2. Historical Background
1962 –Rachel Carson’s Silent Sprint
Warning of potential wide-spread impact of haphazard pesticide use
Possible links of pesticides with cancer
Pesticides might even interrupt reproductive cycles; a “Silent Spring”
Massive Public Outcry
Carson’s book effectively launches the Environmentalism Movement
Launch of Greenpeace, the EPA, and others
1967 – Lynn White Jr.’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis”
Largely blames Christianity for ecological disaster
Problems: Christian dualism, anthropocentrism, and notions of dominion
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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"
3. Birth of Ecotheology
Almost direct response to Lynn White
Dual mandate
How can Christianity respond to environmental concerns
How the ecological crisis must renew the Christian tradition
My Thesis: Ecotheology Needs Technology
Christological Mirror
Cosmology, Ecology, Technology
Creation, Incarnation, Resurrection
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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"
4. Environmental Crisis
Sea-Level Rise of up to One Meter by 2099
Swamping entire communities, displacing millions of people
Greater Evaperation of Water Due to Global Warming
Changes in hydration cycle will reduce availability of water
Increased Disease Vectors from Rising Temperatures
Expected growth in Malaria from mosquito increases
60% of Coral Reefs Threatened
World’s most productive ecosystems
Over HALF of Global Wetlands LOST
11 Percent of Species Go Extinct EVERY DECADE
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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"
5. What is EcoTheology?
Two Good Answers
Theology of our Earthly Home and our place in the Cosmos
Greek: Oikos—”Home” or ”Family”
Experience of God in Nature
Understanding of Christianity from within Nature
AWE: Before the beauty and complexity of Universe
CONCERN: For the destruction of our home
NO ONE KNOWS!
50+ years of discourse; 1000s of papers/books; dozens of typologies
Christian Confessional Approaches, World Religions, Eco-Ethics
No Scholarly Consensus
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6. Caveat & Approach
Methodological Caveat
Honest attempts at summary fail
Criticism aimed at “straw man”
John Haught’s Typology in The Promise of Nature
3 Approaches
Tradition-Oriented Approach
Sacramental Approach
Cosmic-Purpose Approach
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7. Tradition-Centric Approach
Ernst Conradie: “Neither the Bible nor Christianity, but our
failure to accept its core message” is the cause of the
Environmental Crisis”
Resources are already found in Christianity to handle crisis
Stewardship Model: Caretakers, Guardians, Shephards, &c
Gen 1:28—”Be fruitful and multiple; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion…over
everything living thing that moves on the earth.”
Interpreted as a command to care for the Earth
Dominion granted only as long as humanity actives responsibility
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8. Sacramental Approach
Sacramental Character of Nature
Less focus on religious texts and traditions
Nature as revelation of divine
Often a nature pantheism
E.g. Deep Ecology
Holistic/relational approach to
natural world
Rejects anthropocentrism
All beings are sacred
Human self-realization found through dissolving self into the Whole
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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"
9. Cosmic-Purpose Approach
Locus of divine action in the cosmos itself
Conradie: Emphasis on “dynamic, process
character of creation”
Future-Oriented—God’s plan is an on-going
creation, continually unfolding and emerging
E.g. Teilhard de Chardin
Celia Deanne-Drummond: “Synthesis between
evolutionary and cosmological science and Christian
faith in a cosmic, mystical vision.”
Evolution as cosmic unfolding/revelation of God
God works through the cosmos, moving creation toward union
Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"
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10. Two Problematic Dualisms
Tradition-Centric: Platonic God/Cosmos Dualism
Separation of God & Cosmos
“Caring For” vs ”Participating Within”
Radically different worldview than modern science
Sacramental: Cosmos/Nature & Nature/Technology
Separation of Cosmos from Nature
If God is contained in nature, what was he doing
for 9 billion years?
(Divine Action -> God of the Gaps)
Separation of Nature from Technology
Worst human impulses are natural ones;
Technology might also save us
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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"
11. Best of Both Worlds: Cosmic-Purpose
No Limiting Dualisms
No God & Creation Dualism
Open to both Cosmos and Human Techne
Retains Standards of Care
Like Stewardship, feels responsible to nature
Like Deep Ecology, sacredly holistic
Reveals a created cosmos pregnant with
God’s intention, an interrelated web of being
through which all creatures are connected, and
a universe wherein humanity is meant to nurture
God’s cosmic unfolding.
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12. Cosmic Purpose Christology: Creation
Logos, creative Word of God,
creative agency of cosmos
Christ possibilizes and
pervades all of creation
Continual creation,
Christ ever-present as creativity itself
Christic cosmos is how creatures
experience & return to God
Cosmos is “Christi-form”
“Word of God is present in “the primordial hydrogen,
star formation, the Milky Way Galaxy, planet Earth, bacteria,
clams, frogs, and chimpanzees…” (Denis Edwards)
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13. Cosmic Purpose Christology: Incarnation
“Word made Flesh” entails entire cosmic
& ecologial network
“includes the whole interconnected world
of fleshy life and, in some way, includes
the whole universe to which flesh is
related and on which it depends.”
(Denis Edwards)
Flesh is light, oxygen, water, vitamin, mineral
Flesh is the entire evolutionary epic & cosmos
Jesus is HUMAN; conscious creation
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14. Cosmic-Purpose Christology: Resurrection
Resurrection is the forward
movement of the cosmos
Miracle of Self-Sacrifice and Self-Transcendence
Death is not an end, but a new beginning
Resurrection is the love that makes of death new life
Resurrectional Consciousness is
the human dimension
Self-sacrifice for community & creation
Letting go of what is not God, so as to better embrace God
Rejection of sin as self-centered concern, blocking creation
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15. Ecotheology & Technology
Technology is the missing piece of a Oikos Theology
Sometimes found in cosmic-purpose approach
E.g. Teilhard believed technology could
advance religion
Generally lacking technological focus
Nature as intrinsically technological
Technology as part of God’s cosmic becoming
Bringing two concepts to ecotheology
Philip Hefner’s Created Co-Creator
Donna Haraway’s Technonature
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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"
16. Creation & Co-Creation
Following Teilhard, humans are “evolution aware of itself”
We are more than awareness, we are also creators
As creators aware of our cosmic role,
we are Co-Creators
Co-Creation is Christological
Humans are imago dei co-creators
Creation—and creativity—is Christ
We are Co-Christic Co-Creators
Like God through Christ, we are mandated to create
for the good of all creation
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17. Cyborgian Incarnation
Donna Haraway: “Nature is itself artifactual…a technics through and through”
Technonature is Haraway’s way of saying the Nature/Technology
dualism is as problematic as the God/Cosmos dualism
Nature is Cyborg
Cyber-organic, both born-and-made,
as constructed as technology
Technonature is Christological
Christians know nature is both born-and-made
”Begotten not made” but then inhabits made creation
Thus, through Christ, creation is born-and-made
Incarnation is the creation of technonature,
the emergence of Cyborg Christ
All Creation is cyborg, in the image and likeness
of our cyberorganic God
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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"
18. Technological Resurrection
The Word Made Tech
If flesh is the created reality of Christ, what is technology?
Technology is the flesh of human creativity
Technology can be graceful or sinful
Sinful technology separates us from the world,
rather than immersing us in God’s creation
Sinful tech is Anti-Christian, because it
is anti-Creation and thus anti-Incarnational
Technology needs resurrection
Technology can be graceful, crafted in
resurrectional consciousness, built to
“deepen the heart of love.”
Graceful tech must be ecological, part
of the Oikos, part of the cosmic becoming
of Christ.
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19. Summary
An Eco-Theology of Co-Creation & Technonature…
Begins with the Oikos Logos of our cosmic home
Plunges its hands into the incarnational dirt
& mechanics of technonature
Nurturingly co-creates God’s universe through
resurrectional technology
Redeem a world fallen from human &
technological sin
Restores the Cosmotheandric Techne that
is Christic Cosmos
Embraces Technology to Save our
Dying Planet & Fulfill God’s Plan
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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"
20. Parousia: “One More Thing…”
Raimon Panikkar: Always-Already Incarnational & Resurrectional
“The eschatological ‘Second Coming’ is not
another Incarnation or a second Christ appearing
here or there.”
Jesus has “been there, done that” and doesn’t
need to do it again
What form will Christ take when he returns?
Technological Parousia?
A second coming of Logos in the form of a
Global Social Network, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence?
Something new to come? A technological coincidentia oppositorum?
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21. What divine love comes
forth in code, waiting to be
born, yearning to transform?
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