Climate change and the Symbol Deficit in the Christian Tradition: Expanding Gendered Sources

Description

Exploring how the climate crisis discloses the symbol deficit in the Christian tradition, this book argues that Christianity is rich in symbols that identify and address the failures of humans and the obstacles that prevent humans from doing well, while positive symbols that can engage people in constructive action seem underdeveloped. Henriksen examines the potential of the Christian tradition to develop symbols that can engage peoples in committed and sustained action to prevent further crisis. To do so, he argues that we need symbols that engage both intellectually and emotionally, and which enhances our perception of belonging in relationships with other humans, be it both in the present and in the future. According to Henriksen, the deficit can only be obliterated if we can develop symbols that have some root or resonance in the Christian tradition, can provide concrete and specified guidance of agency, as well as can engage people both emotionally and intellectually, and finally open up to visions for a moral agency that provide positive motivations for caring about environmental conditions as a whole. Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Preface Introduction: The deficit thesis and the task it presents Part I: Contexts for the symbol deficit Chapter 1: From acts of God to the Anthropocene Chapter 2: Culprits for the predicament Lynn White revisited Nature as modernity’s other: Adorno and Horkheimer Chapter 3: Consumer idolatry System of idolatry: Abuse of God’s gifts Captured in the consumer society Calling out heresy Chapter 4: Religion in denial Chapter 5: To empower those who suffer and give voice to those who lack a voice An encompassing vision Gendered injustices Doctrinal challenges Conclusion, Part I: Lessons from the context Part II: Conditions for symbolic practices Chapter 6: Symbols as mediating practice Introduction: Symbols, practices and semiotics Tillich on symbols From Tillich to pragmatism: Neville Symbols and experience Symbolic practices are practices of orientation, transformation and engagement Symbols mediate, constitute and engage embodied human experience Perspectives from evolutionary theory To live by metaphors Formative psychological elements for symbolically mediated relationships Chapter 7: Conditions for agency: A critique of modernity’s detached subject An expanded view of agency and freedom conditions Overcoming anthropocentric conditions for agency: From Habermas to Vetlesen Preliminary concluding reflections Chapter 8: Symbols for enhancing moral motivation and avoiding defection The stick: Supernatural punishment as moral motivation? A better way, but no carrot: On emulation of goodness Linda Zagzebski: Goodness as admirable On the virtue of ecological care Virtues as relational and articulations of self-interpretation Virtues and climate crisis: Michael Northcott The virtue of ecological care and other virtues Chapter 9: An inductive, experientially oriented theology Theology and experience A pragmatist theology Part III: Symbols for practices Chapter 10: God as creator: A critical symbol? God of life or God of death? Creation: Interconnectedness deep down entails responsibility Responsible stewardship? Responsibility for more than human nature: From Levinas via Latour to Vetlesen Chapter 11: From Anthropos to all of creation The experiential basis for a metaphor that mediates actions Hans Jonas: Responsibility for future generations Hannah Arendt on natality Creation’s future under your heart: Elaborating the fundamental metaphor Virtues of motherhood for all of creation Ecological virtues in the context of exemplarist moral theory A foundation in Christian narrative elements Chapter 12: Symbolic deficits in apocalypticism: Towards a presentist eschatology Catherine Keller’s warnings Further criticism: Hermann Timm Eschatology reconfigured to address the present: Hope and healing (Barbara Rossing) Chapter 13: Sin Uses of sin 1: To defer and deflect political action and environmental concern Uses of sin 2: An entry point for self-criticism and repentance Uses of sin 3: Sinful actions in specific contexts Narcissism: A metaphor for a sinful relationship between humans and nature Sin as interpretative category: Summary of findings Symbols for the ecological consequences of sin, and their implications for practice Lost in the desert Judged by our actions The ecological hell: Created by humans Chapter 14: Caring relationships: Fundamental motifs revisited Introduction: That which is closest to us: The caring body The born and embodied God of Cosmos: Deep incarnation The world as God’s body? Creation as gift? On gift and responsibility Nature as sacred? Chapter 15: Sacrifice, hope and grace The sacrifice of Jesus as informative? Sacrifice as life-condition: Sarah Coakley Motherhood and sacrifice Hope and grace reconsidered Overcoming ambiguities of orientational symbols: Exodus and Paradise Conclusion Bibliography Names Index Subjects Index