Humanity operates like a force of nature capable of affecting the destiny of the Earth System. This epochal shift profoundly alters the relationship between humankind and the Earth, presenting the conscious, thinking human animal with an unprecedented dilemma: As human power has grown over the Earth, so has the power of nature to extinguish human life. The emergence of the Anthropocene has settled any question of the place of human beings in the world: we stand inescapably at its center. The outstanding question-which forms the impetus and focus for this book-remains: What kind of human being stands at the center of the world? And what is the nature of that world? Unlike the scientific fact of human-centeredness, this is a moral question, a question that brings theology within the scope of reflection on the critical failures of human irresponsibility. Much of Christian theology has so far flunked the test of engaging the reality of the Anthropocene. The authors of these original essays begin with the premise that it is time to push harder at the questions the Anthropocene poses for people of faith.
Jonathan Cole is assistant director of the Centre for Religion, Ethics and Society at Charles Sturt University, Canberra. Peter Walker is research fellow in the Centre for Religion, Ethics and Society at Charles Sturt University, Canberra and Principal of United Theological College, Sydney.
Preface Introduction: Theology on a Defiant Earth, by Peter Walker and Jonathan Cole The Anthropocene Epoch and Its Meaning, by Clive Hamilton A Rupture in the Earth: An Implicit Augustinian Theology of the Anthropocene, by Lisa H. Sideris Is It Time for a Theological Step Change, by Clive Pearson Icarus Falling: Theological Anthropology and the Anthropocene, by Scott Cowdell Thy Kingdom Come: Bonhoeffer's Earthly Christianity as Theology and Ethic, by Dianne Rayson Anthropocene and Ecclesia: The Church in Swarming Mode, by Stephen Pickard Thinking Eschatologically in the Face of the Anthropocene, by Christiaan Mostert Apocalypse and the Anthropocene: A Biblical Resource for a New Global Epoch, by David Neville Redeeming Eden: Biblical Ethics in the Anthropocene, by Mark G. Brett The Serpent in the Garden-Sin and the Anthropocene, by Peter Walker Defiant God: The Fate of Christianity's Holocene Ontology in the Anthropocene, by Jonathan Cole A Climate of Hope? Reflections on the Theology of the Anthropocene, by Clive Hamilton Bibliography Index About the Contributors
