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Document Details : Title: Scheppingsgeloof en de natuurpolitiek Subtitle: Schillebeeckx voor het ecologietijdperk Author(s): PYNE, Elizabeth M. Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 59 Issue: 4 Date: 2019 Pages: 391-413 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.59.4.3287125 Abstract : The significance of Edward Schillebeeckx’s theology of creation is well established. This article explores new angles for interpreting this significance in light of the present ecological age – a global moment marked by increased awareness of humanity’s relation to the natural world and simultaneously by accumulating climatological and ecological crises. In the latter part of his career, Schillebeeckx himself demonstrated a growing concern with human-nature relations as a component of Christian faith. The article examines the ways in which he extended, adapted, and developed his thinking about the meaning of creation in this light. Pyne tracks the theme of human-nature relations in connection with Schillebeeckx’s treatment of major concepts such as critical negativity and the anthropological constants, co-creatureliness, and ritual to reveal several key shifts within his ecological turn. This analysis at the same time highlights persistent tensions surrounding Schillebeeckx’s understanding of human identity in relation to nature and to history and culture, with particular attention to the issue of anthropocentrism that has been raised in contemporary ecological theology. Pyne argues that rather than presenting a problem to be resolved, these tensions indicate potential directions for carrying forward Schillebeeckx’s theological approach. The final portion of the article builds on the earlier analysis with a constructive discussion of how the notion of creation faith can address dilemmas within today’s ecological age. At the heart of these dilemmas are questions regarding the politics of nature – reducible neither to human agency nor material and metaphysical givens. The mystical- political praxis of creation faith, as Schillebeeckx describes it, furnishes a crucial forum in which to consider human beings’ ecological belonging and political subjectivity as interrelated features of their finite creaturality. |
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