Speech of Dr. Dave Bookless, Director of Theology for “A Rocha International” Organization
At the “Ecumenical Perspectives on Climate Change” Symposium
The Middle East Council of Churches organized in cooperation with the Association of Theological Institutes in the Middle East (ATIME) a symposium entitled “Ecumenical Perspectives on Climate Change”. It was inaugurated on Wednesday 4 October 2023, following an Ecumenical Prayer Service held on the occasion of the “Season of Creation” at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik – Lebanon. The symposium continued its sessions on Thursday 5 October 2023, at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut.
During the symposium’s opening, Dr. Dave Bookless, Director of Theology for “A Rocha International” organization, delivers the Keynote speech during which he said: “We are facing many dangers of human-caused climate change, alongside global biodiversity loss and growing inequality within societies, together form an existential threat to human thriving and potentially to the continued survival of human societies... As Christians we are called to turn to God in lament, repentance, reflection, and action. We draw on the resources of our tradition, particularly the biblical narratives of God’s purposes in sustaining and redeeming a good world…”
Hence, you can find below the biography of Dr. Dave Bookless, as well as its full speech.
Biography:
Rev. Dr. Dave Bookless is Director of Theology for A Rocha International (www.arocha.org), an international Christian nature conservation organization established for 40 years and now working in over 20 countries across 6 continents. As part of his role, he serves as a Global Catalyst for Creation Care with the Lausanne Movement co-leading the Lausanne / World Evangelical Alliance Creation Care Network (LWCCN). Dave is an ordained Anglican Priest with 30+ years’ experience serving in multicultural parishes in London. He is a theologian, with a PhD from Cambridge University examining biblical perspectives on wildlife conservation, and lectures regularly in universities and seminaries, as well as speaking to conferences and churches all over the world. He is an author, having contributed to over 30 books, including Planet wise (translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Korean and Spanish) and God Doesn’t do Waste. In addition, Dave serves on global committees for the Season of Creation and Renew our World. Born in India to missionary parents, Dave along with his wife Anne has lived in multifaith Southall since 1991 and brought up their four daughters there. To relax, Dave enjoys birdwatching, running and mountain-walking
Climate Change: biblical and theological perspectives
MECC Symposium, Beirut
It is a great privilege to be invited to give a keynote speech at this symposium on ‘Ecumenical Perspectives on Climate Change’, organised by the Middle East Council of Churches and the Association of Theological Institutes in the Middle East. It is very special indeed to be here in the cradle of Christianity, the lands of the Bible, and in such distinguished ecumenical company.
My subject, ‘Climate Change: biblical and theological perspectives’ is both complex and urgent. It is complex because anthropogenic climate change is itself subject to controversy and debate, requiring multiple academic and practical disciplines as we seek how best to respond. It is also complex because global anthropogenic climate change is a uniquely modern issue, and therefore not one that our Scriptures address directly. Yet, respond we must because the challenge is urgent. The latest report from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) states, “Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people. Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected.”[i]
What makes climate change what scientists sometimes call a ‘wicked problem’ is that it involves a series of interlinked issues which can only be addressed effectively together and at a global level, which is why COP28 in the UAE is so important. It is no exaggeration to say that climate change, together with global biodiversity loss – undermining the fabric on which all life depends – and the increasing divide between rich and poor both within and between nations, together constitute a metacrisis - an existential threat to the thriving of human life and society. If future generations are to inherit a liveable world, with any hope of well-being and flourishing for people and our fellow creatures, we need to radically rethink and reset the way our world works. There has never been a greater challenge facing humanity.
So, how do we respond? For some, the logical response is despair. Influential commentator George Monbiot has written, “Is it reasonable to hope for a better world? Study the cruelty and indifference of governments … the apparently inexorable slide towards climate breakdown, the renewed threat of nuclear war, and the answer appears to be no. Our problems look intractable, our leaders dangerous, while voters are cowed and baffled. Despair looks like the only rational response.”[ii] Climate despair and widespread climate anxiety have become a major cause of mental stress and illness, particularly amongst young people across the world. Despair can also drive people to leave ancestral homes and lands when crops fail or increasing floods, fires and storms destroy livelihoods. Despair makes people migrate to cities and undertake dangerous journeys in small boats to seek a better future.
Despair can also lead to anger. Who can forget the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg addressing world leaders at the UN: “How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”[iii] Movements such as ‘Extinction Rebellion’ and ‘Just Stop Oil’ justify nonviolent direct action against companies and individuals opposing the ending of fossil fuels. I believe it is inevitable that we will see more extreme examples of climate anger in the coming years.
Of course, there is another type of response: that of denial, either refusing to accept the scientific consensus on climate change or refusing to act with adequate urgency, as if this is a problem that can be left to future generations when the evidence is overwhelming that the longer we delay, the more likely we are to see catastrophic tipping points in natural systems. Many ordinary people, even if they do not actively deny climate science, live in effective denial. This is the response of escapism, continuing to eat, drink and be merry as if there is no tomorrow. It is the daily response of most of us, as we push to the back of our minds the inconvenient truth of what’s happening to the planet, as we carry on shopping, flying, over-consuming and polluting. Escapism is also the response of those Christians who naively focus on spiritual matters and the afterlife, as if the hope of heaven means God no longer cares about the earth.
Yet, if we are to be faithful to the God we worship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit then, as Christians, we cannot be consumed by despair and anger, although we may well experience them. Neither should we give in to denial or escapism, however tempting they are. Rather, I suggest, our response should be one of lament, repentance, reflection and action, all bathed in prayer and worship. In the rest of this speech, I will seek to bring our contemporary context into dialogue with the biblical narratives which, whilst they do not address climate change directly, were often written in the context of overwhelming threat. I propose that the Bible, carefully and contextually interpreted, provides a critical framework for understanding the value and purpose of the natural world, and the vocation of human beings within it.
We begin with a theology of creation, recognising that Father, Son and Spirit are the source of all that exists. This planet, along with the creatures and processes that fill it, are far more than the product of random chance. Creation itself is the outworking of the timeless love within the Godhead, an overflow of that mutual and generative relationship that existed before time began. The biblical narratives proclaim, again and again, ‘God saw that it was good’. When the initial creation was complete God looked at all he had made, and behold it was ‘all very good’. One important point here. Theologians have sometimes suggested that the addition of ‘very’ to ‘good’ is due to humanity’s creation. The text suggests otherwise. What is very good is ‘all’ that God has made. That includes humanity, of course, but it also includes mountains and rivers, insects and birds and fish. It is the fulness, the completion of creation that God celebrates as very good. We might almost say, to introduce a modern term, that God celebrates biodiversity as very good.
From a biblical understanding of creation, several important points follow. Firstly, the value of the natural world does not depend on how we value it, but on God’s creation of it. That is to say, modern attempts to place an instrumental or economic value on forests, fossil fuel reserves, carbon sinks, water cycles or agricultural land, or even on species such as pollinating bees, are deeply flawed. Nature is not valuable because of what it does for people, but because, to quote Psalm 24:1, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.’ The value of planet Earth and every creature upon it is not instrumental, dependent on how we value it. Nor, strictly speaking, is it intrinsic – valuable in and of itself. Rather, nature is valuable because God creates it in love, declares it very good, and continues to sustain and renew creation. Nature’s value is contingent on God – and so, for that matter, is our value as human beings. We matter because God loves us and values us.
So, if we live in a world created, sustained and valued by God, what are we to make of today’s depleted, polluted, degraded, chaotic world? Our biblical response is not despair and anger, nor denial and escapism, but lament and repentance. Lament is a great biblical theme we need to recover in these times. Lament is not simply feeling hopeless or angry. It is a cry from the depths to an almighty, all-loving God who alone can change our hearts as well as our world. It is a groaning from our deepest core at the scale of problems we cannot solve. In Romans 8, lament links to a triple ‘groaning’: the whole creation groans ‘as in the pains of childbirth’ (v.22), we, as believers, ‘groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption’ (v.23), and God’s Holy Spirit ‘intercedes for us through wordless groans’ (v.26). These three groanings are intertwined through the interconnection between creation, humanity and God’s Spirit. The Greek root word stenazo entails the feeling of being compressed and constricted, pushed forward, as in a baby’s birth, with either extreme distress or pleasure. Today we experience great pain and longing but, as the pain becomes more intense, so the hope of deliverance and future joy is ever closer.
Lament should also lead to repentance, that profound metanoia, where we acknowledge that we are part of the problem, helpless and hopeless without the cleansing grace and renewing power of God’s Holy Spirit. In an age where people simplistically blame others for all our problems – whether other nations, politicians, powerful business leaders – Christian repentance recognises none of us are without sin, and we should beware of throwing stones or critical words, at others. Metanoia is much more than feeling sorry. It is the complete renewal of our minds, a total reset of our priorities.
If our theology of creation leads us to lament and repentance, it should also lead us to joy and wonder. God has created a world of astonishing beauty, complexity and interdependence. The Season of Creation is a special time to focus, not only on climate and pollution, but to rejoice in nature’s bounty and beauty, its provision and abundance, its complexity and resilience. Surveys worldwide show that access to nature is vital for mental health. If we are at risk of despair, God’s creation is the medicine we need. The Bible’s wisdom literature, particularly Job, the Song of Solomon, and some of the Psalms, show us that time in the wildness, the otherness, the mystery and majesty of creation restores and re-centres us. Our Lord himself, when faced with overwhelming pressures, spent time alone in prayer in creation.
Moving on from a theology of creation, we need to rethink our theological anthropology. In other words, we need to rediscover who we are as human creatures on this earth. Today, many secular thinkers see us as a kind of virus – a plague on the planet - even arguing that nature would be better off without humanity. It is tempting to react defensively by affirming humanity’s uniqueness in bearing the imago Dei, the image of God. Yet perhaps they have a point! The imago Dei does not entitle us to an arrogant disregard for our fellow creatures, or an idolatrous pursuit of so-called progress, endless economic growth and a cycle of consumption and pollution that destroy the goodness of God’s earth. In Genesis 1, the image of God reads less like a royal title and more like a vocation – a job description. Male and female are made in God’s image in order to reflect God’s rule over the beasts, the birds and the fish. If we fail to enable our fellow creatures to flourish as God wants, are we really reflecting the imago Dei any more?
Perhaps we should reflect on the other description of human origins in Genesis. The first human was created ‘from the dust of the earth’, Adam from adamah, humanity from the humus, the living soil. We are, to quote theologian Richard Bauckham, part of ‘the community of creation’, carbon-based lifeforms sharing most of our DNA with all other living organisms. That is the wonder of biblical anthropology. It holds together that we are both earthy, physical creatures and yet we are also created in the image of God. Alongside our familiar creation accounts in Genesis, we need to consider passages like Psalm 104, where God cares not only for humans but also for lions, rock hyraxes, birds and forests, or Job 38-41, where God teases the human about his inability to understand the climate or the ways of wild creatures. Our place is not to rule over creation with arrogance, but humbly to cooperate with the God who already provides for wild creatures, who oversees the forces of nature, who breathes life into every living being.
To put this another way, we have tended towards an anthropocentric worldview, assuming that God made the whole creation for the benefit of humanity, an attitude that has excused the exploitation and pollution of our planet. Today’s alternative ecocentric worldview suggests humans are of no more value than any other species. It is becoming increasingly popular, especially amongst younger people, but it is ultimately a depressing worldview, as humans become the problem with no authority or permission to intervene in nature, and the solution is seen as a world without humanity. Caught within this dichotomy between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, the Christian scriptures offer us an alternative. The world was not made for us, it was made for God: ‘The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it’ (Psalm 24:1). We are not randomly evolved meaningless entities. We are loved from before the creation of the world. We are entrusted with the joyous privilege of cooperating with God in guarding and caring for the world. This Theocentric worldview, where God’s desire that all creation might flourish and worship Him according to its kind, liberates us from idolatry on the one hand and despair on the other.
A Theocentric anthropology has vitally important ethical consequences for us as Christians. The earth is loved and sustained primarily by God rather than us, and we are tasked with reflecting God’s values of shalom. The bible is profoundly relational – all creation emerges from the relationship of love at the heart of the Trinity. Ecology itself is the study of relationships – how different life-forms, ecosystems and processes interact with, and depend on, each other. This is how we are to see ourselves, as relational beings – created to relate to God, to our human neighbours, and also to the community of creation of which we are one part. Shalom is the biblical vision of restored relationships, of justice for all, of peace between former enemies, of harmony within the natural world. Our place as humans is unique because we stand within creation, and yet also relate personally and together to God. It is a role that should be characterised by humility – who are we that God should call us? It should be characterised by simplicity – knowing our dependence upon God for life and breath, and our dependence on nature, God’s creation, for air, water, food and health. Finally, it should be characterised by service. Bearing the image of God does not make us arrogant Lords over creation. Rather it makes us servant-stewards, deacons as much as priests within creation. Like the biblical ideal of the King as servant of his people, an ideal perfected in our Lord’s washing the feet of his disciples, so our rule within creation should be characterised by service. We are to be good shepherds, ensuring that all our flock – human and nonhuman - are fed and pastured and healthy.
Climate justice is therefore vital for vulnerable human beings – climate refugees, those who suffer from the emissions of wealthy countries. We are right to talk about loss and damage. But God’s justice also extends beyond humanity and we must therefore seek justice for our nonhuman neighbours too. As at the time of Noah, we must seek climate solutions that include all the passengers on this ark we call planet earth. So called climate techno fixes that assume we can keep going with an industrialised globalised economy predicated on growth simply fly in the face of how nature works. Rather, our theology demands that we must tackle the biodiversity and climate crises together. As Pope Francis has put it so elegantly, this earth is our casa communa, our ‘common home’ whether we are rich or poor, human or animal, and we must learn to share it equitably with a vision of ‘integral ecology’ or mutual flourishing, a vision of shalom, which Jesus reinterpreted in the language of the Kingdom of God. We are to seek God’s Kingdom values on earth, as it is in heaven.
As well as revisiting and retrieving our theology of creation and our theological anthropology, I finally want to suggest we need to look at our eschatology. Today, for many, there is a crisis of hope. We started by thinking about climate despair, anxiety and anger. When we see the cynical behaviour of powerful companies and governments, the selfishness of ordinary people and the chaotic rapid growth in extreme climate disasters: fires, droughts, floods, storms and more, what hope is there of a liveable world for future generations? Truly, if our hope rests on human beings alone, we are deluded. If we think that the UN, the IPCC, COP28 and the G20 are going to solve the climate crisis, we will be sorely disappointed. But, for Christian believers, our hope rests ultimately not in science and technology, nor in politicians or education or activism, important and helpful as all of these can be. Our ultimate hope rests on the character, actions and promises of God.
It is significant that Jurgen Moltmann’s ‘Theology of Hope’ published nearly 60 years ago, emerged from his own experience of the trauma of World War Two. It is equally significant that the great biblical visions of hope, in the prophetic writings of the Old Testament and the apocalyptic writings of the New Testament, arose in the contexts, respectively, of exile and persecution. Today, we need to wrestle anew with what it means to have hope in a world of climate chaos and social collapse. To do that, we need to return to the purposes of God in creation, in Christ and in the final consummation of all things. What we find is a God who makes this world in love, sustains and rejoices in it, who in Christ enters material creation – taking flesh – and redeeming all things through his death and resurrection, and who promises that one day creation itself will be released from its bondage to decay. Our hope for creation is the same as our hope of resurrection, that out of death and despair God can bring new life, that the Risen Christ is the firstfruits of the renewal of all things.
This theology of hope is not something that makes us retreat from the world and wait passively for Christ’s return. Rather, it should give us a vision of how the world could and should be. It should motivate us to passionate, hope-fuelled action for justice, and for the flourishing of all life on earth. It should drive us to anticipate in the here and now what God-in-Christ will bring to pass fully in the future.
[i] IPCC, Climate Change 2023 Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf
[ii] George Monbiot, The Guardian, 9th Sept. 2017
[iii] Greta Thunberg, Sept. 2019: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit