Towards an EcoTheology of Co-Creation and Technonature

1. Cosmology,
Ecology,
Technology
Towards an EcoTheology of
Co-Creation and Technonature
Theology 8290
Class Presentation
Gregory Hansell
April 20, 2016

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

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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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"

21. What divine love comes
forth in code, waiting to be
born, yearning to transform?
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Gregory Hansell – "Cosmology, Ecology, Technology"