Does Creation Groan and Are We Listening?

DOES CREATION GROAN – AND ARE WE LISTENING? Metaphor as a Key in which to hear the Voice of the Earth in Scripture

I need to begin with some linguistic housekeeping. ... Those in the burgeoning field of Ecological hermeneutics are not agreed on terminology. “Humankind” is clearly descriptive of ... humankind. But descriptions of “the rest” of creation vary. The Australia-based Earth Bible Project uses “Earth”, with capitalised E and no article. Some say “other creatures” and thus exclude inanimate creation. Clough prefers the term “Other-Than-Human Creation” [OTHC] – and I’m convinced of his reasoning so that’s my term referring to all of creation that is not humankind. I sometimes also distinguish between animate and inanimate creation.

Also on language, we have a bit of a minefield. Talking about metaphor means we need a description of language that is not metaphorical. The term “literal” is fraught with difficulties hermeneutically ... IS IT EVER possible and what does “literal” mean anyway!? ... we could say ‘non-tropical language’ – language that is not using a trope, but I think you might dream of your summer holidays instead! ... so I’m going to use a translation from Aristotle, and since he began all the work on metaphor, that seems fair enough. His term is onoma kurion, meaning the ‘standard’, or ‘main’, use of a word. It’s still not ideal, but I hope it will serve our purpose – it carries interesting overtones if we bring it from classical to biblical Greek! ......

We do contextual theology here ... and the context doesn’t get any huger does it?

Even if you’re a sceptic and don’t believe that the causes of climate disruption are anthropogenic, there is still much that is clearly, “down to” humankind: overuse and abuse of natural resources and OTHC, such as deforestation, intensive farming, over-fishing, and so on. And whatever the cause of climate change, it is happening and already affecting millions of people with rising sea levels, encroaching desertification, and increasingly extreme weather conditions are examples. For a number of years, Christian Aid has been saying that climate change is the single 1 biggest factor affecting global poverty. For that reason, if for no other, there is an imperative for Christian response – and that’s only considering humankind; nothing in Christian Aid’s response is about OTHC.

In that huge context, the theological and biblical questions are also huge. My particular interest is, how do we read Scripture in this context? Lots of work has been done over the last 15-20 years, developing a significant ecological hermeneutics – an interested reading, much as liberation, feminist, and post-colonial readings encourage us to read from a particular point of view......

The Earth Bible Team suggests 6 criteria for reading Scripture from the point of view of Earth, one of which (the 3rd) is “The Principle of Voice. Earth is a subject capable of raising its voice in celebration and against injustice.”

To assume that the only way OTHC is capable of communicating in relationship is with voice is peculiarly anthropocentric. All communication is not vocal, nor even verbal, even for human beings. However, if by “voice” we can be forgiven for sleight-of-hand abbreviation for having a point of view and being capable of making it known, I hope the language we’re using will be acceptable ... it’s difficult not to use human-language language!

“Subject” refers, at least in part, to the grammatical subject of verbs – the agent actively undertaking whatever “doing” the doing word suggests. He hoovers; she spins; bulls bellow; worms wiggle ... that’s okay isn’t it? All animate creation can be the active subject of verbs ... at least of some verbs. We might be less at ease with a knitting natterjack or a philosophising flea ... and what about those trees that clap their hands and the cattle that praise the Lord?

And there we come to the nub of the problem. There are many examples in Scripture where an aspect of OTHC appears as the active subject of a verb which

2 isn’t “natural” to them (cattle praising rather than mooing, for example) ... or where such a response is anticipated by the text.

Some examples : “the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Is. 55:12)

“the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.” (Ps 65:12-13)

“Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! ... Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire, and hail, snow and frost, ... Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!” (Ps 148)

And there are many, many such examples.

Perhaps the obvious, and certainly an easy, response is – ‘none of this language is being used in its standard sense [remember that’s the I’m-being-careful-not-to- say-“literal”] ... none of this language is being used in its standard sense, it’s ‘only’ poetry’.

Unpacking that potential response we’ll find that assumptions are being made:

1. 1st, that we all agree upon what “the standard sense’ is (and we almost certainly do not);

3 2. behind the statement “it’s only poetry” lies an assumption that in poetry language does not have actual or true reference – for example, the statement “the meadows clothe themselves with flocks” would, therefore, never have actual reference in the world. That is, in slightly more technical terms, we are talking in metaphors, and the sceptic is, thereby, implying that metaphors do not, and cannot, have true reference;

3. and underlying that is a huge assumption is that we all know what’s happening when we use metaphors. I get very irritated by the amount of assuming that goes on in this area. We find it in theology (Sallie McFague, for example, at least as far as I’ve come across; there may be somewhere in her extensive corpus where she does engage philosophically and look at alternatives) in more biblical writing (such as Marcus Borg). Even in the Earth Bible Project volumes the writing on metaphor is sloppy. McFague, the Earth Bible Team and others rely upon Max Black’s work entirely uncritically (we’ll come back to him in a moment) and often without naming him.

Borg is even less helpful – he explains, a metaphorical reading is about “What ... this story means as a story, independent of its historical factuality.” (Borg, 2001, p38): One of a series of sweeping statements with not a single reference to any scholar who has done work on metaphor.

I digress slightly, but you see what I mean about assumptions – and they become pertinent when those undertaking ecological interpretation are doing exactly the same thing!

The Earth Bible team have an essay entitled “The Voice of the Earth: More than Metaphor?” They refer to McFague in support. They say that “metaphor [has the capacity] to go beyond itself and reveal the unknown, the latent, or the hidden that deserves recognition”. There is still not a single incisive piece of work on metaphor in the whole 5-volume project.

4 We are focussing in more narrowly now. Do the Biblical words that describe OTHC offering, or being called to offer, a response to God or to what is happening in the human world, “only” function as metaphors? Can we get beyond that and, in any way, understand such statements as having true reference?

Let me take you on a swift hop, skip and jump through what I regard as the crucial work on metaphor that will help us to answer that question – admittedly I’m selecting – but I’m trying to show some of the variety and to be critical!

We cannot avoid beginning with Aristotle (Rhetoric and Poetics). At the end of Poetics he acknowledges the genius of the one who finds an appropriate and effective metaphor for the purposes of rhetoric or poetry – but the main conclusion is that the metaphor is just decorative. Thus a metaphor can never be used in a definition. It doesn’t add to the sum of our knowledge of a thing or person, and the metaphor can always be translated back into words using their standard sense. So the “only” a metaphor does, here, mean there’s no true reference – it’s just decorative. (End of Poetics, cf Ricoeur, 2003, p227) ...

... let’s look at a simple example ... ‘he’s a bull in a china shop’ (clearly my example and not Aristotle’s!) ... the person is by no means a bull, and probably the mayhem being perpetrated is not the smashing of china in a shop. Nevertheless, it is more decorative, this argument goes, to say “he’s a bull in a china shop” than to say “that is a clumsy person who often drops and breaks things” ... Aristotle’s work would suggest that one can translate from the metaphor back to the ‘standard use’ without loss of meaning. Perhaps one can in the china shop – the question is ...

... is that where we’re at when we read of the command that monsters, fire, and hail, snow and frost, wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds should praise God?

5 Max Black, writing on metaphor in the early 1950s, explained how he thought the poetry of it worked. Two thoughts are brought together which we would not otherwise expect to find connected, and in the interaction a new meaning is found and each of the original terms is enriched by the juxtaposition. That’s quite helpful isn’t it? especially when he says that we cannot go back to the two literal thoughts without loss of meaning ... there’s something new here! ...

... that’s what seems, at least in my reading, to be grasped by writers of metaphorical theology and biblical interpretation even if there is no real account of Black nor any analysis.

But ... and it’s a big BUT there’s still an ontological problem. Take Donne’s Elegy No. IX, The Autumnal : “No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.”

... even using Black, however aesthetically pleasing the poetic description, and however enhanced our understanding of a woman’s face and of autumn, there still IS NOT ACTUALLY autumn in that face and so that statement isn’t true ... nor, on this analysis, could the statement be used to refer correctly.

... Maybe that doesn’t matter for interpreting John Donne. But I think it matters very much in biblical interpretation. Let’s look at another important contributor and I’ll try and explain why I think that’s the case.

In 1985, Janet Martin Soskice published a brilliant piece of work, Metaphor and Religious Language. I’m taking this out of chronological order because I do not believe she moved forward on the issue which faces us. To summarise horribly, her conclusion on reference is that metaphor functions just like simile; ... let’s look at that for a moment ...

6 ... Soskice borrows an example from Flaubert, (Soskice, 1985, p92) and her argument is that to say “language is a cracked kettle” (which is a metaphor) has precisely the same truth value as the statement “language is like a cracked kettle” (the simile). I don’t know what Flaubert intended ... but to me this says something about not being able to contain meaning, it bursts out, you can’t control what those who hear or read our words will make of them. Language IS NOT a cracked kettle – but what an effective picture of its power and abundance!

... In terms of the ontology and reference, it doesn’t really make any difference which trope we use here. A simile draws a comparison, and it doesn’t matter if language IS NOT a cracked kettle. The post-enlightenment modernists have no problems with similes ... they do not make truth claims, merely comparisons. But if we try and apply this conflation of the tropes to religious language we end up allowing linguistic theory to drive questions of truth. Let me illustrate:

“Jesus is the Son of God.”

Some of you might not be happy to hear me say that this is a metaphor – forgive me and hang in there! I think this is a metaphor – but I am absolutely NOT suggesting this is metaphor in Borg’s sense. I actually think that realising this is a metaphor enhances the statement in precisely the way that Black suggested AND I think we can go beyond Black.

The word “son” is, today, defined in biological terms – and biologically, Jesus is not God’s Son, there is no inherited DNA. BUT we have brought thoughts together as Black suggested we should, “Jesus”, “son”, and “God” – and something unique has emerged and we cannot go backwards to the place where we had not brought these thoughts together. So much is that the case that we have, subsequently, to understand afresh exactly what we mean by the three words, “Jesus”, “son”, and “God”:

7 ... how we understand Jesus is deepened;

... the way we understand God has been changed forever by this statement;

... the way we understand “sonship” has also been altered and enriched (Soskice herself takes this example and gets thus far – 1985, pp89-90). We can see what Paul does with the concept of huiothesia, adoption, having sonship placed upon one, for example (Rom 8:15, Gal 4:5, Eph:1:5).

Aristotle’s position would not allow us to use the metaphor as a definition. On that basis, “Jesus is the son of God” cannot be making a true statement.

... If Soskice were correct, and the truth conditions for using a metaphor are no different from those for using a simile, then it OUGHT to be the same thing to say “Jesus is LIKE the son of God” ... and it just isn’t the same statement is it? We can see the ontological problem particularly clearly in that example. Christology has become reductionist as a result of a linguistic theory – the tail wagging the dog.

So Soskice is still enmeshed in the consequences of the underlying assumption of post-enlightenment modernism and its children, namely, that only literal language can be used to make true statements; [for more detail, see Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language (Tractatus Logico Philosophicus 2.063-2.141); Selby, 2006, chapters 1 and 2.] according to Nietzsche and others, statements utilising metaphor were false or worse, they were lies, [see Nietzsche, 1873] and, as we move into the era of the Logical Positivists, unless there was at least the potential for a statement to be verified [eg Ayer, 1958 {or falsified – eg Popper, 1959 }] then it was meaningless.

Jüngel reflects on how things stood at this point: “Seen from the standpoint of this understanding of truth, religious language seems to be the exact opposite of true language; it seems to be a kind of error, if not a lie.” (Jüngel, 1989, p17). So, we

8 might add, a fortiori, on these arguments language about trees clapping hands and cattle praising must also be an error, if not a lie.

We still have important questions to ask about how we read OTHC metaphors in Scripture. DO the heavens “tell” forth the glory of God? ... or is this JUST poetry, such that the statements have no referential or truth value? None of the participants we’ve noted thus far can really help us.

I turn now to Ricoeur’s 1975 work, The Rule of Metaphor (published in 1975 in France and first translated into English in 1977) where he talks linguistically about “split reference” – and ontologically about “is and is not” (Ricoeur, 2003, p 265).

Let’s go back to the Donne example to unpack what Ricoeur is offering –

- imagine that I arrange to meet you at Starbucks in Fallowfield and we are expecting to meet a third person whom I know but whom you have never met. At the door I see her sitting at a table saving seats for us – but there are two other women sitting on their own at tables, so I can’t say to you ‘she’s the one over there on her own’ ... but what if I said to you ‘she’s the one with autumn in her face’?

... If the other two women sitting on their own are younger, probably students, and the woman to whom I wish to draw your attention is older, and of an ethnic origin such that her skin has a warm brown coloured and is slightly wrinkled, would you be able to pick out the woman from my description? ... It’s quite possible to answer “yes” to that question.

... That means the language has worked in terms of reference – you have correctly picked out the woman to whom I was referring you – so on one level it is a true statement, there IS autumn in her face and you have recognised it.

9 However, and equally clearly, there also IS NOT autumn in her face in the main or standard use of the word “autumn”!

It is possible that the metaphor has also worked for you on Black’s level – something new has emerged for your perception of the woman and even, perhaps, in how you will subsequently use the word “autumn”.

I think we can see what an enormous step Ricoeur has taken by applying it to the example which did not work for Soskice – “Jesus is the Son of God.” ... Now we can say, it’s true there IS NOT DNA transference – BUT we have not only got that wonderful explosion of meaning which enriches our concepts of Jesus, sonship and God ... we have also got the ontology right ... with Ricoeur’s IS and IS NOT ontology we can ALSO say “Jesus IS the Son of God” and make a true statement. Soskice rejects Ricoeur’s “edifice of dualities” (Soskice, 1985, p88) but I’m sorry I don’t think she’s on top of the ontological difficulties.

If you’ve stuck with me ... I hope I have shown now that not only can this be seen as a true and referential statement, but over and above the standard sense of the words in English, we have also gained that richness of the metaphor without the loss of the ontology which seems to have clung to Black and Soskice and, by extension, McFague and others who depend upon them.

Okay. How does that apply to the Biblical passages which indicate that OTHC praises God? We are now in a position to say that the monsters of the deep, cattle and birds, and all weathers both DO praise God and, in the standard sense of the human language, DO NOT. Similarly, we can say the trees of the field clap their hands – because they DO rejoice – AND DO NOT clap their hands, because they haven’t got any!

10 Now we need to ask, HOW does the IS part of the metaphor work? It’s clear that OTHC DOES NOT praise God in the standard sense of the word because the standard sense of the word is human. What is the DOES part?

In the late 80s, Fretheim offered a wonderful study in which he mentions the “is and is not” [Fretheim, 1987, p 22] but does not cite Ricoeur. His thesis is that OTHC (my summary, he doesn’t use that term) praises God by being what God intended – Fretheim says, “Each entity has its own distinctiveness in its praising according to its intrinsic capacity and fitness ...” [Fretheim, 1987, p 23]... and also that praise of God is only complete and sufficient when the whole of creation praises together – for as Psalm 104 concludes ... let them all, every part of creation ... “Let them praise the name of the Lord.” ... And that includes us – for if humans ignore the praise that OTHC offers and assume that it is only human voices that are capable of it, then we will impoverish the glorification of God. We need to JOIN our voices to the praises of all creation – after all, it is we who are the Johnny&Jill-come-latelies.

Hardy and Ford make a similar point (1985, p82). Even my beloved Barth says humankind “is only like a late-comer slipping shamefacedly into creation’s choir in heaven and earth, which has never ceased its praise ...” (ET 1957, p648).

Bauckham takes up this theme and he puts things in a nutshell – again, sadly, avoiding working on metaphor. He says: “The passages about creation’s praise are, of course, metaphorical ... But the reality to which they point is that all creatures bring glory to God simply by being themselves and fulfilling their God-given roles in God’s creation.” [Bauckham, 2002, p47].

Bauckham also picks up Fretheim’s point about all praise being needed – and suggests that it might be understood as antiphonal ... I really like the idea that, as we are able, we see, taste, smell, touch, or hear OTHC, and in our human words respond to their call to praise. [Bauckham, 2002, pp 51ff]. I wonder if that is as good

11 as it gets in terms of hearing OTHC praising God and understanding what such metaphors might be doing in the poetry of Scripture. ...

Lest we sit too comfortably on the laurels of our journey too that point ... there is an important critique to make here. All this assumes that it is possible to know what it means for creation “to be itself”. Does that mean without any human footprint at all, as in before we came along? How then could we join in the praise? Does it imply pre-agricultural or industrial revolution and thus imply that other-than-western cultures who live differently in relation to OTHC know answer we do not?...

... does creation being itself mean existing in peaceful beauty and in devastating tsunami? ... does it mean the gentle play of the leaping salmon and the carnivorous decimation by the grizzly who spears it on its claw and consumes it?... does it mean the nasty malaria-carrying mosquito, and the cancer cell, birth defects in many different species and ... and so on, all the “nature red in tooth and claw” (Alfred Lord Tennyson In Memoriam A. H. H., 1850 Canto 56)?

Horrell and Coad suggest the picture is more complex than has been assumed and conclude praise of all creation is an eschatological goal – the telos of all creation – and thus claim the work of St Francis (2001, pp 39ff) ... and yet a similar point arises – how, then, can the Psalms call upon humankind now to join in praise which isn’t yet? Though I certainly trust there will be lots of that praise in God’s good time!

In the face of the scholarship we’ve just noted, this thought, that creation praises God by being itself, deserves to be taken seriously ... and I’m almost, but not quite, taken aback at the enormity of my critique – that they just haven’t taken into account the not-so-nice things about the natural world ... I think more work is needed, but we have to begin somewhere, so I leave the problem there.

So, a lot of work on OTHC’s praise God, yet I haven’t come across anything on precisely how OTHC mourns or groans ...

12 ... Scripturally, OTHC certainly comes off worst as a by-product of human violence, injustice and greed. For example, as a result of Assyria’s scorched earth policy – remembering that Assyria is God’s servant here (Is. 10:5): “Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.” (Is. 1:7)

There are also occasions when God uses OTHC as a tool to punish – eg, the flood that Noah and a few animals escape – and the plagues of Egypt in which scant concern is shown to frogs or rivers – and none of them have sinned!

What about Jesus? He tells parables about aspects of OTHC, but I suggest that is less about being environmentally concerned and more about getting close to the lives of those who live close to the land and sea. ...

... In terms of direct engagement, Jesus tells the waves “be muzzled!” as if they are wild dogs or evil spirits, and walks all over them. He allows thousands to trample and sit on the grass. He curses a fig tree when there’s no ripe fruit, even though it was completely out of season ... and a large number of pigs don’t come out this well!

Small wonder that a hermeneutics of suspicion seems to be on the horizon, along with a wish to retrieve the voice of protest or mourning – methodologically in very much the same ways that feminist readings have challenged readers.

Hayes, in a monograph that is largely a Hebrew language study, identifies nine occasions when the prophets tell us that the earth mourns – again, OTHC is the active subject of verbs. I take one eg: “Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. 13 There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. 2 Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. 3 Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing.” (Hos. 4:1-3)

THEREFORE the earth mourns – the two things, the human sin and the mourning of the earth, are causally connected the one leading necessarily to the other. Birch says, “Breaking of covenant is denial of the life that God gives and, as consequence, life flows out of creation itself. Sin has consequences for all our relationships, even to the earth itself.” Birch also compares this text to Paul’s understanding of creation subjected to futility (Birch, 1997, p 49 - Rom. 8:19-22)

If we are dealing with a metaphor which both IS and IS NOT making a true and correctly-referential statement, we can say OTHC DOES NOT mourn, because it doesn’t weep and wail ... but we’ve done our metaphorical work and we must look to the ontologyand ask to what the “IS” mourning refers.

IF (and we’ve seen it is an IF) OTHC praises God by being all that God intended it to be – how does the earth mourn? Or how does all creation groan (Rom 8:22)?

I think there are two possible types of response – we might call them “strong” and “weak”. The weak response would be to say that mourning is the absence of praising – so that if creation is not allowed to be as God created which equals its praising, then, necessarily, it is mourning. However, to say ‘mourning’ equals ‘not praising’ is a negative definition and, I think, unsatisfactory ... though there IS a real challenge, even here. If the best we can do in our praise is to join, antiphonally, with creation’s praise of God in order to make that praise complete – then surely if creation IS NOT praising then there is also a call for us to mourn with all creation until it is healed of dis-ease and we can praise God together once more. 14 A ‘strong’ response would carry a more active connotation, such that we define the mourning as the out-breaking of pain that is being clearly evidenced in climate disruption as a result of humankind’s rap sheet of abuse and neglect. Who will raise a voice with the melting ice caps, the dying coral reefs, the slashed rain forests, the frogs and rivers, the polluted oceans? – they are already lamenting loudly!

In her paper “If Earth Could Speak: the Case of the Mountains against YHWH in Ezekiel [chapters] 6, [and] 35-36”, (Stevenson in Habel ed, 2001, pp 158-171) Stevenson suggests that a court case brought by OTHC would be similar to that of a battered woman seeking justice. The charge she brings is against God, and is based on evidence in Ezekiel. God’s own confession is: “I am against you, Mount Seir; I stretch out my hand against you to make you a desolation and a waste.” (Ezek 35:3)

... but surely a grievous bodily harm charge could, with at least equal merit, be laid at the feet of humankind. The battered woman often cannot make her voice heard. There are usually repeated instances of violence, even if the courts intervene, and even if the abuser says ‘I’m sorry, I’ll change’. (Stevenson in Habel, 2001, p164). The question there becomes, how does the woman escape the vicious circle? – the question for a response to earth’s mourning would be, how do we break the vicious cycle of our abuse? The underlying problem is, how do we actually know that OTHC is mourning if we are not listening?

There is certainly no simple answer. But I end with a “concluding question” that matches my title and introduction in the hope that that satisfies the examiner! ...

... what if creation mourns and groans, and suffers her abuse not actually in silence, but effectively in silence because WE will not hear? And what if that not hearing is because we are too quick to say, even of Scripture, “it’s only a metaphor” and thus end by muzzling the vaster language of all creation and just not listening?

15 Select Bibliography

Ayer, A J (1958) Language, Truth and Logic Victor Gollancz Ltd, London.

Barth, K (ET 1957) Church Dogmatics II/I Edinburgh, T&T Clark.

Bauckham R J (2002) “Joining Creation’s Praise of God” Ecotheology 7.1, pp45-59.

Birch, B C (1997) Hosea, Joel, and Amos Louisville; Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press.

Black, M (1955) “Metaphor”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, NS 55, pp273-94.

Borg, M (2001) Reading the Bible Again for the First Time HarperCollins, New York.

Donne, J Elegy IX, The Autumnal

Fretheim, T E, (1987) “Nature’s Praise of God in the Psalms” Ex Auditu 3 pp16-30.

Gadamer H-G, (1989 [1975]) Truth and Method Sheed & Ward, London.

Habel N C ed. (2000) Readings from the Perspective of Earth Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield.

--- (2001) The Earth Story in Psalms and Prophets Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield.

Habel N C and P Trudinger eds.(2008) Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics SBL Series 46, Atlanta.

Hayes, K M (2002) The Earth Mourns: Prophetic Metaphor and Oral Aesthetic (JBL Academia Biblica 8: Brill, Leiden & Boston).

Hardy, D and D F Ford (1985) Praising and Knowing God (Philadelphia, PA, Westminster Press).

Horrell, D G (2010) The Bible and the Environment Acumen Publishing, Durham.

---, and D Coad (2011) “ ‘The stones would cry out’ (Luke 19:40): a Lukan contribution to a hermeneutics of creation’s praise”, SJT 64(1), pp29-44.

Jüngel, E (1989) “Metaphorical Truth: Reflections on the theological relevance of metaphor as a contribution to the hermeneutics of narrative theology”, Theological Essays (T&T Clark, Edinburgh)

McFague S (1982) Metaphorical Theology SCM, London.

Marlow H (2009) Biblical Prophets and Contemporary Environmental Ethics OUP, Oxford.

Martin Soskice J (1985) Metaphor and Religious Language Clarendon, Oxford.

16 Nietzsche, F (1873) “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”, in D Breazeale (ed) Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s (Humanities Press and Sussex, Harvester Press, New Jersey,1979)

Northcott M S (2007) A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming DLT, London.

Popper, K R (1972 [1959]) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson & Co, London.

Riceour P (1975. First ET 1977. Page numbers 2003 edition) The Rule of Metaphor Routledge, Abingdon.

---- (1976) Interpretation Theory Texas Christian University Press, Forth Worth.

Selby R (2006) The Comical Doctrine Paternoster, Milton Keynes.

White Jnr, L (1967) “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”, Science 155, no. 3767, pp 1203-7.

Wittgenstein, L (1921) Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (ET 1922).