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Sabbath and the Common Good an Anglican Response to the Environmental Crisis

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Sabbath and the Common Good an Anglican Response to the Environmental Crisis Sabbath and the Common Good An Anglican response to the environmental crisis A thesis submitted to Charles Sturt University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by George Victor Browning ThL (Hons.), BTh (Hons.), DLitt (honoris causa) November 2014 Certificate of Authorship I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at Charles Sturt University or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by colleagues with whom I have worked at Charles Sturt University or elsewhere during my candidature is acknowledged. I agree that this thesis be accessible for the purpose of study and research in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Executive Director, Library Services or nominee, for the care, loan and reproduction of theses. George Victor Browning Acknowledgements I am grateful for the many sources of inspiration that have contributed to the genesis of this thesis. Having grown up on the land and having commenced my working life in this context I am intuitively aware that the health of the land and the health of humanity are inextricably bound together. I am in debt to the international Anglican Communion for appointing me the initial convenor of its Environmental Network (2005 – 2009). Through this appointment I have been privileged to meet inspiring leaders across the globe and to witness first hand the already devastating consequences of environmental change, especially in some of the poorest places on earth. I was privileged to share responsibility for input and discussion about the environmental crisis at the 1998 and 2008 Lambeth Conferences. Both conferences called for the development of a sabbath based ethic in response to the crisis. I am indebted to my father, John Browning, for intuitively knowing that the practice of sabbath is at the heart of Christian living. This thesis is in part a desire to flesh out this intuition for him as a demonstration that God ‘reigns’ in sabbath. I am very grateful to my supervisors Dr Heather Thomson, Professor James Haire and Professor Stephen Pickard for their wisdom and guidance: also to Mr Alan Wilson who has painstakingly checked the text and references. The biblical text is taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Consistent with this text, sabbath is referred to in the lower case unless circumstances demand otherwise. Finally, I have written this thesis for my grandchildren (and their remarkable grandmother with whom I have had the privilege of sharing life’s journey for 50 years), conscious of the reality that the choices available to them in the future are dependent upon environmentally ethical living in the present. Abstract For at least four decades it has been the contention of environmental science that the biosphere faces a crisis. The growing consensus is that this crisis is not simply a reflection of the well documented cycle of natural variation, but that its intensity is escalated by post industrial human activity. This situation presents the Christian community, with a moral dilemma. Can the Christian community tolerate activity which threatens human and non-human life with a more fragile, less equitable and less sustainable future? The answer must be “no”. Christian belief and action is predicated on love of God and love of neighbour. Contemporary love of neighbour must act to transform a global community where current advantage and power is disproportionately exercised by a minority and disadvantage is experienced, or predicted to fall, upon the majority poor, generations yet unborn and upon the natural environment. Responding to social or moral issues, Anglicans have been traditionally encouraged to seek direction from scripture which calls for the triumph of common good over self interest as an expression of the human calling under God. Sabbath is a biblical framework for global common good and a reliable basis upon which the human vocation in the 21st century can be renewed. This thesis argues that sabbath, with roots in the primeval creation narrative, reveals the manner of God’s engagement with the created order. Further, it argues that the manner in which humanity is to respond to God in the context of the environmental crisis, is to include the whole created order, future as well as present, in the category of neighbour deserving of love care and equity. Contents Part 1 Crisis and Common Good Chapter 1 The Environmental and Theological Context 3 1.1 Political and Economic Context 5 1.2 Christianity and the Environmental Crisis 10 1.3 Theological and Ethical Context 14 1.4 The Sabbath and Creation Theology 19 1.5 Creation and the Common Good 24 1.6 Summary 29 1.7 Conclusions 32 Chapter 2 The Anglican Context: a Lambeth Perspective 33 2.1 Lambeth and the Primacy of Scripture 39 2.2 Lambeth and Catholicity 44 2.3 Lambeth and the Common Good 49 2.4 Lambeth and the Human Vocation 58 2.5 Conclusions 74 Part 2 Biblical Theology: Unfolding Sabbath from Creation to Christ Chapter 3 Sabbath and the Universal Reign of God 79 3.1 Sabbath origins: Scholarly debate 80 3.2 Sabbath and Shekinah (The Presence of God) 83 3.3 The Pentateuch and Sabbath Practice 85 3.4 Genesis 2:1-4a: an exegesis 89 3.5 The Sabbath Principle and Israelite History 97 3.6 Jesus and Genesis 2:1-4 102 3.7 Conclusions 103 Chapter 4 Jesus: ‘Lord of the Sabbath’ 105 4.1 Introduction: Bridging the Old and New Testaments 105 4.2 Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath 110 4.3 Sabbath, Jesus and Jubilee 119 4.4 Sabbath Rest and Jesus 126 4.5 Sabbath and the Kingdom of God 128 4.6 Sabbath, Wisdom and the Cosmic Christ (Col. 1:15-20) 132 4.7 Conclusions 138 Part 3 Sabbath and the Human Vocation Chapter 5 The Human Vocation and Interdependence 143 5.1 Sabbath Rest and Hallowing 144 5.2 Sabbath Rest and Blessing 150 5.3 Vocation within Community 152 5.4 Conclusions 158 Chapter 6 The Human Vocation: Living with the Future in Mind 159 6.1 Living Hopefully under the Reign of God 163 6.2 Living Generously in the Presence of God 168 6.3 Living Together in the House of God 171 6.4 The Marks of the Church Reconsidered 176 6.5 Conclusions 178 Chapter 7 The Human Vocation: Living within Limits 181 7.1 Kenosis 181 7.2 Limits to Human Population Expansion 188 7.3 Limits to Consumption and Environmental Debt 194 7.4 Conclusions 202 Chapter 8 Conclusions 205 Appendices Appendix 1 Scriptural References 213 Appendix 2 Resolutions of the Lambeth Conferences that have a bearing upon a theological and ethical response to the environmental crisis 217 Appendix 3 Declaration accompanying the commencement of the first Lambeth Conference 1867 229 Appendix 4 Lambeth Origins 231 References 235 Part 1 Crisis and Common Good “Living in the midst of these technologically aggressive human societies we cannot expect to draw attention [to the suffering of the planet] without incurring some of the rejection, perhaps even wrath, that has always been the lot of the prophetic community”.1 1 Douglas John Hall, Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 22. 1 2 Chapter 1 The Environmental and Theological Context The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet.2 That there is an environmental crisis3 has been the proposition of a growing body of scientific research for decades. This does not mean that details relating to the perceived crisis are not contested, they are, particularly the scale of human causation. It is also important to understand that the science is an analysis of what has occurred, not a prediction of what will occur, although of course what has occurred has a direct bearing upon what will occur. The crisis is multifaceted. It involves serious decline to bio-diversity, desertification, water shortages, pollution of earth, air and water, increasing intensity to significant weather events, and unsustainable exploitation. However, the factor gaining most attention, because of its current and projected effect, is global warming.4 Attention given to global warming is promoted from opposite directions. On the one hand, global warming is considered a serious threat. Its immediate effects are said to be already felt, while in the future its potential is perceived to seriously undermine the total biosphere, including human flourishing. On the other hand, despite the science, the reality of global warming and its relationship to the human footprint is contested in the public discourse. From those who have a strong vested interest in unlimited exploitation, it is denied.5 In the public discourse there is confusion between what can rightly be called ‘fact’ and what 6 should more appropriately be called ‘opinion’. 2 John F. Kennedy, Address Before the Irish Parliament in Dublin, June 28 1963, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/lPAi7jx2s0i7kePPdJnUXA.aspx (accessed 30 April 2014). 3 I have chosen to use the term ‘environmental crisis’ rather than an ‘ecological crisis’ although both are used in the literature and some of the quotations in the text speak of an ‘ecological crisis’. Richard Bauckham prefers ‘ecology’ “in the general sense of interconnectedness of all things, living and inanimate, on the planet”. Richard Bauckham, Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2010), ix.
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