Creation: A Biblical Vision for the Environment

Description

Margaret Barker contributes a characteristically Christian voice to contemporary theological debates on the environment. Most of the issues we face today were not those that faced the early Christian community and so there are often no directly relevant biblical teachings. Barker's starting point is the question of what Jesus himself would have believed about the Creation? What could the early Church have believed about the Creation? She then shows how much of this belief is embedded, often unrecognised, in the New Testament and early Christian texts. It was what people assumed as the norm, the worldview within which they lived and expressed their faith. Barker establishes the general principles of a Christian view of Creation. Some of what she says will show how current teaching would have been unfamiliar to the first Christians, not just in application but in basic principles.

Margaret Barker is a former President of the Society for Old Testament Study, and author of numerous works, including The Older Testament, The Lost Prophet, The Gate of Heaven, The Great Angel.

'One of our most important tasks at present is to bring the Bible into conversation with pressing environmental challenges. Margaret Barker has done just that with scholarly breadth and compassionate insight. This is an invaluable and much needed contribution.' - Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA -- Mary Evelyn Tucker 'Invoking science and religion where economic theory fails is a powerful way of convincing us all that there are limits to the carrying capacity of our planet. Margaret Barker's book provides a wonderful and thought provoking analysis of how the environmental concerns we have and the lessons we learned from dealing with them were already known and worded in religious writings of the past. We should thank her for the elegant and convincing way she is both reminding and teaching us how history supports the plight of those who care for mother earth!' - Frits Schlingemann, UNEP, Regional Office for Europe -- Frits Schlingemann 'This book has topical relevance; it is also, like all that this author writes, eminently readable.' -- The Pastoral Review It is a passionate recovery of profoundly relevant reflections on humanity's place and role in God's 'incredible creation'... Barker's study offers a richly theological resource for bringing interpretation into conversation with contemporary issues of ecology. -- Interpretation This book would serve well as a text for an upper division college course on religion and the environment or a seminary course on Christianity and ecology. -- Reviews in Religion & Theology "Christians need to recover a deep-rooted biblical perspective on this, which has been renewed in the Orthodox Churches by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who commends this book and believes rightly that we need to recover a sense of the Earth as a divine gift." The Right Rev Geoffrey Rowell, Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, The Times, February 2010. "Veteran Old Testament scholar Barker has long been involved with the intersection of Christianity and the environment. Here she outlines what the first Christians could have known, thinking as they did within the framework of Temple Theology, and juxtaposes it with some striking parallels in today's environmental discourse. Her choice of topics, she says, was influenced by her long participation in a symposium sponsored by the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople. She covers a vision of creation; beginning, weaving, restoring creation; the high priest of creation, and embracing creation." -Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc. "The book is readable and well-structured. It is supplemented with bibliography, indexes of biblical and ancient texts, and indexes of persons, places and subjects." -Igal German, Theological Studies 'Many fascinating insights ... written with a passion that is wholly appropriate to the environmental crisis faced by the human race' Church Times, 6th August 2010 'In this challenging and deeply theological study... Barker has suggested modes of interpretation that will not be forgotten by the careful reader and thus may bear fruit in the work of other scholars and teachers for years to come.' -- Studies in Christian Ethics 'Margaret Barker is a fascinating scholar who writes books that are a gift to the preacher. Her account of Temple theology is an original, insightful, and profoundly biblical and liturgical way of reading the Old Testament, and in this present work, the New Testament as well... attractively produced by Continuum and at a very fair price.' -- Journal of Theological Studies