Species Extinction and the Memory of God
We are given the image of Gaia, the personification of earth as a female, to guide us through Celia E. Deane-Drummond’s thoughts on eco-eschatology. While environmentalist and scientist James Lovelock is attributed with forming the Gaia Hypothesis 1972, the understanding of a feminine embodied earth has its roots in Greek myth. Locklock’s Gaian theories are connected to geo-bio-systems and earth habitability, and are a helpful lens when approaching an eco-eschatology, which demands a strong metaphor so that we can appreciate the significance of the degradation humanity is causing to the planet and to its climate, the extinction of species, and the hope for some kind of cosmic intervention.
Lovelock and Deane-Drummond both speak to the harm in placing an over apocalyptic message in historical Christian tradition as this tends to point to a future that is outside our world, and outside our future grasp. This type of thinking lets humanity off the hook for regarding the ethic of how we live and how we treat our planet. Deane-Drummond also notes that the very thing that has spun us on a trajectory of power and dominion comes from within the Christian tradition. She describes the Judeo-Christian myth of The Fall as happening due to an abuse of power and a corruption of wisdom. Wisdom (who is understood to be either a feminine presence in the Trinity and/or an even earlier iteration of Gaia) understands and has confidence in God’s creation, its order, harmony, and balance. Thus when the fall occurred, wisdom was abused and it has manifested as maltreatment of the earth, and the abuse of creation. It is of paramount importance to not split our theology with a separation of heaven and earth, but rather to understand the transformation is taking place currently and we are co-creators of both our present and future heaven. This ‘transformation in the present’ in both the Old and New Testament is a necessary theological understanding for Christian believers to embody to ensure against continual oppression of Creation.
NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope has provided room for the belief that in the resurrection the physical Earth and all earthly bodies will be redeemed. There will be no leaving this Earth for some cosmic other home, but a putting right of things here — we don’t leave, heaven comes down. In that sense, what we do to the earth matters. That belief is the beginning of Deane-Drummond’s argument in the chapter Eco-eschatology. While her theological intricacies could be irritating and overwhelming, a return to NT Wright and the hope found in the simplicity of transformation is critical, rather than just throwing out the whole confusing mess.
Deane-Drummond’s ecclesiology stands on ecology. She states, “The proclamation of the good news cannot be detached from concern about the natural world in which people are placed: people and planet form an interwoven community that needs to be considered together, rather than separately.” Expanding on this statement, there are three resonating areas in her conclusion:
First, ecological degradation means loss of particularity. Deane-Drummond states, “I have argued that consideration of what lied beyond death through von Balthasar’s notion of Christ’s decent into hell on holy Saturday can be expanded to encompass that hell which includes the extinction of species.” The shock of that loss must not be allowed to lose its force, even though its sting is taken away through subsequent reflection on the redemption of nature.” On the work of the Spirit, Karkkainen, in Pneumatology, states, “The ministry of the spirit is always particular, specific. The one Spirit of God is not a numinous power hovering above the cosmos but a person living in and permeating people in various life situations and contexts.” (p. 147) This loss of particularity through extinction means a loss of God in the world. And herein lies the category of trauma. Humanity is traumatizing the earth, grieving Gaia with the resource-plunging practices that are causing the greatest loss of biodiversity of all time.
Second, redemption is a reconciliation of this death. The putting right of the world in the end means a regaining of this particularity. She states, “Since God is a God of love, the new life we experience will be one that is inclusive of creatures in some way, and that this life will be rich in its experiences, taking up the historical memory of different phases of our own history and biography, as well as wider in terms of the cosmos as a whole.” The new heaven and new earth on the eschaton will in some way mean regaining what was lost in extinction. She further frames atonement as ‘at-one-ment; using Romans 8:19–23, she highlights how this has been restricted to the human community in the past but more recent scholars include the whole of creation.
In further looking at redemption, Deane-Drummond uses Moltmann who proposes a clear understanding of futurans — the future emerging out of the present, and adventus — breaking into the present from the future (which I think she totally misquoted). This beautifully highlights that fear and hope are not always the reverse sides of a coin, in other words, “hope includes fear, but fear does not necessarily include hope”. She appreciates and incorporates Moltmann’s inclusiveness of every creative, however notes where the reality falls short in the ability for earth to sustain all living forms ever created at once.
Lastly, Deane-Drummond states that in regards to what this final redemption looks like, we may not know. She states, “The shape of resurrection and how this will be expressed in detail is a matter for speculative theology, and the wisest course in this case may be silence, for there are some things that we cannot know, since they are hidden in the heart of God.” This hidden place may very well be the mysterious locale of God’s cosmic memory, that which traces all events and inscribes them into a historical context that is relevant for the long-term future. What this boils down to is that everything that has happened whether on earth or the cosmos is inscribed or etched into the mind of God therefore making our present life of profound importance. In imagining an inscription of sorts into God’s mind should give us deep purpose for our daily lives. While somewhat of a mind-bender, this theory allows for all of creation-both past and present-to have a place in the eschaton, to be present on earth in the New Jerusalem. In this way, while the extinct dinosaurs may not be literally roaming about with the redeemed on a renewed Planet Earth, they are held in existence in the memory of God.
Within these three positions about the earth there is the reminder of how easy it is to expand the language of redemption and resurrection to include all life — all it takes is the willingness to lose an anthropocentric viewpoint. This language of redemption is the same for our views of healing trauma in our bodies. For Shelly Rambo, in Spirit and Trauma, the work of the Spirit in the midst of trauma is one of witness. Trauma leaves a person in a middle space that is no longer death, but not quite life. (p. 144) With Spirit as witness, God is intimately near in the midst of suffering, in the loss of our particularity as well as in the redemption of it. The process of witness is what will bring about the ability to reimagine life, which is the beginning of healing. Van der Kolk, in The Body Keeps the Score, states, “The degree to which we are successful, as clinicians, is the degree to which we can restore these capacities of delight, hope, and imagination.” (p. 192) This ability to imagine a life where healing and wholeness is possible is the concept of Holy Saturday that we are living in. The one where Deane-Drummond suggests the church needs to be, acknowledging the death of ecological degradation and working to live into the hope of an earth renewed, and the mystery of it all being held in the memory of God.
