A call for a reinvigorated protestant theology of nature

Abstract

One can easily argue that Protestant attitudes toward a doctrine of the created order have permitted, if not exacerbated or even promoted, the environmental abuses that have produced the current climate that threatens human existence. An essential starting point for believers, individually and as members of the body of Christ, will be the recovery or construction of a sound theology of creation rooted in biblical tradition. This essay examines the deficit in Protestant thought in this critical realm by first tracing the history of Protestant attitudes toward creation as expressed specifically in a distrust of so-called “natural law”/revelation/theology (how we got here) and then by examining contemporary Protestant thinking (where we are), before outlining a modest proposal for correcting the deficit (where we can go).