Insights from Bonhoeffer’s Eschatology for the Climate Crisis
What does the Christian hope of a new heaven and a new earth mean for our engagement with contemporary issues like the climate crisis?
Christians often face accusations, when it comes to the link between their faith and the environmental crisis. On the one hand, historians have claimed that the Christian linear perception of history has helped create the conditions for the exploitation of the earth, in the Industrial era. Yet on the other hand, Christians have also been accused of quietism, precisely because of their expectation of a new heaven and a new earth to ‘come from God’. Faced with these accusations, Christian eschatology (the doctrine of ‘the last things’) has an urgemnt apologetic task.
This task is taken up by Steven C. van den Heuvel, in his recent publication “The Climate Crisis and Christian Eschatology: Insights from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” There, he argues that Christian Eschatology can also offer a helpful perspective in the context of the climate crisis.
Specifically, he argues that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s eschatological conception of the world as Christ-reality can motivate Christians to engage deeply with reality, including the climate crisis.
Furthermore, Bonhoeffer’s distinction between the ultimate and the penultimate makes it clear that it is not up to us to establish the kingdom of God on earth. This is a relaxation of an ecological-activist cramp, but at the same time it does not absolve us of responsibility. The current climate crisis cannot be solved easily, but we do not have to realize a new paradise here. That would be an impossible task that could be paralyzing. At the same time, we are called to take responsibility for the penultimate in the awareness that the future does not unfold in a deterministic way, but that real renewadl is possible. Our acting in this has meaning, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. In this context, Bonhoeffer’s theology can give new impetus and inspire renewed reflection on responsibility and action with regard to the climate crisis.
For more information, you can read can be read in the article (which is published in the Journal of Reformed Theology) for free, via this link.
[The article was written in the context of the research project “The Climate Crisis and the Christian Virtue of Hope,” that is fully funded by the Susanna Wesly Foundation, based at the University of Roehampton (UK).]
