Why should I care for the environment? Why does western society cause so much environmental
damage, despite the fact that we now know how much harm we are doing? What difference
does it make if we believe the world has been created by a good God who does everything
for the best, and has designed the environment to meet our needs?
Good God examines our inherited value judgements about the world and their roots
in different theories of creation. It explores the relationship between value judgements,
cosmology and ethics, and uses theology to argue that we should defend the natural
order against ecological destruction. In practical terms this implies a ‘green’ agenda
for social objectives, quite distinct from the left-right spectrum of modern political
discourse.
By mercilessly exposing inconsistencies in the Christian tradition, the author undermines
virtually the whole of what Christianity stands for in the modern West. In asking
what it is about modern technological society that makes us so determined to destroy
our natural environment, he puts the blame largely on the mechanistic paradigm of
modern secular thought. Paradoxically, he then uses modern biblical scholarship to
show how this alternative account, often condemned as pagan, is in fact a major theme
of the bible.
‘This is a bold and wide-ranging essay, reinforcing the need for us to be clearer
about our basic valuation of the world we live in’. Rowan Williams, Bishop of Monmouth
‘Lucid, well-argued and exciting’. Walter Schwarz
‘A timely and necessary rejoinder both to religious communities who undervalue the
natural world and to the mechanistically minded who are neutral in their evaluation
of it’. Rev Dr Arthur Peacocke, Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford
‘This wide-ranging book trenchantly upholds the belief that we live in a good, unfallen
world, created by a good God, and should live accordingly. Largely, it forms an admirable
corrective to twice-born theology, postmodern value-theories, and New Age religion
too. It will be welcomed by Greens and by undogmatic theists alike’. Robin Attfield,
Professor of Philosophy, University of Wales
