publications
Good God
Green Theology and the Value of Creation
Jonathan Clatworthy
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-
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-
‘Lucid, well-
‘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-