In Him All Things Hold Together: Re-imagining Ecology and Theology in Light of Globalisation

Globalisation is an amorphous yet omnipresent term. It presents a unique challenge to the Church today, requiring a hermeneutic which incorporates the realities of significant challenges facing the 21st century. Evangelicals, in particular, have struggled to engage globalisation in light of conflict surrounding issues such as global poverty, environmental and scientific concerns, and religious pluralism. The industrial era has emphasized a worldview in which nature has become a mechanism, or a machine to manipulate, control, or repair. Evangelical scholarship has often shied away from engaging emerging eco-theology, often emphasizing metaphors of body and organic composition for community life or abstract concepts and the thought of the earth as viable organism to steward, to till, and to keep has lost prominence. The 'second' book of revelation as identified by Aquinas – the natural creation – has often been disregarded. In light of increasing global awareness of significant ecological problems, Evangelicals must once again recover the book of Nature's revelation. In concert with biblical exegesis, Evangelicals have an opportunity to write an ecological hermeneutic which honours the Earth and its communities as sister creations. This paper articulates a critical middle ground between Evangelical commitment to a high theology of scripture and an ethical commitment to ecological care and concern. It will explore a sample of key issues underlying globalisation, with attention to redevelopment of theological anthropology, cosmology, and Christology in light of an ecological ethical framework. The paper retrieves Colossians 1:13-23 as a hermeneutical lens through which to approach the influence of globalisation on the Earth and its communities from an Evangelical theological perpsective. For truly, in Christ, all things, visible and invisible, hold together.