Examines the history and development of ecological theological anthropology and how it engages human suffering, so that people of faith can better understand the suffering inherent to earth's creative processes and that inflicted by human sin.

The Earth needs our attention—the best of our intellectual, ethical, and spiritual wisdom and action. In this collection, written in honor of Elizabeth A. Johnson, scholars from the United States and around the world contribute their insights on how theology today can and must turn to the world in new ways in light of contemporary science and our ecological crisis. The essays in this collection advance theological visions for the human task of healing our destructive relationship with the earth and envision hope for our planet’s future. Contributors: Kevin Glauber Ahern, Erin Lothes Biviano, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Colleen Mary Carpenter, David Cloutier, Kathy Coffey, Carol J. Dempsey, OP, Denis Edwards, William French, Ivone Gebara, John F. Haught, Mary Catherine Hilkert, OP, Sallie McFague, Eric Daryl Meyer, Richard W. Miller, Jürgen Moltmann, Jeannette Rodriguez, Michele Saracino

For millennia plant and animal species have received little sustained attention as subjects of Christian theology and ethics in their own right. Focused on the human dilemma of sin and redemptive grace, theology has considered the doctrine of creation to be mainly an overture to the main drama of human being`s relationship to God. What value does the natural world have within the framework of religious belief? The crisis of biodiversity in our day, when species are going extinct at more than 1,000 times the natural rate, renders this question acutely important. Standard perspectives need to be realigned; theology needs to look out of the window, so to speak as well as in the mirror. Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love leads to the conclusion that love of the natural world is an intrinsic element of faith in God and that far from being an add-on, ecological care is at the centre of moral life.

"The conversation between music and theology, dormant for too long in recent years, is at last gathering pace. And rightly so. There will always be theologians who will regard music as a somewhat peripheral concern, too trivial to trouble the serious scholar, and in any case almost impossible to engage because of its notorious resistance to words and concepts. But an increasing number are discovering again what many of our forbears realized centuries ago, that the kinship between this pervasive feature of human life and the search for a Christian 'intelligence of faith' is intimate and ineradicable. Maeve Heaney's ambitious, wide-ranging, and energetic book pushes the conversation further forward still. Her approach is unapologetically theological, grounded in the passions and concerns of mainstream doctrinal theology. And yet she is insisting . . . that music must be given its due place in the ecology of theology. Although convinced that music should not be set up as a rival to linguistic or conceptual articulation, let alone swallow up 'traditional' modes of theological language and thought, she is equally convinced that music is an irreducible means of coming to terms with the world, a unique vehicle of world-disclosure, and as such, can generate a particular form of 'understanding': 'there are things which God may only be saying through music.' If this is so, it is incumbent on the theologian to listen." --Jeremy Begbie, from the Foreword

In recent decades the ancient apocalyptic work 1 Enoch has been intensively explored for its historical meaning and its contribution to Israelite and Christ-movement thought and identity. Yet its theological meaning, what it can contribute to understanding of the divine-human interface today, has been neglected by scholarship. This is surprising given that 1 Enoch is Scripture for the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches and has been a major influence on Christian theology, experience, and art in Ethiopia since the fifth and sixth centuries CE. This book inaugurates a project in Western scholarship to bring 1 Enoch into theological discussion. It contains a number of essays delivered at meetings in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Cheltenham, England, involving scholars from Ethiopia, Germany, the UK, and the USA. The papers cover topics such as the appropriate theological response to a text that is Scripture for only some Christians; the role of 1 Enoch in Ethiopian ecclesial and theological tradition; the theological potential of 1 Enoch in areas such as the environment, politics, social justice, Christology, persecution, the problem of evil and how 1 Enoch stimulates artistic expression today. The Blessing of Enoch aims to launch a wider discussion on 1 Enoch and contemporary theology.