This paper takes as its premise that climate change is now inevitable. From that beginning, it starts to work out how we can think about hope, environmental work, and pragmatic responses in light of theology and ecological science. Drawing on the resources of paleoclimate and restoration ecology, this paper offers theologically inspired pragmatic suggestions around migration, systemic change, and personal responsibility. It ends exploring the notion of hope in light of our failure to prevent climate change.
{"title":"A Theology of Inevitable Climate Change","authors":"Bethany Sollereder","doi":"10.1111/dial.12877","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12877","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper takes as its premise that climate change is now inevitable. From that beginning, it starts to work out how we can think about hope, environmental work, and pragmatic responses in light of theology and ecological science. Drawing on the resources of paleoclimate and restoration ecology, this paper offers theologically inspired pragmatic suggestions around migration, systemic change, and personal responsibility. It ends exploring the notion of hope in light of our failure to prevent climate change.</p>","PeriodicalId":42769,"journal":{"name":"Dialog-A Journal of Theology","volume":"64 1","pages":"30-35"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dial.12877","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143622423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Meaning in Anthropocene Life","authors":"Niels Henrik Gregersen","doi":"10.1111/dial.12879","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12879","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42769,"journal":{"name":"Dialog-A Journal of Theology","volume":"64 1","pages":"5-7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143622553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Christians, Political Power, and President Trump","authors":"John F. Hoffmeyer","doi":"10.1111/dial.12878","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12878","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42769,"journal":{"name":"Dialog-A Journal of Theology","volume":"64 1","pages":"3-4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143622270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The concept of the Anthropocene rightly points to the damaging effects of human agency on ecosystems and the climate. In this article, I argue that the agency of nature nonetheless continues to play a central role on the human sense of significance. For this purpose, I introduce and discuss the Danish philosopher-theologian K.E. Løgstrup's concept of attunement and show how attunement constitutes a relationship between humans and nature through which a sense of fellowship, rather than hostility, springs. This section is divided into two parts. The first part outlines the elementary features to Løgstrup's argument in his philosophy of sensation, while the second part elaborates on his concept of attunement. It is argued that Løgstrup's philosophy of sensation and attunement describes what I call sovereign conditions of life that are continuously at work in midst of the Anthropocene. Subsequently, two empirical cases are applied to illustrate how attunement is operative in experiences of agency in nature. In conclusion, I propose the concept of the Dianthropocene as a tool for rediscovering the mutual ‘throughput’ circulations between human and more-than-human agency.
{"title":"Attunement and the Sense of Significance in Dianthropocene Life","authors":"Steen Hjul Lybke","doi":"10.1111/dial.12874","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12874","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The concept of the Anthropocene rightly points to the damaging effects of human agency on ecosystems and the climate. In this article, I argue that the agency of nature nonetheless continues to play a central role on the human sense of significance. For this purpose, I introduce and discuss the Danish philosopher-theologian K.E. Løgstrup's concept of attunement and show how attunement constitutes a relationship between humans and nature through which a sense of fellowship, rather than hostility, springs. This section is divided into two parts. The first part outlines the elementary features to Løgstrup's argument in his philosophy of sensation, while the second part elaborates on his concept of attunement. It is argued that Løgstrup's philosophy of sensation and attunement describes what I call sovereign conditions of life that are continuously at work in midst of the Anthropocene. Subsequently, two empirical cases are applied to illustrate how attunement is operative in experiences of agency in nature. In conclusion, I propose the concept of the Dianthropocene as a tool for rediscovering the mutual ‘throughput’ circulations between human and more-than-human agency.</p>","PeriodicalId":42769,"journal":{"name":"Dialog-A Journal of Theology","volume":"64 1","pages":"21-29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dial.12874","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143622728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The threat of increasingly adverse existential conditions has prompted activist groups like Extinction Rebellion to enact civil disobedience. In this article, this sort of behavior is interpreted as a message about not only what they care about, but about what they think their surroundings ought to care about. Care is investigated through the lens of hermeneutic phenomenology as a call to awareness of the value of something or someone. By drawing especially on Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of love and on Joan Tronto's early work on political care, it is shown how to bridge phenomenological concerns with an ethics of caring for someone or something. It is argued that that we may, in some circumstances, demand that other people care about what we care about. Last, these reflections are connected to Sallie McFague's theological suggestion of a friendship model of the divine-creation relationship.
{"title":"Care in Times of Crisis: Phenomenological, Political and Theological Perspectives","authors":"Anders Skou Jørgensen","doi":"10.1111/dial.12876","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12876","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The threat of increasingly adverse existential conditions has prompted activist groups like Extinction Rebellion to enact civil disobedience. In this article, this sort of behavior is interpreted as a message about not only what <i>they</i> care about, but about what they think their surroundings <i>ought</i> to care about. Care is investigated through the lens of hermeneutic phenomenology as a call to awareness of the value of something or someone. By drawing especially on Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of love and on Joan Tronto's early work on political care, it is shown how to bridge phenomenological concerns with an ethics of caring for someone or something. It is argued that that we may, in some circumstances, demand that other people care about what we care about. Last, these reflections are connected to Sallie McFague's theological suggestion of a friendship model of the divine-creation relationship.</p>","PeriodicalId":42769,"journal":{"name":"Dialog-A Journal of Theology","volume":"64 1","pages":"36-44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dial.12876","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143622333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The green transition touches most aspects of contemporary human lives, including their emotions. This article explores one particular climate emotion, namely shame, asking three interrelated questions: What is climate shame? How does climate shame contribute to the green transition? And within which Christian theological context might we handle climate shame when we experience it? For each question, the article employs different methods, thereby combining phenomenology, ethics, and systematic theology. By exploring climate shame, the article contributes to an interdisciplinary theological understanding of our emotional life in the green transition.
{"title":"Climate Shame: What Is It, Does It Matter, and How Do We Handle It?","authors":"Mikkel Gabriel Christoffersen","doi":"10.1111/dial.12875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12875","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The green transition touches most aspects of contemporary human lives, including their emotions. This article explores one particular climate emotion, namely shame, asking three interrelated questions: What is climate shame? How does climate shame contribute to the green transition? And within which Christian theological context might we handle climate shame when we experience it? For each question, the article employs different methods, thereby combining phenomenology, ethics, and systematic theology. By exploring climate shame, the article contributes to an interdisciplinary theological understanding of our emotional life in the green transition.</p>","PeriodicalId":42769,"journal":{"name":"Dialog-A Journal of Theology","volume":"64 1","pages":"15-20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dial.12875","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143622602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p><i>Background for the article</i>: We have composed this article as a dialogue between a psychologist and a philosopher of religion. We believe that our various disciplines may contribute to a varied and nuanced understanding of what meaning entails in the context that the Anthropocene represents. Tatjana has done much research on meaning in life, whereas Jan-Olav is concerned with the meaning of religion in a contemporary context. We continue to discover that we have a lot of interests in common—also when it comes to dealing with the present state of planet Earth and our place in it as humans.</p><p><b><i>Jan-Olav</i></b><i>: The Anthropocene as a call to orientation and transformation</i></p><p>Although the notion of the <i>Anthropocene</i> was rejected as a description of our present age by scientists in 2024, it is still worth employing to depict some of the main features that presently characterize the planet. When Paul Crutzen launched it in 2002 (Crutzen <span>2002, 2006</span>), he pointed to some of the geological-scale changes human actions have caused, such as how between a third and a half of the planet's land surface has been transformed. Moreover, most of the world's major rivers have been dammed or diverted, and fisheries remove more than a third of the primary production of the ocean's coastal waters, and humans use more than half of the world's readily accessible freshwater runoff (Crutzen <span>2002</span>, 23). Thus, “humans are not passive observers of Earth's functioning: To a large extent the future of the only place where life is known to exist is being determined by the actions of humans” (Lewis and Maslin <span>2015</span>, 178). Thus, the far-reaching changes that human actions cause to “the life-supporting infrastructure of Earth that may well have increasing philosophical, social, economic, and political implications over the coming decades” (ibid., 178). The Anthropocene is characterized by the fact that “the human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system” (Bonneuil and Fressoz <span>2017</span>, 4). It points to human power over the fate of the planet. It does not mean, however, that we can fully control or hamper the developments, control the consequences of our actions, or foresee in detail all that will happen. This experience of lack of control may, in fact, contribute to deterioration in the experience of meaning.</p><p>So, what happens with the sense of meaning in a situation like this one? Is the Anthropocene a testimony to the fact that it is humans alone that are the meaning-making species—those who create meaning on the planet by means of our activity, and also the loss of such when we face the threat of destruction and climate catastrophes? Or is the sense of meaning also something we have to detect and realize in other areas than those activities that have shaped the Anthro
{"title":"Search for Meaning in the Anthropocene: A Dialogue Between Psychology and Theology","authors":"Tatjana Schnell, Jan-Olav Henriksen","doi":"10.1111/dial.12873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12873","url":null,"abstract":"<p><i>Background for the article</i>: We have composed this article as a dialogue between a psychologist and a philosopher of religion. We believe that our various disciplines may contribute to a varied and nuanced understanding of what meaning entails in the context that the Anthropocene represents. Tatjana has done much research on meaning in life, whereas Jan-Olav is concerned with the meaning of religion in a contemporary context. We continue to discover that we have a lot of interests in common—also when it comes to dealing with the present state of planet Earth and our place in it as humans.</p><p><b><i>Jan-Olav</i></b><i>: The Anthropocene as a call to orientation and transformation</i></p><p>Although the notion of the <i>Anthropocene</i> was rejected as a description of our present age by scientists in 2024, it is still worth employing to depict some of the main features that presently characterize the planet. When Paul Crutzen launched it in 2002 (Crutzen <span>2002, 2006</span>), he pointed to some of the geological-scale changes human actions have caused, such as how between a third and a half of the planet's land surface has been transformed. Moreover, most of the world's major rivers have been dammed or diverted, and fisheries remove more than a third of the primary production of the ocean's coastal waters, and humans use more than half of the world's readily accessible freshwater runoff (Crutzen <span>2002</span>, 23). Thus, “humans are not passive observers of Earth's functioning: To a large extent the future of the only place where life is known to exist is being determined by the actions of humans” (Lewis and Maslin <span>2015</span>, 178). Thus, the far-reaching changes that human actions cause to “the life-supporting infrastructure of Earth that may well have increasing philosophical, social, economic, and political implications over the coming decades” (ibid., 178). The Anthropocene is characterized by the fact that “the human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system” (Bonneuil and Fressoz <span>2017</span>, 4). It points to human power over the fate of the planet. It does not mean, however, that we can fully control or hamper the developments, control the consequences of our actions, or foresee in detail all that will happen. This experience of lack of control may, in fact, contribute to deterioration in the experience of meaning.</p><p>So, what happens with the sense of meaning in a situation like this one? Is the Anthropocene a testimony to the fact that it is humans alone that are the meaning-making species—those who create meaning on the planet by means of our activity, and also the loss of such when we face the threat of destruction and climate catastrophes? Or is the sense of meaning also something we have to detect and realize in other areas than those activities that have shaped the Anthro","PeriodicalId":42769,"journal":{"name":"Dialog-A Journal of Theology","volume":"64 1","pages":"8-14"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dial.12873","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143622758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christianity stands on the threshold of a new reformation. It will not be the first, nor the second, nor the last. The Church is, in the words of St. Augustine, ever reforming, semper reformanda. But especially in times of great change and crisis in our common world, it is the Church's prophetic task to recognize and respond to God's call in relation to these signs of the times.
{"title":"Keynote address at the Thirteenth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) “One Body, One Spirit, One Hope” September 14, 2023","authors":"Tomáš Halík","doi":"10.1111/dial.12869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12869","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Christianity stands on the threshold of a new reformation. It will not be the first, nor the second, nor the last. The Church is, in the words of St. Augustine, ever reforming, <i>semper reformanda</i>. But especially in times of great change and crisis in our common world, it is the Church's prophetic task to recognize and respond to God's call in relation to these signs of the times.</p>","PeriodicalId":42769,"journal":{"name":"Dialog-A Journal of Theology","volume":"63 4","pages":"160-165"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143253343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}