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| author | Jacob J. Erickson |
| title | A Theopoetics of the Earth: Divinity, Multiplicity, and Epiphany in the Anthropocene |
| abstract |
Global warming elicits theological and ethical problems largely unimagined by human beings and intensifies contexts of injustice: erratic weather, decline in
biodiversity, water scarcity, food shortages, and displacements of human and nonhuman creatures. Environmental activist and writer Bill McKibben calls our new
situation a "tough new planet," and some scholars now call our geologic time the Anthropocene—the time of humans. Global warming is no longer a problem
to be "prevented" but a reality already upon us, challenging senses of communal solidarity, justice, and resilience. Drawing on the fields of Anthropocene
Studies, new materialisms, ecotheology, ecological ethics and other environmental humanities, this dissertation constructs a new theology, indeed a theopoetics
of the earth that might help cultivate stories and strategies of relational resilience. It argues that theology must take the manifold relationships of earth
and divinity in the midst of this reality seriously by acknowledging theology's poietic formation in earthy and material places. Taking the motifs of "theophany"
and "epiphany" (divinity manifest in place) as a joint starting point, this dissertation argues that the traditions of theophany might help signify a mutual and
mutually creative relationship between manifold divinity and earth. Drawing especially on the ninth century Irish mystic John Scottus Eriugena's perspective that
all of creation, including the earth, are theophanies, the self-creation of God, this dissertation constructs via "speculative fabulation" (Donna Haraway) a
"theophanic conviviality" where divinity and earth irreducibly interrelate, and so illuminate the unruly agency of materiality. This writing further demonstrates
that, in the Anthropocene, it takes a "theophanic attention" to wrestle with environmental despair and the tragic beauty of ecology honestly. Finally, this
dissertation argues for an "epiphanic commons," where theophanic creatures work together in convivial lines of solidarity and cooperative justice.
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| school | The Theological School, Drew University |
| degree | Ph.D. (2018) |
| advisor | Catherine Keller |
| committee | Laurel Kearns
Stephen D. Moore |
| full text | JJErickson.pdf |
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