Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 61:1 (NA 2010)
Article: Continuity, Discontinuity, And Hope: The Contribution Of New Testament Eschatology To A Distinctively Christian Environmental Ethos
Author: Jonathan Moo

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Continuity, Discontinuity, And Hope:
The Contribution Of New Testament Eschatology To A Distinctively Christian Environmental Ethos

Jonathan Moo

Summary

This article focuses on the interpretation of three texts—Romans 8, 2 Peter 3, and Revelation 21-22—to develop the exegetical basis for a distinctively Christian perspective of the future that has important implications for how we understand our task in and for the created world. I propose that the diverse ways in which the NT portrays the future of the earth, taken together, provide an indispensable resource for the development of a Christian environmental ethos. I argue that this resource is not rendered more valuable by well-intentioned attempts to collapse the different emphases that emerge from, say 2 Peter 3 and Romans 8, into one version or the other. Nonetheless, I also argue that the contradiction that is often felt to exist between these different portraits of creation’s future is not so acute that we cannot identify vital strands of continuity between them; and, most importantly, that the ecological ethos that emerges from serious reflection on the implications of these visions is as radical as it is consistent with the OT prophets in their stern calls for righteousness and justice to be realised on earth.

1. Introduction

Twenty years ago, the 1989 Tyndale Lecture in Ethics was delivered by the Oxford economist Donald Hay.1 The title of his lecture,

TynBull 61:1 (2010) p. 22

‘Christians in the Global Greenhouse?’, suggests that Hay was prescient in identifying early on the significance of what has come to be considered one of the greatest challenges facing life on earth.2 Only the question mark at the end of his title would be less appropriate if he were delivering the lecture today. Every one of the past twenty years has been significantly above the long-term average in global temperature. Thirteen of them have in fact been hotter than any year recorded prior to 1989, and the ten hottest have all occurred within the last twelve. Even 2008, a year widely hailed by sceptics and a sensationalist media alike as evidence that the climate is now cooling, was still the ninth or tenth warmest on record, and this despite a strong La Niña and a record low solar minimum.3

Debate in the scientific community has progressed from ques...

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