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An Environment Friendly God: Response to Nancy Hudson’s “Divine Immanence”

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This paper is a response to Professor Nancy Hudson’s paper “Divine Immanence: Nicholas of Cusa’s Understanding of Theophany and the Retrieval of a ‘New’ Model of God,” (Nancy Hudson, “Divine Immanence: Nicholas of Cusa’s Understanding of Theophany and the Retrieval of a ‘New’ Model of God,” Journal of Theological Studies 56.2 (October 2005): 450–470). The global ecological crisis has spawned intensive reflection about living in right relationship with the earth. Western Christian thought has received special scrutiny since modern alienation from nature has been traced to Christian theology. Undiscovered within the mystical theology of Nicholas of Cusa lies an ecologically promising vision of nature. The concept of divine immanence presented by this medieval thinker provides a rich spirituality that is inclusive, rather than exclusive, of the natural world. It is also far more intimate than contemporary stewardship theology. Cusanus interprets theophany as divine self-expression. A series of striking metaphors, including God’s enfolding and unfolding, God as ‘Not-other’, and Christ as the contracted maximum, reveals a holistic spirituality. Nicholas of Cusa’s concept of divine immanence infuses the world with immeasurable value and gives rise to a Christian theology that can address the current ecological crisis. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God in response to a presentation of Nancy Hudson’s “Divine Immanence.”

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Notes

  1. See, e.g., Sallie McFague, Models of God. Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1987).

  2. See, e.g., Peter Manchester, “Teleology Revisited: A Neoplatonic Perspective in Environmental Biology” in Neoplatonism and Contemporary Thought I, ed. R. Baine Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 73–83; Laura Westin, “Plotinian Roots of Ecology, Post-Normal Science and Environmental Ethics” and David R. Lee, “Commonality and Difference Between Neoplatonism and Deep Ecology” in Neoplatonism and Contemporary Thought II, ed. R. Baine Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 29–49 and 51–70. See also the collection of essays in Neoplatonism and Nature: Studies in Plotinus’ Enneads, ed. Michael F. Wagner (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).

  3. Nancy Hudson, “Divine Immanence: Nicholas of Cusa’s Understanding of Theophany and the Retrieval of a ‘New’ Model of God,” Journal of Theological Studies 56.2 (October 2005): 455.

  4. John A. Grim, “Indigenous Traditions: Religion and Ecology” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology, ed. Roger A. Gottlieb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 283–284. See also Roy C. Dudgeon and Fikret Berkes, “Local Understandings of the Land: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous Knowledge” in Nature Across Culture. Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures, ed. Helaine Selin (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 75–96.

  5. James Miller, “Daoism and Nature” in Nature Across Culture, 393. Miller clarifies that the English word “nature” does not quite capture the spirit of Daoism since “the natural operation of the Dao is not limited to one dimension of life or being. Indeed it lies at the root of all activity, whether human, celestial, political, animal, or vegetal.”

  6. James Miller, “Daoism and Nature” in Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology, 223–224. Miller here is commenting on Chapter 42 of the Dao De Jing:

    Tao engenders One,

    One engenders Two,

    Two engenders Three,

    Three engenders the ten thousand things.

    Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1993).

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Correspondence to Robert S. Gall.

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Gall, R.S. An Environment Friendly God: Response to Nancy Hudson’s “Divine Immanence”. Philosophia 35, 357–360 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9092-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9092-6

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