estimate that there is an over ninety-five percent probability that human activities have been the dominant cause of this warming since the mid- twentieth century; and (3) warn against the diverse harmful consequences on ecosystems, other species, humans and their livelihoods.10
Based on these findings, different agents engage in an exegetical, interpretative and theological inquiry. The praxis of interpretation of an individual Christian and a collective of Christians—be it a church, a fellowship of churches or a communion of churches—is a bit different. In the case of a collective effort, the interpretative work seeks to articulate a shared understanding of the scriptures, building on nuanced or differentiated interpretations, which is a process that would demand a study of its own. In any case, although climate change is global and affects everyone, it impacts people differently according to where they live. Climate science is universal;
climate experience is local. It takes little imagination to understand how differently the climate issue and the scriptures would be approached by a wealthy Norwegian single businesswoman or a sub-Saharan small farmer with a family, an Indian solar company CEO or an East European coal miner, an Australian conservative politician or a Latin-American indigenous mother. It is reasonable to posit that the level of climate dependency and vulnerability of the interpreters’ livelihood and context—and closely linked to it, their relationship to “nature”—are key.
One should add the other usual “baggage” that any interpreter carries:
personal history; education; worldview; set of values; theology; spirituality;
political stance; etc. This underscores the role of one’s identity and context as one meets the biblical text: the question(s) carried by the interpreter as well as the way the text may speak to and move them—actually, the way the scriptures can become the Word of God through the work of the Holy Spirit—can differ based on these elements. This also applies to professional theologians. The fact is not to be criticized, nor does it entail any determinism allowing anyone to prejudge the way one will read the scriptures, but it is to be taken into account in order to recognize the legitimacy, under certain conditions, of the diversity of interpretations.
Such an understanding is especially important in the case of a collective international interpretative effort.
Speaking of baggage, if not a sense of guilt, surely an apologetic agenda constitutes an item either explicitly carried or present as a hidden interpretative interest in the approach of many Christians. It derives from the famous thesis according to which Judeo-Christianity as it evolved in
10 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2014. Synthesis Report. Summary for Policymakers (Geneva: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014).
Western Europe in the Middle Ages bears a great responsibility for the development of the current ecological crisis: simply put, it is accused of having diffused a worldview based on a reading of Genesis according to which humans are at the center and top of creation and have been given the divine mandate to dominate and exploit the rest of creation, which has value only through its utility for humans. The medieval historian Lynn White Jr. made this case in his famous 1967 article in Science.11 Others supported a similar thesis12 and it has been a regular critique of Christians in environmental circles. Acknowledging this background, an interpretative pitfall can be outlined: someone convinced of the importance of the climate crisis and the urgency to act risks approaching the biblical text with the objective of defending their faith and opposing a tradition of interpretation based on the axiom that the theology of creation depicted by White and others is not—or cannot be—sound. We are presented with a clear danger of eisegesis, i.e., the bringing of meaning to the text by the reader who is not receptive of what the text may say but tweaks the interpretation in a certain pre-determined direction.
We have now stepped into the spiral of interpretation and reappropriation.
Such a spiral exhibits an ongoing coming-and-going between the text and the interpreter in context, and rightly so in our view. Yet, in the case of climate change, one can argue that there is a primary “structuring”
movement, which goes from the contemporary world to the text. The dynamics are opposite to how the text can be read in a traditional daily reading of the Bible or on the occasion of the Sunday sermon; in that case, the text comes first as a source being considered as meaningful and meets the contemporary world down the interpretative road. We therefore hold that there are at least two kinds of spirals. The main difference between both is that climate change leads us to approach the text with a specific question. The fact that a question is posed and, more decisively, the way in which it is formulated, which can vary significantly, play a role in the interpretation. We could metaphorically depict the question and its language as colored glasses that interpreters put on their noses as they approach the biblical text.
Being aware of wearing glasses puts interpreters on their guard: it may be that some elements of meaning of the text are seen in a certain fashion or not seen at all because of them. To give one example: a person who would
11 Lynn White Jr., “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” in Science 155 (1967), 1203-07.
12 For a summary of the discussion, Paul H. Santmyre, The Travail of Nature. The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 1–7.
approach the biblical text using the concept of “environment” would be party to modern Western dualism, which separates human beings from what surrounds them. This person might thus not be sensitive enough to the strength of the biblical view, which puts the greatest divide between the creator and creation, consequently underlining the ontological proximity of humans, animals, plants, rocks, etc., which all fall under the same theological category of creature. Therefore one should always be open to the possibility that the text might put into question the glasses themselves.