One thought that has been occupying my mind recently is something I came across while glancing through J. Richard Middleton’s The Liberating Image, an analysis of the theological doctrine that humans were made in the image of God. Middleton uses a rigorous blend of archaeology, linguistics, and historical analysis to make a potent theological case that this doctrine—one properly seen in its historical context as an inversion of other ancient Mesopotamian religions, which hold that the image of God is a cultic statue in a specific temple, over which only an elite has access and control—implies that we have a robust ecological responsibility that is of a piece with an egalitarian political vision in which no king is necessary but God. I have only…
Tagged: ecotheology, empire, Hans Jonas, imago dei, Jacobi, panentheism, pantheism