| This dissertation seeks to provide a foundation for an adequate Christian environmental ethic based upon an understanding of stewardship as a metaphor for humanity's relationship to the natural world. The development of a concept of ecological Christian stewardship is based upon an appropriation of a modern "ecological perspective," and an expansion of earlier conceptions of the theological concept of stewardship. The project begins with an examination of the historical development of the theological concept. The concept as developed in American Protestantism was a truncated, economic image. The emergence of a scientific ecological perspective provides the opportunity to develop an expanded conception of stewardship. The next chapter examines the emergence and early development of the literature about ecological ethics, both within the theological and non-theological discourse. Theological discourse moved slowly toward identifying the problems of ecological ethics as inherently a problem of justice, between the developed industrialized nations and the less developed countries. A just, participatory, and sustainable society emerged as a formulation for the ethical norm to be sought.; The fourth chapter examines the shift from the early focus on ecological ethics and natural resource scarcity, toward a broader concern with non-human creation in the philosophical literature. The emergence of the fundamental issue of anthropocentrism, and whether human moral discourse can and should be non-anthropocentric, has been played out much more fully in the philosophical than theological literature. Three representative positions are examined; Paul Taylor's biocentric egalitarianism, Holmes Rolston's weakly anthropocentric environmental ethic are contrasted. The third perspective is the "ethic of life" developed by Cobb and Birch, which develops a more explicitly religious foundation for an ethic thoroughly informed by a modern ecological perspective. The fifth chapter elaborates the theological paradigm of ecological Christian stewardship, proposed as a foundation for a Christian ecological ethic. The need for an explicitly theological foundation for a Christian ethic towards the environment is not in opposition to the perspectives examined earlier. Ecological Christian stewardship is not represented as the only Christian response to the problems of our modern, ecological age, but as one of a number of efforts which seek to articulate an appropriate conception of humanity's relationship to the natural world. |
