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List of contents
Introduction: The Deficit Thesis and the Task It Presents
Part 1: Contexts for the Symbol Deficit
Chapter One:
From Acts of God to the Anthropocene
Chapter Two:
Culprits for the Predicament
Chapter Three:
Consumer Idolatry
Chapter Four:
Religion in Denial
Chapter Five:
To Empower Those Who Suffer and Give Voice to Those Who Lack It
Part 2: Conditions for symbolic practices
Chapter Six:
Symbols as Mediating Practice
Chapter Seven:
Conditions for Agency: A Critique of Modernity’s Detached Subject
Chapter Eight:
Symbols for Enhancing Moral Motivation and Avoiding Defection
Chapter Nine:
An Inductive, Experientially Oriented Theology
Part 3: Symbols for Practices
Chapter Ten:
God as Creator - A Critical Symbol?
Chapter Eleven:
From Anthropos to All of Creation
Chapter Twelve:
Symbolic Deficits in Apocalypticism – Towards a Presentist Eschatology
Chapter Thirteen:
Sin
Chapter Fourteen:
Symbols for Hope – A Critical Evaluation
Chapter Fifteen:
Sacrifice, Hope, and Grace
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Jan-Olav Henriksen is Professor of Philosophy of Religion in MF Norwegian School of Theology, Norway.
Summary
Exploring how the climate crisis discloses the symbol deficit in the Christian tradition, this book argues that Christianity is rich in symbols that identify and address the failures of humans and the obstacles that prevent humans from doing well, while positive symbols that can engage people in constructive action seem underdeveloped. Henriksen examines the potential of the Christian tradition to develop symbols that can engage peoples in committed and sustained action to prevent further crisis. To do so, he argues that we need symbols that engage both intellectually and emotionally, and which enhance our perception of belonging in relationships with other humans, be it both in the present and in the future.
According to Henriksen, the deficit can only be obliterated if we can develop symbols that have some root or resonance in the Christian tradition, provide concrete and specified guidance of agency, engage people both emotionally and intellectually, and finally open up to visions for a moral agency that provide positive motivations for caring about environmental conditions as a whole.
Foreword
Explores symbols rooted in the Christian tradition that can motivate to sustained action to counter the climate crisis
Additional text
The late Ursula K Le Guin argued that if we going to think ourselves out of the current problems of climate change and globalization, we are going to need more speculative fiction writers. This means we need new symbols with which to imagine our planetary futures. This book is important because it critiques the underlying theological symbols of western style democracies and economics that are, in the era of the Anthropocence, quite simply deficient. We need new, planetary ways of imagining human-God-Earth relations that suggest we (and all things human) are emergent from the process of planetary evolution.
