Humanity operates like a force of nature capable of affecting the destiny of the Earth System. This epochal shift profoundly alters the relationship between humankind and the Earth, presenting the conscious, thinking human animal with an unprecedented dilemma: As human power has grown over the Earth, so has the power of nature to extinguish human life. The emergence of the Anthropocene has settled any question of the place of human beings in the world: we stand inescapably at its center. The outstanding questionwhich forms the impetus and focus for this bookremains: What kind of human being stands at the center of the world? And what is the nature of that world? Unlike the scientific fact of human-centeredness, this is a moral question, a question that brings theology within the scope of reflection on the critical failures of human irresponsibility. Much of Christian theology has so far flunked the test of engaging the reality of the Anthropocene. The authors of these original essays begin with the premise that it is time to push harder at the questions the Anthropocene poses for people of faith.

Jonathan Cole is assistant director of research at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, Charles Sturt University, Canberra.

Peter Walker is principal of United Theological College, Sydney.

Preface

Introduction: Theology on a Defiant Earth, by Peter Walker and Jonathan Cole

The Anthropocene Epoch and Its Meaning, by Clive HamiltonA Rupture in the Earth: An Implicit Augustinian Theology of the Anthropocene, by Lisa H. SiderisIs It Time for a Theological Step Change, by Clive PearsonIcarus Falling: Theological Anthropology and the Anthropocene, by Scott CowdellThy Kingdom Come: Bonhoeffers Earthly Christianity as Theology and Ethic, by Dianne RaysonAnthropocene and Ecclesia: The Church in Swarming Mode, by Stephen PickardThinking Eschatologically in the Face of the Anthropocene, by Christiaan MostertApocalypse and the Anthropocene: A Biblical Resource for a New Global Epoch, by David NevilleRedeeming Eden: Biblical Ethics in the Anthropocene, by Mark G. BrettThe Serpent in the GardenSin and the Anthropocene, by Peter WalkerDefiant God: The Fate of Christianitys Holocene Ontology in the Anthropocene, by Jonathan ColeA Climate of Hope? Reflections on the Theology of the Anthropocene, by Clive Hamilton

Bibliography

Index

About the Contributors