Here’s a question I have for you, and it is one that lurks in the shadows of many conversations and it comes up more directly in others:
Do you think ecology and the environment are part of the concerns of the gospel? Or, do they belong somewhere else? Does preaching the gospel involve eco-care?
IVP just came out with a new book, a collection of pieces around this theme, and I want to urge you to consider reading it. It is by Noah Toly and Daniel Block, Keeping God’s Earth: The Global Environment in Biblical Perspective
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It has to do with an evangelical response to environmental issues. Authors include Doug Moo, who has an excellent and balanced essay on the principle passages in the NT (Romans 8, Colossians 1, etc), M. Daniel Carroll R., Fred Van Dyke, Michael Guebert, David Gushee, Sir John Houghton, David Toshio Tsumura, Chris Wright and Douglas Green.
The themes are important ones: Cities, diversity of life, water, and climate change.
Doug Moo: “Let me say at the outset that I have no intention of suggesting that the redemption of human beings is not at the heart of God’s plan or that the church should not make evangelism its primary goal. But I do want to suggest that the attitude of an ‘either-or’ when it comes to evangelism and environmental concern is a false alternative, echoing the false alternative of evangelism versus social concern … ” (25).
And Douglas Green sees Adam and Eve created to be vice regent gardeners on behalf of God!