Creation: A Biblical Vision for the Environment

by Margaret Barker

Publisher:

T&T Clark

, 2010

Overview

Margaret Barker contributes a characteristically Christian voice to contemporary theological debates on the environment. Most of the issues we face today weren’t the same as the early Christian community and often there were no relevant biblical teachings. Barker’s starting point is the question of what Jesus himself would have believed about the creation and what could the early Church have believed about the creation. She then shows how much of this belief is embedded, often unrecognized, in the New Testament and early Christian texts. It was what people assumed as the norm, the worldview within which they lived and expressed their faith. Barker establishes the general principles of a Christian view of creation. Some of what she says will show how current teaching would have been unfamiliar to the first Christians, not just in application but in basic principles.

In the Logos edition, all Scripture passages in Creation are tagged, appear on mouseover, and link to your favorite Bible translation in your library. With Logos’ advanced features, you can perform powerful searches by topic or Scripture reference—finding, for example, every mention of “the Garden of Eden” or “Genesis 2:15.”

Key Features

• Considers the radical distinction between the various kinds of economy
• Establishes the general principles of a Christian view of creation

Contents

• Vision of Creation
• Beginning Creation
• Weaving Creation
• Restoring Creation
• High Priest of Creation
• Embracing Creation

Top Highlights

“each person stamped with the image of the Creator was not Caesar’s currency and had another loyalty” (Page 223)

“the Lord is enthroned and reigns in the midst of the world” (Page 50)

“he was the image, the human presence of the Lord coming to make atonement” (Page 219)

“there may be far more singing angels in the Old Testament than is immediately obvious” (Page 280)

“Day One was the state of unity before the visible creation had been separated out from the divine source” (Page 91)

Praise for the Print Edition

One of our most important tasks at present is to bring the Bible into conversation with pressing environmental challenges. Margaret Barker has done just that with scholarly breadth and compassionate insight. This is an invaluable and much needed contribution.

—Mary Evelyn Tucker, senior lecturer and senior research scholar, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Christians need to recover a deep-rooted biblical perspective on this, which has been renewed in the Orthodox Churches by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who commends this book and believes rightly that we need to recover a sense of the earth as a divine gift.

—Geoffrey Rowell, bishop of Gibraltar

Many fascinating insights . . . written with a passion that is wholly appropriate to the environmental crisis faced by the human race.

—Church Times

This book has topical relevance; it is also, like all that this author writes, eminently readable.

—The Pastoral Review

Product Details

• Title: Creation: A Biblical Vision for the Environment
• Author: Margaret Barker
• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 344

About Margaret Barker

Margaret Barker (born 1944), a Methodist preacher, studied theology at the University of Cambridge, after which she has devoted her life to research in ancient Christianity. She has developed an approach to Biblical studies known as Temple Theology. She was president of the Society for Old Testament Study in 1998, and in July 2008 she was awarded a DD by the Archbishop of Canterbury.