Jonathan Edwards’ Ecotheology, Ecospirituality, and the Witness of Creation

This course explores the theological and spiritual vision of Jonathan Edwards as biblical foundational for contemporary ecotheological and environmental witness. Students will examine Edwards’ typological interpretation of nature, scripturally-grounded Trinitarian theology of nature, and view of creation as a divine communication of God’s beauty and glory in Christ. For Edwards, God created all of nature with embedded messages to communicate the divine Self and spiritual truths to those who are open to His Spirit. Edwards’ foundational contribution will be traced in its historical roots, then brought forward through a contemporary ecotheology and ecospirituality proposed by Emil Brunner, Jürgen Moltmann, Alister McGrath, and others.

Using these dialogical tools, the course invites students to engage critically and devotionally with themes of ecospirituality, climate justice, and the sacredness of the natural world to expand their knowledge and experience of God in a new way. Through Edwards’ entranced ecotheological vision, students will learn the sacred value of both the human and more-than-human world in fulfilling God’s original purpose for creation: to communicate God’s self. This divine revelation, when received and delighted in by the believer, reflects God’s glory back to its source in a worshipful cycle of what Edwards calls “emanation and re-emanation.” In this construct, nature, and all God’s works of creation, are a communication of God to humans and a witness of God’s great love and faithfulness…truly a gospel of nature.

Through integrative assignments, including theological writing and field journaling, sermons, and liturgical design, students will cultivate a spiritually rooted, theologically informed, and ethically engaged Christian response to the beauty and wisdom of nature in light of the ecological crises of our time.

By PROF. DR. LISANNE WINSLOW (ETF Leuven)