Gaia and God: Book Review

[Louisiana1976]

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Ruether's book follows a method she frequently employs: she narrates the historical development of an ethical problem, highlighting religious ideologies both for their negative and positive contributions to the issue at hand. She opens Gaia and God with two parallel accounts, one detailing notions of creation from ancient Babylon to modern science, another dealing with scenarios of world destruction with the same sweep. The Bible, in this view, is not a unique foundation for religious reflection, but rather one stage of ongoing religious reflection, a perspective that distances Ruether's program from green evangelicalism.

Her first chapter deals with the classical creation myths of Western culture: The Babylonian Enuma Elish, its reworking in Genesis 1, and Plato's Timaeus: Plato's dialogue became the lens through which Genesis was read in classical Christian thought, a development she sees as exacerbating elements that contribute to Christianity's traditional hesitation to embrace environmental concerns. Not only does she fault the Platonic lens for exacerbating problematic tendencies in Genesis 1, she is rather more critical of the Genesis narratives themselves on account of both environmental and gender dynamics than a number of liberal commentators on Genesis.

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http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/27/817960/-Gaia-and-God:-Book-Review

[MountainLaurel]

1. Thank you for posting

I read her "Sexism and God-Talk" a number of hears ago, and now I'll have to check this one out as well.