Panel: INJUSTICE & SOCIAL TRANSFIGURATION IN THE ANTHROPOCENE: AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE



303.1 - ECOLOGICAL SIN & NATURAL LAW

AUTHORS:
Durante C. (Associate Professor of Theology - Saint Peter's University ~ New York ~ United States of America)
Text:
This presentation adopts the view that a characteristic feature of our new era of the Anthropocene has been humanity's "ecological sinfulness." I will suggest that ecological sin is primarily a collective and systemic form of sin and that has been the result of failing to view nature itself as a source of moral normativity. Drawing upon Maximus Confessor's suggestion that we nature can serve as a tutor in virtue and that the natural law is not only accessible via our rational capacities but also involves empirical as well as spiritual experiential dimensions, I will examine the practical dimensions of what it means to engage in repentance for our ecological sinfulness by suggesting a set of empirically derived natural laws that humanity ought to follow. This will entail a radical reconceptualization of the traditional natural law morality from one which privileges rational speculation into one which incorporates empirical science, contemplative meditation, as well as creative moral imagination into its matrix in order to provide us with the basis of a more ecological understanding of the Christin agapê ethic.