The Beneficence of God with Respect to Environmental Ethics: Tillich’s Divine-Human Creativity Theory as Solution to Climate Crisis

Abstract

The world today is in an environmental crisis due to human destructiveness and aggressive
behaviour. Health problems in terms of bad medicine are rampant. This is so because human
hearts are bent away from the Beneficent God because of sin. Monopoly, greed, and glutton
describe the dangerous situation of the world today. Wealth, money and power are
automatically reasons for inequality. World economics are destructive and exploitative.
Human beings destroy others, destroy themselves; they kill others and kill themselves
(suicide). Human beings destroy their environment. Gender inequality is one example of
human destructiveness where women are senselessly ostracized, downtrodden and relegated.
Because environment is defined in this study as the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic
factors (such as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological
community and ultimately determine its form and survival, climate change is the defining
crisis of our time and it is happening even more quickly than we feared. No person in the
world is immune from the devastating consequences of the global climate change. Rising
temperatures are fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, whether extremes,
food and water insecurity, economic disruptions especially due to COVID-19, conflict, and
terrorism. Sea levels are rising, the Arctic is melting, coral reefs are dying, oceans are
acidifying, and forests are burning. As the infinite cost of climate change reaches irreversible
highs, now is the time for bold multidisciplinary action. The objectives of this study are threefold: i) to address climate crisis calls through an interdisciplinary approach, as a religious
contribution is needed as part of panacea. ii)to use theological correlation methods to
contribute to the understanding of our world and the existential questions - spirituality asks
existential questions, religiosity is the inter-subjective way of elaborating answers to
questions about existential meaning, on beliefs in God, the divine, sacred, or Transcendent;
religion is the system that offers answers. iii) to examine how the world needs to behave
ethically. Environmental philosophy is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral
relationship between human beings and nature, as well as the value and moral status of the
environment and its non-human contents. This qualitative study uses Tillich’s theological
correlation method, and Tillich’s divine human creativity theory in addressing the challenge
of environment and climate crisis. ‘The Christ’ is the one who brings the new reality, Jesus
(Christology) strikes the necessary balance. “Christ is the end of existence lived in
estrangement, conflicts and self-destruction, existential distortion, the ambiguities of life and
human’s historical predicament”.