10 Standing in the Middle of the Ocean: Time for a Public Theology
199
Under the first sub-heading comes the story. In the context of the Blue Pacific the
Noah narrative is an individual story that ‘pulsates with meaning’. The particular
movements within the storyline must be respected but not in a way that leads to
‘the atomization of Scripture into a disjointed anthology’ (p. 26). This warp ought
to situate the particular within a vast and living drama able to evoke a lifelong
engagement. These stories represent ‘episodes arising out of the experiences of a
people struggling to shape a common life in relation to its God’. They are instalments
into an ‘identity-shaping whole’ (p. 27). The weft constitutes the theocratic principle
that further binds the story together into canonical meaning. Hanson privileges the
idea of a covenant (p. 28). For its public role this model of warp and weft—or
something like it—prepares a community to draw upon the resources they have
inherited: they can set about the task of
translating ideals and strategies from the comfort zone of [their] own communal traditions
and practices into a language comprehensible to other communities populating a diverse
universe. (pp. 35–36)
Hanson had been writing in response to the history of the Bible in the politics of
the United States. His warp and weft theory is able to hold in tension how the Bible
is not unilinear in its ethical direction: it possesses a canonical quality of rehearsing
a plot. For J. Richard Middleton that plot extends ‘the full sweep’ from creation
to the eschaton. It holds out a vision of holistic salvation, cosmic renewal and the
redemption of all things. At one level Middleton’s thesis may seem far removed from
rising sea-levels and the difficulty of now growing pulaka. There is only a passing
reference to Noah and Job (Middleton 2014, pp. 47, 552, 54, 61, 92, 93, 99, 117,
133). What is even more surprising is his failure to consider the current threats to the
planet—the site of his renewal—in the appendix ‘Whatever Happened to the New
Earth?’ Where his writing is helpful is the way in which he moves along a different
trajectory from Hanson: in actual practice he weaves together many texts into a
plot that generates an internal canonical discussion and does not leave individual
biblical stories stranded. That has been one of the problems of the Noah story. As a
consequence the text has been open to the criticism of climate denial: the inhabitants
of low-lying islands were left far too dependent upon a highly restricted range of
biblical narratives. It is time for redress.
The Present Kairos
The present is a kairos moment in which to make a stand for a broader-based biblical
response to the climate emergency, the trajectory of a hothouse Earth and the Anthropocene. Bruce Birch and Larry Rasmussen et al. have called for a ‘new conversation’ on the Bible, ethics, and the ‘planetary changes [that] are epochal and probably
deeper and more extended in space and time than we realize’ (Birch et al. 2018, p.
xiii; Rasmussen 2013). These authors assume ‘the inadequacy of literalism’, the need
for an overarching hermeneutic, the role of the canon, the importance of formative
199
Under the first sub-heading comes the story. In the context of the Blue Pacific the
Noah narrative is an individual story that ‘pulsates with meaning’. The particular
movements within the storyline must be respected but not in a way that leads to
‘the atomization of Scripture into a disjointed anthology’ (p. 26). This warp ought
to situate the particular within a vast and living drama able to evoke a lifelong
engagement. These stories represent ‘episodes arising out of the experiences of a
people struggling to shape a common life in relation to its God’. They are instalments
into an ‘identity-shaping whole’ (p. 27). The weft constitutes the theocratic principle
that further binds the story together into canonical meaning. Hanson privileges the
idea of a covenant (p. 28). For its public role this model of warp and weft—or
something like it—prepares a community to draw upon the resources they have
inherited: they can set about the task of
translating ideals and strategies from the comfort zone of [their] own communal traditions
and practices into a language comprehensible to other communities populating a diverse
universe. (pp. 35–36)
Hanson had been writing in response to the history of the Bible in the politics of
the United States. His warp and weft theory is able to hold in tension how the Bible
is not unilinear in its ethical direction: it possesses a canonical quality of rehearsing
a plot. For J. Richard Middleton that plot extends ‘the full sweep’ from creation
to the eschaton. It holds out a vision of holistic salvation, cosmic renewal and the
redemption of all things. At one level Middleton’s thesis may seem far removed from
rising sea-levels and the difficulty of now growing pulaka. There is only a passing
reference to Noah and Job (Middleton 2014, pp. 47, 552, 54, 61, 92, 93, 99, 117,
133). What is even more surprising is his failure to consider the current threats to the
planet—the site of his renewal—in the appendix ‘Whatever Happened to the New
Earth?’ Where his writing is helpful is the way in which he moves along a different
trajectory from Hanson: in actual practice he weaves together many texts into a
plot that generates an internal canonical discussion and does not leave individual
biblical stories stranded. That has been one of the problems of the Noah story. As a
consequence the text has been open to the criticism of climate denial: the inhabitants
of low-lying islands were left far too dependent upon a highly restricted range of
biblical narratives. It is time for redress.
The Present Kairos
The present is a kairos moment in which to make a stand for a broader-based biblical
response to the climate emergency, the trajectory of a hothouse Earth and the Anthropocene. Bruce Birch and Larry Rasmussen et al. have called for a ‘new conversation’ on the Bible, ethics, and the ‘planetary changes [that] are epochal and probably
deeper and more extended in space and time than we realize’ (Birch et al. 2018, p.
xiii; Rasmussen 2013). These authors assume ‘the inadequacy of literalism’, the need
for an overarching hermeneutic, the role of the canon, the importance of formative