A critical reflection of Christian anthropocentrism and ecological crisis from a Taoist perspective: A contribution to Christian-Taoist eco-theology

Abstract

This thesis is a Christian-Taoist study which argues that holistic harmony includes the harmonious relationship among God, Humanity and Earth. This thesis comprises five discussion chapters. The first provides a critical review of Lynn White’s arguments on our modern ecological crisis. The second chapter provides a detailed discussion of Christian anthropocentrism and the third chapter provides a comprehensive introduction of the Taoist concepts of Taiping. The fourth discussion chapter explores the roots of Christian and Taoist cosmology and the commencement of the Christian-Taoist encounter on the concepts of holistic harmony. The fifth discussion chapter contains three main parts. It starts with the study of the concepts of creativity in both the Chinese/Taoist and Western/Christian traditions in order to explore the similarities and dissimilarities of God/Tao’s creativity and human creativity. Based on the study of creativity, the second and third parts of this chapter intend to retrieve the essence of creativity in order to ameliorate the modern ecological crisis through a specific ideology of the Taiping Jing, Zhonghe. Cobb’s reinterpretation of Life and Moltmann’s reinterpretation of Sabbath will be used as the vehicles for introducing the concepts of Ziran and Wuwei, insofar as they are part of Zhonghe, into Christian tradition.