I spent a fascinating day yesterday at our Area Study Day listening to Margaret Barker speak about Temple Theology. Temple theology traces the roots of Christian theology back into the first Temple, destroyed by the cultural revolution in the time of King Josiah at the end of the seventh century BCE.
This sounds very academic and of interest only to historians but Margaret unpacked the significance to demonstrate its significance in providing a framework or paradigm for a characteristically Christian creation theology, emphasising the bonds of creation broken by human sin and advocating the stewardship of knowledge. This is because the temple represented creation, and everything connected with it expressed and symbolised how those worship the Lord should live in the world he created.
Her involvement with Christian environment theology is also not purely academic having been, since 1997, part of the symposium Religion, Science and the Environment, convened by His All Holiness Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch. This work has led her to develop the practical implications of temple theology as the basis for a Christian environment theology.
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2 comments:
In the nicest possible sense: you lucky git. I think Barker is fascinating.
Too right. I'd never come across her before but she was articulate, amusing, right on top of her subject, and talked applicable, rather than estoteric, theology.
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