Eschatological Motivations for Creation Care: A Thomistic Perspective on Environmentalism

Abstract

With the Protestant retrieval of Thomas Aquinas gaining popularity in the West, this article intends a textual analysis of Aquinas’s commentaries on Romans Chapter 8 while conducting a comparative analysis of both Protestant and Catholic resources as they might support a Thomistic perspective on creation care. In Western conservative evangelicalism, environmentalism and ecological considerations tend to be kept at an arm’s length, as the focus is typically on the salvific gospel, done so at the expense of properly redemptive creation care concerns. Such should not be the case, though, as the Bible clearly teaches that humans are to be good stewards over the created order (Gen. 2:15; Ps. 115:16; Jer. 29:5) with purview to the forthcoming eternal state (Mark 13:31; Rev. 21). While Catholics are quite well known for emphasising environmental concerns, it is encouraging that specific Protestant literature was also found to support ecological stewardship in the context of considering future creation-restorative events as expressed in the Holy Bible (2 Pet. 3:13). Moreover, after presenting the Thomistically inspired Restorative-Eschatological creation care position at length, the alternative views of Annihilationism and Synergistic Holism are compared, contrasted, and expressly found wanting.