Скачать или смотреть PhD defense: Holy Ecology: Renewing Christian Vision in a Planetary Age

Public defense and trial lecture for the degree of philosophiae doctor (PhD)

March 17th 2025, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo

Dissertation title: Holy Ecology: Renewing Christian Vision in a Planetary Age
Candidate: Gunnar Gabriel Gjermundsen, Psy.D., Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

Humanity has entered the planetary age—an era in which human-induced environmental disruption on a planetary scale has become impossible to ignore. A growing body of scholarship suggests that at the root of this imbalance lies a historically unprecedented phenomenon: over the past two centuries, Western culture has become untethered from a guiding vision of the sacred at its center—its axis mundi. When the world is perceived solely as inert matter, devoid of any divine presence, origin, or purpose, and fully reducible to the methods of modern science, it becomes increasingly vulnerable to unchecked exploitation by industry and the forces of capital.

This dissertation traces several tributaries of this failure of vision within the Christian theological tradition—the religious tradition that has most profoundly shaped modern Western culture, a culture now increasingly exported globally. Three key theological patterns are examined: (1) eschatological and apocalyptic thought structures that sustain future-oriented, accelerationist thinking within a linear time schema culminating in the Kingdom of Heaven (Article 1); (2) separatist metaphysical dualisms—spirit/body, intellect/senses, natural/supernatural—that reinforce a transcendence-oriented spirituality (Article 2); and (3) the devaluation of women, bodies, and sexuality within Christian theology and ecclesiastical hierarchy, eroding the vision of the divine feminine as embodied in all of nature (Article 3).

In parallel with this critical analysis, each article seeks a constructive retrieval of the ancient Christian contemplative tradition of theoria physike (contemplation of nature), most comprehensively articulated by St Maximus the Confessor (d. 662). The dissertation argues that refining the practice of theoria physike—learning to perceive the face of Christ in all physical phenomena—is key to healing the modern rupture of vision and reimagining Christianity as a religion of the Earth.

Evaluation committee:
1. opponent: Professor Jacob Sherman (California Institute of Integral Studies)
2. opponent: Dosent Thomas Arentzen (Lund University)
Chair of the committee: Professor Ola Sigurdson (University of Oslo).

00:00 Trial lecture: Animism and the Doctrine of Creation in Contemporary Systematic Theology
48:35 Professor Jacob Sherman gives a précis and presentation of the dissertation
1:08:22 First round of questioning by professor Sherman
2:12:10 Ex auditorio question
2:22:15 Second round of questioning by dosent Thomas Arentzen

Article #1: 'Living on This Earth as in Heaven: Time and the Ecological Conversion of Eschatology' (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...)
Article #2: 'The Spiritual Senses and the Problem of Transcendence' (https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/90...)
Article #3: 'Tree of Life, Womb of Creation: Ecology and Sexuality in the Christian Contemplative Tradition' (forthcoming)

Supervisors:
Dr. Simone Kotva, Gothenburg University/Cambridge University
Professor Marius Mjaaland, University of Oslo
Dr. Joshua Lollar, University of Kansas

Video editing: Kristian Skylstad