23rd March 4pm-5pm. This is a hybrid event – in-person and online.
Free and all welcome
See the recording of the event here.
Tim Middleton (Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford) trained as an earth scientist before transitioning to theological study. In this lecture he challenges theology to respond to ecological crisis. Human impacts on the Earth are now so severe, and so persistent, that scientists are considering whether we have entered a new geological epoch altogether—the Anthropocene. Tim Middleton will argue that the advent of the Anthropocene can be understood as a traumatic rupture in time. Any sense of a linear progression towards salvation is hard to square with the devastation that is currently being wrought by our climate and ecological crises. Can a focus on Christ’s work in ‘deep time’ prove helpful for living in the trauma of the Anthropocene?