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Eco Trauma and the Wounds of Christ

AI generated image showing a black Christ on the cross, in front of the earth, with fire in the foreground

[Image generated via AI to bring together Christ, creation and climate change].

A version of a paper for my MA. Rewritten for a presentation at Chester Uni and to make it a little less academic in language, for a wider audience..

T/W I do touch briefly on themes of sexual violence against women including rape.


Inspired by an event I attended last year at Sarum College, “Theology, Trauma, and the Ecological Crisis” I wanted to explore the theme of eco trauma in relation to the planet. Much of my research through my MA has been related to Christology and creation and so I continued in that vein here arguing for a relationship between the wounds of Christ at the crucifixion and the wounds of climate change on the earth. Specifically that: there is a direct correlation between the sin of human-caused damage to the planet, and the wounds of Christ; so that we can see the planet today in a place of ongoing trauma.

I want to note that I am aware that the idea of equating the human experience of trauma to a planetary one may be problematic for those who have or are suffering from trauma, and can potentially be seen as misappropriating or de-personifying the essence of what trauma is. In making my argument I am not seeking to take away from the depth and effects of human experiences of trauma.  

By way of an intro to those who may not be familiar with this area, here’s a few definitions to start off:

Trauma theology

Trauma theologians largely agree that experiencing trauma can affect a person’s life far beyond the traumatic event itself.  

A traumatic event may be:

“…one in which a person or persons perceive themselves or others as threatened by an external force, that seeks to annihilate them and against which they are unable to resist, and which overwhelms their capacity to cope”. [1]

Trauma can disconnect us from the stability of our former life, can affect our perception of life and can be seen as an encounter with death. [2]

It can leave us feeling a sense of powerlessness. [3]

And trauma can also be experienced by communities and may not just be one event but an ongoing series of events or constant threat. [4]

Eco trauma

Is the idea that relates trauma to ecological issues, usually under 3 areas:

  • Eco trauma in humans – symptoms as a result of environmental damage or catastrophe, for example having personally experienced a damaging hurricane or deadly flood.
  • Eco trauma in other species – seen as behavioural changes and damage to other species, as a result of damage to their environment.
  • Planetary eco trauma – the idea that the planet itself is traumatised by the ongoing effects of human industrial impact, and climate change.

Deep incarnation 

I will be exploring the idea of deep incarnation. Niels Henrik Gregersen coined the term “deep incarnation” in 2001, from a foundation of the work of Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa, on the incarnation. [5] He argues that in deep incarnation we consider Christ incarnated deeper than his human form. He argues for a “radical embodiment”, not just confined to humanity, [6] but one that is God’s aim to unite Godself with all forms of worldly flesh ie animals etc. [7] He bases this on a broad understanding of the word flesh, a word that would have been widely understood by those who knew the Hebrew scriptures, where the idea of the flesh is used variously to reference humans, other creatures and in some cases grass and flowers. 

And thirdly Deep Time. 

Some of the theologians I looked at (Middleton, Gregersen and Rambo) share a sense that linear time is not a helpful concept. Gregersen for example takes the idea of deep incarnation into deep time (a term coined by geologist James Hutton), arguing that we need to consider Christ’s incarnation beyond his actual lifespan. [8]Deep time in this sense recognises processes that have no discernible beginning or end, or “taking the long view”. [9]

So hang on to those definitions, I’ll come back to them. 


Christ’s trauma

My interest in this area was piqued by a seminar given by Theologian Tim Middleton, who has explored the idea that climate change might be seen as trauma, and has sought to explore a Christological understanding to what he calls “ongoing temporal trauma of the Anthropocene” (ie: thinking centrally about Christ, in the trauma affecting this age). [10] Middleton shared that his is a metaphorical approach but I wanted to explore the relation of Christ’s wounds and the planet in a metaphysical way  (ie: looking for a direct correlation not just thinking metaphorically).

Looking to the trauma theologians, Shelly Rambo has explored trauma from a Christological perspective. For example, as well as considering the nature of suffering, she challenges that a more modern interpretation of trauma must reflect critically on the “traumatic afterlife of the cross”, by not jumping ahead to the resurrection and what lies beyond that. “The return of Jesus reveals something about life in the midst of death…” [Italics author’s own] …and marks a distinct territory for thinking about life as marked by wounds, and yet recreated through them”. [11]In this way, she identifies Holy Saturday as the place in which death and life are in close relationship, and considers it as a place where we can explore remaining with trauma. [12] I think this is an interesting idea in relation to the earth sitting with trauma.

Preston Hill (practical theologian and therapist) argues that we should focus on Christ in matters of trauma “because Christ is the divine person who has an assumed human body that can keep the score of traumatic stress in a manner most similar to real survivors of trauma”. [13] He asks what might it mean, in a soteriological sense (ie: related to salvation) to think about what kind of body might be needed to consider God holding trauma? Does God need a body to “keep score” of trauma he asks? [14]

Linking to eco theology it seems to me, a natural question then is to ask how might we explore Christ’s bodily trauma in relation to earth?

Sticking with Middleton’s more metaphorical approach, Sallie McFague’s Body of God argues for a metaphorical view of the earth as the body of God, recognising Christianity as a religion of embodiment: the word made flesh, Christ as fully human, the Eucharist, and the church as the body of Christ. [15]McFague recognises her metaphor may stretch beyond what some are prepared to accept but argues that where Christianity has had a focus on suffering, the oppressed and the vulnerable, this should be expanded to include wider creation, non-human animals and the earth as equally oppressed and vulnerable [16]. In fact I feel her metaphor doesn’t go far enough for my argument but she explores how an alternative look at the Trinity might think about “… the world as God’s body overlain by the liberating, healing, and inclusive, love of the cosmic Christ”. [17] This can be taken deeper to think about the planet not just overlain by Christ’s love but more embodied still, inhabited by it? Could we indeed see the wounds of Christ within the earth, is what I was asking.

The Wounds of Creation

Another trauma theologian, Danielle Tuminio Hansen, notes that McFague’s metaphor suggests that as all bodies matter to God, so then any act of ecological destruction is indeed an act against God. She develops McFague’s view, arguing from a feminist viewpoint, to draw parallels between sexual violence against women, and violations to the earth. [18] In the same way in this area we might ask what would the trauma of Christ’s wounds mean then for this planet?

To explore this question, it naturally fits with Gregersen’s idea of deep incarnation as explained earlier. Christ was not just incarnated in human flesh but in a wider sense of creation, AND in turn the entire cosmos, not just humanity, is reconciled to God through his death. He argues the incarnation allows for no separation between Christ and creation, it is not passing but ongoing, it must be perpetual. [19]  

Mark Wallace (theologian), while not directly using the language of deep incarnation, explores similar themes in his work on the Holy Spirit and creation. His work is controversial as he argues for a view of Christianimism (ie: God in creaturely form) using the example of the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove at Christ’s baptism as his starting point, and arguing for all beings, including animals, as imbued with divine presence. [20] I remain unconvinced by his conclusion but he makes some interesting arguments along the way, for example, he suggests “As Jesus was sacrificed at Calvary, so today we crucify afresh God’s wind spirit in nature through toxic impacts against the very life support systems that make all beings’ planetary existence possible”. Using the words of poet WS Merwin he notes: “the scars of Golgotha marked the whole earth, the wounds of crucifixion extend on all creation”. [21]

Referring to Wallace’s work Middleton goes a step further and using the idea of deep time, proposes that the wounds of the crucifixion point also to the permanent ecological wounding of the planet in the Anthropocene ie: now. [22] He argues that the Anthropocene is a defining moment in time from which we will see ongoing trauma and persisting symptoms just as we do with human trauma. Echoing Rambo’s thoughts on Holy Saturday, he argues that we should sit within the wounds of trauma, not rushing to the resurrection, but bearing witness to the damage being done to the planet that will impact it for years to come. In this way we must disrupt the idea of linear history that theologically moves from incarnation to crucifixion to resurrection instead let us focus on the scars on Christ’s body to enable us to be within the trauma. [23]

Planetary Wounding and Trauma

I take all of this and move a step further…

Christian doctrine says that humanity is sinful, but that all sin (past, present, and future) was and is dealt with through the atonement, with the death of Christ on the cross [24] Tuminio Hansen, simplifying McFague’s view of sin as selfishness, argues that humanity’s negative beliefs and practices towards the earth are sinful, therefore we can see the ecological crisis as sinful. I argue then that human-caused damage to God’s creation is, in part, the cause of Christ’s wounds

Wallace and Tuminio Hansen touch upon this quite starkly, Tuminio Hansen using her parallel with sexual violation declares that “humans have been raping the earth’s body” and asks, are we then raping God? [25] Wallace arguing for a cruciform nature of human inflicted damage to the planet, writes, “The lash marks of human sin cut into the body of the crucified Christ are now even more graphically displayed across the expanse of the whole planet, as the body of the wounded Spirit bears the incisions of continual abuse…”. God continually suffers the agony of death and loss in the “environmental squalor that humankind has wrought” he writes. [26]

An argument for contemporary humanity’s actions as sinful and therefore in part a cause of Christ’s wounds historically, requires us to embrace the idea of deep time as noted earlier. In the concept of deep time, we can consider the wounds inflicted on Christ at the crucifixion in his physical lifetime on earth, alongside the wounds inflicted on the planet now in the Anthropocene, as part of those same crucifixion wounds. If we can accept this view of the earth as wounded through the wounds of the crucifixion, and that is a big if, then this surely leaves the earth sitting in a place of ongoing trauma. Wounds that are being inflicted now, and have yet to be inflicted, in the deep time argument, were also inflicted as wounds on the earth at the point of crucifixion, therefore the ongoing effects of these wounds can be seen now through climate change and environmental destruction, as trauma.

Christians live in the knowledge of a crucified and resurrected Christ but also knowing that the fullness of the resurrection is not yet apparent. Some theologians focus on the coming of a new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21) pointing us away from concern about the earth and its destruction, but as Rambo argues, a focus on redemption and resurrection does not allow space to consider the effects of trauma. [27] If we can envisage the trauma of the wounds of Christ within the earth, might that also enable us to find a place of sitting within the wounds, and witnessing to the trauma?

The Earth’s Trauma, a Summary

Circling back to our descriptions of trauma, we can see in Hill’s definition the earth processing the wounds of crucifixion, in the results of climate change. [28] That the earth is indeed struggling with an encounter with death, as Rambo describes, the death of Christ, which challenges the ways in which we see and do life. [29]I n the description of Jones, the earth remains threatened by an external force that seeks to annihilate and against which it is unable to resist, and which overwhelms its capacity to cope. [30]

I’ve avoided including scientific data in this paper but as an example to illustrate these points, and this is rather simplified (!), a few weeks ago it was reported that the temperature of the planet has now risen by 1.5 degrees C [31]. There is little chance of reducing this as the temperature trajectory is increasing. If we see that in itself as a traumatic event, the wounds are for example, the arctic polar ice melting, and the trauma of that wound is that it causes rising sea levels, and permafrost melting means release of greenhouse gases too. The outplaying of that trauma is that the arctic itself cannot heal – ie: refreeze without significantly lower temperatures or human technological input. 

The earth is threatened by an external force (humanity – or more specifically rising temperatures) that seeks to annihilate and against which it is unable to resist (the earth is unable to fight back against rising temperatures (or against the symptoms of trauma) which in turn overwhelm its capacity to cope – Greenhouse Gases releases, coral dying, sea level rising etc. And in the sense of deep time, this threat is both present, past and ongoing [32] it exists as a result of human industry over the last few hundred years, and continues to impact the present and future. And it carries a sense of powerlessness  [33] because without massive change across the globe there is little chance of change or reversal. 

These are wounds inflicted by us, by humanity in our sin. And so as humanity continues to cause damage to the planet, the wounds of Christ are inflicted once again through our sin, and the trauma remains ongoing. Therefore, the wounds of Christ remain an “open wound” on the earth, the planet is awaiting a final resurrection. [34] Earth remains living in a traumatised physical environment. [35] It is a place of trauma, uncertainty, not knowing what the future holds, a place of lament and grief, but also of bearing witness to what has gone before. Earth remains in Holy Saturday. [36]


Bibliography

All quotes from the Bible are from the NRSV except where stated otherwise.

Eaton, M. (2017). Enfleshing Cosmos and Earth: An Ecological Theology of Divine Incarnation. (PhD thesis, unpublished). Faculty of the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto School of Theology.

Gregersen, N.H. (2001). The Cross of Christ in an Evolutionary World. Dialog, Vol. 40, No.3. 192-207. 

Gregersen, N.H. (2013). Deep Incarnation and Kenosis In, With, Under, and As: A Response to Ted Peters. Dialog, Vol. 52, No.3. 251-262.

Gregersen, N.H. (ed.) (2015). Incarnation, On the Scope and Depth of Christology. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Higton, M. (2008). Christian Doctrine. London: SCM.

Hill, P. (2023). Christ’s Body Keeps the Score: Trauma-Informed Theology and the Neuroscience of PTSD. TheoLogica. Vol. 7, No.1. 102-120.

Hill, P. (2024). My Work. Retrieved 31/12/24, from his personal website:  https://www.drprestonhill.com

Johnson, E.A. (2015). Jesus and the Cosmos: Soundings in Deep Christology. In Gregersen. N.H. (ed.) Incarnation, On the Scope and Depth of Christology. Minneapolis: Fortress. 133-156

Johnson, E. A. (2018). Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril. Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.

Jones, S. (2019). Trauma and Grace, Theology in a Ruptured World (E book). Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

McFague, S. (1993). The Body of God. An Ecological Theology. London: SCM.

Meyer, E. D. (2021). Book Review: Wallace, I. Mark: When God Was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World. Theological Studies Vol. 82, No.1.

Middleton, T. (2022). Christic Witnessing: A Practical Response to Ecological Trauma. Practical Theology, Vol. 15, No.5. 420-431.

Middleton, T. (2024a). Christology and the Temporal Trauma of the Anthropocene. In Krebs, A. (ed.). Rethinking Theology in the Anthropocene. Freiburg im Bresigau : WBG Academic. 63-80.

Middleton, T. (2024b). Deep Time Episode 1 Tim Middleton and Richard Fisher. Deep Time Podcast, William Temple Foundation. Retrieved 14/3/24 from Spotify. 

O’Donnell, K. and Cross, K. (eds.). (2020). Feminist Trauma Theologies. Body, Scripture and Church in Critical Perspective. London: SCM.

O’Donnell, K. and Cross, K. (eds.). (2022). Bearing Witness, Intersectional Perspectives on Trauma Theology. London: SCM.

Rambo, S. (2010). Spirit and Trauma. A Theology of Remaining. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

Rambo, S. (2017). Resurrecting wounds, Living in the Afterlife of Trauma. Waco: Baylor University Press.

Reyes, C. and Gregersen, N.H. (2017). Deep Incarnation & the Cosmos: A Conversation with Niels Henrik Gregersen. 

Rolston III, H. (2015). Divine Presence – Causal, Cybernetic, Caring, Cruciform: From Information to Incarnation. In Gregersen. N.H. (ed.) Incarnation, On the Scope and Depth of Christology. Minneapolis: Fortress. 255-287.

Rolston III, H. (2018). Redeeming a Cruciform Nature. Zygon. Vol. 53, No.2. 739-751.

Rowe, T.S. (2020). Book Review: Wallace, I. Mark: When God Was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World. Environmental Values. Vol. 29, No.2.

Stanley, B. and Hollinghurst, S. (eds). (2014). Earthed, Christian Perspectives on Nature Connection. Llanurig: Mystic Press.

Tuminio Hansen, D.E. (2022). The Body of God, Sexually Violated: A Trauma-Informed Reading of the Climate Crisis. Religions 2022, Vol. 13, No.249. 1-12.

Wallace, M.I. (2000). The Wounded Spirit as the Basis for Hope in an Age of Radical Ecology. In Hessel, D.T. and Radford Ruether, R. (eds.). (2000) Christianity and Ecology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 51-72.

Wallace, M. I. (2019). When God was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World. New York: Fordham University Press.


[1] Serene Jones, 2019, 28.

[2] Shelly Rambo, 2010, 4.

[3] O Donnell and Cross, 2020, 17.

[4] Jones, 2019, 29.

[5] Reyes & Gregersen, 2017.

[6] ibid

[7] Gregersen, 2015, 227.

[8] Middleton 2024a, 72.

[9] Middleton 2024a, 72 & 2024b.

[10] Middleton, 2024a, 64-65

[11] Rambo, 2017, 6-7.

[12] Rambo, 2010, 45-80).

[13] Preston Hill, 2023, 105.

[14] ibid

[15] Sally McFague, Body of God, 1993, 1-14.

[16] McFague, 1993, 17-22.

[17] McFague, 1993, xii.

[18] Danielle Tuminio Hansen, 2022, 2-4, 249.

[19] Gregersen, 2013, 260-1.

[20] Mark Wallace, 2019, 12.

[21] Wallace, 2019, 31-32.

[22] Middleton, 2024a, 75-77.

[23] Middleton, 2024a, 64-65.

[24] Mike Higton, 2008, 259-291. NB There are arguments for the nature of atonement theory in its various guises as problematic, but nevertheless it remains a core doctrine for Christianity. Discussion of these arguments is outside the scope of this paper. There are also questions about salvation for humanity of all creation, see Wallace 2019, 12, but again are outside the scope of this argument.

[25] Tuminio Hansen, 2022, 8.

[26] Wallace, 2000, 62 & 2019, 32.

[27] Rambo, 2010, 7.

[28] Hill, 2023, 106.

[29] Rambo, 2010, 4.

[30] Jones, 2019, 28.

[31] https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2024-warmest-year-record-about-155degc-above-pre-industrial-level

[32] Jones, 2019, 29.

[33] O’Donnell & Cross, 2020, 17.

[34] Rambo, 2017, 4.

[35] Jones, 2019, 10.

[36] Rambo, 2017, 4.

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