Creation, Character, and Wisdom

While the traditional Christian engagement with environmental ethics too often begins and ends with Genesis, this project joins numerous recent efforts by biblical scholars to identify new foundations on which Christians can make ethical choices about creation. Wisdom literature, a largely untapped resource, offers a unique point of entry for environmental ethics. Despite their marginalization in ethical debates on the environment, the biblical sages have a great deal to say about the inseparability of God's creation and righteous living--observations that must then be brought into conversation with a host of contemporary disciplines. As the crisis of environmental degradation permeates the lived experience of more and more Christians, it is increasingly critical to have solid and biblically defensible foundations from which to make moral choices about the environmental behavior of individuals, corporations, and nations.

""Dave Bland and Sean Patrick Webb are skilled in finding the wisdom in creation in the biblical 'Wisdom' literature. . . . If you wish to number your days so as to get a heart of wisdom, take and read. Become 'attentive to the voices and the lessons of the nonhuman world together with which we make up a single community of creation.'""
--Holmes Rolston III, University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State University

""The Hebrew sages saw the wonder, order, and agency of God's creation, and this literature is often neglected in environmental discussions. Dave Bland and Sean Patrick Webb draw out the meaning of their insights for contemporary ethics. Using the social and physical sciences as well as the arts, they connect character, justice, and creation to offer a wonderfully shaped and deeply informed Christian environmental ethic.""
--John Mark Hicks, Lipscomb University; Author of Loving Creation: Embracing God's Forgotten Mission

""What a wonderful book. There isn't anything quite like it. By highlighting the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament in the study of environmental ethics, the authors argue that human character, and more exactly certain virtues such as wisdom, shapes the basic relationship between humans and nonhumans and thus should inform our sense of responsibility to creation. Erudite, well written, and timely.""
--Steven Bouma-Prediger, Hope College; Author of For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care

""Dave Bland has helpfully led us through scripture in many books. Now Dave teams up with Sean Patrick Webb to help us think with scriptural imagination about issues related to creation care, the environment, and our stewardship of God's good gifts. Christians will find practical, biblical guidance in this lively, engaging book.""
--William Willimon, United Methodist bishop, retired; Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry, Duke Divinity School


Dave Bland is Professor of Homiletics at Harding School of Theology in Memphis. He is the author of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs (2002) in the College Press NIV Old Testament Commentary Series, and Proverbs and the Formation of Character (2015).

Sean Patrick Webb is an instructor and doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Texas Tech University.