Living with Limits: Finitude, competition, and the economy in recent Anglican theology

Abstract

If theology has any hope of speaking into the contemporary climate and biodiversity crisis it needs to attend to the limits that arise from our God-given creatureliness. This thesis thus considers some of the theological implications of the fact that we are creatures of the dust, constrained by spatial and temporal finitude. I explore these in conversation with Sarah Coakley, Rowan Williams, and Kathryn Tanner. These three significant voices in contemporary Anglican discourse take as axiomatic both the non-competitive relation of creatures with the divine and the fundamentally competitive limitations of our creaturely lives. Yet, I show in this thesis that, respectively, in thinking about contemplating the divine, relating to others, or making our economic world together, they create confusions around these non-competitive and competitive logics, and so in crucial respects fail properly to attend to our material finitude. In engagement with these three scholars, I seek to provide some clarity around the competitive limitations of our existence. Stemming from this, I highlight the need for a proper distinction to be made between the effects of sin and of finitude, and for eschatological visions that keeps us rooted in the earth. Giving such theological attention to our creaturely limits matters so much as we face up to the impact humanity is having upon this planet; we cannot continue to use material resources, produce waste, and erode the ecological conditions that make all life possible, without restraint. The hope is therefore that this thesis offers a theological perspective that might better help us to learn to live with limits.