Contours of Hope: Brian McLaren in conversation with Ruth Harvey from The Iona Community.

https://youtu.be/C6eV4Mx6FSs?feature=shared

Interview with Spanish Philosopher and Theologian Victorino Perez Prieto on Eco- Spirituality

https://magis.iteso.mx/nota/luz-para-restaurar-la-armonia/

 Science, ecology, mysticism and ethics converge in the mind of the Spanish philosopher and theologian Victorino Pérez Prieto, who brings together thinkers from all walks of life to build a theoretical foundation with which to confront the climate crisis of the 21st century: “eco-spirituality.”

Praised be You, my Lord, 
through our sister Mother Earth, 
who sustains and governs us 
and produces various fruits with colorful flowers and herbs.
—St. Francis of Assisi, “Canticle of the Creatures.”

Brother Sun and Sister Moon, or Brother Wind and Brother Fire, whom Saint Francis of Assisi mentions in his “Canticle of the Creatures,” are, for the Spaniard Victorino Pérez Prieto, something more than spiritual allegories: they are coded readings that can serve as a great guide in the face of the climate crisis facing the planet and humanity.

This philosopher and theologian, trained at the Instituto Teológico Compostelano and the Pontifical University of Salamanca, has spent more than three decades structuring the theoretical corpus that he himself has defined as “eco-spirituality” or “eco-theology”, a path in which he has drawn on figures from the Christian tradition as well as scientists and humanist thinkers to make an ecological reading of religious texts, but also to unite science and mysticism as a palliative path to the environmental disaster that the world is facing.

A PhD in Philosophy from the University of Santiago de Compostela and in Theology from the Pontifical University of Salamanca with a thesis on the thought and theology of the Catalan philosopher Raimon Panikkar, Pérez Prieto has worked as an academic at the University of San Buenaventura in Bogotá and at the University of La Salle in Madrid. He was a member of the editorial board of the journal Encrucillada , where he has published several theological articles, as well as being a member of the Juan XXIII Association of Theologians, the Latin American Amerindian Network of Theologians, the Ibero-American Network of Raimon Panikkar Scholars (RIAP), and the Association of Writers in the Galician Language.

A specialist in intercultural and interreligious dialogue, Pérez Prieto has dedicated a good part of his life to analyzing Panikkar's thought. To his credit are titles such as God, Man, World (Herder, 2008), The Search for Harmony in Diversity (Verbo Divino, 2014), The Panikkarian Dictionary (Herder, 2016) and, one of his most recent, Towards an Ecotheology (Fragmenta, 2023), where he condenses his vision of “ecospirituality,” a term that refers to spiritual development in close contact with caring for the earth.

Last April, Pérez Prieto visited ITESO to participate in the Open Classroom of the Jorge Manzano, SJ Chair.

How does the term ecospirituality arise ?

It is a word composed of the words ecology —although I actually prefer the word ecosophy— and spirituality. It arises from the moment you aspire to put the feeling of caring for the earth in contact with what spirituality attempts, which is to develop the human being in a close relationship with God, called to be with Him; as Saint Augustine already said, “You made us for yourself, Lord.” It is a spirituality that develops the human being with the awareness that he is earth, that we are with everything, we are not something apart; sometimes in spirituality the human being is superior, he has to become spiritualized. When we talk about ecology, we are not only talking about caring for nature; there is a cosmic dimension, that is, much higher, and it has to do with everything that is being human, the material and the spiritual.

Eco-spirituality helps me to have an idea of ​​God that is more in line with what He really is, because that despotic, arbitrary, murderous God who sends evil does not exist, or at least He is not the God of Jesus; He was invented by the dominating patriarchy. On top of that, look at the absurdity of theology in thinking that God is masculine, when God is both mother and father—I remember a student walking out of my class at a Franciscan university in Bogotá when I said that. God cannot be the old man with a white beard. Eco-theology helps us to discover these lies that we have believed and to get closer to the reality of God.

You talk about reading the Bible in an ecological sense. Where do we find this interpretation?

When one reads the Bible in an ecological sense, it is fascinating. There are the psalms, which are wonderful poetry and are full of authentic hymns to creation. At the beginning of the Bible, Paradise is mentioned, but a poor interpretation led to it being underestimated, to thinking only of Adam and Eve and the apple. The first two chapters of Genesis are extremely wise. To begin with, the biblical author knew perfectly well that there was no man called Adam and no woman called Eve. Adam is a Hebrew word that means “earth,” that is, it means “coming out of the earth,” and Eve, “from the rib.” They are symbolic names that are expressing what the Earthly Paradise is: a world in total harmony with creatures. And what happened to the Earthly Paradise? Well, the rupture, the division of the human being, which begins precisely with hatred or fear of sex: that is the rupture of harmony.

Ecology speaks of the harmony that must exist between the Earth and the cosmos, between human beings and nature. That is the beginning of the Bible, and when one knows how to read in an ecological sense, one notices that in Deuteronomy, for example, when the people are going to enter the Promised Land, God gives them the rules for living there—which, when broken, cause them to lose harmony with nature and perish—sin is the breaking of harmony with nature. There is another beautiful text from Isaiah that speaks of when the tyrant falls and even the trees sing of that fall, because the woodcutter will no longer cut them down for weapons of war, that is, our brother forest is suffering from human violence.

You also talk about a green Jesus…

If we jump to the New Testament, Jesus, as I have written several times, was an ecologist, a man who lived in harmony, who did not overexploit the land; he was a carpenter and, therefore, he had to cut down trees to obtain wood, but one thing is cutting down trees and maintaining the balance of the forest in order to live with dignity, and another thing is the predatory capitalist spirit. A logging company does not just want to cut down a few trees in order to live with dignity: what it wants is to earn more and more, and “if I destroy the forest, I don’t care.” The spirit of Jesus is exactly the opposite of that and that is why he is always using rural images, of the seasons or of the harvest. Jesus’ parables constantly use elements of nature: the wheat that sprouts, the fig tree that is cared for so that it produces. Jesus’ culture is tremendously rural, and the man and woman of the countryside are people who truly love the land. When Jesus speaks of the Father’s care, he is telling us: “Look how the birds are not aware of themselves; However, his beauty leaves us absorbed; look at the beauty of the grass of the field that grows and tomorrow it is reaped, enjoy that presence”, this tells us that he was a man with his feet on the ground; he was not an abstract Greek philosopher, he was one of very concrete discourses.

When do you think this message was distorted?

The Enlightenment and scientific and technical thought have exacerbated the domination over nature. For many, Descartes is the father of contemporary thought. I have read Discourse on Method many times , I have read Descartes in depth in French and I think I am anti-Cartesian: Descartes is the thought of domination over nature. That is why his typical phrase, “man is the master and possessor of nature”, implies that nature is at his service and from there arises the creation of the machine and the technique to dominate it. However, this rupture has been there from the beginning, since Alexander the Great or in the Roman Empire, but the Christians who were first persecuted by the Empire later blessed it, and it continued to crush the barbarians with the blessing of the popes of Rome. Unfortunately it has always been like this.

And the cross was also used in the conquests of the New Continent…

Obviously, with the Renaissance and the conquests, the search for more wealth, which is destruction, of course. That means that the Master's message, the original message of the Bible, was quickly corrupted. Already in the first centuries of the Church, the corruption of Christianity began: in the Acts of the Apostles we find people who wanted to take advantage of the community. I like history and every time I go to a place, it is always the same: ruins. This means that some have tried to build and then others have destroyed. We have all heard about Jericho, which was such an incredibly fertile space, surrounded by desert. All civilizations wanted to dominate Jericho. So what is Jericho? Layer upon layer, destruction. That violent, predatory and dominating spirit is there. Domination means oppression, what I oppress will oppress me, that is always the case.

BETWEEN SPIRITUAL SONGS AND HYMNS

During his participation in the Jorge Manzano, SJ Chair, Pérez Prieto spoke about the ethical imperative that must govern in the years to come. For the thinker, the human being of the 21st century is either an environmentalist or he will not be one, because he knows that there will not be a 22nd century if people do not know how to live in harmony and if they destroy what surrounds them.

“I published my first book on ecology almost 30 years ago — Ecologism and Christianity (Sal Terræ, 1999) — so I have been thinking about this for some time. Today, the text of Jesus in the desert is not usually read in this way, and look how wonderful: Jesus is in harmony with the harshness of the desert and that is why he can remain there for all that time, because the elements are not against him. One imagines Jesus like these Hindu sages in the lotus position and able to spend days or weeks without moving and even without needing to drink. For me, this text is the expression of the cosmic and natural harmony that Jesus had,” he explains.

In Towards an Ecotheology , Pérez Prieto addresses those he considers to have contributed most to this idea of ​​eco-spirituality: St. Francis of Assisi, St. John of the Cross and the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He takes three religious texts from them: the “Canticle of Creatures” by St. Francis, the “Spiritual Canticle” by St. John of the Cross and the “Hymn to Matter” by Teilhard de Chardin.

Your first great reference in this idea was Saint Francis of Assisi. How do you get to him?

St. Francis was such a seductive figure that he was canonized a few years after his death. He knew how to live and recover that broken harmony with nature. His contemporaries say that he cried when contemplating nature. It was not a pose: he was able to write not only a cosmic and mystical hymn, but a literary piece of magnificent size. The “ Canticle of the Creatures” is at the birth of the Italian language, which is why it is so valued: the Romance languages ​​were just beginning, but were still a corruption of Latin. The poem is born from his experience of the harmony between the earth and the cosmos. That is why I say that St. Francis is not only the patron saint of ecologists, but he is also their father.

And what about the cases of St. John of the Cross and Teilhard de Chardin?

Saint John is a tremendously ecological man. There are anecdotes told by his disciples and when one reads the “Spiritual Canticle” in an ecological key, one sees how everything fits together: the delicate care, the flowers to be seen, not to be plucked: “I will neither pick the flowers nor fear the beasts. And I will cross the forts and borders,” he writes. From him we learn a balance between the earth and the cosmos. Teilhard de Chardin is really the pinnacle, above all because he wrote and reflected on it much more; he speaks of the fact that matter is beautiful, that we are children of the earth, and that, if you are able to communicate with God, it is thanks to matter. It is the maximum mystical expression of the communion between spirit and matter, between God and the creature.

SCIENCE, MYSTICISM AND ECOLOGY

For Pérez Prieto, philosophy exists as an antidote to stupidity, and ecology helps us to be aware of where we are and what we are doing. Science, which establishes empirical relational patterns, also draws from other sources.

Part of his interest is to find the parallels between science and mysticism. For him, there are even scientific clues in sacred books and in the centuries-old statements of St. Francis of Assisi or St. John of the Cross, or what the Eastern mystics were already saying is what physicists are now concluding. “We are one with the cosmos, with the earth, we are not here to dominate, but to care, and sin against the earth always turns against us, which is what Deuteronomy says: 'If you do not comply with these laws, you will die', and the laws are to maintain balance and care for the earth: do not be a predator, be a gardener,” he says.

Science has told us over the last 20 or 30 years that the world works as a system, and that what we do at one latitude of the planet will have repercussions elsewhere, a bit like the Butterfly Effect. What is the relationship between eco-spirituality and the scientific and conservationist vision?

My book begins by talking about the science of complexity, which is born from quantum physics, which goes back to an old physics that goes back to Albert Einstein. The great Einstein, when he spoke with Max Planck, said: “This is madness. God does not play dice.” But quantum physics says: “Yes, God does play dice.” Edgar Morin says: “The world is a chaosmos , a chaocosmos .” And how is it maintained? Precisely because of a harmony that is never broken by disharmony. The physics of complexity speaks of the interrelation of everything with everything else. The most important thing that science has discovered is the relational reality of the cosmos: that matter, rather than corpuscles, is packets of waves in motion.

So how do you get to mysticism through science?

There is a book by my teacher Panikkar in collaboration with the director of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Hans Peter Dürr, entitled Love, the original source of the universe . It was written by an agnostic physicist and a Christian theologian, and both agree on the title, that is, the origin of the universe is love or the search for harmony. I am not a supporter of creatio ex nihilo —that which is created from nothing—, but of creatio continua —the continuous creative activity of God. The Bible does not say that God made the world from nothing; what it says is that God, from chaos, made cosmos, separated light from darkness. This awareness is, to a certain extent, what physics defends most today. Advancing through the philosophy of Edgar Morin's complex thought and the relational thought of Panikkar has allowed me to walk through religions, then through the Bible and through Christian theology, to arrive at mysticism. Science and mysticism are intimately linked, they are saying the same thing. That is why I start from the branches, I start from the material and from reality; I am not a theologian who is inventing a discourse, but I use other thinkers; we walk on the shoulders of giants, which is a brilliant expression from the Middle Ages, that is why we can see further.

It's interesting that you talked about enlightenment and humanism earlier, because another very interesting idea also emerged at that time, that of the noble savage, by Rousseau, who claims that as a society we have lost certain values, but it is the native peoples who have preserved them. You have said that, as a civilization, the Mayans and the Aztecs ended up destroying themselves. In Mexico, there are those who see them as idyllic societies.

A colleague of yours told me that there were the Mayans, that they were an ecological culture. And yes, but do you know how the Mayans ended up? We have a lot to learn from these pre-Columbian cultures and from the concept of Pachamama, for example. But at the same time we must be critical, as with Christianity, which is the most sublime message of the centuries – critical, not of Christ, but of Christianity and the Church. We must also be critical of other cultures, before and after; that is the past, which was idyllic, as you said about Rousseau. Cavemen were beasts with women. Patriarchy overcame matriarchy by the truncheon, because it was stronger, but women had wisdom. Empires win because they have more lethal weapons. In my book, the wisdom of all these pre-Columbian cultures appears, or the wisdom of the Celts. Of course, we can say that those cultures were indeed wise and that the conquistadors came and finished them off. But then, why did the local people flee from the Mayans or the Aztecs? Why did the smaller towns favour those who came from outside? This must always be kept in mind. The ancestral wisdom is there and we do very well to learn from it. But, be careful! Do not idealise, because all of them are touched by Adam's sin.

What do you mean by Adam's sin?

Adam symbolises humanity, he is human history. The Earthly Paradise is not really a past, but a future, it is the messianic kingdom. Primitive man was no less a beast than today, only his weapons were not as lethal. Panikkar speaks of the “new innocence”, as opposed to a presumed Adamic innocence that is unreal; what we need is a new innocence, that is, to reach an authentic balance. In that sense, this question is good in your context, that of the Jesuits. I am critical of my Church, but it is my Church. I am a Christian because I believe that the best message that has been given in all centuries is that of Jesus. I am not a Muslim, although I am very interreligious and I have Muslim friends; they respect Jesus very much, as a prophet, and in this sense I believe that we Christians must learn from other religions and other cultures, and we must investigate more in our Christian roots, because that is there; the problem is that it is buried by a Western, rationalist and dominating interpretation.

It is not a question of saying, then, that the problem is sin. It is not just a moral question; sin means rupture, division, lack of harmony. Sin is what St. Paul says: “I do not know what is happening to me. I know very well what I should do, but I do what I should not do.” That has always been the case. And, as Jesus said, the wheat and the weeds will coexist until the end. I believe that the important thing is lucidity. Trying to walk in the light, constantly seeking harmony, fleeing from everything that breaks that harmony.

There are those who claim that the only valid major ethical problem of the 21st century is ecology, which is the discussion we must have as humanity; others might think that we are facing a lost cause, given the state of the world and capitalist development. Where do you think we are moving?

It is important to talk about ecology not only because of the care of nature. For example, for me, as a religious person, we must also talk about eco-theology. Theology is a revealed word, but it is thought, elaboration and logic – let’s say, to the extent that God can be logically elaborated, which is impossible, but oh well…. Why is it important? Not only because we manage to stop the climate problem… I am not at all sure that we will manage to do so, and there are scientists who say that we have almost reached a point of no return, but we are going to free the Earth as much as possible. Eco-spirituality is valid for being and existing here. Existing in a destructive way is not the same as existing in a constructive way. Existing unconsciously is not the same as existing consciously. My book begins by talking about superficiality. Panikkar said that the biggest problem in our world is superficiality. He begins by talking about science, about quantum physics, which seems the most distant thing, and ends by talking about spirituality.