Categories: General
      Date: Feb 14, 2010
     Title: Theology for the preservation of biodiversity

In this article Anders Melin looks at what the theology of Thomas Aquinas teaches about biodiversity and considers how it might be built upon.

Abstract. As is well known, the depletion of biodiversity is a significant environmental problem and it is essential that Christian ethics develops a response to it. One promising basis for such a response is the Christian virtue ethical tradition. In this paper I discuss some problems and possibilities with developing a theological virtue ethic for the preservation of biodiversity. My starting-point is Thomas Aquinas’ virtue ethics, which still has a strong position within Christian ethics. It has also been suggested by some authors, for instance Celia Deane-Drummond, that it can be applied in an environmental context. First, I describe Deane-Drummond application of Aquinas and then I discuss some problems and possibilities with such an application.

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