Belonging to this World: How Tim Ingold Inspires Two Theologians
In this chapter, we explore the significance of Tim Ingold’s description of belonging to the world in so far as it resonates with a new philosophy of nature and a Christian theological framework that is relevant to the global ecological emergency. His sense of being part of a meshwork is crucially important as a framework for a new multispecies approach to ecological ethics in which humanity is situated within rather than being separable from that ecological living space, and it serves the valuable purpose of illuminating the nature of creaturely human life. This meshwork thinking is subtly different from the mere operation of networks which still presuppose the idea of self-containment. Theologians sensitive to the ecological challenges of our time have begun to pay more attention to the lives and practices of indigenous communities and their spiritualities of life from which Ingold’s perception of the world is developed. This, in turn, inspires a more grounded understanding of the world that resonates with themes in scripture that speak to the meaning of this created world and the nature of human embodiment. We explore the potential insights and challenges to classic theology arising from Ingold’s description of animism and his critique of the ‘logic of inversion’. As in many other spiritualities and theologians, humanity is understood as a wayfarer who is in the process of becoming with others. Humanity primarily becomes human through these densely intertangled mutualistic relationships in Ingold’s thought in a way that also challenges classic Darwinian theory.
