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 Denmark - Bishop runs into stormy weather for suggesting a possible link between global warming and Day of Judgement.
The Bishop of Lolland-Falster, Steen Skovsgaard, has stirred
up a debate on climate change and the Day of Judgement. Speaking to
Ritzau News Agency he said he would not rule out the possibility of a
link between the two. Though insisting that “no one knows the day or
time”, he underlined that Christians have the right to look forward to
the day of the Lord as a day of rejoicing.
Professor Svend
Andersen, University of Aarhus, called the suggestion naïve, while
Professor Viggo Mortensen, University of Aarhus, said, “Like everything
else in the Bible, these texts are not to be understood literally but
as images of human existence, which people can always take as an
example.” Bishop Skovsgaard has in turn questioned this figurative
treatment of the Bible: “Are we to understand the healings, the
Eucharist, the resurrection and the Second Coming as metaphors? Or
symbols? Such frightening changes in our climate ought to make us
listen to Jesus’ words about not being frightened, for the Kingdom of
God is at hand.” This was what the first Christians believed – we can
learn from them to live in the expectation of the Day of Judgement. As
Christians we are turned towards heaven and the life to come.”
The Augsburg Confession and climate change
Church
historian Kurt E. Larsen points out that Denmark has never taken too
kindly to predictions of Judgment Day. “Christianity in Denmark has
become so internalised that a future perspective has simply evaporated.
So of course it comes as a surprise when a bishop even just hints at a
link between climate change and the end of the world.”
Peter
Lodberg, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Aarhus
University, believes that the debate has now taken on a principle
character, to which traditional church doctrine has no answer. “The
very basis of faith is at stake, since the Danish Lutheran Church
adheres to among others the Augsburg Confession of 1530, which states
that Christ will come again to judge humankind to salvation or
damnation. But there is nothing in it about climate change!”
Svend
Andersen has called for a clear statement from the bishops on the
central tenets of the Christian faith: “Church members and enquiring
spirits want to know what the Danish Lutheran Church stands for in
2007.”
Bishop of Ribe, Elisabeth Dons Christensen, has
responded, “It sounds a bit like having a ‘faith police’. The Danish
Lutheran Church does not accept everything,but it accepts a lot, and
that is the way it should be.”
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