Biography
Samuel Davidson (MTh, Edinburgh; MDiv, Truett Theological Seminary) is a PhD Student at Princeton Theological Seminary, where his research explores the intersection of psychology, ecology, and systematic theology. He is particularly interested in taking up the phenomenology of psychological disorder as an ecological hermeneutic, for articulating richer and worldlier formulations of creation and Christology. He also manages the compost and grows vegetables at the PTS Farminary, and is invested in developing an agrarian vision for the church as a locus of healing in the world.
Paper Abstract
This paper suggests the theological potential of engaging with psychological phenomenology in order to develop an ecological hermeneutic. Specifically, it argues that theological anthropology and doctrines of creation may be challenged, deepened, and refined by close attention to the phenomenology of agoraphobia. Placing the author's own phobic experience in conversation with the phenomenological work of Dylan Trigg and Joyce Davidson, it argues that close attention to the agoraphobic mode of being in the world underscores the embodied, intersubjective, and placed character of human nature in a uniquely acute manner. As such, this surreal and intense form of subjectivity offers significant untapped conceptual resources for developing an ecological hermeneutic. To demonstrate how such a hermeneutic invites rich theological interpretation, I draw upon the place-based anthropology and creation theology of Willie James Jennings.
The first part of the essay develops a phenomenological sketch of agoraphobic anxiety, highlighting the centrality of troubled relations to (1) the body, (2) other persons, (3) space, and (4) place. Explicating how these themes are dramatically interwoven in agoraphobic experience, I argue that a phenomenological reading of agoraphobia draws attention to certain realities of human nature and perception that are otherwise easily overlooked. I subsequently turn to Jennings' theological conceptualization of place, land, and human identity, unpacking his insistence that a post-colonial doctrine of creation must foreground the interconnectivity of all life and nurture a sense of creaturely connection that remains lacking in Western conceptions of the world. Teasing out overlapping themes vis-à-vis the fundamental interrelation of human beings with the natural world of bodies, place, and space, I conclude by suggesting how agoraphobic phenomenology may offer a rich philosophical resource for taking up Jennings' challenge to theologians: to weave the human being back into creaturely interconnectedness.
In this essay, I will explore how the central themes of holiness and covenantal community, brought together with animist ethics in Leviticus 20:22-26, place embodied, relational ethics at the center of Israelite life and worship. My central claim about Leviticus 20:22-26 is this: with the common thread of communal holiness characteristic of the Holiness (H) source in Leviticus, the passage weaves together laws concerning ritual purity, diet, social justice, sexual ethics, Molech worship, agriculture, and sabbath that may seem otherwise unrelated. The connective tissue of these disparate laws is the animism assumed by the writers of Leviticus. Because the animist sensibilities of the text are often automatically dismissed by modern commentators, the extent to which H expands P's understanding of holiness to include the whole community of Israel is often lost. However, when the animist ethics involved are recovered, the text blossoms into a profound, radical theology of creation and relation that we desperately need today.