Thomas Berry

William Nathan Berry was born in 1914 in Greensboro, [[asheville|North Carolina]], the third of thirteen children in a Catholic family. He entered the Passionist Congregation (a Catholic religious order known for its preaching tradition) at age twenty and took the religious name Thomas — after Thomas Aquinas. He was ordained a priest in 1942 and pursued graduate work in cultural history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, where he completed a PhD in 1948 with a dissertation on Giambattista Vico (the 17th-c. Italian philosopher of history).

Berry’s intellectual formation continued substantially after the doctorate. He spent extensive time studying Asian languages and religions — substantial periods in China before the Communist Revolution closed access; sustained study of Sanskrit and Hindu thought; engagement with Chinese philosophy. He taught at Seton Hall, St. John’s, and Fordham; from 1970 to 1995 he founded and directed the Riverdale Center for Religious Research in [[bronx|the Bronx]], [[beacon-ny|New York]], a small institution from which he conducted his mature work.

The principal claims

Berry’s mature work is structured around several interrelated claims:

• The universe is a single sacred community. Not a collection of objects to be used or studied, but a community of subjects in continuing relationship. The recognition is the foundation of any adequate spiritual-ecological orientation.
• The 13.8-billion-year story of cosmic evolution is itself a sacred narrative. Every great religious tradition has rested on a cosmology; the contemporary scientific cosmology is the cosmology a renewed religious tradition must rest on. The narrative — from the primordial flaring forth through the formation of galaxies, the birth of stars, the emergence of life on Earth, the evolution of the biosphere into the present moment — is itself [[spirituality|the sacred]] story of our time.
• The current moment is the end of the Cenozoic Era and the necessary beginning of what Berry called the Ecozoic Era. The Cenozoic — the geologic era of the last 66 million years, characterized by the radiation of mammals — is being foreclosed by the present mass extinction. The Ecozoic, if it comes, will be the era in which humans participate consciously and sustainably in the larger Earth community.
• The Western religious-cultural tradition has substantially failed at this task — through the doctrine of human dominion over nature, through the disenchantment of the cosmos, through the displacement of the religious by the technological-scientific. The recovery requires both substantial critique of inherited Western forms and substantial drawing on what those forms had originally contained (Berry was sustained in his work by the Catholic tradition, especially the Franciscan and Teilhardian threads, while substantially critiquing the dominant strands).
• The new functional cosmology must integrate the scientific and the spiritual. Neither the scientific narrative alone (which describes without giving meaning) nor the religious tradition alone (whose pre-modern cosmologies are no longer adequate) can do the work; the integration is the principal religious-cultural task.

The principal works

• The Dream of the Earth (1988). Berry’s first major book, a collection of essays on the new cosmological-religious situation. Foundational.
• [[the-universe-story|The Universe Story]] (1992; with [[brian-swimme|Brian Swimme]]). The systematic articulation of the new-cosmology framework, written in collaboration with the mathematical cosmologist Swimme. Berry provided the religious-cultural framing; Swimme provided the scientific cosmological detail.
• The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (1999). Berry’s articulation of what the present moment asks of human civilization — the great work of our time being the transition from the period of human domination over the Earth to the period of human participation in the Earth community.
• Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community (2006). Late essays.
• [[spirituality|The Sacred]] Universe: Earth, Spirituality, and Religion in the Twenty-First Century (2009; posthumous). Final essays.

Honest framing

A note for clarity. Berry was substantially shaped by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), the Jesuit paleontologist whose late work integrated Catholic theology with evolutionary cosmology. Teilhard’s writing was suppressed by the Vatican during his lifetime; Berry’s work is in part a continuation of Teilhard’s project under different conditions. The Catholic theological reception of Berry has been mixed — substantially welcomed by some quarters (the Franciscan tradition; many Catholic Sisters’ communities; the broader Catholic ecological-theological community), substantially questioned by others (some traditional theological voices have argued that Berry’s cosmological emphasis substantially displaces the centrality of Christ in Catholic theology). Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ (2015) substantially vindicates Berry’s framework while addressing some of the theological concerns; the question of how Berry’s work fits within the Catholic theological tradition remains live.

What this gives the platform

Three contributions:

1. A coherent intellectual framework. Berry’s articulation provides one of the most coherent contemporary frameworks for thinking about the relationship between cosmology, religion, and ecology together. [[0mn1one|The platform]]‘s [[mission-district-sf|mission]] of abundance for every form of life finds in his work substantial intellectual articulation.
2. The Earth-as-sacred-community claim. This claim — that the unit of moral consideration is not the human individual or the human species but the Earth community as a whole — is among the most consequential reframings of recent religious thought.
3. A continuing tradition. Berry’s students ([[mary-evelyn-tucker|Mary Evelyn Tucker]], John Grim, [[brian-swimme|Brian Swimme]], and many others) have continued the work substantially since his death; the Journey of the Universe film and project, the Forum on Religion and Ecology, the various continuing publications. The platform engages this as a continuing intellectual community.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

• Subset of: [[spiritual-ecology]]
• Parallels: [[christian-mysticism]]
• Member of: [[person]]

Sources

1. Thomas Berry. The Dream of the Earth. Sierra Club Books, 1988. Source class: book / foundational.
2. [[brian-swimme|Brian Swimme]] & Thomas Berry. [[the-universe-story|The Universe Story]]. HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. Source class: book / co-authored articulation.
3. Thomas Berry. The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. Bell Tower, 1999. Source class: book / primary.
4. Thomas Berry. Evening Thoughts. Sierra Club Books, 2006. Source class: book / late essays.
5. Thomas Berry. [[spirituality|The Sacred]] Universe. Columbia, 2009. Source class: book / posthumous final essays.
6. [[mary-evelyn-tucker|Mary Evelyn Tucker]] & John Grim. Thomas Berry: A Biography. Columbia, 2019. Source class: book / authorized biography.

Lenses still to grow

• The Riverdale Center as Berry’s working base.
• Berry and Teilhard — the lineage Berry continues from Teilhard de Chardin.
• The Ecozoic as a concept deserving its own treatment.
• Berry’s Asian formation — China, Sanskrit, Hindu thought — as substantial influence on his work.
• The Catholic theological reception — the substantial debate over Berry’s relationship to traditional Catholic theology.