Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature.

By Sallie McFague Fortress, $16, 207 pp.

Sallie McFague states the thesis of her book as follows: "Christian practice, loving God and neighbor as subjects, as worthy of our love in and for themselves, should be extended to nature." McFague argues for an attitude toward the natural world that is more sacramental, more dialogical (she is much in debt to Martin Buber), more oriented toward a community of care, and more attuned to a "loving eye" than to an exploitative one.

The major arguments advanced are hardly new. McFague borrows heavily from nature writers like Annie Dillard and Bill McKibben, cites "ecofeminist" theorists and scientific writers like E. O. Wilson. My major criticism of this work is that - save for a few final homiletical pages hither and yon - McFague is strangely silent about her passion for the world of nature from a theological point of view. She pays the obligatory nod to the creation account in Genesis and doffs her hat to Saint Francis of Assisi (seemingly depending almost exclusively on Leonardo Boff's somewhat idiosyncratic view of the saint), but I did not find any sustained theological reflection on the implications of her basic thesis. McFague is open to the charge David Cunningham (no relation) made recently in his incisive study of trinitarian theology, These Three Are One: "...much of this recent 'eco-theology' is composed of roughly 95 percent ecology with theological considerations entering the picture only in order to buttress a position that was already ecologically warranted."

The value of McFague's book, at least for this reader, is that it serves as a catalyst for arguing against her thesis. The basic rebuttal would take the form of this question: Are we to love God, neighbor, and nature equally and, if not, what are the discriminations that are necessary to make sense of McFague's affirmation? One can love the world which comes from the hand of God without necessarily saying that one loves nature (whatever nature might mean; Saint Francis, for one, never uses the word) on a par with love of God and neighbor.

We urgently need an account of Christian theology that embraces a sense of stewardship for the natural world and sees that same world as a sacrament of God's presence. To accomplish that synthesis is not easy. Michael Northcott's The Environment and Christian Ethics (reviewed in this column, January 16) sorts out and offers a critique of the various "models" for such an integration. Indeed, Northcott can give the reader a good sense of the state of the question, as well as some possible trajectories for developing a theological perspective on ecological matters. McFague's solution, in my estimation, is somewhat sentimental and theologically thin.

Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame.