In recent years, a growing awareness of the importance of caring for our “common home” has become widespread. Local governments, international organizations, citizens’ movements, individuals… many have discovered the importance of caring for nature, of the social and economic consequences of its exploitation, of population displacements, deforestation or the imposition of monoculture farming, of the inequalities created by the processes of colonisation for the benefit of some nations, of the scarcity of natural resources for many millions of people, of global warming… This situation is an unavoidable hermeneutical context for any decision or any assessment of our present and our future as humanity.

    The Bible has been at the heart of many decisions that have been taken in the past and is part of the awareness that we human beings have of our relationship with our common home, the oikoumenê. Whether by the particular reading of some texts, or by the presuppositions or circumstances of their interpretation, the Bible has inspired attitudes of care and respect, as well as others of exploitation and domination. Identifying these readings and the interests behind them can be a way of contributing to this growing awareness of the care of our environment, as well as an appropriate way to deepen any anthropology that has biblical roots and wishes to advance in the understanding of the relations between creature and creator.