Description
About the book
This book gathers together a selection of essays and articles by Vicky Balabanski that demonstrate how she has come to read New Testament Scripture ‘with Earth’, understood as the intricate interconnected web of life. They explore how she has shaped her expertise in various methods of New Testament interpretation to give greater attention to the natural world, not as a disinterested interpreter, but as one who partners with Earth to sustain its balance and diversity. The collection is in two parts, with the first ranging across various New Testament writings, and the second with a focus on the Letter to the Colossians. They show a New Testament interpreter who writes with a breadth and depth of exegetical insight, originality and the contemporary world in mind.
About the author
Vicky Balabanski is a New Testament scholar at the University of Divinity and serves as the Principal of Uniting College for Leadership and Theology in Adelaide. Vicky is an ordained Minister of the Word in the Uniting Church. She’s an accomplished academic, with expertise in the Synoptic Gospels, John’s Gospel, Colossians, Receptive Ecumenism, and particularly, Ecological Hermeneutics. She is the General Editor of the Earth Bible series, collaborating with Professor Gerald West in South Africa; the series emphasizes interpreting Scripture in harmony with the Earth, the interconnected web of life. Her Earth Bible commentary, “Colossians: An Eco-Stoic reading” (Bloomsbury T&T Clark 2020), draws on Stoic philosophy to enrich ecological interpretations.
Professor Balabanski is a sought-after conference speaker, and international keynotes include World Diakonia conference 2001 and 2021 and the UCA President’s Conference in Fiji, 2019, and the Christian Conference of Asia (2023). She has accepted invitations to teach in Thailand and India, including an intensive at McGilvary College of Divinity in Chiang Mai (2009) and as visiting scholar in the Diocese of Madras (2012). She received a post-doctoral fellowship at the Hebrew University (1988), and has worked as a visiting scholar in Heidelberg, Germany (2000).
Professor Balabanski was elected into membership of the international Society of Biblical Studies (SNTS) in 2017
