Introduction

In a consideration of the concerns of rural theology, there has historically been an emphasis on the care of the created order although, latterly, climate change has become a predominant theme. Both these concerns, despite their enormous importance, are driven by essentially pragmatic factors. It is helpful from time to time, however, to step back from pragmatism to wider and larger perspectives, and it is this that Moltmann's theology enables us to do. But first, it is necessary to make a distinction between four theological enterprises. There is a long tradition of natural theology going back in Christian history at least as far as St Paul and the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans and, in Jewish history, to the Psalms and the declaration by the heavens of the glory of God (Psalm 19.1). Natural theology was given a succinct shape and central place in the writings of Thomas Aquinas where the cosmological argument provides one of the proofs for the existence of God (McDermott, 1989, pp. 12–13). William Paley (1802) elaborated the argument; he contended that the design, intricacy, harmony and variety of the world all point to a rich and beneficent creator.