ABSTRACT
T his essay attempts to read TerrenceMalick’s 2011 film The Tree of Life as ecotheology. More specifically, I argue that the
film expresses a Judeo-Christian ecotheology
that understands human experience and human
meaning within an evolving physical cosmos
that is subject to ongoing chaos and contingency.
Such a universe, of course, has raised some diffi-
cult questions for monotheistic theologies that
embrace the idea of God’s omnipotence. Judeo-
Christian theology, for example, has more often
as not simply bypassed these questions by ignor-
ing or denying the complexity, temporal depth,
and violence of the earth’s story. How, for
example, can one reconcile the idea of providence
or believe in the meaning of human suffering
when life itself is subject to and even dependent
on chance and violence or when human experi-
ence takes place in such a small fragment of geo-
logical time? In order to sustain faith in
providence in such a universe, Malick’s unique
contribution is to suggest that one must be
willing to absorb the insults of accident and sacri-
fice the human drive to control and master one’s
own destiny. In his invocation of Job, his allu-
sions to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov,
and his debt toKierkegaard,Malick suggests that
the recompense for this sacrifice is an intensifica-
tion of appreciation for existence itself, una-
dorned by expectation, and a revelation of what
Dostoevsky calls the earth’s “glory” (289). The
paradox is that the earth’s glory is only made
available once one accepts that the will of God
cannot easily be distinguished from nature’s
indifferent and indiscriminate whims; God
becomes possible, in other words, in a universe
where he doesn’t seem necessary and where
biology itself appears miraculous. The film’s
