Christian responses to the environment can be roughly classified on the basis of what a person considers the environment to be: creation, or nature. The first considers the environment and all of its living and nonliving components to be the product of a deity that has made humankind separate from it in some way, while the second considers the environment to be the source of humankind (“nature” comes from the Latin for “birth”). First, in this installment, let us consider the approach that considers the environment to be creation.
The major monotheistic religions of the world (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) believe that a single, all-powerful deity created the world and made humans the rulers of it. Moreover, these religions base their beliefs upon scriptures written long before people even imagined the questions of environmental ethics. Until the last few centuries, humans quite rightly viewed the Earth as unconquerable and usually dangerous. The Earth could take care of itself. Modern adherents of these religions therefore turn to their pre-ecological scriptures and pick out passages that were not written for the purpose of answering such questions and try to base systems of environmental ethics upon them, concluding that the environment is expendable.
Because of the importance of the Judeo-Christian Bible in the history of western culture, historian Lynn White, Jr. wrote in 1967 that Christianity, guided by the first chapter of Genesis, had been in the forefront of a largely successful attempt to conquer the created world. It is beyond dispute that, according to this chapter, God gives humans the command to conquer and subdue the Earth and have dominion over it. The words clearly refer to the kind of conquest that kings exercised over vanquished nations. White did not, however, say that Christianity should be rejected, but that Christians should use Saint Francis of Assisi, a medieval Italian monk who considered the Sun, Moon, wind, fire, and all creatures to be his brothers and sisters, as the model of ethical behavior rather than the Bible.
Not surprisingly, many Christians became defensive and claimed that White had misinterpreted the first chapter of Genesis. Since 1967, Christian writers have found many passages in the Bible that paint a very different picture of the creation. Here are a few examples:
• The second chapter of Genesis depicts God as commanding humans to take care of the Earth the way one would care for a garden (the Garden of Eden).
• The third chapter of Genesis depicts expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and a host of environmental problems (“cursed is the ground…thorns and thistles it shall bring forth”) as consequences of sin.
• The sixth chapter of Genesis describes Noah, whose family was to be the sole survivors of a worldwide flood. God old Noah to build an ark big enough for a pair of each species of terrestrial animal, presumably even those that Noah did not especially care about.
• The Ten Commandments included a prohibition against work on one day of the week, called the sabbath. The result of this commandment, according to conservative Jewish scholars, is the deliberate interruption of the momentum of acquisition—to desist, once a week, from using other people (and the Earth) as a source of profit.
• The Old Testament law included some commandments that dealt directly with the Earth. Most famous is the Sabbath of the Fields, in which agricultural fields were supposed to be left fallow every seventh year.
• In the book of Job, God addresses Job from a whirlwind, and describes a vast unknowable and unconquerable world of creatures, from large ones such as Behemoth and Leviathan to humble ones such as donkeys and conies. The message is clear that the purposes of these creatures have absolutely nothing to do with humans. The fact that these creatures are untamed was a perfectly acceptable part of God’s order of the world.
• Many passages in the psalms and prophets describe the beauty of creation entirely apart from any benefit it may confer on humans. A passage from the prophet Isaiah describes trees reclaiming wasteland and restoring its water resources, and claims that this process, which would now be called ecological, was the work of God.
• Jesus frequently used symbolism from the creation, from wildflowers to sparrows, in his parables—frequently things that would be noticed only by people who stopped to carefully observe them.
Ecology-minded Christians, who focus attention on these passages, claim that God has given humans the responsibility to be stewards, or caretakers, of the Earth, rather than its conquerors. This is an important concept, even though the terms steward and caretaker do not appear in the Bible in connection with the Earth.
This essay is based on the entry “Environmental ethics” in my forthcoming Encyclopedia of Biodiversity.
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