“God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them, saying: ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.'” (Gen. 1:27-28 NAB)
Genesis, as we know, is a funny book. Myth, theological text, history etc. The literalness (or not) withstanding, I would like to use this pericope as a starting point for a discussion on the concept of a Theology of Ecology. In the culture in which we live, there is a thousand and one talking points about the issue of the proper care of the planet and the possible destruction of the natural resources by humanity. Throughout the noise of activism and the deafness of maintaining the status quo, there seems to be less rationality and more disconnect and partisanship. I forget who it was who first said this, but Chesterton certainly says that Christianity is not an “either/or” religion but “both/and”. Therefore, let us examine a proper orientation toward the created world. This is the “orientation” that Pope Benedict referenced in his 2008 address to the Roman Curia:
“The ultimate basis for our responsibility towards the earth lies in our faith regarding creation. It is not simply our property, which we can exploit according to our own interests and desires. It is instead the gift of the Creator, with certain intrinsic rules that offer us an orientation we must respect as administrators of creation.” (my emphasis)
When God created us, he told us of the proper approach to creation. In fact, he gave us three responsibilities as enumerated in the verses above. They are: the responsibility to fertility, the responsibility to the earth, and the responsibility to living creatures.
Is it significant that God first gave the responsibility to fertility? I would say so. It implies if not directly states that our first priority is to the human race. God does not say “Make sure you don’t use up the earth’s resources by limiting the number of children you have.” No, he says “Be fertile and multiply”. Fertility is a huge issue in this age of contraception. For one reason or another (and there are compelling reasons) people choose to either temporarily or permanently destroy their fertility. I will not go into all the reasons why they do this, but once you reject the order to be fertile, you reject the order to multiply. This is why contraception, abortion, homosexual acts etc. are sinful and disordered because they are in direct contradiction to this first decree to humanity. God’s first decree then is a decree to create as He created, to bring into being other beings in order that they might also experience His Love.
The first order was concerned with how humanity was to show love in procreation and the continuance of the human race. The second involved how humanity was to interact with each other and the earth. This of course is in two parts: Fill the earth and then subdue it. In order to fill the earth, we must first multiply (already taken care of) but we must also know how to divide up the earth. In theory, all of the earth belongs to all of us and so the division of the earth wasn’t a huge issue back at creation. However, due to sin, some of us (looking at you, St. Augustine) have the weird desire to destroy things. If we are to fill the earth, we can not be destroying that which allows us to live on the land. So in order to fill the earth, we must develop technology, law, and politics in order to keep this “filling” from reverting to the chaos from which creation started.
The next part is subduing the earth. This could mean “being a tyrant and completely destroying the earth for one’s own amusement or pleasure” or it could alternately mean “bring under control”. This is of course where farmers come in. Adam tilled the soil so that he could control the earth for the common good of creation. The earth needs pruning and we need food, so farming only makes sense. This subduing of the earth is also obvious in our own man-made environments. If we see a river that is impassable, do we just lay down and die? No, we build a bridge. We control nature without destroying it. The same applies to my own field of architecture. There is a great environmental movement within the profession and guided correctly, it could do a lot of good. However, the incorrect stewardship of building resources can result in the destruction, not the control of the earth.
This second decree is the one that “environmentalists” are most in line with. They often claim we are being tyrants instead of kindly monarchs. I would agree that to a certain extent this is true. We have to control ourselves before we will be effective controllers of nature. In our attempts to subdue the earth, we engage in slavery. Instead of filling the earth with all of human kind, we have decided that some are better than others and perform experiments on them in order that the übermenschen may fill the earth. This is of course a corruption of the decree and not only involves unethical experimentation, but also genocide and death camps. All of these things are sins against the creation.
The third decree would probably be a PETA nightmare. Dominion over animals? What does this mean? Does this mean that we must mutilate and painfully destroy beasts for food? Count me out! So says PETA and so say I. It however does not mean that, so don’t worry. Dominion obviously is related to the word dominus in Latin. It means “lord, master” which tends to also be what we call God. In other words, we are to treat the animals as God would. Tall order you say? Since when was God a God of short order? He made the earth in 6 days when he could have done it in 1. He doesn’t do slipshod. He doesn’t do mediocre.
Anyway, God gave Adam the authority over the animals, to name them, to tame them, to enjoy them. Later, he gave Noah the privilege to eat them after he fulfilled the responsibility of saving them. These are all acceptable ways of dealing with animals and they should all be done with the care that God would take. Shall we mistreat animals on their way to the slaughterhouse? Remember that God himself was brutally treated as the Lamb of Sacrifice. This is not the way. We must also be careful of our technology and inventions which could potentially harm our interaction with the beasts.
What is it about this creation that demands our respect? Pope Benedict says in the same address that we must listen to the “language of creation”. What does this mean? This means that God’s Word is apparent in all of creation and that in order to hear God in a fuller way, we must listen to what He tells us through this creation. In other words, our correct orientation toward creation can actually bring us closer to God…it can sanctify us! What is this language though and how can it help us?
The Pope’s Easter homily from this year (commented upon by Fr. Z.) mentions the idea of the rhythm of the week being the outward expression of our Sabbath Covenant with God. We are called to be like him and so we work for 6 days and rest on 1. In this way, we become more like him. Also commented on by Fr. Z. was an article in the National Catholic Reporter about the reestablishment of Ember Days because of their connection to the rhythm of the seasons. All these signs (almost sacramental) point us to a closer union with God. This is why the Church has such a rhythm to its liturgical year. We publicly acknowledge the Logos inherent in creation.
In fact, the Church throughout its history has brought to the foreground of culture these precise ideas about fertility, the earth, and the animals. Each of these areas are scarred with the sins of humanity. We must become a voice, as Pope Benedict continually says, in the public forum and in this case we must talk about the environment in its connection to God’s will and our continuing sanctification. We must not let partisanship deter us from this. We must, in a phrase, develop a sophisticated theology of ecology.
2 thoughts on “A Theology of Ecology”
Thank you for addressing this very important but often misunderstood issue. I am very interested in learning and reading more about this. Does anyone have any recommendations of books that address the theology of ecology? Thanks
You had a really interesting reflection. Here’s a couple of related thoughts. (Hopefully they make sense).
I went to a talk last week about contaminants in the rivers in Southern Alberta and how this is affecting fish populations. The gist is that fishes’ sex is linked to the levels of contaminants in the water. For example, certain places downstream of a city/cattle pens/landfills/strongly fertilized fields have huge population differences (some places up to 90% female). Hormones in fish are also extremely affected (ie. increased female hormones in male fish or decreased female hormones in female fish). The presenter explained that most people have been pointing at the birth control pill for this problem, but that the severity is increased when the water is a mixture with several pollutants (heavy metals, medications, hormones from cattle production, etc.) They think that these other pollutants have an estrogen like affect.
These rivers are much cleaner than ones in other parts of the world (they come from glaciers/mountain snow and rain with a relative small human population). So, the contaminants are very diluted, but the effect is still amazing.
The odd thing was that the presenter was very concerned about how such minute quantities could affect fish populations. But when he was asked about the issues that the birth control pill causes in a woman (considering the higher concentrations), he said that there was no problem.
I’m not a scientist, but it seemed really strange that a small concentration in the river could cause such a huge problem, however a large one of artificial hormones in a woman didn’t seem to be a problem. Granted, the effect is increased with other contaminants, but surely similar contaminants exist in the air (ie. household cleaners, plastics, fire retardants, etc.)? So wouldn’t there be a similar compound problem?
Sorry for the long comment, but it ties in with your point about the first responsibility to procreation and how messing with it causes problems. It also seems to me that the other two responsibilities are then tied in with the first. If you exploit the earth (overusing strong chemicals when farming) or animals (hormones in cattle), then you run into problems with the first responsibility. So, it’s all connected.
I’m not trying to say that we need to go back to hunter gatherer societies. People do need food, medicine, shelter etc. And a couple needs to be allowed to only have as many children as they can handle. But it shows that we need to make responsible decisions because we are very connected with our environment and any decision about one responsibility will effect another.