On Caring for Creation
Q. What does this mean about our place in the universe?
A. It means that the world belongs to its creator; and that we are called to enjoy it and to care for it in accordance with God's purposes.
Q. What does this mean about human life?
A.It means that all people are worthy of respect and honor, because all are created in the image of God, and all can respond to the love of God.
In continuing to look at the implications of God as creator of the world, we arrive at the to questions that deal with the behavioral implications of God as creator and of the world as God’s creation. Both of these questions are further elaborations on the first question in this section, with direct reference to it in asking “what does this mean…”, so it will be helpful to remember what the “this” is. The first two questions of this section establish that there is “one God, the Father Almighty” who is the creator, sustainer, and director of a good universe encompassing all existing things other than God. Having established that there is this universe, and given that we are created things that are not God, the Catechism goes on to explain our place in the rest of that creation and how we are to relate to the rest of that creation. The first question we look at today deals with how we are to treat non-human creation; the second question deals with how we are to treat other human beings.
We first turn, then, to the question of what may broadly called “theological environmental ethics,” or the question of what appropriate Christian dispositions and behaviors toward the non-human world should be. Starting in earnest with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, there has been an increasing awareness of significant environmental damage caused by human behavior, damage that has increased exponentially since the Industrial Revolution. From awareness of specific forms of air or water pollution or the threat of the extinction of specific species of plants or animals, there has been an increasing awareness of the ways our general patterns of consumption and waste, particularly of things such as fossil fuels, are directly causing an increase in average global temperatures. This upward temperature shift does not just mean things are getting hotter or that sea levels will rise, though, but also is related to and in some cases directly causative of, a disruption of the total environmental patterns for which microbial, fungal, plant, and animal life—including the human animal!—is adapted.
This state of affairs, I would argue, stands in contrast to the vision of human interaction with the non-human world envisioned by the Catechism. In 1967 another significant piece related to our thinking on the environment came out, Lynn White’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” which essentially argued that a Christian anthropocentrism that separated out humans from the rest of the created world led to human exploitation and destruction of that non-human world which had little or no intrinsic value. White’s article offered a helpful insight into how humans have perhaps distorted Christian views of the non-human world to justify extraction and exploitation, but I believe that a vision like that of the Catechism can find room both for recognizing the importance of preserving and protecting the environment from a sense of its intrinsic and instrumental value as well as seeing some special status accorded to humans (or, as I argued in an earlier post, persons as a category that may go beyond biological humans).
To begin with, humans should recognize that the world remains God’s even as it is given to us for our use and enjoyment. In the first chapter of Genesis, human beings are represented as stewards and representatives of God—the imagery of “subjecting” or “subduing” creation not meant to be that of exploiting or destroying, but of relating to creation as God would and perhaps of continuing the work of creation. As Gerhard von Rad points out, “Just as powerful earthly kings, to indicate their claim to dominion, erect an image of themselves in the provinces of their empire they do not personally appear, so man is placed upon earth in God’s image as God’s sovereign emblem” (Genesis, 1:26-28). As God relates to all of creation as good and very good, as something that exists to refract in its immense diversity the splendor of God, it is not something to be exploited and destroyed for human gain. This notion that all of creation is given to humans as stewards, and not as property owners, has effects that reach beyond our care for non-human creation to how we manage and use our material resources in our intra-human interactions. Nothing can truly belong to us, not in the proper sense, as everything is essentially on loan from God for our use and enjoyment. Thus, while Christians can debate the proper way in which to exercise stewardship of material resources, we cannot actually accept the notion of absolute private property. Even if we should not be held accountable to any other human for how we use some of the resources we are entrusted with, we are accountable to God for the wise, just, and responsible use of all things. As used to be said in most Episcopal worship services as the offering was collected, and quoting 1 Chronicles 29:14, “All things come of thee, O LORD, and of thine own have we given thee.”
The Catechism does affirm though that creation exists also for our enjoyment, which would seem to imply moving beyond our base material needs to also providing the resources to allow us to enjoy the good life. Above all this means our ascent to the greater knowledge, love, and imitation of God. There is a long tradition in Christianity, in the West going back to Augustine at least, of seeing the created world around us as bearing traces of the God and thus offering a means of ascent to greater knowledge of God. St. Bonaventure, in his Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, or the Journey of the Mind to God, sees the panoply of non-human creation and reflection upon it as the first rung on a ladder of ascent toward God. Moreover, Bonaventure indicates that creation as a vehicle for contemplation of God is built into the purpose of creation from before the Fall. Beyond this ultimate purpose of moving us toward our ultimate goal, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who served as an inspiration for so much Christian thought, and who moreover would have likewise seen contemplation of the divine as the highest goal, thought that the good life “by no means excludes the goods of culture, sport, or the table” (Timothy Gorringe, Fair Shares: Ethics and the Global Economy, 21). However, such does not mean unrestrained hedonism or consumption, a sentiment equally echoed by Aristotle. Whatever enjoyment we have of the temporal world, only God can satisfy our ultimate desire and such temporal things can only ever point toward that ultimate satisfaction. Restraint in consumption is necessary to prevent us from the idolatrous attempt to fill our infinite longing with temporal things. Thus, even from the perspective of the right enjoyment of the created world, of seeing the ways in which non-human creation can benefit humans, we see the need to do so responsibly and in a way that preserves as much possible diversity and reigns in excess consumption.
Moving from human interaction with the non-human world, we move to the question of what humans considered as creatures means for how we interact with each other. Here, the guiding principle is the human being as the bearer of the image of God. Bearing the image of God, as discussed above, places a special responsibility upon us for care of non-human creation, but it also instills a particular dignity on every human being. The significance of the human as divine image bearer cannot be overstated for how Christians are called to treat other humans. It means that there are no conditions placed on who can or should receive dignity, or, as the Catechism puts it “respect and honor.” As Rowan Williams points out, “The reverence I owe to every human person is connected with the reverence I owe to God,” and further that within every human “there will always be something precious that does not need to be proved by success, something that escapes what society expects or demands” (Being Disciples 65, 66). Because of this relatedness to God through bearing the divine image, all humans not only deserve the necessities of life but the necessities of the good life, of the life that allows them to fully exhibit their image of God, regardless of what they do to seem to merit such things. The Christian recognition of this fact not only calls us to acknowledge it with our beliefs, but to do what we can to work toward instantiating it within those communities over which we have the power to do so. As Katie G. Cannon argues, “human beings are united in a bond of divine love which enables them to live justly; and the overarching mandate calls for all people to live cooperatively as faithful disciples in an inclusive human community” (Black Womanist Ethics, 174). We must work to remove the material and ideological barriers erected to prevent certain classes of people from having access to this good life, which means a life in which they can evince the image of God more and more.
Of course, this whole discussion looks as creation as creation, with no reference to the distorting effects that Sin has on it. The world distorted by Sin will of course require greater scrutiny on what we can actually accomplish through our own power as well as a reckoning with the ways in which our desires are distorted and our ability to recognize the right course of action in seeing the image of God in all people distorted. However, while Sin complicates the behavioral imperatives of creation for the Christian, it does not eliminate them. While creation comes to need restoration, it remains always good, a characteristic that no amount of distortion can undue, and in many ways an appropriate and thankful response to God’s redemptive acts simply adds to and heightens our responsibilities as creatures (particularly those related to the unmerited dessert of all humans for the necessities for the good life)—it does not eliminate them. What these added responsibilities may be, though, will have to wait for a discussion of Sin and Redemption and the sections that follow.
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