Ecological Hermeneutics

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 Ecological Hermeneutics
Biblical, Historical and Theological Perspectives

Edited by

David G. Horrell
Cherryl Hunt
Christopher Southgate
and
Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Published by T&T Clark International,
A Continuum Imprint,
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Copyright © David G. Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, Christopher Southgate, Francesca Stavrakopoulou
and contributors, 2010
David G. Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, Christopher Southgate, Francesca Stavrakopoulou and
contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be
identified as the Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-567-03303-1 (Hardback)

978-0-567-03304-8 (Paperback)

Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
 Contents

Preface vii
Contributors ix
Abbreviations xi

Introduction – David G. Horrell 1

Part I: Biblical Perspectives 13

Introduction to Part I – Francesca Stavrakopoulou 15

Chapter 1. The Creation Stories: Their Ecological Potential
and Problems – John W. Rogerson 21
Chapter 2. Sacrifice in Leviticus: Eco-Friendly Ritual or
Unholy Waste? – Jonathan Morgan 32
Chapter 3. Reading the Prophets from an Environmental
Perspective – John Barton 46
Chapter 4. The Significance of the Wisdom Tradition in the
Ecological Debate – Katharine J. Dell 56
Chapter 5. Reading the Synoptic Gospels Ecologically
– Richard Bauckham 70
Chapter 6. An Ecological Reading of Rom. 8.19-22:
Possibilities and Hesitations – Brendan Byrne, SJ 83
Chapter 7. Hellenistic Cosmology and the Letter to the
Colossians: Towards an Ecological Hermeneutic
– Vicky S. Balabanski 94
Chapter 8. Retrieving the Earth from the Conflagration:
2 Peter 3.5-13 and the Environment – Edward Adams 108

Part II: Insights from the History of Interpretation 121

Introduction to Part II – Cherryl Hunt 123

Chapter 9. In the Beginning: Irenaeus, Creation and the
Environment – Francis Watson 127
Chapter 10. Power and Dominion: Patristic Interpretations
of Genesis 1 – Morwenna Ludlow 140
Chapter 11. Thomas Aquinas: Reading the Idea of Dominion
in the Light of the Doctrine of Creation – Mark Wynn 154
Chapter 12. Martin Luther, the Word of God and Nature:
Reformation Hermeneutics in Context – H. Paul Santmire 166
Chapter 13. ‘Remaining Loyal to the Earth’: Humanity, God’s
Other Creatures and the Bible in Karl Barth
– Geoff Thompson 181
Chapter 14. Hans Urs von Balthasar: Beginning with Beauty
– David Moss 196
Chapter 15. Between Creation and Transfiguration: The
Environment in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition
– Andrew Louth 211
Chapter 16. Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics
– Jeremy Law 223

Part III: Contemporary Hermeneutical Possibilities 241

Introduction to Part III – Christopher Southgate 243

Chapter 17. Green Millennialism: American Evangelicals,
Environmentalism and the Book of Revelation
– Harry O. Maier 246
Chapter 18. New Testament Eschatology and the Ecological
Crisis in Theological and Ecclesial Perspective
– Stephen C. Barton 266
Chapter 19. Keeping the Commandments: The Meaning of
Sustainable Countryside – Tim Gorringe 283
Chapter 20. What on Earth is an Ecological Hermeneutics?
Some Broad Parameters – Ernst M. Conradie 295
Index of Biblical References 315
Index of Names 323
Index of Subjects 329
 Preface

This collection of essays is among the outputs from a collaborative research project
at the University of Exeter, UK, on ‘Uses of the Bible in Environmental Ethics’ (for
details and other publications, see http://www.huss.ex.ac.uk/theology/research/
projects/uses). The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council
of the UK (AHRC), and we would like to thank the Council most warmly for their
generous support (Grant No. AH D001188/1). The project has sought to foster col-
laboration and interaction between biblical scholars and theologians, and the attempt
to cross the boundaries of (sub)disciplinary specialisms is evident in the structure
and contents of this volume. With the AHRC’s support, we have been able to invite
a number of speakers to address our research seminar over the past three years.
Conscious of the need to minimize the carbon footprint of the project, especially
given its subject, we invited to the seminar only scholars based in or otherwise visiting
the UK. We did however invite two international scholars, Ernst Conradie and Harry
Maier, to spend a month with us in Exeter as visiting professors; this seemed a more
justifiable reason for long-distance air travel. We derived great benefit from these
two visits, and express our sincere thanks to Ernst and Harry for their willingness
to come and discuss our work over an extended period. These various speakers and
visitors presented papers which, following revision in the light of discussion, are
included here. Others, too, kindly agreed to write for the volume. In many cases,
and quite deliberately, we invited contributors known for their expertise in some
area of biblical studies or theology, but who have not previously worked in the area
of ecotheology or ecological hermeneutics. In our view, this has helped to generate
much fresh and stimulating thinking. We would like to express our thanks to all the
contributors for their willingness to accept our invitation and to reflect on the kinds
of issues central to the volume.
We also thank the members of the project’s advisory group, most of whom are
also among the contributors to the volume, for their very valuable support and
advice through the course of the project: Edward Adams, John Barton, Stephen
Barton, Esther Reed and John Rogerson. We are grateful to the two doctoral students
who have worked under the auspices of the project, Dominic Coad and Jonathan
Morgan, for their contribution to our work, and for many stimulating and helpful
viii Preface

conversations. We would also like to record our thanks to our colleagues in the
Department of Theology and Religion at Exeter, particularly those who kindly agreed
to contribute to the volume. Much of the labour of checking and standardizing the
essays has been undertaken by Cherryl Hunt, and the other editors would like to
express their appreciation for her cheerful efficiency and hard work.
It may be pertinent to note here that the focus of this volume is the Christian Bible
and its historical and theological interpretation in various Christian churches and
traditions. We have not attempted to consider, for example, how Jewish interpreters,
past and present, have reflected on some of the same texts, nor have we engaged
other religious traditions and their possible responses to the contemporary ecological
crisis. Even our coverage of the diverse Christian traditions is necessarily limited and
illustrative only.
After a general introductory essay, the book is divided into three parts, each of
which is introduced by one of the editors. The boundaries between the parts, espe-
cially between Parts II and III, are, however, somewhat blurry. Since each chapter is
intended as a self-contained contribution we decided that it would be most helpful
to readers to have a list of references at the end of each chapter, rather than a final
compiled bibliography. Our chosen title, ecological hermeneutics, does not represent
an established or widely recognized label or method, except in the work of the Earth
Bible project and the Society of Biblical Literature Consultation led by members
of that project (on which see the Introduction). Nor have we sought in any way
to invite adherence to any particular method on the part of our contributors. The
phrase does, however, seem most apposite to encapsulate the nature of the task in
which the contributors to this volume are collectively engaged. Our hope is that the
various essays will prove individually stimulating and, more importantly, that the
collection as a whole will not only provide a rich resource for those with an interest
in this field but also foster future work which will draw further connections between
biblical studies, the history of interpretation and contemporary theological and ethi-
cal reflection in this vital area of global concern.

The Editors
Exeter, September 2009.

Each year the AHRC provides funding from the government to support research
and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from archaeology and English
literature to design and dance. Only applications of the highest quality and excellence
are funded and the range of research supported by this investment of public funds
not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic
success of the UK. For further information on the AHRC, please see our website
www.ahrc.ac.uk
 Contributors

1. Edward Adams is Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies at King’s College

London, UK.
2. Vicky S. Balabanski is Senior Lecturer in New Testament at Adelaide College
of Divinity, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia.
3. John Barton is Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture
at Oriel College, University of Oxford, UK.
4. Stephen C. Barton is Reader in New Testament in the Department of Theology
and Religion, University of Durham, UK.
5. Richard Bauckham is Emeritus Professor of New Testament Studies at
the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and Senior Scholar at Ridley Hall,
Cambridge, UK.
6. Brendan Byrne, SJ is Professor of New Testament, Jesuit Theological College,
Melbourne College of Divinity, Victoria, Australia.
7. Ernst M. Conradie is Professor in the Department of Religion and Theology,
University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
8. Katharine J. Dell is Senior Lecturer in Old Testament at the Faculty of Divinity,
University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, UK.
9. Tim Gorringe is St Luke’s Foundation Professor of Theological Studies,
Department of Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, UK.
10. Jeremy Law is Dean of Chapel at Canterbury Christ Church University,
Canterbury, UK.
11. Andrew Louth is Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies in the Department
of Theology and Religion, University of Durham, UK.
12. Morwenna Ludlow is Lecturer in Patristics, Department of Theology and
Religion, University of Exeter, UK.
13. Harry O. Maier is Professor of New Testament Studies at Vancouver School of
Theology, Vancouver, Canada.
14. Jonathan Morgan is a PhD Student in the Department of Theology and
Religion, University of Exeter, UK.
15. David Moss is Principal of the South West Ministry Training Course and
Honorary Fellow in Theology, University of Exeter, UK.
x Contributors

16. John W. Rogerson is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, University of

Sheffield, UK.
17. H. Paul Santmire is now retired having previously taught at Wellesley College,
Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA.
18. Geoff Thompson is Director of Studies in Systematic Theology, Trinity
Theological College, Brisbane, Australia.
19. Francis Watson is Professor of Biblical Interpretation in the Department of
Theology and Religion, University of Durham, UK.
20. Mark Wynn is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion, Department of
Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, UK.
 Abbreviations

References to biblical books follow standard and easily recognizable abbreviations.

References in individual essays to other primary sources, and specific abbreviations
thereof, are explained in the relevant list of references or in the essay itself. The fol-
lowing bibliographical abbreviations are used throughout the volume.

AB Anchor Bible
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt,
H. Temporini and W. Haase (eds), (Berlin and New
York: De Gruyter, 1972–)
ANTC Abingdon New Testament Commentaries
AOTC Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries
BBR Bulletin for Biblical Research
BDAG A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and
Other Early Christian Literature, W. Bauer, F.W. Danker
et al., (3rd edn, Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 2000).
BHT Beiträge zur historischen Theologie
BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of
Manchester
BNTC Black’s New Testament Commentaries
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CRINT Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum
EDNT Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, H. Balz and
G. Schneider (eds), (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990–1993)
ESV English Standard Version
ICC International Critical Commentary
ITC International Theological Commentary
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
JSJSup Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series
xii Abbreviations

JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement
Series
JSSR Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
KJV King James Version
LNTS Library of New Testament Studies
NIGTC New International Greek Testament Commentary
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
NTS New Testament Studies
OTG Old Testament Guides
PG Patrologia Graeca, J.-P. Migne (ed.), (Paris: Migne/
Turnhout: Brepols).
PSCF Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith
RRR Review of Religious Research
SBL Society of Biblical Literature
SBLSS Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series
SCE Studies in Christian Ethics
SJT Scottish Journal of Theology
SNTW Studies of the New Testament and Its World
SP Sacra Pagina
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen
Testament
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
 Introduction

David G. Horrell

Environmental concerns are now widely recognized as among the most pressing
issues facing the global community. The modern environmental movement has of
course been active for some decades, spurred on by the early and provocative stimulus
of Rachel Carson’s 1962 classic Silent Spring – which detailed the impact of chemical
pesticides in particular – and sustained by pressure groups such as Greenpeace and
Friends of the Earth, both formed in 1971. But it is in recent years, and especially
with the increasingly clear scientific consensus about the reality and wide-ranging
impacts of anthropogenic global warming, that the environment has emerged as a
central issue for international political concern. The level of public and political
concern is reason enough to make the environment, or ecology,1 a topic for reflection
by theologians, ethicists and biblical scholars, whose agendas are to some extent
set by contemporary issues and priorities. Indeed, given the status of the Christian
Bible as holy scripture for members of the Christian churches, it is an established and
obvious strategy, as part of theological and ethical reflection, to consider what the
Bible might have to ‘say’ on a given topic, whether that consideration is done with a
certain naivety (as if answers could simply be found by reading out the right verses)
or with more hermeneutical and critical sophistication. This applies both to issues
which are explicitly within the purview of the biblical writers, such as divorce, and
also to issues which are clearly beyond their experience, such as nuclear weapons or
genetic engineering.
There have also been more specific provocations to consider the ecological
implications, positive or negative, of the biblical material. In a now famous article,
published in 1967, the medieval historian Lynn White Jr argued that the (Western)
Christian worldview, rooted in the creation stories and the notion of humanity made
in God’s image, introduced a dualism between humanity and nature, and established
the notion that it was God’s will that humanity exploit nature to serve human inter-
ests; this Christian worldview thus legitimated and encouraged humanity’s aggressive

1 Ecology is a preferable term in many ways, since it suggests the sense that we are talking
about the communities of living things in which we find our home (oikos), rather than about
things which happen to surround us (our environs).
2 Ecological Hermeneutics

project to dominate and exploit nature (1967). From this perspective, White sug-
gests, everything that exists in the natural world was ‘planned’ by God ‘explicitly
for man’s benefit and rule; no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to
serve man’s purposes’. Humanity is seen as uniquely made in the image of God, and
as having been given ‘dominion’ over all the creatures of the earth (Gen. 1.26-30).
Sweeping aside other ancient mythologies, with their cyclical views of time and their
animistic sacralization of nature, Christianity thus ‘not only established a dualism
of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for
his proper ends’. ‘Man’s effective monopoly . . . was confirmed and the old inhibi-
tions to the exploitation of nature crumbled.’ Thus, ‘Christianity made it possible
to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects’ (White
1967: 1205). White concludes that the active conquest of nature that characterizes
the modern technological project and has led to the ‘ecologic crisis’ has in large
part been made possible by the dominance in the West of this Christian worldview.
Christianity therefore ‘bears a huge burden of guilt’ (1206).
Interestingly, as James Barr (1972) points out, White’s argument is essentially
a critical version of the earlier view that effectively credited the Judeo-Christian
tradition with fostering and enabling the emergence of modern science – depicted
as a positive achievement. For White, writing from an ecological perspective, the
scientific and technological ideologies that emerged as the Christian worldview came
to prominence have had a disastrous impact on the ways in which the relationship
between humanity and ‘nature’ is conceived. White does not however call for the
abandonment of the Christian tradition, but rather for its renewal and reorienta-
tion, appealing to St Francis as a potential ‘patron saint for ecologists’ (1207).
Nonetheless, his provocative argument suggested that the biblical texts and their
interpretation in the Western Christian tradition had had an essentially negative
impact on humanity’s interaction with the non-human creation.
Despite many telling criticisms of ‘the Lynn White thesis’, not least from biblical
scholars who contest his (implicit) interpretation of the crucial text in Gen. 1.26-28
(e.g. Barr 1972), White’s essay remains probably the most cited contribution to eco-
theological debate.2 Indeed, many of the writers in the present volume take White’s
article as something of a point of reference in the debate, even if they swiftly move
beyond his particular perspective and analysis.
While White’s critique has led to a focus on the meaning and impact of the Bible’s
creation stories, especially the mandate given to humanity to subdue and have
dominion over the earth (Gen. 1.26-28), questions have also been raised about the
impact of biblical eschatology. A number of biblical texts present images of cosmic
destruction, depicting what will happen on ‘the day of the Lord’, the coming day
of God’s judgement and salvation (e.g. Joel 1.15; Amos 5.18-20; 1 Thess. 5.2).3

2 Cf. Baranzke and Lamberty-Zielinski 1995: 56. Blenkinsopp’s comments on White are thus
overly dismissive (Blenkinsopp 2004: 37–38).
3 For a comprehensive survey of such material, see Adams 2007.
 Introduction 3

Some texts suggest that catastrophes on the earth must precede this final day of
salvation (e.g. Mk 13.8, 24-25); others depict Christians being ‘caught up’ to meet
the returning Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4.16-17). Such texts, along with the enigmatic
apocalyptic scenarios depicted in the book of Revelation, have, of course, shaped
the development of contemporary Christian eschatologies. The critical question
is whether such eschatological views foster a view of the earth as merely a tem-
porary and soon-to-be destroyed habitation, from which the elect will be rescued
(cf. Dyer 2002, esp. 45–49). The implication would be that preserving the earth
is hardly a priority and may even represent opposition to the progress of God’s
eschatological purposes. Indeed, some writers have argued that such views make
evangelical Christians disinclined to care for the earth. David Orr, for example, sug-
gests that ‘belief in the imminence of the end times tends to make evangelicals careless
stewards of our forests, soils, wildlife, air, water, seas and climate’ (Orr 2005: 291).
Just as White’s seminal article raised critical questions about the impact of the biblical
creation stories, so the arguments of Orr and others raise critical questions about the
impact of biblical eschatology on Christian attitudes towards the environment, par-
ticularly among some US fundamentalist and evangelical groups (see Harry Maier’s
essay).

Ecological Engagement with the Bible

Such critical arguments have clearly posed a challenge to theologians and biblical
scholars concerned to draw on the Bible to foster a positive Christian response to the
challenge of environmental care.4 Unsurprisingly, considerable energy has gone into
attempts to demonstrate that the Bible does not promote such a negative attitude to
the non-human creation as writers such as White have implied. Positively, attempts
have been made to show how an ecologically valuable message can be derived from
scripture, rightly interpreted. Often, especially in the case of evangelical environ-
mental writers, these efforts have been consciously directed against those who,
either explicitly or implicitly, hold views antithetical to the environmental agenda on
biblical grounds. For example, there have been fundamentalists who have opposed
the environmental cause, regarding it as part of a satanic ‘new age’ deception, or
as encouraging nature-worship. Some evangelicals have insisted that the Bible calls
Christians to evangelism to save individuals from the coming judgement, not to
action to sustain the material earth, while others argue that the biblical view does
indeed give humanity a rightful dominion over the earth, and a God-given vocation
to transform nature from wilderness to garden, in order for it best to serve human
needs (Beisner 1997; see further Maier’s essay).
Some treatments of the problematic ‘dominion’ text (Gen. 1.26-28), for example,

4 For a critical survey of such engagements with the Bible, see Horrell et al. 2008; 2010: chs
1–2.
4 Ecological Hermeneutics

have been primarily concerned to defend Genesis 1 by placing it in its ancient his-
torical context (see further John Rogerson’s essay). Norbert Lohfink argues that the
‘blessing’ of Gen. 1.28 refers to the divine plan for each nation to ‘take possession of
their own regions’, and for humans to domesticate animals in a way which establishes
a form of peaceful co-existence. Since the text has this kind of expansion of human
civilization and domestication of animals in view, it is inappropriate in Lohfink’s
view to use it ‘to legitimate what humanity has inaugurated in modern times . . . The
Jewish-Christian doctrine of humanity . . . regards human beings very highly, but
it would never designate them as absolute rulers of the universe’ (Lohfink 1994: 8,
12–13, 17). Similar points have been made by Barr (1972), Bernhard Anderson
(1984) and others.
A particularly significant and influential approach, which attempts to recover
from biblical texts such as Gen. 1.28 a message of positive value to the ecological
agenda, reinterprets the notion of human dominion as a model of stewardship. This
approach picks up the use of kingly language in Gen. 1.26-28, and also the notion
of tending the garden in Gen. 2.15, and interprets these within the broader treatment
of kingship in the Hebrew Bible. Kingly rule, it is argued, was not about domination
and exploitation, at least in terms of the biblical ‘ideal’. The language of dominion
can thus be read as giving a responsibility to humanity, to care for and tend the
earth (see e.g. De Vos et al. 1980; Granberg-Michaelson 1987; Hall 1990 [1982]).
Indeed, a focus on stewardship as a biblical image of humanity’s role in creation is
central to the realignment of major evangelical leaders and bodies behind a more
environmentally conscious vision of Christian responsibility (e.g. The Evangelical
Climate Initiative 2006).5
A similar tendency can be seen in relation to the equally difficult eschatological
texts. A good deal of energy has gone into the attempt to demonstrate that such
texts, or most of them at least, do not imply the destruction of the earth but rather its
transformation (e.g. Russell 1996; Moo 2006). In an essay entitled ‘New Testament
Teaching on the Environment’, for example, Ernest Lucas confronts the apparent
difficulties of what is widely regarded as the most ‘difficult’ eschatological text in
relation to environmental issues: 2 Peter 3 (see Edward Adams’ essay). First, Lucas
notes that the most likely reading of 3.10 is not that the earth will be ‘burned up’,
as some manuscripts and English translations have it, but that it will be ‘found’, or
exposed for judgement (cf. NRSV, ESV; Lucas 1999: 97). Secondly, he argues that the
‘elements’ (Gk stoicheia) in 3.10 refers not to the physical universe, but to spiritual
powers or heavenly beings. More generally, he argues that the author is likely using
‘figurative’ language about cosmic events: ‘Hence we should be wary of reading
it as a literal account of the end of the physical cosmos’. The primary focus is on
God’s judgement, for which the metaphor of fire is used in the Old Testament (97).
And since the author uses the Greek word kainos (new in quality) rather than neos

5 Available at http://christiansandclimate.org/learn/call-to-action/ (accessed 23 Sept 2009).

 Introduction 5

(new in the sense of previously non-existent), Lucas argues that ‘although 2 Peter 3
is speaking of a radical transformation of the heaven and the earth, it is a renewal
through transformation, not a total destruction of the old and its replacement by
something quite different’. Thus, Lucas argues, ‘[i]t is certainly not a basis for arguing
against Christian concern for, and involvement in, ecological issues’ (97). Similar
defences of 2 Peter 3 have been mounted by Thomas Finger (1998: 3–6) and Steven
Bouma-Prediger (2001: 76–78).
In a discussion of Revelation 21–22, another famous and influential depiction
of the apparent replacement of the ‘old’ heaven and earth with a ‘new’ creation,
Bouma-Prediger argues that a positive ecological vision emerges (2001: 114–16).
The ‘new heaven and new earth’ does not, he argues, imply the destruction of the
old cosmos and the emergence of a new one, but rather ‘connotes new in quality’
(114). Furthermore, the separation between heaven and earth is overcome and
evil and its consequences are no more. The holy city is an eloquent vision of ‘the
all-embracing scope of God’s redemptive work’ (115, quoting George Caird).
So, Bouma-Prediger proposes, this is ‘an earthly vision of life made good and
whole and right, because of God’s grace. Heaven and earth are renewed and are
one. God dwells with us, at home in creation . . . In short, a world of shalom’
(115–16).
As well as attempting to rescue the ‘difficult’ texts from the charge that they
legitimate the unsustainable exploitation of the earth, such engagements with the
Bible also draw attention to the ecological potential of texts that have often been
neglected, or whose ecological relevance has generally been missed. Texts coming
under consideration here include Gen. 9.9-17, with its references to the covenant
with all the earth; various Psalms (e.g. chs 104, 148), with their references to the
whole creation as displaying God’s greatness and as joining in praise of its creator;
the latter chapters of Job (38–41), with their apparent ‘decentring’ of humanity (see
esp. McKibben 1994; Patrick 2001); and, in the New Testament, the Pauline texts
which depict the whole creation as caught up in the redeeming and reconciling work
of God in Christ (esp. Rom. 8.19-23; Col. 1.15-20).6
This kind of approach to the Bible, attempting to show how it contains a positive
message of environmental care, is epitomized in the recently published Green Bible
(2008). By highlighting in green texts that are deemed relevant to concerns about the
earth, the editors of this new edition of the NRSV intend to reveal the ‘clear’ message
of the Bible concerning care for creation. As the preface puts it:

Our role in creation’s care may be a new question unique to our place in history, but the Bible
turns out to be amazingly relevant. In fact, it is almost as if it were waiting for this moment to
speak to us. With over a thousand references to the earth and caring for creation in the Bible,
the message is clear: all in God’s creation – nature, animals, humanity – are inextricably linked

6 See, e.g. Bouma-Prediger 2001. For a critical survey of interpretations from ecological
perspectives of these texts and others, see Horrell 2010b.
6 Ecological Hermeneutics

to one another. As God cares for all of creation, so we cannot love one dimension without
caring for the others. We are called to care for all God has made.7 (I–15)

In relation to ‘difficult’ texts like Gen. 1.26-28, the assumption of The Green Bible
is clearly that this text does not legitimate aggressive human domination of the earth
(contra White), but instead teaches a human responsibility to care for the earth as
stewards (and hence can be highlighted in green). Indeed, the conviction that stew-
ardship is central to the Bible’s teaching about humanity’s relationship to the earth
runs through many of the essays in The Green Bible. Calvin DeWitt, for example,
asserts that the Bible ‘shows that dominion means responsible stewardship. God gave
humans a special role and responsibility as stewards of his creation’ (I–26). One of
the themes picked out in the ‘Trail Guide’ Bible studies near the end of the volume is
that we ‘are meant to live . . . as stewards of creation’, and the questions for reflection
indicate that the image of dominion has been liable to be ‘misunderstood’. Indeed, ‘[t]
his stewardship role’, we are told, ‘is important enough that it is mentioned several
times in the creation narrative’ (1226).
Yet The Green Bible illustrates well some of the profound problems with such
attempts to show that the Bible ‘really’ teaches humanity to love and care for crea-
tion (for a critique, see Horrell 2010a). For example, the notion of ‘stewardship’,
so central to many attempts to construct a ‘biblical’ environmental ethic, does not
appear as such in Genesis 1, nor indeed is it a major biblical theme, certainly not in
relation to humanity’s responsibility for creation: nowhere does the Bible say that
humans are appointed stewards of creation. There are questions too about whether
the language of Gen. 1.26-28 can so easily be softened and reclaimed, and about
whether ‘stewardship’ is an adequate or valuable basis for an environmental ethic
(see esp. Palmer 1992).8 It may be argued that stewardship can usefully function
as a key concept in an ecological interpretation of the Bible, but it should be clear,
as Ernst Conradie suggests (see his essay in this volume), that this is a product of
interpretation, not something somehow ‘contained’ within the Bible, waiting to
be discovered. Moreover, it seems that the Bible’s diverse material remains more
ambivalent in relation to ecological issues and environmental responsibilities than
many positive presentations of its ‘green’ message allow. The difficult texts cannot
so easily be reclaimed (see further, e.g. the essays in this volume by Rogerson and
Adams), and the positive ecological contribution of the Bible to theological and
ethical discussion needs nuanced and critical interpretation.9
Indeed, one of the concerns at the heart of the Earth Bible project is, in the words

7 Pages in the introductory section of the book are prefaced with I–, distinguishing them from
pages in the main section of the volume, which contains the biblical text (and additional end
materials).
8 For an overview of such discussions, see Southgate 2006, and the range of materials collected
in Berry 2006.
9 For further articulation of such critical points, see Horrell, Hunt and Southgate 2008:
231–38; 2010: ch. 2.
 Introduction 7

of its general editor, Norman Habel, to confront what Habel sees as the naïve use of
the Bible in many works of ecotheology: ‘The vast majority of these works assume
that the Bible is environmentally friendly and quote biblical passages uncritically
to support the contention that an ecological thrust is inherent in the text’ (Habel
2000a: 30). The Earth Bible project, described briefly by one of its members, Vicky
Balabanski, in her essay in this volume, and discussed also by Conradie, has been
concerned to read biblical texts ‘from the perspective of Earth’ (cf. Habel 2000b),
and to develop a critical ecojustice hermeneutic.10 This approach, as Habel describes
it, involves both suspicion and retrieval; there is critical suspicion concerning the
anthropocentrism of the biblical writers (as well as their later interpreters) and a
corresponding attempt to recover the voice of Earth (capitalized as a character) even
where this is silenced or opposed by the explicit perspective of the text.
Fundamental to the approach taken in the five volumes of the Earth Bible series is
a set of six ecojustice principles (these are listed in full in Conradie’s essay, p. 307):
the principle of intrinsic worth; the principle of interconnectedness; the principle
of voice; the principle of purpose; the principle of mutual custodianship; and the
principle of resistance (Habel 2000b: 24). These principles, deliberately formulated
in non-theological and non-biblical terms (see The Earth Bible Team 2000a: 38),
encapsulate the (ethical) commitments of the project team, and function as a standard
against which the biblical texts are measured: the key task is to discern whether ‘the
text is consistent, or in conflict, with whichever of the six ecojustice principles may
be considered relevant’ in any particular case (The Earth Bible Team 2002: 2).11
More recently, the project’s work has continued through a Society of Biblical
Literature Consultation on Ecological Hermeneutics. In the introduction to a vol-
ume of essays based on papers presented at the seminar, Habel further outlines the
hermeneutical method. Building on the earlier articulation of ecojustice principles,
three key steps are outlined: suspicion (of the texts’ anthropocentrism), identification
(with non-human characters) and retrieval (of the perspective or voice of Earth)
(Habel 2008).
The Earth Bible project has been ground-breaking and important in offering
ecologically orientated readings of a variety of biblical texts, and in moving atten-
tion beyond a few ‘key’ texts. Also significant, not least in relation to approaches
which imply that a green message can simply be found in the Bible once the right
texts are highlighted, is the project’s insistence that ecological interpretation of the
Bible will require a critical and self-conscious hermeneutical strategy. Nonetheless,
one difficulty with this approach, at least in terms of an approach to doing Christian
theology, is that authority effectively lies not with the Bible or the Christian tradition,

10 The most important publications from the project are the five-volume Earth Bible series,
and a recent volume of essays presented at the SBL Ecological Hermeneutics Consultation,
led by members of the project. See Habel and Wurst (eds) 2000; 2001; Habel (ed.) 2000b;
2001; Habel and Balabanski (eds) 2002; Habel and Trudinger (eds) 2008.
11 For further discussion of these principles, see The Earth Bible Team 2000b.
8 Ecological Hermeneutics

but with the ecojustice principles, principles deliberately formulated in ways which
are general and non-theological, not reflective of the specifically biblical and Christian
tradition; it is these principles that present a set of norms and commitments to inspire
and instruct human belief and action. But why, for Christians, should these principles
be found persuasive, persuasive enough to serve as a basis for ethical commitment
and critical evaluation of the Bible? The hermeneutical approach outlined in the
most recent volume of essays (Habel and Trudinger 2008) invites the retrieval of
perspectives and voices that may go against the content or grain of the text: many of
the essays in that volume focus on voicing the perspective of Earth (as character), in
some cases exercising suspicion against the chosen text and creating a new text, the
product of the reader’s imagination. Such reconstructions, needless to say, do not
carry the same kind of potential theological significance as new interpretations of
the biblical texts themselves. It is unclear how such readings might contribute to the
reconfiguration of the Christian tradition, a reconfiguration in which constructive
and critical readings of the Bible will certainly play a crucial part. Put differently, to
be potentially persuasive as an attempt to reshape Christian theology and ethics, an
ecological reading of the Bible will need to demonstrate that it offers an authentic
rearticulation of the Christian tradition, albeit one that treads the delicate (and hotly
contested) line between faithfulness and creativity.
The critical remarks here and earlier should help to indicate how, and why, much
of the work undertaken by those of us involved in the Exeter project has explored
ways to develop a position somewhere between the stance of ‘recovery’ represented
in some evangelical writing and in The Green Bible on the one hand, and the critical
ecojustice hermeneutic developed by The Earth Bible Team on the other (see esp.
Horrell, Hunt and Southgate 2008, 2010). The former approach too easily gives
the impression that ecological theology and ethics can simply be read from the
pages of the Bible, once the text is rightly understood, and that the Bible can be
defended against all the critical charges levelled against it and labelled a ‘green’
book with a clearly ‘green’ message. This kind of approach fails to do justice both
to the ambivalence and difficulty of the biblical material and to the extent to which
contemporary theological and ethical appropriation is necessarily a constructive
endeavour, informed by the present context (including science, etc.) as well as by
the traditions of Christian theology. By contrast, we have suggested that the critical
ecojustice approach of the Earth Bible project, while generating much theologically
pertinent material, does not sufficiently articulate how such creative and critical inter-
pretation might contribute to the ecological reconfiguration of Christian theology
– a theology in which the Bible will need to have some formative and authoritative
place and which will need to be in some kind of demonstrable continuity with the
Christian tradition.12 The approach we have tried to develop, by contrast, may be
broadly described as an attempt to construct an ecological theology which, while

12 Cf. the discussion of the Earth Bible project, its ecojustice principles and their relation to
Christian doctrine in Conradie’s essay in this volume and in Conradie 2004.
 Introduction 9

innovative, is nonetheless coherent (and in dialogue) with a scripturally shaped

Christian orthodoxy – though that, of course, immediately raises questions about
what will ‘count’ as orthodox, sufficiently faithful to the tradition to be authentically
Christian yet sufficiently creative to reshape a tradition that has by and large been
preoccupied with issues of human behaviour and salvation.
Any attempt to develop such a theological ecological hermeneutic will need to
learn carefully from the history of Christian theological interpretation in order to
consider the kinds of twists and turns that have been taken – for better or worse
– as the biblical texts have been read through the centuries, and will need to foster
engagement between biblical scholars and theologians in order to consider how
the texts might fruitfully be interpreted now. It is these desiderata that inform the
conception and structure of the present volume. We have not imposed upon, nor even
suggested to, our contributors any particular hermeneutical method or theological
stance; indeed some, for sure, will disagree with the particular way in which we have
framed our approach to ecological hermeneutics. But the various contributions, for
all their individual diversity, provide material which resources the kind of reflection
we have sought to develop.

The Aims and Scope of the Volume

Two concerns are then crucial to the shaping of this collection of essays. The first is to
bring biblical and theological perspectives into closer dialogue through ecologically
orientated and hermeneutically informed reflection on the Bible. The second is to learn
critically from the history of interpretation, recognising that earlier interpreters did not
share our ecological concerns and awareness and may indeed have helped to reinforce
the anthropocentrism of the theological tradition, but be ready also to find potentially
fruitful interpretative perspectives in previous engagements with the biblical texts.
Part I of the book, introduced by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, contains a variety
of readings of biblical texts, though these are unavoidably selective in terms of the
range of texts that are included. In some cases their focus is on texts that have long
been identified as pertinent to, or indeed problematic for, the themes of ecology (e.g.
the essays by John Rogerson, Brendan Byrne, Vicky Balabanski and Edward Adams).
In other cases they range more widely into bodies of literature whose ecological
relevance has not been so fully considered (e.g. the essays by Katharine Dell, John
Barton and Richard Bauckham). Jonathan Morgan’s essay deals with the book
of Leviticus, a text which, for a range of more and less obvious reasons, has been
neglected in Christian theology generally as well as in ecological interpretation.13
While our contributors take a range of perspectives and offer a diversity of possible
interpretations, they are aware of the difficulties in finding ecologically relevant or

13 For this reason, this text was chosen as the focus for a doctoral thesis (being written by
Morgan) within the project’s overall concerns.
10 Ecological Hermeneutics

positive material in the Bible, and recognize that developing ecological interpretations
of the texts requires some constructive and creative thought.
Part II of the book, introduced by Cherryl Hunt, deals with the history of inter-
pretation, from Irenaeus (Francis Watson) and the early Church fathers (Morwenna
Ludlow), through Thomas Aquinas (Mark Wynn), Martin Luther (Paul Santmire)
to twentieth-century theologians such as Karl Barth (Geoff Thompson), Hans Urs
von Balthasar (David Moss) and Jürgen Moltmann (Jeremy Law). The Orthodox
tradition is considered in the essay by Andrew Louth. Here, then, it is even more
inevitable that the diverse range of studies is highly selective and illustrative only in
terms of what and who is covered. Despite a wide variety of approaches and con-
cerns, our contributors are generally candid about the fact that these earlier writers
did not share our ecological awareness and concerns, except in the case of the most
recent and still contemporary writer to be considered, Moltmann. But this does not
prevent these writers and traditions from offering significant material relevant to the
task of developing an ecologically orientated theology.
The third and final part of the book, introduced by Christopher Southgate, is
still more selective, as well as being briefer. What unites the essays in this section,
by Harry Maier, Stephen Barton, Tim Gorringe and Ernst Conradie, is a concern
to articulate in some way an approach or direction in contemporary biblical
interpretation that represents some kind of ecological hermeneutic. In this respect,
however, there is an overlap of concern with many of the essays in the previous
section, where examinations of particular figures or traditions are undertaken not
for purely historical interest but precisely because of the ways in which these might
resource contemporary ecological hermeneutics. It is appropriate that the volume
concludes with a programmatic and wide-ranging essay by Ernst Conradie because
his methodological reflections are fundamental to the overall task and aims of the
volume; his work has also been highly influential on the approach we have developed
in our own project at Exeter. Conradie outlines the way in which he sees biblical
interpretation functioning within the overall task of ecological hermeneutics, with
‘doctrinal constructs’ (such as ‘stewardship’) ‘made’ in the process of reading and
interpreting, and serving ‘to identify both the meaning of the contemporary context
and of the biblical texts’ (301).
The volume thus constitutes only an initial foray, or set of forays, into a field
that will undoubtedly remain of high importance for the foreseeable future. Many
more biblical texts could be engaged, and many more traditions and figures from
the history of interpretation could fruitfully be examined. And, not least given the
enormous amount of ecotheological literature produced in recent years,14 there
remain many possible directions for constructive theological and ethical engage-
ment beyond those included here. Nonetheless, our hope is that this collection of
essays makes a significant contribution to the field in a number of ways. First, in

14 For an extensive listing of bibliographical resources, see Conradie 2001.

 Introduction 11

generating hermeneutically aware and critical readings of biblical texts, readings

that make constructive contributions to ecotheology without pretending that the
Bible can straightforwardly or unproblematically be regarded as a ‘green’ text.
Second, in indicating how valuable studies of the history of interpretation can be
for ecotheology, even where that history is ambivalent in its impact and far removed
from the specific issues of ecological concern. Third, in illustrating the potential for
an ecological hermeneutics which crosses boundaries between biblical studies and
theology to bring a diverse range of scholars together in making constructive attempts
to address an issue of profound importance.

References

Adams, E. 2007 The Stars Will fall From Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the New Testament and
Its World (LNTS 347; London/New York: T&T Clark).
Anderson, B.W. 1984 ‘Creation and Ecology’, in B.W. Anderson, Creation in the Old Testament
(Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SPCK): 152–71.
Baranzke, H. and Lamberty-Zielinski, H. 1995 ‘Lynn White und das Dominium Terrae (Gen. 1.28b).
Ein Beitrag zu einer doppelten Wirkungsgeschichte’, Biblische Notizen 76: 32–61.
Barr, J. 1972 ‘Man and Nature – The Ecological Controversy and the Old Testament’, BJRL 55:
9–32.
Beisner, E.C. 1997 Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental
Debate (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty/Eerdmans).
Berry, R.J. (ed.) 2006 Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives, Past and Present (London/
New York: T&T Clark).
Blenkinsopp, J. 2004 Treasures Old and New: Essays in the Theology of the Pentateuch (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
Bouma-Prediger, S. 2001 For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic).
Conradie, E.M. 2001 Ecological Theology: An Indexed Bibliography (Study Guides in Religion and
Theology 3; Bellville, South Africa: University of the Western Cape).
Conradie, E.M. 2004 ‘Towards an Ecological Biblical Hermeneutics: A Review Essay on the Earth
Bible Project’, Scriptura 85: 123–35.
De Vos, P., Wilkinson, L. and Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship 1980 Earthkeeping: Christian
Stewardship of Natural Resources (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
Dyer, K.D. 2002 ‘When is the End Not the End? The Fate of Earth in Biblical Eschatology (Mark 13)’,
in N.C. Habel and V. Balabanski (eds), The Earth Story in the New Testament (The Earth
Bible, 5; London/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 44–56.
Earth Bible Team, The 2000a ‘Guiding Ecojustice Principles’, in N.C. Habel (ed.), Readings from
the Perspective of Earth (The Earth Bible, 1; Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic
Press/Pilgrim Press): 38–53.
Earth Bible Team, The 2000b ‘Conversations with Gene Tucker and Other Writers’, in N.C. Habel
and S. Wurst (eds), The Earth Story in Genesis (The Earth Bible, 2; Sheffield/Cleveland, OH:
Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 21–33.
Earth Bible Team, The 2002 ‘Ecojustice Hermeneutics: Reflections and Challenges’, in N.C. Habel
and V. Balabanski (eds), The Earth Story in the New Testament (The Earth Bible, 5; London/
Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 1–14.
Finger, T. 1998 Evangelicals, Eschatology, and the Environment (The Scholars Circle; Wynnewood,
PA: Evangelical Environmental Network).
Granberg-Michaelson, W. (ed.) 1987 Tending the Garden (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
12 Ecological Hermeneutics

The Green Bible. New York/London: HarperCollins, 2008.

Habel, N.C. 2000a ‘Introducing the Earth Bible’, in N.C. Habel (ed.), Readings from the Perspective
of Earth (The Earth Bible, 1; Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim
Press): 25–37.
Habel, N.C. (ed.) 2000b Readings from the Perspective of Earth (The Earth Bible, 1; Sheffield/
Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press).
Habel, N.C. (ed.) 2001 The Earth Story in Psalms and Prophets (The Earth Bible, 4; Sheffield/
Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press).
Habel, N.C. 2008 ‘Introduction’, in N.C. Habel and P. Trudinger (eds), Exploring Ecological
Hermeneutics (SBLSS 46; Atlanta: SBL): 1–8.
Habel, N.C. and Balabanski, V. (eds) 2002 The Earth Story in the New Testament (The Earth Bible,
5; Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press).
Habel, N.C. and Trudinger, P. (eds) 2008 Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics (SBLSS 46; Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Literature).
Habel, N.C. and Wurst, S. (eds) 2000 The Earth Story in Genesis (The Earth Bible, 2; Sheffield/
Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press).
Habel, N.C. and Wurst, S. (eds) 2001 The Earth Story in Wisdom Traditions (The Earth Bible, 3;
Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press).
Hall, D.J. 1990 [1982] The Steward: A Biblical Symbol Come of Age (revised edn; Grand Rapids,
MI/New York: Eerdmans/Friendship Press).
Horrell, D.G. 2010a ‘The Green Bible: A Timely Idea Deeply Flawed’, Expository Times 121:
180–86.
Horrell, D.G. 2010b The Bible and the Environment: Towards a Critical Ecological Biblical
Theology (Biblical Challenges in the Contemporary World; London/Oakville, CT: Equinox).
Horrell, D.G., Hunt, C. and Southgate, C. 2008 ‘Appeals to the Bible in Ecotheology and
Environmental Ethics: A Typology of Hermeneutical Stances’, SCE 21: 219–38.
Horrell, D.G., Hunt, C. and Southgate, C. 2010 Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in an Age of
Ecological Crisis (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press).
Lohfink, N. 1994 Theology of the Pentateuch: Themes of the Priestly Narrative and Deuteronomy,
tr. L.M. Maloney (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Lucas, E. 1999 ‘The New Testament Teaching on the Environment’, Transformation 16.3: 93–99.
McKibben, B. 1994 The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans).
Moo, D.J. 2006 ‘Nature in the New Creation: New Testament Eschatology and the Environment’,
JETS 49: 449–88.
Orr, D.W. 2005 ‘Armageddon Versus Extinction’, Conservation Biology 19: 290–92.
Palmer, C. 1992 ‘Stewardship: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics’, in I. Ball, M. Goodall,
C. Palmer and J. Reader (eds), The Earth Beneath: A Critical Guide to Green Theology
(London: SPCK): 67–86.
Patrick, D. 2001 ‘Divine Creative Power and the Decentering of Creation: The Subtext of the
Lord’s Addresses to Job’, in N.C. Habel and S. Wurst (eds), The Earth Story in Wisdom
Traditions (The Earth Bible, 3; Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim
Press): 103–15.
Russell, D.M. 1996 The “New Heavens and New Earth”. Hope for the Creation in Jewish
Apocalyptic and the New Testament (Studies in Biblical Apocalyptic Literature; Philadelphia,
PA: Visionary Press).
Southgate, C. 2006 ‘Stewardship and its Competitors: A Spectrum of Relationships between Humans
and the Non-human Creation’, in R.J. Berry (ed.), Environmental Stewardship: Critical
Perspectives, Past and Present (London/New York: T&T Clark): 185–95.
White, L., Jr 1967 ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155: 1203–207.
 Part I

Biblical Perspectives
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction to Part I

Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Ecological readings of biblical texts often deal with the twin matters of authority
and accountability. For some, biblical portrayals of a humanity at the centre or apex
of creation have been used to give divine authorization for the relegation of the
rest of the world to a secondary, lesser status. Accordingly, the Bible has been held
accountable by many eco-critics for the ethical devaluation of the environment that
has served to legitimate its ongoing degradation and damage. But the Bible is often
also regarded as an authoritative voice by Christians seeking to protect the environ-
ment from further damage, so that ethical appeals to its religio-cultural authority
and influence are used to evoke in others a biblically and theologically accountable
responsibility for the care of the non-human world. Collectively, the essays gathered
in this section of the volume address questions about the authority and accountability
of the Bible in these broad ways.
But among these contributions, several also engage a third matter alongside
authority and accountability by exploring the extent to which it is appropriate
to appeal to biblical literature in cultivating positive and negative attitudes to the
environment. As will become apparent, many authors here emphasize that the
essential otherness of the ancient worlds giving rise to the biblical texts must be
taken seriously. While this can help disarm the more aggressive and environmentally
damaging appeals to biblical images of a glorious anthropocentrism, it can also create
notable difficulties in trying to use the Bible as an eco-friendly resource. Sophisticated
eco-criticism demands a multivalent and creative approach to these ancient texts in
order to render them more palatable – and useful – to modernist, Western concerns
about the environment and humanity’s role and place within it.
As is well known, the creation story in Genesis 1 has been given particular atten-
tion in the debate concerning the influence of the Bible on human attitudes to the
environment. John Rogerson engages this debate head-on in recognizing that the
language of subjugation used in Genesis 1 to describe the dominant relationship of
humans over non-human creation is not easily softened within its biblical context:
notions of supportive stewardship are not easily derived from this text. Rather,
he argues, it is within the broader narrative context of Genesis 1–9 that a softer
interpretation of humanity’s relationship with non-human creation can and should
16 Ecological Hermeneutics

be located. Read alongside the accompanying stories of humanity’s bad behaviour,

the subsequent flood and the world that emerges from the waters, Genesis 1 images a
world in which humanity’s coercion of non-human creation is to be performed with
reciprocally beneficial generosity in a non-violent world – but this is not the world
experienced by post-diluvian humanity. Instead, the world in which Noah and his
meat-eating, conflict-ready descendants live is a ‘compromise world’, formed and
marked by human violence and exploitation of the non-human creation which was
never intended. Genesis 1 thus functions biblically as a prophetic critique of the actual
state of human behaviour.
One of the most significant aspects of Rogerson’s discussion is the scholarly
honesty with which he engages the biblical text. For him, the language of domination
and subjugation in Genesis 1 is plainly present; it can only be smoothed into a more
palatable form for contemporary concerns by its interpretation within the broader
frame of inter-textual and extra-textual, multivalent critique, which employs not
only theological, ethical and eco-critical strategies, but philosophical and cultural
perspectives too, in acknowledgment that the worlds of human existence envisaged
in Genesis 1 and other biblical texts are not the worlds of contemporary human
experience.
This crucial point is similarly emphasized by Jonathan Morgan, who reminds
us that in engaging biblical texts, Western readers are crossing a cultural divide
to enter ancient worlds in which the norms of our own culture are at a significant
distance from those represented in the biblical literature. In considering the relation-
ship between human and non-human species and the environments they share, he
asks whether the biblical norm of animal sacrifice is inevitably and irreconcilably
at odds with contemporary attempts to construct a biblically-based environmental
ethic. In the eyes of most Western readers, it may be perceived to be so. But this is to
misunderstand the religio-cultural interrelatedness of human and non-human animals
within the cultures giving rise to the biblical material. By focusing on the worldview
of Leviticus, and bringing it into dialogue with Genesis 1–11, Morgan argues that
animal sacrifice functions as an act of humility, deriving from and responding to
an awareness of both the anthropocentric ordering of creation and the human
inclination towards, and perpetuation of, violence. The animal offering is not a
passive, substitutionary victim of human–divine ritual exchange, but an empowered
and empowering high-status member of the Israelite community, which performs
a crucially liminal role humans would be incapable of performing for themselves.
The essential interrelatedness of human and non-human creation is also a focus
of the writings attributed to the Hebrew Bible’s prophets – but perhaps not as
explicitly or self-consciously so as today’s environmentally interested readers might
hope. As John Barton points out, the biblical prophets conventionally located in the
eighth–sixth centuries bce are not so much concerned with environmental ethics as
with inter-personal ethics. Large-scale land acquisition and agricultural exploitation
are condemned, but for the sake of human flourishing, rather than environmental
welfare. And yet the ‘authentic’ writings credited to these prophetic figures are given
 Introduction to Part I 17

a more cosmic scope in their biblical reworking, expansion and reception in the
exilic and post-exilic periods. Indeed, it is the biblical modelling of what has been
called the ‘cosmic covenant’ that images a direct link between human conduct and
universal – and not merely local or national – welfare, with God acting as guarantor
and guardian of this relationship. The cosmos flourishes when in their appropriate
environmental settings humans act harmoniously with one another; it becomes a
disastrous ‘world turned upside down’ when bad behaviour brings about the divine
destabilizing of cosmic order. But while prophetic portrayals of the cosmic covenant
might offer contemporary readers with a care for the environment a more helpful
portrayal of the symbiotic relationship between humanity and the world in which
they live, they nevertheless prioritize divine–human and human–human relationships,
with little direct emphasis on the ‘goodness’ of the non-human creation. The pro-
phetic writings remain therefore limited in the extent to which they may be applied
to modern eco-ethical strategies.
Thus, like Rogerson and Morgan, it is in Barton’s view hermeneutically essential
to recognize and accept the essential ‘otherness’ of the worldviews exhibited in
the biblical texts – despite and because of the problems these texts might pose for
contemporary readers seeking to reconcile or rehabilitate modernist concerns for the
environment with the biblical heritage of the West. But not all biblical texts are as
difficult in this regard. The wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible is now increas-
ingly perceived as a collection of fruitful texts from which to garner positive biblical
perspectives on the environment. Katharine Dell explores the role of the biblical
wisdom tradition within the ecological debate, focusing in particular on the books
of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. While these books tend to exhibit an anthropo-
centric interest, many texts within them are also sharply critical of anthropocentrism.
Significantly, some portray a relationship between the natural world and God that
does not involve humans at all – and might indeed suggest that humans can learn
something from non-human creation about the dynamics of the relationship between
the divine and created worlds. Though the relative absence of ‘national’ and ‘salvific’
themes more common elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (such as temple, covenant,
exodus and exile) might go some way to explain wisdom’s concentrated focus on
cosmological theology, there is also a strong sense in these texts of the inherent value
of the natural world in and of itself, regardless of human interaction with it. Most
important, perhaps, is the repeated and rich portrayal of what Dell describes as ‘a
complex web of life’, in which God is both creator and sustainer of the created world,
but in which humans and non-humans also play vital roles in enabling, maintain-
ing and sustaining the world. At the very least, this worldview has the potential to
engender a humility in contemporary readers which might go some way to temper
the more environmentally destructive aspects of contemporary anthropocentrisms.
It might be argued that the New Testament’s Christologies model another – and
culturally more influential – paradigm of a tempered anthropocentrism to be
welcomed by environmentalism. The figure (and refiguring) of Jesus in these texts
engages complex ideas about the relationship between the divine and created realms,
18 Ecological Hermeneutics

ideas which crucially locate a sense of the potential, limits and impacts of humanity
within a broader, non-human frame, both ‘earthly’ and ‘cosmic’. But again, some
texts are more conducive to an environmentalist reading than others. As Richard
Bauckham observes, the Synoptic Gospels’ somewhat limited portrayal of Jesus’
relationship with non-human creation might be thought to be of little interest or help
in this regard. But for Bauckham, ecological dimensions of the Jesus story can be
identified in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and might indeed go some way
to contributing to a biblically-based theological understanding of humanity’s part
in the rest of creation. The god of Jesus is the creator god familiar from the Hebrew
Bible, who cares for birds and flowers as he also cares for the human creation – they
are all a part of the same created community. Accordingly, Jesus’ portrayed teaching
about the Kingdom of God points not only to the place of non-human creation in the
hoped-for Kingdom, but also indicates that, for the synoptic writers, the coming of
the Kingdom signalled the redemption of the human relationship with the non-human
creation: the coming of the Kingdom of God will not destroy and replace creation,
but will instead renew it in accordance with the divine will. This is anticipated in
some of the miraculous acts credited to Jesus in these texts (including the feeding
miracles in the wilderness), and is also underlined in the depiction of the Kingdom of
God as a peaceable kingdom, in which the conflict between human and non-human
creation in the current world will be absent. Thus in the Synoptic Gospels, it is in the
eschatological dynamics of Jesus’ teaching that an ethical environmentalism might
be most helpfully located and explored.
For Brendan Byrne, the eschatological imaging of cosmic re-ordering forms an
important backdrop to Rom. 8.19-22 – another key biblical text in debates address-
ing the roles of the Bible in environmental ethics. In his essay, Byrne argues that the
‘groaning’ of non-human creation in this text is best understood as a difficult longing
and eager anticipation of a better situation to come, an experience shared by humans
caught in the eschatological overlap between the two ages. Thus for Paul, non-human
creation is intimately bound up with the fate of humans, whether good or bad, so
that human failure impacts negatively on creation, while human restoration will
render the non-human creation positively transformed. This emphasis likely derives
from the tradition articulated in Genesis 1–3, but finds distinctive expression in
Romans in the (notably personified) imaging of non-human creation as an innocent
but hopeful victim of divine punishment for human sin, a punishing process which
renders non-human creation thwarted, on account of its role as the instrument of
God’s retribution. Once again, the interrelatedness of human and non-human crea-
tion comes to the fore, because according to Byrne, the solidarity between the two
is evident in their sharing a ‘common fate’: their purposeful suffering and hopeful
redemption. Importantly, this interrelatedness is not manifested directly, but rather
mediated through the agency of God in both human and non-human creation.
In focusing on the letter to the Colossians, Vicky Balabanski offers nuanced
reflections on the portrayal of what she terms the ‘interconnectedness’ of humanity
and the rest of creation, and its implications for ecological hermeneutics. The crucial
 Introduction to Part I 19

frame for her discussion is the distinctive Hellenistic cosmology the letter assumes
in imaging the ‘world’ in which humanity exists. As she argues, this is a cosmology
notably akin to the ideas about the cosmos and its angelic and astral components that
are evident in the writings of Philo, whose own religio-cultural heritage contained
concepts derived in part from Platonic, Stoic and Babylonian cosmologies. Within
the letter’s rich cosmological frame, it is in Christ that the cause, logic and goal of
the invisible and visible cosmos, and the heavenly and earthly domains, are located
and reconciled. This is both a ‘cosmic Christology’ and a ‘Christological cosmology’
which can offer contemporary readers an instructive understanding of the significance
of the non-human cosmos and humanity’s interaction with it: the cosmic Christ is the
interconnection of all things – heavenly and earthly, material and spiritual. As such,
Balabanski argues, ‘the fabric of the material world cannot be viewed as spiritually
irrelevant’; rather, it must be taken seriously in its divine significance, rendering
redundant the tendency within Western Christianity to prioritize only the divine
and the human at the cost of the rest of the cosmos. While the notion of a cosmic
Christ may be more at home within Eastern Orthodox theologies, it can thus play a
transformative, ecologically beneficial role in the theologies of Western Christianity.
Many of our contributors emphasize the solidarity of the divine and non-divine,
and the human and the non-human, in searching out texts offering a plausible or per-
suasive biblical basis on which to construct an environmental ethic. But in some cases,
this solidarity is set within the context of cosmic dissolution, and thus might be held
to engender and even endorse a destructive attitude to the environment, particularly
among some Christians awaiting the eschaton. Edward Adams deals with one such
example in his discussion of 2 Pet. 3.5-13, a passage in which it is claimed that the
heavens and the earth will be dissolved in fire, to be replaced by new heavens and a
new earth. Adams explores whether this text can bear the interpretative load placed
upon it by recent commentators who seek to characterize this vision as an image of
transformation (renewal), rather than destruction – and argues it cannot. ‘Special
pleading’ cannot rehabilitate this difficult text for a pro-environmentalist agenda;
nor indeed should it be marginalized or ignored, as some might prefer. Rather, its
portrayal of cosmic destruction and its new and subsequent creation should be
recognized and addressed directly. In doing so, Adams argues that 2 Pet. 3.5-13
is not empty of eco-ethical potential: the intrinsic value of the earthly realm is not
cheapened by this eschatological text, for the earth is not held to be inherently evil;
the cosmic dissolution is not an end in itself, but a means to a new earthly future, as
well as new heavens; and in 2 Peter (perhaps most importantly) the approaching end
does not encourage or allow for the abandonment of humanity’s ethical obligations.
In exhibiting a diverse range of approaches and emphases in their eco-critical
engagement with biblical literature, these essays share a view that a biblically-based,
contemporary environmental ethic cannot rely on a simplistic or selective reading of
texts. As ancient and complex literature, the biblical texts are essentially distanced
and therefore limited in their direct cultural relevance to contemporary socio-political
and ecological concerns. It is only through constructive and critical use – that is,
20 Ecological Hermeneutics

through the agency of human readers – that the biblical texts can contribute some-
thing to contemporary ecotheology.
This focus on human agency and responsibility dovetails with the Bible’s own
anthropocentrism. Several essays here engage explicitly with the benefits and limita-
tions of this anthropocentrism, while others emphasize the biblical portrayal of
humanity as a part of an interrelated cosmos, in which the human and non-human,
the divine and non-divine, the material and non-material, are bound up together
as a dynamic whole. But while this emphasis can go some way to reframe the
human-centredness of the biblical literature, our contributors would likely agree that
it is unable to liberate the non-human world from its reliance upon representation
by humans – both within and beyond the Bible. After all, human concerns set the
agenda for both biblical writing and interpretation, as much as they set the agenda
for both environmental damage and protection. Any depictions of the ‘environment’,
or of ‘nature’, and any construals of human responsibilities towards it, are of course
human constructions, voiced by humans.
 Chapter 1

The Creation Stories: Their Ecological

Potential and Problems

John W. Rogerson

For most of the history of western civilization the Old Testament creation stories,
especially those in Genesis 1, have been viewed with great respect because of the
belief that they give an accurate account of how God created the universe. That
belief was gradually abandoned by biblical scholars in the nineteenth century, but it
enjoys currency today in the challenge to Darwin’s theory of natural selection that
is mounted by advocates of various types of ‘creationism’. That debate is no part of
the present chapter (see the illuminating account of the origins of ‘creationism’ in
McCalla 2006). The concern here is rather with the debate that has raged around
Genesis 1 in recent discussions about the ecological crisis faced by the world today.
Rightly or wrongly, an article published by Lynn White in 1967 has been taken as
the starting point for a modern debate that has held Christianity in general and the
biblical creation narratives in particular to be responsible for the current ecological
crisis (White 1967). Writing as a professor of medieval history and a churchman,
White stressed the need for greater knowledge of the history of technological change,
and he sketched some key moments, as he saw them. He made a distinction between
the Latin West, the site of the most significant developments, and the rest of the
then-civilized world. Crucial to the march of technological progress, in White’s view,
was a belief in perpetual progress, derived from Judeo-Christian theology. This was
further exacerbated by what White saw as an essentially anthropocentric view of
the world that was contained in the biblical creation stories, and which taught that
the universe was created solely for the benefit of humanity. If it was the case that
modern science and technology were a realization of the Christian view of humanity’s
God-given mastery over the natural world, then Christianity, and by implication the
biblical creation stories, bore a huge burden of guilt for the present ecological crisis.
White’s charge – that a Christian anthropocentric view of the natural world was
in some way responsible for the ecological crisis – was taken up by others (see the
brief survey in Santmire 1985: 1–7) and linked specifically by Paul Santmire to the
work of two prominent Old Testament scholars, G. E. Wright and Gerhard von Rad
(Santmire 185: 187–92). Both were accused of downgrading the natural world by
their emphasis on history, and the assertion that God had revealed himself to Israel
through historical processes and traditions rather than through nature.
22 Ecological Hermeneutics

The discussion was not confined to North America. In 1972 the German writer
on ecology Carl Amery published a book which held Judaism and Christianity to
be responsible for the view that there could and should be unlimited and continu-
ous economic and technological growth (Amery 1972). This produced a response
from the Old Testament scholar Norbert Lohfink (1977: 156–71). Lohfink felt
it necessary to deal with the interpretation of one particular verse in Genesis 1,
a verse which seemed to ‘justify’ the criticism being made against Judaism and
Christianity:

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of
the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.
(Gen. 1.28)

Lohfink dealt first with the charge that the creation of humans in the divine image
(Gen. 1.27) forged a gulf between humanity and the rest of the natural order. In fact,
the passage had to be understood in the context of creation stories found among
Israel’s neighbours in the ancient world, in which human beings were created by
the gods in order to do the hard and menial tasks that the gods did not wish to
undertake themselves. The passage about the divine image in humanity was meant
to bestow a dignity upon human beings, something lacking in the worldviews of
Israel’s neighbours. It had nothing to do with creating a gulf between humanity and
the rest of nature.
Secondly, Lohfink distinguished between command and blessing in relation to
the words about being fruitful and multiplying. He noted that they were preceded
immediately by the phrase ‘And God blessed them and said . . .’. There was there-
fore not a command to the whole of humanity for all time to continue to multiply.
God’s blessing was designed to enable the human species to become viable and was
considered to have been fulfilled in Exod. 1.7, which describes the Israelites in Egypt
as having been fruitful and having multiplied. Lohfink turned his attention next to
the two Hebrew verbs kabash and radah in Gen. 1.28, verbs normally rendered as
‘subdue’ and ‘have dominion’. The basic sense of kabash, he argued, was to put the
foot on something, in the sense of claiming ownership. In Gen. 1.28, therefore, the
translation ‘subdue it [the earth]’ gave a false impression. It had to do with taking
possession of the earth, as in Josh. 18.1 where ‘the land lay subdued before them’
meant ‘the land lay under their feet’, i.e. they had taken possession of it. The verb
radah had a semantic field that included accompanying, shepherding, leading, com-
manding. It belonged to the cluster of ideas common in the ancient world where
the notions of ruler and shepherd were linked together. ‘Have dominion’, therefore,
implied tender, sympathetic rule. Whether Lohfink made a convincing case for his
understanding of kabash and radah is something that must be considered later.
One of Lohfink’s most interesting arguments and one that, again, will be con-
sidered more fully later, was that those who took Gen. 1.28 to be a command to
humanity to multiply for all future generations overlooked the fact that Gen. 1.29
 The Creation Stories 23

presupposed the existence of a world in which humans would be vegetarians:

Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of the earth and
every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.

Would those who made such play out of Gen. 1.28 also argue that in all future
generations, humans everywhere should be vegetarians? Dismissing the idea as
absurd, Lohfink went on to point out the important contrast between Gen. 1.30
with its vegetarianism, and Gen. 9.3, which gave permission to human beings to
eat (kosher) meat, and which, in verse 2, described an enmity between humans and
the other living creatures. This latter state of affairs corresponded to the world of
human affairs, which meant that Gen. 1.28-30 was prophetic in envisaging a world
in which humans and animals lived in mutual harmony. This fact was of fundamental
importance for any understanding of Genesis 1.
What has been written so far can be taken as an introduction to the chapter. In
what follows there will be four sections, dealing with the history of the modern idea
of the subordination of nature to human interest, the interpretation of Genesis 1 in
the context of the narrative structure of Genesis 1–9, a view of the current ecological
crisis and a return to Genesis 1 in the light of this.

Any reconstruction of the history of ideas is bound to be subjective, and this will
be true of what is said here. Also, the questions of influence, and how far alleged
influences can be said to bear burdens of guilt for subsequent developments, are
very slippery indeed. This section will confine itself to some observations drawn
from Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, published in 1989. Taylor’s stated aim was
to describe the phenomena of modernity, especially modern identity, stressing and
exploring the significant differences between the moral world of ‘moderns’ and that
of previous civilizations (Taylor 1989: x, 3, 11). A long section is devoted to Descartes
and to how, in Taylor’s view, Descartes transformed a tradition of introspection that
went back through Augustine to Plato (139–58). Prior to Descartes, introspection
(‘inwardness’ as Taylor calls it) had among other things viewed the natural world as
an arena in which signs of God’s presence and work could be discerned. The change
brought about by Descartes was to use the faculty of reason that was disclosed by
introspection as the main or even sole arbiter in determining what was true. This
‘disengaged reason’ as Taylor calls it (disengaged from the outside world) led to a
radically different understanding of the world of nature. It was no longer something
to be contemplated; it was objectified. It was to be understood mechanistically; it
became ‘disenchanted’. Here was that ‘instrumental reason’ which would underlie
the advances in technology that would ultimately bring the world to an ecological
crisis. As Taylor remarks in a later section
24 Ecological Hermeneutics

We who think, and see, have a glimpse of how deep the roots are of our fragile consciousness,
and how mysterious and strange its emergence is. This spiritual attitude is in exact contradic-
tion to the Cartesian. There the dominant idea is of the purity of thinking being, of its utter
heterogeneity from blind physical nature, and of its transcendently higher status. (347)

To what extent can Christianity and Genesis 1 be blamed for this transformation
of the understanding of nature and all that flowed from it via Locke, the Deists and
others? Taylor acknowledges that it was within Christian culture that these develop-
ments took place; that behind the Cartesian turn stood Augustinian inwardness.
‘The disengaged subject stands in a place already hollowed out for God; he takes
a stance to the world which befits an image of the Deity’ (315). Yet what arises
within Christian culture is transformed by what Taylor calls a mutation ‘which will
carry it outside Christian faith altogether’ (315). But of course, this ‘secularizing’,
rationalizing trajectory was not the only one to stem from Descartes, and Taylor
devotes space to what he calls the ‘Expressionist Turn’, something exemplified in
Herder, the German Romantics, and Wordsworth, to name but a few. Nature ceases
to be merely a machine that can be observed, mastered and exploited for human
ends. It becomes an enigma that can only begin to be understood if one participates
in it. It is necessary for new forms to be created in poetry and art in order to bring
to expression what arises from an engagement with nature in all its manifestations
(see Taylor 1989: 379–81). What this brief reference to Taylor’s wide-ranging and
profound book indicates is that reconstructions of the history of ideas in relation to
the alleged responsibility of Christianity for the ecological crisis cannot afford to be
simplistic and one-dimensional if they are to be convincing, and to make a contribu-
tion to the ecological debate.

II

The fact that Gen. 1.29 appears to command human beings to use a vegetarian
diet, while the permission to eat meat is given only after the flood, at 9.3, is no new
discovery. The Babylonian Talmud records a discussion of the matter among Rabbis
of the third century ce (Sanh. 59b). One of the points of discussion was whether the
eating of fish was allowed before the flood, the point being that at Gen. 9.3 there is
a specific warning that meat with blood in it is not to be eaten. If it was the case that
fish had no blood, were humans allowed meat as food before the flood? Protestant
commentators from the Reformation onwards were uncertain as to how to interpret
the verse. Because it was stated that Abel brought the firstlings of his flock as an
offering to God (Gen. 4.4) it was assumed that before the flood the earliest humans
killed animals in order to sacrifice them, and that they may also have eaten part of
what was sacrificed. The Puritan commentator Matthew Poole was representative of
opinion with the words, ‘It is neither affirmed nor denied that flesh was granted to
the first men for food, and therefore we may safely be ignorant of it. It is sufficient
 The Creation Stories 25

for us that it was expressly allowed, Gen.ix.3’ (Poole 1962 [1685]: 5). Scholars in
the nineteenth century took a more robust view of the matter. Adam Clarke had no
doubt that the first humans were vegetarians (Clarke 1825: ad loc.) and added the
significant point ‘it may be inferred from this passage, that no animal whatever was
originally designed to prey on others’. A detailed discussion along similar lines was
offered by Franz Delitzsch (1853: 113–15). The question of whether the animals were
herbivores before the flood was rarely dealt with; the whole discussion was sometimes
affected by the fact that there is no explicit reference to animals being allowed to eat
meat in Genesis 9. Of course, this discussion was effected by the belief, that prevailed
in the nineteenth and earlier centuries, that Genesis 1 was an authoritative account
of how God had actually created the universe. Once this belief was abandoned it was
possible to draw other conclusions, conclusions that arguably made it more likely
that the original intentions of the biblical writer(s) were being understood.
Before this step is considered, however, a slight digression is necessary. The origi-
nal charge of White was that the anthropocentric view of the creation narrative in
Genesis 1 had led via Christianity to the modern view that humanity had the right to
exploit the natural world for its own benefits. Lohfink sought to rebut that charge (in
its German form) by arguing that Genesis 1 enjoined a pastoral, supportive role for
the human created order, not a domineering, exploitative role. His defence raises two
questions: did he succeed in rescuing Genesis 1 from the charges brought against it,
and, second, if he did, did this decide the matter? It has to be allowed as a possibility
that even if the writer(s) of Genesis 1 intended it to be read in the way that Lohfink
suggested, the passage may still have been misunderstood by later interpreters, and
this misunderstanding may have been responsible for the development of the alleged
Christian anthropocentric view of things.
In answer to this first question, the view taken here is that Lohfink’s discussion
of the verbs kabash and radah is not convincing. Without going into a detailed
examination of the fourteen occurrences of kabash and the twenty-four occurrences
of radah in the Bible in Hebrew, there are no indisputable instances of the verbs
being used in the way claimed by Lohfink.1 If kabash indeed had a basic meaning of
‘placing the foot upon’, this is almost always in a hostile manner. Usage in the Bible
leads inevitably to the ‘basic meaning’ of kabash being ‘to subdue, to subjugate’.
Similarly, the usage of radah points inevitably to the senses ‘have dominion’, ‘rule’,
‘dominate’ (see Brown et al. 1953: 921–22). If there is any way of ‘softening’ the
implication of these verbs, it must be by way of interpreting them in the context of
the narrative structure of Genesis 1–9, as will be argued shortly. With regard to the
second question, it has already been argued in the previous section that the history of
the roots of the ecological crisis is complex and many-faceted. Even if the crisis has
its origins in Christian culture, there have been ‘mutations’ which have taken theory
and practice into areas that cannot justifiably be called Christian.

1 For an exhaustive discussion of radah and kabash see Neumann-Gorsolke 2004: 204–29
and 274–300, respectively.
26 Ecological Hermeneutics

It is time to return to Gen. 1.29-30 and their implications in the light of the nar-
rative structure of Genesis 1–9. If, as pointed out above, the vegetarian implications
of Gen. 1.29 have long been noted and discussed, it is only comparatively recently
that scholars have taken seriously the implication of Gen. 1.30 that the animals as
well as the humans were not permitted to eat meat.2 One of the most subtle and
persuasive discussions of this subject is by Pierre Beauchamp (1987). For him, the
verses concerning the animals (the non-human living creatures) are crucial because
they help to define what it means to be human. In Gen. 9.2 it is stated that ‘the fear
of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth . . .’. This is the
prelude to humanity being granted permission to eat meat in the following verse. The
issue is thus not merely one of what it is permitted to eat; it is about relationships
between human and non-human living creatures. The fact that, after the flood, this
relationship is one of fear and mutual enmity indicates that prior to the flood, the
relationship was one of mutual harmony. The vegetarian regime in Gen. 1.29-30 is a
way of describing a world that is in harmony with itself, a world without ‘nature red
in tooth and claw’. This is of importance for the understanding of the verbs kabash
and radah because whatever they may mean in other contexts, in Genesis 1 they occur
in the context of a non-violent world. Any coercive sense that they possess has to be
understood in a non-violent way. Beauchamp writes of Genesis 1:

It is able to believe that a mastery over the earth is possible without exercising a mastery over
the other beings, who are intermediate beings between the master and the earth . . . The Bible
does not think of peace between human beings without peace between humans and animals.3
(1987: 170, 180; my translation)

In this connection it is noteworthy that in the visions of a renewed created order

in Isa. 11.1-9 and 65.17-25 the vegetarian order returns, in the sense that animals
that are normally carnivores or predators are depicted as lying down together, while
the lion will eat straw like the ox. The child will not be attacked by the snake (Isa.
11.7-8; 65.25). These things exemplify the promise ‘they shall not hurt or destroy in
all my holy mountain’ (Isa. 11.9; 65.25).
What is clear from these observations is that whatever else Genesis 1 may describe,
it is not the world of our experience. That world, in which there is enmity between
a meat-eating humanity and the animals, and among the animals themselves, comes
into existence only after the flood. Gen. 9.1-7 is meant to be read over against
Gen. 1.27-30. The latter is a prophetic text, describing an ideal that is not realized in
the world of actual human experience. A reading of the opening chapter of Genesis
in this way was impossible as long as it was believed that Genesis 1 was an account

2 For a contrary view and wide-ranging discussion see Neumann-Gorsolke, 2004: 233–70.
3 ‘elle a pu faire croire qu’un maîtrise de la terre était possible sans que fût exercée une maîtrise
sur d’autres êtres, intermédiares entre le maître et la terre . . . La Bible ne pense pas la paix
entre les hommes sans la paix de l’homme avec l’animal.’
 The Creation Stories 27

of how God brought the universe into being. This is no doubt one reason why com-
mentators such as Poole preferred to be agnostic about whether Gen. 1.29 prescribed
vegetarian fare for human beings. The abandonment of the belief that Genesis 1 is an
accurate account of the creation of the universe has made possible a reading that is
closer to the intention of the biblical writer(s). No doubt he or they also believed that
Genesis 1 described how God created the universe; but the chapter was not intended
to be natural science. It was myth in the sense of being a narrative set in beginning
time whose purpose was to describe how and why things experienced by humanity
came to be as they were. The narrative structure of Genesis 1–9 made it clear that the
world of human experience was not as God intended it to be. That was the world of
Genesis 1, a world that had been so corrupted by human wickedness that God had
had to destroy it by means of a flood, after which a compromise world was set up,
one which allowed for the fact that it contained, in the human species, an animal
that was determined to exploit and dominate other living creatures. These other
animals were now allowed to defend themselves on the basis of the fear that existed
between them and human beings. Genesis 1 read in the context of Genesis 9 is not a
mandate for the human exploitation of the world; it is a critique of the actual state
of human behaviour. This does not mean, however, that it cannot be used in modern
discussions about the ecological crisis, as will be shown in the concluding sections.

III

In his Ökologie, Naturschutz, Umweltschutz, the German environmental scientist

Ragnor Kinzelbach outlines two main approaches to thinking about, and seeking
to deal with, the current environmental crisis (Kinzelbach 1995). What is common
to them is their analysis of the causes of the crisis, namely, over-population and
over-production, and the consequent divergence of the human economic system from
the ecosystems of the natural world so that the ecosystems are under threat from the
economic systems. The first strategy for dealing with the problem he describes as die
ökologische Versöhnungsstrategie, the strategy of reconciling the economic systems
with the ecosystems. This involves the following goals, and means to their attain-
ment. First, the protection of nature and its environments, including the protection
of land, air and water and the animal and plant worlds, against the harmful effects of
human use of these things (111). Secondly, a restriction on or reduction of population
growth and a reversal of the cycles of economic over-production. Needless to say,
this latter goal has consequences for the lifestyles especially of those who live in the
affluent parts of the world (139–44). Third, a drastic recasting of financial systems
so that it becomes clear who, and what practices, are responsible for environmental
degradation, so that those responsible can be penalized financially.
On the matter of protecting the natural world Kinzelbach points out that this
amounts to an intervention on the part of the human species. During the history
of the world many species have become extinct either because of regional or global
28 Ecological Hermeneutics

changes of temperature, etc., or because they have been unable to protect themselves
against other species. The modern protection of species implies a recreation of the
natural world in the image of those doing the protecting; and it can be added that if,
say, aboriginal peoples were doing the recreating of nature in their image, it might
work out differently from the results produced by modern Western environmental-
ists. Put another way, protection of nature is essentially protection of humanity
(Kinzelbach 1995: 116), which does not invalidate it, but raises the question of the
nature of the human species that is protecting itself via the protection of nature.
This assertion of the subjective element in nature preservation leads Kinzelbach
to make observations about two assumptions which are often part of the ‘reconcili-
ation with nature’ strategy. The first is that nature has intrinsic value; the second is
that it maintains a kind of equilibrium that human economic activity has disturbed,
and which human action must try to restore. Both assumptions are questionable,
according to Kinzelbach. The first is based upon a sentimental view of nature which
ignores its violent manifestations such as earthquakes, floods and outbreaks of deadly
diseases. The second view, that concerning equilibrium, is too simplistic and needs
to be replaced by a dynamic model in which the system is constantly changing by
means of diversification and adaptation, something that has been going on for the
entire history of the world. Kinzelbach makes a nice German distinction between
Da-Sein and So-Sein, between what is actually in existence (Da-Sein) and what people
would ideally like to exist or to remain in existence (So-Sein) (1995: 136–37). The
strategy of ‘reconciliation with nature’ will be flawed if nature is seen as a benign
system in harmony with itself. It must rather be seen as an ongoing and dynamic
process, not a condition.
These observations lead to a second strategy outlined by Kinzelbach, and the
one he prefers, die ökologische Entwicklingsstrategie, the ecological development
strategy. What this boils down to is that humanity can only save itself and the world
that it inhabits, first, by emancipating itself from nature, and secondly, by steering
nature in a direction determined by human values. This, however, raises the question
of the nature of humanity and its values, and calls, in the view of Kinzelbach, for
a new conception of the nature of humanity and the structure of its society in the
world of the future (1995: 166).

IV

Kinzelbach’s alternative strategy, that the solution to the ecological crisis is for
humanity to save itself from the world by emancipating itself from nature and by
steering it in a direction determined by human nature, suggests a way of returning
to Genesis 1 and the verbs kabash and radah. The element of coercion implied by
the Hebrew verbs cannot be denied but, as argued above, that element of coercion
appears in a different light when read in the context of the vegetarian, conflict-free
world implied in Genesis 1. Kinzelbach’s preferred option would be disastrous if
 The Creation Stories 29

the human values that steered the natural world were those of a humanity driven
by greed and exploitation, a humanity that continued to fell rainforests, pollute the
atmosphere and was indifferent to thousands of deaths each day in road accidents.
This, of course, is not what is intended. As Kinzelbach says at the end of his book,
‘the overcoming of the ecological crisis requires a new conception of the nature of
humanity and of the structure of the world community of the future’ (Kinzelbach
1995: 166, my translation).4 This is arguably what Genesis 1, seen as a prophetic
text, is about. Read against Gen. 9.1-4 it is a critique of the world that humanity’s
wickedness has brought about. It is a challenge to create a human society that will
be capable of living in a world that is the kind of world that God intends.
One of the ways in which this is to be done in the Old Testament is by ‘imposing’
gracious behaviour on the natural world behaviour, drawn from the experience
of the people of God as the recipients of divine graciousness. A locus classicus is
Exod. 23.9-12 which reads as follows in my translation:

A stranger you shall not treat harshly. You know what it is like to be a stranger, for you were
strangers in the land of Egypt. Six years you may sow your land and harvest its produce,
but in the seventh you shall let it lie fallow and leave it unattended. The poor of your people
shall eat from it, and what remains may be eaten by the wild animals. You shall do the same
to your vineyard and to your olive orchard. For six days you may do your work, but on the
seventh day you shall desist, so that your ox and your ass may have rest and your slave and
the stranger resting with you may refresh themselves.

The passage begins with a command that the Israelites must deal graciously with
strangers, that is, Israelites or non-Israelites who are estranged from their families and
taking refuge with those who are not their kin. The command is grounded in the fact
that the Israelites were themselves estranged in Egypt. Also implied is the fact of their
having been freed from Egyptian enslavement by the gracious act of God. Both their
sympathy born of suffering and their gratitude for deliverance must be translated
into generosity towards others. But not just towards others. This generosity must
also be extended to the natural order.
The origins of the sabbatical year for agriculture have been sought in ancient
tabu practices that set a boundary against the extent to which humans could use
nature for their own purposes (Albertz 1998: 394). The addition of vineyards and
oliveyards, and the injunction to allow the poor and wild beasts to eat the produce
from the sabbatical year would therefore be later developments, as would the linking
of these practices with the exodus story. But the end result is a theologizing which is
impressive and calls for attention.
Because of the lack of fertilizers in ancient Israel, fields were fallowed every other
year, which means that the sabbatical year was not an agricultural necessity made into

4 ‘zur Behebung der ökologischen Krise bedarf es eines neuen Entwurfes vom Bild des
Menschen und von der Struktur der Weltgesellschaft der Zukunft.’
30 Ecological Hermeneutics

a theological virtue. No doubt it helped fields to recover their growing potential, but
this was not the primary purpose. The primary purpose was to establish and preserve
a triple relationship between God, the users of the land and the land itself, where the
limits set upon the use of the land also contributed to human self-understanding by
setting limits to human ambition. This is indicated by the later addition of vineyards
and olive orchards to the text, things that do not need to be fallowed every seven
years to assist their growing potential. These items are most likely to have been added
to the text in the post-exilic period when land use in Judah seems to have switched
from the growing of barley (its main cereal crop) to the production of oil and wine.
The continuation of the passage to embrace the weekly sabbath moves in the same
direction, that of imposing upon the use of domesticated animals – a practice derived
from compassion and graciousness. The first stated beneficiaries of the sabbath rule
in Exod. 23.12 are the ox and the ass.
There are, of course, other well-known passages in which compassion for aspects
of the natural order are enjoined. Deut. 20.19-20 forbids the felling of fruit trees that
belong to a city that is besieged in warfare. Trees which do not yield fruit may be
used to build siege works, but trees are not otherwise to be felled. As the most recent
research indicates, this injunction was not simply an expression of solidarity with
the world of nature; it was also a way of expressing outrage at the military practices
of the neo-Assyrian empire, which showed no mercy either to human foes or the
world of nature. Eckhart Otto in his recent Krieg und Frieden in der Hebräischen
Bibel und in Alten Orient not only quotes from Assyrian texts which boast about the
wholesale destruction of fruit trees, and indeed of anything that produced food for
human consumption; he also reproduces a scene from an Assyrian relief which shows
Assyrian soldiers felling the fruit trees outside a besieged city (Otto 1999: 99–100).
However, the Hebrew legislation is not simply an outraged human reaction against
brutal practices; it is driven by the divine command for compassion rooted in God’s
act of compassion in freeing his people from slavery; and the same motive is behind
the injunction in Deuteronomy 22 which commands compassionate treatment for
straying and lost animals, animals that have fallen down in some way, mother birds
with their young and asses that must not be made to plough with the much stronger
oxen.
These passages are arguably the best commentary on the verbs kabash and radah
in Genesis 1. The passages do not describe a humanity exploiting the natural world
and its non-human creatures but rather a humanity exercising a gracious role in an
otherwise cruel world, inspired by narratives and cultural memories about God’s
compassionate action in freeing a people from slavery. Taken together with Genesis 1
they offer a challenge to modern practice. Most of us do not possess slaves, or fields,
or vineyards or domesticated animals that plough and carry heavy loads; but we
are challenged to ask what narratives and values we need to bring to bear if we are
to save the world by the way we treat and shape it. We cannot avoid the question
‘what does it mean to be human?’ if we agree with Kinzelbach that we need a new
conception of the nature of humanity and the structure of the world community. The
 The Creation Stories 31

ecological crisis is as much a theological matter as a scientific one, which brings us

back, although in a different way, to Lynn White’s claim to see a connection between
the Genesis view of humanity’s place in the world and the present ecological crisis.

References

Albertz, R. 1998 ‘Sabbatjahr’ in Neues Bibel-Lexikon (Vol. 3; Zürich and Düsseldorf:

Benzinger): 394–95.
Amery, C. 1972 Das Ende der Vorsehung. Die gnadenlosen Folgen des Christentums (Reinbeck:
Rowohlt).
Beauchamp, P. 1987 ‘Création et fondation de la loi en Gn 1,1-2,4’ in F. Blanquart (ed.), La Création
dans l’orient ancien (Paris: Cerf): 139–82.
Brown, F., S.R. Driver and C.A. Briggs 1953 [1907] A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old
Testament (Oxford: Clarendon).
Clarke, A. 1825 The Holy Bible vol. 1 (London: Joseph Butterworth and Son).
Delitzsch, F. 1853 Die Genesis ausgelegt (Leipzig: Dörffling und Franke).
Kinzelbach, R. 1995 Ökologie, Naturschutz,Umweltschutz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft).
Lohfink, N. 1977 Unsere großen Wörter. Das Alte Testament zu Themen dieser Jahre (Freiburg:
Herder).
McCalla, A. 2006 The Creationist Debate: The Encounter Between the Bible and the Historical
Mind (London: T&T Clark).
Neumann-Gorsolke, U. 2004 Herrschen in den Grenzen der Schöpfung. Ein Beitrag zur alttesta-
mentlichen Anthropologie am Beispiel von Psalm 8, Genesis 1 und verwandten Texten
(WMANT 101; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener).
Otto, E. 1999 Krieg und Frieden in der Hebräischen Bibel und im Alten Orient. Aspekte für eine
Friedensordnung in der Moderne (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer).
Poole, M. 1962 [1685] A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust).
Santmire, H.P. 1985 The Travail of Nature. The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian
Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress).
Taylor, C. 1989 Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
White, L., Jr 1967 ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155: 1203–207.
 Chapter 2

Sacrifice in Leviticus: Eco-Friendly

Ritual or Unholy Waste?

Jonathan Morgan

In a fascinating scene early on in Nikita Mikhalkov’s beautiful but little-known 1991

film Urga: Close to Eden, Sergei – a Russian, who in the opening moments falls asleep
at the wheel and drives his truck into a lake in the middle of the Mongolian steppe – is
offered hospitality by a local shepherd, Gombo, and his family. While Sergei rests,
Gombo selects and catches a lamb and prepares to kill it. As Sergei looks on from a
distance, Gombo turns the lamb over, sits with one leg across its body to hold it still
and, after making a small incision in its belly, swiftly reaches inside the animal and
manually disconnects the aorta from its heart. The camera cuts to Sergei and we see
that he is severely unsettled by what he is witnessing.
As Gombo and his wife Pagma go about draining the blood, removing the organs
and feet and skinning the lamb, Sergei becomes increasingly uncomfortable until,
at the point where the couple instruct their young children to help with the work of
preparing the animal, he turns away in dismay and disgust. Once the food is ready,
Sergei refuses to join the family for the meal, choosing to remain outside and eat
from a packed lunch salvaged from his truck. After it becomes clear that the family
will not eat without him, and indeed that the lamb has been prepared in his honour,
Sergei reluctantly enters the yurt and shares the food.
It is perhaps no surprise that Urga – a film about a clash of cultures, between
technological and traditional ways of life – begins with two powerful scenes relating
to death. In the other such scene, just prior to the meal, Sergei explains to Gombo, in
a rather panicked way, that there is a human corpse in the grass near to his stranded
vehicle. He is shocked and disconcerted to learn that not only is Gombo aware of this,
but that his uncle is lying there by design – uncovered and face up in accordance with
Mongolian tradition. Beliefs and practices relating to the beginning and end of life
are often those held to be most significant within a culture and also those that carry
the strongest weight of socialization. It strikes Sergei as almost inconceivable that
anyone would deliberately leave a dead body outside, uncovered – to rot, be eaten
by birds and seen by anyone who passes – or that anyone could kill an animal by
tearing open its heart with their hands; yet Gombo is bemused by Sergei’s scandalized
responses to what are, for him, two thoroughly ordinary scenarios.
These two scenes, the meal scene in particular, are, I think, particularly instructive
 Sacrifice in Leviticus 33

for an attempt to relate a contemporary agenda like ecological ethics to ancient

texts regarding animal sacrifice. We must be aware that we, like Sergei, are crossing
a cultural divide, that we approach the texts from a world that, while not totally
discontinuous with that of the text, is significantly removed from it. Furthermore,
we must recognize that the issues surrounding the sacrifice of an animal touch on a
realm that we tend to interpret emotively, instinctively and in line with the norms
of our own culture.
For example, when I recently explained to a friend over a drink that I was writ-
ing about ecological ethics and animal sacrifice, his immediate response was ‘Surely
they’re diametrically opposed?’ When I asked him to expand, he explained that in
his mind being ecological was all about reducing waste, using resources responsibly
and learning that we are not above and beyond nature, but inextricably part of the
ecosystem. When I asked him why he thought animal sacrifice was at odds with this
vision, he paused for a while and then said, ‘Well, it shows that we think of animals
as just another “resource” and as less morally significant than us. I mean, from what
I’ve heard, it was done in a pretty gruesome way and happened an awful lot – neither
of which seem particularly respectful.’ He stopped, took a drink and then added,
‘I wouldn’t mind a sacrifice that was essentially a ceremonial preface to a meal,
but aren’t there some in the Bible where they just burn the whole lot up? That’, he
proclaimed with certainty, ‘is just an unholy waste.’
In this essay I intend to question whether this kind of interpretation of animal sac-
rifice – one that I suspect is fairly typical of those held generally in modern, Western
culture – constitutes an accurate reflection of the ritualistic practices mentioned in
the book of Leviticus. Moreover, I argue that reflections on these practices, and
their wider ideological and cosmological foundations in the priestly writings more
generally, can offer an insight into the priestly understanding of the relationship
between humans and non-human animals which is far more nuanced, intriguing
and (potentially) ecologically valuable than that which is often derived from an
unhelpfully narrow and superficial focus on their apparent assertion of human
dominion over nature. It is my proposal that, rather than being a cruel, wasteful
practice emanating from the logic of human domination, animal sacrifice can be seen
to function in priestly thought as an act of humility, deriving from a keen sense of
human perpetuation of, and culpability for, violence and corruption. In the light of
this, I also question traditional assumptions regarding the substitutionary function,
passivity and victimhood of the sacrificial animal.
The most fundamental challenge that I wish to pose to the kind of analysis with
which my friend confronted me, is the notion that ancient Israelite sacrifice func-
tions as an expression not of domination and disrespect, but of humility. In order
to explore this proposition, we must firstly contextualize the human/non-human
animal dynamic at work in Leviticus’ sacrificial regulations within the more general
priestly conception of the relationship between all animals. In order to do this we
34 Ecological Hermeneutics

must examine various aspects of the myths of pre-history in Genesis 1–11.1

One of the most striking aspects of the priestly creation myth in Gen. 1.1–2.4a
is its description of the vegetarianism of the first humans. Although (infamously)
Gen. 1.28 instructs the humans to rule over both the earth and all non-human
animals, the following verse makes it clear that they are not entitled to eat meat.

God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and
subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over
every living thing that moves upon the earth’. God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant
yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you
shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to
everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every
green plant for food.’ And it was so. (Gen. 1.28-30)2

The key emphasis seems to be that since death and killing are not aspects of this
idealized vision of ‘original’ society, no animals, including humans, are carnivorous.
Although it is obvious, it is perhaps also worth emphasizing that this deathless,
vegetarian scenario signifies that animal sacrifice is also not an aspect of the priestly
myth of origins.3
While the killing and eating of other animals is explicitly not part of the dominion
that they are to exercise, humans are distinguished by virtue of being the only animals
that eat fruits and grains, rather than simply green plants. In the light of verse 29,
therefore, it seems likely that a major part of what is signified by the instruction in
verse 28 to ‘subdue the earth’ is the tilling of the soil to make possible the raising of
fruits and crops (MacDonald 2008: 18). At the heart of what is being communicated
in these verses is the concept that humans are animals whose nature is to be cultured.4
Much to the disappointment of any reader looking for an excuse to stop eating
broccoli, the message is not that humans shouldn’t eat green vegetables because they

1 Working with an interpretative logic that is informed both by a theological emphasis on

canon and by the likelihood of a priestly redaction and arrangement of the Pentateuch, I
consider these chapters – both material which is usually classified as priestly and that tradi-
tionally attributed to other sources – as an invaluable resource for attempting to interpret
and understand the priestly worldview.
2 Biblical quotations are from the NRSV, unless otherwise stated.
3 It is also interesting that while many scholars have noted the apparent presence of temple
imagery in the Edenic narrative (e.g. see Wenham 1986; Stordalen 2000), there does not
appear to be any representation of an altar. In this context, the apparent proposition of a
mythic temple without an altar, and hence without cultic activity, is an intriguing one indeed.
4 A similar argument can be made with regard to God’s clothing of Adam and Eve in Gen. 3.21
– an act (presumably) only made possible by the first animal slaughter.
 Sacrifice in Leviticus 35

are dull or tasteless – although there is certainly an argument for saying that the
ancient Israelites were scornful of them5 – but rather they are not listed as human
food in this situation because they symbolize non-cultivated foodstuffs, not requiring
of agricultural organization. This having been said, there is also crucial metaphorical
significance in the allocation of seed-yielding plants to humans in the light of the call
for them to ‘be fruitful and multiply’. This dual identification of the consumption
of ‘seeds’ with both cultural activity and sexual fecundity functions as an aspect of
a complex subtext in the priestly material concerning the nature of human life and
vocation.
Part of the reason why Gen. 1.28-30 has been disdained in recent times, espe-
cially within ecotheological discourse, is that it is seen as presenting a negatively
anthropocentric understanding of creation that places humanity at the top of a
hierarchy, perched above the creation as its local rulers. It is in my opinion a futile
and disingenuous exercise to attempt to reinterpret the priestly creation myth in order
to insulate it from all the potency of this type of critique. A hierarchical structuring
of creation with human beings at the apex is irrefutably part of the priestly vision.
However, there is more to this material than simply the endorsement of humanity
as the ontological rulers of creation. As such, the interpretation I offer here is not
intended so much as a ‘restoration reading’ as simply a broadened one.
Given the inescapability of the priestly vision of humanity’s ruling status, the
interesting question, the question that we must pursue, is precisely what kind of rule
are humans expected to exercise within the priestly understanding, and just what kind
of relationship between humans and the rest of creation does this dynamic propose?

II

Moving ahead to Genesis 9, we find a rather different situation to the one laid out
in Genesis 1:

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air,
on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are
delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green
plants, I give you everything. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. For
your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and
from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human
life. Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for
in his own image God made humankind. And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the
earth and multiply in it.’ (Gen. 9.1-7)

5 See MacDonald 2008: 18, 28 n.6.

36 Ecological Hermeneutics

Here, in a passage that is very clearly intended to function as a postdiluvian parallel

to Gen. 1.28-30, we find that the prohibition on eating meat has almost completely
evaporated. It appears that only one solitary restriction, a prohibition on the inges-
tion of blood, stands to limit Noah and his sons’ (and presumably their wives’)
consumption of flesh.
Between these two instances of the instruction for human beings to ‘be fruitful
and multiply, and fill the earth’, of course, stands the Edenic myth, and thereafter,
the vignettes that describe the proliferation of sin that causes God to grieve over his
creation and to decide to cleanse the earth with water. In describing the condition of
the antediluvian world, Gen. 6.11-13 states that

The earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw
that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said
to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence
because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth’.

Following the disobedience of Adam and Eve, and first exemplified in the brutality of
Cain’s attack on Abel, violence begins to proliferate and pervades the pre-historical
culture to the point where verse 11 describes the earth as ‘filled with violence
(Hämäs)’. Having begun in human society, as a result of the human disobedience
of divine regulation, violence has here become a part of the reality of the lives of
‘all flesh’ (Gen. 6.12). Although the floodwaters enact the (ritual) purification of
the earth, the violence which brought about its corruption remains a reality of the
postdiluvian world by virtue of its effect on all the animals – human and non-human
– that survived the flood.
As many commentators have argued, this shifting of the boundaries with regard to
human diet reflects a recognition of the need to control the violence that has redefined
the existence of all animals.6 In the same way that dietary distinctions defined the
relationship of humans to non-human animals in Genesis 1, the postdiluvian recourse
to meat eating represents the redefinition of that same relationship.
Whereas in the priestly creation myth humans were distinguished from other ani-
mals on the basis of an emphasis on their unique propensity for enculturation, now
they are to some extent re-equated with them both through the implicit recognition
of a shared tendency towards violence and the explicit reference to the consumption
of green plants in Gen. 9.3. What distinguishes humans now is the fact that they are
permitted to kill and eat animals whereas no one is permitted to kill (or eat) humans.
Where predation and self-defence were not an aspect of the vision of Gen. 1.1–2.4a,
they are an unavoidable reality of the world of Noah and his family. The legiti-
mation of the slaughter and consumption of other animals is apparently now a
necessary aspect of the rule of humanity over the rest of creation. Part catharsis,

6 See Houston 1979: 165–66; 1993: 254–58; Rogerson 1991: 17–25, Anderson 1984: 161–69.
 Sacrifice in Leviticus 37

part self-defence, the practice of meat eating is envisaged as a regulatory measure.

Whereas previously both humans and non-human animals were defined by their
location within the perfection of the divine creation – ‘and indeed, it was very good’
– now, no natural harmony exists between the species. Where once a natural justice
existed with regard to inter-special relations, there is now a need for boundaries to
regulate violence. While the human activity of meat eating serves to regulate the
activity of non-human animals, the prohibition of the consumption of blood stands
to regulate human activity.
As Steven Mason has recently and convincingly argued, this paradigm shift in
the relationship between humans and non-human animals is intimately bound up
with the covenant God makes with Noah. In opposition to the traditional tendency
to interpret God’s commitment never again to flood the earth (Gen. 9:8-17) as a
unilateral promise, Mason posits a bilateral aspect to the covenant as expressed in
verses 1-7 (Mason 2007: 184–95). According to this interpretation, God promises
to never flood the earth again on the condition that human beings take over the role
of controlling the effects of violence by regulating the shedding of blood. Mason’s
proposal has much to commend it, not least the way in which it highlights the density
and scope of the classic priestly commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill
the earth’, frames the apparent connection between the threat from wild animals and
human enemies (e.g. Lev. 26.6, 21-25) and provides an useful context within which
the complex issue of the role of blood in the Hebrew Bible can be explored.
The context of Genesis 9 and the covenant with Noah are therefore vital in terms
of setting animal sacrifice in a wider ideological and cosmological context. Central to
this contextualization is the emphasis on the profundity of the impact of human sin
on the wider created order, and on the relationship between humans and non-human
animals in particular. Furthermore, it sets out and formalizes in covenant form the
deep-rooted connections between the human calling to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, the
need to regulate violence and the killing of animals. However, whereas in the case
of killing animals for food the emphasis is on the maintenance of peace between
humans and non-human animals for the explicit benefit and flourishing of humans,
it is my proposal that the sacrificial killing of animals carries a more complex and
ecologically interesting aspect.

III

Whereas Gen. 9.4 places only one limitation, that of not consuming animal blood,
the system of rules regarding purity and sacrifice set out in Leviticus creates a far
more regulated framework within which this dynamic must operate, reinterpreting
and clarifying the situation further through a re-emphasis on the boundaries that
make creation ordered and good. Just as in the dynamic envisaged by Genesis 9, the
38 Ecological Hermeneutics

functioning of the tabernacle/temple7 in Leviticus relies upon a fundamental recogni-

tion of the corrupting influence of human sin. Central to the texts that describe the
sacrificial tradition stands the insistence that temple practice is a matter of profound
seriousness, indeed of absolute necessity. The fundamental logic that the priestly
instructions regarding sacrifice attest to, reinforce and indeed proceed from, is that
regular, officially sanctioned sacrifice is a fundamental requirement for the proper
functioning of Israelite society and that this is because of the ever-present reality of
human corruption.
The centrality of this notion within the priestly worldview explains how Leviticus
can begin its instructions concerning sacrifice with the words, ‘When any of you
bring an offering of livestock to the LORD . . .’ (Lev. 1.2). Not only is it assumed
that the priesthood, the sanctuary, the whole sacrificial system is necessary, but it is
also assumed that the text’s intended audience recognizes this, or at least accepts it
to be the case without the need for demonstration.
The emphasis on the potency of impurity proceeds from the priestly understanding
of the importance of the presence of YHWH at the heart of the community. While
the whole earth is YHWH’s to roam, and the land of Canaan his home in particular
(Lev. 25.23), within the priestly tradition the tabernacle/temple is the primary loca-
tion of the divine presence (Lev. 26.11-12). The holy of holies is envisaged as the
space in which the human and divine realms meet, and whence the divine holiness
radiates throughout the whole land, purifying and sustaining it (see e.g. Gorman
1997: 10, 13–14, 20).
Impurity, which is in this model the opposite of holiness, inhibits the permeation of
holiness, and can, if things get bad enough, force YHWH to abandon the sanctuary
and cause the people to be ejected from the land.8 This possibility of abandonment
and ejection, which essentially functions as the framework for the priestly interpreta-
tion of the exile, is a threat not just to the people, but to the wider flourishing of
the land and all its inhabitants (see esp. Lev. 18.24-28; 26.19-33).9 The sacrificial
‘system’ that we encounter as readers of Leviticus is a complex set of distinct yet
related ritualistic practices which are only sketchily described and which tend to
wriggle free from attempts at complete schematization. Perhaps the most accurate
generalization we can make is that it is a way of dealing with the consequences of
impurity, and thus avoiding the extreme scenario described in Leviticus 26.
Although it functions as a significant foundation for the notion, simply highlight-
ing the fact that a recognition of the potency and perpetuity of human sin lies at the
heart of Leviticus’ conception of sacrifice does not go far enough to justify my claim
that a sacrifice can be perceived as an act of humility. In order, therefore, to further

7 This composite phrase is used to express the dual emphases derived from both the nar-
ratological and historical locations of Leviticus.
8 The central motif in the book of Ezekiel – cf. Ezek. 8.6, 12; 9.9; 10.18-20; 11.9-12; 12.1-6,
17-20; 15.7; 20.38; 22.15; 39.23.
9 For an account of the potential ecological value of the conception of the land in Leviticus,
see Morgan 2009.
 Sacrifice in Leviticus 39

expand the grounds of this claim, let us consider one particular type of sacrifice set
out in Leviticus – the Ha††a’t, usually translated ‘sin offering’.
According to Leviticus chapters 4, 12, 15 and 16, the sin offering was necessary
to rectify the situation where someone had either unintentionally committed an act
prohibited by the law, was in need of purification as a result of childbirth or genital
discharge or had, as in the case of Aaron’s sons, committed a flagrant and deliberate
violation. Jacob Milgrom has long argued that the translation ‘sin offering’ has fed
the (incorrect) assumption that the ritual focuses on the individual offender and that
the offering functions to rid them of their sin. Departing from this interpretation, he
points out that the blood used in the offering is not applied to the offender, but in
fact to various parts of the sanctuary (depending on the nature of offence). He argues
that while the offender is purified variously by washing, by the passing of time or
by the recognition of their fault, blood is required to purge the sanctuary which has
become corrupted (Milgrom 1991: 254–61).
According to this interpretation, as well as being the earthly dwelling of YHWH
and the location from which the divine holiness emanates, the tabernacle/temple
is also the target of the polluting effect of impurity, which functions as a kind of
miasma, attaching itself to the sanctuary and sancta, polluting them from a distance.
Although Milgrom’s clearly overstated insistence that the Ha††a’t never serves to rid
the impure party of their sin but rather always functions to cleanse the sancta of its
effects has come in for criticism,10 there seems little doubt that his basic proposition
– that the priestly writers conceived of the sanctuary as the primary locus of the pol-
luting effects of sin – is indeed a key concept at work in Leviticus (see Lev. 8.14-15;
15.31; 16.15-19).11
For Milgrom, the recognition of this miasmic quality within the priestly conception
of sin serves as a sharp contrast between Israel and her neighbours. While he argues
that the concept of pollution at a distance is common to many ancient Near Eastern
traditions, he notes that the corruption in question is usually the result of the actions
of demons. By contrast, in the Israelite priestly tradition, concern regarding autono-
mous, malevolent deities or spirits is eclipsed by the recognition of humanity as chief
among the corrupting influences in the world (see Milgrom 1991: 261; 2004: 8–16).
I remain unconvinced by Milgrom’s claim that the notion of autonomous
elemental or spiritual forces in opposition to YHWH is total anathema to the priestly
tradition, and am certainly uneasy about his repeated emphasis on the definite
distinction between Israelite and ‘pagan’ religion. However, despite these concerns,
it seems to me that Milgrom is right to emphasize both the anthropogenic nature of
impurity and its communal affect.
Therefore, it is not simply the case that the people were to be reminded of the
voracity and persistence of sin by the continual functioning of the tabernacle/

10 See Gilders 2004: 28–32, 109–141; Kiuchi 1987: 14–19; Grabbe 1997: 38–43; Jenson
1992:156–60; Willis 2009: 38–40.
11 See Rogerson 1998: 10–11, 255 n.8; 1980: 54.
40 Ecological Hermeneutics

temple, but also that the workings of the system bore testimony to the effects of all
sin beyond the realm of the individual – indeed beyond the realm of human society.
As with the wider priestly conception expressed in Genesis 9, the relentless and cor-
rosive reality of human sin forms the framework within which the relationship of
humans and non-human animals must be brokered. The foremost responsibility for
managing the relationship falls to humans, not simply because of a recognition of
their higher status, but, more significantly, because of their culpability with regard
to the controlling dynamic.
This notion that the sacrificial system served, at least in part, to preserve the purity
of the sanctuary for the benefit not just of the people, but all the inhabitants of the
land – and indeed the land itself – brings us to the core of the claim regarding humil-
ity. Conceiving of the system in this way makes it clear that the priestly conception of
animal sacrifice did not simply displace human responsibility and needlessly victimize
disinterested animals. The animals concerned were not envisaged as external to
the problem; they too were members of the community that would be affected by
YHWH’s abandonment of the sanctuary or the people being evicted by the land.
Some might baulk at this idea of the conception of animals as members of the
community, interpreting it as a modern, fluffy fiction, but once again we must remind
ourselves that, just like Sergei, we carry with us our unspoken cultural assumptions
about the ‘proper’ relationship of humans to animals. The majority of animals used
for sacrifice are what we would call ‘farm animals’: cattle, sheep and goats. While for
the majority of modern, particularly urban, Westerners these animals inhabit a very
different kind of space from people, the realities of ancient Near Eastern life would
have meant (as is indeed the case in many non-urban, non-Western contemporary
settings) that such animals lived in a fashion much more in line with our notion of
‘domestic’ animals. While they would have been far from modern Western pets, they
would certainly not have existed (either physically or ideologically) in an environment
completely separated from the family home.12 It is worth reminding ourselves that
the kind of alienation from the agricultural means of production that occupants of
modern, Western cities have come to regard as normal would have been far from so
for the majority of people since the birth of civilization.
Even if we accept, however, the notion that the practical relationship between an
Ancient Israelite household and its animals, and the ritualistic conception of animals
as part of the community affected by human sin, speaks to a more nuanced, more
interesting relationship between humans and animals at work in the sacrificial system,
we are still left with the question as to why an animal has to die.
The simple answer to the question as to why, for Leviticus, an animal has to die
for a sacrifice to be performed, is that it does not. We must not forget that in Ancient
Israel, ‘sacrifice’ and ‘animal sacrifice’ were not synonymous terms. Setting aside the
broad gamut of activities to which the term sacrifice might be legitimately applied in

12 See Douglas 1966: 54–55; 1999: 149; Rogerson 1998: 13–14.

 Sacrifice in Leviticus 41

what we might think of as a more metaphorical sense, there are, of course, a large
number of ritualistic sanctuary offerings and practices which do not require the
shedding of animal blood.
Significantly, wheat, barley, oil, incense, wine, bread and salt13 are all among the
vegetarian sacrificial equipment sanctioned for use in various circumstances and for
various purposes in Leviticus.14 Furthermore, there are the certain sacrificial rituals
which involve animals, but do not demand their death (e.g. the rites of cleansing in
Lev. 14.1-7 and 48-53, or the mysterious Azazel ritual described in Lev. 16.1-22).
Setting this important point regarding non-animal and non-lethal animal sacrifice
to one side, in the light of what we have already observed I propose that there is a
thread of reasoning by which we might examine those sacrificial activities wherein
an animal was required to die in a way which has the potential to throw them into
an unusual and interesting perspective.
Partly because of certain overarching theological conceptions that many Christians
bring to the Hebrew Bible, and partly due to well-established ideas regarding sacrifice
and ritual in various other periods and cultures, readers of Leviticus often tend
towards interpreting the sacrificial animal as a substitute for the sacrificer. Even if
they are not inclined to think of the animal as literally standing in for a human victim,
often a vaguer conception of symbolic stead directs interpretation. Much is made in
this context of the ‘laying on of hands’ (see Lev. 1.4; 3.2, 8, 13; 4.4, 15, 24, 29, 33;
8.14, 18, 22). Although many commentators have drawn attention to the fact that the
texts that mention this procedure do not allow the reader to draw any firm conclu-
sions regarding its ritualistic function (e.g. Kiuchi 1987: 112–19), it is interesting to
note that many still affirm the assumption that it signifies a substitution.15
The notion of substitution can connote a variety of meanings, some of which will
be more helpful than others in terms of interpreting animal sacrifice in Leviticus. My
reticence to embrace the term derives from both the intense theological meaning with
which it is loaded – meaning which easily has the potential to hijack an interpreta-
tion – and the fact that often the implicit logic of its application is that the sacrificial
animal is essentially an expendable stand-in onto which impurity and/or guilt can be
displaced in order to enable the cleansing (and survival) of the human sinner.
It is my conviction that this kind of interpretation fails to take both the status
and the function of the sacrificial animal within the priestly tradition with the neces-
sary seriousness. For a start, there is good reason to think of the animals that were
suitable for sacrifice as possessing extremely high status. These were highly prized
animals, not only practically but also ritualistically. The instructions are clear that,

13 Note how these are all classic symbols of cultural activity.

14 On the importance of vegetal and liquid offerings see McClymond 2008.
15 A fitting and interesting example is found in Wenham 1995 where the author provides a
fairly nuanced survey of several possible meanings without demonstrating any one to be
compelling, but then appears to revert to the assumption of a broadly conservative and
one-dimensional interpretation. It is also interesting to note the appeal to the story of
Abraham and Isaac (80) – a common yet, I believe, deeply flawed rhetorical move.
42 Ecological Hermeneutics

in order to be acceptable, animals used for sacrifice were to be ‘perfect’ (Lev. 22.21),
‘without blemish’ (Lev. 1.3, 10; 3.1, 6; 4.3, 23, 28, 32; 5.15, 18; 6.6; 9.2, 3; 14.10;
22.19; 23.12, 18.). This insistence is no doubt partly to ensure that weak or lame
animals were not offloaded as offerings (Lev. 22.21-25) – a point which testifies
to the fact that the inherent economic loss to the offerer was not an insignificant
factor.16 However, more fundamentally, the insistence on physical perfection seems
to have been to ensure that the animal was seen as worthy of, and able to live up
to, the cultic role required of it. In order to perform its ritualistic role, the sacrificed
animal needed to be holy. This, in itself, given the seriousness with which the priests
use holiness language and the lengths to which they themselves needed to go in order
to be fit for their work, suggests interesting implications about the perceived status
of such animals.
The role that a sacrificed animal must play is a liminal one; it is required sym-
bolically to span two realms. In priestly thought, such liminality is a deadly serious
matter. Clear boundaries separate life and death, order and chaos, the holy and
the profane; even to approach, let alone transgress, the clearly defined boundaries
between these realms is potentially to jeopardize the very fabric of created reality.
In being able to transgress these boundaries and pass from one realm to the other,
the animal somehow makes possible cleansing from contamination, the restoration
of distinctions between things and thus the right reordering of society (see Davies
1977: 396–97).
It is only by virtue of being a member of the (covenant) community that desires
the presence of God and would suffer from its withdrawal, but not a member of the
community of (immediate) culpability for sin that the animal can play this vital role.
Therefore, far from being a poor substitute, the sacrificed animal is a holy thing that
performs a role on behalf of humans which they could not and could never perform
for themselves. In this sense, if the concept of substitution is at all a helpful one in
this context, we must be clear that rather than being about the importation of a more
disposable alternative to bear the brunt of punishment, it is an exchange that involves
the replacement of a less ritually capable and significant animal (the human) with a
more ritually capable and significant one (the ‘holy’ sheep/bull/goat/bird).
By the same logic, while it is obviously not plausible to think of the selection
process as being on a voluntary basis, it does not seem fitting to me to conceive of the
animal as a ‘sacrificial victim’. It could be argued that if there is a single ‘sacrificial
victim’ it is the human, who is powerless to deal with the effects of their own sin. In
making this recognition, we come to see that the flaw in the language of victimhood
is its failure to account for the chronology of sacrifice. The sacrificial animal begins
as a victim, suffering the actual and potential consequences of a particular sin (along
with all the inhabitants of the land), but, through enabling the cleansing of the
sanctuary and the offender, ends by dissolving the very context of the victimhood of

16 See Rogerson 1998: 14–15.

 Sacrifice in Leviticus 43

all concerned. The animal does not remain a victim in exactly the same way that the
community as a whole is restored from a position of victimization.

IV

I began by sketching a series of assumptions that a modern, ecologically aware reader

might bring to the sacrificial material in Leviticus regarding the antithetical nature
of ecology and animal sacrifice. First, that animal sacrifice implies and necessitates
assent to the conception of a destructive, anthropocentric, hierarchical, domination
paradigm. Secondly, that animal sacrifice is unavoidably cruel and disrespectful
to animal life. And third, that it is inherently wasteful. It is my hope that over the
course of this brief chapter I have been able to meaningfully address and disrupt
these assumptions.
I have argued that by means of close attention to the broader context of the
priestly conception of the relationship between humans and non-human animals,
and the nudging of things beyond the (often assumed) context of sacrifices as making
satisfaction for individual sin, that the act of animal sacrifice can be described as an
act of humility rather than hubris.17 I have also sought to demonstrate that other
assumptions regarding the low status, passivity and victimhood of the sacrificial
animal are somewhat unjustified in the context of Leviticus’ conception.
With regard to the question of waste, it was, in a sense, my intention to undermine
this objection before it had ever been raised by presenting the scenes from Urga as a
hermeneutical context. It seems clear to me that such a conception of wastefulness
intrinsically assumes the definition of its opposite; that is, to say that something is
wasteful is to assume that we know what the opposite of waste looks like. In claim-
ing that sacrifices are a waste if they do not provide food, for example, my friend
demonstrated a cultural predisposition regarding the unnecessity and inefficacy of
sacrifice. The charge of wastefulness is severely weakened once the priestly concep-
tion of sacrifice is explored in depth and on its own terms.
At the broadest level, it has been my intention to convey the notion that careful
attention to the precise role and function of the sacrificed animal serves to lead us
still further from the conceptual paradigm wherein humans use other animals to
rectify their problems. Not only is the world of Ancient Israelite priestly thought
not ruled by issues of utility, but it relies on and expounds a conception of reality in
which humans, non-human animals and the earth itself are inextricably bound up
in a set of relationships with YHWH that require humans to commit to regulating

17 The scope of the concept of humility that I have utilized is illustrated in the appeal to a
concern for the whole land (N.B. humus) and all its inhabitants. In this sense the distinc-
tion between ‘humility’ and ‘hubris’ can be seen to map onto the tensions in Genesis 1–11
between ‘multiply’ (rabah) and ‘increase’ (tarob), which Shemaryahu Talmon has argued
carries an implicit concern regarding human self-aggrandizement and pride (1987: 114–15).
44 Ecological Hermeneutics

the proliferation of violence, which is the result of human sin, and require certain
non-human animals to function as mediators and agents of purification on behalf
of the whole community.
The hermeneutical complexities involved in drawing an obscure, Ancient, ritualis-
tic text into conversation with contemporary ecological ethics cannot be overstated.
However, for communities of faith, the challenge of continually rereading and
reinterpreting sacred texts and instantiating their wisdom in the here-and-now is one
which simply cannot be avoided and must not be abandoned. As I see it, the most
fruitful way ahead involves the construction and utilization of bridges of imaginative
analogy between our own location and that of the text, in full recognition of the
fact that neither is ever fully known or truly independent of the other, but that both
collide in their provisionality within the community of interpretation.
In the context of this kind of hermeneutical project, it is my conviction that, more
than simply enabling a construction of a defence of the Levitical sacrificial system
against accusations of negative ecological value, it is possible to discern, in the details
of its conceptualizations of sin, human culture, non-human animal life and ecological
interdependence and accountability, practices and principles that can serve as fruitful
stimuli for contemporary ecotheological reflection.
Perhaps, in this context, Milgrom is not so far off the mark when he comments
that in the Priestly writings ‘we can detect the earliest groupings [sic] toward an
ecological position’ (Milgrom 2004: 13), or indeed when he offers the following
reflection a few pages later:

How would Israel’s priests see our world today? Without hesitation they would spot the
growing physical pollution of the earth: oil spills, acid rain, strip mining, ozone depletion,
nuclear waste. [Likewise] they would be aghast at the unending moral pollution of the earth.
How long [they] would cry out, before God abandons God’s earthly sanctuary? (33)

References

Anderson, B. 1984 ‘Creation and Ecology’, in B. Anderson, Creation in the Old Testament (Issues
in Religion and Theology 6; London/Philadelphia, PA: SPCK/Fortress): 152–71.
Davies, D. 1977 ‘An Interpretation of Sacrifice in Leviticus’, ZAW 89: 388–98.
Douglas, M. 1966 Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul).
Douglas, M. 1999 Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Gilders, W.K. 2004 Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press).
Gorman F.H., Jr 1997 Divine Presence and Community: A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus
(ITC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
Grabbe, L. 1997 Leviticus (OTG; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press).
Houston, W. 1979 ‘“And Let Them Have Dominion . . .”: Biblical Views of Man in Relation to
 Sacrifice in Leviticus 45

the Environmental Crisis’, in E.A. Livingstone (ed.), Studia Biblica 1978. I. Papers on Old
Testament and Related Themes (JSOTSup 11; Sheffield: JSOT Press): 161–84.
Houston, W. 1993 Purity and Monotheism: Clean and Unclean Animals in Biblical Law (JSOTSup
140; Sheffield: JSOT Press).
Jenson, P.P. 1992 Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of the World (JSOTSup 106;
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press).
Kiuchi, N. 1987 The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning and Function
(JSOTSup 56; Sheffield: JSOT Press).
McClymond, K. 2008 Beyond Sacred Violence: A Comparative Study of Sacrifice (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press).
MacDonald, N. 2008 ‘Food and Diet in the Priestly Material of the Pentateuch’, in R. Muers and
D. Grumett (eds), Eating and Believing: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vegetarianism and
Theology (London: T&T Clark).
Mason, S. 2007 ‘Another Flood? Genesis 9 and Isaiah’s Broken Eternal Covenant’, JSOT 32: 177–98.
Milgrom, J. 1991 Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 3;
New York, NY: Doubleday).
Milgrom, J. 2004 Leviticus: A Book of Rituals and Ethics (A Continental Commentary; Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress).
Morgan, J. 2009 ‘Transgressing, Puking, Covenanting: The Character of Land in Leviticus’, Theology
112: 172–80.
Rogerson, J. 1980 ‘Sacrifice in the Old Testament: Problems of Method and Approach’, in M.F.C.
Bourdillon and M. Fortes (eds), Sacrifice (London/New York: Academic Press): 45–59.
Rogerson, J. 1991 Genesis 1–11 (OTG; Sheffield: JSOT Press).
Rogerson, J. 1998 ‘What Was the Meaning of Animal Sacrifice?’, in A. Linzey and D. Yamamoto
(eds), Animals on the Agenda: Questions about Animals for Theology and Ethics (London:
SCM): 8–17.
Stordalen, T. 2000 Echoes of Eden: Genesis 2–3 and Symbolism of the Eden Garden in Biblical
Hebrew Literature (Leuven: Peeters).
Talmon, S. 1987 ‘The Biblical Understanding of Creation and the Human Commitment’, Ex Auditu
3: 98–119.
Wenham, G. J. 1986 ‘Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story’, in Proceedings of the Ninth
World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division A, Jerusalem, 19–25.
Wenham, G. J. 1995 ‘The Theology of Old Testament Sacrifice’, in R. Beckwith and M. Selman (eds),
Sacrifice in the Bible (Carlisle/Grand Rapids, MI: Paternoster/Baker).
Willis, T.M. 2009 Leviticus (AOTC; Nashville, TN: Abingdon).
 Chapter 3

Reading the Prophets from an

Environmental Perspective

John Barton

Once at the beginning of Lent I preached a sermon about repentance, as might be

expected. In it I stressed that repentance should not begin with a sense of one’s own
inferiority, but rather of one’s human dignity. We are sorry for our shortcomings, I
said, because we recognize what we are capable of and so of having fallen short of
it, not because we think of ourselves as worms in the first place. After all, I said, not
much can be expected of worms in any case.
After the service I was approached by a woman in the congregation who seemed
rather angry. ‘You’re obviously not a gardener,’ she said – which is true – ‘or you
wouldn’t have been so rude about worms. Worms do exactly what they’re meant to,
and they’re absolutely vital. We expect a lot of them, and they never disappoint us.
Humans are really inferior to worms.’
This showed how one can take something for granted without reflecting how it
will play out in someone else’s mind. I had taken it as read that we look down on
worms, but of course we shouldn’t: they are essential to our life, and they do indeed
carry out their tasks to perfection. I reflected ruefully that others have not made the
same mistake. Haydn’s Creation, for example, has a great section on the creation
of the worms, for bass solo. But the Bible does tend to be fairly dismissive of them,
as when Second Isaiah disparagingly addresses Israel as a worm (Isa. 41.14). The
unexpected attack on what I had said, however, reminded me of other things
the prophets say about animals, in which, like the defender of worms, they contrast the
way animals fulfil their divine vocation with the way humans do not. One thinks
immediately of Isa. 1.3: ‘The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib;
but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.’ Or Jer. 8.7: ‘Even the stork
in the heavens knows its times; and the turtle-dove, swallow, and crane observe
the time of their coming; but my people do not know the ordinance of the Lord.’
There is here an awareness of the good order of nature which contrasts with the bad
behaviour of human beings. This might contribute in some small way to discussion
about the environment, by suggesting that the prophets were aware of the orderliness
of creation when uninterfered with by human beings, as a backdrop to what was
their more obvious concern, the sins and failings of humankind and especially of
their own nation, Israel.
 Reading the Prophets from an Environmental Perspective 47

At the same time it is difficult to find very much else that bears on environmental
issues in those words of the prophets that most scholars consider ‘authentic’, that is,
to have actually been spoken by the prophets under whose name they now appear.
I think that the great prophets of the eighth to the sixth centuries bce concerned
themselves much more obviously with interpersonal ethics than with environmental
ethics, and this is certainly how they have mainly been received, both in Judaism and
in Christianity. It would be anachronistic to look to them for a concern to protect
the environment in the terms in which this is understood nowadays: they simply
did not have that at the forefront of their interests, and of course they thought of
environmental disasters, such as drought and famine, as natural or, rather, God-given
disasters, not as the result of bad agricultural techniques or anything of that kind.
However, even the interpersonal ethic that was the prophets’ major concern did
have components that for us at least can have environmental implications. It is clear
that for them there was a kind of ideal for human society, represented in the idea of
every man sitting under his vine and under his fig tree (e.g. Zech. 3.10). The ideal
was that of the independent peasant farmer, secure on his own ancestral land, and
not seeking to upset the balance in society by trying to increase that land by pushing
others off theirs. This is crystal-clear in Isaiah 5, where the prophet attacks those
who are grabbing land: ‘Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field,
until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of
the land!’ (Isa. 5.8). The consequence of this practice, something like what we think
of as enclosure, is not only personal but also environmental damage: ‘The Lord
of hosts has sworn in my hearing: Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and
beautiful houses, without inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one
bath, and a homer of seed shall yield a mere ephah’ (Isa. 5.8-10). Micah says similar
things: ‘Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil desires on their beds! When
the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. They covet fields,
and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house,
people and their inheritance’ (Mic. 2.1-2). Again, the punishment for this takes a
tit-for-tat form, in which those who have in this way transgressed the ancient laws
against removing their neighbour’s landmark (cf. Deut. 27.17) will see their own
ancestral land shared out among the invading troops when God intervenes by send-
ing in the Assyrians, saying, ‘We are utterly ruined; the Lord alters the inheritance
of my people; how he removes it from me! Among our captors he parcels out our
fields’ (Mic. 2.4). This will leave ‘no one to cast the line by lot in the assembly of the
Lord’ (2.5) – in other words, no one who by virtue of being a landowner has rights
to participate in the city’s assembly.
Underlying all this is the kind of attitude we find in the story of Naboth’s vineyard
in 1 Kings 21. The prophet Elijah condemns King Ahab for getting Naboth killed in
order to take over his vineyard, presumably implying that the property of convicted
criminals became the king’s. But Ahab sins in the first place by wanting the vineyard
and trying to get it even by what might strike us as legitimate means, offering
Naboth its full value or an equivalent piece of land somewhere else. What is wrong
48 Ecological Hermeneutics

with this is that it would result in ancestral land being alienated from the family it
belongs to. This is not seen as a matter of commercial justice – for then Ahab’s offer
would in principle be perfectly reasonable – but as an attack on the family and tribal
structures of the people. God, in effect, has given Naboth’s family this piece of land,
and Naboth is not at liberty to sell it. Thus the ideal behind the story, as behind the
prophecies of Isaiah and Micah, is the inalienability of the family possession, truly
the ideal of a nation of peasant farmers. Whether it is legitimate to deploy these
examples nowadays to attack the accumulation of massive estates I am not sure, but
they certainly have force where actual land-grabbing is in question and people are
forcibly put off the land on which they have always lived. There is some sense here
of the ideal human scale for agricultural life, a defence of the small-holding against
massive farms that are inhuman in their scale. I think the prophets in general share
this ideal, even though it is mostly in Isaiah and Micah that it surfaces visibly. There
is implicit in all the prophets of the eighth century a dislike of growing urbanism,
with its rootless people, and a defence of traditional agricultural values.1
I said that there is not much in the words of the prophets generally agreed to be
authentically theirs that bears on environmental issues, and I think we have now
probably exhausted what there is. It has little to say to us on most of the environmen-
tal issues we face today, which were far from the awareness of the prophets: they did
not think about sustainability or pollution, of course, but mainly about the justice
or injustice for human beings of the system of land distribution. That is not to say,
however, that there is no relevant material in the prophets, for there is a good deal in
the material that is widely judged ‘inauthentic’. It is often in oracles and paragraphs
in the prophetic books that most scholars think later than the prophets whose names
they bear that we do find a concern for nature in its own right, and about human
responsibility for maintaining and nurturing it.
The pioneering work on this material was done in 1992 by Robert Murray in
his important book The Cosmic Covenant, the subtitle of which draws on a World
Council of Churches initiative of the time: Biblical Themes of Justice, Peace and the
Integrity of Creation. Murray’s basic argument in this book is as follows. Within the
Old Testament, and especially in the prophetic corpus, we find speculations about
a covenant older and more all-embracing than any of the covenants Old Testament
scholars have traditionally studied – the covenants with Abraham or David, or the
covenant made through the mediation of Moses on Mount Sinai. Those covenants
are to do with people or peoples. The covenant with Abraham is a divine promise
that Abraham’s descendants, taken to be the people of Israel, will grow and prosper.
The covenant with David speaks of the choice of the royal dynasty of Judah, and
would in time come to be seen as having its longer-term fulfilment in the coming of
the Messiah. The covenant of Sinai establishes the Mosaic legislation as the basis
for the ongoing life of Israel as a people. But alongside these covenants, Murray

1 On Naboth and Micah see the comments in Wittenberg 2001.

 Reading the Prophets from an Environmental Perspective 49

argued, there is another covenant, in which God develops a particular relationship

with the created world and its fruitfulness. This covenant tends to be mentioned in
rather ‘late’ texts, that is, in passages in the prophetic books that have been added
to the authentic words of the prophets, and in later narrative sources such as the
Priestly Document (P) in the Pentateuch. But its origins are probably in fact older
than those of the other covenants, being part of the set of ideas Israel shared with
many other ancient Near Eastern nations. In the ancient world generally there was
a belief in divinely ordained order in the universe, and the Israelite texts in question
are a reflection of that.
According to Murray we can see the idea of what he calls a ‘cosmic’ covenant
underlying a late passage such as Isaiah 24, usually referred to as ‘proto-apocalyptic’
and coming perhaps from as late as the third century bce.

Now the Lord is about to lay waste the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its surface
and scatter its inhabitants . . . The earth shall be utterly laid waste and utterly despoiled, for the
Lord has spoken this word. The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers,
the heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for
they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore
a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants
of the earth dwindled, and few people are left. The wine dries up, the vine languishes, all the
merry-hearted sigh. The mirth of the timbrels is stilled, the noise of the jubilant has ceased, the
mirth of the lyre is stilled. No longer do they drink wine with singing; strong drink is bitter to
those who drink it. The city of chaos is broken down, every house is shut up so that no one
can enter. There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine; all joy has reached its eventide;
the gladness of the earth is banished. Desolation is left in the city, the gates are battered into
ruins. For thus it shall be on the earth and among the nations, as when an olive tree is beaten,
as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is ended.2 (Isa. 24.1-13)

The ‘everlasting covenant’ that has been broken here is surely not the Sinai covenant,
which was incumbent only on Israel, but some covenant that embraces the whole
human race, and its breach has universal consequences in terms of desolation for
the whole earth, not simply for Israel. Breaking the covenant results in turning the
whole physical world upside down, producing a resurgence of primeval chaos, not
simply the kind of military conquest of Israel that the prophets themselves mostly
foresaw but a cosmic upheaval.
Here we find what we lack in the authentic words of the prophets, a link forged
between human conduct and cosmic, rather than merely national, disaster. Although,
as I said, much of the relevant material is in texts later than the prophets themselves,
Murray thinks that it often rests on much more ancient sources, which were to some
extent elbowed out of the way by the prophets and the ‘deuteronomists’, the zealous

2 On this passage see also Charles 2001.

50 Ecological Hermeneutics

monotheistic party responsible for orientating so much in the Old Testament as we

now have it towards the covenant made through Moses. The theme of ‘the world
turned upside down’ surfaces in many prophetic passages, as here in Jeremiah:

I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void [tohu wabohu, the phrase used in Genesis 1
for the primeval chaos], and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains,
and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no
one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins, before the Lord, before his fierce anger. (Jer. 4.23-6)

Thus human misconduct – the content of which is unfortunately unspecified – has

the result that not just human society but the physical world itself is affected.
Now if people in ancient Israel in general believed that there was a covenant
between God and the world, not only between God and human beings or even only
between God and Israel, a number of things in the prophetic books become more
comprehensible; and that applies even to the prophets themselves, who probably
had these ideas as part of their mental make-up even though they do not surface
explicitly in their authentic words but only in rather later texts. For example, it is
quite common to find that human sin is supposed to affect the fertility of the land.
This is perhaps clearest of all in the early post-exilic prophet Haggai, speaking around
520 or so about the crop failures that were blighting the life of the community trying
to resettle in Judah after the Babylonian Exile:

You have looked for much, and lo, it came to little, and when you brought it home I blew it
away. Why? Says the Lord of hosts. Because my house lies in ruins, while all of you hurry off
to your own houses. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth
has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the
grain, the new wine, and the oil, on what the soil produces, on human beings and animals,
and on all their labours. (Hag. 1.9-11)

The human sin that has produced this dire effect is the neglect of the prophetic call to
rebuild the ruined Temple: more on that later. But the nexus between sin and physical
environmental disaster is very clear. Haggai continues the theme in chapter 2:

Before a stone was placed upon a stone in the Lord’s temple, how did you fare? When one
came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten; when one came to the wine vat to
draw fifty measures, there were but twenty. I struck you and all the products of your toil with
blight and mildew and hail; yet you did not return to me, says the Lord Consider from this
day on . . . Since the day that the foundation of the Lord’s house was laid, consider: Is there
any seed left in the barn? Do the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree still
yield nothing? From this day on I will bless you. (Hag. 2.15-19)

The restoration God promises in many late prophetic texts is also presented, Murray
 Reading the Prophets from an Environmental Perspective 51

argues, in terms of a renewed covenant with the physical world. This is strikingly
seen in an oracle in the book of Hosea, in chapter 2, which again most commentators
think does not go back to Hosea himself but is a later reflection on the restoration of
Israel after the Exile. But again it draws on very old themes of the reintegration of
the whole creation. The passage is quite obscure but Murray translates it as follows:
‘On that day I will cause response, declares YHWH – I will cause heaven to respond,
and it will respond to earth, and earth will make response of corn, of wine and of
oil, and they shall make response to Jezreel’ (Hos. 2.21-22; Murray 1992: 30). There
is here a kind of ‘marriage of heaven and earth’, parallel to Hosea’s own marriage,
which in turn is a symbol for God’s marriage to Israel. Underlying this is a very
ancient idea of the god’s marriage to his creation, such as we find in the mythology of
both Egypt and Mesopotamia, and which is one way of conceptualizing the ‘cosmic
covenant’. It implies a restoration of a primal harmony between human beings and
the animal and physical worlds. A passage just before this spells this out similarly: ‘I
will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air,
and the creeping things of the ground’ (Hos. 2.18). Thus in these images the world as
it were turns back the right way up again, with a harmonious relationship between
the human and animal creations.
There is a similar vision of cosmic harmony in the famous passage in Isaiah 11
about the ‘peaceable kingdom’, with the wolf living with the lamb, and so on. Here
again the whole world, not just Israel, is to be as full of the knowledge of God as
the sea is full of water. Right order is restored, the order as it was at creation, when
animals and humans alike were vegetarian, according to Genesis 1. The fact that
lions can’t survive on a vegetarian diet was not realized, or else it was assumed this
would somehow be redressed; though another great paean of praise to creation,
Psalm 104, says that the lions roaring for their prey are seeking their food from God
(Ps. 104.21), a rather more realistic picture.
Murray sees his rediscovery of the ‘cosmic covenant’ as having definite implica-
tions for the modern ecological debate:

When the Bible’s teaching on God’s creation and our place in it is duly digested, I believe that
it cries out to us ‘you are brothers and sisters of every other human being, and fellow-creatures
of everything else in the cosmos; you have no right to exploit or destroy, but you have duties
to all, under God to whom you are responsible.’ (Murray 1992: 174)

He believes that a reading of the Old Testament prophetic books that attends to the
later passages succeeds, paradoxically, in rediscovering themes that were present in
very ancient times, before the biblical prophets themselves began their work, and that
these themes are much more relevant to our modern debates than much in the overt
teaching of the classical prophets themselves which is less focused on the obligations
peculiar to Israel and more concerned with how the human race should relate to the
physical and animal world.
52 Ecological Hermeneutics

I think Murray’s work is fascinating, and deserves to be much more widely known
than it is: I hope its reissue in 2007 will have this result. Let me however raise some
issues that we might encounter in trying to apply it to the modern situation.
First, the prophets of Israel were not announcing a programme of reform, but
primarily spoke of what God had done and would do of his own initiative. They
criticized what the people had, in their view, done wrong, but on the whole they
were not proposing ways in which they could act better, or at least were not saying
that it would now make any difference if they did. This is true, at any rate, of the
great prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries: Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah and
Jeremiah. As we saw earlier, with Haggai (as also with his contemporary Zechariah)
there is a clear desire to propose courses of action that would result in God changing
tack and blessing rather than destroying the nation. But in the earlier prophets the
focus is very much on coming judgement, and the moral teaching is given to explain
the disaster that can no longer be avoided, rather than to provide a programme for
future conduct – in other words, theodicy is more of a concern than reform.
Nevertheless, there is no reason why we should not do as later generations in
Israel certainly did, and take up the prophetic critique as providing some guidelines
for our own concerns today. As we have seen, it is in later prophecies, where there
generally is more interest in the future conduct of the prophets’ audience, that we find
the theme of the cosmic covenant emerging most clearly. If we ask why there should
be any connection at all between how human beings act towards their environment
and what outcomes God brings about, we can see a clear conviction that there is an
ideal state of harmony between humankind and the universe, expressed in a fraternal
relationship with the physical and animal world as well as in good relations between
people and peoples, that will dispose God to give blessing rather than curse in the
physical environment. Thus the rediscovery of the ‘cosmic covenant’ does have some
quite positive benefits. Of course there is the much wider question whether God
ever in fact intervenes to do things of any sort in the world, and hence whether the
theological basis of the cosmic covenant makes any difference. One could perfectly
well imagine a secularized version of it, and it could be argued that this is, in effect,
what most people with an interest in environmental issues believe: that there is a
natural principle that connects human action with the environment through normal
causal nexuses, without any need to bring God into the picture. Nevertheless, for a
theist with any kind of commitment to the Bible, the religious version of this idea,
in which God is somehow the guarantor and guardian of this natural principle, is
likely to be attractive. Old Testament studies in recent years has become much more
able to accommodate such ideas than it used to be, with a much greater awareness
of the concerns for natural justice and universal moral principles that united Israel
with its wider ancient Near Eastern context, and much less stress on the features that
made it distinctive. Biblical study is gradually recovering from a kind of Barthianism
that denied all continuities with the environing culture, and is instead coming to see
the Old Testament as a very sophisticated version of much that was common in the
ancient world. In this newer context the idea of a cosmic covenant that antedates
 Reading the Prophets from an Environmental Perspective 53

the covenant on Sinai, and was part of the mental furniture even of the prophets,
becomes more attractive, even as it also suggests that the Old Testament has much
more to contribute to questions such as environmental ones than an earlier genera-
tion of scholars was ready to believe. Certainly it undermines the accusation, which
once seemed considerably more plausible, that the Old Testament disenchanted the
world to such an extent that it allowed space for human exploitation of the planet
– the accusation in the famous essay of Lynn White Jr that has occupied so many
theologians over the years.3 In significant ways the Old Testament was fully aware
of the need for human care for the physical environment, which it saw as grounded
in God’s own creative intentions.
But secondly, how is the cosmic covenant maintained and fostered? Here there
is a real divergence between the Old Testament picture and modern concerns. We
saw in Haggai that the natural order will become responsive to human need, not
when humankind stops exploiting it or when some kind of ethical standards are
implemented, but rather once the Temple is rebuilt. This reminds us of something
that is much stressed by Murray, namely that in the ancient world – and Israel was
no exception to this – cosmic order was maintained through ritual. What went on in
temples helped to sustain the cosmos in right order. Murray fascinatingly shows how
traces of this idea can still be found in the Old Testament even though on the surface
it is often more exercised about what we should call ‘moral’ issues. After outlining
the prophetic role in cursing the enemies of Israel, he continues:

The establishment of shalom is the positive side of the ‘rituals of control’: the side of blessing
as against cursing, of attracting good power as against exorcizing evil power. The rituals of
shalom will have affirmed the supremacy of sedeq, right order in the cosmos and on earth, and
symbolized the ‘marriage of heaven and earth’ so as to ensure the right functioning of nature
and right relationships between all the inhabitants of earth. The existence of rituals with these
objects is far less hypothetical than that of the ‘control rituals’ just described, for the latter
have not survived in Judaism in anything like their original form, whereas the shalom rituals,
which clearly centred in the autumn festival (and, indeed, formed its main theme and raison
d’être) lived on in the feasts of New Year and Tabernacles as described in the Mishnah, and
their themes remain recognizable in the High Holydays to this day. (Murray 1992: 82–83)

Ritual in Israel as in many other cultures had the function of world-maintenance: it

ensured that the natural order would continue in a benign way.
Here, it seems to me, we encounter an aspect of the Old Testament’s cosmic
covenant that is likely to strike the average modern person, whether religious or
not, as hard to engage with. The way to maintain the world in good order for us is
a matter of how we actually treat it, and has nothing to do with ritual actions. It is
here that we encounter the great divide between the Old Testament world and our

3 White 1967. See the discussion in Barr 1972.

54 Ecological Hermeneutics

own. The way to ensure good crops, according to Haggai, is to build the Temple and
get the sacrificial system up and running again. In Joel we may even have a liturgy
for restoring fruitfulness to the land after the depredations of a plague of locusts,
involving prayer, fasting and weeping. Such ideas continued well into early modern
times: an interesting set of liturgies was devised in Elizabethan England for fasting
ceremonies in time of national pestilence. But this is all quite out of keeping with
modern ecological concerns. We do well in turning to the Old Testament to realize
that it does come from a non-modern culture, and cannot be simply applied to our
world without adjustment. There are indeed themes about ‘Peace, Justice, and the
Integrity of Creation’, but they work with a very different mindset from ours.
Thirdly, attention to the cosmic covenant should not obscure the extent to which
the prophets are concerned with human ethics, and are pioneers in this, actually try-
ing to wrest their audience’s attention away from ritual and towards the well-ordering
of human society. Peace and harmony on earth, for the great classical prophets, are
achieved through justice and righteousness, and though these terms (mishpat and
sedaqah) have definite cosmic overtones, they are still to be encountered primarily
in the way humans behave towards each other. A clear case of this can be found in
Isaiah 33, another probably late oracle, but one that does not work so much with
a cosmic covenant as with a covenantal structure embracing the human realm.
We begin, admittedly, with images of cosmic collapse reminiscent of Isaiah 24 or
Jeremiah 4, discussed earlier: ‘The land mourns and languishes; Lebanon is con-
founded and withers away; Sharon is like a desert; and Bashan and Carmel shake off
their leaves’ (Isa. 33.9). This causes panic: ‘The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling
has seized the godless: “Who among us can live with the devouring fire? Who among
us can live with everlasting flames?”’ (Isa. 33.14). But the answer is: ‘Those who walk
righteously and speak uprightly, who despise the gain of oppression, who wave away
a bribe instead of accepting it, who stop their ears from hearing of bloodshed, and
shut their eyes from looking on evil, they will live on the heights; their refuge will be
the fortresses of rocks; their food will be supplied, their water assured’ (Isa. 33.14-16).
It is when people behave like this that all goes well for them and the earth yields
its goodness. Here, therefore, it is ethical conduct rather than ritual that ensures
the goodness of the created order. Very much the same picture emerges outside the
prophets, in a psalm such as Psalm 72, where ethical conduct on the part of the king
secures the blessings of fertility for his land. When he ‘delivers the needy when they
call, the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their
life; and precious is their blood in his sight’ (Ps. 72.12-14), then there will be ‘an
abundance of grain in the land, may it wave on the tops of the mountains’ (v. 16).
The king in this psalm does not maintain order in the universe through right rituals,
but through justice and righteousness in the social sphere. And this is very much the
main message of the prophets, despite the presence of the ideas about the cosmic
covenant that Murray so well digs out and analyzes. In the end it is interpersonal
ethics that is the main burden of the prophetic message, with ideas about the integrity
 Reading the Prophets from an Environmental Perspective 55

of the created order an important but secondary theme.

So although I hope in this essay to have suggested some perhaps unexpected
ways in which the books of the prophets do offer some constructive ideas for an
environmental concern, I think in the end that it is probably elsewhere in the Old
Testament that one would need to look for a more sustained presentation of this
theme. It is probably above all the Priestly document in the Pentateuch, and perhaps
also the wisdom literature – Proverbs and Job – where one finds more sustained
interest in the maintenance of the created order, in respect for everything that God
made and declared to be very good. The prophets, for all that they do draw on the
traditions of the cosmic covenant, are on the whole more concerned with social
than with environmental ethics, and have their eyes fixed on the human rather than
the natural world. It is paradoxical that only a generation or so ago this made them
seem much closer to our own ethical concerns, further away from ancient Near
Eastern speculations about the order of the universe, whereas now it distances them
somewhat from the things that really interest us, certainly if we are exercised (as
who is not nowadays?) by environmental issues. Concern for ‘peace, justice, and
the integrity of creation’ is quite central to modern ethical discussion, and it may be
that parts of the Bible other than the prophets have the most to contribute to this
theme. On the other hand, the foregrounding of these questions does force us to ask
whether we have analyzed the prophets correctly, as I have tried to show; and it has
the effect of rehabilitating large swathes of prophetic oracles which, because they
are probably not ‘authentic’ to the prophets under whose names they appear, have
traditionally been neglected by Old Testament scholars.

References

Barr, J. 1972 ‘Man and Nature – The Ecological Controversy and the Old Testament’, BJRL 55:
9–32.
Charles, N.J, 2001 ‘A Prophetic (Fore)Word: “A Curse Is Devouring Earth” (Isaiah 24.6)’, in N.C.
Habel (ed.), The Earth Story in the Psalms and the Prophets (The Earth Bible, 4; Sheffield/
Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 123–28.
Murray, R, 1992 The Cosmic Covenant: Biblical Themes of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of
Creation (reprinted 2007; London: Sheed & Ward).
White, L., Jr 1967 ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155: 1203–207.
Wittenberg, G.H, 2001 ‘The Vision of Land in Jeremiah 32’, in N.C. Habel (ed.), The Earth Story
in the Psalms and the Prophets (The Earth Bible, 4; Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield
Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 129–42.
 Chapter 4

The Significance of the Wisdom Tradition

in the Ecological Debate

Katharine J. Dell

But ask the animals, and they will teach you;

the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every living thing
And the breath of every human being.
(Job 12.7-10)

In their book Deep Ecology, Bill Devall and George Sessions suggest that ‘A celebra-
tory deep ecology, drawing from Scripture, might begin with a passage such as this:’
(1985: 91) and they quote Job 12.7-8. In this passage from Job, one of the three
wisdom books of the Old Testament,1 the suggestion is that human beings might
well have something to learn not only from animals, but birds, plants and fish as
well. These non-humans are aware of the omniscient hand of God in all things, in
the created order and in the life of every sentient being. In a sense this passage is
anthropocentric in that a dialogue takes place involving human beings, i.e. between
Job and his so-called friends. Yet it is almost an attack on anthropocentrism in
that a key message of this passage is that human beings do not always have all the
answers. Another key point is that there is a relationship between the natural world
and God which does not involve human beings, and in fact may have a lot to teach
them. A passage such as this immediately introduces us to the value that a study of
the wisdom literature is going to have in the quest for an ecological hermeneutic.

1 I shall confine my comments in this article to the three main wisdom books of the Old Testament,
Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. The debate might well be illuminated further by reference
to Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, wisdom psalms and other literature on the periphery
of the genre. See Dell 2000 for a discussion of the definition of wisdom and its parameters.
 The Significance of the Wisdom Tradition in the Ecological Debate 57

If there is a corresponding negative to be drawn out here, it is that the wisdom

literature has only slowly been brought into the environmental debate. Due to the
focus on Genesis and to some of the less positive sentiments about dominion that can
be traced back, in modern times, to the seminal article of Lynn White Jr (1967),2 it has
been assumed that this kind of view is a consistent one throughout the Old Testament
when it comes to creation ideas. However, the wisdom tradition stands apart as
having its own worldview regarding God as creator, a rich tradition of observation
of the natural world and of the interaction of human beings with both. Reasons for
this relative neglect may include a devaluation of the wisdom literature in general
when it was regarded as containing a more ‘foreign’ theology than mainstream Old
Testament views on covenant and salvation history.3 However, such prejudices are
well behind us and increasingly wisdom is coming into the environmental debate.
James Barr, for example notes the place of creation in the wisdom tradition and the
delight taken in it, although he also says of the wisdom literature, in slight denigra-
tion, ‘the sorts of scientific and technological interests that it reveals are not explicitly
derived from the specific revelation of God to Israel’ (1972: 68). A more positive and
significant contribution is found in the work of Robert K. Johnston (1987) who still
regards the wisdom literature as in some sense commentary on Genesis, but who
provides useful insights into the relation between wisdom and ecology. Interest has
deepened in the last couple of decades in the work of Norman Habel (Habel and
Wurst 2001; Habel 2003), Celia Deane-Drummond,4 William P. Brown (1999) and
Bill McKibben,5 among others.
It is a well-established point in modern hermeneutical theory that it is partly in
the way the text is ‘read’ that leads to a particular emphasis. Thus wisdom has been
regarded as very much ‘life from the human side’ in contrast to divine revelation.6 It
has a pragmatism and realism that is firmly grounded in concern for human beings
and their relationships. However, this has also led to it being read in a one-sided and

2 White blames the emphasis on ‘dominion’ in the Genesis creation story and our perception
that we are made in God’s image as the root of our arrogant attitude to our environment in
the past and lack of care for the world in which we live. The belief that the natural order was
created for the sake of human beings is at the root of the problem in his view. Of course he
has been attacked from many quarters, not least for misrepresenting Genesis (see Barr 1972).
This article sounds dated today when the environment is at the centre of global concern and
it shows how much can change in 50 years.
3 See for example Bright 1967, 136: ‘Some parts of the Old Testament are far less clearly
expressive of Israel’s distinctive understanding of reality than others, some parts (and one
thinks of such a book as Proverbs) seem be be only peripherally related to it, while others
(for example Ecclesiastes) even question its essential features.’
4 Deane-Drummond (2000, 2004, 2006, 2008), is coming from a more doctrinal angle, but
has some very helpful reflections on the relationship of creation and wisdom, the latter in
the two senses of practical, ethical wisdom and divine, personified Wisdom.
5 McKibben (2005) draws together his views on the current ecological crisis and explores
them in relation to Job 38–39. This lively book forms an important bridge between scholarly
insights and the wider world. He urges the need for new ways of looking at the world, as
was the result for Job after his challenge.
6 Von Rad referred to it as ‘Israel’s wisdom deriving from experience’ (1965: 418).
58 Ecological Hermeneutics

anthropocentric way in many quarters and in this paper I wish to affirm the three-way
interaction of human beings, God and nature that I believe is central to the ethos of
the wisdom debate and to the wider Old Testament when considered with regard to
ecological issues.7 In terms of the questions that ecologists ask of texts, this too will
lead to some fresh readings and insights. Of course it needs to be borne in mind that
biblical authors did not have our environmental awareness in scientific terms,8 and
yet they had strong connections to the land and to the non-human world around
them which many of us today have lost. Their outlooks and presuppositions can
therefore be illuminating for our own concerns and guide us in attitudes we might
adopt towards our environment.
Unusually in the Old Testament, in the wisdom literature God is perceived solely
as creator rather than in any of his more salvific roles.9 He is also guarantor of
the order that underlies creation and that the sages believe can be perceived and
experienced in the world.10 It was Walter Zimmerli who coined the phrase, ‘Wisdom
thinks resolutely within the framework of a theology of creation’ (1964: 148). The
work of Leo Perdue (1991, 1994) has in recent times attempted to spell this out in
more detailed terms. He speaks, following Gerhard von Rad (1965), of a dialectic
between an anthropology that sees human beings at the centre of creation and a
cosmology that puts the divine at the centre. A dialectic between these two poles
conveys the dynamic nature of the relationship between God and the created order
and insists that divine and non-divine aspects are given equal place. The use of the
word ‘anthropology’ suggests that this model is anthropologically conceived and
we might wish to bring the non-human creation into the picture here. ‘Creation’ is
essentially about the making of order out of chaos and the wisdom literature seeks
to explicate that order as it is identifiable in the world. It is almost a pre-scientific
attempt to list, order, categorize and control the world.11
I have drawn attention elsewhere (Dell 1994) to three essential ecological princi-
ples that are applicable in an evaluation of biblical texts. The first is concerned with

7 The essential three-fold nature of this interaction is spelt out in the work of my own research
student, Hilary Marlow (2009). I am grateful to her for reading a draft of this article and
making helpful suggestions for improvement.
8 The ancient Israelites saw the world as much more of a unity than we do today. As Hermisson
comments, ‘ancient wisdom starts from the conviction that the regularities within the human
and the historical-social realm are not in principle different from the ones within the realm
of nonhuman phenomena’ (1978: 44).
9 It is often pointed out that there is no mention of Moses, the Exodus or David in the wisdom
literature – Solomon, however, is wisdom’s ‘patron’ (Prov. 1.1; 10.1; Eccl. 1.1; 1.12).
10 Von Rad (1972) stressed the importance of the ‘act-consequence’ relationship in wisdom in
which every act has a consequence within an order that can be known. While he has been
criticized as being over-prescriptive in this judgement, there is some truth in the ‘black and
white’ worldview of the proverbial material and the strong sense of order found there. Cf.
Schmid 1968.
11 In ancient Egypt onomastica or lists were used to range items and there may be hints of that
in this material, in Proverbs 30 in particular. Listing phenomena was a way of pinpointing,
arranging and controlling them.
 The Significance of the Wisdom Tradition in the Ecological Debate 59

nature’s complex interrelated processes and the interaction of human beings with
those processes and with each other. To this we might add interaction with the divine
as the essential third strand of any theologically orientated evaluation. The second is
about the well-being and flourishing of all human and non-human life in its richness
and diversity. Ideas of the essential goodness of creation (cf. Genesis 1), and awe at
the sheer wonder of the created world (cf. Psalm 104) come under this heading. The
third is that of the sustaining of life – it is often forgotten that the picture of God
as creator in the Old Testament is also essentially that of sustainer. Although God
overcomes the creature of chaos at creation and creates the world ex nihilo,12 he also
sustains it upon its course, constantly providing for it from the beginning until the
end. Essentially, God is the creator of the natural world, not part of nature itself. As
Bernhard W. Anderson stresses, God transcends the whole of creation. He writes:
‘While heaven and earth reveal the glory of deity, Israel refused to suggest that the
creation is a direct self-revelation of Yahweh, as though it were an emanation of his
being or as though he were a power immanent within it’ (1975: 32). This is a very
important distinction in relation to the ‘nature religions’ of the surrounding world
of the time in which gods often represented an aspect of nature, e.g. Baal in the
Canaanite pantheon was the god of thunder. While we find portrayals of Yahweh
as having a powerful voice that ‘thunders’ (e.g. in Psalm 29, which may well have
been an old Canaanite hymn adapted for Israelite use), he is never embodied in an
aspect of nature. Rather, elements of storm god and fertility deity enrich his portrayal
without threatening his transcendence over such elements. This is where essential
interaction with human beings comes in since humans have a key role, although not
an exclusive one,13 in the continuation and sustenance of the created world. The
non-human world too has a vital role to play in maintaining this sustenance. The
triangle of responsibility comes out strongly here.
These three ecological principles help to give us a nuanced framework through
which to look at key texts from the wisdom tradition that might inform an ecological
hermeneutic in a positive way. The first of ‘interaction’, both within nature and with
humans and between both and the divine, comes across in the wisdom literature in
the sheer use of nature imagery and interest in the natural world that is revealed there.
In Proverbs, human life is over and over illuminated by a pithy proverb, likening

12 May (1994) makes the distinction between a developed doctrine of creation ex nihilo, which
he ascribes not to Hellenistic-Jewish achievement in the post-exilic period as commonly
assumed by scholars, but to a controversy between Greek philosophy and early Christianity.
He admits however that older, unsophisticated, implicit statements of this concept exist in the
Old Testament itself so that a line runs from biblical ideas of creation to this more developed
doctrine.
13 Job 38.25-30 reminds us that God provides rain for the wilderness where no human habita-
tion is found, hence confirming that nature is of value in itself without human involvement
(see pp. 64–66) and indeed human beings have tended to take over non-human ecosystems
and hence change them, assuming a responsibility dictated by an anthropocentric outlook.
McKibbin (2005) makes the point that by exercising our power over oceans, atmospheres
and animals, we are gradually destroying our planet.
60 Ecological Hermeneutics

some aspect of human character to the natural world: ‘The north wind produces rain,
and a backbiting tongue, angry looks’ (Prov. 25.23), for example. God’s interaction
is shown by the fact that he is behind the scenes, directing the action, presupposed
even if not specifically mentioned.14 The proverbs contain basic observations, similes,
metaphors and antithetical comparisons all of which use animal, plant or other
references to illuminate some aspect of human behaviour. Let us look briefly at
one example of each of these. An example of a short proverb springing from basic
observation of animal behaviour is Prov. 6.6: ‘Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider
its ways, and be wise.’ The lazy person is instructed to look at an insect who is a
paradigm of discipline and hard work, which is of course the ideal of the diligent
wise person who is the opposite to the aforementioned ‘lazybones’. An example
of a simile using plant imagery is Prov. 11.28: ‘Those who trust in their riches will
wither, but the righteous will flourish like green leaves.’ The healthy leaf is a symbol
of vitality and well-being, such as describes the righteous, who by inference trust in
God rather than in ephemeral matters such as ‘riches’. An example of a metaphor
is in Prov. 15.19: ‘The way of the lazy is overgrown with thorns, but the path of
the upright is a level highway.’ The metaphor of thorns is a frequent one, denoting
a bumpy path rather than a smooth one. Once again the lazybones is under attack.
Antithetical comparison is a keynote of the wisdom literature. This is characterized
by the use of the phrase ‘Better . . . than . . .’, e.g. Prov. 15.17: ‘Better is a dinner of
vegetables where love is than a fatted ox and hatred with it.’
So on one level the approach here in Proverbs is anthropocentric, in that the sages
are attempting to shed light on human character and yet at the same time they are
telling us something profound about their detailed observation of the non-human
world around them, a world with which they interact every day. In many ways they
interact more profoundly with the natural world and are not so divorced from that
world as we are in our modern cities today. As von Rad wrote, ‘While present-day
man lives his life very much isolated from the world, and is determined by the feeling
of otherness and foreignness to it, Hebrew man felt it to be much more personally
related to himself’ (1965: 428).
The sages particularly liked joining together in a proverb two things that had appar-
ently nothing to do with each other – the bringing together itself made for an interesting
and sometimes profound observation. For example, ‘Like clouds and wind without
rain is one who boasts of a gift never given’ (Prov. 25.14). This likens two completely
unlike situations by the link of disappointment when what is promised does not appear
in reality. This is about both perceiving and imposing an order on the world so that
human behaviour can be understood as part of a wider order that links the natural
world and the divine realm. Similar techniques of proverbial types are found in Job
and Ecclesiastes. In Job they are often phrased as a question, e.g. ‘Does the wild ass
bray over its grass, or the ox low over its fodder?’ (Job 6.5). This suggests the answer,

14 The issue of how theological or secular the proverbs are is a well-worn debate. See the
discussion in Dell 2006, where the stress is on the more theological side of the argument.
 The Significance of the Wisdom Tradition in the Ecological Debate 61

no, since if these animals have their desire – i.e. food – there is no need for complaint.
Job makes considerable use of similes, e.g. Job 9.25-6: ‘My days are swifter than a
runner; they flee away, they see no good. They go by like skiffs of reed, like an eagle
swooping on the prey.’ Here the days are personified, another common technique in
Job. In Eccl. 7.6 there is a clear simile using plant imagery: ‘For like the crackling of
thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools.’ A metaphor example from Job is the
use of a ploughing metaphor used of the wicked: ‘Those who plough iniquity and sow
trouble reap the same’ (Job 4.8). Another technique, found particularly in Job, is the
use of personification of non-human elements in order to shed light on human life or
experience. An example is the personification of day and night as witnesses to Job’s
conception and birth (Job 3.1-10). In Ecclesiastes too there are simple comparisons
with the natural world, as in 10.1 where folly in the context of wisdom is likened to
dead flies in the context of fine ointment: ‘Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment
give off a foul odour; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honour.’
There are two key texts I wish to look at in connection with this first principle
of interaction, that is Prov. 30.15-33 and Eccl. 1.4-9. In Prov. 30.15-33 we find
considerable use of animal and plant imagery used in creative listings, often using
techniques of numerical heightening as a means of comparison. This idea of putting
together images that apparently have no link at all is at the heart of this clever
technique perfected by the wise. Ranged together the separate images form a wider
whole and the human and animal world are interchangeable. The passage divides into
subsections, the first being verses 15-16, which is about things that are not satisfied.
The image of a leech is used. Leeches suck people dry of blood and are a good image
for the endless need for more. The leech is portrayed as having two daughters who
also are never satisfied. This is where a numerical heightening technique comes in:
the four ‘never satisfied’ items that are put together are Sheol, the place of the dead
that never ceases to gobble up victims; the barren womb that always wants a child;
the earth that is always needing water; and the raging fire that goes on increasing
and intensifying unless it is checked. By putting these four things together there is
illumination between them and we can see how the human and non-human worlds
are not distinguished one from another – they are completely interchangeable. Verses
18-19 form another unity and bring together four unlike things under the catchword
‘way’. Two images are from the natural world – the eagle and the snake whose habits
are beyond the understanding of the writer. Then the passage turns to a human
invention – the ship – but its passage through the sea, which apparently behaves
according to its own rules, and then on to human relationships.
Verses 21-23 form another group of four, this time of unnatural occurrences that
threaten ‘order’. Here all the images are human ones and show an interest in human
hierarchies. However in verse 24 the concern switches to animals again. Here four
items are ranged together that are small but ‘exceedingly wise’. The industrious ant is
held up as an example again, badgers are praised for their ingenuity in making their
homes in the rocks, locusts march in rank despite having no leader and lizards are
small but aspire to more when they are found in the palaces of kings. This ranking
62 Ecological Hermeneutics

has a slightly tongue-in-cheek, humorous feel to it. The imagery is rich and allows the
imagination free rein. Deane-Drummond comments on this passage that ‘by paying
attention to the quiet witness of such creatures . . . human beings learn of the possibil-
ity of a different form of society’ (2008: 94). She sees these creatures as representing
the ‘voice of the earth’ speaking to humans. However, her emphasis on the human
parallel, in my view, draws attention away from the sheer delight in the insect world
that is expressed. Verses 29-31 provide the final set of numerically heightened images.
The four here are three animals, which are then likened to the king. It is often, of
course, in the fourth image that the climax is found. Here one imagines a mighty
lion, which is likened to a strutting rooster and a he-goat. The king’s similar striding
perhaps has an air of arrogance to it, as with these animals. This shows once again
the complete interlinking of worlds, albeit always in a human context.
The book of Ecclesiastes gives us an insight into nature’s own complex interrelated
processes in its description of the ‘cycles’ of sun, moon and wind in Eccl. 1.4-9. A
human comparison is brought in in verse 4 with the mention of human generations in
contrast to the earth’s permanence, although the emphasis is on a simple watching of
the world on its course (see Dell 2009). It is basically the observation that everything
goes around – the sun rises and goes down. In the ancient world the sun had a resting
place overnight as there was no concept of the roundness of the world. The wind too
blows in all directions on its own circuits. Water flows to the sea and then returns to
its source.15 The message is that everything on the earth comes around, except the
earth itself, which is permanent. Human life is a part of that equation. The wider
context of verses 2, 3 and 8 suggest a world-weariness and feeling of pointlessness
about life, although I would argue that verses 4-9 themselves are more neutral and
are simply observation rather than evaluation in a negative vein. Human intervention
in such natural cycles arguably puts them under threat and human beings need to
make sure that protection of natural processes is a prime concern.16
The second principle of the flourishing of all life, gives us a sense of the awe that
human beings have when they consider the created world and the God who first
created and now sustains it. This involves ideas of the essential goodness of God’s
intention for the world and all its creatures (cf. Genesis 1). An important presup-
position of the proverbs is that life is essentially good, for example, Prov. 16.20:

15 An alternative translation for 1.7 is, ‘To the source from which the rivers come, there they
flow to run again’, following Min (1991). Min recognizes the problem that it is common
knowledge that waters do not flow backward from the sea to the water source, but posits
that the author of Ecclesiastes may have understood evaporation of water into the air which
then falls as rain at the source of the water (as propounded by Ibn Ezra in relation to this
passage).
16 McKibben writes, ‘What we are doing is very simple – we are taking over control of the
physical world around us. The most basic laws remain beyond our grasp – gravity still causes
objects to fall, atoms still repel at close distances, the sun still revolves around the earth.
But nature on the scale immediately and constantly visible to us – the world of animals, of
rainfall, of trees, of waves – may soon answer to us, as our crude alterations of atmospheric
chemistry begin to guide the most fundamental processes of terrestrial life’ (2005: 57).
 The Significance of the Wisdom Tradition in the Ecological Debate 63

‘Those who are attentive to a matter will prosper, and happy are those who trust in
the LORD.’ Reaching towards an intention of goodness is something with which the
environmental thinker should be dealing.
A sense of awe at the created world is found in Job 28, ostensibly a hymn to
Wisdom, but arguably, rather, a hymn in praise of the created world (see Dell 2001).
There is a description of all the precious metals to be found in the bowels of the earth
and praise of human ingenuity in finding them. The irony that the earth provides
‘bread’ (v. 5) but underneath contains gold and fine sapphires (v. 6) is brought out.
The point of comparison is with Wisdom, which cannot be found however hard it is
sought.17 However, this should not detract from the sheer awe at the created world
that is found here. Strong animals are described such as falcons and lion – even
they have not found Wisdom. Human beings probe all things – ‘hidden things they
bring to light’ (v. 11) – this is the closest the Bible comes to a description of scientific
endeavour. Yet no one knows the way to Wisdom – it is not in the ‘land of the living’
(v. 14) and the place of the dead has only heard a ‘rumour’ of it (v. 22). It is not
in the sea, it is unable to be valued versus gold or glass – and yet in the process all
those wonders are themselves described. Its price is beyond coral, crystals or pearls,
chrysolite or gold (vv. 16-19) – and yet those wonders come from the earth too.
This list of fine stones and metals comprises the richness of the earth’s gifts. The
comparison with the inaccessibility of Wisdom then, while seeming to downgrade
all these wonders in the process of the comparison itself, also reveals the wonders
of the world at the same time. It is the earth that is full of these bounties and that is
to be praised. Human beings also have a role in that they have used their ingenuity
to find out such hidden things. The climax comes in verse 23 that God does know
the way to wisdom for he ‘sees everything under the heavens’ (v. 24).18 His work
as creator is described and clearly his lordship over all is an important theme here.

17 Fretheim, in his important book on creation theology which stresses its relational aspect
and brings in the non-human, likens Wisdom to a person with ever deeper dimensions, ‘a
being that is always in the process of becoming . . . Those in search of wisdom will always
be finding ever new dimensions of reality to be studied and will always be at least one step
behind. As with persons, wisdom is forever inexhaustible’ (2005: 210).
18 Habel (2003) makes an important point about biodiversity and the changing nature of spe-
cies, according to a Darwinian model, which requires us to see creation as a more continuous
process. He suggests that God discovers wisdom in the natural ordering of the Earth and
hence looks to the Earth for this wisdom. He likens God to a sage seeking out wisdom in
the Earth. This however could suggest limitation of the divine mind of the world that Job
28.24 arguably qualifies. Deane-Drummond struggles with this distinction when, having
supported Habel’s view, she writes, ‘Certainly from the perspective of the book of Job, it
seems to make more sense to speak primarily of creaturely wisdom as being that which
God discovers in creation, rather than that which is imposed by God. Yet, God’s ability to
create in the first place according to a “design” and purpose, and then assess that wisdom
and confirm it, implies wisdom in God that is beyond that which God discovers as existing
in the world that God creates’ (2008: 95). Perhaps the idea of wisdom existing in the divine
mind (Perdue 1994) and a wisdom that is continually changing and being discovered by
God (Habel) are not completely in tension and can be seen as facets of the mystery that is
Wisdom herself.
64 Ecological Hermeneutics

However, he is also responsible for creating and sustaining the wonders of the earth,
in the presence of which human beings stand open-mouthed in awe.
This same awe at the processes of both life and death is also found in somewhat
more cynical vein in Eccl. 3.18-21. The thematic link with Job 28 is the limits of
human knowledge. The comparison here is between the fates of humans and animals
respectively. The context is that both die and thus one has no advantage over the
other. The question comes in verse 21: ‘Who knows whether the human spirit goes
upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth?’ The author does not
know the answer here and perhaps there is a slight hint that in fact, in line with the
former verses, humans and animals are the same in their fate and so perhaps this
distinction cannot be made after all. People have a tendency to denigrate animals
below humans but, rather like in Job 12.7-8, they may have something to teach us.
And who knows where the human and animal spirit goes? The author’s advice is to
stop worrying about afterwards and get on with the enjoyment of hard work! One
key way in which human beings can flourish is to develop a sense of purpose in their
work, a facet of human life that Ecclesiastes emphasizes.
The third principle of the sustaining of life – a process initiated by God but
continued by his creatures – brings us right up to the present and our human duty
of care. In the whole creation and sustaining process there is a dark side, as God has
the freedom to act as he likes and he can bring weal as well as woe (e.g. Job 1.10).
One way in which he appears to exercise this freedom is in the use of natural disaster,
such as earthquake and fire, to exercise judgement (cf. Amos 1.7, 10, 12, 14; 2.5;
8.8). However the wisdom tradition in general is confident that God tends to act
according to the rules he has established – or at least the earlier wisdom tradition had
this confidence (as demonstrated in Proverbs) which was somewhat undermined by
the time Job and Ecclesiastes were written. I wish in this section to look at two key
texts: Job 38–39 and Proverbs 8.
Job 38–39 gives us a fascinating insight into some of the wild animals created by
God and sustained by him for no better purpose than for the sheer sake of it, dem-
onstrating to Job that God’s world is far richer and more free than he ever imagined.
This conveys the idea that the natural world has inherent value in and of itself and as
God’s creation, whether or not there are any humans to interact with it (see Attfield
and Dell 1996). Job 38 consists of a series of rhetorical questions to Job, designed
to make him feel small. He was clearly not present at creation and doesn’t know
the technicalities of it. God, by contrast, was and does! However, as well as being
a ‘put-down’ of Job, it is also an immensely rich account of God’s action in crea-
tion and that as a continuous, not once-only, process. The language of foundation,
measurements, stretching a line, sinking bases and placing a cornerstone is that of
building a house. The sense of sheer joy is found in verse 7: ‘when the morning stars
sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy.’ Creation involves ordering
chaos, reining in that which is likely to get out of hand, hence the image of shutting
in the sea (v. 8) and prescribing bounds for it (v. 10). This is an act of continual
restraint on God’s part that happened both once for all at creation, but also goes
 The Significance of the Wisdom Tradition in the Ecological Debate 65

on being done to sustain the planet and all its creatures.19 We find similar imagery
to that in Eccl. 1.5-7 in the cycle of the day in verse 12, although it is interesting
that such a process is likened, in verse 13, to the overcoming of the wicked. God’s
all-encompassing power over every corner of the earth is described in verses 16-18,
19-21 and 22-24, recalling God’s knowledge of Wisdom’s hiding place in Job 28.
God is also the provider of all sustenance – in verses 25-27, 28-30 of rain that waters
the land – and is the bringer of life to desolate places. These places contain no human
habitation – the wilderness is wholly independent of humanity and yet God causes it
to rain. In fact even the observation of this gratuitous rain is of no use to humans –
such rain is simply part of God’s scheme.20 The description is rich in the way it turns
to the stars in verses 31-33. God has the power to do all things – he can command
floods and lightning and he can provide wisdom to humanity (vv. 34-38). From Job
38.39 begins the long description of different animals – mainly wild ones and certainly
strong ones – which God created and which he sustains. This section rejoices in the
habits of animals that behave according to set orders set in motion by God and whose
lives follow cycles such as birth and death. We find rich descriptions of lions, ravens,
mountain goats, wild asses, wild oxen, the ostrich, the horse, hawks and eagles. The
wildness of these animals suggests something untamed and free, which is how God
is being described here too.21 These animals exist and function without any reference
to the human world – they are simply answerable to their divine creator.22 There is a
sense of awe at the sheer variety and diversity of this world – and some of the animals
behave in ways that humans beings would find chaotic, e.g. the ostrich leaving her
eggs to hatch alone (Job 39.14-15) – and yet such animal habits are rejoiced in as part
of the wider tapestry of God’s magnificent creation. In this thought-world, the very
existence of the created world and all that is in it is a process utterly dependent upon
God as creator and sustainer. It does not exist apart from him as a separate working
entity, but rather is dependent upon him in a continuous sense.
The description of the animals in Job 38–39 is a unique opportunity in the biblical

19 Peacocke (2001) makes the important point that, in the light of our knowledge of biological
evolution, any modern statement of God as creator must assert that God is continuously
creating in a dynamic sense. He writes, ‘The traditional notion of God sustaining the world
in its general order and structure now has to be replaced by one with a dynamic and creative
dimension – a model of God giving continuous existence to a process that has an inbuilt
creativity, built into it by God and manifest in a “time” itself given existence by God’ (23).
20 Palmer comments on this verse in the context of human assumption of their stewardship of
nature and the occasional inappropriateness (as here) of that presupposition, that ‘God is
directly involved with the land and has no gardener. Humanity is irrelevant. Its position is
neither to have dominion over the land, nor to tend and dress it. The “desolate wasteland
sprouts with grass” without human aid’ (1992: 70).
21 Fretheim expresses the paradox that there is order in creation and yet some disorder is allowed
for by God. He writes, ‘Amid the order there is room for chance. The world has ostriches
and eagles, raging seas and predictable sunrises, wild weather or stars that stay their courses.
God creates space for creaturely freedom at various levels of complexity’ (2005: 244).
22 Dyrness makes the point that in these speeches it is clear that non-human creation doesn’t
need to have a relation to human lives – ‘we are relieved of the pressure to make creation at
every point useful for human society’ (1987: 52–53).
66 Ecological Hermeneutics

tradition to see God and nature in partnership quite apart from the involvement
of human beings. It is not a particularly palatable picture – it is nature in the raw
involving blood and death and, while the description inspires awe, it also repels and
alienates the human perspective. There is no transformation of the natural world
in Job as in Isaiah 40.4. This is a celebration of the wild and the untamed, of noble
creatures nurtured by God but remaining wild. This description certainly expands
Job’s horizons, but whether it expands his moral horizons (Brown 1999) is debatable.
It is also not stated that this creation is ‘innocent’ (Santmire 2006). In my view these
descriptions serve to overwhelm Job with the wonders of creation, to make him see
other possibilities that lie outside a human-centred worldview, hence to displace him
from his usual ‘world’, and to teach him more about God’s created world, particu-
larly a world that is on the margins of his own experience. However, these speeches
are, more crucially, about the beauty and non-conformity of the created world and
there is an essential element of playfulness, whim and caprice in God’s delighting in
what he has made. They are also about God’s power in nature, none more so than
in the descriptions of Behemoth and Leviathan in chapters 40–41, great creatures
that represent both the chaos overcome by God at creation and the constant care of
God on nature’s behalf in the face of chaotic forces. These creatures, even if they are
based on hippopotamus and crocodiles, are representative of animals that remain
untamed and apart from human experience and control.
One of the keynotes of the wisdom tradition is contradiction. Individual proverbs
contradict one another from time to time (e.g. consecutive and conflicting proverbs
on silence in Prov. 17.27-28). That sense of contradiction is particularly brought out
in Ecclesiastes where the speaker comments on proverbial sayings and puts them in
the wider context of ‘vanity’. Job also draws out the contradiction between tradi-
tional guarantees and fresh experience, which leads to contradiction and a deep sense
of questioning. The sense of dialectic runs through the material and, as commented
above, that dialectic need not simply be regarded as two-way – divine/human – but
three-way – divine/human/non-human. Contradiction suggests openness to revision
and elaboration and openness to change. The very presence of Job and Ecclesiastes
within the wisdom tradition itself shows how the tradition managed to break out
of its own certainties and fixed system. In Proverbs 8 the sense of dialectic spoken
of by Perdue (1994) – between cosmology and anthropology – is apparent. A figure
that stands at the heart of this dialectic in Proverbs is Woman Wisdom, as described
in Proverbs 8, who mediates between the divine and the human. And yet she also
rejoices in the inhabited world and is described as having been present and delighting
in the world at the very beginning.23 This is therefore a helpful paradigm with which

23 Fretheim stresses the importance of ‘delight’ in the relationship between God and Wisdom
– it shows God involved in a dynamic and interactive relationship, it shows Wisdom delight-
ing in humanity and hence realizing God’s purposes for creation. He writes, ‘Delight is not
amusement in the sense of an activity different from work but a dimension of the relationship
itself and including work and all participants – God, wisdom and creation’ (2005: 217).
 The Significance of the Wisdom Tradition in the Ecological Debate 67

to end and from which to reflect on our own dialectic with God and nature.
In Proverbs 8, Wisdom first seems to relate to human beings – their well-being
depends upon hearing her call and she represents knowledge and justice. This is the
same Wisdom described in Job 28 as being beyond human knowledge. Here, however,
Wisdom, in female guise, is on offer to human beings if they will take hold of her and
embrace her. From verse 22 the link with God’s creative acts is apparent, although
she is never doing the creating. Rather she stands beside God admiring his work. This
need not be taken literally24 but can be regarded as an extended poetic metaphor for
describing God’s creative act. However, the use of this poetic technique conveys the
mediation between God’s creation and the humans and non-humans within that world.
Wisdom forms a bridge between the work of God and the delight that is taken in ‘his
inhabited world . . . and the human race’ (v. 31). This is therefore a profound image of
the dialectic between creator and created that is at the heart of the wisdom worldview.
So what of a practical nature can human beings take away from these rich images
found in the wisdom literature? The sense of interaction with God and nature comes
across here. We human beings are a part of a complex web of life, the key to which
is the need to sustain the world that we inhabit. God is both creator and sustainer of
the world, but we have a major role in sustaining it25 and enabling all its processes
to continue, processes which are open to constant change. However, the study of the
wisdom material has given us a timely reminder that we are not the only inhabitants
of this universe and has prioritized the wilderness image of places of habitation well
beyond the human domain. Contradiction and reinvention characterize the creative
process, the natural world and human life. Embracing the contradiction and the
dialectic leaves us open to the possibilities of change. It is clear from the speeches
of God in the book of Job that not all of creation should be seen as subordinated to
human interests, a lesson we will still do well to learn as we continue to live unsus-
tainably in the world. McKibben (2005) gives us a timely reminder that the voice
from the whirlwind calls us to humility on the one hand and joy on the other – the
need to restrain our desires for control of the planet and for ever increasing levels
of consumerism and find our rightful place in the world of nature by restraining
our greed and appreciating our environment afresh. Just as the way to wisdom is
a mystery (Job 28) so full awareness of the created world is not known to us, only
to God. We rightfully seek to discover this world, but our desire to control it and
change it and so often spoil it needs to be kept in check. The study of the wisdom

24 Some scholars have seen evidence of vestiges of a goddess figure here, e.g. Lang 1975.
Fretheim (2005) also sees her as both divine and a creature, which in my view is an over-
statement – she is ‘created’ but in a special role and relationship with God.
25 There is a slight tendency from those writing from an environmental angle to downgrade the
role of human beings and present humans as the ‘baddies’ who have destroyed much of the
planet. However, it has to be acknowledged that, as McKibben puts it, ‘our peculiar brains
set us apart from the rest of creation. We have powers unique to ourselves; to refuse them
would be like a bird refusing flight. Luckily . . . there are whole huge categories of activity
for which reason is utterly suited and which do not also spell destruction for the rest of the
ecosystem’ (2005: 67).
68 Ecological Hermeneutics

world-view engenders a certain humility that we are indeed a part of a complex set
of processes, of God’s world, of which we are a crucial part, but which has the right
to exist completely independently of ourselves.

References

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Contemporary Thought (Somerville, MA: Hadden): 27–45.
Attfield, R. and K. J. Dell (eds) 1996 Values, Conflict and the Environment (Aldershot: Avebury).
Barr, J. 1972 ‘Man and Nature: The Ecological Controversy and the Old Testament’, BJRL 55: 9–32.
Bright, J. 1967 The Authority of the Old Testament (London: SCM).
Brown, W. P. 1999 Cosmos and Ethos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Grand Rapids,
MI/Cambridge: Eerdmans).
Deane-Drummond, C. 2000 Creation Through Wisdom (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Deane-Drummond, C. 2004 The Ethics of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell).
Deane-Drummond, C. 2006 Wonder and Wisdom (London: Darton, Longman & Todd).
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Dell, K. J. 1994 ‘Green Ideas in the Wisdom Tradition’, SJT 47: 423–51.
Dell, K. J. 2000 Get Wisdom, Get Insight: An Introduction to Israel’s Wisdom Literature (London:
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Dell, K. J. 2001 ‘Plumbing the Depths of Earth: Job 28 and Deep Ecology’, in N. C. Habel and
S. Wurst (eds), The Earth Story in Wisdom Traditions (The Earth Bible, 3; Sheffield/
Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 116–25.
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Dell, K. J. 2009 ‘The Cycle of Life in Ecclesiastes’, Vetus Testamentum 59: 181–89.
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Michaelson (ed.), Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth (Grand Rapids,
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Fretheim, T. E. 2005 God and the World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation
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28: Cognition in Context (Leiden: Brill): 281–97.
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and Literary Essays in Honour of Samuel Terrien (Missoula, MA: Scholars Press): 43–57.
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 Chapter 5

Reading the Synoptic Gospels

Ecologically

Richard Bauckham

Few of those who have written about the ecological dimension of the Bible have
found much to say about the Synoptic Gospels.1 It may be that, as Robert Murray
(1997: 126) comments, Jesus’ relationship to the non-human creation is not ‘a salient
theme in the gospels’, but, alternatively, it may be that, especially when the Gospels
are read with their relation to the Old Testament in mind, there are significant refer-
ences to the non-human creation that have not been given the attention they deserve.
It may be that, in the case of the Gospels, the eyes of modern urban readers still need
to be opened to that dimension of human life, our relationship to the non-human
environment and its creatures, that to the biblical writers was self-evidently of huge
importance.
In this essay I shall explore two approaches to identifying the ecological dimen-
sions of the story of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. (I shall not be concerned to
distinguish ‘the historical Jesus’ from the Jesus of the Gospels, but with the way in
which the Gospels depict Jesus and his story.) The first approach attempts to make
explicit the Palestinian ecological context that the Gospels largely take for granted,
in the hope of discovering something of Jesus’ relationship with it. The second
approach works with the theme of the Kingdom of God, unquestionably the central
theme of Jesus’ teaching and ministry in the Synoptic Gospels, in order to show that
the Kingdom includes the whole of creation and that some of the acts in which Jesus
anticipated the coming Kingdom point to the redemption of the human relationship
with the rest of creation.

Jesus in his Ecological Context

In a chapter called ‘Jesus and the Ecology of Galilee’, Sean Freyne (2004: 24–59)
has recently characterized the ‘micro-ecologies’ that distinguished the three regions

1 Notable exceptions include Faricy 1982: 40–48; Northcott 1996: 224–225; Leske 2002;
Loader 2002; Jones 2003. My own previous contributions are: Bauckham 1994; 1998;
2009a; 2009b.
 Reading the Synoptic Gospels Ecologically 71

of Galilee – Lower (including Nazareth), the Valley (including Capernaum and the
lakeside) and Upper (including Caesarea Philippi) – along with the ‘different modes
of human interaction with, and different opinions about the natural world’ that the
three different environments produced (Freyne 2004: 40). Freyne sees Jesus’ ministry
as taking place successively in these three regions, and suggests ways in which the
ecological character of each may have influenced Jesus’ thought and teaching. It
has to be said that many of these suggestions are very speculative, while some are
illuminating and others at least plausible.
It is probable, for example, that the term ‘the sea’, used by Mark and Matthew
to refer to the lake of Galilee, reflects the usage of those who lived beside it and
were unconcerned with the Mediterranean, while the story of the stilling of the
storm reflects the threat of the mythological abyss on the part of people whose lives
were dominated by water, its possibilities and dangers. It is also plausible that Jesus’
faith in the creator God of the Hebrew Scriptures, who cares for his creation and
overcomes the ever-threatening chaos, engaged at this point with the consciousness,
at once realistic and mythic, of the local fishermen who were his disciples (Freyne
2004: 53). (The stilling of the storm will be discussed further in the last main section
of this essay.)
On the other hand, I am not tempted by this suggestion:

One is tempted to ask whether Jesus’ healing ministry, attested in all the gospels, might have
given him a special appreciation of the climatic conditions of the Lake area, and the quality
of its water, prompting a visit to its source [Mount Hermon]. (Freyne 2004: 56)

Nothing in the stories of Jesus’ healings offers the slightest hint of a regard for the
health-giving quality of the water of the lake. There is nothing like Elisha’s command
to Naaman to wash in the Jordan (2 Kgs 5.10) or the Johannine Jesus’ command to
the blind man to wash in the pool of Siloam (Jn 9.7). Freyne does not answer the
question he says ‘one is tempted to ask’, but one may also question whether such
an excessively speculative question is even worth asking. It seems to be a strained
attempt to forge a link between Jesus and some aspects of the lake of Galilee and
Mount Hermon that we know interested some ancient writers. This example is
among the least plausible of Freyne’s suggestions.
Freyne is surely right in general to argue that Jesus’ thought and teaching were
influenced by his natural environment, its diversity and the various ways Galileans
made a living from it. He was not a bookish intellectual but a man consciously
embedded in his rural environment. But Freyne is also right to insist that we need
not play off Jesus’ direct experience of his environment against the rootedness of
his beliefs in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish religious tradition (especially, in this
case, faith in God as Creator of all things). The parables, he says,

are the product of a religious imagination that is deeply grounded in the world of nature and
the human struggle with it, and at the same time deeply rooted in the traditions of Israel which
72 Ecological Hermeneutics

speak of God as creator of heaven and earth and all that is in them (Freyne 2004: 59, cf. also 48).2

It is also important to note that Freyne does not, like some nineteenth-century
writers,3 depict Jesus’ relationship to nature as a romantic idyll. Many of Jesus’
references to the non-human world are to the hard work of making a living from the
soil or the lake, and the parables also show awareness of the increasingly precarious
state of small landowners, hard-pressed or deprived of their land as large estates
became more numerous (Freyne 2004: 45–46).4
Freyne’s method is a historical one, drawing on archaeology and literary sources to
reconstruct the ecology of Galilee in Jesus’ time. As in much historiography, historical
imagination is required to make the links with Jesus. But Edward Echlin’s approach
is more creatively imaginative. He speaks of ‘imaginative contemplation’ in which
we can make the ‘implicit’ in the Gospels (as in the rest of the Bible) ‘explicit’ (Echlin
1999: 26–27, 30, 32, 54–55).

When we contemplate the testimonies to Jesus looking for insights we will catch glimpses in
the depths, in the small print, in what is hidden, between the lines, tacit and silent. (Echlin
1999: 29; cf. 54)

The following passage, imagining Jesus’ early years in Nazareth, shows how Echlin
takes up hints in the Gospels to paint the sort of picture they make no attempt
to provide, but which Echlin, a former Jesuit, aptly places in the tradition of the
imaginative meditations in Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises:

With imagination we may place ourselves in hilly Nazareth with its few hundred families and
their sheep and goats, oxen, cattle and donkeys. In those green and brown and stony hills
we may imaginatively observe the growing Jesus (Lk. 2.40, 52) learning, especially from his
mother, about the useful elder trees, the scattered Tabor oaks and Aleppo pine, the nettle,
bramble, mallow, and startling yellow chrysanthemums of April, the galaxy of weeds and
herbs and wild flowers which he later compared to Solomon’s attire. Grapes grow and grew
in Nazareth’s old town, their branches nourished by the everlasting vine. Jesus wondered
at their rapid growth, their ripening in the burning sun, and their harsh winter pruning, he
learned about apples, almonds and pomegranates, he saw figs swarming from rocks offering
two, even three crops of dripping sweetness. When they began to put out leaves, as did the
other trees, he knew that summer was here (Lk. 21.20).5 (Echlin 1999: 55)

2 Similarly Echlin 1999, 76: Jesus’ ‘sensitivity to nature, so vivid in his parables, derived from
living close to the natural world and from familiarity with the Jewish Scriptures and their
metaphors of cosmic order’.
3 See especially Renan 1905 [1863]: 42–44.
4 On this point with regard to the parables, see also Shillington 1997: 9–11.
5 It is interesting to compare this account of Jesus’ environment in his early years in Nazareth
with Renan’s (1905: 17–18). Renan’s is more romantically aesthetic, Echlin’s more ecological.
 Reading the Synoptic Gospels Ecologically 73

This may seem novelistic, but something like this must indeed have been the case
for Jesus, as for any boy growing up in the villages of Lower Galilee. In principle,
this kind of filling in of the environmental context of Jesus that the Gospels take
for granted or ignore is no different from the way that historical Jesus scholars
routinely fill in the social, economic, political and religious contexts of first-century
Jewish Palestine to which events of the Gospel narratives relate. Imaginative as it is,
an exercise like this could, paradoxically perhaps, also be an exercise in historical
realism.
The wealth of references to flora, wild and cultivated, and fauna, wild and domes-
ticated, as well as to common farming practices, in the Synoptic teaching of Jesus
has, of course, often been taken to indicate Jesus’ closeness to the natural and rural
world of Galilee, but I know of no systematic study of the matter. In an admittedly
rapid survey, I find the following animals mentioned, each at least once: bird, camel,
chicken (cock and hen), dog, donkey, dove, fish, fox, gnat, goat, moth, ox, pig, raven,
scorpion, sheep, snake, sparrow, viper, vulture, wolf (21 in total). Of these, eight
are domestic animals. None is especially surprising in a rural Palestinian environ-
ment. The following are the plants to which the Synoptic teaching of Jesus refers:
bramble, fig tree, herbs (mint, dill, cummin, rue and others), mulberry, mustard
plant, reed, thorn, vine, weed, wheat, wild flower. Methods of making a living from
this environment, mentioned in Jesus’ teaching, include arboriculture, viticulture,
shepherding, trapping animals, netting birds and the various stages of growing
and processing wheat and other grains. Of course, this basic information could be
expanded to include the frequency of mention of the various items, and evidence
of familiarity with natural and farming processes, animal behaviour and so forth.
References to the weather and its bearing on the farming activities of Jesus’ Galilean
contemporaries are another such topic for which the information could be assembled
and discussed.
Most of these references, of course, function in the teaching of Jesus not as literal
references but as figurative comparisons, and even the factual references are made for
the sake of a religious point. Broadly similar phenomena are common in the prophets,
the psalms and wisdom literature. So the question arises whether such material in
the teaching of Jesus derives from direct observation of nature and farming or from
the scriptural and oral traditional sources of Jesus’ reflection and teaching. Vincent
Mora (1991: 184–92), writing specifically about the animals in Matthew’s Gospel,
argues that almost all of these are used as symbols with deep roots in the Hebrew
Scriptures. This is, course, true for some of the material, such as the image of shep-
herd and sheep, but certainly not for all. To take just two examples of Matthean
animals, that foxes have holes (Mt. 8.20) and that pigs can be savage (Mt. 7.6) are
not observations to be found in the Hebrew Bible or in Jewish traditions known to
us. As we have already noted that Freyne observes, there is no need to think of direct
observation and traditional usage as exclusive alternatives.
With the range and frequency of allusions to nature in the Synoptic teaching of
Jesus it is perhaps instructive to compare the comparative rarity of such allusions in
74 Ecological Hermeneutics

the Pauline letters. In the whole Pauline corpus (including the Pastorals) these animals
occur: dog, lion, ox, snake, sheep (and Passover lamb), viper, wild animals, along
with a general reference to birds, animals and reptiles. Only the following plants
occur: olive tree, vine, wheat and other grains. Although ancient cities were much
more closely connected with the natural and cultivated environment outside them
than modern cities are, it does seem likely that the contrast between Jesus and Paul
in this respect reflects the urban context of both Paul and his readers and hearers,
by contrast with the mostly rural context of Jesus’ life and ministry.6 The contrast
shows that the range and frequency of allusions to nature in the Synoptic teaching
of Jesus are not merely what one might expect from any Jewish teacher acquainted
with the Scriptures and Jewish religious traditions.
This whole issue merits much closer and more careful study. But, even if we sup-
pose that Jesus’ teaching drew extensively on his own close familiarity with the nature
and farming practices of rural Galilee, we may still ask what the significance of this
might be. With few exceptions, all these references have a figurative function: they do
not seem to function to teach Jesus’ hearers anything about the natural world itself
or human relationships with it, but serve to make points about God and human life.
However, there are some suggestions in the literature that could indicate otherwise.
C. H. Dodd, having observed that the parables are realistic stories, true to nature
and to life,7 rather than artificial allegories, writes:

There is a reason for this realism of the parables of Jesus. It arises from a conviction that
there is no mere analogy, but an inward affinity, between the natural order and the spiritual
order; or as we might put it in the language of the parables themselves, the Kingdom of God
is intrinsically like the process of nature and of the daily life of men. Jesus therefore did not
feel the need of making up artificial illustrations for the truths He wished to teach. He found
them ready-made by the Maker of man and nature. (Dodd 1961: 20)

Claus Westermann understands the way parables work differently from Dodd, but he
also argues that, like the ‘comparisons’ in the Old Testament with which he compares
them, the parables of Jesus, by drawing their comparisons from the world of creation,
‘assign great significance to God’s creation in the context of what the Bible says about
God’ (Westermann 1990: 202). These are claims that need much fuller investigation
before they can be confidently accepted or rejected.
Freyne makes a related but somewhat different point:

Part of the genius of Jesus’ parable-making is his ability to take everyday experiences, such as
sowing and reaping and weave these into narratives that are at one and the same time highly

6 Of course, Galilee included the Herodian cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias, but the absence
of any reference to these in the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ ministry very probably indicates
that he deliberately avoided visiting them.
7 On the realism of the parables, see especially Hedrick 1994: 39–56.
 Reading the Synoptic Gospels Ecologically 75

realistic in terms of his hearers’ world and their experiences and deeply resonant of Yahweh’s
activity on behalf of Israel as this had been described in the psalms and the prophets. For
peasant hearers their everyday work and experiences were being elevated to a symbolic level
with reference to God’s caring presence to Israel, as was the case also with the proverbial
wisdom in the Hebrew Scriptures. The element of surprise and dislocation that many of these
stories contain was intended to challenge the hearers to reconsider their understanding of God
and his dealings with Israel, and to experience his presence in the world of the everyday, the
world of home, village, field, sky and mountain. (Freyne 2004: 59)

This feature of the parables of Jesus could be highlighted by a comparison with the
rabbinic parables. Though these share motifs with the parables of Jesus, they are
much less connected with the everyday world (natural and occupational) of ordinary
people. This down-to-earth and small-scale character of the stories Jesus told could
also be associated with Jesus’ miracles (healings, exorcisms and nature miracles) and
significant acts (such as eating with sinners): both in his teaching and his activity
Jesus proclaimed and embodied the kingdom of God in small-scale instances within
the lives of ordinary people. These people’s relationship to the natural world was
a constant and determining feature of their lives, and this is reflected both in Jesus’
parables and in his nature miracles.
Closeness and sensitivity to the natural environment would not, of course, make
Jesus a modern ecologist. Echlin is clear about this: ‘What emerges from the gospels
is a villager within the Jewish tradition of holistic compassion and sustainable organic
husbandry with people and animals on the land, working with and not against the
ways of nature’ (Echlin 1999: 78).
In other words, Echlin sees Jesus as embodying the best of the Jewish tradition,
informed by the Hebrew Bible, with regard to attitudes to other living creatures and
the environment. But this requires that we look for signs of the creation theology
of the Hebrew Scriptures within the Synoptic teaching of Jesus. This is the starting
point for the next section of this essay, in which we shall ask how creation theol-
ogy might relate to the central theme of Jesus’ teaching and ministry: the Kingdom
of God.

The Kingdom of God as the Renewal of Creation

Jesus evidently endorsed the creation theology of the Hebrew Bible, centred on the
belief that God created all things (cf. Mt. 19.9; Mk 10.6) and, as ‘Lord of heaven and
earth’ (Lk. 10.21; Mt. 11.25), cared for the whole of his creation. As we shall see,
this was the presupposition of his teaching about the Kingdom of God. But creation
theology also appears explicitly at a number of key points in Jesus’ theology:

1. To support his command to love enemies, Jesus uses the notion of imitation of God:
‘so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on
76 Ecological Hermeneutics

the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’
(Mt. 5.45).8 The God who generously and mercifully pours his blessings on all people
without distinction is the Creator who, according to Psalm 145, ‘is good to all, and his
compassion is over all that he has made’ (Ps. 145.9). He is the source of all the blessings
of the natural world, including sun (Ps. 19.4-6) and rain (Pss 65.9-11; 104.13; 147.8;
Lev. 26.4).
2. ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground
apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be
afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows’ (Mt. 10.29-31; cf. Lk. 12.6-7). While
the point of this saying is to reassure the disciples of God’s providential care for them,
this rests on the assertion that God’s providence embraces even the sparrows, whom
humans value so cheaply that a pair costs a penny in the market. It is God who preserves
each sparrow’s life, and so not one sparrow can be caught in a hunter’s net without his
knowledge and consent. Jesus’ words here reflect the view of the Hebrew Scriptures
that God’s caring responsibility embraces each living creature he has made (Job 12.10;
Pss 36.6; 104.29-30).9
3. ‘Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet
your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? . . . Consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon
in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the
field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more
clothe you . . .’ (Mt. 6.26, 28-30; cf. Lk. 12.24, 27-28). Again, this is an argument from
the lesser (wild flowers and birds) to the greater (human), but again the lesson for Jesus’
hearers cannot be had without the premise that God cares for birds and wild flowers.
That God feeds the birds (as he does all living creatures) is explicit in the Hebrew Bible
(Ps. 147.9; Job 38.41; cf. Pss 104.27-28; 145.15-16). Humans can trust in God’s provi-
sion because they too are members, even if eminent members, of the community of God’s
creatures for whom he generously provides.
4. Probably Jesus’ hearers would also have understood his parables of growth (Mk 4.3-8,
26-32; and parallels) in terms of Jewish creation theology. They would not have supposed
the growth of grain or mustard plants to be some kind of autonomous natural process,
but as due to the blessing of God (cf. 1 Cor. 3.6). Only through the blessing of God is
his creation fruitful (Deut. 7.12; 26.15; 28.4-5; Pss 65.9-11; 67.6; 107.38; cf. Gen. 1.22,
28). So in these parables the comparison is between God-given growth in creation and
the God-given growth of the Kingdom of God, or, we might say, between the divine
work of creation and the divine work of salvation and renewal. Also worth noticing at
this point is the fact that the Psalms feature so prominently among the biblical sources
of Jesus’ creation theology. They would, of course, have been among the Scriptures best
known to both Jesus and his hearers.

8 Biblical quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise stated.

9 On this passage, and the Lukan parallel, see Bauckham 1998: 42–44.
 Reading the Synoptic Gospels Ecologically 77

From these indications of the importance of creation theology to Jesus the question
arises as to its relationship to his proclamation of the coming Kingdom of God, which
the Synoptic Gospels consider the overriding theme of his mission and teaching.
Misunderstanding at this point has been fostered both by the tendency of scholars
(enshrined in the so called ‘criterion of dissimilarity’) to stress only what appears to
be novel in the teaching of Jesus vis-à-vis Judaism, and also by the perception of some
kind of opposition between creation and eschatology, as though the eschatological
Kingdom comes to abolish and replace creation. Instead, we should recognize the
continuity between Jesus’ teaching and the Scriptures and traditions of Judaism,
without which what was novel in his teaching cannot be understood, and, crucially,
that the Kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus represents not the abolition but
the renewal of creation.
Just as Jesus’ creation theology seems rooted especially in the Psalms, so also is his
understanding of the Kingdom of God, though Isaiah and Daniel are also important
in this case. Most treatments of the background to the Kingdom of God in the
Gospels give no great prominence to the Psalms, but Bruce Chilton’s work especially
remedies this failure (Chilton 1996: 23–44). The kingship and rule of God are more
prominent in the Psalms than in most other parts of the Hebrew Bible, and they are
closely related to creation. It is as Creator that God rules his whole creation (Ps.
103.19-22). His rule is over all that he has made, human and otherwise (Pss 95.4-5;
96.11-13), and it is expressed in the kind of caring responsibility for creation that we
have already seen reflected also in the teaching of Jesus (Psalm 145). All non-human
creatures acclaim his rule now (Pss 103.19-22; 148) and all nations must come to
do so in the future (Ps. 97.1), for God is coming to judge the world, that is, both to
condemn and to save (Pss 96.13; 98.9). His own people Israel’s role is to declare his
kingship to the nations (Pss 96.3, 10; 145.10-12). When God does come to judge
and to rule, all creation will rejoice at his advent (Pss 96.11-12; 98.7-8). (These last
three sentences show how close these Psalms are to the message of Isaiah 40–66,
where the rule of God is also central.)
The kingship and rule of God in the Psalms have both a spatial and a temporal
dimension. They are cosmic in scope, encompassing all creation, by no means con-
fined to human society. They are also eternal, established at creation and set to last
forever (Pss 93; 145.13; 146.10). Yet God’s rule is widely flouted and rejected by the
nations, and so it is still to come in the fullness of power and in manifest glory. The
God who rules from his heavenly throne (Pss 11.4; 103.19) is coming to establish
his rule on earth. It is this coming that Jesus proclaims. His distinctive phrase, ‘the
kingdom of God comes’, stands for the expectation of the Psalms and the prophets
that God himself is coming to reign (Meier 1994: 298-99).
The cosmic scope of the Kingdom can be seen in the opening three petitions of
the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s version:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,
78 Ecological Hermeneutics

your kingdom come,

your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. (Mt. 6.9-10)

The phrase ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ should probably be understood to qualify all
three of the petitions. Presently, God’s name is perfectly hallowed, his rule perfectly
obeyed, and his will absolutely done in heaven, but all are neglected or contested
on earth. Probably the emphasis is on humans coming to hallow God’s name, to
acknowledge God’s rule and to do his will, but we should recall that in the Hebrew
Bible non-human creatures also do these things, often when humans fail to do so
(e.g. praising God’s name: Ps. 145.5, 13; acclaiming his rule: Pss 103.19-22; 145.10-11;
doing his will: Jer. 8.7). Moreover, the coupling of ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ cannot fail to
evoke the whole creation, everything God created at the beginning (Gen. 1.1; 2.1, 4).
God, it was standardly said, is the Creator of heaven and earth, and this is the basis
on which his Kingdom must come on earth as it is in heaven. The Kingdom does not
come to extract people from the rest of creation, but to renew the whole creation in
accordance with God’s perfect will for it.
As well as proclaiming and explaining the Kingdom of God, Jesus instantiated it in
the many activities of his ministry. These included the miracles of healing, exorcisms
and the so-called ‘nature’ miracles. They also included significant acts such as his
demonstration in the temple, sharing meals with sinners, blessing children, washing
the disciples’ feet and riding a donkey into Jerusalem. All these activities are to be
understood as proleptic instances of the coming of the Kingdom, helping to define
how Jesus understood the rule of God, but more than just symbols of its coming.
In such activities the Kingdom was actually coming, but in anticipatory fashion, in
small-scale instances. Their small-scale nature comports with the way most of the
parables represent the Kingdom by events set in the ordinary world of Jesus’ hearers.
Just as a mustard plant, in the parable, grows to the dimensions of the mythical world
tree, so, when Jesus stills the storm, a squall on the lake evokes the vast destructive
power of the mythical abyss. Just as the extraordinary generosity of God in his coming
Kingdom is figured, in the parable, when a master serves dinner to his slaves, so it takes
place when Jesus pronounces the forgiveness of a notorious sinner who washed his feet.
The activities of Jesus were small-scale anticipations of the Kingdom that heralded
its universal coming in the future. What is notable about them, for our purposes,
is the way that their holistic character points to the coming of the Kingdom in all
creation. Jesus brought wholeness to the lives of the people he healed and delivered:
reconciling them to God, driving the power of evil from their lives, healing diseased
bodies, making good crippling disabilities, restoring social relationships to those
isolated by their misfortune, while of those who had everything he required much.
At least some of the nature miracles anticipate the transformation of human relation-
ships with the non-human world in the renewed creation. In the feeding miracles
God’s generous provision for his people through the gifts of creation takes place
even in the barren wilderness, as had happened in the first exodus (Ps. 78.15-16,
 Reading the Synoptic Gospels Ecologically 79

23-25) and was expected for the new exodus (Isa. 35.1, 6-7;10 41.18-19; 51.3; cf.
Ezek. 34.26-39). When Jesus walks on the water and stills the storm, God’s unique
sovereignty over the waters of chaos is evoked, with the expectation that in the
renewed creation the destructive powers of nature will be finally quelled. While most
of Jesus’ activities focused on humans and human society in relation to God, there are
sufficient indications that Jesus and the evangelists also embraced the fully inclusive
understanding of God’s rule over all creation that is so prominent in the Psalms.

Jesus and the Peaceable Kingdom

In the Hebrew Bible the desirable relationship between humans and other creatures
is sometimes portrayed as peace. As Murray points out, this may be either peace
from or peace with (Murray 1997: 34, 105). Both speak to the threat that dangerous
animals posed both to human life and to human livelihood (in the form of domestic
animals). Peace from is the more pragmatic possibility, secured in the covenant with
Noah by the fear of humans that came to characterize other creatures (Gen. 9.2).
Peace from could also be secured simply by the absence of dangerous animals, like
the absence of invading armies that is sometimes linked with it (Lev. 26.6; Ezek.
34.25, 28; cf. Hos. 2.18). The more positive state of peace with wild animals is a
return to paradisal conditions. This is the relationship with dangerous animals that
is portrayed in the well-known description of the messianic kingdom in Isa. 11.6-9.
This passage has often been misunderstood by modern readers as a picture simply of
peace between animals. In fact, it depicts peace between the human world, with its
domesticated animals (lamb, kid, calf, bullock, cow), and those wild animals (wolf,
leopard, lion, bear, poisonous snakes) that were normally perceived as threats both to
human livelihood and to human life. Humans appear in their most vulnerable form,
as children, just as most of the domestic animals do (lamb, kid, etc.). This is a picture
of reconciliation of the human world with the wild world, healed of the fear and
violence that had been accepted, as a pragmatic compromise, in the Noahic covenant.
It is likely that the ecotopia envisaged in Isaiah 11 is the key to understanding the
reference to wild animals in Mark’s brief account of Jesus in the wilderness:

He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan;

and he was with the wild animals;
and the angels ministered to him. (Mk 1.13: my translation)

Here Jesus goes into the wilderness, the realm outside of human habitation, in order
to establish his messianic relationship with the non-human creatures. The order in
which the three categories of them appear is significant. Satan is simply an enemy of

10 It is noteworthy that in Isaiah 35, the transformation of nature accompanies the healing of
the blind, the deaf, the lame and the dumb (a passage to which Mt. 11.6 and Lk. 7.22 allude).
80 Ecological Hermeneutics

Jesus and the angels simply his friends, but the wild animals, placed by Mark between
the two, are enemies of whom Jesus makes friends. Jesus in the wilderness enacts, in
an anticipatory way, the peace between the human world and wild nature that is the
Bible’s hope for the messianic future. Mark’s simple but effective phrase (‘he was with
the wild animals’) has no suggestion of hostility or resistance about it. It indicates Jesus’
peaceable presence with the animals. The expression ‘to be with someone’ frequently
has, in Mark’s usage (3.14; 5.18; 14.67; cf. 4.36) and elsewhere, the sense of close,
friendly association. (It may also be relevant that Genesis describes the animals in
the ark as those who were ‘with’ Noah: Gen. 7.23; 8.1, 17; 9.12.) Mark could have
thought of the ideal relationship between wild animals and humans, here represented
by their messianic king, as the restoration of dominion over them or as recruiting them
to the ranks of the domestic animals who are useful to humans. But the simple ‘with
them’ can have no such implication. Jesus befriends them. He is peaceably with them.11
A passage that evokes a very different aspect of messianic peace with the non-human
world is the story of the stilling of the storm. According to Mark’s version (4.35-41),
Jesus ‘rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased,
and there was a dead calm’ (4.39). The story evokes a mythical image that is widely
reflected in the Hebrew Bible: the primeval waters, the destructive powers of nature
imaged as a vast tempestuous ocean, which God in creation reduced to calm and
confined within limits so that the world could be a stable environment for living
creatures. These waters of chaos were not abolished by creation, only confined, always
ready to break out and endanger creation, needing to be constantly restrained by
the Creator. For ancient Israelites the waters of the mythical abyss were not simply a
metaphysical idea. In an event such as a storm at sea, the real waters of the sea became
the waters of chaos, threatening life and controllable only by God. In the case of this
story, a squall on the lake of Galilee is enough to raise the spectre of elemental chaos.
When Mark says that Jesus ‘rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be
still!”’, he recalls the most characteristic ways in which the Hebrew Bible speaks
of God’s subduing the waters of chaos. The ‘rebuke’ is God’s powerful word of
command, as in Ps. 104.7: ‘at your rebuke the waters flee’. The word that silences
the storm occurs, among other places, in Job 26.12: ‘By his power he stills the sea’.
What Jesus enacts, therefore, is the Creator’s pacification of chaos. In this small-scale
instance he anticipates the final elimination of all forces of destruction that will
distinguish the renewed creation from the present (cf. Isa. 27.1; Rev. 21.1).
A third instance in which Jesus anticipated the peaceable kingdom is his entry into
Jerusalem riding a donkey (Mk 11.1-10 and parallels). As Matthew (21.5) makes
explicit, Jesus here enacts the prophecy of Zech. 9.9-10.12 According to the prophecy,
following the Messiah’s victory ride on the donkey, he will ‘command peace to the

11 I have argued at length for this interpretation of Mk 1.13 in Bauckham 1994. Among recent
studies, this view is also taken by Marcus 1999: 167–68.
12 There may also be allusion to Gen. 49.10-11, interpreted as a reference to the Davidic
Messiah. Here the Messiah’s donkey occurs within a context of paradisal plenty.
 Reading the Synoptic Gospels Ecologically 81

nations’. The peace is among humans, but a peaceable animal, the donkey, helps to
bring it about.13 In ancient Near Eastern cultures, horses were associated with war,
but a king in peacetime might be expected to ride a mule, not a donkey (cf. 1 Kgs
1.33).14 Jesus rides the animal that was every peasant farmer’s beast of burden.
Michael Northcott (1996: 224) writes that, in the Gospels, ‘Jesus is portrayed as one
who lives in supreme harmony with the natural order’. This is not entirely true. The
harmony is marred by the destruction of the Gerasene pigs (Mk 5.10-13 and parallels)
and by the cursing of the unfruitful fig tree (Mk 11.12-14, 20-21; Mt. 21.18-21). It is, of
course, the demons who destroy the pigs, but Jesus lets them do so, presumably because
the destruction of the pigs was of lesser concern than the deliverance of a man from
demon-possession.15 The fig tree suffers from symbolizing the failure of the temple
authorities to do the good that God expected of them. In both cases we are reminded
that Jesus anticipates the Kingdom within a still unredeemed and unrenewed world.
The glimpses of paradisal harmony are no more than small-scale instances pointing to
the eschatological future. They do, however, show that the Gospels take seriously the
Messiah’s task of healing the enmity between humans and the rest of God’s creation.

Concluding Comment

This exploration of the ecological dimensions of the Synoptic Gospels has remained
within their first-century Jewish thought world. I have not attempted the further
hermeneutical task of relating this to the very different ecological context in which
twenty-first century people find themselves. The suggestions made here do not
have direct ethical implications, but may contribute to the formation of a Christian
theological understanding, rooted in the whole canon of Scripture, of what it means
for God’s human creatures to be part of God’s whole creation. The earthly Jesus,
his teaching and story, can hardly be irrelevant to such an understanding. But the
enterprise of reading the Gospels ecologically has barely begun.

References

Bauckham, R. 1994 ‘Jesus and the Wild Animals (Mark 1:13): A Christological Image for an
Ecological Age’, in J.B. Green and M. Turner (eds), Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ:
Essays on the Historical Jesus and New Testament Christology (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans): 3–21.
Bauckham, R. 1998 ‘Jesus and Animals I: What did he Teach?’ (chapter 4) and ‘Jesus and Animals II:

13 Cf. Bishop 1955: 212: ‘In this case both animal and Rider implied the same idea of peaceable
progress.’
14 Davies and Allison 1997: 116–17, provide relevant references but seem curiously unable to
distinguish a donkey from a mule.
15 On the story of the Gerasene demoniac, see Bauckham 1998: 47–48.
82 Ecological Hermeneutics

What did he Practise?’ (chapter 5), in A. Linzey and D. Yamamoto (eds), Animals on the
Agenda: Questions about Animals for Theology and Ethics (London: SCM): 33–60.
Bauckham, R. 2009a ‘Reading the Sermon on the Mount in an Age of Ecological Catastrophe’,
SCE 22: 76–88.
Bauckham, R. 2009b ‘Jesus, God and Nature in the Gospels’, in R.S. White, Creation in Crisis:
Christian Perspectives on Sustainability (London: SPCK): 209–24.
Bishop, E.F.F. 1955 Jesus of Palestine (London: Lutterworth).
Chilton, B. 1996 Pure Kingdom: Jesus’ Vision of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans/London: SPCK).
Davies, W.D. and D.C. Allison 1997 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According
to Saint Matthew, vol. 3 (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Dodd, C.H. 1961 The Parables of the Kingdom (revised edition; Glasgow: Fontana).
Echlin, E.P. 1999 Earth Spirituality: Jesus at the Centre (New Alresford: Arthur James).
Faricy, R. 1982 Wind and Sea Obey Him (London: SCM).
Freyne, S. 2004 Jesus, a Jewish Galilean: A New Reading of the Jesus-story (London: T&T Clark).
Hedrick, C.W. 1994 Parables as Poetic Fictions: The Creative Voice of Jesus (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson).
Jones, J. 2003 Jesus and the Earth (London: SPCK).
Leske, A.M. 2002 ‘Matthew 6.25-34: Human Anxiety and the Natural World’, in N.C. Habel and
V. Balabanski (eds), The Earth Story in the New Testament (The Earth Bible, 5; London and
New York: Sheffield Academic Press/Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press): 15–27.
Loader, W. 2002 ‘Good News – For the Earth? Reflections on Mark 1.1-15’, in N.C. Habel and
V. Balabanski (eds), The Earth Story in the New Testament (The Earth Bible, 5; London and
New York: Sheffield Academic Press/Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press): 28–43.
Marcus, J. 1999 Mark 1–8 (AB 27; New York: Doubleday).
Meier, J.P. 1994 A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 2: Mentor, Message, and
Miracles (New York: Doubleday).
Mora, V. 1991 La Symbolique de la Création dans l’Évangile de Matthieu (Lectio Divina 144; Paris:
Cerf).
Murray, R. 1997 The Cosmic Covenant (Heythrop Monographs 7; London: Sheed & Ward).
Northcott, M.S. 1996 The Environment and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press).
Renan, E. 1905 [1863] Renan’s Life of Jesus (tr. William G. Hutchinson; London: Walter Scott).
Shillington, V.G. 1997 ‘Engaging with the Parables’, in V. George Shillington (ed.), Jesus and His
Parables: Interpreting the Parables of Jesus Today (Edinburgh: T&T Clark): 1–20.
Westermann, C. 1990 The Parables of Jesus in the Light of the Old Testament (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark).
 Chapter 6

An Ecological Reading of
Rom. 8.19-22: Possibilities and Hesitations

Brendan Byrne, SJ

Recent endeavour to rest ecological concern upon a biblical basis has asked a lot
of a small passage in Romans 8 (vv. 19-22) where Paul makes reference to the
groaning of creation. Whether Paul can be recruited for the ecological cause on so
slender a base remains a question. Paul would doubtless be startled to discover all
that has been wrung out of the tortured sentences and mysterious allusions in this
text. His major concerns in the letter far more evidently bear upon such matters as
the necessity of faith in the Gospel (rather than observance of the Mosaic law) for
justification, and the fate of the bulk of Israel that has proved resistant to such faith.
Interest in the fate of the non-human remainder of creation is at best tangential.
When, then, we interpret this text in an ecological sense we are pushing it well
beyond what would appear to be Paul’s main concerns, though not, I would argue,
counter to the intent of the text. From a hermeneutical point of view, we are reading
the text as Scripture. We are therefore engaging with it from a wider horizon of
discourse, informed by the concerns peculiar to our own time, notably the global
situation.
What has been missing in more recent enquiry into Rom. 8.18-22 is a consid-
eration of it within the wider running context of Paul’s letter to Rome. Such a
consideration can, I believe, enhance the hermeneutical possibilities of the text in the
direction of ecological concern. In a recent book chapter and now in his published
commentary on Romans (Jewett 2004; 2007: 508–10), Robert Jewett has offered
a reading of Rom. 8.18-22 – and the corruption and redemption of creation which
it mentions – within the context of the Roman imperial ideology, the most familiar
element of which would be the celebrated Fourth Eclogue of Virgil. Harry Hahne
has studied the passage from the perspective of the corruption and redemption of
the natural world as a motif in Jewish apocalyptic literature (Hahne 2006). Both
authors, from complementary directions, fill out the background to Paul’s rather
sudden introduction of the non-human created world, and its longing and groaning,
at this point in Romans 8. What I offer here is a consideration of the text within
the broader argument of the letter itself and in respect to several themes that run
throughout its length: the complex (‘overlap’) eschatology of believers’ present exist-
ence; the interplay of grace and sin, and the symbolic role of Adam as instrument
84 Ecological Hermeneutics

of sin; the consequences for ‘creation’ of human existence as embodied. It is from a

wider view building upon consideration of these motifs that I propose to approach
the references to ‘creation’ in Romans 8.
It is generally agreed that Paul states the theme of his letter to Rome in a lengthy
statement describing the power of the Gospel in 1.16-17:

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel: it is the power of God leading to salvation for every
one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God
is revealed, from faith to faith, as it is written: ‘The person who is righteous by faith will
live’ [Hab. 2.4].

This programmatic statement makes clear that the letter is primarily about ‘salva-
tion’. It is a defence of the power of the Gospel – and the Gospel alone – to bring
to salvation all who respond to it in faith, because through faith believers receive
as gift the righteous status upon which salvation depends (Rom. 5.9-10; 10.9-13).
In the light of our current concern the question that immediately presents itself is
whether ‘salvation’ as here asserted includes the non-human remainder of creation
or envisages human beings alone. Until recently, and especially as a consequence
of the Reformation controversy, interpretation has hardly stopped to examine
this question, so confident has been the assumption that Romans is all about how
human individuals find salvation through the grace of God. Too rarely, perhaps,
have interpreters paused to consider that human existence for Paul is embodied
existence – something that, as Paul insists in 1 Corinthians 15, extends beyond the
barrier of death. The difficulty of conceiving of a human bodily existence that did not
in some sense relate to the non-human material remainder of creation as its necessary
physical context suggests from the start that the ‘salvation’ thematically asserted as
the objective of the Gospel must in some way include that non-human remainder
within its scope. Nonetheless, Paul’s notion of salvation operates within a complex
reconfiguring of post-biblical Jewish eschatology, to which we must now devote some
attention.

The Overlap of the Ages

Behind the argument that Paul develops in Romans is the sense shared with Jewish
apocalyptic eschatology of two ages or ‘aeons’: the ‘present age’ and the ‘age to
come’ (Byrne 1996: 20–21). In the present age the created world and human beings
within it have become corrupted and dominated by sin, with a destiny to death and
decay. How the world got into this state Paul does not explain, though he seems
to presuppose in his readers awareness of a tradition, stemming ultimately from
Genesis 3, in which the first human being, Adam, plays a significant role (Scroggs
1966; Levison 1988). This ‘present age’ stands under God’s wrath (Rom. 1.18; 5.9;
cf. 1 Thess. 1.10), a wrath that is very soon to break out destructively and which is
 An Ecological Reading of Rom. 8.19-22 85

already to some extent ‘revealed’ in the perverted state of human bodily existence
(Rom. 1.18-32).1
According to the Gospel, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, God has begun
to establish upon earth a new age in which human beings can be rescued (‘saved’)
from the present time and reclaimed for the original intent of the Creator. For Paul
this divine rescue operation has not burst upon the world unannounced. It is the
working out of a liberation proclaimed long ago in the Scriptures (Rom. 1.2). In fact,
it fulfils a promise made to Abraham, to whom the originally universalist design of
the Creator was announced and in whose person and responses to God its realization
is prefigured (Rom. 4.1-23).2
What complicates things for Paul is the fact that, contrary to conventional Jewish
apocalyptic expectation, these two ‘ages’ have not followed each other in orderly
sequence; they in fact overlap and co-exist at the present time (Dunn 1998: 464).
God has intervened in Christ to mount an eleventh hour rescue of the human situ-
ation before the full operation of divine wrath comes into play. The eschatological
justification leading to entrance into the new age is available here and now for all
who accept in faith the divine offer of righteousness made in the proclamation of the
Gospel (Rom. 3.21-26). This means that, as far as relations with God are concerned
and as attested by the gift of the Spirit, believers already live the life of the new age.
As far as their bodily existence is concerned, however, they are still anchored in the
present age. It is this situation of having to live currently in both ages that creates
the spiritual and ethical dilemmas confronting the present life of believers that Paul
addresses in Romans 5–8 (Byrne 1981).

Paul’s Sense of Life in the Body in Romans

In this part of the letter (Romans 5–8) Paul addresses three factors arising out of the
continuing tug of the old age upon believers in their bodily life: first, suffering; then,
mortality; and, third, the necessity and possibility of living righteously in the present
‘overlap’ time where people no longer live ‘under the law’. Paul addresses the issue
of suffering in the first half of chapter 5 (vv. 1-11) and revisits it in the latter half of
chapter 8 (vv. 18, 31-39). Suffering is not to be interpreted as an indication of God’s
wrath. On the contrary, in the context of God’s action in giving up the Son for our
justification (Rom. 4.25; 5.6-10; 8.32) and the union with Christ thereby established
(Rom.8.17), it is a sure index of hope: that God will bring to completion that saving
work already begun at such cost (Gieniusz 1999). Likewise (Rom. 5.12-21), though

1 On the hermeneutical and ethical issues raised for contemporary interpretation by Paul’s
adherence to a conventional Hellenistic Jewish view linking idolatry and sexual perversion
in pagan society, see Byrne 1996: 70.
2 I leave aside here the huge issue for Paul arising out of how to account for Israel, the Sinai
covenant, and the Law and the righteousness it purported to offer.
86 Ecological Hermeneutics

death has become a universally prevalent factor of human existence as a legacy of

Adam’s sin and the universal sinfulness thereby unleashed (Rom. 5.12), sin and
death will not have the last word. In Christ, as counterpart to Adam (‘Last Adam’
[1 Cor. 15.45]), God has introduced into the world a ‘much more’ powerful legacy
of righteousness leading to life (Rom. 5.15-17). Finally, whereas in the old era human
existence had fallen under the grip of ‘Sin’ (hamartia) personified as an overbearing
slavemaster imposing a fatal necessity to sin, through faith and their baptizmal union
with Christ, believers have been set free from such slavery and brought into a new
obedience of righteousness leading to life (Rom. 6.1-23).
Believers have to live out this new situation, however, as ‘flesh’, and flesh is where
they remain vulnerable to the still present threat of the slavemaster Sin. When Paul’s
argument takes an anthropological turn in Romans 7, it is not easy to get a grasp
upon why he at times speaks about human existence as ‘flesh’ (Rom. 7.5, 14, 18, 25;
8.3-9 [passim], 12, 13) and at times as ‘body’ (Rom. 7.24; 8.10, 11, 13, 23). Flesh is
clearly the more pejorative quantity. While it can refer simply to the physical aspect
of human life (2 Cor. 12.7; Gal. 4.14), it more usually has overtones of vulnerability,
leading to hostility to God and resistance to the Spirit (Rom. 8.6-8); as ‘flesh’ human
beings have bad relationships: with God, with each other and with each one’s own
best interest. Human bodily existence is material but essentially relational: it is as
söma that believers relate to surrounding physical world and also to each other
(Byrne 1983). Whereas as ‘flesh’ relating is always bad, as söma it can go either way:
in the direction of alienation from God and death, or, under the influence of the Spirit,
in the direction of freedom and eternal life. So Paul can speak of our ‘former self’
(literally, ‘our old man’) being concrucified with Christ in order to take away the
‘body of sin’, that is, presumably, to destroy our bodily subjection to Sin (Rom. 6.6);
he can also urge his audience, not ‘to allow Sin to reign in your mortal bodies’ but to
offer ‘your members as instruments of righteousness to God’ (Rom. 6.12).
In regard to this latter, positive aspiration, in Paul’s view the Law is no help at all
(Rom. 7.5); it simply anchors people in the conditions and slavery of the old age – a
situation dramatically illustrated in the dilemma of the ‘I’ described in the latter part
of chapter 7 (vv. 14-25). This comes to a climax with the plaintive cry: ‘Who will
deliver me from the body of this death?’ (v. 24b), that is, from a bodily existence
trapped in a servitude to Sin that will inevitably lead to (eternal) death.
In the first part of chapter 8, as a kind of answering second panel of a diptych,
Paul describes the new possibility brought about by God’s redemptive act in the
sending of the Son (Byrne 1996: 213, 234–41). This has liberated human beings from
the power of Sin dominating the flesh and created the possibility of living bodily life
under the influence not of the flesh but of the Spirit (Rom. 8.1-4). In Rom. 8.12-13,
Paul concludes on a kind of exhortatory note:

So then, my brothers (and sisters), we are people under an obligation – not to the flesh, to live
according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But, if in the Spirit
you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
 An Ecological Reading of Rom. 8.19-22 87

Why did Paul write (or dictate) in that penultimate phrase ‘deeds of the body’ – as
though the body were the cause of all the trouble? Why did he not write, ‘deeds of
the flesh’? Was it a lapse that Tertius (Rom. 16.22) did not advert to? Or did Paul
mean ‘body’ under the negative aspect? Presuming that he did mean ‘body’, perhaps
we have to understand here deeds that believers do in the body under its aspect of still
being anchored in the conditions of the present age and still liable to be determined
by it, that is, by its enslavement under Sin. We remember that in verse 3, Paul speaks
of God in the Christ act having ‘condemned’ Sin in the flesh. This reference to Sin’s
‘outing’ and condemnation as the real villain is not necessarily the same thing as its
complete removal or elimination.
Later in Romans 8, in the verse (v. 23) coming immediately after the passage that
is our fine point of focus, Paul will speak of believers awaiting ‘the redemption of the
body’. As is widely recognized, this phrase is not to be interpreted in a proto-Gnostic
sense as redemption ‘from’ the body, as though bodily existence were the whole
problem. Rather it refers to the redemption – that is, the costly liberation – of believ-
ers’ bodily existence from the continuing conditions of the present age: suffering,
death and the threat of sin. The ‘cost’ may be physical death itself (cf. Rom. 8.10b).
For Paul, however, death is not the end of life in the body but the gateway to bodily
life fully under the influence of the Spirit (cf. 1 Corinthians 15): human existence as
God intended from the start that it should be, patterned upon the risen humanity of
Jesus (cf. Rom. 8.29).
In the meantime, as he begins the parenesis that brings to a conclusion the
main body of his letter to Rome (12.1–15.13), Paul exhorts his audience to offer
their bodies ‘as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, the worship you owe
as rational beings’ (Rom. 12.1). Present bodily life, though vulnerable and mortal
(Rom. 8.10), is capable of being lived out in a way totally pleasing and acceptable to
God – a pattern of life regulated not by going back to the Law but through discern-
ment of God’s will, and what is ‘good and acceptable and perfect’ (Rom. 12.2d).
This discernment is made possible through believers’ not being conformed to this
present age but transformed through the renewal of their mind (Rom. 12.2c). The
exhortation recognizes that believers have to live their bodily life in the context
of two ages but insists that they do not have to live determined by the conditions
of the present one: with renewed ‘mind’ they can live in the present the values of
the new.
What I have been trying to uncover in this review of Paul’s wider argument in
Romans is a context that makes Paul’s sudden appeal to ‘creation’ in the middle of
chapter 8 somewhat less surprising. In the context of his continuing consciousness
of human existence as bodily existence and hence of related existence, including
relation to the non-human created world, that reference, when it occurs, becomes less
anomalous. All through this part of Romans Paul has been dealing with the issues
and dilemmas created by the overlap of the ages and the necessity for believers of
living a bodily life within the opposing ‘tugs’ of those two ages.
88 Ecological Hermeneutics

The Groaning of Creation: Rom. 8.19-22

The passage that is the specific object of our enquiry occurs at a point where Paul,
pursuing his overall case for hope in the present ‘overlap’ situation (Romans 5–8),
explicitly confronts once more (cf. Rom. 5.1-4) the phenomenon of suffering. After
an opening thematic assertion (v. 18) to the effect that the sufferings of the present
time pale into insignificance (literally, ‘do not bear comparison’) with ‘the glory
that is to be revealed in us’, the small passage on ‘creation’ appears as the first of
three subsections each of which features a subject that ‘groans’: (‘creation’ [vv.
19-22]; ‘ourselves’ [vv. 23-25]; ‘the Spirit’ [vv. 26-27]). In each case the ‘groaning’
is not simply a negative reaction to pain. It provides grounds for hope in the sense
of expressing a ‘divine restlessness’ with the present state of affairs, offering a
well-founded anticipation of a much better situation (‘glory’) soon to come (Byrne
1996: 255). Paul rounds off the ‘groaning’ sequence by evoking the sense of believers’
being caught up in the inexorable unfolding of God’s salvific plan (vv. 28-30).
The logical flow in the sequence making up the first ‘groaning’ passage (vv. 19-22)
is not all that obvious at first glance. Paul works to his conclusion, the groaning of
creation (v. 22), by first (v. 19) pointing to an eager longing on the part of creation,
and then, in a little parenthesis (vv. 20-21), explains why creation has this eager
longing, which expresses itself in a groaning (v. 22) that he sees to be the outward
manifestation of hope. Along with most interpreters, I take ‘creation’ (ktisis) here to
refer to the non-human remainder of creation (Byrne 1996: 255–56; Hahne 2006:
176–81). Paul’s argument then rests upon a biblical and post-biblical tradition,
stemming ultimately from Gen. 1.26-28, that sees creation in this sense as intimately
bound up with the fate of human beings for good and for ill. When human beings
fail, that failure redounds negatively upon creation (cf. Gen. 3.17-19; 4 Ezra 7.11-12;
9.19-20). Conversely, human restoration will be reflected in a transformation of
the non-human created world (cf. Isa. 11.6-9; 43.19-21; 55.12-13; Ezek. 34.25-31;
Hos. 2.18; Zech. 8.12; 1 Enoch 45.4-5; 51.4-5; 4 Ezra 8.51-54; 2 Apoc. Bar. 29.1-8;
Byrne 1996: 256; Hahne 2006: 35–168). It is on the basis of this ‘common fate’ that
Paul, personifying ‘creation’, can speak of its ‘eager longing’ (apokaradokia) for
the revelation of the sons (and daughters) of God’ (v. 19), that is, for the outward
manifestation in risen glory of the filial status in regard to God of those who already,
as beneficiaries of Christ’s redemptive act, experience the reality of that status in a
hidden way (Rom. 8.15-16, 23; Gal. 3.26-28; Byrne 1996: 257).
The background to this eager expectation on the part of creation is explained in
the little parenthesis making up Rom. 8.20-21. Most interpreters find in the refer-
ence to creation’s ‘subjection to futility’ an allusion to the element of the second
creation story Gen 2.4b–3.24 where the earth is cursed as a consequence (and
punishment) for Adam’s sin (Gen. 3.17-19). ‘Futility’ (mataiotës) has the general
sense of ‘worthlessness’, ‘purposelessness’ (BDAG: 621). It is difficult to pinpoint
precisely what Paul means by ‘futility’ in the context under discussion, though it
is probably safest to see the term retaining its basic sense of ‘inability to attain its
 An Ecological Reading of Rom. 8.19-22 89

true purpose’ (Cranfield 1975: 413–14). The motif occurs elsewhere in Paul (in the
form of the cognate verb in the passive) only in Rom. 1.21 (with an echo in Eph.
4.17) in regard to the human lapse into idolatry (worshipping the creature rather
than the Creator [v 24]). In Rom. 1.21, however, it is the human side of the interac-
tion (the mind) that becomes ‘futile’ rather than the objective created world, as in
Rom. 8.20. What is common to both occurrences is the sense that because of human
failure something – the human mind in the first case, the non-human created world
in the second – has been frustrated from attaining its true purpose. In Gen. 3.17-19
the consequence of yhwh’s cursing of the earth is that what had previously been a
garden providing all manner of delightful food for the human couple without any
labour on their part has been rendered a difficult and harsh terrain from which they
have to wrest their food with wearying toil and effort. In other words, the kind of
harmonious relationship between human beings and the natural world proper to life
in a garden has been replaced by one more redolent of situations where the two are
virtually in conflict. In this sense it is perhaps not drawing too long a bow to relate
the subjection to ‘futility’ in Rom. 8.20 to the contemporary sense of environmental
degradation – at least in the context of the wider Adamic ‘sin story’ that, as I shall
argue, runs through the central chapters of the letter.
But who is ‘the subduer’ (ton hypotaxanta) ‘on account of’ (dia) whom creation,
against its own will (ouch hekousa) underwent subjection to futility (v. 20b)? While
most interpreters recognize an ‘Adamic’ aura behind the elusive references in this text,
a minority find here a precise reference to Adam, or to humankind as represented
by him (Byrne 1996: 258, 260–61). However, the unmistakable divine passive in the
reference to subjection hypetagë earlier in the verse and the fact that God is certainly
the agent of the cursing of the earth according to Gen. 3.17-19 have led most to see
here a reference to God – even though such a reference does put a strain upon the dia
ton . . . phrase, which has then to be understood in a rarely occurring instrumental
sense rather than in the causal sense that it far more normally has (Fitzmyer 1993:
508). Within the overall allusion to the so-called ‘Fall’ story and hence the sin of
Adam, what seems to be uppermost in Paul’s mind is responsibility for the bringing
about of the negative situation (the subjection of creation to ‘futility’). He wants
to deflect this responsibility from creation, which neither wanted it (ouch hekousa)
nor deserved it. The subjection came about as a consequence of human sin and
as punishment for that sin. Perhaps in trying to wrest meaning from Paul’s highly
cryptic phrases here we can offer some distinctions in regard to ‘causality’ for the
‘subjection’: God was the agent of the subjection (the hypotaxanta corresponding
to the divine passive in hypetagë); Adam was its cause in the sense of meriting this
punishment; creation, as the instrument of the divine retribution, was compelled to
be the innocent victim in the entire transaction.
In ‘compensation’, so to speak, for its being required to play this retributory role,
God gave creation the ‘hope’ spelled out in v. 21 (reading hoti at the start of the
statement in a declaratory sense: Byrne 1996: 261). That is, creation would be set free
from its bondage to decay (‘futility’) to share in the ‘freedom’ (from such bondage)
90 Ecological Hermeneutics

associated with the glory of the children of God. On the solidarity or ‘common fate’
principle linking it with human beings, the non-human creation cherished the hope
that when the fall of human beings would be reversed and they (or at least some)
would attain the likeness to God (‘glory’) that was the original intent of the Creator
in their regard, and it also would share this freedom and glory from corruption
and decay.
It is in view of this hope given it by God that creation awaits with ‘eager longing’
the revelation of God’s sons (and daughters) (v. 19), a revelation that will occur when
the status of divine filiation now attested only through the Spirit (Rom. 8.14-16) will
be made externally manifest through the liberation of human bodily existence (the
awaited ‘redemption of the body’ [v. 23]) in resurrection. The reversal of human
beings’ bondage to mortality (‘decay’) and attainment of the ‘glory’ that was the
Creator’s original intent in their regard will signal to creation that its own time for
liberation has arrived.
Having explained why creation has this eager longing, Paul can now (v. 22) round
off this first stage of his argument for hope by pointing to its ‘groaning’ manifesta-
tion as an object of common knowledge (oidamen gar). Ever since the ‘Fall’ (cf.
Gen. 3.17-19) right up to the present (achri tou nun), the entire non-human creation
has been groaning, not simply because it has had to bear the consequences of Adam’s
sin, but also in view of the hope that the Creator bestowed upon it when ‘subjecting
it to futility’ as a way of punishing human sin. It is suffering but not suffering to no
purpose. As in the case of the suffering of the justified as expressed in Rom. 5.3-5,
it is suffering a suffering redolent of hope.
It is natural to interpret the ‘groaning together’ (systenazei) of ‘all creation’
in the sense of a response to the pain inflicted upon the earth by (sinful) human
misuse. While there is no need from an exegetical point of view to exclude the
sense of a groaning in response to injury and pain, the wider flow of the argument
in Rom. 8.18-30 as a whole favours understanding this ‘groaning’ (along with the
later references to the groaning of ‘ourselves’ [v. 23] and the ‘inexpressible groans’
of the Spirit [v. 26]) primarily as an index of hope (Byrne 1996: 255; Hahne 2006:
202–203). Hence, when ecologically attuned present-day readers find in the ‘groan-
ing’ of creation a response to the pain inflicted upon the earth by (sinful) human
misuse, there is need for some nuance and clarification. Neither in the ‘Fall’ story
of Gen. 3.17-19 nor in the apparent allusion to it behind Rom. 8.20-21 is there any
suggestion of direct human action in respect of creation in a destructive sense. Adam’s
sin, while it may involve reaching out to a forbidden creature (Gen. 2.16-17; 3.6),
was essentially an act of disobedience towards God. In the Genesis myth and the
tradition stemming from it the ‘subjection’ inflicted upon creation came about as an
action of God designed to punish human beings for their sin. There is no ‘straight
line’ between human action and the effect upon the non-human created world. The
punitive causality, if one may speak in such terms, runs through God.
 An Ecological Reading of Rom. 8.19-22 91

The ‘Sin Story’ in Relation to Creation

Such being the case, a reading of Rom. 8.19-22 that wishes to derive from the text
a reflection upon destructive human behaviour in regard to the non-human creation
will have to do so on the basis of a somewhat broader view of human sinfulness
and its consequences according to Paul. Besides the focus upon grace and faith,
Paul’s letter to Rome offers a sustained and sophisticated analysis of human sin,
which in its central chapters it portrays under the image of a slavery from which
humans are powerless to escape. The Adamic aura hovering about Rom. 8.19-22
draws this text into association with the Adamic allusions that first become explicit
in connection with the onset of sin and death in Rom. 5.12-21, but which run far
more widely beneath the surface of the argument. Adam was significant for Paul not
simply as the individual who fathered the race but also as representative symbol of
unredeemed human existence, enslaved to selfishness as the radical core of sin and, in
consequence, relating poorly both to God and to the wider created world. ‘In Adam’
Paul sees told the ‘sin story’ of the human race, over against which God’s action in
the Christ-event has counterpoised a (much more powerful) ‘grace story’ (Byrne
2003). Throughout a substantial block of the argument in Romans (5.12–8.4) Paul
portrays sin (hamartia) as a tyrant slavemaster into whose grip Adam has delivered
the human race, the consequence being an ineluctable compulsion to sin that can
only be broken by God’s act in Christ (Rom. 8.3-4).
It is in this wider sense, I believe, that the Adamic allusions in Rom. 8.19-22 can
most properly be related to ecological concern. In the ‘overlap of the ages’ situation
where human bodily life continues to be anchored in the conditions of the ‘old age’,
vulnerable to weakness (‘flesh’), suffering and death, the Adamic ‘sin story’ continues
to exert its tug upon human beings. While, as the imagery suggests, Paul is more
interested in the radical core of sinfulness rather than its outward manifestation
in specific acts, there is no reason why ecological misbehaviour and abuse of the
environment, whether on an individual or communal scale, should not be seen as
outward manifestations of what he would recognize as a radical slavery to ‘Sin’.

The ‘Grace Story’ in Relation to Creation

So much for the negative. But what of the positive? As is widely recognized, Paul’s
negative allusions to the Adam story and to the onset of sin and death that it encap-
sulates, serve as a foil over against which to assert the superior force (the ‘much more’
[pollö mallon]: Rom. 5.9, 10, 15, 17; cf. 20b) of the grace story told in Christ, which
is the basis of hope. Is it possible to relate this story, focused upon Christ as ‘Last
Adam’ (cf. 1 Cor. 15.45), to a positive future for the world resting again on human
bodily solidarity with the non-human creation?
In several respects things are even more tricky here than in the negative case,
where, as I pointed out, neither Paul in Rom. 8.19-21 nor the Genesis text lying
92 Ecological Hermeneutics

behind it envisaged direct human agency for ill upon the non-human world. The
‘grace story’ is precisely grace: the gift of God made concrete in the life and especially
the sacrificial self-gift in death of Jesus Christ (Rom. 5.15, 17). In respect of that gift,
which is in effect the ‘new creation’ (2 Cor. 5.18; Gal. 6.15), human beings can ‘do’
nothing: all they can do is to open themselves up to receive through faith the justi-
fication that it offers and the promise of salvation that it holds out (Rom. 1.16-17;
3.21-26; 4.21-25; 5.1; 10.5-13).
Pure receptivity is not the whole story, however. Faith may be the sole channel
of justification (Rom. 3.28) but Paul also insists that in the ‘overlap of the ages’ era,
while living in the ‘space’ between justification and the salvation still to come, believ-
ers must live a life of ‘obedience’ (Rom. 6.1–7.6). This is not an obedience to the Law,
but an obedience which is really the self-sacrificing obedience of Christ (Rom. 5.19;
Phil. 2.8) welling up within them as a consequence of their baptizmal union with
him (Rom. 6.4, 11; cf. Rom. 15.1-3). In this way there is ‘fulfilled’ (plëröthë) within
them ‘the righteous requirement of the Law’ as they ‘walk’ not according to the
flesh but according to the Spirit (Rom. 8.4). As I have argued elsewhere (Byrne
1981: 569, 576), the passive ‘fulfilled’ here carefully preserves the divine initiative,
the sense that all Christian obedience is the product of the Spirit’s working within
the believer the continuing obedience of Christ. At the same time, the righteousness
created in this way as a response to grace does lead to ‘salvation’ (Rom. 1.16-17),
as believers, in accordance with Paul’s exhortation, ‘offer their members (melë)’ as
‘instruments (hopla) of righteousness’ to God (Rom. 6.13). ‘Members’ takes up the
reference to ‘mortal body’ in the preceding verse (‘Let not then Sin reign in your
mortal body . . .’ [v. 12]), making it clear that Paul has in mind the bodily life of
believers in the ‘overlap’ era. Such human bodily life, though not fully ‘redeemed’
(Rom. 8.23), can nonetheless be part of the ‘new creation’ (2 Cor. 5.17) that is being
brought into being through the action of the Spirit.
In this sense, I believe, it is possible to speak of an Adamic existence relating –
as a response to grace – to the non-human created world in a positive, unselfish,
non-exploitative way on the model of the ‘Last Adam’ (1 Cor. 15.45), who did not
‘please himself’ (Rom. 15.3; Phil. 2.6-8). Once again, as in the negative case, it is
necessary to read the specific text (Rom. 8.19-22) within a general awareness of Paul’s
sense of life in the body and in the context of the wider flow of his letter to Rome.
In this way a positive reading can emerge to balance the negative side of the story.
‘Balance’, however, is not quite accurate, since throughout the letter Paul has
insisted upon the ‘superiority’ of the grace side at the expense of sin (Rom. 5.6-11;
5.15-21; cf. 8.31-32). It is because of the ‘much more’ stemming from God’s act in
Christ that there is hope for salvation, the central affirmation of Romans 5–8, and
indeed of the letter as a whole. Can the ‘salvation’ in question, for which there is
hope, include the non-human created world? Since for Paul it does involve the bodily
life of human beings it must surely do so. Also, unlike other Pauline passages where
the motif of resurrection is more explicit, ‘(t)he passage implies the redemption and
transformation of the present material world, rather than the destruction of the world
 An Ecological Reading of Rom. 8.19-22 93

and the creation of a new one’ (Hahne 2006: 208; cf. Byrne 2000: 201–202). It would,
then, be exegetically naïve, as well as hermeneutically irresponsible, to conclude that
even if human beings destroy the world, God will ultimately recreate or rescue it.
On the basis, however, that human action impinges upon the world for good
(as a response to grace) and for ill (as a manifestation of captivity to sin), we can
acknowledge that, in Pauline terms, the future of the world (salvation) does to some
extent lie in human hands. It is not simply God’s gift and it remains ours to lose.
Hope for the future in this sense takes human action into account. It remains hope
in God but it is also hope in the prevailing power of God’s grace working through,
not around or above human cooperation. If righteousness for Paul is ultimately about
fidelity – divine and human – then Paul’s exhortation to believers that they offer
‘their members as instruments of righteousness to God’ (Rom. 6.13) can be taken
as, in part at least, an encouragement to behave not only responsibly towards the
environment but with an unselfish, non-exploitative fidelity that mirrors and indeed
is an extension of the divine fidelity (righteousness) behind the entire Christ-event
(cf. 2 Cor. 5.21). In this way, I believe, we may include the future of the world in the
broad sweep of the Gospel as proclaimed by Paul in Romans.

References

Byrne B. 1981 ‘Living Out the Righteousness of God: The Contribution of Rom. 6.1–8.13 to an
Understanding of Paul’s Ethical Presuppositions’, CBQ 43: 557–81.
Byrne B. 1983 ‘Sinning Against One’s Own Body: Paul’s Understanding of the Sexual Relationship
in 1 Corinthians 6.18’, CBQ 45: 608–16.
Byrne B. 1996 Romans (SP 6; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press).
Byrne B. 2000 ‘Creation Groaning: An Earth Bible Reading of Romans 8.18–22’, in N. C. Habel
(ed.), Readings From the Perspective of the Earth (The Earth Bible, 1; Sheffield/Cleveland,
OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 193–203.
Byrne B. 2003 ‘Paul’s Adam Myth Revisited’, in D. Reid and M. Worthing (eds), Sin and Salvation (Task
of Theology Today III; Hindmarsh, South Australia: Australian Theological Forum): 41–54.
Cranfield, C.E.B. 1975 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans: Vol. 1
Introduction and Commentary on Romans I–VIII (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Dunn, J.D.G. 1998 The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans).
Fitzmyer, J.A. 1993 Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 33; New
York: Doubleday).
Gieniusz, C.R. 1999 Romans 8:18-30: Suffering Does Not Thwart the Future Glory (Atlanta, GA:
Scholars Press).
Hahne, H. 2006 The Corruption and Redemption of Creation: Nature in Romans 8.19-22 and Jewish
Apocalyptic Literature (LNTS 336; London: T&T Clark).
Jewett, R. 2004 ‘The Corruption and Redemption of Creation: Reading Rom. 8:18-22 Within the
Imperial Context’, in R. A. Horsley (ed.), Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (Harrisburg,
PA; London and New York: Trinity Press International): 25–46.
Jewett, R. 2007 Romans: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress).
Levison, J.R. 1988 Portraits of Adam in Early Judaism: From Sirach to 2 Baruch (Sheffield: JSOT
Press).
Scroggs, R. 1966 The Last Adam: A Study in Pauline Anthropology (Philadelphia: Fortress; Oxford:
Blackwell).
 Chapter 7

Hellenistic Cosmology and the Letter to the

Colossians: Towards an Ecological Hermeneutic

Vicky S. Balabanski

One of the most formidable gulfs between the ancient world and ourselves is how
vastly different the cosmological framework implicit in a biblical text may be from
our own. In order to develop a contemporary ecological hermeneutic, it is imperative
to have some explicit interaction between the ancient cosmology or cosmologies
implied in a biblical text and our contemporary cosmological framework. To draw
ecological meaning from ancient scripture, cosmology is one of the areas needing to
receive some careful and nuanced attention.
One context in which this issue has been raised is the ‘Earth Bible’ project. This is
a South Australian-based project, though with national and international contributors
from several continents, and a variety of social locations, including Africa and South
America. It began in 1998, under the guidance and facilitation of Norman Habel,
a biblical scholar best known for his commentary on Job (1985), but whose often
prophetic work has led him to fall foul of conservative church authorities at various
times. The strategy of the project was a collaborative one, which called together a team
of scholars in the fields of Old and New Testament, as well as systematic theology,
and sought to identify not only those biblical texts apparently friendly to the earth,
but also those which are problematic. The aim was to read the Bible in solidarity with
the Earth; and here, ‘Earth’ is used as an inclusive term encompassing the whole web
of life, or ecosystem, of which humanity is a part. This differed in approach from
other ecological biblical hermeneutic strategies, in that it did not focus on

what a given text may say about creation, about nature, or about Earth. In this context, Earth
is not a topos or theme for analysis. We are not focusing on ecology and creation, or ecology
and theology. An ecological hermeneutic demands a radical change of posture in relation to
Earth as a subject in the text.1 (Habel 2008: 3)

1 The Earth Bible team, of which I am a member, drafted and reviewed essays which set out to
engage with small sections of the biblical witness from the perspective of the Earth. Habel,
in dialogue with both theologians and ecologists over several years, had developed a series
of ‘eco-justice’ principles which became the central strategy by which these essays found a
coherent focus. These principles were not framed in theological terms, but rather in terms
that allowed cross disciplinary dialogue.
 Hellenistic Cosmology and the Letter to the Colossians 95

In order to achieve this ‘radical change of posture’, it is necessary to give attention

to what presuppositions we hold about the nature of the universe, the kosmos, and
how humanity relates to the kosmos. In an early essay in the Earth Bible series, ‘An
Earth Bible Reading of the Lord’s Prayer’, I raised the issue of implied cosmologies,
and stated that ancient cosmologies may be more diverse than had been presumed
(Balabanski 2000: 153–54). This present essay takes up the issue of ancient cosmolo-
gies. The Earth Bible eco-justice principle of interconnectedness is fundamental to
this reading, and is further explicated by it (‘Earth is a community of interconnected
living things that are mutually dependent on each other for life and survival’ [Habel
and Balabanski 2002: xx].

Assumptions of this Study

There are several assumptions which this study makes. The first is that the cosmology
of Plato’s Timaeus is relevant to first century Asia Minor and to the Letter to the
Colossians, despite the fact that it was written circa 348–338 bce, some four hundred
years before this letter.2 It is clear that Timaeus had been interpreted and adapted
by the period of the first century ce, so that this era of Plato’s heritage has come to
be distinguished from the earlier period. These Platonic interpreters, known to us
as Middle Platonists, incorporated concepts and insights from other philosophical
schools, particularly Stoicism. French classics scholar Rémi Brague demonstrates
just how influential Plato’s cosmology was, even for those who took different views
(Brague 2003: 36). He recognizes that the Timaean model of the cosmos became
dominant only after a long history, but nevertheless argues that Stoic philosophy, at
least in relation to cosmology, takes its impetus from the model of Plato’s Timaeus
(25). This was a syncretistic period, and Timaeus’ influence has been identified in
many philosophical streams, whether positively, as in Philo’s work (Runia 1986) or
negatively, as in the writings of Epicurus. Brague (2003: 39) points out that Epicurus
may have intended to parody aspects of Timaeus.
The second assumption relates to the Letter to the Colossians. This study accepts
that Colossians is not primarily the work of Paul, largely on the basis that the cosmol-
ogy of Colossians differs from the cosmology of the undisputed letters. There are
various considerations giving weight to this indication of authorship: the Letter itself
states that the Colossians have not met Paul in person (2.1), that the authorship is
joint (1.1) and that the Letter was not penned by Paul himself (4.18), so these factors
may have influenced the articulated cosmology of the Letter. Moreover, the Letter
is very interested in affirming the leadership of Epaphras (1.7-8; 4.12-13), in a way
that suggests a dating still close to that of Paul’s own lifetime, given that Epaphras
was the one who brought the Gospel to them originally. George van Kooten has

2 For text of Timaeus (Tim.) see Bury 1929/1999.

96 Ecological Hermeneutics

persuasively argued in his monograph on Pauline and deutero-Pauline cosmology

(2003) that Colossians reflects a different cosmology to that of the genuine Pauline
epistles, and I will discuss the basis of this claim presently. At this point it is neces-
sary only to note that this paper assumes that the cosmic Christology of this letter is
not Pauline.
The third assumption is that the cosmology of the Colossian hymn, whatever its
source, is shared by the rest of the Letter. This has also been argued convincingly by
van Kooten, who states that there is no reason that the hymn could not have been
composed by the author of the Letter (2003: 115). Without entering into the source
question, it is important to decide whether one holds that the cosmological views of
the hymn differ from those of the central part of the Letter, and I accept that there
is a consistent cosmological perspective across the Letter.

Ancient Cosmology as an Interpretative Framework

Since the late 1990s, there has been increased interest in exploring cosmological
questions as they arise in Pauline writings. Two monographs in particular can be
mentioned: Edward Adams, Constructing the World: A Study in Paul’s Cosmological
Language (2000), and George H. van Kooten, Cosmic Christology in Paul and
the Pauline School: Colossians and Ephesians in the Context of Graeco-Roman
Cosmology, with a New Synopsis of the Greek Texts (2003). A third monograph is
also pertinent to the field, namely The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience
of the Universe in Western Thought, by Rémi Brague (2003). A fourth monograph
also makes an important contribution to the area, as it explores both biblical and
Greco-Roman cosmology in relation to ecology. It is by the Dutch environmental
scientist and philosopher Jan J. Boersema, entitled The Torah and the Stoics on
Humankind and Nature: A Contribution to the Debate on Sustainability and Quality
(2001). Boersema sets out compelling reasons why engaging in the cultural-historical
background of environmental problems and their perception is important, and he
pursues this particularly in relation to the creation, Sabbath and purity traditions
of the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the Greek cosmologies which shaped Christian
thinking.
In 2004 I presented a paper to the ecological hermeneutics consultation at the
annual SBL meeting in which I argued that the cosmological language of Colossians
evokes Stoic cosmology to a greater extent than has been recognized; this gives
the cosmological framework for the Christological cosmology in which Christ
permeates creation (Balabanski 2008: 151–59). This current essay seeks to explore
further aspects of the cosmological background to Colossians in order to pursue its
implications for ecological hermeneutics.
 Hellenistic Cosmology and the Letter to the Colossians 97

How did Hellenistic Cosmology Shape the Hearing of the

Christian Proclamation?

Hellenistic cosmology can be understood as an aspect of ancient philosophy. The

philosophy of the ancient Greeks embraced the study of logic, mathematics, physics,
astronomy and linguistics, and in these ways engaged in seeking to understand the
inner logic of the cosmos. Though ancient ‘science’ began with observation, experi-
ment and analysis, as contemporary scientific method does today, it did not view its
task as limited to that which is apprehensible via the senses. Rather, it sought to draw
connections between disparate phenomena and, via inductive logic, to move towards
synthesis, where the underlying meaning which brought the world into harmony
could be glimpsed. This was viewed as a significant part of the quest for wisdom.
A prominent aspect of philosophy was the discourse about how events were con-
nected with one another. Ancient Greek philosophers gave a great deal of attention
to ‘causes’ – what was the primary or ‘first cause’ (Tim. 29E, 68E), and what were
auxiliary or secondary causes (Tim. 46–47). The underlying principle was that there
was a unified cosmos which was created rationally, so examining the observed effects
could lead someone trained in logic to discern the causes. Much thought was there-
fore given to discerning what an observed phenomenon – an effect – might indicate
about the cause or causes which brought it about. Aristotle categorized causes into
four rubrics, all of which could be logically demonstrated to lead to an effect.3 Many
subsequent philosophers shared this concern to link an effect to its cause or causes,
for it could bring the thinker closer to reaching a measure of understanding, if not
control, of the causes and thus situate the thinker more securely in the world. The
chaotic and irrational were constant possibilities in the world, but the wise person
sought to discern the unifying logic of the cosmos and to attune themself to it.
These reflections are pertinent to the task of seeking to comprehend the cosmology
behind the Letter to the Colossians. Where was Christ positioned in relation to the
cosmos? And what new position did the Colossians see themselves as gaining through
their connection with Christ?
It is not just that the cosmology itself is different from a contemporary cosmology.
It also played a different and much more prominent role for the recipients of this
letter. They expected their new religious path to address all aspects of life – cosmol-
ogy, and the related area of calendars, as well as feast and fast days. In a world
perceived as essentially integrated in every facet, the adoption of a new religious
allegiance had to be connected intellectually and experientially with the received
wisdom. They expected to be taught religious practices, because every effect has a

3 These were the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause and the final cause. The
most famous illustration is that of a bronze statue, whereby the bronze is the material cause,
the figure is the formal cause, the artist the efficient cause and the purpose of the creation the
final cause. Aristotle Physics 2.3-9 (194b-200b); also Metaphysics 1.3.1. (933a-b); 5.2.1-3
(1013a-b).
98 Ecological Hermeneutics

cause or causes, and how one lives is directly connected with how one experiences
the phenomenal world. One could not ignore one’s ritual responsibilities and hope
that the outcome would be good. If all things are connected, and there is a unifying
wisdom which binds the visible world and the invisible world together, each action
is potentially significant.
We see from the Letter to the Colossians that the community is carefully cultivat-
ing the ethical and community practices that they have been taught – the ‘love for
all the saints’ (1.4), the ‘spiritual wisdom and understanding’ (1.9) that leads to
virtue. They are also following certain practices that were not explicitly taught, but
which seemed to them to be an outworking of the same wisdom, namely the ancient
Jewish purity regulations, as practised in the Diaspora. This included avoidance of
substances that defile (2.21), and dietary restriction (2.16, 21, 23). It also included
a different calendar of religious practices from those which they had once observed,
with the introduction of the ‘sabbath’ cycle in addition to the lunar observance
(2.16). The seven-day week was not widely established in the wider society until the
beginning of the fourth century ce (Evans 1999: 269), and the adoption of it must
have shaped the routines of the new believers quite significantly, as well as shaping
the perception which their non-Christian neighbours now had of them. It must have
seemed patently obvious to the new believers, grafted as they were onto the ancient
Jewish faith with its messianic revelation, that they could not continue to practise
their ritual observations according to the old ways and the Greco-Roman calendar.
But neither could they cease to practise such things altogether, for the connection
between inward and outward, between cosmic and individual was affirmed by their
new understanding of wisdom. Omitting such practices, which affirmed their piety,
humility and their subjection of the demands of the flesh (2.23), had apparently not
appeared to them to be an option.
There is a further issue for the believers at Colossae that seems to have been
related to cosmology, namely ‘self-abasement’ and ‘worship of angels’ (2.18). Angels
were firmly part of the cosmological systems in Hellenized Asia Minor of the first
century; scholars have demonstrated their centrality to religious practices in this
region (Stuckenbruck 1995: 181–204). However, they were also firmly established via
cosmology. Plato’s Timaeus describes God creating the Cosmos as a Living Creature
endowed with soul and reason (30B). In a series of steps, God creates four classes of
creatures: the first is deemed heavenly (39E), namely the stars, which are wrought
out of fire and able to move about the heavens (40A). To these God delegated the
task of fashioning human beings as mortal living creatures, weaving together the
immortal with the mortal (41C, D). In this cosmogony, the stars are the ones who,
like angels affecting God’s will, fashion humans, sustain them with food (41D) and
receive them again when the mortals waste away (41D). This gives these ‘gods’, the
stars, particular claim over the ones whom they have fashioned, as the divine speech
in Tim. 41C indicates:

But if by my doing these creatures came into existence and partook of life, they would be
 Hellenistic Cosmology and the Letter to the Colossians 99

made equal unto gods; in order, therefore, that they may be mortal and that this World-all
may be truly All, do ye turn yourselves, as Nature directs, to the work of fashioning these
living creatures, imitating the power showed by me in my generating of you.

The stars therefore had precedence over the mortal creatures that they had fashioned.
Just as a patriarch commanded honour and obedience from his progeny, so too did
the stars, for those who shared this cosmology. If the Colossians continued certain
practices that acknowledged the role of angels/gods/stars in their heritage, they would
be acting according to the cultural script of Greco-Roman patriarchal society.
Cosmological concepts transcend the boundaries of religious affiliation. In trans-
ferring their allegiance to the God of Israel, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Colossians were not divested of the categories in which they thought of the material
world. Rather, they were in the process of revising their understanding of the powers
and forces within whose jurisdiction they lived. The Letter can therefore be seen as
a stage in a longer process of reconfiguring their concept of themselves in relation
to the cosmos.
Approaching the Colossians’ problems implicit in the Letter via Hellenistic
cosmology makes it unnecessary to postulate an influx of false teachers into this situ-
ation, or a community that is unusually concerned with astrology and angels.4 I am
suggesting that the Colossian believers had received the Pauline Gospel (though not
from Paul himself [2.1] and since then had been seeking to interpret it as a full system
of religious practices. For areas of uncertainty, they could turn to the cosmological
wisdom which had its roots in the Timaean model and which had already been
integrated with Jewish thought by Philo. This is not to suggest that Philo’s writings
were known to this community directly, but rather that many of the ideas were cur-
rent. David Runia has demonstrated that the cosmology of Colossians has striking
similarities to the cosmology of Philo (Runia 1993: 84–86), and this could only be
the case if the ideas which Philo set out in an elegant and scholarly way already had
currency in Hellenized Jewish circles.
It would be straightforward to conclude that the cosmology evoked by Colossians
is fully elucidated against this background of Platonic cosmology. However, the
cosmological shifts that occurred in the intervening years make such a claim only
partially true. Runia discusses these shifts in more detail than there is scope for
in this paper, looking at Plato’s successors, the influence of Aristotle, the creative
interpretation of Timaeus by the Stoics, and then its diminished influence under the
Peripatetics, Epicureans and Cynics (Runia 1986: 41–49).5 It seems to have been later
Stoic philosophers, particularly Panaetius of Rhodes (c.185–109 bce) and Posidonius

4 Morna Hooker, who does not reconstruct false teachers at Colossae, sees this as a minority
position, though it is also supported by N.T. Wright and R. Yates (Hooker 2003: 117).
5 One shift occurred relatively quickly; Timaeus was interpreted non-literally but rather
didactically by subsequent leaders of the Academy. Aristotle interpreted Plato’s cosmogony
literally, however, and both criticized and reinterpreted it in a way that later interpreters
found very difficult to disentangle (Runia 1986: 45).
100 Ecological Hermeneutics

of Apamea (c.135–50 bce), who played an important role in the reaffirmation of

Platonic thinking, though stamped with distinctive Stoic concepts in the areas of
physics and theology. To give a full account of the rise of Middle Platonism, with its
more religiously tinted, orientalizing approach to philosophy, is beyond the scope of
this paper. However, one factor that has not been sufficiently noted by those dealing
with the history of these ideas is the impact of the Babylonian planetary theory on
Greek astronomy. Greek astronomers contemporary with Plato had not found an
approach for calculating planetary positions from theory. During this period of the
rise of Middle Platonism, Babylonian planetary theories with quantitative, predic-
tive capacity, based not on geometrical models, but on arithmetic rules, came to
the attention of Greek astronomers (Evans 1999: 259). Such a development must
have encouraged and enabled the heightened interest in astrology in this period, and
fostered respect for oriental wisdom.
This heightened respect for oriental wisdom may in itself have played a role in
fostering the spread of the Gospel. Whether or not this is so, we can see that the
Letter to the Colossians was written into a context which was open to a synergy
of ideas.
The writer of the Letter to the Colossians did not seek to dissuade the recipients
from integrating their cosmology with their Christology. The opening section affirms
their desire to be ‘filled with the knowledge (epignösis) in all wisdom (sophia)
and spiritual understanding (sunesis pneumatikë)’ (1.9). The word epignösis and
its cognate verb epiginöskö occur three times in the first ten verses, and again
in chapters 2 and 3 (2.2; 3.10). There is no sense in which the writer is seeking
to minimize the Colossians’ desire for an integrating wisdom. Rather than seeking to
dissuade them, he is confirming them in this direction. This is even more striking in
chapter 2, where the author desires for the readers ‘all the riches of the full certainty
of knowledge (sunesis), for understanding (epignösis) the mystery of God, namely
Christ’ (2.2). Christ is shown to be the key to comprehending the cosmos itself.
The Colossian hymn had claimed in Stoic language that in Christ all things were
created, all things hold together and all things are reconciled. There could hardly
be a grander image of Christ as the cause, the logic and the goal of the visible and
invisible cosmos. The undisputed Pauline letters had already made some of these
claims for Christ (Gal. 4.3-10; 1 Cor. 15.23-28; Rom. 11.36), but Paul maintained in
his undisputed letters that the present order of the cosmos is in the process of being
subjugated, and saw the present world as passing away (van Kooten 2003: 107–109).
Colossians’ cosmology not only affirms the present coherence of the cosmos in
Christ, but identifies Christ ontologically with the cosmos. In the undisputed letters
of Paul, Christ is seen messianically, shaped by the Danielic vision of the subjuga-
tion of the powers and kingdoms. In Colossians, the framework has shifted to a
Timaean one.
In Timaeus, prior to the creation of humanity and prior to the creation of heavenly
bodies, the cosmos comes into existence as a ‘Living Creature endowed with soul and
reason owing to the providence of God’ (30B). It goes on to state that this
 Hellenistic Cosmology and the Letter to the Colossians 101

Living Creature embraces and contains within itself all the intelligible Living Creatures, just
as this Universe contains us and all the other visible living creatures that have been fashioned.
For since God desired to make it resemble most closely that intelligible Creature which is
fairest of all and in all ways most perfect, He constructed it as a Living Creature (zöon),
one and visible, containing within itself all the living creatures which are by nature akin to
itself. (30D)

Plato portrays this as being a process of bringing order out of disorder.

Zeno of Cittium, the founder of Stoicism, gave this image of the cosmos as a
Living Creature a revised and more central position in his cosmological framework.
He opposed the dualism between matter and spirit in Platonism and Aristotelianism,
and developed a philosophy in which matter and spirit are identical in a cosmic body.
Michael Lapidge describes the cosmology vividly:

Stoic cosmology was one of the most imaginative and compelling intellectual constructs
devised in antiquity to explain the structure and appearance of the universe: its conception of
the divine and fiery mind penetrating all parts of the universe, of the resulting cosmic sympathy
between all these parts, of the chain of fate in which every event is linked to every other, and
of the fiery conflagration into which the universe dissolves at certain times – these striking
theories attracted many adherents to Stoicism . . .. (Lapidge 1989: 1379–380)

He goes on to state that the fundamental orientation of Stoic cosmology can be

described as biological, in that for the Stoics, the universe was a living being or
organism (zöon; Lapidge 1989: 1381).6 For those who shared a Stoic cosmological
framework, the immanence of this Living Creature, in which all creation exists,
became a touchstone of their thinking. This living being was permeated by an
all-pervasive fiery pneuma, according to Chrysippus’ writings; as in the body, so in
the universe, the pervasive motion of spirit creates a tensional force, which holds
the universe together (Lapidge 1989: 1383). This concept did not remain unique to
Stoic thought, but is evident in many authors of the Middle Platonic period, including

6 There are, to my knowledge, at least three areas of contemporary scientific enquiry that have
analogies with ancient Stoic cosmology. The first and most obvious relates to the biological
and geophysical sciences, namely the concept of the earth as a body. This has re-emerged in
recent years in public discourse via James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. Although this concept
has been hailed as ‘new’, we can see that it has its antecedents in ancient philosophy. The
hypothesis, which highlights the feedback processes that connect ecosystems, provides a
heuristic tool for the earth sciences and has prompted fruitful discussion and research. The
second and third are related to the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. The second is the
analogy between the Stoic concept of ‘Cosmic sympathy’ and contemporary research into
dark matter. The third concerns the primordial cosmic structures such as those observed
in the cosmic microwave background radiation that are believed to have precipitated the
formation of galaxies, and the tiny seed magnetic fields postulated to have existed in the
early universe and to have stretched during the rapid phase of cosmic expansion known as
inflation. In the Stoic framework there are such seeds, known as logoi spermatikoi, which
account for exceptional causation.
102 Ecological Hermeneutics

Cicero and Vergil, to name just two who were not self-professed Stoics (Lapidge
1989: 1386–92).7

The shift from Pauline eschatology, in which the present order of the cosmos is in
the process of being subjugated and the present world is passing away, to a Timaean
framework, against which the present coherence of the cosmos in Christ is affirmed,
represents a shift in the relative weight given to eschatology and cosmology. In
Pauline thought, the emphasis lies with eschatology, whereas for the writer of the
Letter to the Colossians, the emphasis lies with cosmology.8
Such a distinction is not perfect, however, as Timaean cosmology has its own
cyclical eschatology, which looked for the end of the present order in cosmic confla-
gration and potential palingenesia, renewed birth and repetition of all things (Tim. 22
C, D). John J. Collins discusses ekpurösis (conflagration) (Collins 2004: 59–70),
and points out that destruction/purification of the world by fire is envisaged in
Zoroastrian myth, Greek tradition and even in the Apocalypse of Asclepius,
associated with the Hermetic corpus but also an example of cosmic eschatology
in the Egyptian tradition: ‘It reflects the syncretism of late antiquity, where ideas
circulated widely and the coherence of cosmos and history was widely assumed’
(Collins 2004: 70). An illustration of this on a philosophical level is found in
the writings of Sextus Empiricus, a physician in the late second century ce, who
writes of the universe as a living being, and connects this view with both Plato
and Zeno:

7 Given the blended nature of Greco-Roman cosmology in the first century, it is difficult to
state with accuracy what elements can be deemed to be Stoic, and what elements are Middle
Platonic. If I were to venture a list of distinguishing Stoic characteristics, it would include:
i. The emphasis on the corporeality of reality, including god; matter and spirit are
identical. Only four groups are deemed to be incorporeal: lekta – meanings, or
intellectual intentions behind human thoughts; the void beyond the universe,
space; and time.
ii. The conviction that mind is not external to matter; it is the active principle, the
creative force permeating the universe and holding it together.
iii. The immanence of god/logos/spirit in creation.
iv. The interconnection of all cosmic parts by means of ‘sympathy’; a movement in
one part of the universe would have a reciprocal and corresponding movement
elsewhere.
v. The downplaying of chance in the world of nature in favour of a chain of causes.
vi. The affirmation that reason and the senses make certain knowledge possible.
vii. The concept that there are cosmic cycles of the universe, ending with
conflagration.
8 This is not to deny that there are some future (unrealized) eschatological references in
Colossians, particularly the future revelation of Christ and of the believers in glory (3.3-4),
though the nature of that revelation is debated. See Still 2004: 129. Other unrealized
references, according to Still and others, include 1.5, 26-27; and 3.6, 24-25. Nevertheless,
the ‘vertical axis’ of this eschatology, depicted as current reality which crosses spatial and
temporal boundaries, is more vivid and pronounced that the ‘horizontal axis’ of chronology.
Hence the author of Colossians can refer to the raising of the believers with Christ through
baptism as a past event (2.12; 3.1; aorist passive constructions).
 Hellenistic Cosmology and the Letter to the Colossians 103

Plato sets forth virtually the same argument as Zeno. For Zeno says that the universe is the
most beautiful product executed according to nature, and in all probability a living being,
endowed with soul, both intelligent and rational. (von Armin 1968–1978: I, 110)

The writer of Colossians, by identifying the one through whom, in whom and for
whom the creation came into being as Christ, is giving Christ the same pre-eminent
position vis-à-vis the invisible and visible world as this Living Creature has in the
Timaean model, and expressing this conviction in Stoic terms. Such a move already
had currency in Hellenistic Judaism in relation to the Logos of God, as we see in
Philo’s De opificio mundi (Opif):

If you would wish to use a formulation that has been stripped down to essentials, you might
say that the intelligible cosmos is nothing else than the Logos of God as he is actually engaged
in making the cosmos. (Opif. §24; Runia 2001: 51)

So in making this interpretative move, the author of Colossians seems to be laying

claim to the cosmological framework of Plato’s Timaeus, but claiming that the Living
One is to be known and identified in the person of Jesus Christ.9 In Colossians we
have therefore a cosmic Christology, and seen from another angle, a Christological
cosmology. I see this as a bold deutero-Pauline move, enabled by the Timaean cos-
mological framework, shaped by Stoic thought and motivated by the drive towards
synthesis which characterized philosophical thought in the ancient world.

Ecological Hermeneutical Potential

At this point I want to turn to the question of ecological hermeneutics, and ask
whether the cosmic Christology of Colossians offers contemporary readers the
potential for a renewed understanding of the significance of the non-human cosmos.
It is almost a truism that the duality of matter and spirit lies at the heart of Western
thought, and that the Christian faith is shaped and determined by such fundamental
binary opposition. In Colossians, however, we have a Christology which allows us
to see something different. ‘All things in heaven and on earth’ (1.16) are shown to
be connected via Christ, not only in their origin and their purpose, but also in the
soteriology of reconciliation (God was pleased to reconcile all things to himself, via

9 In this scheme, the Living One is created. Christian patristic reflection, though strongly
influenced by Middle Platonic thought, came to insist on the uncreatedness of Christ, most
particularly in the Arian controversy, in which Colossians played an important role. See
Stead (1964: 16–31), who sets out the complexity of this debate, discusses aspects of the
reception of Timaeus (though not the Living One) and illustrates the close link between
differing cosmologies and Trinitarian theologies.
104 Ecological Hermeneutics

Christ [1.20].10 All things therefore have divine significance, matter and spirit alike.
Greek philosophy is more diverse than is often recognized with regard to binary
thinking, and so too is Christology. The more holistic attitude to the world that is
often associated with Eastern religion and philosophy has its counterpart in Stoic
thinking, and in the Letter to the Colossians.
However, Christian doctrine does not arise directly from scripture, bypassing the
intervening centuries, but comes mediated via Church history and tradition. The
tradition of the Church fathers is shaped by Middle Platonism, which integrated
aspects of Stoic thought, but not primarily its cosmology. We find ourselves therefore
at a conceptual distance from Stoic cosmology, and indeed in Western Christian
thinking at a conceptual distance from cosmic Christology.
Yet it is the cosmic Christ who has direct ecological implications. The Jesus of the
Gospel traditions can model a lifestyle of simplicity and respect for all creatures, but
he does not directly give a framework for reconfiguring our relationship with the
Earth based on mutuality rather than hierarchy.11 However, if one holds a cosmic
Christology, the fabric of the material world cannot be viewed as spiritually irrel-
evant. It cannot be merely the arena for God’s dealings with humanity. In embracing a
cosmic Christology, Christian practice also cannot remain an individual piety, which
takes neither responsibility for others nor for just dealings with other species, as ‘all
things’ were created in him and for him.
However, it is this very cosmic Christology which is largely foreign to Western
Christianity and to Protestant theology most particularly. Jesus is proclaimed as
‘Lord’, ‘Saviour’, ‘Friend’, but not as the one through whom and for whom the
world was created, nor as the reconciler of a broken and exploited cosmos. And it
is precisely Western Protestant theology which recent scholarship has implicated in
some of the damaging practices of the transnational corporations, justified by an
eschatology that looks for a new heaven and new earth (Maier 2002: 171–74).
Cosmic Christology remains problematic for many, perhaps most, Western
evangelical Christians. It seems as though proclaiming a Christ who is ‘bigger than
Jesus’ (Robinson 1973: 10) is seen to be relativizing the particularity of the revelation
in the crucified and risen man Jesus. The author of Colossians would vigorously
disagree, given that the ‘blood of his cross’ (1.20) is cited as the instrument of cosmic
reconciliation. Some contemporary evangelical thinkers also disagree (Bauckham
2003: 134–35). Yet the fact remains that contemporary Western Christians have

10 The author of the Letter assumes the need for the reconciliation of all things due to cosmic
disorder. Tim. 29A had affirmed the goodness of the cosmos, but subsequent thinkers
accounted for the problem of evil by adopting what was a logical possibility in Platonic
thought, namely a bad or ignorant Demiurge (Creator); this is reflected in the rise of
Gnosticism (van Kooten 2003: 5). For the author of the Letter to the Colossians, the cosmos
was in need of reconciliation with God; the principles, powers and elements of the present
cosmos have been restored from disharmony to peace with God under Christ their head
(Col. 2.10; van Kooten 2003: 129–35).
11 John’s affirmation that the Word became flesh (Jn 1.14) does open up ways of connecting
Christ with the web of life. See Habel 2009: 93–94.
 Hellenistic Cosmology and the Letter to the Colossians 105

significant difficulty in connecting the individual and historically particular with the
universal and transcendent. The role of the Cosmic Christ has therefore largely been
occupied by the third person of the Trinity in Western theology.
Stoic cosmology is not directly comparable to standard Christian theology as it has
developed particularly in the West, because is it both monist and materialist.12 Yet it is
fruitful to recognize that the earliest Christians in Asia Minor, and possibly elsewhere,
may have been much closer to holding a Stoic cosmology than we are today. For those
of us who profess Christian faith and are concerned with ecological hermeneutics, it
can be positive to recognize that Stoic cosmological concepts, at least as they come to
us via the Letter to the Colossians, are not pantheistic, but function christologically.
I do not know whether it is possible to reinvigorate cosmic Christological thinking
in Western Christian thought. It is certainly prominent in Eastern Orthodox theology,
with Christ Pantocrator represented in the cupola of each church, and the tradition of
iconography requiring a different set of assumptions about the connection between
matter and spirit. Western tendencies in theology and in worldview more generally
are oriented towards thinking primarily in historical rather than symbolic categories,
with the individual and the particular taking the most prominent place. Because of
this, the Cosmic Christ may be a concept that remains too foreign for the majority
of Western Christians to embrace. Yet the ecological implications of ignoring this
theology are profound. In a world-view in which only God and humans have sig-
nificance, utilitarianism can come to govern everything else, and the natural world
can be viewed as being there simply for maintaining and entertaining humans. One
Western scholar who has developed a significant ecotheology of the Cosmic Christ
is Sally McFague, who shows that the dimensions of place and space, which are
neglected in traditional Christian theology, must become increasingly significant as
‘an ecological sensibility demands that we broaden the circle of salvation to include
the natural world’ (1993: 180). In order to effect this shift in perspective, McFague
writes that we need to see ourselves in relation to our ‘home’, Earth, by learning
ecology, ‘words about home’ (oikos, home, logos, word) (McFague 2008: 48–49).
Some practical implications arise specifically from the cosmic Christology of
Colossians. Most Christians understand the Body of Christ ecclesiologically (Rom. 12.5;
1 Cor. 12.27) or sacramentally (1 Cor. 10.16). In Colossians, Christ is also13 the head
of the body, the church (Col. 1.18), but his body is understood ecologically as the
kosmos; in him ‘all things hold together’ (1.17). If we can hear this perspective, we
can expect to experience the divine in all creation, not just in the Church or in the
Eucharist. The various understandings of Christ’s body need to be connected with one
another; the Church must be committed to Christ’s body, our ecological home, and

12 Monistic and materialistic worldviews are not by definition opposed to Christian thought.
John W. Cooper states that ‘nowadays most biblical scholars strive to outdo one another
in emphasizing that Hebrew anthropology, like the Hebrew mind and Hebrew worldview
in general, is decidedly antidualistic and enthusiastically holistic or monist’. He goes on to
point out that this can be closely linked with materialism (2000: 34).
13 MacDonald 2000: 61.
106 Ecological Hermeneutics

our participation in the sacraments must help us perceive the world sacramentally.
Christ’s body, wounded on the cross (1.20), makes peace and reconciles, and this
same suffering Christ is now perceived in the woundedness of creation. We are called
to cultivate practices that connect us with the wounded world, and with each other.14

Conclusions

At the opening of this essay I claimed that in order to draw ecological meaning from
ancient scripture, cosmology is one of the areas needing to receive some careful and
nuanced attention. I then proposed that cosmological concepts transcend the bounda-
ries of religious affiliation, and I examined aspects of Plato’s cosmology in Timaeus
and the Stoic framework of Zeno and subsequent Stoic thinkers. This formed the
background to examining aspects of the Letter to the Colossians, as the believers at
Colossae, in transferring their allegiance to the God of Israel, the Father of the Lord
Jesus Christ, did not divest themselves of the categories in which they thought about
the material world. Rather, they were in the process of revising their understanding
of the powers and forces within whose jurisdiction they lived. The Letter to the
Colossians can therefore be seen as a stage in a process of reconfiguring their concept
of themselves in relation to the cosmos. The writer of Colossians, by identifying the
one through whom, in whom and for whom the creation came into being as Christ,
is giving Christ the same pre-eminent position vis-à-vis the invisible and visible world
as the Living Creature has in the Timaean model, and expressing this conviction in
Stoic terms. I went on to argue that cosmic Christology has significant ecological
potential, although it is more difficult for Christians shaped in the Western tradition
of the Church than in the Eastern tradition to access this potential.
The cosmic Christology of Colossians deserves to be given much more significant
weight in constructing a contemporary theology that is aware of the interconnected-
ness of the Earth. The earliest Christians in Colossae, and possibly elsewhere in Asia
Minor, expressed their faith against the conceptual framework of Stoic cosmology,
which they understood Christologically. For those of us who profess Christian faith
and are concerned with ecological hermeneutics, this ancient interconnected cosmol-
ogy can be in dialogue with a contemporary scientifically informed cosmology, and
in this way, help us to find new ways of recognising our connection with all things.

References

Adams, E. 2000 Constructing the World: A Study in Paul’s Cosmological Language (SNTW;
Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Balabanski, V.S. 2000 ‘An Earth Bible Reading of the Lord’s Prayer’, in N.C. Habel (ed.), Readings

14 For example, see Habito 2006.

 Hellenistic Cosmology and the Letter to the Colossians 107

From the Perspective of the Earth (The Earth Bible, 1; Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield
Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 151–61.
Balabanski, V.S. 2008 ‘Critiquing Anthropocentric Cosmology: Retrieving a Stoic “Permeation
Cosmology” in Colossians 1.15-20’, in N.C. Habel and P. Trudinger (eds), Exploring
Ecological Hermeneutics (SBLSS 46; Atlanta, GA: SBL): 151–59.
Bauckham, R. 2003 ‘Where is Wisdom to be Found? Colossians 1.15-20 (2)’, in D. Ford and
G. Stanton (eds), Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom (London: SCM): 129–38.
Boersema, J.J. 2001 The Torah and the Stoics on Humankind and Nature: A Contribution to the
Debate on Sustainability and Quality (Leiden/Boston: Brill).
Brague, R. 2003 The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western
Thought (tr. T.L. Fagan; Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press).
Bury, R.G. (tr.) 1929/1999 Plato’s Timaeus (Plato IX, Loeb Classical Library 234; Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press).
Collins, J.J. 2004 ‘Cosmology: Time and History’, in S.I. Johnston (ed.), Religions in the Ancient
World: A Guide (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press): 59–70.
Cooper, J.W. 2000 Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism
Debate (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
Evans, J. 1999 ‘The Material Culture of Greek Astronomy’, in Journal for the History of Astronomy
30: 237–308.
Habel N.C. 1985 The Book of Job (London: SCM).
Habel N.C. 2008 ‘Introducing Ecological Hermeneutics’, in N.C. Habel and P. Trudinger (eds),
Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics, (SBLSS 46; Atlanta, GA: SBL): 1–8.
Habel, N. 2009 An Inconvenient Text: Is a Green Reading of the Bible Possible? (Adelaide:
Australasian Theological Forum).
Habel, N.C. and Balabanski, V. (eds) 2002 The Earth Story in the New Testament (The Earth Bible,
5; London and New York/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press).
Habito, R.L.F. 2006 Healing Breath: Zen for Christians and Buddhists in a Wounded World (Boston,
MA: Wisdom Publications).
Hooker, M. 2003 ‘Where is Wisdom to be Found? Colossians 1.15-20 (1)’, in D. Ford and G. Stanton
(eds), Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom (London: SCM): 116–28.
Lapidge, M. 1989 ‘Stoic Cosmology and Roman Literature, First to Third Centuries ad.’, ANRW
II.36.3: 1379–429.
MacDonald, M.Y. 2000 Colossians and Ephesians (SP 17; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press).
McFague, S. 1993 The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress).
McFague, S. 2008 A New Climate for Theology, the World and Global Warming (Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress).
Maier, H.O. 2002 ‘There’s a New World Coming! Reading the Apocalypse in the Shadow of the
Canadian Rockies’, in N.C. Habel and V. Balabanski (eds), The Earth Story in the New
Testament (The Earth Bible, 5; London and New York/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic
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Still, T.D. 2004 ‘Eschatology in Colossians: How Realized is it?’, NTS 50: 129.
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 Chapter 8

Retrieving the Earth from the Conflagration:

2 Peter 3.5-13 and the Environment

Edward Adams

2 Peter 3.5-13 is, at first sight, one of the least eco-friendly texts in the New Testament.
A fiery destiny is predicted for ‘the present heavens and earth’ (v. 7). We are told that
‘the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire’
on the coming day of the Lord (v. 12); after the fire, there will be ‘new heavens and
a new earth’ (v. 13). The eschatological scenario projected in these verses appears to
offer little incentive for environmental care. Indeed, the writer’s exhortation to wait
for and ‘hasten’ the coming of the fiery day of God (v. 12) might seem to encourage
practices that lead to environmental decline and ruination. Keith Dyer (2002: 56)
thinks that this passage ‘presents irretrievable problems for an ethical response to
ecological problems’. Yet, various efforts have been made to read the text in a way
that supports a biblically based environmentalism.1 Such attempts largely consist
of exegetical and interpretative arguments aimed at showing that what is in view is
not the earth’s destruction but its transformation. In this essay, I will consider these
arguments, concluding that the dissolution of the earth, along with the heavens, is
indeed envisioned. However, I will suggest that, even on a destructionist interpreta-
tion of it, the environmental implications of this text are perhaps somewhat less
egregious than may appear.

2 Pet. 3.4-13

In our passage, the writer is countering the eschatological cynicism of his opponents.2
The ‘false teachers’, as he labels them (2.1), are active within the congregations
addressed, undermining traditional apostolic teaching, especially with regard to the
Lord’s coming. In his polemic, the author portrays the adversaries as ‘scoffers’ of
the last days whose coming (of which the author speaks in the future tense) is a sign

1 Bouma-Prediger 2001: 76–77; Finger 1998: 3–6; Heide 1997: 46–55; Lucas 1999: 97; Moo
2006: 466–69.
2 The writer presents himself as Peter, but most commentators doubt that the apostle was the
actual author of the epistle.
 Retrieving the Earth from the Conflagration 109

that the last phase of history has arrived (3.3).

The content of their eschatological mockery is cited in verse 4: ‘Where is the prom-
ise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they
were from the beginning of creation!’ The promise under attack is usually taken to be
Jesus’ own promise (or the promise attributed to him) to return within a generation
(Mk 13.30 + par.), but it is more likely to be Old Testament prophetic expectation
of God’s eschatological coming (e.g. Isa. 64.1-3; 66.15-18; Zech. 14.1-5; Mal. 3.1-
4), which the early Christians applied to Jesus’ return.3 This fits with the mention
of ‘the fathers’, a term regularly used of the Old Testament fathers,4 and also with
1.20-21, which implies that the opponents denounce Old Testament prophecy. The
scoffers reject the hope of the Lord’s coming because of the great length of time that
has elapsed since it was originally expressed (v. 4a). The excessive time of waiting,
beyond all reasonable expectation, indicates that the promise is unlikely ever to come
true (Adams 2005: 113–14). The temporal objection is buttressed by the assertion
that all things continue just as they were from the creation of the cosmos. On the
standard interpretation of verse 4b, this clause expresses a dismissal of the possibility
of divine intervention in the world.5 The opponents’ outlook is thought to resemble
Epicurean scepticism (see esp. Neyrey 1980): Epicureans rejected divine involvement
in the cosmos or human history. However, if the false teachers were radical sceptics
in the Epicurean mould, it is difficult to imagine how they could have belonged to
the believing community.6 The assertion of verse 4b is much better understood as an
affirmation of cosmic stability and immutability, reflecting philosophical belief in the
imperishableness of the cosmos.7 Like Plato (Timaeus 32–3) and Philo (De aeternitate
mundi), the adversaries held that the world is created and indestructible. The idea
of the parousia is thus to be rejected because it involves the impossible prospect of
cosmic destabilization and collapse.8
The author answers the objections of his opponents in verses 5-9, dealing first, in
verses 5-7, with their cosmological argument. In response to the claim that the created
cosmos continues unceasingly without major change, he argues that the adversaries
have deliberately ignored the fact that there was an occasion, the occasion of the flood
in the time of Noah, when the created world was destroyed. The flood shows that
the world is not imperishable. As God destroyed the world once before, so he will
do so once more. In these verses, the writer correlates creation, flood and the final
day of judgement: by word and water God created the world; by word and water

3 As argued in Adams 2005. This view is also now taken by Peter Davids in his new com-
mentary on 2 Peter (2006: 266). For the influence of the Old Testament and early Jewish
hope of God’s coming on the New Testament expectation of Jesus’ return, see Adams 2006.
4 E.g. Mt. 23.30, 32; Lk. 1.55, 72; Jn 4.20; 6.31; Acts 3.13, 25; Rom. 9.5.
5 E.g. Bauckham 1983: 294; Horrell 1998: 139, Kraftchick 2002: 152–53
6 For further difficulties, see Adams 2005: 115–16.
7 So Bigg 1910: 119. For a fuller defence of this view, see Adams 2005: 116–21.
8 In Old Testament prophecies of God’s coming, the divine advent is often accompanied by
massive upheavals in nature: e.g. Mic. 1.2-4; Nah. 1.3-5; Hab. 3.3-15; Zech. 14.4-5.
110 Ecological Hermeneutics

he destroyed it; by word and fire, he will destroy it again. In verses 8-9, he responds
to their temporal argument by showing that God’s sense of time is very different to
ours: ‘with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like
one day’ (cf. Ps. 90.4). He further argues that the seeming delay of the parousia is
due to God’s forbearance: by appearing to postpone the day of judgement, God is
allowing people time to repent.
The writer assures his readers in verse 10 that, despite the apparent delay, the
day of the Lord will come. When it arrives, it will do so suddenly: ‘like a thief’ (cf.
Mt. 24.43; Lk. 12.39; 1 Thess. 5.2, 4; Rev. 3.3; 16.15). On that day, the heavens will
pass away with a loud noise, the elements will be dissolved with fire, and ‘the earth
and all its works will be found’. In verses 11-13, the author moves from apologetic
to moral application.

Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in
leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of
God because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt
with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth,
where righteousness is at home.

In the course of the appeal, he repeats his description of the fiery dissolution from
verse 10, but now mentions ‘new heavens and a new earth’. The ‘promise’ of which
he speaks is almost certainly that contained in Isa. 65.17 and 66.2, verses which
specifically foretell the creation of ‘new heavens and a new earth’ (Kelly 1969: 368).
The coming destruction is thus not an end in itself; it prepares the way for a new
situation. Unlike John the Seer in Revelation 21–22, the author makes no attempt
to describe the new created order; he simply notes that the new creation will be an
environment in which righteousness flourishes (in contrast to the corruption that
marks the world at present [1.4].

Destruction or Transformation?

It is generally accepted that 2 Pet. 3.4-13 has to do with the future of the cosmos. It has
become fashionable to interpret the language of cosmic catastrophe in Mk 13.24-27
(talk of sun and moon being darkened, cosmic structures convulsing and stars falling
at the coming of the Son of Man) as metaphorical for localized socio-political change
and as referring to events on the immediate historical horizon, usually the events
surrounding the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ce.9 Reading the catastrophic and cosmic
language in this way is an effective way of nullifying its apparent anti-environmental
force. But, I have not as yet come across any scholarly attempt to rescue 2 Pet. 3.4-13

9 E.g. France 2002: 530–37; Hatina 1996; Wright 1996: 339–67; Bird 2008: 56–58.
 Retrieving the Earth from the Conflagration 111

for biblical environmentalism that employs this interpretative strategy.10 In my

view, it is a mark of good exegetical sense that such an approach has not (so far!)
been adopted. That the writer is presenting a scenario that is universal and cosmic
in scope is very hard to deny. Even if it is insisted that the language (especially the
language of fire) is to some extent ‘figurative’, that the text is about cosmic events
is crystal clear. It is noteworthy that even N.T. Wright, the main contemporary
advocate of the socio-political interpretation of biblical cosmic catastrophe language,
acknowledges that this passage presents an ‘end-time scenario’ and a ‘cosmic drama’
(2003: 462).
Writers who have sought to retrieve 2 Pet. 3.4-13 for a biblically based envi-
ronmentalism have done so mainly by trying to argue that the passage does not
describe the destruction of the existing earth but rather its transformation. Whether
this text envisages destruction (and re-creation) or transformation is a longstanding
interpretative debate,11 but it is deemed to have particular relevance to the environ-
mental question. As Thomas Finger puts its, the conviction that God will transform
the present earth, rather than destroy it, means that ‘this earth must be precious to
God, and that proper stewardship of nonhuman nature is a task with eternal con-
sequences’ (1998: 27). By advocating a non-destructionist reading of 2 Pet. 3.5-13,
scholars such as Finger also endeavour to bring it more into line with Paul’s hope
for the liberation of creation expressed in Rom. 8.18-25, which, as Douglas Moo
states, ‘clearly implies that the destiny of the natural world is not destruction but
transformation’ (2006: 463).
At least five distinct exegetical and interpretative arguments are used in support
of a non-destructionist interpretation of 2 Pet. 3.4-13.
First, it is argued that the analogy with the flood indicates something less than
destruction. The author states that at the time of the flood, the world that then
existed ‘perished’ (apöleto, 3.6), but as Gale Heide notes, the flood, as described in
Genesis 6–9, ‘did not destroy the earth completely’ (1997: 53). Fish presumably con-
tinued to exist and geological features, such as mountains, remained. Every animal
species was spared, along with some human beings, by virtue of being in the ark. In
other words, ‘much of what existed previously in creation survived’ (Heide 1997:
54). The comparison drawn between the flood and the fiery judgement suggests that

10 The claim that 2 Peter 3 is about the destruction of Jerusalem was, however, made over a
century ago by J.S. Russell as part of his general thesis that the parousia happened in the
events in 70 ce. See Russell 1887: 319–26.
11 The issue tends to be presented in dichotomous terms: either total annihilation (destruction
into nothing) followed by new creation ex nihilo, or transformation. For the annihilationist
reading, see, for example, Overstreet (1980: 365): ‘Heaven and earth shall be annihilated.
In nuclear fission some waste products are always left over. But when God causes this
catastrophic event, the destruction will be complete and total.’ The scholars with whom I
am engaging in this essay (Bouma-Prediger, Finger, Heide, Lucas and Moo) operate with
the annihilation/transformation dichotomy. I will argue that the author of 2 Peter envisages
destruction, but not absolute annihilation, a concept that would have been inconceivable
to him.
112 Ecological Hermeneutics

the latter, like the former, is about the cleansing of creation from unrighteousness
not its complete destruction (Heide 1997: 55).
Secondly, it is maintained that fire is not primarily a destructive agent in 2 Pet. 3.5-13.
Moo points out that fire in the Old Testament ‘is often a metaphorical way of
speaking of judgment’, and even if sometimes the reference is to physical fire, the
fire need not be totally destructive (2006: 468). Ernest Lucas notes that ‘fire is used
as a metaphor of judgement which does not simply destroy, but purifies, e.g. Isaiah
21-26; Malachi 1-4’ (1999: 97). The purpose of the eschatological fire in 2 Peter 3,
according to Lucas, is to ‘purge the created order of all evil’(1999: 97). Similarly,
Heide suggests that fire in this text is ‘the cleansing agent for the stain of sin upon
the earth . . . rather than a means for indiscriminate disintegration’ (1997: 54).
Thirdly, it is argued that the preservation of the earth is implied in the final clause
of verse 10. It is noted that the reading adopted by the KJV and some other versions,
‘the earth and everything in it shall be burned up’, finds little acceptance nowadays.
Most commentators agree that the original reading is: ‘the earth and all its works will
be found’. On this construal, according to Bouma-Prediger, the earth is ‘discovered,
not destroyed’ (2001: 77). Finger, in line with a number of recent commentators,
argues that being ‘found’ refers mainly to God’s assessment of human beings: he
maintains that the earth is ‘found, or discovered; not to be destroyed, but so that the
human works done upon it may be judged’ (1998: 5).
Fourthly, it is noted that the word for ‘dissolve’ in verses 10, 11 and 12 is luö,
which ‘does not necessarily have to refer to annihilation’; according to Heide, the
thought is more that of ‘breaking down into component parts’ or ‘release from
bondage’ (1997: 53). Some form of physical alteration is meant, but not ‘a total
eradication of all physical substance.’ Similarly Moo thinks that the word points not
to annihilation ‘but a dissolution or radical change in nature’ (2006: 468).
Finally, the point is made that the word for ‘new’ in the phrase ‘new heavens and
a new earth’ is not neos, which means ‘previously non-existent’, but kainos, which
means ‘new in quality’ (Lucas 1999: 97). According to Finger, it is not necessary to
think of the new state as ‘created entirely from scratch’ (1998: 6); the wording is
consistent with the idea of a transformation of the existing heavens and earth.
A cumulative case is thus built for seeing 2 Pet. 3.4-10 as about ‘renewal through
transformation, not a total destruction of the old and its replacement by something
quite different’ (Lucas 1999: 97). The case looks impressive, but on closer scrutiny
none of these arguments for a non-destructionist interpretation of the passage holds up.
First, it is true that in the Genesis account of the flood, creation is not totally
destroyed, but, as J.N.D. Kelly points out, ‘Jewish apocalyptic and speculation
dependent on it read this frightening development into the story’ (1969: 359).
In 1 Enoch 10.2, ‘the whole earth’ is said to have perished at the flood. 1 Enoch
83.3-5 depicts the heavens as collapsing onto the earth, and the earth itself as being
 Retrieving the Earth from the Conflagration 113

swallowed by the abyss.12 Most commentators agree that the author of 2 Peter goes
beyond Genesis and imagines the flood as bringing about the destruction of the whole
universe: this is implied by the contrast between the ‘heavens . . . and earth’ of ‘long
ago’ in verse 5 and ‘the present heavens and earth’ in verse 7 (Horrell 1998: 177).
As well as post-biblical flood tradition that sees the flood as destroying the earth or
the whole cosmos, the writer also seems to be influenced by the notion of parallel
cosmic destructions by water and fire, an idea found in Stoicism of the period (Seneca,
Naturales Quaestiones 3.28.7). One may readily agree that the analogous relation
of flood and final act of judgement suggests that the latter, in line with the former, is
about the cleansing of creation from sin and evil, but the cleansings take place, for
our author, by means of destruction not instead of it.
Secondly, it is also true that fire is sometimes a metaphor for judgement in the Old
Testament. For example, Zeph. 1.18 speaks of the whole earth being consumed ‘in
the fire of his passion’; here fire clearly functions as a metaphor for God’s wrath (cf.
Isa. 30.27; Jer. 40.4; Zeph. 3.8). But since the writer obviously understands water
as a literal agent of destruction in the flood, we can be sure that he thinks of fire as
a ‘real’ destructive force in the coming judgement. Moreover, it is doubtful that the
background to the author’s expectation of a fiery cosmic destruction is to be found
in the Old Testament. As Richard Bauckham notes, in Old Testament texts where
fire is an instrument of judgement, its function is mainly to consume the wicked
(1983: 300); nowhere in the Old Testament is the total destruction of heaven and
earth by fire predicted or visualized (Adams 2007: 97 n. 201; van der Horst 1994:
234–36). In Second Temple Jewish literature, the idea of the complete destruction of
the cosmos by fire comes to expression in the Sibylline Oracles (2.196-213; 3.75-92;
4.171-92; 5.206-13, 512-31; Adams 2007: 88–95), but it does so under the influence
of Stoic cosmology (Van der Horst 1994: 239). At the time of 2 Peter, the expecta-
tion of a cosmic conflagration was commonly viewed as a typically Stoic idea. The
doctrine of world conflagration, or ekpurösis, as it was known, was taught by Zeno,
the founder of Stoicism, and his immediate successors, Cleanthes and Chrysippus.13
It was abandoned by several leading figures of middle Stoicism but was affirmed by
first-century ce Roman Stoics including Seneca and Epictetus. Philo (Aet. 8) attributes
the theorem to the great mass of Stoic philosophers in his day. Given the Stoic
provenance of the notion, it seems reasonable to suppose, as many have concluded,
that it was from this source that the author of 2 Peter derived it. This is not to say
that the writer bought into the cyclic dimensions of the Stoic theory, according to
which the cosmos is destroyed and regenerated endlessly: the author presses the Stoic
conception into a linear scheme and imagines the conflagration as a one-off and final
act of judgement. If a Stoic background to 2 Pet. 3.10-12 is accepted, there need be
no distinction between destruction and purification, since in Stoic thought the fire

12 On ‘the abyss’ as a reference to the primeval waters, see Dennis 2008: 174–75, rightly
correcting Adams 2007: 214.
13 On the Stoic conflagration see Adams 2007: 114–24; Long 1985.
114 Ecological Hermeneutics

that devours the cosmos is both destructive and purifying (it was evidently called a
katharsis or purification [Lapidge 1978: 180]), consuming all material things and
purging the world of evil.
Thirdly, it is correct that the last line of verse 10, on the best textual evidence,
does not speak of the destruction of the earth. The meaning of the reading, ‘the
earth and all its works will be found’, which should be regarded as original,14 is not
easy to determine, but as Finger argues, it most likely relates to God’s judgement
of humans. The point being expressed, as Horrell states, is that ‘[a]ll the deeds and
works of human beings will be laid bare before God’.15 But this clause should not be
interpreted to mean that the earth is preserved through or protected from the fire. The
destruction of the earth along with the heavens is expressed in the opening phrase
of verse 11: ‘since all these things are to be dissolved in this way . . .’ The words ‘all
these things’ (toutön pantön) pick up the references to the heavens, the elements and
the earth in verse 10. As Bauckham (1983: 324) points out, the dissolution of the
earth is also implied in verse 7 (‘the present heavens and earth have been reserved
for fire’) and in verse 13 (‘a new earth’).
In my view, the earth’s dissolution is further implied in verse 10 with the men-
tion of the elements being dissolved with fire (cf. v. 12, ‘the elements will melt with
fire’). The meaning of the word stoicheia, translated ‘elements’, is debated. Most
commentators take the word as referring to the heavenly bodies: sun, moon and
stars. Some (e.g. Horrell 1998: 180; Finger 1998: 6) see a double reference to the
cosmic bodies and the spiritual powers thought to be controlling them. However,
the application of the term stoicheia to the heavenly bodies is not securely attested
until after the New Testament period (EDNT: 3.278). The most natural meaning
of stoicheia in 2 Pet. 3.10-12, when the epistle was written, would have been the
physical elements of which, it was believed, all earthly things are composed: earth,
air, water and fire. Commentators tend to reject a reference to the four material ele-
ments because that would seem to entail the absurdity that fire is dissolved by fire.
However, no illogicality is involved if the background of thought is Stoic cosmology,
since Stoics distinguished between the element fire and the cosmic fire into which all
things are resolved at the conflagration (Adams 2007: 115). The author’s division
of cosmic reality into the heavens and the elements (especially in v. 12, where there
is no additional mention of the earth) fits with the standard Stoic division of the
cosmos (with the four elements comprising all things in the earthly realm, and ether
constituting the substance of things in the supra-terrestrial realm).
Fourthly, it is indeed the case that the word luö means more to break down into
component parts than to annihilate or obliterate from existence, but the former still
has to do with destruction (specifically disintegration) and the latter would not have
been considered a conceivable meaning at the time of writing. In Greco-Roman

14 So Bauckham 1983: 316–21; Neyrey 1993: 243–44; Horrell 1998: 180–81; Kraftchick 2002:
163.
15 Horrell 1998: 181. See further Adams 2007: 228.
 Retrieving the Earth from the Conflagration 115

discussion of whether the cosmos will perish or endure forever, ‘destruction’ was
understood as resolution into some originating principle or breaking down into
constituent parts, and not as reduction to nothing. Philo (Aet. 6) is quite clear on
this point:

Nothing in fact is so foolish as to raise the question whether the world is destroyed into
non-existence. The point is whether it undergoes a transmutation from its ordered arrange-
ment through the various forms of the elements and their combinations being either resolved
into one and the self-same conformation or reduced in complete confusion as things are
when shattered.

The idea of the total resolution of the cosmos and all matter into nothingness is
given serious expression in the mid-second century ce and beyond, largely in het-
erodox circles on the fringes of the mainstream Church. It was apparently part of
Valentinian cosmological teaching (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.7.1), and it is found
in certain Nag Hammadi treatises (Orig. World 126-7; Great Pow. 46). Among the
church fathers, it was accepted by Tertullian (Against Hermogenes 34), who, unlike
Valentinians and ‘Gnostics’, looked for a new creation ex nihilo. But it would be
anachronistic to use this notion of destruction as the benchmark for determining
whether 2 Pet. 3.5-13 is about the dissolution of the cosmos.
The author of 2 Peter uses the word luö in a standard destructionist sense, and so
it is correctly translated ‘dissolve’ or ‘destroy’ (BDAG: 667). The cluster of verbs used
in verses 10 and 13 (parerchomai, ‘pass away’; puroö,‘set ablaze’; kausoö,‘burn up’;
tekö, ‘melt’) is clearly meant to portray violent destruction. The writer appears to
envisage destruction by reduction into the primal element fire, as in the Stoic theory
of ekpurösis. To interpret his language as rhetorical hyperbole for non-destructive
transformation is to ride roughshod over the writer’s careful and ‘scientifically’
appropriate use of terms and to rob his argument of its force as a response to the
assertion that the cosmos is indestructible.
Finally, the observation that the word for ‘new’ is kainos not neos is not all that
significant since the words were plainly being used interchangeably at this time
(BDAG: 496–97, 669). The contrast with ‘the present heavens and earth’ in verse 7
clearly indicates that the author is thinking in terms of a new created order not just
a transformation of the present cosmic order.
In sum, therefore, the case for a non-destructionist reading of 2 Pet. 3.5-13 is not
very strong and is marked to a certain extent by special pleading. What the author envi-
sions here is the violent dissolution of the heavens and earth and their creation anew.
His vision differs markedly from Paul’s view of the cosmic future in Rom. 8.18-25
and it should not be made to conform to the Pauline text.
116 Ecological Hermeneutics

Beyond Retrieval?

Is 2 Pet. 3.5-13, then, beyond retrieval for a biblically informed environmentalism?

And does it really matter if the text is deemed irrecoverable? It would be easy to
dismiss this passage as expressing a marginal and extreme viewpoint out of harmony
with other biblical voices. But the fact is that 2 Pet. 3.5–13 is not alone in the biblical
canon in affirming the dissolution of creation (see Ps. 102: 25-27; Isa. 51.6; Mk 13.31
+ par.; Heb. 1.10-12 [citing Ps. 102.25-27]; Rev. 21.1), so it is not out on a limb in
this regard, though no other biblical passage depicts the destruction of heaven and
earth so graphically and violently. Those seeking to derive from the Bible a positive
environmental ethic need to acknowledge that the Bible has more than one way of
conceiving the cosmic future and that the various statements cannot be pressed into
a singular vision of non-destructive transformation.
Although 2 Pet. 3.5-13 cannot be considered a pro-environmental text, there are
certain considerations which, even in a destructionist interpretation of the passage,
mollify its apparent anti-environmental thrust.16
First, we can be confident that the expectation of cosmic destruction here
articulated does not entail a negative assessment of the present creation as innately
evil. According to N.T. Wright (1992: 285), the very idea of the world coming to
an end betokens a world-negating, dualistic cosmology. But this was not the case
for the Stoics, whose cosmology was firmly monistic. The main Stoic proponents
of ekpurösis regarded the conflagration as a wholly positive event (Adams 2007:
120–21). Chrysippus maintained that at ekpurösis, the cosmos turns into light or
brightness (Philo, Aet. 90). He insisted that the universe does not die (Plutarch,
Moralia [On Stoic Self-Contradictions] 1052c); rather it grows to its acme and is
regenerated. As Pieter van der Horst states, for Stoics, the conflagration ‘is an act
of god in his benevolent providence. It is a blessing, not an evil’ (1994: 234). It
was perhaps this positive assessment of the conflagration within Stoic cosmology
that made it theologically acceptable to the writer of 2 Peter. He clearly views the
destruction and re-creation of the cosmos as a positive action of God, bringing
judgement, establishing righteousness and fulfilling divine promise. Old Testament
and Second Temple Jewish writers can also affirm the destructibility or end of the
world without assuming that the earth is inherently bad (Adams 2007: 28–32). The
book of Genesis, in its finished form, holds together belief in the intrinsic goodness of
creation (Gen. 1.4, 10, 12, etc.) and belief in the mortality of the earth (Gen. 8.22).
The writer of 2 Peter alludes to Genesis 1 in 2 Pet. 3.5-6, and we can be sure that he
agrees with the verdict of Genesis 1 that creation is intrinsically good.17
Secondly, the dissolution of the earth is not envisaged as an end in itself; it prepares

16 What follows expands and develops Adams 2007: 258–59.

17 True, the writer believes that there is corruption in the world, but like Paul in Rom. 8.20-21,
he sees corruption entering the world by means of a ‘fall’ event (‘because of desire’,
2 Pet. 1.4).
 Retrieving the Earth from the Conflagration 117

the way for a new earthly future. The writer’s vision stands in sharp contrast to later
‘Gnostic’ conceptions of the end in which there is no material re-creation after the
annihilation of the material order (MacRae 1983: 323). For the writer of 2 Peter, the
dissolution of heaven and earth is part of a process of renewal, which brings about
a new heavens and new earth in continuity with what has gone before. In Stoicism,
the new cosmos was conceived as an exact (or near-exact) replica of the preceding
world (Long 1985: 25–26). It is doubtful that the author expected the new cosmic
creation to be an exact replication of the present world, but it is very likely that he
thought of it as in some sense a restoration and perfection of the original creation.
For the author of 2 Peter, the new heavens and earth are not a creatio ex nihilo
but a creatio ex vetere, a creation out of the old. Material continuity between the
present cosmos and the new eschatological creation is assumed, on the basis of the
physical continuity that obtained between the antediluvian and postdiluvian worlds,
and on the basis of the preservation of matter through conflagration and regeneration
as pictured in Stoic cosmology. For the writer of 2 Peter, matter is not to be dumped
into eternal nothingness but recycled.
Thirdly, living in the light of the end and re-creation, for this author, does not
mean the abandonment of ethical obligations; he issues a moral appeal precisely on
the basis of the coming end and renewal (vv. 11-12). In verse 14, pressing further his
moral petition, he indicates that as believers await the new heavens and new earth,
they should ‘strive to be found by him at peace’. The verb ‘strive’ points to strenuous
effort (and thus rules out passive waiting). Commentators tend to take ‘peace’ as
meaning the condition of being reconciled to God18 or the state of holiness or purity
that flows from salvation.19 In the Old Testament, ‘peace’ (Hebrew, shalöm) covers
wholeness and well-being in the widest sense; it has a social and public significance
‘far beyond the purely personal’.20 Peace is a traditional quality of the eschatological
order (Isa. 9.6-7; 32.15-20; 52.7; 60.17-22; etc.) and it embraces harmony with
human beings and harmony with the wider creation (especially Isa. 32.15-20;
61.17-22). One wonders whether the broader notion of peace is being evoked in 2
Pet. 3.14, especially when one considers the immediate eschatological context. If so,
the injunction to ‘strive to be found at peace’ might be interpreted as a call to work
for wholeness in the present world wherever possible in anticipation of the peace
that God himself will establish in the new creation. Since shalöm in its eschatological
manifestation has an environmental dimension, might not striving for peace be taken
to entail the exercise of environmental as well as social responsibility? This would
of course be going beyond what the author himself had in mind (it would be absurd
to attribute to him an ecological awareness), but it might be seen as an appropriate
contemporary extension of his appeal.
But what of the exhortation to ‘hasten’ the coming of the day of God? Does this

18 E.g. Bauckham 1983: 327.

19 E.g. Neyrey 1993: 250.
20 See Beck and Brown 1976: 776–83.
118 Ecological Hermeneutics

not encourage the exploitation of the earth and its resources so as to accelerate the
inevitable demise of the present creation? From the author’s viewpoint, how one
may hasten the day of the Lord is by living godly, holy and peace-seeking lives.
The abusive treatment of God’s creation is hardly consistent with such a lifestyle.
It would be a twisted and pernicious misapplication of the writer’s injunction to use
it to legitimate the shameless neglect and misuse of the environment.
What about the sense of imminence that attaches to the expectation of the earth’s
fiery future? Does this not act as a disincentive to meaningful reparative and preserva-
tive environmental action? The time signals in this passage are decidedly mixed. On
the one hand, there are strong indications of imminence (vv. 3, 12-13), but on other,
there is the acknowledgement that the end may be a long way off (v. 8). Readers are
thus encouraged to live in expectancy of the end while recognizing that the present
world may continue to exist for thousands of years to come. This tension between
urgency and long-termism, it seems to me, leaves space for Christian involvement
in the wider socio-political world and its problems and for the development of an
ethic of environmental care.

Conclusion

2 Pet. 3.5-13 remains a problematic text from an environmental perspective.

Attempts to retrieve the passage for the environment based on the claim that what is
envisioned is transformation and not destruction fail to persuade. The eschatologi-
cal scenario depicted involves the destruction of the earth along with the material
heavens; the scenario (in and of itself) is hardly one that inspires pro-environmental
action. Yet, as I hope to have indicated, relating this passage in a positive way to the
environment is not a completely lost cause. The text almost certainly presupposes
the created goodness of the earth, which I regard as the primary biblical motivation
for environmental concern (along with the stewardship of the earth implied in the
‘creation mandate’ of Gen. 1.26-28). The thought of the creator ‘recycling’ the old
to produce the new, conserving and reprocessing matter, has positive environmental
resonances. And the ‘peace’ for which readers are called to strive in verse 14 can be
legitimately extended to include harmony with the environment. None of this is to
suggest that 2 Pet. 3.5-13 can safely be re-labelled an eco-friendly text, but it perhaps
shows that the text is not completely devoid of features which are retrievable for a
biblical theology and ethic of the environment.

References

Adams, E. 2005 ‘“Where is the Promise of His Coming?” The Complaint of the Scoffers in 2 Peter
3.4’, NTS 51: 106–22.
Adams, E. 2006 ‘The Coming of God Tradition and Its Influence on New Testament Parousia Texts’,
 Retrieving the Earth from the Conflagration 119

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Michael A. Knibb (JSJSup 111; Leiden: Brill): 1–19.
Adams, E. 2007 The Stars Will Fall From Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the New Testament and
Its World (LNTS 347; London: T&T Clark).
Bauckham, R.J. 1983 Jude, 2 Peter (WBC 50; Waco: Word).
Beck, H. and Brown, C. 1976 ‘Peace’, in C. Brown (ed.), New International Dictionary of New
Testament Theology, Volume 2 (Exeter: Paternoster): 776–83.
Bigg, C. 1910 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude (ICC;
Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Bird, M. 2008 ‘Tearing the Heavens and Shaking the Heavenlies: Mark’s Cosmology in Its
Apocalyptic Context’, in J.T. Pennington and S.M. McDonough (eds), Cosmology and New
Testament Theology (LNTS 355; London: T&T Clark): 45–59.
Bouma-Prediger, S. 2001 For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic).
Davids, P.H. 2006 The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
Dennis, J. 2008 ‘Cosmology in the Petrine Literature and Jude’, in J.T. Pennington and S.M.
McDonough (eds), Cosmology and New Testament Theology (LNTS 355; London:
T&T Clark): 157–77
Dyer, K. 2002 ‘When is the End not the End? The Fate of Earth in Biblical Eschatology (Mark 13)’, in
N.C. Habel and V. Balabanski (eds), The Earth Story in the New Testament (The Earth Bible,
5; London and New York/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 44–56.
Finger, T. 1998 Evangelicals, Eschatology and the Environment (The Scholars Circle 2; Wynnewood,
PA: Evangelical Environmental Network).
France, R.T. 2002 The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids,
MI/Carlisle: Eerdmans Paternoster).
Hatina, T.R. 1996 ‘The Focus of Mark 13.24-27: The Parousia, or the Destruction of the Temple’,
BBR 6: 43–66.
Heide, G.Z. 1997 ‘What is New About the New Heaven and the New Earth: A Theology of Creation
From Revelation 21 and 2 Peter 3’, JETS 40: 37–56.
Horrell, D.G. 1998 The Epistles of Peter and Jude (Epworth Commentaries; Peterborough: Epworth).
Kelly, J.N.D. 1969 A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude (BNTC; London: A. & C. Black).
Kraftchick, S.J. 2002 Jude, 2 Peter (ANTC; Nashville: Abingdon).
Lapidge, M. 1978 ‘Stoic Cosmology’, in J.M. Rist (ed.), The Stoics (Berkley/Los Angeles/London:
University of California Press): 160–85.
Long, A.A. 1985 ‘The Stoics on World-Conflagration’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 23:
13–37.
Lucas, E. 1999 ‘The New Testament Teaching on the Environment’, Transformation 16.3: 93–99.
MacRae, G. 1983 ‘Apocalyptic Eschatology in Gnosticism’, in D. Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticism in
the Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium
on Apocalypticisim, Uppsala, Aug 12–17 1979 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck): 317–25.
Moo, D. 2006 ‘Nature in the New Creation: New Testament Eschatology and the Environment’,
JETS 49: 449–88.
Neyrey, J.H. 1980 ‘The Form and Background of the Polemic in 2 Peter’, JBL 99: 407–31.
Neyrey, J.H. 1993 2 Peter, Jude: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 37C;
New York: Doubleday).
Overstreet, R.L. 1980 ‘A Study of 2 Peter 3:10-13’, Bibliotheca Sacra 137: 354–71.
Russell, J.S. 1887 The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord’s
Second Coming (London: T. Fisher Unwin, new edition).
van der Horst, P.W. 1994 ‘“The Elements will be Dissolved with Fire”: The Idea of Cosmic
Conflagration in Hellenism, Ancient Judaism, and Early Christianity’, in P.W. van der Horst,
Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity: Essays on Their Interaction (Kampen: Kok Pharos): 227–51.
Wright, N.T. 1992 The New Testament and the People of God. Christian Origins and the Question
of God Volume One (London: SPCK).
120 Ecological Hermeneutics

Wright, N.T. 1996 Jesus and the Victory of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God Volume
Two (London: SPCK).
Wright, N.T. 2003 The Resurrection of the Son of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God
Volume Three (London: SPCK).
 Part II

Insights from the History of Interpretation

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 Introduction to Part II

Cherryl Hunt

The essays in Part I explored the possible contributions, and potential problems,
arising from biblical texts considered from an ecotheological perspective. Our area
of enquiry now moves to consider Christian theological thought from the second
century to the twentieth. With the entire history of Christian interpretation to choose
from, this section necessarily provides only a sample of the resources within the
tradition for exploring a fruitful ecological hermeneutic. Our various contributors
each examine how individual thinkers, or particular approaches, in the history of
interpretation have read and used the Bible in relation to what are now perceived to
be ecologically relevant themes; in most cases this reading centres on the relationship
between God and creation as a whole, and the particular status and role of human
beings in relation to the rest of creation. In this respect the focus is often, following
Lynn White Jr’s article, on theological construals of the creation narratives in Genesis.
As Francis Watson points out, Christian theology has always been characterized
by an ongoing reshaping in response to the challenges thrown up by each successive
age. Noting that the ecological crisis has highlighted the weaknesses of the anthro-
pomonistic tendencies of the Christian tradition’s ‘fall–redemption’ model, Watson
stresses the need to remember that ‘the gospel story is grounded in creation as well
as fall’. His focus is on Irenaeus’s rebuttal of Valentinian Christianity, in particular
their belief that Valentinians, as truly spiritual beings, had no enduring connection
with a physical world which was the product of an inferior demiurge. Irenaeus uses
John’s Gospel and the Genesis creation stories in an intertextual reading to form a
theological hermeneutic which both rebuts the Valentinian argument and stresses the
integral place of humanity within the community of creation. The Irenaean reminder
of the foundational nature of creatureliness is a possible resource for an ecological
hermeneutic and a timely challenge to the tendency to view creation as ‘merely the
stage on which the real drama of fall and redemption is played out’.
In contrast to Irenaeus’s positive approach towards creation in its totality, some
strands of the Christian tradition have left a more ambiguous legacy; in some cases,
indeed, they are now viewed as irremediably anthropocentric, offering no support
for contemporary ecotheological reflection. However, just as in Part I some authors
found resources for such reflection within some initially unpromising texts, so
124 Ecological Hermeneutics

here our contributors find useful approaches in what might initially appear hostile
territory. Morwenna Ludlow’s essay, focusing on a selection of the early Church
Fathers, looks at how they read Gen. 1.1-2 and 1.26 and how they classified their
readings – as literal, allegorical or spiritual, descriptions which often differ from
modern definitions. This exploration illustrates how influenced the Fathers were by
contemporary philosophical and cultural assumptions regarding the superiority of
reason over emotion – and reason’s concomitant right to assume a superior position
in the hierarchy thought to be necessary to harmony within the creative order. These
assumptions led the Fathers to perceive as natural a position of human dominion over
other life forms, a concept they saw as supported by the biblical account of human
creation in the image of God. However, Ludlow finds some positive resources for
ecotheological reflection within the more distinctively Christian features of patristic
discourse on these passages, arising both from Genesis itself and from understandings
of the Incarnation: namely the goodness of creation, the co-materiality of human
and non-human emphasizing the interconnectedness of all life, and the concomitant
effects of human sin upon the whole.
Moving on into the Middle Ages, we have Mark Wynn’s examination of Thomas
Aquinas. Despite what many have seen as Aquinas’s anthropocentric position on the
dominion of higher, rational human beings over other animals, Wynn finds, in the
Thomistic concept of God as subsistent existence, grounds for arguing for the good-
ness of all creation and the directedness of all creatures towards God. Moreover, it is
by no means evident from Aquinas’s text that the goals of other creatures are always
to be subordinated to the goals of human beings. Significantly, Aquinas’s writings
indicate that the entire community of creatures together resembles God more closely,
in some respects, than does any individual creature, even rational human beings. The
human goal may be taken to be that of imaging God by means of our participation
within a community of diverse creaturely types, where each type flourishes according
to the possibilities which are inherent in its own nature.
As Paul Santmire shows, despite the possibility of considering nature as ‘the
biophysical dimension of creation’ within Luther’s theology of creation, Luther’s
writings provide a similarly ambiguous legacy to that of Aquinas. His anthropocen-
tric portrayal of creation as a ‘building’ for the use of humanity and its being cursed
due to Adam’s sin, the central position he gave to human salvation, his prioritization
of ‘hearing’ the Word over ‘seeing’ it, and his consequent rejection of the theology
of glory in favour of the theology of the cross, are apparently eco-negative features.
These are, however, balanced by Luther’s sense of the divine immanence, the Word of
God in nature, and his seeing creation as a means of gracious provision for human-
ity to share (rather than a possession to be exploited). Furthermore, an enhanced
sense of nature’s glory is accessible to the believer. Santmire, while acknowledging
the problematic aspects of Luther’s thought, proposes an appropriation of Luther’s
theology which balances the the-anthropocentrical strand of his thought with a
the-cosmocentrical dimension based on his affirmations of the goodness of creation
and of God’s presence in it.
 Introduction to Part II 125

Another theologian whose work is often cited as being irremediably hostile

towards ecotheological reflection is Karl Barth. Geoff Thompson acknowledges
Barth’s emphasis upon the Christocentricity of the biblical witness and the con-
comitant focus on the fulfilment of the covenant between God and humanity, not to
mention his aversion to natural theology. Nevertheless, he sees Barth’s determination
to turn away from anthropocentrism as a key point of contact between his work and
that of twenty-first century ecotheologians. Barth’s description of non-human crea-
tion as a ‘stage’ and the ‘external basis’ of the covenant needs to be understood in the
light of his portrayal of a far- from-passive, creation-praising God, and his insistence
that humanity’s dominion was limited in scope; rather than having a God-like right
to dispose of the entirety of creation, humans are merely given dominion over the
animals. This is tightly linked to their commission to be loyal servants of the earth
and its vegetation. They may be integral to the goal of the creative and redemptive
project, but they are far from being its sum.
In a similar fashion, David Moss begins by acknowledging that Hans Urs von
Balthasar ‘said little, if anything’ about the environmental crisis. Rather, Moss argues
that if Balthasar’s thinking is to be appropriated to the cause of ecological reflection
then it will be through an understanding of the theophanic character to nature, which
always remains to be Christologically decoded. Thus, a Balthasarian contribution
to an ecological hermeneutic should emerge not from a search for responses to the
present crisis but rather, more fundamentally, from an attitude of wonder towards
nature’s beauty, and an ability to perceive ‘the whole in the fragment’, to see beyond
the particular instance within nature to the One who is its origin and maintains it. We
need to ‘begin with beauty’, to recover the sense that ‘those transitory experiences of
the truth, goodness and beauty of the cosmos are intelligible only by way of reference
to a transcendent order of Being that is absolutely true, good and beautiful’. This
‘hermeneutic of beauty’ is needed to see the good, to read the stamp of God upon
creation; the observers are ‘trained by it in giving themselves away in love’.
Less ambiguous resources for reflection on ecotheology are to be found in the
theology of Eastern Orthodoxy and, within the Protestant tradition, the writings
of Jürgen Moltmann. Andrew Louth, drawing on both ancient and more recent
Orthodox thinkers including St Maximos and Sergii Bulgakov, reminds us that
Orthodox theologians have consistently seen the human drama of fall and redemp-
tion as being set within a larger story stretching from creation to transfiguration
and deification. Viewing the world as having been created out of nothing, by the
mediation of God’s creative Word, leads to an attitude of praise and an ability to see
the presence of God within creation. Furthermore, Orthodox interpretations of the
creation of humanity itself see the human and the larger cosmos as interconnected:
the cosmos is affected by human sin and the same sin hinders human perception of
God within creation. The human is intended to be the priest of creation, ‘interpreter
of the cosmos’, not its exploiter; the Incarnation enables the realization of this human
role and a recognition of the holiness of both human and non-human creation, which
can motivate a change in our attitudes towards our environment. Together, both
126 Ecological Hermeneutics

human and the rest of creation approach a transfiguration, not into something new
but into a state where they realize their true identity in union with God.
As Jeremy Law reminds us, Jürgen Moltmann has for some time been concerned
with the environmental crisis, which he sees as a consequence of a crisis of values
and therefore a subject on which theology can and should comment. Moltmann finds
Cartesian anthropological theology a contributor, rather than an antidote, to this
crisis, but he finds in the promissory nature of scripture a reason to seek answers
therein. Further, he finds there a mandate to take the trajectory of biblical teachings
beyond their original meanings to apply them to contemporary contexts, albeit a
trajectory constrained by exegetical considerations. Following an examination of five
key biblical motifs that Moltmann employs in his ecotheological reflection, Law goes
on to outline central themes within his reflections, including a perichoretic Trinitarian
panentheism and a concept of creation in God, together with a cosmic Christology
that includes a vision of Christ as redeemer of the evolutionary process itself and
of the whole cosmos; Law summarizes the impulse towards Christian action within
Moltmann’s works, as anticipation of the new creation leading to ‘resistance and
protest against that which contradicts this future’.
It might be said that some of our contributors are providing an apologetic for
their subjects, attempting to salvage from committedly anthropocentric writings and
attitudes some positive, more holistically creation-centred features to contribute to
Christian reflection on the environment. In some cases the same can be said as is
said of the biblical writers – it is understandable and to some degree inevitable that
these theologians did not speak directly to an ecologically threatening situation which
they did not have to face. Moreover it is notable that, in every case, the resources
that our contributors find our subjects to provide lie in their meditations on the
relationships between Creator and creation, Creator and humanity, and between
humanity and non-human creation. The dyadic God–human focus of much Western
theology is actually just one side of a triangle of relationships and the ecologically
important baseline – the relationship between humans and non-human creation – is
from a theological perspective totally dependent for its character upon the other two
sides. This points the way for our formation of ecological hermeneutics: rather than
proof-texting to seek a basis for how we should act along the human–non-human
side of the triangle, those committed to working with the biblical texts should take a
comprehensive approach towards scripture as a whole and build a model that takes
account of the whole network of relationships. In contrast to an often anthropocen-
tric theological tradition, an ecological hermeneutic should not focus entirely or even
mostly on the God–human relationship but neither should it conflate God-human
with God–non-human relationships; the human is in some respects distinct from
the non-human in the biblical witness and an adequate ecological hermeneutic will
recognize this and work with it. The essays here, taken together, illustrate more
clearly all three sides of the creational triangle and offer diverse ways of developing an
ecological hermeneutic in which creation is restored to its crucial place in the matrix
of relationships between God, humanity and the non-human world.
 Chapter 9

In the Beginning: Irenaeus, Creation and the Environment

Francis Watson

Preamble: Environmental Hermeneutics

There is an ‘environmental crisis’, and a ‘crisis’ is an emergency requiring immediate

action if disaster is to be averted. Some of this action can be undertaken only by
experts. It takes special training to launch a lifeboat, or operate a fire engine or design
an energy-efficient light bulb. But immediate action may also be required from the
crisis’s potential victims. They must become aware that they are potential victims,
and take whatever forms of evasive or remedial action that are open to them. They
must grasp that the ship is sinking or that the building is on fire or that the planet is
at risk, and act instantly in such a way as to minimize the threat to life – their own
and others’. Similar considerations apply to perpetrators of the crisis, those whose
misguided actions pose a threat to public safety and well-being. (Indeed, perpetrators
and victims may be the same people.) Those who are at risk or who put others at risk
must undergo a conversion from the mistaken belief that all is well to the recognition
that disaster is imminent. All other considerations must be set aside.
Rather than speaking of a singular ‘crisis’, however, we might prefer to speak of a
plurality of ‘environmental problems’. The use of the plural would acknowledge that
the issues that make up the singular ‘crisis’ are actually distinct. These issues may well
be interrelated, and they may possibly be traceable back to a single underlying cause.
Yet they are different. The terms ‘recycling’, ‘conservation’ and ‘renewable energy’
all represent current environmental imperatives, but each has its own distinct context
and rationale. They are related, but they are not the same thing; they are responses
to different problems. Only one of them directly responds to the problem of ‘global
warming’ or ‘climate change’, and even there this is not the exclusive motivation: the
problem with non-renewable energy is not only that it appears to promote global
warming but also that it is finite. To speak of ‘problems’ rather than a ‘crisis’ is not
to downgrade the seriousness of the issues. ‘Problems’ may be said to be ‘serious’ or
‘urgent’, and in their different ways our environmental problems may all be serious
and urgent ones. Yet, unlike a crisis or an emergency, a problem allows time for
critical reflection and informed debate.
The crisis model engenders eco-theologies, eco-justice, eco-warriors and eco-
congregations, and there are good pragmatic reasons for all of them. Yet there
128 Ecological Hermeneutics

is also room for an alternative approach, although it may lack the eco- prefix. In
such an approach, it is acknowledged that environmental problems demand to be
taken into account in our ongoing reshaping of the ethical, religious and intellectual
traditions we inhabit. This reshaping is happening anyway. Traditions are always
reshaped as they are handed on, for their transmission is constantly interrupted by
new challenges that require adjustment and adaptation. There is nothing uniquely
problematic or threatening about present encounters between an old tradition
and ‘contemporary issues’, for the tradition is constituted in part by its previous
encounters with once-contemporary issues of previous generations. Adapting to
contemporary issues is what traditions do best, although the outcome may not please
everyone. In such encounters between old and new, what is required is not just to
reinterpret the tradition in the light of the contemporary issue but also to reinterpret
the issue in the light of the tradition. An ‘issue’ is always an interpretative construct,
and a construct may require re-construction if it is to be accommodated within a
new context. Environmental problems may be construed quite differently within,
say, Christian, Marxist or feminist perspectives, and these particular encounters
will also be affected by other current encounters in which the tradition in question
is being reshaped.
From the perspective of Christian faith, the ‘environment’ will be understood
as ‘creation’, that is, as originating in the creative act of the triune God who is the
subject and object of the fundamental biblical and credal narrative. Equally, however,
a Christian understanding of ‘creation’ will now be affected by the current concept
of ‘environment’, with its connotations of fragility, finitude, interdependence and
inherent worth. Neither concept will remain unaffected by the other. In particular,
the concept of ‘environment’ provokes some searching questions about the way in
which Christian tradition has tended to understand ‘creation’. These are theological
questions, internal to Christian faith, and yet they are occasioned and incited by
developments from outside its own immediate sphere.
What are these questions for and within Christian faith, provoked by contem-
porary environmental concern? In general, they have to do with the relationship of
the human to the nonhuman world. What is meant by human ‘dominion’ over the
animals, and is it subject to ethical constraints? Does the nonhuman world have any
inherent value, or is its value measured exclusively by its usefulness for humans? Is
biblical ‘anthropocentrism’ ethically problematic? Is there biblical warrant for an
ethic of ‘reverence for life’ and for the practices that might follow from it? How do
such issues fit into the wider field of Christian faith and practice? If there are difficul-
ties in accommodating them, why is this the case, and can or should anything be done
about it? To repeat, these are questions internal to Christian faith yet provoked from
the outside, by the wider public debate about the environment. Of course, Christian
faith may be directly questioned from the outside about its attitude to the environ-
ment. Yet there are no neutral criteria of ecological rectitude by means of which the
Bible or ‘Christianity’ could be weighed in the balance and found wanting. Nor are
there objective criteria to hand that would enable us to identify environmentally
 In the Beginning 129

friendly fragments within the biblical witness, to be presented as ‘positive resources’

for anyone who cares to use them. Where texts are uprooted from the fragile biblical
ecology and transplanted into some alien value system, they are subjected to exploita-
tion and abuse. In the long run, internally shaped questions and answers will be of
greater public significance than superficial interrogations of the Bible on the basis of
external criteria that tolerate no counter-questioning or dissent.
And so we approach at last the specific topic of this essay. Public debate about the
environment has indirectly served to expose a seriously deficient construal of Christian
faith and the biblical witness. We may identify this construal as the fall/redemption
model. In this model creation is affirmed, but not as an integral part of the main
story. Creation is merely the stage on which the real drama of fall and redemption
is played out. Humans are indeed created, but far more important is the fact that
they are fallen, and more important still is the fact that though fallen they are also
redeemed. Within this model, Christian self-understanding moves to and fro between
the poles of sin and salvation, guilt and grace, law and gospel. Sin, guilt and the law
represent a standing before God that is superseded by gospel, grace and salvation,
and yet in such a way that the supervenient present preserves the recollection of the
past. Within this model, I am to understand myself as a redeemed sinner – redeemed,
indeed, but a sinner nevertheless. The entire biblical narrative depicts the transition
from the one state to the other, and the machinery that makes it possible. This is not
just ‘anthropocentrism’. Anthropocentrism is inescapable for humans: since we are
neither angels nor earthworms, our primary perspective on the world is a human
one, it is bounded and shaped by the determinants of specifically human existence.
Anthropocentrism is compatible with broad horizons. The fall/redemption model is
not so much anthropocentric as anthropomonistic. The drama of sin and salvation is
all-consuming. The created order provides the drama’s theatre, staging and scenery,
but it is the problematics of the divine–human relationship that provide the exclusive
focus of attention. It is as though the Bible started at Genesis 3. In consequence
of its theological marginalization, creation is secularized. It is assumed that those
preoccupied with it absent themselves from the scene of the real, eternally significant
action. Their gaze is directed outward, when it should be directed upward and inward.
This fall/redemption model is, of course, an ideal type that has never actually
existed in pure, unqualified form. Yet it does serve to identify an anthropomonistic
tendency within Christian life and spirituality (and not just in its protestant forms).
The anthropomonistic tendency is flawed and problematic quite apart from cur-
rent environmental concerns. Yet the current concerns expose its limitations with
particular clarity. They relate to a realm – that of the ‘natural order’ – in which the
Christian community appears to have no stake. Where Christians seek to challenge
this perception, it proves surprisingly difficult to show that human responsibility to
the environment is integral to their own core concerns. For anthropomonism, the
only environment that counts is that of the divine–human relationship, understood
in terms of sin and salvation. Humans share a creaturely status with the rest of crea-
tion, but far more important is what makes them unique. With the minor exception
130 Ecological Hermeneutics

of some fallen angels, humans alone are capable of sinning, and indeed have always
already realized that capacity. And humans alone are the objects of redemption.
For anthropomonism, humans are unique and uniquely solitary, cut off from the
community of creation.
In response to this flawed rendering of the biblical story, it is not enough merely
to point to the fact that Genesis 3 is preceded by Genesis 1–2, and that the three
chapters are closely connected. What is at issue is the coherence and logic of the core
Christian narrative, which finds its goal and centre in the composite gospel account
of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Where the gospel story is set against the
background of ‘the fall’, the result is not lacking in coherence. What must be shown is
that the gospel story is grounded in creation as well as fall, that the Genesis creation
narrative is a plausible and necessary beginning for a story that reaches its culmina-
tion in Jesus. Creation is not just the stage on which the real drama is enacted, but
is itself the opening act of the drama. What Jesus does is oriented towards humans
not just in their unique fallenness but also in the creatureliness they share with the
rest of the natural or created order.
Such a telling of the Christian and biblical story is not an innovation. On the
contrary, it is as old as the Christian Bible itself, and is integral to the construction
of a scriptural collection that includes four gospels and the Book of Genesis. Irenaeus
of Lyons is one of the chief architects of the Christian canon, and his account of the
place of creation within the story it tells remains highly instructive.

Gospels and Creation: A Johannine Key

As its traditional title indicates, Irenaeus’s main work is directed Against All Heresies
(AH). The heretics in question include Marcionites, Ebionites, Encratites and
Gnostics (a term that Irenaeus can associate with a quite specific group, although his
usage is not consistent).1 But the ‘heresy’ that he knows best, and to which he keeps
returning, is the one he ascribes to followers of Valentinus. Book 1 of his work opens
with a detailed account of a Valentinian system, and much of the second and third
books too are devoted to responding to its characteristic claims. Irenaeus’s strategy
is not a purely negative one. He refutes not only by exposing internal implausibili-
ties and inconsistencies, but above all by constructing an alternative account of the
matter in question. It is the encounter with Valentinian theology that generates his
own constructive theological thinking.2
At the heart of Irenaeus’s project is the need to demonstrate that the God revealed
in Jesus is the God who created heaven and earth. This identification was denied

1 AH 1.29.1; 2.31.1; 4.6.4; 4.33.3; 4.35.1. On this see Logan 2006: 8–56.
2 On the relationship of this system to its predecessors, see Logan 1996, which focuses espe-
cially on the Apocryphon of John and AH 1.29-30. The recently published Gospel of Judas
may also belong to the oldest accessible stratum of these ‘Christian demiurgical traditions’.
 In the Beginning 131

by Valentinian theology, which announced the advent in Jesus of a previously

unknown God above the creator deity of Genesis and Jewish scripture. This creator
or demiurge previously believed himself to be the one true God, and repeatedly and
mistakenly declared himself to be such in scripture (AH 1.5.3). But now, through
Jesus, he knows better – and so do we. In himself, Jesus is already no ordinary
human being but the special workmanship of the creator, miraculously born and
deriving nothing from his mother. At his baptism, however, there descended upon
him a being from the ‘Pleroma’, the truly divine sphere above the creator: Christ,
or the Saviour, who embodies that many-sided divine sphere in its entirety, and
who discloses it to us through his temporary union with Jesus. Thus, in Jesus, his
life and his teaching, we encounter the God above the god of this world – not on
account of Jesus himself but on account of the Christ or Saviour who spoke and
acted through him. At the crucifixion, the heavenly Saviour left Jesus in order to
return to the world above – an event which is to be distinguished from Jesus’ own
subsequent exaltation to the demiurge’s right hand (AH 1.6.1; 1.7.2; 3.16.1). What
the Saviour reveals is not just the superior God or the heavenly world per se, but
also and above all our own stake in it. To our amazement, we discover from him
that we ourselves have a transcendent origin and destiny. We (the enlightened elite,
as opposed to the common Christian majority) are not of this world or its creator
deity. He is responsible for our souls and our bodies, but not for the true spiritual
self that originated in a complex train of events in the world above. Essentially, and
to cut a long story short, our spiritual selves derive from the pre-mundane encounter
between the Saviour and one ‘Achamoth’ (or ‘Sophia’), our mother, the divine victim
of a fall within the world of divinity itself.3 (She is also incidentally the mother of
the inferior creator-deity of Genesis, although his ontological status is inferior to
ours [AH 1.5.1].) Unbeknownst to the creator, his mother secreted a spiritual seed
within the animate, fleshly human creatures that he made in his own image and
likeness. We are that seed, temporarily fallen into the world of the demiurge but
destined to return to the Pleroma: that is the good news that the Saviour reveals
through Jesus.4
Irenaeus’s refutation of this theology was historically so successful that it is hard
for most later Christians to recognize it as a possible though misguided construal of

3 Achamoth-Sophia (AH 1.4.1-5) derives from the Sophia who belongs to the Pleroma but
who temporarily fell from it (1.2.1-4).
4 AH 1.5.6; 1.7.1. Here and elsewhere in this paper, my account of Valentinian theology
restricts itself to evidence drawn from Irenaeus himself. As Dennis Minns notes, ‘It should
not be too readily supposed that [Irenaeus] resorts to cheap misrepresentations of his
opponents’ views in order to score rhetorical victories’ (1994: 26–27). One reason for
trusting Irenaeus’s account is that he considered ‘the accurate reporting of the views of his
opponents . . . to be one of his most effective weapons against them’ (26). Minns also notes,
however, that Irenaeus is ‘incapable of achieving any kind of imaginative, sympathetic insight
into a world-view in which the phenomenal world is negatively assessed. He takes it as a
given that the created world, in all its rich diversity, is a place of wonder and delight . . .’
(25). Is that a limitation, or a theological virtue?
132 Ecological Hermeneutics

Christian faith. It hardly looks Christian at all. Yet Christian is what it intends to
be. Beneath the surface of the extravagant mythology lies an early version of what
we are calling the fall/redemption model of Christian faith. Admittedly, this version
of the model is in many respects quite different from the more familiar later ones.
Yet analogies may be traced even in the differences. Through the lapse of a heavenly
being or of our earthly parents, we are fallen beings: in spite of the difference,
Valentinian and orthodox Christianities agree on that. In both cases, our fallenness
is a more fundamental truth about ourselves than our createdness. In both cases,
we therefore have little stake in the created order, for our gaze must be directed
not outward but upward and inward in view of our redemption through Jesus. In
both cases, redemption is seen as the supreme work of deity, and is only tenuously
linked to our creatureliness. In both cases, our origin and destiny lie beyond the
bounds of this world in the outworking of the divine predestination; this world
is merely the stage on which the drama of our redemption is enacted. To draw
attention to these parallels is in no way to minimize the stark differences between
early and later versions of the fall/redemption model. In their tendency to detach
redemption from creation, however, they are on common ground. For that reason,
Irenaeus’s response to the Valentinian version of the model is of more than merely
historical interest.
At the beginning of book 3 of his work, Irenaeus tells how the single gospel pro-
claimed by the apostles has taken fourfold written form. Initially, he provides a brief
introductory note about the circumstances in which he believes each gospel to have
been written. Matthew wrote for Jews, Mark recorded Peter’s preaching in Rome
after his death, Luke recorded Paul’s preaching and finally John wrote his gospel
in Ephesus (AH 3.1.1). Later, Irenaeus will seek to justify the church’s selection of
precisely four gospels (no more and no fewer), by way of an analogy with the four
living creatures that surround the throne of God – one with the face of a lion, the
second with the face of a calf, the third with the face of a man, the fourth with the
face of an eagle (Rev. 4.7).5 Just as in heaven there are four and only four creatures
around the throne of God, offering God their differentiated yet harmonious worship,
so on earth there are four and only four gospels in the church, differentiated yet at
one in their teaching. Additional gospels are ruled out on principle – Irenaeus knows
of a Valentinian Gospel of Truth and of a Gospel of Judas (AH 3.11.9; 1.31.1).
Also ruled out at the other extreme is Marcion’s use of just one gospel, Luke, or
rather, that part of it that he did not excise (AH 3.11.7). Yet Irenaeus’s problems are
not solved merely by selecting the right texts. Everything depends on how they are
interpreted. According to Irenaeus, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ‘have all declared
to us that there is one God, Creator of heaven and earth, announced by the law and
the prophets, and one Christ, the Son of God’ (AH 3.1.2). These gospels speak of
the Creator and his Christ, of the one God and the Son of God. But it is one thing

5 AH 3.11.8. For theological analysis of this symbolism, see Watson 2006: 102–109.
 In the Beginning 133

for Irenaeus to assert this, another to demonstrate it. Valentinians started from the
same texts yet reached opposite conclusions: for them, the Christ is the being who
descended from the Pleroma on the occasion of Jesus’ baptism, revealing through
him the unknown Father, and thereby exposing the creator of heaven and earth as
an ignorant and subdivine being, the product of a cosmic accident.
Within the Valentinian hermeneutic, the Father is not the Creator. The gospels
have little or nothing to say of creation. Even in Jn 1.3 (‘All things came into being
through him . . .’), the reference is not to Jesus as creator of the world but to the
Logos as the originator of the lower levels of the Pleroma (AH 3.1.2). If Jesus had
wished to affirm the Creator, the God of the Jews, he would not have spoken of his
Father as unknown: ‘No-one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom
the Son chooses to reveal him’ (Mt. 11.27; AH 3.1.2). Where on the other hand Jesus
speaks of heaven as the throne of God, of earth as his footstool, and of Jerusalem as
the city of the Great King (Mt. 5.35), he is clearly speaking of a well-known deity
thoroughly at home in the cosmos and worshipped in Jerusalem: and this is not the
Father but the Demiurge (AH 4.2.5-4.1). Similarly, we are told that ‘no-one has ever
seen God’, but that ‘the only Son [or God], who is in the bosom of the Father, has
made him known’ (Jn 1.18; AH 4.20.6, 11). In Jewish scripture, however, a number
of people do see ‘God’: Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel and others. This vis-
ible deity is no doubt the creator, but he cannot be the invisible Father made known in
Jesus (AH 4.20.5). It is true that the gospels as they stand imply connections between
Jesus and the creator-God of the Jews, for example in their citations of prophetic
texts. But that is to be expected, for Jesus himself was the creature of the Demiurge.
In addition, the evangelists were Jews and may either have shared Jewish prejudices
themselves or at least accommodated their message to the prejudices of their audience
(AH 3.1.1; 3.2.2; 3.5.1-2; 3.12.6). In modern parlance, Jewish features of the texts
are ‘culturally conditioned’ or ‘apologetically motivated’. The truly spiritual reader of
the gospels is not deceived by their superficial Jewish features, but penetrates behind
them to their secret disclosures of the heavenly Christ.
Given this hermeneutic, it will not be possible to demonstrate that the four gospels
all attest one God, Creator of heaven and earth, perhaps by amassing unambiguous
proof-texts. The Valentinian hermeneutic cannot be refuted merely by appealing to
a ‘literal sense’ in opposition to the arbitrariness of ‘allegorical interpretation’, for
it has already taken that literal sense into account. It can only be refuted by way
of an alternative hermeneutic that offers a more persuasive reading of the texts as
a whole. The Irenaean reading will be no less of an interpretative construct than
the Valentinian one; the two readings will be incommensurable, and not subject to
assessment by neutral exegetical criteria.
Irenaeus finds the key he needs in the Johannine motif of the Word. Rather than
starting at the beginning of the Johannine prologue, with an anonymous Logos
whose identification with Jesus is initially far from obvious, Irenaeus works back-
wards from the declaration that ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . .’
(Jn 1.14), claiming that none of the heretics quite knows what to do with this text.
134 Ecological Hermeneutics

The Logos-become-flesh can only be Jesus. Jesus is the Logos, and the Logos is Jesus:
this simple equation replaces the complex differentiations between Jesus, the heavenly
Christ or Saviour, and the Logos (AH 1.9.2-3; 3.11.3). The identification is still
clearer in view of the preceding verses as Irenaeus reads them. There we read of the
coming into the world of ‘the true Light’, who enabled those who received him ‘to
become children of God’ (1.12), and ‘who was born not of blood nor of the will of
the flesh nor of the will of man but of God’ (1.13). The variant reading that Irenaeus
here follows – ‘who was born’ rather than ‘who were born’ – is crucially important,
referring as it does to the miraculous conception of Jesus himself.6 Where verse 13 is
read as a singular reference to the Light rather than a plural reference to the children
of God, it creates the strongest possible connection between Johannine incarnational
christology and the Lukan and Matthean virginal conception tradition. The Word is
the fleshly Jesus who derived his enfleshed existence from Mary his mother, and so the
opening of the fourth gospel harmonizes perfectly with the openings of the first and
the third. Only the second gospel opens with Jesus’ baptism, and a christology that
focuses on this event may now find itself at a disadvantage.7 A Johannine incarnation
fused with a Lukan annunciation provides a more substantial basis for christology
than the later descent of the Spirit – although admittedly that event is important
enough to be attested in all four gospels.
We continue to follow Irenaeus’s backward reading of Jn 1.1-14, which for
him constitutes the ‘Johannine prologue’. (Verses 15-18 represent ‘the testimony
of John’, and thus a transition to the passage that follows [Jn 1.19-34].8) Reading
back from verses 12-13 to verse 11, we learn that ‘he came to his own home’ and
that ‘his own people received him not’ – referring to Jesus’ rejection by his own
people, culminating in his crucifixion. And we learn that he, the true Light, ‘was in
the world, and the world was made by him . . .’ (v. 10). Having achieved his crucial
lateral connection between the fourth gospel and the first and third, Irenaeus can
now link the fourfold gospel and its protagonist back to Genesis (AH 3.11.2). The
link to Genesis is confirmed by the assertion that in the Word ‘all things were made,
and without him was nothing made’ (v. 3) and by the reference to the Word’s divine
being ‘in the beginning’ (v. 1; AH 3.8.3; 3.11.1, 8). In Irenaeus’s reflection on this
Johannine material, a scriptural canon is taking shape – not just a list of included
writings, but a theological structure. We recall that his purpose is to show that, for
all four evangelists, ‘there is one God, Creator of heaven and earth, announced by the
law and the prophets, and one Christ, the Son of God’ (AH 3.1.2). The gospels are
connected in many and various ways to the law and the prophets, and Irenaeus will

6 AH 3.16.2; 3.19.2; 5.1.3. On this reading see Metzger 1975: 196–97. The fact that this
reading may not have been ‘original’ does not affect the argument here.
7 The significance of Mark for a (heretical) christology oriented towards Jesus’ baptism is
noted in AH 3.11.7.
8 AH 3.10.2. Here and in AH 3.11.4, Irenaeus seeks to connect the Johannine ‘testimony of
John’ with Luke 1.
 In the Beginning 135

explore these in his fourth book, directed especially against Marcion.9 Yet explicit
references to the God revealed in Jesus as the Creator of heaven and earth are scarce.
Irenaeus cannot make his case by amassing unambiguous texts. Instead, he creates a
theological hermeneutic out of the Johannine prologue. The hermeneutic still needs to
be tested. If, for example, Genesis knows nothing of a creation of all things through
the Logos, then the Valentinian claim that the Johannine text actually refers to the
origins of the Pleroma will remain unrefuted. Yet Irenaeus has at least established a
foothold in the biblical texts, a base for further theological and exegetical operations.
He has begun to show that an impressive Platonizing myth of fall and redemption
may not do justice to the apostolic and prophetic writings.

Re-enacting Genesis

Does Genesis support Irenaeus’s claims? If we reread its opening chapters in the light
of the Johannine prologue, is it plausible that the divine agency at work in the crea-
tion of heaven and earth is the same as the divine agency at work in the incarnation
of the Word? Irenaeus’s affirmative answer focuses primarily on the Genesis narrative
insofar as it relates to humans. His rendering of the biblical narrative of creation
and incarnation remains ‘anthropocentric’. Yet the crucial question is how the being
of anthröpos is understood, and what kind of ‘centre’ this being constitutes. By
emphasizing creatureliness as fundamental rather than accidental, Irenaeus excludes
the claim that human existence is a life in exile from one’s true home, and restores
the human being to the community of heaven and earth. This restoration takes place
only in the context of the creation/incarnation sequence, which Irenaeus develops by
way of a series of parallels between the two.
At the very moment when the creation of humans is first announced, God appears
to become plural: ‘Let us create man after our image, after our likeness’ (Gen. 1.26
LXX). Whom does God address here? Is God a community? Elsewhere in scripture,
we read of God’s hands: ‘The sea is his, for he made it, for his hands formed the
dry land’ (Ps. 95.5). God does not possess physical hands, however. According
to Irenaeus, God’s ‘hands’ are the Son or Word and the Holy Spirit (the Wisdom
present with God in creation, according to Prov. 8.22-31; AH 4, pref. 4; 4.20.1-3;
5.1.3). ‘Let us create . . .’ addresses the Son and the Spirit, the ‘hands’ through whom
creation is accomplished. Furthermore, it is said that humans are to be created on
the basis of a divine archetype, ‘according to our image’. According to the apostle
Paul, Jesus Christ is ‘the image of the invisible God’ (Col. 1.15; cf. 2 Cor. 4.4). If
he is humanity’s archetype, he is so by virtue of his incarnate life, already envisaged
at the dawn of creation. Creation in the image of God is creation with a view to
Jesus Christ (AH 5.1.3; 5.2.1). Elsewhere Paul tells us that humanity redeemed and

9 AH 4.6.2; 4.8.1; 4.13.1; 4.33.2; 4.34.1.

136 Ecological Hermeneutics

sanctified in Christ is ‘being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its

creator’ (Col. 3.10; AH 5.12.4). Creation in the image of God refers us not only to
the origin of human being but also to its goal, which is to be ‘conformed to the image
of [God’s] Son’ (Rom. 8.29).10 In view of these intertextual links, it is inconceivable
that the Creator is anyone other than the Father of Jesus. Irenaeus’s christological
interpretation of the Genesis image motif ensures that the humanity sanctified in
Christ remains rooted in the created order.11
Genesis narrates the creation of humans not once but twice, and Irenaeus again
has a Pauline template to hand as he turns from the first account to the second
(Gen. 2.7). According to Paul, Adam was ‘a type of the Coming One’ (Rom. 5.14),
that is, Christ (AH 3.22.3). As a result, Paul can construct a series of analogies
between Adam and Christ – analogies which typically also involve contrasts. ‘As in
Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1 Cor. 15.22). While life is
the opposite of death, the as/so format ensures a focus not only on the contrast but
also on the analogy, which consists in the fact that the individual figures of Adam and
Christ both determine universal destiny. For Irenaeus’s purposes, this Pauline tem-
plate is the perfect vehicle for his argument about the single divine agency operative
in both creation and incarnation. It enables him to develop his well-known account of
‘recapitulation’ – a term that can refer simply to a summing-up or gathering-together,
but that is most characteristically used to assert the re-enactment in Christ of what
initially occurred in Adam.12
The second Genesis account tells how ‘the Lord God formed man of dust from
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a liv-
ing being’ (Gen. 2.7). The first part of this statement speaks of the origin of human
physicality, and Irenaeus argues that this was re-enacted in the incarnation. In the
following citation, bold print highlights the as/so format, italics identify scriptural
material from Romans or Genesis, and underlining indicates the points of analogy.
While Irenaeus’s initial venture into this analogy keeps close to Pauline language, the
second is more independent:

. . . And the original formation was re-enacted in him [Christ]. For as by one man’s disobedi-
ence sin gained entrance, and through sin death held sway, so also by the obedience of one
man, righteousness being established, life comes to fruition in those persons who in times
past were dead. And as the first-formed man Adam had his existence from uncultivated and
still virgin soil (for God had not yet sent rain, and there was no man working the ground),
and was formed by the hand of God (. . . And the Lord took dust from the earth and formed

10 AH 5.6.1. In Irenaeus’s anthropology, ‘Man himself is still in the making. It is not his
unmasking that is wanted, but his finishing; not the liberation of the spirit from the body
sought by the gnostics and by pagans generally, but the life of communion vouchsafed to us
in Christ’ (Farrow 1999: 51).
11 For the christological interpretation of the ‘image of God’ motif, see Watson 1997:
277–304.
12 On ‘recapitulation’ and its hermeneutical significance, see Holsinger-Friesen 2009.
 In the Beginning 137

man), so, re-enacting Adam in himself and deriving from Mary who was still virgin, the Word
himself fittingly submitted to an origin that re-enacted Adam’s.13

Genesis 2 is linked to Luke 1, itself interpreted in the light of Johannine incarnational

christology. The Word took flesh within the womb of Mary the Virgin, and the
theme of virginity is unexpectedly anticipated in the ‘still virgin soil’ of Genesis. If
the attribution of virginity to soil seems far-fetched, we should recall that the fruitful
soil is an obvious metaphor for the womb and that the Genesis text explicitly draws
our attention to the absence of the male (‘there was no man . . .’) and to the lack of a
fertilizing element (‘rain’). The incarnation of the second Adam re-enacts the creation
of the first, for the same divine agency is at work in both cases.14
Gen. 2.7 speaks not only of human materiality but also of the original bestowal
of life. Having formed a human figure out of dust, the Lord God ‘breathed into his
face the breath of life, and the man became a living being’. This too is re-enacted in
the incarnation:

As at the beginning of our formation in Adam, the breath of life which came from God, united
to what had been formed, brought the man to life and manifested him as a rational being; so
at the end, the Word of the Father and the Spirit of God, united with the original substance
of Adam’s formation, made man living and perfect, receptive of the perfect Father; in order
that as in the natural man we all were dead, so in the spiritual man we may all be made
alive.15

The incarnation corresponds to the first creation, as the end to the beginning. The
original breath of God anticipates the soteriological role of the Spirit of God in the
incarnation of the Word (cf. Lk. 1.35; Mt. 1.18, 20). The Word becomes flesh, but
it is through the presence of the Spirit who was to be poured out on all flesh that
this event has its fundamental soteriological significance. In the incarnation of the
Word the original bestowal of life is re-enacted, and the same agency must therefore
underlie both events.
To underline the point, Irenaeus immediately reverts from Genesis 2 to Genesis 1:

For at no time did Adam escape the hands of God, to whom the Father said, Let us make
man in our image and likeness. Therefore at the end, not by the will of the flesh, nor by the
will of man, but by the good pleasure of the Father, his hands perfected a living man, so that
Adam might be created according to the image and likeness of God.16

13 AH 3.21.9-10. Scriptural allusions are to Rom. 5.19a, 12, 19b; 1 Cor. 15.45; Gen. 2.5, 7.
14 In this context, Irenaeus is refuting the Ebionite denial of the incarnation and virgin
conception.
15 AH 5.1.3. Pauline allusions here are to 1 Cor. 15.22, 46.
16 AH 5.1.3. The Johannine allusion is to Jn 1.13, again in its singular form.
138 Ecological Hermeneutics

Here Gen. 1.26 becomes a prophecy of the incarnation, and conversely the incarna-
tion is shown to be grounded in the original creation of Adam, which it re-enacts.17
Elsewhere further analogies are drawn between Genesis 1–3 and the gospel narra-
tive. Where they derive from Genesis 3, the re-enactment will also contain an element
of reversal, as in the case of Mary’s obedience in relation to Eve’s disobedience (AH
3.22.4; 5.19.1), or Jesus’ victory over Satan in relation to Adam’s defeat (AH 5.21.1-2).
Just as in Paul, however, the emphasis is still on the formal analogy created by the
as/so format. As the gospels point us back to Genesis (by way of the Johannine
prologue), so Genesis points us forward to the gospels.18 This intertextual pattern is
absolutely fundamental to Christian canonical scripture, which in Irenaeus’s work is
still under construction. The effect is to establish creation and human creatureliness
as the foundation of the scriptural and credal narrative.

Conclusion

To be human is to be a creature and a member of the community of creation. It

is also to be made in the image of God, that is, to participate in the fulfilment of
human creatureliness in Jesus, the incarnate Word. Or so we are taught by Irenaeus’s
theological hermeneutics. The interpretative moves that make up this hermeneutics
are in many cases astonishingly creative and imaginative; they do not compel assent,
however. While the Valentinian version of the fall/redemption model has had its day,
‘orthodox’ versions of this model still flourish – as do construals of Christian faith
that appear to have learned little from Genesis. Yet it may be timely to consider again
the Irenaean theology, with its insistence that creation represents the beginning, end
and overarching context of the Christian and scriptural account of the world. No
theology of the classical Christian past will directly help us to address the environ-
mental problems of the present. Yet such a theology might help to shape an ethos
within which one learnt to take the environment seriously, as creation – and to do
so without ceasing to be Christian.

17 As Farrow notes, however, Irenaeus’s concept of recapitulation ‘does something more than
reserve for Jesus a pride of place at the apex of salvation history . . . Its first task is to signify
that no realm whatever lies beyond the pale of his domain, that there are no autonomous
times or spheres over which he is not the Lord’ (1999: 54). At this point Irenaeus coincides
with Barth.
18 This to-and-fro movement is characteristic of Irenaeus’s theological style. As von Balthasar
notes, for Irenaeus ‘a line of thought is equally true whether it is followed from below to
above or from above to below, from front to back or from back to front’ (1984: 43). ‘The
most characteristic feature of this particular theologian’ is ‘his ability . . . to see things in
their relation to one another, in a compact concentrated whole’ (50).
 In the Beginning 139

References

Balthasar, H. Urs von, 1984 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume II, Studies in
Theological Style: Clerical Styles (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Farrow, D. 1999 Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for
Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Holsinger-Friesen, T. 2009 ‘Irenaeus and Genesis: A Study of Competition in Early Christian
Hermeneutics’ (JTISup 1; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns).
Logan, A.H.B. 1996 Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy: A Study in the History of Gnosticism
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Logan, A.H.B. 2006 The Gnostics: Identifying an Early Christian Cult (London: T&T Clark).
Metzger, B.M. 1975 A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London & New York:
United Bible Societies).
Minns, D. 1994 Irenaeus (London: Geoffrey Chapman).
Watson, F. 1997 Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Watson, F. 2006 ‘Are There Still Four Gospels?’, in A.K.M. Adam, S.E. Fowl, K.J. Vanhoozer and
F. Watson, Reading Scripture With the Church: Toward a Hermeneutic for Theological
Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker): 95–116.
 Chapter 10

Power and Dominion: Patristic

Interpretations of Genesis 1

Morwenna Ludlow

In current environmental debates, Christian biblical interpretation has often been

held partly responsible for modern Western attitudes to the natural world. In par-
ticular, attention has fallen on readings of Gen. 1.26 in which God is described as
giving humans ‘dominion’ over other creatures. Setting the modern theological and
ecological debate to one side, this paper will give an historical analysis of some church
fathers’ interpretations of the first chapter of Genesis. The first part – ‘power’ – will
be a very brief survey of readings of Gen. 1.1-2 with the aim of reviewing what kind
of interpretation the fathers are attempting (literal, figurative, allegorical?) and in
what kind of contexts (homilies for a mixed audience, more specialized philosophical
treatises?). The paper’s second part – ‘dominion’ – will focus on Gen. 1.26, analys-
ing the fathers’ understanding of the relationship of humans to other animals, in
the light both of the imago dei theme and of late antique concepts of human and
animal nature. Throughout, I will focus my comments on the writings of Origen,
Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine and I will conclude by offering some brief
suggestions as to the significance of their exegesis of Genesis in the context of current
environmental debates.

I. Power

In the beginning (en archë) when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a
formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God (pneuma
theou) swept over the face of the water (Gen. 1.1-2).

What is the beginning of all things except our Lord and ‘Saviour of all’ (1 Tim. 4.10) Jesus
Christ ‘the first born of every creature’ (Col. 1.15)? In this beginning, therefore, that is, in his
Word, ‘God made heaven and earth’ as the evangelist John also says in the beginning of his
Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word . . .’ Scripture is not speaking here of any temporal
beginning, but it says that the heaven and earth and all things which were made, were made
‘in the beginning’, that is, in the Saviour (Origen Homilies on Genesis [Hom. Gen.] I).
 Power and Dominion 141

This extract apparently gives a classic ‘allegorical’ interpretation of Gen. 1.1-2.

However, two points should make one pause. First, although his Homilies do contain
much explicitly allegorical interpretation, Origen does not announce the above read-
ing as such. Secondly, it is not his only reading of the verses: his (earlier) Commentary
on John’s Gospel not only rejected the Christological sense of archë for Gen. 1.1, but
offered seven different possible meanings of the word! In fact, Origen rules several
of these out – his main concern in the Commentary is to combat misreadings of
Genesis which would undermine the unique glory and beauty of God’s creative act.
Hence Origen denies the possibility of any substance co-existing with God, whether
immaterial or material. The work is detailed, exploratory, very aware of philosophi-
cal and religious alternatives to the views it proposes. By contrast, Origen’s Homilies
on Genesis were first preached in a liturgical context and were probably intended
for a more general audience. Their concern is the clear delivery of a theological
message, rather than delving into philosophical technicalities; the emphasis is often
on salvation and ethics. This, rather than a change of mind, probably explains the
differences in approach to the word archë.
Origen’s exegesis in these works (and his Commentary on Genesis, unfortunately
now lost) set the agenda for later readings, but by the fourth century his use of alle-
gory had already met with criticism. Thus Basil’s writings on Genesis – his Homilies
on the Hexameron (Hex.) (the six days of creation) and two sermons On the Origin
of Humanity I & II (De crig.) – proclaim themselves to be uninterested in it (see
below). In these works Basil also launches some scathing attacks on pagan philoso-
phy: he claims to be opposing the divisive foolishness of pagan philosophers with the
plain unified truth of Scripture (Courtonne 1934: 143–44, Basil Hex. I.2). However,
the matter is not that simple. First, Basil makes extensive use of pagan sources:
he is unlikely to have been reliant merely on text-book compilations (Courtonne
1934: 157–58; Henke 2000: 62–97). Secondly, although Basil has been criticized
for a sketchy treatment of and weak arguments against non-Christian cosmological
theories, he does at least engage directly with them (Courtonne 1934: 143–61). It
is best to treat Basil’s Homilies as a work intended for a mixed audience, some of
whom will respond to the colourful examples, others to the arguments and to the
echoes of famous texts. They do not present one coherent argument, but the sermon
genre explains their structure (like a ‘harlequin’s tunic’ [Courtonne 1934: 160]),
the tendency to draw morals from the biblical text and the focus on key theological
ideas, like the fundamentals of the theology of creation, to which we will now turn.
Basil examines several possible meanings for Gen. 1.1, but his main theological
point is clear: the cosmos was caused by God’s good intention; there is nothing
co-existent with God, whether an eternal evil principle, or eternally existing unformed
matter (I.7). He believes the message of Genesis 1 is, in essence, simple and he claims
to be avoiding too much technical language for fear that it would not serve ‘the
edification of the church’ (I.8). Although Basil eschews a Christological reading of ‘in
the beginning’, he is willing to accept that Gen. 1.2 refers to the Holy Spirit (II.6; the
LXX Greek pneuma theou could naturally be translated ‘God’s spirit’). However, in
142 Ecological Hermeneutics

the light of his general attitude to allegory in the Homilies and in the way he supports
his argument (with reference to a Syriac version of the text), he seems not to think
that this is an ‘allegorical’ interpretation.
Gregory of Nyssa had a complex relationship with his brother Basil. He says that
his work On the Hexameron (In Hex.) depends on what Basil taught – even to the
extent of rejecting allegorical interpretation. However, Gregory’s very method implies
that his work completes what Basil left undone (64b-c; 68c-b; 121d).1 Furthermore,
it is even more debatable in Gregory’s case than in Basil’s whether allegory has been
completely left behind. Much more than Basil’s, Gregory’s work is focused on a
‘systematic vision of the world’ (Alexandre 1976: 159): he assumes that the ‘ordered
linkage’ (akolouthia) of Moses’ texts reflects such a structure in the world, and he
aims to reflects that structure in the order of his own text (68d). Although using some
of Basil’s ideas, Gregory analyses in more detail the exact nature of God’s creative
action. Despite these differences, however, Gregory too desires to combat the sort of
ideas that would limit divine power and thus affirms that ‘in the beginning’ means
that everything came to be in a ‘global’ and ‘instantaneous’ creative act (Alexandre
1976). Gregory avoids a Christological interpretation of verse 1 and is much more
circumspect than Basil about the spirit in verse 2. (Gregory seems to equate God’s
Spirit with the divine nature [81b].)
How does Augustine’s approach compare? It is well known that Augustine’s
attitude to exegesis developed in the course of his career. For a while he sympathized
with the way in which the Manichees ridiculed the idea of an anthropomorphic God,
which they claimed to find, for example, in Genesis 1 (Confessions [Conf.] III.vii.12).
But the discovery of spiritual exegesis was a turning point: ‘I was delighted to hear
Ambrose . . . saying, as if he were most carefully enunciating a principle of exegesis:
“The letter kills, but the spirit gives life” [2 Cor. 3.6]. Those texts which, when taken
literally, seemed to contain perverse teaching, he would expound spiritually . . .’
(Conf. VI.iv.6). In fact, Augustine grew increasingly anxious about the excessive
use of spiritual interpretation; but he never returned to the extreme literalism of the
Manichees and continued to condemn it vociferously.
In his Commentary on Genesis Against the Manichees (Gen. Man.) Augustine
outlines what he calls a historical meaning, according to which, he asserts, ‘in the
beginning’ means ‘in Christ’. He complains that the Manichaean reading of Gen. 1.1
raises inappropriate questions about time and God, such as ‘what did God do before
he created?’ (Gen. Man. 1. 2.3; cf. Conf. XI.xii.14). Augustine adds, however, that
‘in the beginning’ also means that God created time (Gen. Man. I.2.3). He seems to
assume that the ‘spirit’ in verse 2 is the spirit of God, being concerned to combat a
Manichean reading which saw the spirit as a material substance dwelling in the sea
(Gen. Man. I.5.8-9).
In his Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis (Gen. imp.), Augustine assesses

1 In Hex. numbers in my text refer to divisions in Migne’s PG 44, also used by Lecaudey and
Rousselet.
 Power and Dominion 143

the possibility of plural literal meanings of the text. For example, does ‘in the begin-
ning’ indicate the beginning of time, or of all matter, or the origin of creation ‘in
Christ’? He does not reject the last idea, but seems more keen on a non-Christological
reading (Gen. imp. 3.8). Again, in the completed Commentary on Genesis According
to the Letter Augustine raises a very similar series of questions about Gen. 1.1, but
now he seems to prefer the Christological reading (The Literal Meaning of Genesis
[Gen. litt.] I.1.1). More explicitly than in his earlier writings (or than the other writers
we have examined) he asserts that the pneuma of Gen. 1.2 is the Holy Spirit. Indeed,
in it ‘we recognize the complete indication of the Trinity’ – that is, it ‘completes’ the
allusion made to the Son as ‘beginning’ in Gen. 1.1 (Gen. Man. I.6.12).
There are I think three important conclusions which arise from this very brief
survey of these fathers’ readings of Gen. 1.1-2. First, they are not in agreement as
to the meaning of ‘in the beginning’ and several writers raise the possibility of the
verse having more than one literal meaning. They are, however, unanimous in ruling
out meanings which would undermine the singularity of the power of God’s creative
act (e.g. the existence of uncreated matter out of which God formed the world; the
co-existence with God of time or a spiritual realm). Secondly, while some of the writ-
ers are ambivalent about taking Gen. 1.1-2 to refer to the Son or Spirit, none of them
seems to regard such a reading as an allegorical reading. Indeed, it is Augustine in his
last commentary on Genesis – a work which is a self-proclaimed literal interpretation
– who is the most certain about identifying ‘God’, the ‘beginning’, and the ‘spirit’
with the persons of the Trinity. Thirdly, then, although such a theological reading of
the verse would hardly be described as literal by most modern scholars, one should
at least pay attention to what the fathers say about their own exegesis: whether we
think such readings are literal or not, clearly the fathers regarded them as something
different from what they (or others) did when they read Scripture allegorically.

II. Dominion

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind [anthröpon] in our image [kat’ eikona hëmeteran],
according to our likeness [kath’ homoiösin]; and let them have dominion [archëtösan] over
the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild
animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created
humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created
them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth
and subdue it [plërösate tën gën kai katakurieusate]; and have dominion over [archete] the
fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the
earth’. (Gen. 1.26-28, LXX)

In his Homilies on Genesis, Origen thinks that Gen 1.20-26 refers not only to the
historical creation of creeping and flying things and beasts of the land, but also to
the presence of certain impulses in the human mind (I.11). ‘Creeping things’ signify
144 Ecological Hermeneutics

evil thoughts, flying things good ones. Land animals represent ‘the impulses and
thoughts of our mind which are brought forth from the depth of our heart’, that
is the impulses of ‘humans’ outer nature’ (exterioris hominis). The outer nature is
not the human body; rather, ‘lower’ emotions and thoughts were associated with
bodily functions (such as appetites for food or sex) but were not thought by most
late antique writers to be material in themselves. Origen is clearly referring to Paul’s
distinction between ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ human nature (ho exö hëmön anthröpos, ho
esöthen [anthröpos]: 2 Cor. 4.16), which is a theological distinction, not a contrast
between material and immaterial.
In Hom. Gen. I.11 Origen is quite clear that he is working in parallel with a
historical reading (animals) and a spiritual reading (different kinds of thought and
impulse). When he comes to Gen. 1.27, however, Origen argues that ‘the image of
God’ must be understood ‘spiritually’: he attacks those interpreters who assume it
means that God looked like humans (I.12). Instead, Origen asserts, people are made
in the image of God as to their immaterial nature, not their bodies. Furthermore,
they image God as to the interior aspect of their human nature – that is, the good
inner nature, not the lower impulses, thoughts and emotions of the ‘exterior nature’.
Finally, humans are, strictly speaking, created in or according to the image of God:
Christ himself is the true image of God (I.13). Not only is this idea consistent with
Origen’s teaching elsewhere, but emphasizing that Christ is the true image of God
allows Origen to draw an appropriately homiletic message. Humans were created
not as God’s image (a state which cannot be lost), but merely according to God’s
image. They lost their God-likeness in the Fall, but can regain it in Christ: Origen
bids his congregation to keep their eyes on Christ the image of God, in order to be
renewed in God’s likeness (I.13).
Origen, then, associates conformity with the image of God not just with the
immaterial aspect of human nature, nor just with human rationality, but also
with the evaluative or theological concept of the ‘inner man’, which he associates
especially with the qualities of incorruptibility and immortality (I.13). These were
lost in the Fall, but Christ the true image possesses them fully and will communicate
them to those who love him. One result of interpreting the ‘image of God’ in these
spiritual terms is that Origen appears to interpret humans’ dominion over animals
in a similarly spiritual way – that is, humans’ inner nature is granted dominion over
the passions and thoughts of their outer nature (I.12).
This is an interpretation which Origen himself declares to be ‘spiritual’ and in
the Homilies such a reading is usually associated with the use of allegory. However,
he apparently also assumes that, by virtue of being created ‘in the image’ of God,
humans are superior to literal fish, birds and beasts. Furthermore, he asserts that the
rest of creation was created ‘for humanity’ (I.12). He even seems to hint that one can
take an allegorical interpretation not just of the text of Genesis, but also of the very
structure (the ‘text’) of the natural world: that world is in itself an indication of the
‘world-in-miniature which is human nature’ (minorem mundum id est hominem).
Origen uses this concept to express his belief that humanity ‘sums up’ – and is
 Power and Dominion 145

therefore superior to – the rest of creation. He seems little interested in animals for
their own sakes: the constant allegorical identification of the animals with human
impulses reinforces this impression.
It is precisely this allegory which Basil rejects in his Homilies on the Hexameron:

I know the laws of allegory, though less by myself than from the works of others. There are
those truly, who do not admit the common sense of the Scriptures, for whom water is not
water, but some other nature, who see in a plant, in a fish, what their fancy wishes, who
change the nature of reptiles and of wild beasts to suit their own meanings, like the interpreters
of dreams who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own ends. For me grass is
grass; plant, fish, wild beast, domestic animal, I take all in the literal sense. (IX:1, tr. Jackson,
altered slightly by present author)

However, Basil still shows little interest in animals in themselves: he relates many
stories about animals (some of them scarcely credible!) in order to draw a moral from
them. For instance, from the migrations of various types of fish, Basil concludes:

if beings deprived of reason (ta aloga) are capable of thinking and of providing for their own
preservation . . . what shall we say, who are honoured with reason (logö), instructed by law,
encouraged by the promises, made wise by the Spirit, and are nevertheless less reasonable
(alogöteron) about our own affairs than the fish?’ (VII.5)

Other animals are used as an example of divine providence: Basil notes the sea urchin
which can predict inclement weather: ‘it is the Lord of the sea and of the winds who
has impressed on this little animal a manifest proof of His great wisdom . . . [God]
is present everywhere and gives to each being the means of preservation. If God has
not left the sea urchin outside His providence, is He without care for you?’ Finally,
throughout the Hexameron Basil multiplies his examples of animal and plant life in
order to impress on his audience the beauty, variety and fecundity of creation (see
e.g. VII.1-2).
His Homilies on the Hexameron conclude with only brief comment on the crea-
tion of humans; the theme is picked up by two sermons On the Origin of Humanity
I & II (sometimes mistakenly attributed to Gregory of Nyssa: on Basil’s authorship
see Harrison’s comments in Basil of Caesarea 2005: 14–16). Although Basil denies
that the animals can be read allegorically as the passions of the ‘outer man’, he does
accept Origen’s point that humans image God only as to their invisible nature (De
orig. I.7). But he omits Origen’s notion of Christ as the true image and understands
humans’ inner nature less in terms of qualities (a moral or theological similarity)
and more in terms of their rational capacity (an ontological similarity, resting on
the immaterial, invisible nature of both the human mind and God). The mind, Basil
asserts, is one’s true self (I.7).
Basil connects the rational mind very closely with ‘dominion’: humans patently are
physically weaker than animals, therefore they have dominion in that aspect which
146 Ecological Hermeneutics

distinguishes them from, and according to which they are stronger than animals – the
rational mind (De orig. I.6, 9, 10). Humans should not ‘fill the earth’ by occupying
every space, but ‘by authority [exousia], which God has given us to dominate [kata
to kurieuma] the earth’ (I.14).
Basil argues, however, that humans’ ability to exercise this rational authority prop-
erly is severely undermined if they are not themselves ruled by reason; faintly echoing
Origen’s allegory, Basil chides his audience: ‘Do you truly rule real beasts if those
within you are untamed?’ (De orig. I.19; cf. I.9). A later writer, John Chrysostom,
follows this line of thought through to its logical conclusion by suggesting that in the
Fall humans lost their full authority over other animals. God has permitted the use
of farm animals as a concession, but human fear of wild beasts is designed by God
to prevent excessive human pride (Reuling 2006: 129–30, 142).
For Basil himself, speculation about the effects of the Fall on humans’ relations with
animals was restricted to the idea that it ended vegetarianism: as there was no death
before the Fall, there could have been no carnivores. Meat-eating, however, was pro-
vided by God as a concession to human weakness (just as doctors prescribe delicacies
for recovering invalids). This subtle tension is characteristic of Cappadocian theology:
meat-eating falls short of an ideal state, but as a God-given concession it is not in
itself a bad thing (Basil De orig. II.7; see Harrison’s comments in Basil of Caesarea
2005: 27–28). Ascetics who give up meat are thus not condemning its consumption;
rather, they are pointing prophetically towards the possibility of another way of life.
Throughout this discussion of vegetarianism it is notable that Basil’s concern is not
for the well-being of animals, but rather for human spiritual health. In sum, Basil
connects the imago dei very closely with humans’ dominion over animals. According
to his reading, the second half of verse 26 (‘let them have dominion’) explains the first
(‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’): it is because of the
fact that humans are created in the image of God that they are given dominion; it is
only with respect to the aspect of human nature that images God (the rational mind)
that they have it. This, however, raises a theological problem: if humans still have
rational souls – that is, if they still possess the image of God – how is it that they are
so sinful? This problem is only partially addressed by Chrysostom’s argument that
human dominion over animals is now limited. As we have seen, Origen’s solution
made Christ the true image of God; humans were created merely according to that
image, implicitly explaining how they could have lost their image-likeness. It is possible
that Basil rejects this solution because of the subordinationist/Arian implications of
emphasizing Christ as God’s image. His answer (at least in On the Origin of Humanity)
is to distinguish the divine image from humans’ likeness to God:

By our creation [ktisis] we have the first and by our free choice [prohairesis] we accomplish
the second . . . For I have that which is according to the image in being a rational being,
but I become according to the likeness in becoming Christian’ (II.16). In these sermons, this
allows Basil to stress the importance not only of good behaviour but of Christian baptism: ‘As
you have that which is according to the image through your being rational, you come to be
 Power and Dominion 147

according to the likeness by undertaking kindness [chrëstotes – a pun on the word Christos].
Put on Christ [i.e. in baptism], draw near to him and thus to God . . . the creation story is an
education in human life’. (II.17)

Although the theological reasoning is somewhat different, the theological message

is strikingly similar to Origen’s.
With their homiletic lessons, brief allusions to philosophical theories and enter-
taining references to animal behaviour, Basil’s two sermons on human origins contain
a similar blend of material to his Homilies on the Hexameron. Gregory of Nyssa’s
treatise On the Making of Humanity, like his treatise on the Hexameron, has a
contrasting style to his brother’s work: both of Gregory’s works are more reflective
than Basil’s – more complex, more concerned with a detailed resolution of puzzling
features of the text, more focused on drawing a coherent argument (rather than a
useful moral) from Scripture. Just as Gregory’s treatise on the Hexameron puzzles
over the exact nature of the divine creative act, so On the Making of Humanity
worries at the problem left by Basil’s accounts of human origins: if humanity was
created in/according to the image of God, why is humanity currently so sadly lacking
in God-like qualities (De hom. XVI)?
Gregory believes (as did Basil, in fact) that rationality is inextricably connected
with human free will and thus with sin: if humans habitually sin, it must indicate a
defect in their reason as well as their passions. Gregory disassociates the divine image
from rationality per se – that is, with a faculty which humans have by definition of
being human and which they keep, come what may; rather, he identifies it with certain
qualities which mirror God, but which are liable to be lost: e.g. wisdom, virtue, free
will, purity, kingship, blessedness, beauty (Behr 1999: 225; Ludlow 2000: 54–55).
These qualities are regarded not as immaterial aspects of the soul, but characteristics
of the ways in which humans (should) act as embodied beings. One interesting con-
sequence of this is that Gregory connects the image with human physicality, arguing
not that humans physically resemble God, but that their upright posture and ability
to speak are perfectly fitted to (or facilitate) their kingly role (VIII–IX). Seemingly,
then, the image of God resides not in the human body or soul, but in humanity’s
function or purpose in the world. After the Fall humanity still retains this purpose
even if it fails to achieve it.
For Gregory, humans, as ‘rational animals’, have the function both of summing
up the whole of creation and mediating between non-human creation and its Creator
(see especially Behr 1999). To this end Gregory develops an idea implicit in Basil: that
humanity is both different from and in a continuum with the rest of creation. In both
writers this sense of (dis)continuity is conveyed by reflection on the quality of plant,
animal and human life – particularly on the nature of ‘soul’ (psuchë). These reflections
are informed both by Greek philosophy and by the Septuagint text of Gen. 1.30: ‘eve-
rything that has the breath of life [psuchën zöës – literally ‘soul of life’]’ (cf. Gen. 1.20,
24). Because fish (ichthues) are not mentioned (in the LXX) until 1.26-28, the herpeta
(literally ‘creeping things’, cf. Gen. 1.30 above) created in 1.20-21 are understood by
148 Ecological Hermeneutics

Basil as reptiles etc. Basil notes that herpeta, not fish, are described as having a ‘living
soul’, thus he concludes: fish are guided by bodily motions, while in creeping things
‘the soul (psuchë) enjoys supreme authority [hëgemonian]’ (Hex. VIII.1). He supports
this with evidence that most quadrupeds have memory and keener sense perception.
Furthermore, they ‘express by cries their joy and sadness, recognition of what is
familiar to them, the need of food, regret at being separated from their companions,
and numberless emotions. Aquatic animals, on the contrary, are not only dumb; it is
impossible to tame them, to teach them, to train them for man’s society’ (Hex. VIII.1
– an interestingly anthropocentric definition of animal capabilities!). Crucially, these
abilities do not amount to the possession of reason, according to Basil (Hex. VIII.2);
on the other hand, even fish demonstrate a remarkable ability to take precautions
for their own preservation (as we saw above). Thus Basil describes a continuum of
creatures’ increasing awareness and interaction with their environment.
This idea is made even more explicit in Gregory who uses the common Greek
distinction between the nutritive, the appetitive (or sensitive) and the rational (or
intellectual) soul. The appetitive soul includes the nutritive; the rational includes the
other two, thus: ‘this rational animal, man, is blended of every form of soul; he is
nourished by the vegetative kind of soul, and to the faculty of growth was added that
of sense . . . Then takes place a certain alliance and commixture of the intellectual
essence with the subtle and enlightened element of the sensitive nature: so that man
consists of these three’ (De hom. opif. VIII.5, citing 1 Thess. 5.23, Mk. 12.30; see
Behr 1999: 227–28).
Gregory’s repeated emphasis on this point develops Basil’s notion that humanity
is a microcosm – a mini-creation – encapsulating both materiality and the whole
range of created immaterial functions (‘souls’). However, interpretations differ as
to the extent to which Gregory sets humanity apart from creation. According to
one reading, Gregory thinks that humanity unites two inherently opposed aspects
of creation – the material and the immaterial. A true microcosm (according to clas-
sical Greek philosophy) would hold these together in a static harmony. However,
the image of God means that humanity has been given the chance to choose freely
between a life dominated by the material and a life dominated by the immaterial
(Corsini 1972). This interpretation emphasizes a dynamic, transformative view of
the world, but at the expense of rather a negative interpretation of material nature:
it gives little weight to Gregory’s belief that all animal life is, in various ways,
ensouled. It assumes that the conception of humanity as imago dei is set against
that of humanity as microcosm. By contrast, John Behr has suggested that Gregory
balances the two (1999: 233, citing De hom. opif. XVI.2). Behr stresses the intimate
communion (koinönia) between humans’ intellectual and bodily aspects in Gregory’s
theology: even knowledge of the world and other people is mediated through the
senses; rational thought is expressed through physical speech (1999: 229–30). This
is how humans were always intended to be: materiality was not added as a result of
the Fall. On the other hand, humans’ nature as image-bearing is also their natural
(albeit God-given) state. Thus, humanity’s natural and proper role in creation is as
 Power and Dominion 149

a mid-way point (methorios) or mediator communicating divine beauty from God

to creation and, as Harrison asserts, raising up creation’s praise to God in priestly
fashion (Behr 1999: 231; Harrison 1990: 468 n. 92).
It would be foolish to deny that Gregory thinks that humans have a God-given
dominion over creation: the image of God lies in humanity’s kingship and Gregory
asserts, for example, that creation is a royal palace for humankind, its king (De hom.
opif. II). Gregory, for all his general appreciation of the natural world does not take
a theological interest in animals in their own right. His most lyrical celebrations of
natural beauty assume it is best when humans are there to share it (De hom. opif. I.5;
Letter 20 to Adelphius). However, his vision of humanity as methorios or half-way
point does offer a new perspective on the concept of dominion.
Augustine’s interpretations follow the development of his career as we might expect:
his first, most ‘allegorical’, commentary on Genesis contains a vociferous attack on
Manicheans who assumed that ‘image’ refers to the ‘shape of our bodies’ and thus
denied humanity was made in the image of God (Gen. Man. I.17.27-28). Instead,
Augustine argued, one must take a ‘spiritual’ understanding: ‘[image] is said with
reference to the interior man, where reason is to be found and intelligence; and it is
from this that he gets “authority over the fishes . . .”.’ His explanation here seems to
echo Basil’s: the image is precisely ‘the power by which [human nature] surpasses all
cattle, all animals’, for humans evidently do not surpass such beasts in physical power.
In response to the question of why humans are now attacked by wild animals,
Augustine replies (like Chrysostom) that human dominion is an ideal state, which
was lost in the Fall. Even now, humans have control over domestic animals; eventu-
ally, when they are ‘set free’ humans will regain dominion over all other creatures
(Gen. Man. I.18:29). Thus, Augustine firmly believes that human dominion over ani-
mals is part of the natural order – not the social order to which human kingship over
other humans belongs (Clark 1998: 73). In a surprising echo of Origen, Augustine
adds to this literal understanding a ‘spiritual’ interpretation of dominion as reason’s
control of emotions (Gen. Man. I.20.31; cf. Gen. Man. II.11.16). Both readings are
connected by an implicit assumption that perfect harmony (the perfection of paradise,
the perfected soul) is not only compatible with, but requires a hierarchy.
In his Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis the ‘spiritual’ reading of
dominion as control over passion is absent. There is theological interpretation, but
in it Augustine is more concerned with Christology: he wants to show that ‘let us
make’ indicates the Father’s making of humanity through the Son and that humanity
is made according to the image and likeness of God, which is the Son. Later, in The
Literal Meaning of Genesis Augustine corrects both of these readings to avoid mis-
interpretations which might sideline the Spirit: God the Trinity created humanity in
the image of God as Trinity (Gen. imp. 16.57-60; Gen. litt. III.19.29). The emphasis
on Trinitarian theology in this work follows the pattern we saw earlier. What is clear
from the book titles, however, is that Augustine regards these theological speculations
as literal interpretations of the text.
With regard to animals, in the unfinished commentary Augustine (somewhat
150 Ecological Hermeneutics

off-handedly) admits a ‘certain connection’ between humanity and the other crea-
tures made on the sixth day: ‘they are all of them together land animals, after all’
(Gen. imp. 16.55). However, he puts far more emphasis on the fact that humans and
other animals are different ‘because of the pre-eminence of reason, with respect to
which man is made to the image of God and his likeness’ (Gen. imp. 16.55; Gen. litt.
III.20.30). Indeed, there is little evidence in these or other works that Augustine
considers animals in and of themselves. Even vocabulary is significant: Augustine
tends not to use the neutral term animalia, which could include humans, but prefers
pecus (cattle or farm animals: ‘herds’) and bestia or belua (wild animals) – that
is, those creatures who have, or have not, been successfully tamed for human use
(Clark 1998: 68). He professes to steer away from Origen’s allegory and the ‘moral
tales’ approach found in Basil and Ambrose. Nevertheless, he still uses animals to
understand human nature not vice versa and his approach is perhaps not so different
from theirs as one might at first think (pace Cizewski 1993: 365–66). Even direct
examples of human cruelty to animals are condemned because of their effects on
the perpetrators, not the victims; meat-eating is judged according to the well-being
of the consumer not his prey (Clark 1998: 78–79, 75). (Augustine had very mixed
feelings about vegetarianism because it was encouraged by Manichees as well as
many Christian ascetics.) In sum, we might well conclude that ‘his conviction of
human superiority leads him to argue that even the struggle of animals to survive is
both appropriate and edifying’ (Clark 1998: 72).
Augustine’s use of animal examples is undoubtedly given more ‘bite’ through his
encounter with Manichees. They took the existence of ‘pernicious or superfluous’
animals (‘mice and frogs . . . flies and worms’) as evidence that material creation
was bad (Gen. Man. I.16:25-26). Augustine first seems to argue that God sees an
overall beauty and good function to the universe (which is both his masterpiece and
his workshop: Gen. Man. I.16:25-26). From their limited perspective, humans fail
to grasp this – although Augustine himself professes to appreciate the ‘harmonious
unity’ in individual mice and worms.
Augustine never wavers from his conviction that creation is good. But in later
works, as he wrestles with the problem of evil at all levels, his response is more
nuanced. First, he arguably approaches even animal suffering from a less detached,
more compassionate perspective (Cizewski 1993: 370–71). Secondly, although he
holds that an ultimate harmony explains apparently bad elements of creation ‘purely
at the level of the natural world at large’, he is insistent that both humans and animals
are part of a created world united by a very complex ‘interlocking system of action
and passion’ (Williams 2000: 109; cf. Williams 1999: 252). Who can say how far
the effects of human agency (‘moral evil’) extend into the natural world? Finally,
Augustine, like Gregory, balances a strongly hierarchical explanation of the world
with an equally strong emphasis on its interconnectedness: ‘things further down
the scale that contribute to the good of things higher up, find their own good in so
doing’ (Williams 2000: 114; cf. Behr 1999: 228). As we have seen, however, this
interconnectedness cuts both ways. Augustine agrees with Basil and Gregory that
 Power and Dominion 151

other animals have a kind of awareness and even, through rudimentary memory,
come close to being rational (Clark 1998: 69, 76–77). But he also thinks it is clear
both from experience and by theological definition that humans are more rational
than other animals and he shares the cultural assumption of his age that the more
rational should rule the less (Clark 1998: 68). Beliefs such as these lead to a very
anthropocentric theology.

Conclusions

As with the readings of ‘in the beginning’, these early Christian interpretations of
‘image’ and ‘dominion’ show a degree of variety, but are united in what they rule
out (the idea that ‘image’ meant God had a body) and in their assertion of human
dominion – albeit a flawed dominion. Several interpretations show an awareness that
there might be more than one possible meaning to Gen. 1.26-28, but all simply assume
that humans are superior to animals by definition of being created in the image of God.
These authors share an assumption with their non-Christian contemporaries that
humans have dominion over other animals because they are more rational than
them. They also share a belief that harmony in creation is dependent on a structural
hierarchy which binds different kinds of being together (this is evident in the notion
of three kinds of ‘soul’). But these Christian writers deny that humans have dominion
because they simply happen to be more rational than other animals (a ‘natural’
difference, if you like); rather they claim that God created them as rational beings
in his image in order that they could exercise dominion over the rest of creation
as his regents (a theological difference). Although it is profoundly theological, the
understanding of dominion over other animals in terms of the imago dei is seen by
all the fathers examined here as a literal reading – in contrast with the allegorical
reading of dominion as reason’s control over passions. Nevertheless, the influence
of that allegorical reading continued to be felt: one senses that the fathers thought
that the providential ordering of creation with rational humanity at its head was as
obviously harmonious and good as the providential ordering of human nature with
reason (at least ideally) having dominion over passions.
It is difficult to see how Christians of their era could have moved beyond this
anthropocentric theology without a radical reassessment of the belief in humanity’s
creation in the image of God. Greco-Roman philosophy assumed that being rational
(logikos, possessing reason/logos) was necessary for spiritual awareness – that is,
for a conscious relationship with God. Christianity affirmed this idea (Behr 1999:
225–33, 246; Clark 1998: 68). But Christian theology pushed it in an even more
anthropocentric direction: first by (usually) connecting the ‘image of God’ directly
with human reason and secondly by connecting it with the doctrine of the incarna-
tion. Once logikos meant not only ‘word-endowed’ but ‘Word-endowed’ it became
even more impossible for Christian theologians to view the world from anything but
a thoroughly anthropocentric perspective.
152 Ecological Hermeneutics

In sum, in these fathers’ view of dominion at least three ideas are intertwined:
the notion that the harmony of creation is dependent on a hierarchy with reason at
its head; the notion that God created humans to have a king-like role over creation
which echoed his own lordship; and the notion that humans’ special status was
confirmed (or restored) by the incarnation of the Word as human. In the modern
context, several of these ideas have been challenged, or at least, developed: for
example, order and harmony is no longer necessarily connected with hierarchy and
many have questioned the clear distinction between human reason and emotions,
or between human and other animal forms of reasoning. Furthermore, theologians
have thoroughly rethought both the notions of the imago dei and of the incarnation.
Nevertheless, there are some ideas found in these fathers which might stimulate
fruitful reflection on the relationship between humanity and the rest of creation. As we
have seen, several of the writers do acknowledge the continuity between humans and
other animals. This recognition of continuity rests not only on the acknowledgement
of a variety of forms of rationality in human and other animals, but also – crucially
– on the essential materiality of humankind. All of these writers repeatedly stress the
goodness of God’s material creation and thus the value and beauty of human and
other bodies. These emphases chime well with modern ecological ideas of the intercon-
nectedness of the natural world, and serve as a useful corrective to those theologies
which have tended to see non-human creation as an ‘other’ or as a mere instrument.
In particular, Gregory of Nyssa’s recasting of the idea of the image of God less in
terms of reason/soul (which has a tendency to separate humans from other animals)
and more in terms of qualities or virtues which enable humans as psychosomatic
unities to perform a role in creation might be a helpful way to reflect on the notion of
the imago dei while maintaining an emphasis on the interconnectedness of creation.
Because of this interconnectedness, these writers also emphasize the complex effects
of human sin, including its disruptive effects on the rest of creation. Thus Chrysostom
and Augustine see the untameable brutality of wild animals as evidence of the fall
(see pages 146 and 149), and Basil and Gregory of Nyssa think that the mortality
of non-human animals was due to the Fall (see page 146 and Gregory Catechetical
Oration §VIII). Although these ideas depend on rather literal conceptions of Adam
and Eve’s actions, the general idea that human sinfulness has insidious and destructive
effects on the whole of creation is a useful one. Augustine’s complex reflections on the
relationship between natural and moral evil are an example of how that basic idea
might be explored in a more philosophical direction.

References

Primary Texts

Augustine 1998 Confessions (Conf.) [397–398] tr. H. Chadwick, Augustine’s Confessions (Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
 Power and Dominion 153

Augustine 2002 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees (Gen. Man.) [c.388–389], Unfinished
Literal Commentary on Genesis (Gen. imp.) [393], The Literal Meaning of Genesis
(Gen. Litt.) [401–414] tr. E. Hill, Saint Augustine on Genesis (New York: New City Press).
Basil of Caesarea 1894 Homilies on the Hexameron (Hex.) [370s] tr. B. Jackson, Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 8 (reprinted 1989; Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Basil of Caesarea 2005 On the Origin of Humanity I & II (De orig.) [370s] tr. N. Harrison, St
Basil the Great, On the Human Condition (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press).
Gregory of Nyssa 1892 Catechetical Oration (Or. cat.) [c.386–387] tr. H. A. Wilson, Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 5 (reprinted 1988; Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Gregory of Nyssa 1892 On the Making of Humanity (De hom. opif.) [c.379] tr. H.A. Wilson, Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 5 (reprinted 1988; Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Gregory of Nyssa 1999a Gregor von Nyssa, Über das Sechstagewerk [c.379] tr. F. X. Risch (Stuttgart:
Hiersemann).
Gregory of Nyssa 1999b On the Hexameron (In Hex.) [c.379] tr. T. Lecaudey and J. Rousselet,
Grégoire, évêque de Nysse: Les six jours de la Création (published online October 1999
www.gregoiredenysse.com/?page_id=66)
Origen 1982 Homilies on Genesis (Hom. Gen.) [c.238–244] tr. R. Heine, The Fathers of the Church,
vol. 71 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press).
Origen 1998 Commentary on John Book I (Comm. Joh.) [c.231] tr. J.W. Trigg, Origen (London:
Routledge).

Secondary Sources

Alexandre, M. 1976 ‘L’Exégèse de Gen. 1,1-2a dans l’in Hexaemeron de Grégoire de Nysse: deux
approches de la matière’, in H. Dörrie, M. Altenburger and U. Schramm (eds), Gregor von
Nyssa und die Philosophie (Leiden: Brill): 159–92.
Behr, J. 1999 ‘The Rational Animal: A Rereading of Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio’, JECS
7: 219–47.
Cizewski, W. 1993 ‘The Meaning and Purpose of Animals According to Augustine’s Genesis
Commentaries’, in J. Lienhard, E.C. Muller and R.J. Teske (eds), Augustine: Presbyter Factus
Sum (New York, Berlin: Peter Lang): 363–73.
Clark, G. 1998 ‘The Fathers and the Animals: The Rule of Reason?’, in A. Linzey and D. Yamamoto
(eds), Animals on the Agenda: Questions About Animals for Theology and Ethics (London:
SCM): 67–79.
Corsini, E. 1972 ‘L’harmonie du monde et l’homme microcosme dans le De Hominis Opificio’, in
J. Fontaine and C. Kannengiesser (eds), Epektasis. Mélanges patristiques offerts au Cardinal
Jean Daniélou (Paris: Beauchesne).
Courtonne, Y. 1934 Saint Basile et l’hellénisme, étude sur la rencontre de la pensée chrétienne avec
la sagesse antique dans l’Hexaméron de Basile le Grand (Paris: Firmin-Didot).
Harrison, N. V. 1990 ‘Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology’, JTS 41: 441–71.
Henke, R. 2000 Basilius und Ambrosius über das Sechstagewerk (Chrësis vol. VII; Basel: Schwabe).
Ludlow, M. 2000 Universal Salvation: Eschatology in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa and Karl
Rahner (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Reuling, H. 2006 After Eden: Church Fathers and Rabbis on Genesis 3:16-21 (Leiden: Brill).
Williams, R. 1999 ‘Creation’, in A.D. Fitzgerald (eds), Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans): 251–54.
Williams, R. 2000 ‘Insubstantial Evil’, in R. Dodaro and G. Lawless (eds), Augustine and His Critics
(London: Routledge): 105–23.
 Chapter 11

Thomas Aquinas: Reading the Idea of Dominion

in the Light of the Doctrine of Creation1

Mark Wynn

The State of the Question

Theological commentators commonly read Aquinas’s account of our relations with

non-human animals in thoroughly anthropocentric terms. For example, Andrew
Linzey remarks that:

three elements distinguish Aquinas’s views of the status of animals. First, animals are irra-
tional, possessing no mind or reason. Second, they exist to serve human ends by virtue of their
nature and by divine providence. Third, they therefore have no moral status in themselves save
in so far as some human interest is involved, for example, as human property.

And he adds:

In case it is thought that this might be a caricature or misreading of Aquinas’s position, it is

worth noting that this view is consistently defended without substantial deviation throughout
the whole of his work. (Linzey 1994: 13–14)

In support of this reading, we might recall Aquinas’s discussion in the Summa

Theologiae (ST) of Gen 1.26, and the idea that human beings should ‘rule over [or
have dominion over] the fishes of the sea, and the birds of the sky and the beasts of the
earth’. Having cited this text, Aquinas continues: ‘the order of divine providence . . .
always governs lower things by higher. So since man is above the other animals . . .
other animals are properly subjected to his government’ (ST 1a 96.1). Here we find
the thought that Linzey attributes to Aquinas: the order of providence requires the
ends of non-human animals to be subordinated to those of human beings.
A similar assessment of the tendencies of medieval Western thought is offered
by the commentator who is perhaps the single most cited source for the view that

1 I would like to thank the Editors and participants in the research seminar of the Department
of Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, for their helpful comments on an earlier
draft of this essay.
 Thomas Aquinas 155

Christian theology has poisoned our relations with non-human creatures. Lynn White
suggests that the attitudes that prevailed in the medieval West are to be distinguished
from those which obtained in the ‘Greek East’, and that it is the mentality of the West
that lies at the root of our modern disregard of nature (White 1967: 1204). Taking a
similar view, Robin Gill remarks: ‘More than Augustine, Aquinas articulated a view
of non-human life which appears to many today to be thoroughly anthropocentric.
Even if Lynn White’s critique is somewhat modified, it does suggest that Aquinas,
or the culture that he represented, has had an important influence upon Western
society’ (Gill 2006: 286). On this perspective, Aquinas’s views are objectionable in
themselves, and bound up with wider intellectual developments which have licensed,
and perhaps encouraged, centuries of bad ‘environmental’ practice.
Given this tradition of reading Aquinas, it is perhaps surprising to find that there
are other commentators who have taken his work to provide the basis for a nuanced
and ‘sympathetic’ appreciation of the nature of our responsibilities to the non-human
world. These commentators tend to deflect attention away from passages where
Aquinas is concerned specifically with our relations to non-human animals – such as
the text on ‘dominion’ that I cited just now – and to concentrate instead on broader
themes in his doctrine of creation. For instance, Celia Deane-Drummond writes with
reference to Aquinas in particular: ‘I suggest that once understood in the context of
evolutionary categories, the Chain of Being . . . affirms the continuity of human life
with all life forms: we are an integral part of the whole complex chain of creation’
(Deane-Drummond 2004: 77). It is not difficult to see how this reading of Aquinas
on creation will issue in a rather different interpretation of the bearing of his thought
on questions of environmental ethical practice.
In a similarly enthusiastic spirit, Michael Northcott writes that ‘natural law ethics
as we encounter it in Aquinas . . . provides the strongest conceptual base within the
Christian tradition for an ecological ethic’. And this is because: ‘It affirms that the
natural order is a moral order . . .’ (Northcott 1996: 232). Jill LeBlanc has made
perhaps the most systematic attempt to relate the broader principles of Aquinas’s
metaphysics to questions in environmental ethics. She suggests that three such
principles are of particular relevance here: ‘First, being is good in all its manifesta-
tions . . . Second, the world is an organic unity, in which each part plays a role. Third,
diversity is itself good . . .’ And the implication of these principles, she suggests, is ‘a
requirement of respect – for being, for life, and for the world order’ (LeBlanc 1999:
306). The approach I am going to adopt here will fit most closely with LeBlanc’s.
But I shall give particular emphasis to the role that is played by the idea of God as
subsistent existence – as ipsum esse per se subsistens (ST 1a 4.2) – in holding together
the various strands of Aquinas’s thought on these matters.
Attending to the notion of subsistent existence might seem to imply a rather
‘philosophical’, non-biblically grounded route into Aquinas’s thought, but it should
be remembered that this notion is in the service of a biblical theme, a theme which
Aquinas did not find in his Aristotelian or other philosophical sources – namely, the
idea of God as creator. The notion of subsistent existence is Aquinas’s answer to the
156 Ecological Hermeneutics

question of what it would take for something to be the source of the existence of
things. In the remainder of this paper, I am going to suggest that Aquinas’s doctrine
of creation provides a way of framing the passages that exercise Linzey and others,
and a way of reading his development of the ‘dominion’ theme in the light of his
broader metaphysical commitments.

Aquinas’s Teleology of Creation

One well-trodden route into environmental ethical questions is to consider whether

non-human creatures or ‘systems’ can be deemed to have purposes or interests of their
own, which might require some sort of practical acknowledgement in our (human)
dealings with them. Aquinas’s thought can be brought to bear on these matters
with relatively little effort – most obviously by considering his development of the
view, which he has inherited from Aristotle, that natural things in general, including
inanimate things, are goal-directed. So let us begin here.
If we put to Aquinas’s text the question: in what sense or senses is the behaviour
of creatures goal-directed?, we will find that he has a ready and systematic response.
In ST 1a 65.2, Aquinas sets out the ends of creatures in these terms:

Each creature has its proper operation and perfection; secondly, lower creatures serve the
higher, as the creatures below man provide for his welfare; thirdly, individual creatures
manifest the perfection of the entire universe; and finally, the whole universe and all its
parts have God as their goal, in so far as the divine goodness is reflected through them and
thus his glory manifested. Over and above this, however, rational creatures have God as
their goal in a special way, since they can attain him by their own operations of knowing
and loving. Thus it is apparent that the divine goodness is the goal of everything corporeal.
(ST 1a 65.2)

So if we were to put to Aquinas the question: in what respects are material things
goal-directed?, he would give in response this fivefold typology. It is significant that
in this passage, Aquinas maintains that the ‘lower’ creatures properly serve the
‘welfare’ of human beings, and that this is part of their divinely ordained telos. He
also supposes here that rational creatures ‘have God as their goal in a special way’.
These are, of course, the strands in his thought that have struck Linzey and others
in their reading of various passages in Aquinas, such as the ‘dominion’ text that I
cited just now. In these passages, Aquinas tends to be concerned not with the first
principles of the cosmos’s being, but with the specific question of the relationship
of human beings to non-human animals. But it is striking that Aquinas here places
these anthropocentric-sounding themes within a broader context – and his remarks
on the question of human beings’ relationship to non-human animals need to be set,
I am going to suggest, within this larger frame of reference. Let us consider now the
various dimensions of Aquinas’s account.
 Thomas Aquinas 157

First, Aquinas holds that ‘each creature has its proper operation and perfection’.
Now someone who favours an unreservedly anthropocentrist reading of Aquinas
might say: but perhaps the ‘proper operation and perfection’ of non-human creatures
is nothing but their pliant conformity to human wants and even human whims.
But there must be more to ‘proper operation’ than this. Consider for instance the
following celebrated text, where Aquinas is considering the relationship between
‘inclinations’ (or goal-directed tendencies) in human beings and in other things, and
trying thereby to deduce some of the fundamental principles of the ‘natural law’:

in man there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the nature which he has
in common with all substances, inasmuch as every substance seeks the preservation of its
own being according to its nature, and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a means of
preserving human life and of warding off its obstacles belongs to the natural law. (ST 1a2ae
94.2, cited in Baumgarth and Regan 1988: 48)

Of course, this text is likely to provoke various questions to do with the very idea
of a ‘natural’ law in the human context, but let us set those aside – and return to the
matter of the teleology of non-human creatures, and the ‘perfection’ to which they
are directed. This passage makes clear that all created things are directed towards
their own continued existence. And this suggests that the teleology of non-human
creatures cannot simply consist in their service of human beings: we can intelligibly
speak of their own good and accordingly of their own ends.
Of course, an anthropocentrist reading of 1a 65.2 is still possible. It might be said:
while non-human creatures aim at their own continued existence, this is a strictly
subordinate end. The ultimate end of such creatures, to which their other ends
should be subordinated in any case of potential conflict, is to be of use to human
beings, where being ‘of use’ may take the form of ceasing to exist for the sake of
satisfying some human want or even some human whim. Such a construal of the
text is certainly possible. Indeed, we need to allow for the possibility of some such
reading where at least some non-animate creatures are concerned. Otherwise, we
may find ourselves admitting the propriety of questions about whether using straw
to thatch a roof constitutes an unacceptable frustration of the straw’s telos to sink to
the earth! However, two things do seem to be implied by the position that Aquinas
takes in ST 1a2ae 94.2.
First, it is at least intelligible to pose the question of whether our treatment of
non-human creatures is morally or otherwise dubious, because these creatures do
after all have ends which are not just trivially identical with the end of serving human
interests. There are other worldviews on which it would not even be intelligible to
suppose that our relations to other creatures might somehow involve a ‘violation’
of their own purposes or tendencies. To this extent, Aquinas can already be enlisted
(along with Aristotle, of course) as potentially an ally in the construction of an
‘ecological ethic’.
Secondly, while the idea that non-animate creatures have ‘inclinations’ or
158 Ecological Hermeneutics

tendencies which need to be respected for their own sake may prove to be dubious,
we do not need to suppose that the same must be true of the idea that non-human life
forms have such tendencies (cf. Rolston 1988: 97–106.) The passage from 1a2ae 94.2
that I have just cited goes on to note that the ‘inclinations’ of, for example, animals
include those of non-animate things and more besides – and it may be that these
additional inclinations are to be given weight even in cases where their fulfilment will
involve the frustration of some human want or interest. In fact, for what it is worth,
I am inclined to think that even the ‘inclinations’ of some non-animate things can
carry this sort of significance – if we strip a mountainside of its smaller stones, as
when walkers pass by and pile them up in a cairn, then there is a sense in which we
remove the stones from the order in which they have been placed by ‘nature’, and it
is not fanciful or sentimental, I suggest, to read that as a ‘disruption’ or ‘frustration’
of their kind-grounded ‘inclinations’.
Let us move now, more briefly, to the second point in Aquinas’s fivefold teleolo-
gical scheme. Aquinas notes that ‘lower creatures serve the higher, as the creatures
below [human beings] provide for their welfare’. This text may seem to support the
idea that while non-human creatures may have ends which are not simply identical
with the end of serving human beings, any such end will turn out to be, in every
case, subordinate to the end of being of service to us. However, it would be rash to
suppose that the text has to be assigned this meaning. If we allow that non-human
creatures have ends which are not simply identical with the end of being of service
to us, then it is possible that ends of this kind (let us call them: non-human-regarding
ends) can come into conflict with those ends which consist in the service of human
beings. And in such cases it is not clear that these non-human-regarding ends are
always to be assigned a subordinate significance. How might we determine when, if
at all, these non-human-regarding ends might override those ends which do consist
in being of service to human beings?
The next two steps in Aquinas’s scheme are, I think, relevant to this issue. Aquinas
continues: ‘thirdly, individual creatures manifest the perfection of the entire universe;
and finally, the whole universe and all its parts have God as their goal, in so far as
the divine goodness is reflected through them and thus his glory manifested.’ Let
us concentrate on the second of these two steps, which subsumes the first. How is
it we might ask, that the goodness of the divine nature is reflected in the universe?
Aquinas addresses this question in ST 1a 47.1, where he poses the question: is the
multiplicity and distinction of things from God? I am going to take his answer to
this question as a way of expounding the claim of 1a 65.2 that the universe and its
parts are directed to God. He writes:

distinctiveness and plurality of things is because the first agent, who is God, intended them.
For he brought things into existence so that his goodness might be communicated to creatures
and re-enacted through them. And because one single creature was not enough, he produced
many and diverse, so that what was wanting in one expression of his goodness might be
supplied by another, for goodness, which in God is single and all together, in creatures is
 Thomas Aquinas 159

multiple and scattered. Hence the whole universe less incompletely than one alone shares and
represents his goodness. (ST 1a 47.1)

To understand the import of this passage, we need to have recourse to the idea of
subsistent existence. Because God is subsistent existence – or being itself rather than
a particular being – a universe which comprises a diverse set of creaturely types
will image the divine nature more fully than will any one creature. This is because
each creature, and each creaturely type, bodies forth what it is to be according to its
particular limited mode of being – and it is therefore creatures considered in concert
which offer the best image of what it is to be unrestrictedly free from the bounds of
a particular nature. Here then is a reason for God to create a diverse creation – so
that it will succeed more fully in imaging the divine perfection.
It is worth recalling here why Aquinas supposes that the designation ‘The One
who Is’ (drawn of course from Exod. 3.14), which he reads as a biblical warrant
for the doctrine of subsistent existence, is ‘the most appropriate name for God’. He
comments: ‘Any other name selects some particular aspect of the being of the thing,
but “The One who Is” fixes on no aspect of being but stands open to all and refers
to God as to an infinite ocean of being’ (ST 1a 13.11, cited in Davies and Leftow
2006: 163). A fuller treatment of these matters would require us to distinguish
between the different kinds of resemblance which creatures can bear to God, and to
note the difference between a ‘trace’ and an ‘image’ in Aquinas’s terms (see ST 1a 93).
However, these passages are sufficient to indicate that for Aquinas, all things, just by
virtue of being, present a kind of likeness to God, and a created order will present a
better likeness to God the more varied its stock of creaturely types.
The passage I have just cited, from ST 1a 47.1, together with the doctrine of
subsistent existence, in terms of which it is to be understood, can help us to bring
the first two points in Aquinas’s typology of ‘ends’ into clearer focus. First, granted
these observations, we can now say that the directedness of creatures to their own
perfection is also a directedness to God. As Aquinas puts it: ‘In desiring its own
perfection everything desires God himself, for the perfections of all things somehow
resemble divine existence’ (ST 1a 6.1 ad 2; Davies and Leftow 2006: 64). This is,
I think, a significant claim: the natural kind-grounded tendencies of things can be
described not only as directed to the perfection of the thing (this is already to use
a normative language, and therefore potentially to lay down requirements on our
behaviour in relation to such things), but also as directed towards God. And the
perfection of the thing, we may say, involves an admittedly limited and kind-relative
but nonetheless real likeness to the divine perfection. This is, potentially, a very rich
and normatively weighty vocabulary for thinking about the sense in which creatures
are good – because it sees their goodness as bearing a resemblance to the divine
goodness, which by assumption is the source and summit of goodness.
Given this assessment of the goodness of creatures, we may well wish to suppose
that while non-human animals can properly serve the interests of human beings
160 Ecological Hermeneutics

(following the second point in Aquinas’s scheme), there is even so a sense in which
our allowing them simply to be, where this involves no significant compromise of our
own well-being, will constitute a good: because thereby they will be able to present
their own, kind-relative likeness to the divine nature. In other words, we seem to
have here the raw materials for a defence of the view that prima facie anyway, there
is reason to respect the natural inclinations of things. And this case will be stronger
for animals than for plants, and for plants than for minerals, if we share Aquinas’s
sense of the hierarchical arrangement of these creatures, and their varying capacities
to resemble the divine nature.
The passage I have cited from ST 1a 47.1, together with the doctrine of subsistent
existence, points to a further respect in which creatures matter. It is not just that they
are directed to God, and to the extent that they flourish as individuals of a particular
kind succeed in resembling God. It is also true that creatures image God most fully by
virtue of their participation within the wider community of created being, since this
community presents a better likeness of God than does any individual thing. Might
this view suggest that if our human perfection, like that of other creatures, consists in
God-likeness, then we should see our human telos as inseparably tied to our assuming
our proper place within creation – since the creation in its unity-in-diversity offers
a better likeness of God than any we human beings can achieve, when considered
simply as individuals or even collectively? (Compare Willis Jenkins’s discussion of the
role of relationship to creation in the sanctification of human beings [2008: 115–32].)
Aquinas touches on these matters in ST 1a 93.2, where he asks: is there an image
of God in non-rational creatures? He comments, in the body of the article, that
‘it is clear that only intelligent creatures are properly speaking after God’s image’.
However, he goes on to say that:

The universe is more perfect than the intelligent creation in extent and diffusion. But in
intensity and concentration a better likeness of the divine perfection is to be found in the
intelligent creation, which has a capacity for the highest good [of knowing and loving God].
Or else you can say that part should not be compared with whole, but with another part.
Thus when it is said that intelligent nature alone is after God’s image, this merely excludes
other parts of the universe from being after God’s image, not the universe as a whole with
respect to some of its parts. (ST 1a 93.2 ad 3)

So Aquinas allows that there is a sense (connected to the idea of ‘extent and diffu-
sion’) in which the universe presents a better likeness to God than does ‘the intelligent
creation’. (So this likeness is superior, in these respects, to any provided by human
beings.) And he allows that the universe as a whole can be said to ‘image’ God.
Admittedly, he goes on to say that this is ‘with respect to some of its parts’, and
evidently he means by this ‘with respect to its intelligent parts’ in particular. But even
on this reading, the universe as a whole will depend for its capacity to image God
upon the ability of non-rational creatures to realize the perfections that are proper to
them, if the order of the whole is to be preserved. The stance that Aquinas adopts here
 Thomas Aquinas 161

might well lead us to suppose that we human beings are to respect the diversity of
creaturely types not only in so far as each type has its own perfection, and resembles
God after its own fashion, but also because we ourselves can image God through
our participation in the integrated perfection of the universe as a whole, where that
perfection depends upon the existence of a diverse range of creaturely types, and upon
each type being able to achieve its own perfection. And the sort of resemblance that
is presented by the universe as an integrated whole provides, indeed, in at least one
sense, a better image of God than can be provided by individual human beings or by
the ‘intelligent creation’ in its entirety.
This appreciation of the goodness of the universe as an integrated totality, and of
the significance of individual creatures in so far as they participate in this totality,
is apparent again when Aquinas considers the problem of evil. Here he is explicit
that the goodness of non-rational creatures cannot be reduced to their usefulness to
human beings. For instance, he remarks that:

Material creatures are by nature good, but not inexhaustibly and universally so, since they
are particular and restricted. Thus contrariety is found among them: one is different from
another, although each in itself is good. Yet certain thinkers, considering not natures but
utility, regard harmful things as completely evil, failing to see that what is harmful to one
being under a particular aspect is advantageous for another or even for the same being, when
seen under a different aspect. This could never happen if bodies were intrinsically evil and
harmful. (ST 1a 65.2 ad 2)

Aquinas discusses these matters more fully in questions 48–49, but from this remark
it is sufficiently clear that the expression of a creature’s nature is of itself good,
even if it should make for some frustration of the goals of another creature. And
at points, Aquinas seems to extrapolate this thought in the direction of a radically
non-anthropocentric account of value. For instance, he describes in these terms the
error of those who thought that some sort of ultimate or metaphysical dualism is
required to account for the presence in the world of both good and evil:

they did not consider the universal cause of the whole of being, but only the particular cause
of particular effects. On this account, when they discovered that by the strength of its own
nature one thing was damaging to another they reckoned that the nature of that thing was
evil; for example, that fire’s nature was bad for burning down some poor man’s home. The
goodness, however, of a thing should not be assessed from its reference to another particular
thing, but on its own worth according to the universal scheme of things, wherein each . . .
most admirably holds an appointed place. (ST 1a 49.3)

Here Aquinas’s commitment to the goodness of the universe in its variety seems to
issue in the thought that it is overall good, sometimes anyway, that human beings
should suffer frustration, even if the nature which is hereby fulfilled is that of a
non-animate thing such as fire!
162 Ecological Hermeneutics

So there are a number of considerations in Aquinas’s text which might incline

us to say not only that non-human creatures, including non-animate creatures, aim
at their own perfection, rather than being directed simply to the service of human
beings, but also that their goals cannot be deemed merely trivial when they come
into conflict with the ends of human beings – or at any rate, with human ends which
do not touch on vital human interests. These considerations are: (1) these creatures
also aim at God, by resembling God so far as they can, according to the constraints
of their particular kind; (2) the universe as a whole, in its unity-in-diversity, which
requires the flourishing of the full range of creaturely types, images God better in
some respects than does any individual creature; and (3) the fulfilment of the nature
of ‘lesser’ creatures, and even of non-animate creatures, can count as a good, even
when this results in a human being suffering some deprivation of good. These themes
allow us to fill out the idea set down in Aquinas’s fivefold typology that individual
creatures and the universe as a whole have God as their end. Although Aquinas does
not explicitly do so, I would add that the universe’s perfection requires not only the
existence of many types of creature, but also the flourishing of many individuals
within any one type – since these individuals will realize the potentialities of the
type in different ways, and thereby make a distinctive contribution as individuals to
the unity-in-diversity by virtue of which the creation is able to image the God who
simply is.
Of course, in the passage from ST 1a 65.2 which we have been considering,
Aquinas also says that ‘rational creatures have God as their goal in a special way,
since they can attain him by their own operations of knowing and loving’. But this
addition to the foregoing account does not shake the thought that the flourishing of
non-human creatures, especially in their diversity, constitutes a profound good – and
one to which we should assign some weight, therefore, in our practical deliberations.

Revisiting the Literature

As we have seen, Andrew Linzey summarizes Aquinas’s assessment of the significance

of animals in these terms: ‘they exist to serve human ends by virtue of their nature and
by divine providence . . . they therefore have no moral status in themselves save in so
far as some human interest is involved’ (my emphasis). Our discussion suggests that
the ‘therefore’ here is too quick. It is true that Aquinas supposes that animals ‘exist
to serve human ends’, but he also considers how animals can be assigned various
other goals – and these other goals, I have been arguing, seem not to be reducible
to, nor are they evidently in all cases subordinate to, the goal of being of service to
human beings. Some of these goals (for example, those of resembling God by virtue
of their own perfections, or of contributing, collectively, to an image of God which
is in some respects better than any which individual human beings can provide) sug-
gest that the flourishing of non-human animals has a deep theological significance
independently of their importance for the sustaining of human life – and that their
 Thomas Aquinas 163

well-being is therefore not to be put at risk for the sake of relatively trivial, or even
perhaps for pretty weighty, human purposes. In this connection, it is significant that
when expounding his fivefold typology, Aquinas seems to move from localized goals,
including the goal which fits the ‘dominion’ theme most directly (the second goal in
his list), to goals which concern the character of creation as a whole – and given his
tendency to think of the whole as more perfect than the part (for the reasons we have
been considering), this should lead us to suppose that the goals which are listed after
the goal of being of service to human beings are indeed of considerable importance.
For the same reasons, Robin Gill’s suggestion that Aquinas’s views appear to be
‘thoroughly anthropocentric’ also invites qualification. By thinking of God as the
creator, and therefore as subsistent existence, and by placing this conception of God
at the centre of his philosophical theology, Aquinas provides, I have been suggesting,
a very rich way of articulating the goodness of the material order – and of reflecting
upon the sense in which its goodness is not reducible to its serviceability for human
purposes. To put the point most simply, if we begin not from a conception of God
as mind or intelligence, or as non-material, but from a conception of God as being,
then immediately we have a way of recognising the God-likeness of all things, in so
far as they simply are. Of course, Aristotle also supposed that animals and plants
and also non-animate things aim at God by striving for actuality (The Metaphysics
[Metaph.]. 12.7 [373–75]) – but he does not articulate, and does not have the con-
ceptual resources to articulate, the distinctively Thomistic thought that God is imaged
by the material order in its unity-in-diversity in so far as God is subsistent existence.
On the other side of the debate, we have seen, are commentators who want to
appropriate Aquinas’s work for the purpose of defending a non-anthropocentric
ethic. Celia Deane-Drummond suggests that the ‘Chain of Being . . . affirms the
continuity of human life with all life forms’, and that this is a reason for treating
non-human creatures as morally considerable. This is a suggestive thought. But it
passes by the thought that the creatures which make up the chain are able to image
God because of their diversity. And this latter point should lead us to suppose that
creatures which manifestly are not closely continuous with ourselves are even so
important, in so far as their flourishing is required if the universe is to image God
– and if we human beings are to fulfil our telos of participating in the universe’s
unity-in-diversity.
Michael Northcott commends Aquinas’s work as a resource for ‘ecological ethics’
because it represents the creation as a moral order. In light of the themes in Aquinas
that we have been exploring, we could say that his approach is significant in this con-
text because it takes the creation to bear a likeness to God. While enthusiastic about
the general drift of Aquinas’s thought, Northcott takes exception to his ‘tendency to
discount the significance of natural evil . . .’ (1996: 231). Aquinas’s stance on these
matters offers, we have seen, a particularly radical route into a non-anthropocentric
ethic. But Northcott finds this route too costly, and he envisages a time when preda-
tion, for example, will be at an end. By contrast, Aquinas sees predation as part of
the Edenic ordering of things – since the fulfilment of a leonine nature, for example,
164 Ecological Hermeneutics

requires the hunting of other creatures (ST 1a 96.1 ad 2). This perspective suggests
a very generous assessment of the good of lions’ flourishing – an assessment which
indicates that, on certain points, Aquinas is far less ‘anthropocentric’ than are some
of his ecologically minded critics.
Finally, I have noted Jill LeBlanc’s defence of an ‘eco-Thomist’ perspective. She is
right to say that for Aquinas: ‘being is good in all its manifestations’, and ‘the world
is an organic unity, in which each part plays a role’; and ‘diversity is itself good, both
as an expression of being, and because diversity enables the functioning of the whole’.
The central matters which an eco-Thomist must address, I would suggest, are these:
to what extent are the goals of non-human creatures conceptually independent of the
goal of being useful to human beings? (‘Useful’ here is to be understood ‘narrowly’
– that is, useful as a resource for meeting human beings’ material wants or whims.)
And secondly, in so far as these goals do exhibit such independence, to what extent
can they be overridden or set aside if they come into conflict with the fulfilment of
various human goals? To my mind, the idea of God as subsistent existence holds the
key to answering these questions, since it enables us to see how creatures, including
non-rational and even non-animate creatures, may be said to resemble God, and how
the created order as a whole may be said to ‘image’ God even more fully than can an
individual human being. When understood in these terms, the goals of non-human
creatures have to be assigned a considerable, even if not (given Aquinas’s discussion)
a fully determinate, weight.
Of course, someone might grant all that I have said here, as a reading of Aquinas,
and still think that he has an impoverished conception of animals and other
non-human embodied life forms. It might be said for example that Aquinas envis-
ages no place for these creatures in the life of the world to come (ST Supplement 3a
91.5). And if that is so, then the good of their flourishing surely cannot be all that
fundamental after all. The metaphysical position which I have been attributing to
Aquinas might suggest that it would be truer to the spirit of his account, and its accent
on the fundamental goodness of diversity, to allow plant and non-human animal life a
place in the world to come. But on this point, we would certainly be reading beyond
and even against the text – using Aquinas’s metaphysics of creation to challenge his
own teaching on certain specific issues. For what it is worth, I would say that such
a case could be made, by analogy with the case that Aquinas himself makes for the
contribution of the human body to the condition of the blessed in the afterlife (see
ST 1a2ae 4.6). But however that may be, Aquinas has surely given us, at least, the
elements for a deeply humane vision of our relations to non-human creatures: these
creatures are good in themselves; they are good, and they image God, above all when
considered in community; we human beings therefore share with other creatures
the project of imaging God; and we are called to recognize and respect difference
in creation, while finding in this difference an invitation to a common, God-
directed end.
 Thomas Aquinas 165

References

Aquinas, T. 1922 The Summa Theologica, Third Part (Supplement), QQ 87–99 (tr. Fathers of the
English Dominican Province; London: Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd).
Aquinas, T. 1964–1974 Summa Theologiae T. Gilby (ed.) (60 vols; London: Blackfriars).
Aristotle 1998 The Metaphysics (ed. H. Lawson-Tancred; London: Penguin Books).
Baumgarth, W.P. and Regan, R.J. (eds) 1988 Saint Thomas Aquinas: On Law, Morality, and Politics
(Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company).
Davies, B. and Leftow, B. (eds) 2006 Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, Questions on God
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Deane-Drummond, C. 2004 The Ethics of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell).
Gill, R. (ed.) 2006 A Textbook of Christian Ethics (third edition; London: T&T Clark).
Jenkins, W. 2008 Ecologies of Grace: Environmental Ethics and Christian Theology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
LeBlanc, J. 1999 ‘Eco-Thomism’, Environmental Ethics 21: 293–306.
Linzey, A. 1994 Animal Theology (London: SCM).
Northcott, M.S. 1996 The Environment and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press).
Rolston, H. 1988 Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia,
PA: Temple University Press).
White, L., Jr 1967 ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155: 1203–207.
 Chapter 12

Martin Luther, the Word of God and Nature:

Reformation Hermeneutics in Context1

H. Paul Santmire

‘Nature’ is not a word that Martin Luther used to refer to what we commonly call the
world of stars and planets, mountains and oceans, animals and plants, and humans,
too, insofar as humans are products of evolutionary processes and integrally belong
to the earth’s biosphere. Luther preferred to use the word ‘creation’ to refer to all
such things, humans included. Further, the word ‘nature’ is often employed in modern
scientific and philosophical discourse to refer to a self-enclosed system that, as it
were, runs by itself. In contrast, Luther’s view of things was profoundly theocentric.
For Luther the created world is not self-enclosed. It does not run by itself. So we will
hear him speaking of the powerful presence of God in, with and under all creatures,
holding all things in being and energizing their becoming.
Why, then, employ the term ‘nature’ to interpret Luther’s thought? The answer is
this. It is both theologically possible and situationally necessary to do so. It is theo-
logically possible because the word ‘nature’ can be defined in a way that resonates
with Luther’s own theology of creation. Nature can be thought of under the rubric
of the idea of creation itself, as ‘the biophysical dimension of creation’ (Santmire
1985: 11–12). This definition presupposes, moreover, that humans are essentially
natural. But for our purposes here, we can bracket the highly complicated and much
discussed issue about whether the human creature in some sense transcends nature
in some creaturely fashion. Our inquiry will focus on what Luther has to say about
the physical and biological dimension of the creation, what the Nicene Creed refers
to as ‘all things visible’ and that dimension includes humans insofar as they are
bodily creatures.
It is situationally necessary to use the term ‘nature’ here, once it has been defined
in terms of the creation, because many, if not most treatments of Luther’s thought,
from his own era to the present, address this theme in his theology only in passing, if
at all. Interpreters of Luther’s theology of creation have explored Luther’s creational
ethics, his theology of divine immanence in the creation, especially in connection

1 I want to thank three friends, scholars in their own right, who read this essay along the way
and made helpful suggestions for clarifications and emendations: Mark Edwards, Clifford
Green and Roger Johnson. I, of course, take full responsibility for this essay as it now stands.
 Martin Luther, the Word of God and Nature 167

with his treatment of the sacraments, his teaching about ‘creation out of nothing’,
his views of human corporeality, his understanding of the eschatological consumma-
tion of all things and other related themes. But rarely have they focused on Luther’s
theology of nature, as the term is being used here.2 The signs of our times compel
us, however, to do precisely that, to inquire whether Luther’s theology may have
something to teach us about such matters. Conversely, if we do not ask about this
aspect of Luther’s thought, then those critics of the Christian tradition, who have
argued that Christianity is ecologically bankrupt, that it has nothing helpful to teach
us about world of nature, will have Luther all to themselves, as it were, to set aside as
one more allegedly irrelevant and perhaps even dangerously anthropocentric voice.
If we must be cautious about our use of the term ‘nature’ in interpreting Luther,
however, we can be confident that the accent on the Word of God announced by our
theme takes us to the heart of his thought. Whatever else Martin Luther may have
been, he was fundamentally a theologian of the Word of God (Pelikan 1959: 48–70).
Still, we will not have understood Luther’s reading of the Scriptures correctly if we do
not see these two constructs together, Word and nature. However Luther may have
interpreted the Scriptures as the Word of God, in different ways at different times,
his mature theology, as it came into view in the 1520s and thereafter, was a theology
of the Word of God in nature. Majestically in nature, we may say.
Thus, in one of his sermons on the Gospel of John, preached in 1537, we hear
these words, regarding Jn 1.3:

God the Father initiated and executed the creation of all things through the Word; and he now
continues to preserve His creation through the Word, and that forever and ever . . . Hence,
as heaven, earth, sun, moon, stars, man, and all living things were created in the beginning
through the Word, so they are wonderfully governed and preserved through that Word.
(Luthers’s Works [LW XXII, 26])

Such thoughts might be read, to be sure, as a kind of faithful recapitulation of

traditional trinitarian formulations, and little more. But Luther could not leave it at
that, as he might well have done – he was, after all, interpreting the first chapter of
John, not the first chapter of Genesis.
Rather, Luther presents us with an exuberantly extended confession of the Word
of God in nature, not just of the Word of God in the world of human affairs, and
does so vividly, as nature was concretely known to Luther and to his contemporaries:

How long, do you suppose, would the sun, the moon, the entire firmament keep to the course
maintained for so many thousands of years? Or how would the sun rise or set year after year
at the same time in the same place if God, its Creator, did not continue to sustain it daily? If

2 For two of the few available descriptions of Luther’s treatment of nature, see Bornkamm
1965: 177–94 and Gregersen 2005. For an overview of Luther’s theology of nature in the
context of the unfolding of the Reformation tradition, see Santmire 1985: 121–43.
168 Ecological Hermeneutics

it were not for the divine power, it would be impossible for mankind to be fruitful and beget
children; the beasts could not bring forth their young, each after its own kind, as they do every
day; the earth would not be rejuvenated each year, producing a variety of fruit; the ocean
would not supply fish . . . If God were to withdraw His hand, this building and everything in
it would collapse . . . The sun would not long retain its position and shine in the heavens; no
child would be born; no kernel, no blade of grass, nothing at all would grow on the earth or
reproduce itself if God did not work forever and ever . . . Daily we can see the birth into this
world of new human beings, young children who were nonexistent before; we behold new
trees, new animals on the earth, new fish in the water, new birds in the air. And such creation
and preservation will continue until the Last Day. (LW XXII, 26–27)

In this our ecological era, those who are seeking to recapture long-forgotten tradi-
tional theological testimonies to the glory of God in nature and thereby to celebrate
God’s embrace of the whole creation, not just humankind, will surely want to
welcome the kind of theological discourse that we hear in Luther’s commentary on
John. But if we are theologically to appropriate the promise of Luther’s interpretation
of the Scriptures for our own purposes, as distinct from merely gathering what may
seem to us to be relevant theological quotations, we will have to study the kind of
exegetical testimony we meet in Luther’s commentary on John in its own context,
fraught as that context was with its own complexities and ambiguities.
The necessity of such a contextual approach to Luther’s biblical interpretation
is already signalled, for those who have eyes to see, by his passing reference above
to the whole of creation as ‘this building’. By that Luther meant, and he often took
this for granted, that the whole earth is constructed and sustained by God to be a
home and a blessing for humans, as if that were its chief or even only raison d’être.
As Luther wrote in 1528: ‘The Father gives himself to us, with heaven and earth
and all the creatures, in order that they may serve us and benefit us’ (LW XXXVII,
366). This kind of thinking has the ring of a surreptitious but nevertheless ominous
anthropocentrism, which could be more counterproductive for our ecological
interests today than helpful. Does Luther, then, have a rich understanding of God
in nature and yet somehow undercut that understanding by veering in the direction
of anthropocentrism? To answer this kind of question, we must probe the varied
historical textures and spiritual sensibilities of his thought.
To that end, in turn, it will be necessary for us to follow a somewhat meandering
course. We will seek to understand, as carefully as we can in the short compass of
an essay, what can be called the formal and the material elements of Luther’s herme-
neutic, with particular attention to his thought about nature, as that term is being
used in this essay. We will explore (I) how Luther actually approached the Scriptures
and (II) what some of the major theological assumptions were that he brought with
him as he formed his judgement about the meanings of biblical texts. These are
weighty matters in Luther studies, of course. But we can circumspectly address them
in a single essay by depending, wherever possible, on the findings of modern Luther
scholarship (see Bayer 2003; Isaac 2001). In a postscript, finally (III), we will consider
 Martin Luther, the Word of God and Nature 169

the challenge of appropriating Luther’s formal and material hermeneutic of nature

in a contemporary theological context.

It is frequently said, in various ways, that Luther was a biblical theologian, not a
systematic theologian.3 And there is some truth in that affirmation. As is often noted,
Luther never produced a Summa Theologiae nor even an Institutes of the Christian
Religion, as Aquinas and Calvin did. Many of Luther’s writings, such as his sermons
on John, which we have already encountered, were in fact, formally speaking,
biblical commentaries, which represented an enormously substantive theological
output (Pelikan 1959: 5–31). One noted scholar, indeed, once referred to Luther’s
commentary on Genesis as Luther’s Summa.4
But the construct ‘commentary’, as it is understood today, scarcely does justice
to what Luther thought he was doing in his interpretations of the Scriptures. Karl
Barth’s commentary on Romans, which precipitated a theological revolution in the
first half of the twentieth century, may be the closest example in our era of the kind
of biblical interpretation that Luther practised throughout much of his theological
career. Luther thought of his work as a commentator as hearing the living voice of
God speaking to him, to the church and to the world. In this sense, he can be called
an ‘existential’ interpreter of Scripture, using the language of Otto Pesch (1970).
Thus, in interpreting Genesis, as Johannes Schwanke explains, ‘Luther interprets
primordial history as a history of the present. For Luther, creation is not something
past, but something present. Because Luther sees himself in his individuality as cre-
ated, addressed, and desired by God, the history of creation can be nothing other
than present history’ (2004: 81).
Of particular significance for his biblical interpretation of the history of creation,
moreover, and, in some respects, as we will see presently, for his biblical interpreta-
tion of nature in particular, Luther came to believe, with increasing existential pathos
during the course of his life, that the end of the world was close at hand. He was, in
this respect, a prophet of the Last Days in his preaching and exposition of Scripture
and public life in general (Oberman 2001: 193–98).
But we have yet to identify the full concreteness of what can be called Luther’s
existential interpretation of the Scriptures. Not only did Luther hear the Word
of God in the Scriptures addressing the present, even the present eschatologically
construed, much more particularly, he was inclined to hear the Word as addressed

3 A more sophisticated statement of this kind of distinction has been developed by Otto
H. Pesch, who thinks of Luther as an ‘existential theologian’ and Thomas Aquinas, in
comparison, as a ‘sapiential theologian’ (Pesch 1970). On Luther as a ‘biblical theologian’
see Pelikan 1959: 46–47.
4 Heiko Oberman, in a lecture at Harvard Divinity School, 1964.
170 Ecological Hermeneutics

to the individual believer. Thus, Luther distinguished between historical and living
faith (fides historica, fides vera) (Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe [WA] XXXIX.1,
46.7-8). Even the Devil could believe that Christ died for the sins of the world, Luther
would say. But the Devil cannot or will not believe that Christ died for him. Call this
Luther’s existential hermeneutical concentration: my faith, if it is living faith, must
be predicated on the conviction that the grace of God is given for me – pro me. As
Kenneth Hagen has observed, Luther claimed that his biblical work was ‘not so much
a commentary as a testimony of my faith in Christ’ (Hagen 1993: 2). This is not to
suggest that Luther’s exegesis was some kind of arbitrary testimonial literature. On
the contrary, Luther was at home with the best humanistic and monastic scholarship
of his day. And he was gifted with an extensive knowledge of the Scriptures, which
made it possible for him creatively to view a variety of biblical texts in relationship
with many others. Rather, the point here is that, precisely with the benefit of his
scholarly approach to Scripture, Luther was personally driven to hear the Word of
God speaking to him and his world (Maschke 2001: 181–82).
With Luther’s commitment to existential interpretation of the Scripture thus
before us, it is possible, and for our purposes necessary, to probe still more deeply
into the dynamics of this kind of biblical interpretation. We have seen that Luther’s
mode of biblical interpretation is fundamentally predicated on the notion of the Word
of God speaking to the believer. Beneath this, and reinforced by this understanding
of the Word of God, is a somewhat more elusive set of interpretative assumptions:
Luther’s deep commitment to the sensibility of hearing, over against the sensibility of
seeing.5 This may seem to be an obvious point at first – for what is speaking without
hearing? – but, as we will presently see, it would seem to have profound implications
for Luther’s understanding of the biblical view of nature.
For Luther, as many observers have noted, and as he himself often stated, ‘The ear
is the only organ of the Christian’ (LW XIX.1.1, cited by Miles 1985: 515). This is
a typical exegetical comment of the Reformer, regarding the account of Jesus riding
into Jerusalem:

But shut your eyes and open your ears and perceive not how [Christ] rides there so beggarly,
but hearken to what is said and preached about this poor king. His wretchedness and poverty
are manifest . . . But that he will take from us sin, strangle death, endow us with eternal holi-
ness, eternal bliss, and eternal life, this cannot be seen. Wherefore you must hear and believe.
(WA XXXVII, 201–202, quoted by Steinmetz 1993: 5)

Since, for Luther, only the Word of God liberates us from sin and reveals to us the
purpose of the Creator, ‘[a] right faith goes right on with its eyes closed; it clings to
God’s Word; it follows that Word; it believes that Word’ (WA XLVIII, 48).

5 In considering the sensibilities of hearing and seeing, we touch on a highly complex and
much discussed subject in Western philosophy and theology; see Blumenberg 1993; Chidester
1992; Levin 1993; Miles 1985.
 Martin Luther, the Word of God and Nature 171

This emphasis on hearing was no less true of Luther’s teaching about the sacra-
ments, where one might have expected, if anywhere, to encounter a shift of sensibility
from the moment of hearing to the moment of seeing. But Luther took up, with a
passion, the traditional Augustinian view that the sacraments are ‘visible Words’.
‘You should know’, he stated characteristically, ‘that the Word of God is the chief
thing in the sacrament’. The Word is to the elements, he explained, as the soul is to
the body (WA XLVII, 219).
Luther carried through the same agenda architecturally, as well. On occasion,
he could speak approvingly of images in the churches, but he generally did so only
if those images had an evident pedagogical purpose, only if they communicated
the Word (Koerner 2004). Indeed, he liked to think of the church building as a
‘mouth-house’ (WA X.1.2, 48, cited by Pelikan 1959: 63). It would, therefore, not be
an overstatement to characterize the earliest example of a surviving church building
designed and built within the Reformation milieu, dedicated by Luther in 1534,
the small Schloss Kapelle in Torgau, Germany, precisely in those terms. This was
veritably a house for preaching. The elevated pulpit that dominates the plain space
dramatically announces that the proclamation of the Word of God is that building’s
primary purpose. The paintings that are in place, by Luther’s friend, the well-known
Lucas Cranach, depict Luther preaching, among other images of worship in that
space, such as the Lord’s Supper. In that chapel space, the sensibility of hearing had
triumphed.
We have more of Luther’s thought to explore now, as we move from considering
his approach to the Scriptures – the formal elements of his hermeneutic – to a review
of some of the major theological assumptions he brought with him to his biblical
interpretation – the material elements of his hermeneutic. But it will be helpful as
we chart this course to make some preliminary observations about the significance
of the materials we have just reviewed.
In a chapter entitled ‘The Uniqueness of Luther’s Theology’, the eminent Luther
scholar Bernhard Lohse writes:

What is new [in Luther’s theology, compared with earlier theological traditions] is that of
all the questions with which theology must deal, the aim and goal in any given instance is
the question of salvation. Questions about the doctrine of God, about the sacrament, about
ecclesiology, can be dealt with only when this aspect is seen from the outset. (1999: 35)

Whether this focus on salvation is indeed unique to Luther is a question that need not
concern us here. That salvation, however, specifically human salvation, is at the heart
of Luther’s theology is a judgement that illuminates the materials we have reviewed
thus far. We have observed Luther’s existential approach to the Scriptures and indeed
his individualizing, existential hermeneutical concentration: he was wont to hear
God addressing him, personally, through the biblical Word, for the sake of his own
salvation. That theme we saw is undergirded by his commitment to hearing as the
primary sensibility of faith. God speaks, the believer hears in faith and the believer
172 Ecological Hermeneutics

then knows the certainty of his or her salvation. That appears to be the paradigmatic
moment of the Christian faith, as far as Luther was concerned.
Missing in all this is any kind of thoroughgoing reference to the larger world of
nature. The world of sun and stars and earth, trees and lakes, fish and birds is by no
means excluded from Luther’s way of approaching the Scriptures. We have already
seen an instance, in Luther’s commentary on John 1, where that world is celebrated
by Luther. But what Luther finds himself driven to hear, what he is most fascinated
with, is not primarily biblical testimony to the works of God in creation, nor even
the consummation of the whole creation (more on this presently). Rather, Luther is
driven, passionately, to hear the message of human salvation, and of the individual
believer’s salvation, in particular. The primacy of the sensibility of hearing in Luther’s
thinking makes the regular, de facto inattention to the greater world of nature as an
object of exegetical inquiry almost inevitable, it would seem, at least at the heart of
Luther’s theology. The Word of God is to be proclaimed to sinful humans, accord-
ing to Luther’s way of thinking, not to beasts of the field or trees and the stars,
which have not sinned (LW XXII, 29; I, 204–205). The creatures of nature, other
than humans, do not have ears to hear the Word. So if the Word is the theological
centre, all those creatures will, as a matter of course, if not by intention, be pushed
to the periphery, if not out of the picture altogether. This much we can notice at this
point in the discussion, on the basis of our consideration of the formal elements of
Luther’s hermeneutic. Now we turn to consider some of the material elements of his
hermeneutic.

II

What are the major theological assumptions that Luther, as a matter of course,
brings with him when he seeks to interpret the Scriptures? This is a question that
would take a whole volume to answer, but it can be addressed sufficiently here,
since most of these elements are so well attested in modern Luther studies. We can
conveniently begin by identifying the key distinction that shapes so much of Luther’s
thinking about the content of theology, at least since the time of his 1518 Heidelberg
Dissertation, the difference between a ‘theology of glory’ and the ‘theology of the
cross’ (McGrath 1985). Luther understands the first to be a kind of speculative
theology, which is predicated on theological interpretation of the created world.
Had he wished to do so, Luther could have called this, in his own terms, a theol-
ogy of seeing. For this kind of theology, as Luther understood it, contemplates the
created world and moves the mind, by that contemplation, to ascend ultimately
to the vision of God. The theology of glory, in Luther’s view, also leads inevitably,
because of its rationalizing methodology, to a theology of justification by works, in
one form or another. The theology of the cross, in contrast, sees only the contradic-
tory, inglorious vision of the Crucified, and knows God hidden and revealed there,
by the proclamation of the Word of the cross. That Word mediates the justifying
 Martin Luther, the Word of God and Nature 173

grace of God, according to Luther, which the believer receives by faith alone. From
the perspective of the theology of the cross, moreover, the theology of glory, which,
in Luther’s words, ‘sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man,
is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened’ (LW XIX, 52–53, cited by Lohse
1999: 38). Whether this core distinction in Luther’s thought allows any sustained
contemplation of the larger world of nature seems doubtful. Contemplation of nature
would appear to fall under the rejected rubric of the theology of glory.
The distinction between the theology of glory and the theology of the cross is
intimately related to another teaching of Luther, just alluded to, perhaps the core
conviction of his thought, and so recognized by most students of Luther: justifica-
tion by faith alone, apart from works of the law (Lohse 1999: 74–78). For Luther,
‘the article of justification is the master and prince, the lord, the ruler, and the judge
over all kinds of doctrines; it preserves and governs all church doctrine . . . Without
this article the world is utter death and darkness’ (WA XXXIX.1, 205). Karl Barth
coined the term ‘the-anthropology’ to describe his own thought, focused as it is
on God and humanity. The heart of Luther’s theology, as he himself describes it, is
the-anthropological in that sense. It focuses on the justifying God and the justified
sinner. Luther stated this vividly in a 1532 lecture on Psalm 51:

Knowledge of God and man is divine wisdom, and in the real sense theological. It is such
knowledge of God and man as is related to the justifying God and to sinful man, so that in
the real sense the subject of theology is guilty and lost man and the justifying and redeeming
God. What is inquired into apart from this question and subject is error and vanity in theology.
(WA II, 327-28, cited by Lohse 1999: 40)

With this core teaching of Luther in view, as when we considered his distinction
between the theology of glory and the theology of the cross, we may wonder what is
to become of the larger world of nature in Luther’s biblical interpretation, since justi-
fication, as Luther understands it, seems to be almost exclusively the-anthropological,
a matter of God and humanity alone. The beasts of the fields, for example, do not
need to be justified, in Luther’s view, even if that were conceivable in his terms, since
those creatures have not fallen.
This is not to say that Luther has no significant convictions concerning nature
that he brings with him to the interpretation of biblical texts. He does have such
convictions, as we have already seen in his commentary on John and as we now
must consider in some detail. When we do, we will be able to observe a kind of
asymmetrical relationship between the formal and the material elements of Luther’s
hermeneutic. The two are symmetrical insofar as both are the-anthropocentric. The
notion of God speaking to the individual believer, undergirded by the accent on the
sensibility of hearing, on the one hand, and the themes of the cross and justification
by faith, on the other hand, fit together perfectly, since both these formal and material
elements have to do, focally, with God and humanity and since the larger world of
nature in this respect is peripheral. But the material elements of Luther’s hermeneutic
174 Ecological Hermeneutics

are also more comprehensive than his the-anthropocentrism appears to allow. In a

variety of contexts, Luther gives direct attention to, indeed, he tends to be fascinated
with, the whole world of nature.
Luther, on occasion, can speak powerfully of the immanence of God in nature, of
the Creator’s majestic presence ‘in, with and under’ all the creatures of the natural
world. Luther can envision the whole creation as the ‘mask of God’ (WA XL.1, 94).
This means, for Luther, that God is hidden there. But it also means that God is
powerfully present there. Luther thinks of the Creator as being ‘with all creatures,
flowing and pouring into them, filling all things’ (WA X, 143). For Luther, therefore,
creation is not merely some transcendental event before the beginning of time. The
Divine act of creation is also now, as we saw in Luther’s commentary on John 1. In
this connection, Luther has a rich and sophisticated, albeit paradoxical, understand-
ing of the dynamism of the divine immanence:

God is substantially present everywhere, in and through all creatures, in all their parts and
places, so that the world is full of God and He fills all, but without His being encompassed
and surrounded by it. He is at the same time outside and above all creatures. These are all
exceedingly incomprehensible matters; yet they are articles of our faith and are attested clearly
and mightily in Holy Scripture . . . For how can reason tolerate it that the Divine Majesty
is so small that it can be substantially present in a grain, on a grain, through a grain, within
and without, and that, although it is a single Majesty, it nevertheless is entirely in each grain
separately, no matter how immeasurably numerous these grains may be? . . . And that the
same Majesty is so large that neither this world nor a thousand worlds can encompass it and
say: ‘Behold, there it is!’ . . . His own divine essence can be in all creatures collectively and
in each one individually more profoundly, more intimately, more present than the creature
is in itself, yet it can be encompassed nowhere and by no one. It encompasses all things and
dwells in all, but not one thing encompasses it and dwells in it. (WA XXIII, 134.34–136.36,
cited by Bornkamm 1965: 189)

How then does Luther think of the individual believer’s relationship to the whole
world of nature thus charged with the powerful presence of God? He gives a variety
of answers to this question.
First, for Luther there is, as it were, no direct line of communion between the
believer and the God who is in, with and under the larger world of nature. That
God is masked. Indeed, for Luther, that God – ‘the Majesty’ as we have heard him
say – is terrifying. So Luther counsels the believer always to seek God in the Word
of the cross, not in nature.
Second, the believer – along with all other humans – will, as a matter of course,
encounter the whole world of nature as cursed by God. Twenty-first-century ears
may not be attuned to such language, but Luther takes it very seriously. The curse
of God is the heritage of the fall of Adam and Eve, as Luther sees it. Especially in
his Genesis commentary, Luther can describe sinful humanity’s relationship with the
world of nature in great and vivid detail.
 Martin Luther, the Word of God and Nature 175

[T]he earth, which is innocent and committed no sin, is nevertheless compelled to endure a
curse . . . [I]t will be freed from this on the Last Day, for which it is waiting . . . [Under the
curse,] in the first place, it does not bring forth the good things it would have produced if
man had not fallen. In the second place, it produces many harmful plants, which it would
not have produced, such as darnel, wild oats, weeds, nettles, thorns, thistles. Add to these the
poisons, the injurious vermin, and whatever else there is of this kind. All these things were
brought in through sin (LW I, 204).

Further, Luther believed that the curse was made more severe following the time of
what he reckoned to have been the flood and, indeed, that the effects of the curse
of God on nature were being felt with increasing severity in the days at the end of
the world in which Luther believed that he was living: ‘The world is deteriorating
from day to day’ (LW I, 206). So Luther concludes: ‘The closer the world is to its
end, the worse human beings become. For this reason it also happens that harsher
punishments are exacted from us’ (LW I, 216).
Thirdly, and in marked contrast with his ideas of nature as the mask of – the hidden
– God and nature as cursed by God because of human sin, Luther from time to time
gives voice to paeans of praise for the goodness of God in creation (Gregersen 2005).
Luther’s well-known words in his explanation of the first article of the Apostles’
Creed are typical of many other utterances, especially in his Genesis commentary:

I believe that God has created me and all that exists; that he has given me and still sustains my
body and soul, all my limbs and sense, my reason and all the faculties of my mind, together
with goods and clothing, house and home, family and property; that he provides me daily
and abundantly with all the necessities of life, protects me from all danger, and preserves me
from all evil. All this he does out of his pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy, without
any merit or worthiness on my part. (1959 [‘Small Catechism’]: 345)

In the same vein, Luther sees the creative Word of God providing the grain that
sustains human life:

We are . . . to praise and thank God for making the grain to grow. We are to recognize that
it is not our work but His blessing and gift that grain, wine, and all kinds of crops grow,
for us to eat and drink and use for our needs, as is shown in the Lord’s Prayer when we say:
‘Give us this day our daily bread’ . . . [W]hen we see a whole field or one grain, we should
recognize not only God’s goodness but also His power . . . And with [that] great power He
protects you [Luther says to the wheat itself]! What dangers have you not survived from the
hour when you were sown until you are put on the table! (LW XIV, 122)

In this sense, for Luther, the grace of God is experienced in both creation and
redemption.
This is the context, then, in which Luther’s various references to the creation as
a divinely made ‘building’ for the human creature should be understood. Luther
176 Ecological Hermeneutics

is thinking in such settings of the overflowing goodness of God in nature, rather

than some kind of property that is given to human creatures to own for their own
purposes. True, Luther does restate a traditional theological view of human dominion
over the earth, dependent on the words of Gen. 1.28-30: ‘. . . you must use the things
given and granted to you by God in His kindness. You must rule, work, and strive not
to tempt God’ (LW V, 256). But this kind of statement is never translated by Luther
into any kind of mandate for the economic transformation of nature.
As a citizen of the sixteenth century, moreover, Luther obviously did not have a
twenty-first-century ecological consciousness nor, with that, was he aware of the radi-
cal transformations and, indeed, desecrations of nature that would result from the
triumph of the spirit of modern capitalism. Nevertheless, Luther was highly critical
of many of the policies of early capitalism, particularly that system’s exploitation of
the poor. Luther’s best ethical counsel, indeed, was that believers should always focus
on serving the neighbour, which was an ethical stance that he distinguished from the
spirit of profit and the drive to acquire goods (Lindberg 2003). Luther understood
human ‘dominion’, then, primarily in terms of service to the neighbour in need, as
he wrote in his Genesis commentary: ‘God does not give out his gifts so that we
can rule and have power over others or so that we should spurn their opinion and
judgement: rather so that we should serve those who are in such a case as to need
our counsel and help’ (LW II, 239).
All this Luther can proclaim under the rubric of the sensibility of hearing. All
this is a theological inference, as it were, from the believer’s originating encounter
with the proclaimed Word of God. Directly, for Luther, as we have seen, there is no
access of any import to the knowledge of God in the world of nature. That would
be to enter the province of the theology of glory, in Luther’s view. Indeed, nature in
itself does, in fact, mask God. Moreover, it is God’s Majesty that is active in nature,
in overwhelmingly powerful ways, and no one can see the Majesty of God and live.
Still, Luther can celebrate the glorious power of God in, with and under nature, as
we have just seen, with a kind of mystical passion, however hidden he believes that
presence to be and however cursed nature might be, due to human sin. And Luther
can also consistently celebrate the blessings that God pours down on human creatures
throughout the world of nature.
Further, and strikingly, there are times when Luther seems to move beyond the
sensibility of hearing, which he treasures so much, to a kind of contemplation of
nature, which could only be born of the sensibility of seeing. This is no theology of
glory, in his terms. It is something else.
First, it has to do with what appears to be, for Luther, the new, sanctified life of
the believer, who has been justified by faith and who has then received the gift of
the Spirit. Redeemed existence, in this sense, seems to bring with it, as Luther thinks
about it, a new and more vital, even a contemplative relationship with the whole
world of nature. So Luther writes in his commentary on John:

Now if I believe in God’s Son and bear in mind that He became man, all creatures will appear
 Martin Luther, the Word of God and Nature 177

a hundred times more beautiful to me than before. Then I will properly appreciate the sun,
the moon, the stars, trees, apples, pears, as I reflect that he is Lord over and the center of all
things. (LW XXII, 496)

By 1544, in a sermon, Luther can even somewhat self-consciously shift his discourse
from the sensibility of hearing to the sensibility of seeing, alluding as he does to the
traditional theological image of the two books of God, the book of Scripture and
the book of nature:

Our home, farm, field, garden, and everything, is full of Bible, where God through his won-
drous works not only preaches, but also knocks on our eyes, touches our senses, and somehow
enlightens our hearts. (WA XLIX, 434, quoted by Gregersen 2005: 28)

In the very last year of his life, remarkably, Luther as a matter of course invokes
the sensibility of seeing, as he writes a notation in a volume of Pliny’s works: ‘All
creation is the most beautiful book or Bible; in it God has described and portrayed
Himself’ (WA XLVIII, 201.5-6, quoted by Bornkamm 1965: 179). In this sense, for
Luther, the justified sinner who has heard the Word of the cross can begin to see
nature with new eyes.
Secondly, from this perspective as a redeemed creature in Christ, Luther also seems
to have found a way to see the world as God originally intended it to be, ‘before the
fall’. Luther at times can present an almost Franciscan vision of that primal human
identity in nature, particularly with regard to human corporeality. So in his Genesis
commentary, where countless doctors of the church had sung the praises of human
rationality, under the rubric of the image of God, Luther states that the fact that
Adam and Eve walked about naked was their greatest adornment before God and all
creatures. In the same vein, Luther envisions Adam and Eve as enjoying a ‘common
table’ with the animals before the fall (LW I, 42).
Thirdly, Luther further envisions the sanctified life of the believer, who has been
justified by faith, as standing on the threshold of the eschatologically consummated
creation. In the following utterance, the sensibility of seeing has definitely taken over
Luther’s thinking. And his eschatological consciousness has here been shaped by hope
and joy, as distinct from the moods of fear and foreboding which sometimes seem to
inform Luther’s mind and heart most deeply, especially when he is agonizing about
the curse of God on nature:

We are now living in the dawn of the future life; for we are beginning to regain a knowledge
of the creation, a knowledge forfeited by the fall of Adam. Now we have a correct view of the
creatures, more so, I suppose, than they have in the papacy. Erasmus does not concern himself
with this; it interests him little how the fetus is made in the womb . . . But by God’s mercy we
can begin to recognize His wonderful works and wonders also in flowers when we ponder
his might and goodness. Therefore we laud, magnify, and thank him. (WA [Tischreden]: I,
1160, cited by Bornkamm 1965: 184)
178 Ecological Hermeneutics

All this Luther sees – the proper word – coming together and majestically transfigured
on the Day of the consummation of all things, beyond every hint of Divine judgement:

Then there will also be a new heaven and a new earth, the light of the moon will be as the light of
the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold . . . That will be a broad and beautiful heaven
and a joyful earth, much more beautiful and joyful than Paradise was. (LW XII, 119, 121)

This vision of the end time articulates and completes Luther’s occasionally lavish
statements about the sanctified life of the justified sinner in the world of nature.

III

At this point the historical task ends. But it may be helpful to ask, as a postscript,
how, if at all, Luther’s hermeneutic of nature might be appropriated by theologians
today. Some individual themes would probably need to be reconfigured, such as
Luther’s suggestive but underdeveloped treatment of human dominion on the earth or
his passionate, yet, to most moderns (we may imagine), perplexing view of the divine
curse of the earth. Other themes, such as Luther’s rich theology of divine immanence,
would doubtlessly commend themselves for deeper exploration.6
But the greatest challenge for theologians who may wish to claim Luther’s
hermeneutic of nature as their own today would undoubtedly be coming to terms
with what might be called the the-anthropocentric axis of his theology. That axis
tends to drive Luther’s vivid attestations to God in nature and to nature itself to the
outer edges of his thought or out of the picture altogether, as a matter of consistent
emphasis, if in no other way – a tendency which would become the rule as Luther’s
thought was appropriated by many of his theological heirs (Santmire 1985: 121–43).
This is the legacy of the asymmetrical character of the formal and material elements
of his hermeneutic.
This would be the challenge, then: to explore whether the axis of his thought could
be construed two-dimensionally. Could it be construed both in terms of God and
humanity and in terms of God and nature, that is, both the-anthropocentrically and,
to introduce a parallel term, the-cosmocentrically? This, in order to bring Luther’s
rich affirmations about God and nature and nature itself into the centre of the theo-
logical narrative. Which could thereby have the positive effect of allowing the formal
and the material elements of Luther’s hermeneutic to bond much more symmetrically
than the single axis of God and humanity permits. The heart of theological narrative
would then be this: the story of God and humanity, on the one hand, and the story
of God and the whole world of nature, on the other – all viewed as one unfolding
narrative of the divine economy.

6 For one attempt to develop Luther’s theology of divine immanence systematically in the
context of the theology of nature, see Santmire 2008, especially 108–31.
 Martin Luther, the Word of God and Nature 179

To this end, following some of Luther’s own affirmations and perhaps building
all the more so on the insights of Calvin (see Dyrness 2004; Zachman 2007), the
fundamentally the-anthropocentric sensibility of hearing in Luther’s thought could
be reconfigured as a sensibility of hearing-and-seeing. This would allow us to
envision nature from the vantage point of the justified sinner now being sanctified,
to see nature with new eyes. Inspired by the Spirit, we would then be enabled to
contemplate nature as Calvin did, as ‘the theater of God’s glory’ (Schreiner 1991),
in a way that would disclose its divinely charged beauty and goodness and mystery,
but which would steer clear of any kind of theology of glory. This would be a
theology of seeing through a glass darkly, but seeing nevertheless, all in the context
of hearing-faith. And this would be the vision: the whole of nature at the centre of
things, along with humanity.7
The new the-cosmocentric dimension of the theological axis could be further
secured with the introduction of a theological theme that seems to be totally missing
from Luther’s thought – and from much of the theological tradition as well – the
integrity of nature (Santmire 1985). This is the theme, arguably biblical, that God
has purposes for the whole creation, and for all the creatures that dwell therein,
purposes which are independent of the divine purposes with humanity alone
(Santmire 1970: 133–39). Given with this theme, too, would be the notion of nature’s
mysterious otherness and, indeed, its virtual incomprehensibility in the larger scheme
of things, a thought that could easily be undergirded by drawing on Luther’s vision
of the hidden God in, with and under the whole world of nature. Human salvation
would still be a central theme in this reconfiguration, as it was for Luther, but with
this understanding, which Luther himself affirmed exegetically: according to the
Pauline image, we would hear and see the whole creation groaning in travail, wait-
ing in hope for the liberation of the human creature and then, finally, for the divine
consummation of all things.

References

Bayer, O. 2003 ‘Luther as an Interpreter of Scripture’, in D.K. McKim (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Martin Luther (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 73–85.
Blumenberg, H. 1993 ‘Light as a Metaphor for Truth: At the Preliminary Stage of Philosophical
Concept Formation’, in D.M. Levin (ed.), Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (Berkeley:
University of California): 30–62.
Bornkamm, H. 1965 Luther’s World of Thought (tr. M. H. Bertram; St. Louis: Concordia).
Chidester, D. 1992 Word and Light: Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse (Urbana: University
of Chicago Press).

7 Obviously, this kind of formulation would have to be explicated in a variety of ways, if

it were to be theologically satisfactory. One particularly critical issue would be to address
human embodiment in nature and whether, or in what respect, it is possible to talk about
the embodied human self as transcending nature, as nature is here understood.
180 Ecological Hermeneutics

Dyrness, W.A. 2004 Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant Imagination from Calvin
to Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Gregersen, N.H. 2005 ‘Grace in Nature and History: Luther’s Doctrine of Creation Revisited’,
Dialog 44: 19–29.
Hagen, K. 1993 Luther’s Approach to Scripture as Seen in his ‘Commentaries’ on Galatians
1519–1538 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck).
Isaac, G.L. 2001 ‘The Changing Image of Luther as Biblical Expositor’, in T. Maschke, F. Posset and
J. Skocir (eds), Ad Fontes Lutheri: Toward the Recovery of the Real Luther: Essays in Honor
of Kenneth Hagen’s Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press): 67–85.
Koerner, J. 2004 The Reformation of the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago).
Levin, D.M. (ed.) 1993 Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (Berkeley: University of California).
Lindberg, C. 2003 ‘Luther’s Struggle With Social-Ethical Issues’, in D.K. McKim (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 165–78.
Lohse, B. 1999 Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development (tr. and ed.
R.A. Harrisville; Minneapolis: Fortress).
Luther, M. Luther’s Works [LW] (ed.) J. Pelikan and H. Lehman (St Louis/Philadelphia: Concordia/
Muhlenberg 1955–1976).
Luther, M. 1959 ‘Small Catechism’, in T.G. Tappert (tr. and ed.), The Book of Concord (Philadelphia:
Fortress).
Luther, M. Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe [WA] (Weimar 1883–2005).
Maschke, T. 2001 ‘Contemporaneity: A Hermeneutical Perspective in Martin Luther’s Work’, in
T. Maschke, F. Posset and J. Skocir (eds), Ad Fontes Lutheri: Toward the Recovery of the Real
Luther: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Hagen’s Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press): 165–82.
McGrath, A.E. 1985 Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough
(Oxford/New York: Basil Blackwell).
Miles, M. 1985 Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture
(Boston: Beacon).
Oberman, H. 2001 ‘Martin Luther Contra Medieval Monasticism: A Friar in the Lion’s Den’, in
T. Maschke, F. Posset and J. Skocir (eds), Ad Fontes Lutheri: Toward the Recovery of the Real
Luther: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Hagen’s Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press): 183–213.
Pelikan, J. 1959 Luther the Expositor: Introduction to the Reformer’s Exegetical Writings (St Louis:
Concordia). Companion volume to Luther, M., 1959 Luther’s Works.
Pesch, O.H. 1970 ‘Existential and Sapiential Theology: The Theological Confrontation Between
Luther and Thomas Aquinas’, in J. Wicks (ed.), Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther
(Chicago: Loyola University Press): 61–81.
Santmire, H.P. 1970 Brother Earth: Nature, God, and Ecology in a Time of Crisis (New York:
Thomas Nelson).
Santmire, H.P. 1985 The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian
Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress).
Santmire, H.P. 2008 Ritualizing Nature: Renewing Christian Liturgy in a Time of Crisis (Minneapolis:
Fortress).
Schreiner, S.E. 1991 The Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of
John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Baker).
Schwanke, J. 2004 ‘Luther on Creation’, in T.J. Wengert (ed.), Harvesting Martin Luther’s Reflections
on Theology, Ethics, and the Church, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans): 78–98.
Steinmetz, D. 1993 ‘Luther and Loyola’, Interpretation 67: 5–14.
Zachman, R.C. 2007 Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin (Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame).
 Chapter 13

‘Remaining Loyal to the Earth’: Humanity, God’s

Other Creatures and the Bible in Karl Barth

Geoff Thompson

Introduction

In the opening pages of his anthropology, Karl Barth (1886–1968) offered the follow-
ing warning in relation to a proper Christian account of the human creature: ‘If we
forget that he must remain loyal to the earth, we shall never truly understand him’.
(CD III/2: 4).1 This statement may seem to offer a surprisingly promising beginning
for a chapter on Barth’s theology in the present volume. Surprising, because so
many of Barth’s leading ideas and doctrinal commitments, not least those related
to his reading of the Bible, would initially seem to be deeply problematic in any
conversation about the Bible, Christian theology and environmental ethics. Critics
would point to his sustained polemic against ‘natural theology’, his designation of
creation as the ‘external’ basis of the covenant (with its prima facie suggestion of
an instrumentalist posture towards creation), his emphasis on the covenant between
God and humanity and his insistence that the biblical witness is centred on Jesus
Christ’s fulfilment of that covenant. In fact, such critics would not be surprised to
find that in the early pages of his doctrine of creation Barth writes that ‘man is and
represents the secret of the creature’ (CD III/1: 18). Indeed, taken on their own, this
cluster of views could seem at once to locate him among the proponents of precisely
that kind of Christian theology which is said to be culpable for the contemporary
environmental crisis (e.g. White 1967). In fact, Barth’s theology might well be taken
as a prime instance of the ‘long anthropocentric, patriarchal, and androcentric
approach to reading the text that has devalued the Earth’ (Habel 2008: 1).
Yet, even granting certain prima facie impressions of Barth’s theology, the
concerns of Barth and the ecotheologians do overlap at one point: they share a
sustained critique of and resistance to anthropocentrism. Of course, their respec-
tive motivations for such critique and resistance are as divergent as are their
endpoints. Nevertheless it does make for an interesting point of entry for Barth into

1 All references to Barth’s Church Dogmatics will be indicated in parentheses in the main body
of the text in the format, either CD or KD vol/part: page(s). Full bibliographical details are
included in the References under Barth 1945, 1956, 1957a, 1958, 1960.
182 Ecological Hermeneutics

contemporary ecotheological debates. Indeed, both his christological understanding

of the Bible and his powerful Nein to natural theology – the very moves which might
be taken as confirming his place among the ‘long anthropocentric reading of the
text’ – are themselves significantly shaped by his particular critique and rejection
of anthropocentrism. Of course, Barth did not respond to anthropocentrism by
devaluing the human or by turning his attention to the non-human world. Instead,
he exposed the anthropocentric tendencies which had taken hold in some of the basic
presuppositions of the prevailing theology, not least in the reading of the Bible, and
then proceeded to develop a theology freed from those tendencies. What follows in
this chapter will, therefore, be an exploration of Barth’s own diagnosis of anthropo-
centric tendencies in Christian theology and of how his own christocentric theology
– which was itself based on a certain way of reading the Bible – led to a particular
account of the human person, the natural world and the relationships between them.
This will involve going well beyond the prima facie impressions of Barth’s theology.

Uncovering Anthropocentrism

Introductions to Barth’s theology are replete with accounts of his break with the
liberal Protestant theology in which he had been formed during his theological
education. His epochal commentaries on Romans, his shift from the pastorate
to academia and his growing commitment to the task of dogmatics are all well
documented.2 Key developments in this intellectual conversion and its aftermath
included his discovery that ‘within the Bible there is a strange, new world, the world
of God’ (Barth 1957b: 33), his ‘recognition of what Kierkegaard called the “infinite
qualitative distinction” between time and eternity’ (Barth 1933: 10) and his unfolding
commitment to theology as the science of God rather than of the religious experience
of human beings. Indeed, it is this latter point which more than any other crystallizes
the central issue at stake and was pithily summed up in one of his frequently quoted
statements: ‘one cannot speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice’
(Barth 1957c: 196).
It is tempting to read these various aspects of Barth’s theology as merely episodes
in an academically domesticated discussion about theological method. Yet Barth’s
theological reorientation was set within a much broader cultural horizon. For
Barth, anthropocentrism was not simply a methodological foible of certain allegedly
misguided Christian theologians – it was the symptom of an entire culture. In fact,
on Barth’s reading it was something of a compensatory, rearguard reaction precisely
to the implied loss of human status which accompanied the so-called advances of
modern thought, specifically those associated with the newly expanding awareness

2 For overviews of the genesis, development and content of Barth’s theology see, for example,
Busch 2004, Mangina 2004, Webster 2000. For the most comprehensive and authoritative
account of the nature of Barth’s break with liberalism, see McCormack 1995.
 ‘Remaining Loyal to the Earth’ 183

of the scale of the cosmos. Barth notes these developments in the fascinating second
and third chapters of his Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, the chap-
ters headed ‘Man in the Eighteenth Century’ and ‘The Problem in the Eighteenth
Century’. Although not published until 1947, this material had been presented as
lectures in 1932 and 1933. Barth acknowledges that the ‘eighteenth-century man . . .
could no longer remain ignorant of the significance of the fact that Copernicus
and Galileo were right, that this vast and rich earth of his, the theatre of his deeds
was not the centre of the universe, but a grain of dust amid countless others in the
universe’ (Barth 2001: 23). Did this lead to more modest accounts of the human, to
an ‘unprecedented and boundless humiliation of man’? According to Barth, quite
the contrary:

[N]o, man is all the greater for this, man is the centre of all things, in a quite different sense,
too, for he was able to discover this revolutionary truth by his own resources and to think it
abstractly . . .: clearly now the world was even more and properly so his world! It is paradoxi-
cal and yet it is a fact that the answer to his humiliation was those philosophical systems
of rationalism, empiricism and scepticism which made men even more self-confident. The
geocentric picture of the universe was replaced as a matter of course by the anthropocentric.
(Barth 2001: 23)

Intriguingly, Barth also notes in the same chapter that this same eighteenth-century
‘man’ did, in fact, have ‘very close ties with nature’ and that these ties ‘were far from
being simply of the kind which lead man to study nature scientifically and exploit
it for gain; they could also be felt and enjoyed aesthetically’ (Barth 2001: 41). Yet,
beyond this apparent ecological harmony Barth detects something less balanced:

It is, however, . . . a humanized nature, a nature which has been put to rights and formed in
accordance with man’s sensibility and enjoyment, an idealized, and more preferably a visibly
idealized nature . . .; a nature which even after the grooming it has had to endure is really
beautiful only when there is a Greek temple, a statue or a bust somewhere about which quite
unequivocally serves as a reminder of the lords of creation. (Barth 2001: 41)

Therefore, at least part of the background to Barth’s own constructive theology is a

keen awareness of the immodesty of modern Western humanity, and its willingness
to resist and indeed obscure its modest place in the universe. Of course, neither
this immodest humanity nor humanized nature were by themselves the presenting
issues in his theology. But the associated and consequent ‘attempt . . . to humanize
Christianity’ (Barth 2001: 110) was. Barth’s target was a Christianity tailored to the
capacity of the human. ‘Christianity’, he wrote, ‘was affirmed, but men affirmed it
with a secret sovereignty which already seemed to make it questionable whether
what was being affirmed was still Christianity’ (Barth 2001: 91). The willingness
of Christians – and Christian theologians – to exercise this ‘secret sovereignty’ had
produced a Christianity – and a Christian theology – in which ‘we have measured
184 Ecological Hermeneutics

God with our own measure, conceived of God with our own conceptions, wished
ourselves a God according to our own wishes’ (Barth 1957b: 47).
Consequently, Barth’s counter to modernity’s self-aggrandized human being was
neither a renewed geocentrism nor a simple subordination of the ‘human’ to the
‘divine’. Instead, Barth’s counter was a more christocentric Christianity – one in
which humanity’s proper place could be recognized – or, more exactly, was revealed
– in the unity of God and humanity in Jesus Christ. But in drawing Christian theology
away from what he perceived to be its compromise with modern anthropocentrism
Barth targeted two particular elements of the theology which on his reading were
symptomatic of its anthropocentric tendencies: its appeal to natural theology and
its dependence on the historicism of historical-critical exegesis. And in drawing
Christian theology towards what he believed was its true object, namely God
revealed in Jesus Christ, he proposed a theology which began not with nature but
with the biblical witness and which involved a way of reading that witness which
dislodged the interpreter from any position of hermeneutical sovereignty. These two
counter proposals – both driven in their own way by Barth’s critique of modern
anthropocentrism and theology’s compromise with it – had significant implications
for his engagement with what would become the pivotal resource for his doctrine
of creation, i.e. the creation narratives of Genesis. So, before turning to examine
Barth’s engagement with those texts, it will be important to explore his critique of
both natural theology and modern biblical hermeneutics.

Natural Theology

Barth’s critique of natural theology is broad-ranging, sustained and uncompromising.

Of his early engagements with these issues, the best known is his 1934 provocative
and somewhat intemperate rejoinder to Emil Brunner’s ‘Nature and Grace’ (Brunner
2002). Barth gave his rejoinder the simple title: ‘No! Answer to Emil Brunner’ (Barth
2002b). Another important early occasion for Barth’s evaluation and response to nat-
ural theology was his 1937/38 Gifford Lectures published in 1938 as The Knowledge
of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation.3 For
this brief engagement with Barth on natural theology I will refer firstly to the later
text, largely because it sets out the issues more systematically, before drawing on the
earlier text to make a more specific point.
In the Gifford Lectures, Barth takes up the theme of natural theology in the con-
text of an exposition of the Scots Confession. Here he presents natural theology as an
outright alternative to the Reformed faith (see Barth 1938: 1–4). What is of interest
for the present discussion, however, is that in his definition of natural theology he
relates it to a quite specific human posture towards its object. It consists, he indicates,

3 For Barth’s developed reflections on natural theology see CD II/1: 63–178.

 ‘Remaining Loyal to the Earth’ 185

of a knowledge of God and God’s connection with the world which ‘perhaps requires
and is capable of development and cultivation, but is none the less a knowledge which
man as man is master of, just as he is of chemical and astronomical knowledge’
(Barth 1938: 4). It is a knowledge of God – or at least a claim to the knowledge of
God – which ‘declares that man himself possesses the capacity and the power to
inform himself about God, the world and man’ (Barth 1938: 9). Then, in his exposi-
tion of the Confession’s first article on ‘the one God’, Barth points out that such a
confession, in contrast to the ‘mastery’ of natural theology, ‘means the limiting of
human self-assertion’ (Barth 1938: 17). Barth notes that while the denial of this
confession and the voice of human self-assertion which accompanies it was indeed
‘heard and obeyed long before the time of Descartes’, nevertheless the ‘Cartesian
revolution’ gave particular licence to this phenomenon. So, employing the same
language already developed in his lectures on nineteenth-century theology he writes:

The modern world has failed to hear the warning of the Reformed confession precisely at this
point and has thought fit to exchange the medieval conception of the world as geocentric for
the much more naïve conception of the world as anthropocentric. (Barth 1938: 17)

For Barth, therefore, although essentially a spiritual issue which constantly threatens
the confession of faith, natural theology comes into particular relief in the modern
era. It both reflects and feeds on a human self-assertion which is part of an anthropo-
centric conception of the world. But for Barth, the theological issues are deeper still.
For if the human creature positions itself to stand in judgement on God, can it really
be God who is the object of the judgement? This is one of the issues which Barth
presses upon Brunner and in doing so makes it clear that it is inseparable from the
question of theological method. This concern is reflected in the following definition
of natural theology.

By ‘natural theology’ I mean every (positive or negative) formulation of a system which

claims to be theological, i.e., to interpret divine revelation, whose subject, however, differs
fundamentally from the revelation in Jesus Christ and whose method therefore differs equally
from the exposition of Holy Scripture. (Barth 2002b: 74)

A different method of theology implies a different divine subject.4 Thus the theologi-
cal issues at stake in the matter of where theological work begins and how it proceeds
could scarcely be higher. And it is exactly this concern which provides the background
to Barth’s objections to creation per se as divine revelation. Such appeals ‘differ
fundamentally’ from the revelation in Jesus Christ, and the attempt so to interpret
divine revelation is something which ‘differs’ from the exposition of Holy Scripture.

4 Eberhard Busch captures exactly this line of Barth’s thought: ‘The result [of natural theology]
is that God is not only known via another way, but is known as another God’ (Busch 2004:
177).
186 Ecological Hermeneutics

This is what Barth believed he encountered in Brunner’s suggestion that because God
‘leaves the imprint of his nature upon what he does’, it follows that ‘the creation of
the world is at the same time a revelation, a self-revelation of God’ (Brunner 2002:
25). Brunner maintained that there are ‘two revelations, that in creation and that
in Jesus Christ’ (Brunner 2002: 26) and that in the first the ‘creator is in some way
recognisable’ (Brunner 2002: 24). In his sharp response to these claims, Barth puts
this question to Brunner: ‘[I]f we really do know the true God from his creation
without Christ and without the Holy Spirit . . . how can it be said . . . that in matters
of the proclamation of the Church Scripture is the only norm . . .?’ (Barth 2002b: 82).
Barth’s insistence on looking to scripture instead of creation in order to interpret
revelation cannot, therefore, be reduced to merely an instance of a generic or polemical
Protestant appeal to the primacy of scripture. It is embedded in a set of concerns about
natural theology which in turn reflect wider concerns about ‘human self-assertion’
and a ‘secret human sovereignty’ exercised in a particularly strident way in modern
Western culture. Yet it turns out that the insistence on the primacy of scripture does not
by itself provide immediate relief from the anthropocentrism feeding natural theology.
For, on Barth’s analysis, the reading of the Bible governed by modern hermeneutics
reflected that same human assertion and those same claims to sovereignty.

The Bible and Its Interpretation

Explicit references to anthropocentrism do not feature in Barth’s engagement with

modern hermeneutics in the way they do in his rejection of natural theology. But
the issue of human posture towards God clearly does. In his seminal 1917 lecture,
‘The Strange New World within the Bible’, Barth suggests that the human question
which asks ‘What is within the Bible?’ has a ‘mortifying way of converting itself
into the opposing question, “Well what are you looking for, and who are you, pray,
who make bold to look?”’(Barth 1957b: 32). The same inversion of the human and
divine which was at issue in the discussion of natural theology repeatedly comes to
the surface in Barth’s various reflections on the Bible and hermeneutics. The inflated
humanity which affects the reading of the Bible involves a displacement of the true
object of interpretation. Countering this, again to quote the 1917 lecture, Barth has
the Bible speak back to the modern interpreter with these words: ‘You wanted to be
mirrored in me, and now you have really found in me your own reflection. But now
I bid you come seek me as well’ (Barth 1957b: 33).
Of course, as Barth’s reflections deepen and develop the stress will fall on the
fact that it is God who speaks through the Bible. Indeed, it was this conviction
that lay behind his early wrestling with historical criticism. It came to the fore in
his commentaries on Romans and was the focus of Barth’s response to his critics
in his preface to the second edition. Barth’s point was that the historical critics, by
confining themselves to literary, archaeological and philological matters in order to
understand Paul, stopped short of the very thing, die Sache, which preoccupied Paul
 ‘Remaining Loyal to the Earth’ 187

and propelled his writing, i.e. God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. Of such critics he thus
wrote: ‘Remaining at this level of the textual engagement they failed to recognize
the existence of any real substance at all, of any underlying problem, of any Word
in the words’ (Barth 1933: 9). Therefore, according to Barth, the ‘critical historian
needs to be more critical’ (Barth 1933: 8).5 Indeed, Barth notes an absence of any
real ‘struggling’ with the text on the part of modern exegetes.6 In fact, not to engage
this struggle is really to exclude God from the exegetical process. As such, in Bruce
McCormack’s summary of Barth’s critique, ‘exegesis . . . is made an independent
human activity, isolated from the process of knowing God’ (McCormack 2002: xx).
In contrast to such exegesis, Barth claims that the ‘matter contained in the text cannot
be released save by a creative straining of the sinews’ (Barth 1933: 8). The process of
interpretation is thus presented as a ‘conversation between the original record and
reader [which] moves around the subject matter’ (Barth 1933: 7).7 Yet ‘conversation’
seems more passive than the overall picture Barth presents of the act of interpretation.
In fact, it is more a two-way ‘struggle’ – as hinted at in the following passage from
the preface to the third edition. Here Barth combines in an active, dynamic way his
insistence on the given words of the text, the indispensability of interpretation, and
the real subject (or ‘heart’ or ‘spirit’) of the text:

Is there any way of penetrating the heart of a document . . . except on the assumption that its
spirit will speak to our spirit through the actual written words? This does not exclude criti-
cism of the letter by the spirit, which is indeed, unavoidable. It is precisely a strict faithfulness
which compels us to expand and abbreviate the text, lest a too rigid attitude to the words
should obscure that which is struggling to expression in them and which demands expression.
(Barth 1933: 18–19)

Despite their rudimentary nature, in these attempts to distinguish his approach from
that of the historical critics many of the contours of Barth’s developed understanding
of scripture and its interpretation are laid down. The arguments developed in the
debate about Romans will be extended to the whole Bible.8 It is a human word which
manifestly requires interpretation, and exactly as this interpretable word it bears

5 Barth’s point here is crystallized by Bruce McCormack: ‘[I]f the texts that the exegete con-
fronts are essentially witness, proclamation, then a truly “scientific” approach to exegesis
will seek methods and strategies in accordance with their true character’ (McCormack
2002: xx).
6 See Barth 1933: 7. The reference here is to Adolf Jülicher whom Barth cites as typical of
modern exegetes.
7 On this see John Webster’s description of Barth’s account of the interpretation of scripture
as ‘an episode in the communicative history of God with us’ (Webster 2001: 93).
8 For the extended texts in which this development can be seen, see his discussion of the
Reformed scripture principle in Barth 2002a: 38–64 and the account of ‘Holy Scripture’ in
CD I/2: 457–740.
188 Ecological Hermeneutics

witness to God’s revelation.9 God speaks in sovereign freedom – but not arbitrarily:
the canonical witness is the ‘sphere’ where God has spoken and the ‘same sphere’
where God ‘has thereby promised to speak anew’ (Barth 2003: 66).10 In order to hear
this Word of the sovereign God, the interpreter must eschew ‘our usual self-assured
mastery’ (CD I/2: 470) of the text and our ‘evil domination of the text’ (CD I/2: 471).
Assuming this more modest but still engaged posture towards the text

there can be no question of our achieving, as we do in others, the confident approach

which masters and subdues the matter. It is rather a question of our being gripped by the
subject-matter . . . so that it is only as those who are mastered by the subject-matter, who
are subdued by it, that we can investigate the humanity of the word by which it is told us.
(CD I/2: 470)

Above all, however, this divine revelation, the ‘subject matter’ which ‘struggles to
expression’ will be more explicitly defined as the Word of God spoken in Jesus Christ
as the fulfilment of the covenant between God and humanity. It is this which – at
least from the perspective of biblical scholars, and by extension that of the ecotheo-
logians – is arguably the most problematic aspect of Barth’s theology of scripture:
Jesus Christ – either in expectation or recollection – is the subject matter of all the
texts of scripture. ‘Scripture . . . is the witness of the Old and New Testaments, the
witness of the expectation and recollection, the witness of the preparation and the
accomplishment of the revelation achieved in Jesus Christ’ (CD I/2: 481).
These various convictions about the Bible and the rejection of natural theology
have deep and manifold foundations. Nevertheless, their respective features and
accents were shaped, in part, by a common, if varying, dependence on Barth’s
rejection of the anthropocentrism which he detected in modern Western culture and
which he believed had been wrongly appropriated by modern Protestant theologians.
Eventually, they converge in quite striking ways in the first part of Barth’s doctrine
of creation, involving as it does detailed exegesis of the Genesis creation narratives.
Yet for all the reasons discussed at the outset of this chapter, the very moves which
Barth makes to resist anthropocentrism may end up producing his own version of
it. To examine this possibility, it is now necessary to turn to the first part of the third
volume of the Church Dogmatics, and to Barth’s doctrine of creation.11

9 On the ‘humanity’ of the Bible see especially CD I/2: 462–72. For a critical discussion of
the theological foundations and hermeneutical consequences of the category of ‘witness’ see
Wood 2007: 137–49.
10 The relationship between God’s sovereign freedom and the texts through which God
speaks is helpfully summarised by Francis Watson in his reference to the ‘Reality’ of God’s
self-revelation ‘preceding the text yet articulating itself through the text’ (Watson 2002: li).
11 The present discussion is necessarily limited to this single doctrinal locus not only for reasons
of space, but also to focus more directly on the links between this text, hermeneutics and
Barth’s earlier critique of anthropocentrism. For a longer and doctrinally more comprehen-
sive engagement with Barth on issues of environmental ethics see Jenkins 2008.
 ‘Remaining Loyal to the Earth’ 189

The Doctrine of Creation

The distinctiveness of Barth’s doctrine of creation stems precisely from its christologi-
cal foundation. For all the reasons he resists natural theology, he resists any secular
knowledge of creation which might offer itself as an apologetic foundation for
Christian theology. Instead, ‘the knowledge of creation, of the Creator, and of the
creature, is a knowledge of faith and that here too the Christian doctrine is a doctrine
of faith’ (CD III/1: 28). Fundamentally, ‘Jesus Christ is the key to the secret of crea-
tion’ (CD III/1: 28), and for that reason creation has a quite particular telos: ‘God
wills and God creates the creature for the sake of His Son or Word and therefore in
harmony with Himself’ (CD III/1: 59). As with all God’s works, creation has ‘in view
the institution, preservation and execution of the covenant of grace, for partnership
in which He has predestined and called man’ (CD III/1: 43). It ‘sets the stage for the
story of the covenant of grace’ (CD III/1: 44).
These broad doctrinal claims prompt at least two critical questions. First, given
his commitment to the primacy of scripture, how has Barth actually drawn this
christological account of creation from scripture? Secondly, does creation’s status as
the ‘external’ basis of, or the ‘stage’ for, the covenant between humanity and God
betray a de facto separation of creation from covenant and therefore a separation of
humanity from the rest of creation?

Creation and Covenant in the Genesis Narratives

Several factors combine to shape Barth’s reading of the Genesis narratives within
the framework of the expectation of Jesus Christ. As noted above, that this is the
subject matter of the text neither negates the humanity of the word nor prohibits the
investigation of that word. Nor does it determine the exegetical outcomes in advance
or suggest that Jesus Christ is somehow immediately transparent in these texts. So,
respect for the text’s divine subject and a commitment to its human word combine
in an investigation which involves Barth giving maximal hermeneutical weight to the
canonical context, making certain judgements about the genre of the material, and
drawing on the source-critical observation of two distinct narratives.
Recognition of the canonical context means first that the reader of the Genesis nar-
ratives must not ignore those texts’ connection with ‘what follows in the Pentateuch
and the rest of the Old Testament’ (CD III/1: 64). In fact the ‘decisive commentary
on the biblical histories of creation is the rest of the Old Testament’ (CD III/1: 65).
Secondly, that Genesis 1 and 2 speak of the Creator is, for the Christian theologian,
to immediately bring them into connection with those New Testament passages (e.g.
Col. 1.17; Jn 1.1; 1 Jn 2.13-14; Col. 1.15; Heb. 1.2) which speak of the ‘ontological
connection between Christ and creation’ (CD III/1: 51) and in which ‘the position,
dignity and power of the Creator . . . are unquestionably ascribed to Christ’ (CD
III/1: 51). It is these large-scale canonical-hermeneutical moves which form the basis
of his claim that creation and covenant are a particular kind of unity.
190 Ecological Hermeneutics

Barth designates the genre of these narratives as ‘saga’ in order to distinguish them
from ‘myth’ and ‘history’. This designation itself already reflects the convergence of
doctrinal and exegetical considerations, and the theological issues at stake are very
significant.12 In fact, far from being a theologically neutral discussion about literary
forms the discussion about saga is a theologically freighted discussion which is not
unrelated to Barth’s claims about the unity of the Bible’s subject matter. It therefore
plays a role in Barth’s discussion about the unity of creation and covenant. Crucial
in all of this is Barth’s general claim about the nature of revelation as portrayed
across scripture: ‘According to Scripture, there are no timeless truths, but all truths
according to Scripture are specific acts of God’ (CD III/1: 60). Therefore, with its
emphasis on timeless truths, myth cannot bear witness to the truth of creation (itself
an ‘historical’ event because an act of the God of Scripture). On the other hand, saga
bears witness to the historical element of creation without being reduced to the his-
toricist stress on ‘that which is accessible to man because it is visible and perceptible’
(CD III/1: 78). Because it is an event, but without human witnesses, creation belongs
to that ‘history (Geschichte) which we cannot see and comprehend’ and which ‘is
not history in the historicist sense’ (keine historische Geschichte). Rather, it is a
‘“non-historical” history’ (unhistorische Geschichte, CD III/1: 78; KD III/1: 86). It
is to such ‘history’ that saga bears witness. As David Ford notes, Barth’s discussion
of saga connects the creation narratives ‘with the rest of the Bible on the basis of
form and content’ (Ford 1985: 108).
If Barth has argued for the unity of creation and covenant by appealing to the
canonical framework and by the discussion of saga, he draws a distinction between
them by building on the observation that there are clearly two distinct creation nar-
ratives. The Priestly narration of the history of creation is focused on the Creator’s
creative work itself, the culmination of which is not the creation of human beings
on the sixth day but God’s rest on the seventh: ‘The goal of creation, and at the
same time the beginning of all that follows is the event of God’s Sabbath freedom’
which is ‘His invitation to man to rest with Him’ (CD III/1: 98). Because oriented
to this goal, creation itself, therefore, ‘prepares and establishes the sphere in which
the institution and history of the covenant take place’ (CD III/1: 97). On the other
hand, the Yahwist’s narrative points in a more focused way to the human being and
the Creator in relationship. Crucial to Barth’s reading of this second narrative is the
setting of the human creature in the garden prepared by God. The garden is ‘God’s
sanctuary’ (CD III/1: 254) and it is here that the human creature is brought into the
divine rest – the ‘rest of his normal existence in relation to his Creator and to the earth
as the creaturely sphere’ (CD III/1: 251). This (and even more so once the creature
is differentiated between male and female) is covenantal life: it is to ‘hold fellowship

12 The key focus of critical discussion is Barth’s insistence contra Augustine on the temporality
of creation. On this and other critical issues regarding Barth’s doctrine of creation see Crisp
2006 and with particular reference to the role of the Genesis narratives see MacDonald
2000: 135–62.
 ‘Remaining Loyal to the Earth’ 191

with the Creator . . . in assuming by conscious spontaneous and active assent to His
divine decision’ (CD III/1: 265–66). On Barth’s reading, therefore, by being focused
on the various works of creation per se, the first narrative becomes the basis for
describing creation as the external basis of the covenant. The second narrative, by
being focused on the relationship between God and the human creature, becomes
the basis for describing the covenant as the internal basis of creation.

Humanity and the Rest of Creation

Does Barth’s appeal to creation as the ‘external’ basis of the covenant between God
and humanity or his description of creation as a ‘stage’ for the covenant betray an
unwitting return to the very anthropocentrism he resisted at so many points in his
theology? There is no doubt that taken on their own, these are problematic images.
Reflecting exactly such concerns in relation to Barth’s ‘stage’ metaphor it has recently
been claimed that ‘[c]reation has a God-given integrity and purposefulness and is not
simply a stage for the drama between God and human beings’ (McIntosh 2009: 27).13
Does the language of ‘externality’ and ‘stage’, however, fully express Barth’s under-
standing of the relationship between creation and covenant, and does it sanction a
new anthropocentrism? To answer these questions, our attention will turn to some
of the details of Barth’s exegesis of the creation narratives.
For the purposes of this present discussion it is very important to note that Barth
is explicitly aware of the potential for these texts to be misread anthropocentrically.
Moreover, he even differentiates between the tendencies to anthropocentricity of
the respective narratives. Perhaps most strikingly of all, he makes this judgement
in the course of introductory comments on the second narrative – the one that he
deems to be focused on the covenant between God and humanity. He points out not
only that this second saga ‘is not as anthropocentric as it is often made out to be’
(CD III/1: 235), but also that it is less anthropocentric than the first – the one which
he deemed to be focused on creation more generally. Barth displays a noticeable
sensitivity to the possibility of misusing these texts to magnify the human in relation
to both God and the rest of creation. This is most evident in his treatment of the
sagas’ respective accounts of the creation of the human.
In relation to Gen. 1.26-28 Barth shows no hesitation in affirming that the
human being has been given precedence by God not only over the firmament, the
earth, the constellations, the creatures of sea and air, but ‘also over his immediate
but very different fellow-animals within the one dwelling place’ (CD III/1: 177).
Indeed, the human is ‘more noble than these creatures’ (CD III/1: 177). Yet, within
this framework Barth makes two anti-anthropocentric exegetical moves. The first

13 By too readily accepting the ‘stage’ metaphor, McIntosh understates the full extent of Barth’s
evaluation of creation. Nevertheless, he offers an illuminating and important account of
human and animal relations in Barth based on Barth’s discussion of vegetarianism in CD
III/4: 351–56.
192 Ecological Hermeneutics

subverts any passivity or muteness on the part of the non-human creation which
might be suggested by the ‘stage’ metaphor. According to the saga the animals are
no less creatures of the will and Word of God than humans and therefore the human
is constantly surrounded by ‘the spectacle of a submission to this Word which, if it
is not free, is in its own way real and complete’ (CD III/1: 177). In fact, the human
creature finds itself addressed by its fellow animals as examples of a certain kind of
praise of the Creator and of creaturely limitation.

The creature precedes man in a self-evident praise of its Creator, in the natural fulfilment of
the destiny given to it at its creation, in the actual humble recognition and confirmation of its
creatureliness. It also precedes him in the fact that it does not forget but maintains its animal
nature, with its dignity and also its limitation, and thus asks man whether and to what extent
the same can be said of him. (CD III/1: 177)

This suggestion of the collective voice of the non-human animals at the very least
stretches the ‘stage’ metaphor, albeit without completely dislodging it.
The second move of note in relation to Gen. 1.26-28 is one which challenges any
crass instrumentalism which might be suggested by the stage metaphor. Although
Barth maintains that the human creature is God’s representative on earth, he insists
that there is no equality between divine and human lordship. This does not depend,
however, on any attempt to tone down what he explicitly acknowledges is the
strength of radah and kabash (even acknowledging certain violent overtones to the
latter). Instead, this limitation to human lordship is based on the fact that within
these verses there is ‘no expansion of human lordship beyond the animal kingdom’
(CD III/1: 205). Precisely because human lordship is limited it does not share in the
sovereignty of God’s lordship. It was, of course, some such human appropriation of
divine sovereignty which was a key target of Barth’s critique of modern anthropocen-
trism. Against this background, these particular observations lead to a sharp rejection
of attempts to invoke this text to justify claims for unlimited human lordship over
the earth14 and thereby to use it as a warrant for ‘such things as the tunnelling and
levelling of mountains, or the drying up or diversion of rivers’ (CD III/1: 206). Such
claims, Barth maintains, are ‘foreign to the passage’ (CD III/1: 205) and he sides
with those who have elsewhere described them as blasphemous (see CD III/1: 206).
It is in relation to Gen. 2.4b-7 that Barth draws the distinction between the
relative anthropocentricity of the two sagas. At issue is their respective accounts
of the relationship of the human creature to the world of vegetation. In contrast
to the anthropocentric tendency of the Priestly saga where the ‘world of vegeta-
tion was ordained and created only to be the food of men and animals’ (CD III/1:
235), the Yahwist narrative presents the human as the servant of the earth and its
vegetation. Indeed, Barth suggests that in this narrative, the latter ‘is a kind of end

14 Barth is here referring to the work of the Jewish commentator, B. Jacob.

 ‘Remaining Loyal to the Earth’ 193

in itself’ (CD III/1: 235). The creation of the human as the farmer and gardener fills
the ‘gap’ between the barren earth and its goal of fruitfulness. The human ‘is first
introduced only as the being who had to be created for the sake of the earth and to
serve it’ (CD III/1: 235). On the basis of this reading of these verses, Barth offers a
commentary which strikes a now-familiar anti-anthropocentric note: ‘In view of his
complete integration into the totality of the created order there can be no question of
a superiority of man supported by appeals to his special dignity, or of forgetfulness
not merely of a general but a very definite control of Yahweh-Elohim over man’ (CD
III/1: 235). Notably, this is followed not by an immediate shift to the human creature’s
corresponding responsibility to the Creator, but its responsibility to the earth: ‘In spite
of all the particular things that God may plan to do with him, in the first instance
man can only serve the earth and will continually have to do so’ (CD III/1: 235).
So, notwithstanding the relation with the Creator to which the human is sum-
moned, Barth presents the human creature as ‘completely integrated’ into the
‘totality’ of creation and as one who is summoned to ‘serve the earth’. ‘Integration’
and ‘servanthood’ do not undermine the particular uses to which Barth places the
language of ‘externality’ and ‘stage’, but the former do expose the limitations of
the latter as comprehensive summaries of Barth’s account of the status of creation.
Finally, the reference to the human as the servant of the earth echoes Barth’s
comment about ‘loyalty’ to the earth which was quoted at the outset of this chapter.
These themes of ‘loyalty’ and ‘service’ are never fully developed as independent, let
alone dominant, themes in Barth’s doctrine of creation. Nor do they obscure what
Barth points out as he turns to the doctrine of the creature per se in the second part
of his doctrine of creation: the human creature is indeed the ‘goal and centre’ of
the ‘gracious plan’ for which God created the universe (CD III/2: 14). This does
not mean, however, that the human can be understood as ‘the cosmos in nuce’
(CD III/2: 15). Nor does it mean that ‘our attitude to the wider creation [could] be
one of blindness, indifference or disparagement’ (CD III/2: 4). Besides the human,
says Barth, ‘there are other creatures posited by God and distinct from God, and
with their own dignity and right, and enveloped in the secret of their own relation to
their Creator’ (CD III/2: 4). As such, ‘loyalty’ and ‘service’ point to the proper mode
of the relationship between the human and these other creatures. Not to be loyal,
and not to serve, would be symptomatic of the human creature who had forgotten
its limits, forgotten to understand itself from the Word of God: ‘Man is a creature
in the midst of others which were directly created by God and exist independently
of man. The Word of God itself sees man in this context and within these appointed
limits’ (CD III/2: 4).

Conclusion

Perhaps because the themes of human ‘loyalty’ and ‘service’ to the non-human crea-
tion are never fully developed, Karl Barth’s theology is unlikely ever to be a major
194 Ecological Hermeneutics

resource for contemporary discussion of environmental ethics. Arguably, however, it

is not an insignificant resource for Christian theologians seeking to engage those dis-
cussions (cf. further Jenkins 2008). His alertness to the problem and the consequences
of anthropocentricity is acute, wide ranging and deeply rooted. He recognizes its
pervasiveness: the anthropocentricity which seeks to ‘humanize nature’ is the same
as that which seeks to ‘master the text’ of scripture. Of course, his own attempts to
resist such ‘mastery’ of the text will remain contested and controversial. Nevertheless,
his reading of the Bible as witness to Jesus Christ is multi-layered and – precisely
because it is a reading centred on Jesus Christ – deeply sensitive to the possibilities
of a humanity which refuses and resists its limits. At the very least, Barth’s theology
is a reminder that even in its classical expressions, far from necessarily legitimating
anthropocentrism and its devaluing of the environment, Christianity has its own
reasons for both refusing anthropocentrism and for valuing the environment.

References

Barth, K. 1933 Epistle to the Romans (6th edn; Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Barth, K. 1938 The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the
Reformation (London: Hodder and Stoughton).
Barth, K. 1945 Die kirchliche Dogmatik: Band 1: Die Lehre von der Schöpfung: Teil Eins (Zurich:
Evangelischer Verlag).
Barth, K. 1956 Church Dogmatics: Volume 1: The Doctrine of the Word of God: Part Two
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Barth, K. 1957a Church Dogmatics: Volume II: The Doctrine of God: Part One (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark).
Barth, K. 1957b ‘The Strange New World within the Bible’ in The Word of God and the Word of
Man (New York: Harper and Brothers): 28–50.
Barth, K. 1957c ‘The Word of God and the Task of the Ministry’ in The Word of God and the Word
of Man (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers): 183–217.
Barth, K. 1958 Church Dogmatics: Volume III: The Doctrine of Creation: Part One (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark).
Barth, K. 1960 Church Dogmatics: Volume III: The Doctrine of Creation: Part Two (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark).
Barth, K. 2001 Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History (London:
SCM).
Barth, K. 2002a The Theology of the Reformed Confessions (Louisville, KY: Westminster John
Knox).
Barth, K. 2002b ‘No! Answer to Emil Brunner’ in E. Brunner and K. Barth, Natural Theology:
Comprising ‘Nature and Grace’ by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply ‘No!’ by Dr.
Karl Barth (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock): 65–128.
Barth, K. 2003 ‘The Authority and the Significance of the Bible: Twelve Theses’ in God Here and
Now (London: Routledge): 55–74.
Brunner, E. 2002 ‘Nature and Grace’ in E. Brunner and K. Barth, Natural Theology: Comprising
‘Nature and Grace’ by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply ‘No!’ by Dr. Karl Barth
(Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock): 15–64.
Busch, E. 2004 The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans).
 ‘Remaining Loyal to the Earth’ 195

Crisp, O. 2006 ‘Karl Barth on Creation’, in S.W. Chung (ed.), Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology:
Convergences and Divergences (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic): 77–95.
Ford, D. 1985 Barth and God’s Story: Biblical Narrative and the Theological Method of Karl Barth
in the ‘Church Dogmatics’ (Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity, 27; Bern:
Peter Lang).
Habel, N. C. 2008 ‘Introducing Ecological Hermeneutics’ in N.C. Habel and P. Trudinger (eds),
Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature): 1–8.
Jenkins, W. 2008 Ecologies of Grace: Environmental Ethics and Christian Theology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
McCormack, B.L. 1995 Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and
Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
McCormack, B.L. 2002 ‘The Significance of Karl Barth’s Theological Exegesis of Philippians’ in
K. Barth, Epistle to the Philippians: 40th Anniversary Edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox): v–xxv.
MacDonald, N.B. 2000 Karl Barth and the Strange New World within the Bible: Barth, Wittgenstein
and the Metadilemmas of the Enlightenment (Paternoster Biblical and Theological
Monographs; Carlisle: Paternoster).
McIntosh. A. 2009 ‘Human and Animal Relations in the Theology of Karl Barth’, Pacifica 22: 20–35.
Mangina, J.L. 2004 Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness (Louisville, KY: Westminster John
Knox).
Watson, F. 2002 ‘Barth’s Philippians as Theological Exegesis’ in K. Barth, Epistle to the Philippians:
40th Anniversary Edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox): xxvi–li.
Webster, J. 2000 Barth (Outstanding Christian Thinkers; London: Continuum).
Webster, J. 2001 ‘Reading the Bible: The Example of Barth and Bonhoeffer’ in Word and Church:
Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark): 87–112.
White, L. Jr 1967 ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155: 1203–207.
Wood, D. 2007 Barth’s Theology of Interpretation (Barth Studies Series; Aldershot: Ashgate).
 Chapter 14

Hans Urs von Balthasar: Beginning with Beauty

David Moss

If we took [Balthasar] as seriously as he deserves, we would have to change

our lives.
(Donoghue 2004: 56)

I. Situating Balthasar

To my knowledge Hans Urs von Balthasar, through all his truly prodigious theo-
logical output, said little, if anything, about what we have learnt to call, and more
experience, as the environmental crisis today. For sure, there may be some sort of
biographical apologia for this. Balthasar died on 26 May 1988 and perhaps one
could enter the mitigating plea that even by the late 1980s the true challenge of our
situation, along with the impact of the environmental movement, still remained out of
view to many.1 After all, the Rio Earth Summit was still four years ahead. However,
Balthasar’s theological productivity only slightly diminished with his advancing
years, and when he came to review the main ‘trends of modern theology’ in the
introduction to Theo-drama I: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume I: Prolegomena
in 1983 (Balthasar 1988: 25–50), the manifestly dramatic impact that the fate of
the environment stands to have on theology’s construal of the relationship between
creature and Creator is utterly neglected in favour of Balthasar’s conviction that the
most pressing concern for theological thinking today is to ‘build from scratch’ a
fully theological rendition of the confrontation between ‘divine and human freedom’
(Balthasar 1988: 50).
Thus, if Balthasar’s theology has been adjudged – although not incontestably
– ‘ahead of its time’ in terms of engaging those themes that have so entranced
postmodern theoretics, in the case of ecology and the seemingly inexorable fate of

1 Although Lynn White’s 1967 article ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’ has been
credited with setting the agenda for Christian environmental theologies (see Jenkins 2008:
10–15), a largely unscientific review of the bibliographies of books and articles concerned
with ecotheology tends to suggest that it was not until the late 1980s and early 1990s that
the environment became a pressing theme for theological reflection and publication.
 Hans Urs von Balthasar 197

the ancient and fragile biosphere we inhabit he can hardly be claimed to be any sort
of ecotheologian at all; or even, for that matter, sensitive to its appeal. And even
if we are to agree with Francis Watson (Chapter 9 in this volume) that ‘From the
perspective of Christian faith, the “environment” will be understood as “creation”’,
this would still appear to offer little encouragement to our endeavour when, as John
Riches suggests, ‘There is . . . little doubt that [Balthasar] actually spends little time
developing his own theology of creation’ (Riches 1996: 169).
That this is a rather partial judgement (as Riches is aware), I will have cause
to consider below; however, it does resonate with the perception that Balthasar’s
overwhelming theological focus dwelt elsewhere. Which is to say, not with the
testimony of the ‘natural sciences’ to the irreparable damage we may be inflicting on
the planet – for as Balthasar airily remarks: ‘The Bible has never shown any inter-
est in so-called natural laws’ (Balthasar 1982: 665) – but with the focal encounter
of a loving God with sinful men and women. For Balthasar what ‘is specifically
Christian about Christianity’ (Balthasar 2004a: 7) is just this: ‘Man’s participation
in God which, from God’s perspective, is actualized as “revelation” (culminating in
Christ’s Godmanhood) and which, from man’s perspective, is actualized as “faith”
(culminating in Christ’s Godmanhood)’ (Balthasar 1982: 125). An exchange, of
course, that is theologically dramatized by Balthasar’s very Barthian concentration on
‘the way of the Son of God into the far country’; although as appropriated – in very
un-Barthian fashion – through the liturgical and theologically speculative resources
of the Triduum Mortis (see Balthasar 1993a).
Thus, what to do in pursuit of saying something about Balthasar’s ecological
credentials; or even more, his provision of resources for generating an ecological
hermeneutic? The soil would appear to be very thin indeed.
But is it truly the case that so colossal a thinker has nothing, or almost nothing,
to say to our crisis today? Is it that a theologian who ‘more or less single-handedly
heaved up a huge mountain range of theology’ (Oakes and Moss 2004: 2) has so
quickly become outdated, outmoded and irrelevant? And I raise this suggestion not as
a merely idle remark, but as a serious theological question – a question that in many
ways will dictate the contention of this essay. For if we countenance such a conclu-
sion (and this has surely been reckoned ‘necessary’ by some for whom the corrosive
emergency of our current situation demands the root and branch deconstruction of
the Christian tradition2), then in the case of Balthasar at least, this can only reinforce

2 John Milbank offers a harsh judgement on this theological ‘fashion’ when he writes,
‘[Ecotheology] assumes that re-sacralizing nature, and de-throning a super-natural God,
must obviously be the key to our sick condition. But this repeats the facile mis-deduction
. . . [that] . . . we have been nasty to nature, so let us have more nature, more science even
(after all it’s about nature, and quantum physics is really Taoism and so forth). Also more
creation, more animality, more body . . . and less fall and redemption, less doctrine of sin,
less history, less humanity, less spirit. Never mind that “spirit”, as the realm of culture, is
the only possible source of all our eco-problems, such that their solution demands that this
realm be set to rights, not asked to efface itself before an affronted nature’ (Milbank 1997:
262).
198 Ecological Hermeneutics

a sobering hermeneutical realization. For in so far as Balthasar’s project was noth-

ing if not the self-conscious attempt to re-present in synoptic repletion the fullness
of the catholic Faith, then is it that our reception of that Faith today can only be
experienced as though a natural resource fast running out – deforested, over-mined
or exhausted? Is it that what goes for ‘our’ natural resources today – in their scarcity
and depletion – should also go for any synoptic presentation of the Faith in this ‘new
paradigm’ of environmental crisis? In short, recognition that the tradition is no longer
prophetic of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Rev. 21.1), but is now recognisably
toxic by virtue of the ideology of ‘dominion’ (Gen. 1.26) that it historically released.
No doubt, this is to play rather fast and loose with ecological images of a (pol-
luted?) tradition (see Merchant 1982). Nonetheless, does it not, in some manner,
also betoken what is really at stake in any theological step ‘towards an ecological
hermeneutic’? And if this is really so, then perhaps Balthasar does indeed represent
something of a ‘test case’. For in eschewing the urgent contemporaneity of a Jürgen
Moltmann, the scientific concern of a Wolfhart Pannenberg or even the crea-
turely sympathies of a Karl Barth, it appears difficult to avoid the conclusion that
Balthasar’s theology represents anything other than what Moltmann once derided
as a now discredited old anthropocentric picture of the world.
Nonetheless, if this view is to merit serious support (while, of course, leaving us to
plunder the body parts of the Balthasarian corpus), it can only do so in recognition of
the fact that Balthasar’s entire diagnosis of modern (‘anthropocentric’) theology – which
includes, of course, modern biblical hermeneutics3 – remained riveted to the ailments
afflicting our sense and experience of nature, the natural or creation – all, no doubt,
slippery terms – in light of the supernatural. For according to Balthasar: ‘[The] sign
imprinted on nature . . . comes to light only when the sign of absolute love appears’.
For ‘the light of the Cross makes worldly being intelligible, it allows the inchoate forms
and ways of love, which otherwise threaten to stray into trackless thickets, to receive
a foundation in their true transcendent ground’ (Balthasar 2004a: 142).

3 The scope of this essay does not allow me to explore Balthasar’s distinctive engagement
with the Bible. However, what is important to recognize here is that his Aesthetics – that we
have as the main focus of this essay – remains ‘of-a-piece’ with his Biblical hermeneutics.
Eschewing varieties of either propositional fundamentalism on the one hand, or modernist
liberalism on the other (both of which, for Balthasar, spring from the same mistake), he con-
tended that a disregard for beauty has left modern hermeneutics with little resource by which
to integrate scriptural sign and referent. Or, in categories that he will deploy in his Aesthetics:
unable to recognize the true splendour of revelation as mediated through its scriptural form.
His approach thus reconnects with aspects of a pre-modern hermeneutic in its claim upon the
liturgical context for scriptural interpretation, which remains allegorically directed towards
Christ and informed by the Holy Spirit. However, as W.T. Dickens (2003) has argued in an
excellent and not uncritical essay, Balthasar’s approach also offers profound resources for
a genuinely post-critical biblical hermeneutic. To what extent Balthasar’s specific exegeses
could contribute to a so-called ecological reading of Scripture would be a matter of some
interest. However, I would suggest – as above – that the real value in his approach would
lie in the manner in which his hermeneutic ‘performance’ sustained a dramatic and genuine
openness to the plight of the environment.
 Hans Urs von Balthasar 199

Thus, while Balthasar may have spent little time ‘developing his own theology of
creation’, it is nonetheless crucial to recognize that for Balthasar ‘nature’ is essentially
theophanic; although theophanic in his precise sense:

[For] if the cosmos as a whole has been created in the image of God that appears in the
First-Born of creation . . . and if this First-Born indwells the world as its head through the
Church, then in the last analysis the world is a ‘body’ of God, who represents and expresses
himself in this body, on the basis of the principle not of pantheistic but hypostatic union.
(Balthasar 1982: 679)

The key to reading the cosmos, its origin and destiny, lies in no pantheistic (or even
panentheistic) narrative, but, according to Balthasar, in the manner through which
Christ, through an obedience to the fate of creaturely being in his death and burial,
thereby shepherded creation up from nothingness in his rising from ‘the lower parts
of the earth’ (Eph. 4.9). And while technically this will be articulated by Balthasar
in terms of linking the Thomistic ‘Real Distinction’ (that subtends every creaturely
being as being both what it is and that it is) to the character of Christological love
(see below), what this recognition demands first of all is that we ‘See the Form’ of
the world in the image of love – the image of the ‘First Born of creation’.
Thus, when Rowan Williams urges that Balthasar’s analysis, through the meander-
ing volumes of the Aesthetics, poses the ‘profoundly important question about our
understanding of the human vis-à-vis the world as a whole, [in] echoing Heidegger’s
polemic against the technocratic distortion of human relations with the natural order’
(Williams 2007: 95), then just perhaps a more nuanced perspective may begin to
open up for appropriation and understanding. Such an approach though is by no
means easy to fathom; nor is it to be pragmatically, or even theoretically, ‘read off’
from Balthasar’s ‘script’.
In the light of this suggestion then, the following essay has the very modest aim
of sketching in briefest terms Balthasar’s hermeneutics of beauty, of ‘seeing the
form’, which, although coming to a point of maximal intensity in the person of Jesus
Christ, crucified and risen – just as in ‘an hour-glass’, Balthasar explains4 – reaches
up to receive ‘from above’ the cascading flow of graceful Being, while embracing its
sedimentation in the shifting sands of the environment ‘here below’.
Thus, in slight adjustment to the suggestion made by John Riches (above), accord-
ing to Balthasar what is required to bolster contemporary doctrines of creation is

4 ‘We could describe this . . . as a kind of hourglass, where the two contiguous vessels (God
and creature) meet only at the narrow passage through the centre: where they both encounter
each other in Jesus Christ. The purpose of the image is to show that there is no other point
of contact between the two chambers of the hourglass. And just as the sand flows only from
top to bottom, so too God’s revelation is one-sided, flowing from his gracious decision alone.
But of course the sand flows down into the other chamber so that the sand can really increase.
In other words, there is a countermovement in the other chamber but only because of the
first movement, the initiative of the first chamber’ (Balthasar 1992: 197).
200 Ecological Hermeneutics

precisely not the fabrication of reconstructed theologies that would transcribe, for
example, the gaia-like quality of nature as the ‘body of God’, but the renewal of a
‘cultural’ wonderment (thaumazein) at the theophanic quality of beings through
which the light of divine Love itself shines. And what this suggests, to use Willis
Jenkins’ richly suggestive phrase, is attention to Balthasar’s ‘ecology of grace’ which
comprehensively and Christologically indicates how nature becomes significant for
Christian existence (Jenkins 2008). Consequently, if an ethics is to be discovered
here – as assuredly it must – it is not in emergency recoil to the ‘state we’re in’, but
as contemplatively dependent upon, although coincident with, a prior receptivity
to the world’s beauty which initiates the drama of the earth as ‘always-already’
soteriological.5
If ‘love and gratitude are starting points for determining our ethical obliga-
tions’ with regard to the environment (Sideris 2003: 254), then moving towards
an ecological hermeneutic demands, in Balthasarian terms, not the construction
of a new theological paradigm, or even raiding of his comprehensive oeuvre, but
the re-attunement of an ancient and creaturely capacity to perceive das Ganze im
Fragment: that ‘intuition’ through which we receive (subjectively), from amidst all
the teeming variety and particularity of our environment, a testimony (objectively)
to its environing source and sustenance.6
But we must surely wonder, does beauty have anything to offer an ecological
hermeneutic today – other, that is, than a haunting melancholia, given the urgent
straits in which we live?

II. Seeing the Form

Beauty is the word that shall be our first (Balthasar 1982: 18).

I begin a course for undergraduates on Balthasar’s theology with a brief section from
Dennis Potter’s last interview, given to Melvyn Bragg, several weeks before his death
from cancer in 1994.7 The choice is hardly accidental given Balthasar’s commitment
to the work of the poets and dramatists (see Balthasar 1984; 1986). However, the

5 The central merit of Jenkins’ valuable book is in re-establishing soteriology at the centre of
environmental ethics by way, not of displacing an ecologically attuned sense of creation, but
by reminding us of the profound interconnectedness of creation, salvation and sanctification
in any truly Christian ‘ecology of grace’.
6 Das Ganze im Fragment is the title of Balthasar’s 1963 study of theological anthropology –
translated as Man in History: A Theological Study (1972). The German title translates ‘the
whole in the fragment’ and indicates Balthasar’s abiding conviction that the metaphysical and
religious ‘quest’ begins not in some sort of pre-apprehension of infinity, but rather through
an astonishment at particular and concrete form.
7 Dennis Potter is probably Britain’s most acclaimed and creative television dramatist remem-
bered particularly for his innovative and biographically inspired plays including Pennies for
Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986).
 Hans Urs von Balthasar 201

question it poses – and especially for those new to Balthasar’s oeuvre – is quite simply
this: is there anything more to be understood in Potter’s testimony than the subjective
reflex of a ‘poetically’ attuned playwright?
Potter records of his current life:

Below my window in Ross . . . there at this season, the blossom is out in full now . . . it’s a
plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white, and looking at it instead of saying ‘Oh
that’s nice apple blossom’ . . . last week looking at it through the window when I’m writing,
I see it as the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it.
Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were,
and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the now-
ness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that you know. There’s no
way of telling, you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the
reassurance . . . not that I’m interested in reassuring people, bugger that. The fact is, if you
see the present tense, boy you see it! And boy you can celebrate it. (Potter 1994: 5)

And so I ask: is Potter, in short, saying anything fundamental – anything true or

good – about the world, the cosmos, in which we live? And is this moment of being
struck by the beauty and glory of the blossom in any sense revelatory of the way the
world, the cosmos, is? Revelatory that is of its truth, goodness and unity through a
modality of human intellection and imagination which promises access to the Real
beyond the omnivorous grasp of ‘promethean’ reduction and ecological spoiling?
The responses I receive tend to remain – to pick up Balthasar’s suggestion from
above – rather ‘inchoate’. And indeed, as Frederick Ferré comments, in his ecologi-
cally inspired Being and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics:

Probably the most difficult domain for modern people considering the reality-grounding of
value intuitions is that of beauty. We live surrounded by stimuli that give us experiences of
aesthetic aversion and attraction but our world view leads us to doubt that there is anything
‘out there’ that is ugly or beautiful. Our dominant theories assure us that that the hues of
the rose in full bloom, the sunset’s splendour, or the rainbow’s subtle spectrum are not to be
reckoned in the world but only in human responses to the world. (Ferré 1996: 14)

Ferré’s judgement accords well with Balthasar’s conviction, and moreover suggests
that what we have to reckon with here is no mere temporary impairment, but the
result of a complex historical and cultural story which involves so severe a depletion
of our creaturely capacity that:

the world, formerly penetrated by God’s light, now becomes but an appearance and a
dream – the Romantic vision – and soon thereafter nothing but music. But where the cloud
disperses, naked matter remains as an indigestible symbol of fear and anguish. Since nothing
else remains, and yet something must be embraced, twentieth-century man is urged to enter
this impossible marriage with matter, a union which finally spoils all man’s taste for love. But
202 Ecological Hermeneutics

man cannot bear to live with the object of his impotence, that which remains permanently
unmastered. He must either deny or conceal it in the silence of death.s (Balthasar 1982: 18–19)

Where we can no longer read the language of beauty so, for Balthasar, the witness of
creation as created becomes untrustworthy and open to abuse; and where we cannot
embrace creativity, just so love becomes impotent and impossible. Potter’s lyrical
outburst, in Balthasarian terms, is anything but a frivolous ‘subjective’ testimony,
but rather resonates – if problematically – with the ‘intuition’ (as Balthasar calls it)
that had prevailed in the West up until the late Middle Ages. In short, that those
transitory experiences of the truth, goodness and beauty of the cosmos are intelligible
only by way of reference to a transcendent order of Being that is absolutely true, good
and beautiful. And if such reference secured, as it were, the vision of the whole of
creation through (and by way of participation in) its fragmentary parts – and which
now is, in some sense, evoked by way of allusion to the ‘biosphere’ – then the logos
of this reference was established precisely in so far as ‘creation’s aesthetic values’ were
attributed ‘eminenter to the creating principle itself’ (Balthasar 1982: 38). Perhaps,
we could suggest, a kind of ‘ecologic hermeneutic’ to(wards) which the enrapturing
experience of beauty gave entrée?
But this is to have travelled too far, too quickly and to have potentially resolved
Balthasar’s hermeneutic into an altogether different context from that for which it
was originally conceived. However, the analogy has been drawn (in returning to
Francis Watson’s equation of ‘creation’ and ‘environment’) – and it is always helpful
when setting out upon a journey to have a sense of the place to which one is heading.
We now, however, need to retrace our steps and lay out why ‘beginning with beauty’
may yet give theological and biblical purchase to an ecological hermeneutic. For the
matter must go beyond (while never abandoning) lyrical testimony to the ‘dearest
freshness deep down things’ – as Hopkins describes the depths of nature as brooded
over by the Holy Spirit.
For when we find ourselves caught up by the glory of a particular form in showy
presentation, or register in sensuous distress the wanton spoilment of nature, are we
to reckon these charismatic interludes as anything other than a mere (and increasingly
dulled) ‘subjective’ response to the environment around us? For if this is all there is
to say, then from where will come the motivational basis for ethical action as well
as ethical restraint? If we are to follow Balthasar, however, such intimations – of the
glorious as well as ugly – have something to say to us, just as they leave us with a
mission to be undertaken.

III. A Hermeneutic of Beauty

A moment of grace lies in all beauty: it shows itself to me far beyond what I have a right to
expect, which is why we feel astonishment and admiration. (Balthasar 2004b: 66)
 Hans Urs von Balthasar 203

In 1963 Balthasar published a short and programmatic essay which, to all intents
and purposes, foreshadowed the colossal amplitude of his great theological trip-
tych. In Love Alone is Credible Balthasar offered a genealogy of historically
situated approaches to the perennial question: ‘What is specifically Christian about
Christianity?’ (Balthasar 2004a: 9). As he argued, within the overarching framework
of any epoch Christian theology has always sought to find ‘a logos that, however
particular it might be, nevertheless had the power to persuade, and indeed to over-
whelm, a logos that, in breaking out of the sphere of “accidental historical truths”
would lend these truths a necessity’ (Balthasar 2004a: 9).
For the ancients, Balthasar suggested, this was the ‘cosmological reduction’; for the
moderns, the ‘anthropological’. And while Balthasar was by no means wholly unsym-
pathetic to aspects of these richly orchestrated approaches, he nonetheless concluded
that, if the cosmological approach suffered too much the ‘limitations of temporal
history’ following the disenchantment of nature, then the anthropological approach
betrayed ‘a fundamental flaw’ in promoting the dialectics of self-consciousness as
the measure of all things, including the divine. For Balthasar then, the framework of
God’s message in Christ cannot be tied to the world in general, nor to human being
in particular. It is, and remains, an act of God on human being; an act (revelation)
whose only credibility is that of love – ‘God’s own love, the manifestation of which
is the manifestation of the glory of God’ (Balthasar 2004a: 10).
For Balthasar, the radicality of this claim, transgressing any and every historical
epoch, consists in the fact that far from being the merely pious grammar of Christian
practice, or methodological discrimens for disentangling the love of God from our
worldly loves, the revelation of this divine love is the revelation of that which holds
sway over all the realms of being. Or as St Paul expresses this same truth: ‘all things hold
together (sunestëken) in him’ (Col. 1:17) – Jesus the Christ. The light of divine love is
the very logos of being and thus demands, so Balthasar claims, the need for a genuinely
theological aesthetic which opens onto, while continuing to fund, the recognition that
created objects derive their value from participation in their transcendent ground.
God has created the natural world in such a way that its depth bears the super-
natural stamp of its divine origin and end, and that what is required to read this
ontological depth is a hermeneutic which, enraptured by the sensuous signals of
beauty, is thus consequently transported towards the reality of this donation – the
‘creating principle itself’. Thus, for Balthasar these two approaches of aesthetics and
love coincide in fathoming the intelligibility of revelation. For in so far as ‘whatever
we love – no matter how profoundly or superficially we may love it – always appears
radiant with glory’, so ‘whatever is objectively perceived as glorious – no matter how
profoundly or superficially we experience it – does not penetrate into the onlooker
except through the specificity of an eros’ (Balthasar 2004a: 54). Altogether then,
while this spiralling hermeneutic is firmly rooted in creation – in responding to the
full sensuality of nature’s touch in all its particularity (thus renewing the sympathies
of classical Christianity, and most assuredly Balthasar’s own sympathies as well) –
it nonetheless renovates modernity’s anthropological starting-point by locating this
204 Ecological Hermeneutics

not in the solipsism of self but through the free encounter of an I with a Thou or
‘Wholly Other’, whether this ‘other’ be animal, mineral, or spiritual.
This approach, I would suggest, shares something with Lisa Sideris’s contention,
that while some forms of reconstructive ecotheology can all too easily and para-
doxically stray into offering their ‘results’ as though products of knowledge, what
is really required here is that ‘we [both] have to turn inward – to an understanding
of human moral reasoning and moral complexity – and outward – to a source of
values beyond strictly anthropocentric values’. In other words, we have to turn to
what Balthasar called, at a distance, a meta-anthropology – ‘presupposing not only
the cosmological sciences but also the anthropological sciences and surpassing them’
(Balthasar 1993b: 115).
But is this all lyrical pretence? For how can something so transcending and spiritual
as beauty and love be discovered in the ‘givenness’ of things – things that constitute
our environment? And how can the ‘quiddity’ of the plum blossom ultimately insti-
gate anything other than poetic lyricism giving way to exhausted aphasia (‘There’s
no way of telling. . .’!)? But then again perhaps we need, at this very juncture, to
become more attentive to the intensive reiteration that, albeit fleetingly, signals in
Potter’s evocation of the glory of the ‘blossomest blossom’? For in this moment of
astonished vision, I want to suggest, a difference appears that will, if we will but let
it, fuel the (hermeneutic) transcription of the truth of creaturely existence amidst the
good of its social environing (‘if you see the present tense, boy you see it. And boy
can you celebrate it!’) And how so? Balthasar explains with deceptive simplicity (an
explanation which dictates the order of his theological triptych) as follows:

A being appears, it has an epiphany: in that it is beautiful and makes us marvel. In appearing
it gives itself, it delivers itself to us: it is good. And in giving itself up, it speaks itself, it unveils
itself: it is true (in itself, but in the other to which it reveals itself). (Balthasar 1993b: 116)

For the present though we need to remain with this inaugurating moment which is
never to be superseded lest the testimony of things fall silent (into the simply logically
correct) or barren (into the merely useful).
‘A being appears . . .’: but how does it appear? As Potter recalls, tautologically,
through the blossoming of the blossom. The blossom all-of-a-sudden presents itself
(‘objectively’) to Potter’s sight as though through an illumination and depth which,
as it were, back-lights its showy and engaging appearance as that which it truly is.
We rejoice in the presentation of an object when through the experience of a rich
and expressive encounter we feel the object lay itself open to us, and sense that this
signals a mysterious more to the object’s nature than can appear in this or any other
single expression. Thus, in appreciating the clear, rich and expressive form of the
blossoming blossom so we espy radiance – a ‘glory’ Potter says – breaking forth
from the blossoming blossom. What asserts itself to Potter, beyond the correct and
useful, is a positive delight to his intellect and will, causing him to want to ‘celebrate’
the apprehension of the blossom. And Balthasar has a vocabulary for precisely this
 Hans Urs von Balthasar 205

experience: beauty is to be conceived, he explains in the language of scholasticism,

through the imbrication of formae and splendor. Form, not as the objective skeleton
of a thing, but as its integrated integrity through which an inexhaustible intelligibility
and splendour appears to shine for us.
Moreover, since we can never draw from the object all of its beauty (‘you have to
experience it . . .’), so we feel ourselves bound to it in expectation of something more,
still to arrive. Thus, in so far as I am satisfied by the beautiful, so I am frustratingly
so (‘and if people could see that you know. There’s no way of telling you . . .’). I sense
that not only does the deepest truth of the object appear in its epiphany, but that in
some still more mysterious manner its goodness provides me with a sort of destiny
to this encounter.
But can we go further and speak of a still deeper signal betokening that vast ocean
of formal fertility which is the mystery of being? The curtailment of Potter’s quest
at this point – at once breached and then, in somewhat embarrassed recognition,
dismissed – is illustrative indeed. And illustrative of the surd element – as a sort of
Kantian noumena – that materiality has so much become for modernity. For with
the disenchantment of the world, so modern aesthetics in its anthropological turn
(which is paradoxically also ‘a turn to nature’) has abandoned talk about ‘being’ as
empty and convictions about ‘beauty’ (especially in relation to God) as sentimental.
Rather, it has bidden us see the source of all form in the constructive powers of the
mind. Consequently the aesthetics of modernity – as mere addendum to our energies
for valuing and willing – has focused ‘artistically’ on the way in which our subjectivity
uses nature as a medium for self-expression.
Balthasar, however, in a brief and brilliant metaphysical sketch that concludes the
fifth volume of the Aesthetics (Balthasar 1991: 613–27) refuses this modern ban upon
the transport (ecstasy) of beauty and recalls us to the fact that the most significant
thing in aesthetic experience is not that it is a sort of creation or expression, but rather
an exploration and discovery, much like love. Thus, beginning from the startled reflex
of wonderment, I recognize through the variety of particular forms an apprehension
of participating in the whole of existence. I recognize that the light that shines through
this blossom, in enabling it to come into its own, while also illuminating all else, is
nonetheless never to be discovered apart from the sheer plenitude and accidentality
of particular form. The metaphysical and religious quest is ultimately riveted into the
sensuous experience of being-in-the-world of things – the environment.
Moreover, in appearing in this manner, so this presentation can hardly be construed
as any sort of function of the whole, as though creation were some sort of enormous
circuit board intermittently switching on and off. Or, as Williams explains: given the
characteristic and paradoxical interdependence of splendour and form ‘it is impossible
to conceive being-as-a-whole in a mechanical, supra-personal mode’. Much rather,
have we not to conclude that it is some sort of ‘system of contingent and flexible
interdependence in which novelty and gratuity are possible – and in which therefore
beauty is intelligible’ (Williams 2007: 93, my italics). But what of this intelligibility?
For Balthasar this is to promote once again the perennial philosophical question:
206 Ecological Hermeneutics

‘Why is there anything at all and not simply nothing?’ (Balthasar 1991: 614). For
in following Thomas Aquinas, Balthasar will discover in the polarity of form and
splendour, erupting in the experience of beauty, entrée into the heart of the ‘Real
Distinction’ itself: the difference between what a thing is and that a thing is that runs
through every existent thing in creation. Given that in created being the two never
coincide such that an apprehension of essence can automatically generate existence,
then what of this ‘suspension’ of created beings? What of this indecipherable symbol
that arrests us when we see the form?
Balthasar is clear: the ‘question remains open regardless of whether one affirms
or denies the existence of an absolute being’ (Balthasar 2004a: 143). For while on
the one hand, construing being as arising out of an abysmal dialectic with ‘Nothing’
would seem merely to stay the true urgency of the question; so on the other, positing
the action of absolute being already sufficient to itself would end up with much the
same result. Thus, Balthasar’s conclusion:

Only a philosophy of freedom and love can account for our existence, though not unless it also
interprets the essence of finite beings in terms of love. In terms of love – and not, in the final
analysis, in terms of consciousness, or spirit, or knowledge, or power, or desire, or usefulness.
Rather, all of these must be seen as ways toward and presuppositions for the single fulfilling
act that comes to light in a superabundant way in the sign of God.
Thus, beyond existence in general and beyond the composition of essence, a light breaks
on the constitution of being itself, insofar as it subsists in no other way than in the ‘refusal-to-
cling-to-itself’, in the emptying of itself into the finite and concrete, while finite entities in turn
are able to receive and retain it, as it is in itself, only as that which does not hold onto itself.
Finite beings are thus trained by it in giving themselves away in love. One’s consciousness,
one’s self-possession and possession of being, can grow only and precisely to the extent that
one breaks out of being in and for oneself in the act of communication, in exchange, and in
human and cosmic sympatheia. It is only the sign of God that places all the world’s values
in their true light, because it is only here that the limitations of love and all the objections to
it are overcome, all the mysterious depths of self-sacrificing love are preserved and wrested
from the grip of unrestrained knowledge.8 (Balthasar 2004a: 143–44)

8 This dense passage makes a key claim that we have already had occasion to mention: the
connection Balthasar draws between the Thomistic ‘Real Distinction’ – between the being
and nature of a thing – and the archetypical character of divine love as manifest in Christ’s
kenosis (Phil. 2.7). The ‘metaphysics’ of this can be sketched as follows: in that Christ’s
incarnation reveals the character of divine love, just so is this reflected in the divine liberality
of being which in accounting for nature as its formal cause nonetheless depends on it for its
instantiation. Christ is thus prototype for the whole relationship by which created being both
causes and depends on created nature. As Williams concludes, ‘The structure of created being
itself thus presupposes a Trinitarian foundation once it is recognized as centering upon the
incarnate word’ (Williams 2004: 41). To which, we need only add, as the Incarnate Word
Christ not only grounds nature but simultaneously presupposes and receives himself from
it, so nature’s own characteristic interiority is given as no dull and protected hinterland but
as, similarly, kenotic and ecstatic. For a scholarly elucidation of this see Healy 2005.
 Hans Urs von Balthasar 207

For Balthasar then a hermeneutic of beauty recovers for the environment – the
‘whole’ of finite being as accessed through particular beings – a quality of ‘penul-
timate’ valuation in the indecipherable signal it offers to ‘human and cosmic
sympatheia’. Which is to say, the testimony that finite beings offer to the paradoxical
character of their appearing as both replete in being what they are and yet depend-
ent upon receiving this existence in sheerly chance and limited circumstances – as
though always and only ever gift and gifted. And this, surprisingly enough, remains
in touch with Potter’s intuition of both the sheer triviality and yet staggering impor-
tance of his ‘experience’: in short, the utterly mundane and yet wondrous quality
of things.
Thus far we have travelled with Potter, and thus far, I want to suggest, does
Balthasar provide us with – beginning with beauty – an interpretative energy towards
an ecological hermeneutic.
However, if such a hermeneutic proper pretends towards a reason (logos) that
understands our ‘home’ (oikos) as this ancient and fragile biosphere, then it will
only be (as it always is with logos) as ordered about a point or ‘explanation’ for the
dynamics of this teeming environment that we can both enliven and exploit. We may
begin with rapture at this theophanic creation (and with, as it were, its ‘inexhaustible’
fuel of created Being), but its beauties will still, and always, appeal to our laborious
‘completion’ of the same, by way of cultural construct and fabrication.
And here, of course, Potter and Balthasar – the poet and the theologian – part
company. For while the poet’s artifice remains absolutely fundamental to understand-
ing our place in the world (on this both Balthasar and Heidegger agree), for Balthasar,
this witness – apart from revelation – will always remain constrained within the
ever-alluring play of a ‘nature that loves to hide’9 – a game of hide and seek, of
gain and, no doubt, loss. The theologian however, beyond so showy, even sublime,
an appearance, looks towards ‘the sign of absolute love’ (Balthasar 2004a: 142)

9 In his brilliant survey of the idea of nature in the Western tradition, Pierre Hadot reveals
how variant interpretations of Heraclitus’ cryptic saying Phusis kruptesthai philei (‘Nature
loves to hide’) have sustained ‘two fundamental attitudes with regard to the secrets of nature:
one voluntarist, the other contemplative’. Thus, under the patronage of Prometheus, Hadot
describes the first as laying claim very early on to its legitimacy by affirming mankind’s
right to dominate nature – conferred on man by the God of Genesis – and to submit it, if
necessary, to a judicial procedure and even torture, in order to make it hand over its secrets:
Francis Bacon’s famous metaphor would still be used by Kant and Cuvier. Magic, mechanics
and technology take their place within this tradition, and each, moreover, had as its goal,
each in its own way, to defend mankind’s vital interests. In counterpoint, Hadot invokes the
name of Orpheus to stand over a Nature which loves to hide for her secrets are dangerous
to humankind. Thus, Hadot writes,
By intervening technologically in natural processes, man risks discovering them
and, what is worse, unleashing unforeseeable consequences. From this perspective,
it is the philosophical or aesthetic approach . . . two attitudes that have their end in
themselves and presuppose a disinterested approach, that will be the best means of
knowing nature. Besides scientific truth, we will also have to allow for an aesthetic
truth, which provides an authentic knowledge of nature. (Hadot 2006: 317)
208 Ecological Hermeneutics

imprinted on nature – for sure, the Logos as prototype of everything that is, but the
Logos as most fully revealed in the Cross and Holy Saturday.

IV. For the Drama of the Earth

[The] formative power of Christ lies in the formlessness of the grain of wheat that dies and
wastes away [verwesen] in the humus, the grain that rises again, not in its own form but in that
of a stalk of wheat (Jn 12:24; 1 Cor. 15:36, 42–44). This movement into the earth (humilis)
is universally Christian . . .. (Balthasar 2004a: 137)

This essay has done no more than point to the manner in which the deepest moti-
vuum of Balthasar’s aesthetics may be understood to signal towards an ecological
hermeneutic of creation.
However, if, following Balthasar, the ‘surpassing’ of cosmological and anthropo-
logical sciences is occasioned by the experience of beauty as both inward (‘subjective’)
reception and outward (‘objective’) valuation, then this only goes to reinforce the
always-already dramatic character of our immersion in the environment we inhabit;
and, no doubt, dramatic resolution to the indecipherable sign that nature is to us.
For Balthasar there can be no re-establishment of an ascending ‘great chain of
Being’ today – for the time of the cosmological vision has passed and, as is clear from
Potter’s testimony, no romantically slanted eros-nostalgia will ever reclaim it. What
then of our crisis today? Is it that in circumstances such as this, the ecstatic quality of
created being, stands to reveal its chthonic frailty in a distinctly apocalyptic hue – a
seeing-through to the exhaustion of its gifted and gifting effluence? Certainly the
apocalyptic register of our crisis is everywhere apparent.
But if such is to be reckoned the case, then it is perhaps particularly intriguing for
any ecological appropriation of Balthasar’s theology ‘in-the-round’ that nature – as
bearing the imprint of sacrificial love – is finally revealed in its greatest Christological
foundation and Trinitarian calibration through a decoding of the Book of Revelation
(see Balthasar 1994). For Balthasar’s ‘theo-dramatics’ (his ‘ethics’) is not a ‘part-two’
of a three-part story – such that we can (should we choose) isolate the transcendentals
one by one – but is more properly to be seen as the apocalyptic ‘overwriting’ of divine
theophany. Thus, as Balthasar writes:

The image that should interpret the mystery of Christ is, in itself as an image of nature,
utterly overtaxed, but in so far as it is grounded in Christ as the presupposition of nature, it
is allowed to say by grace of the archetype what it cannot say of itself. (Balthasar 1986: 394)

Perhaps then, we can venture one final comment with regard to the ‘light’ that
Balthasar’s theology may throw on the project of an ecological hermeneutic. There
is much in Balthasar’s theology, as I have suggested, that can viably be conscripted,
in the words of Lisa Sideris, to the ‘imperatives of ecotheologians (particularly, I
 Hans Urs von Balthasar 209

think of McFague’s arguments) that we work harder at seeing the world around us
with different eyes, [and] that concepts of knowing and loving become more closely
aligned’ (Sideris 2003: 259).
However, as Sideris’ passing reference to the work of Sallie McFague – and her
influential ‘body of God’ ecotheology – may suggest, the emergency of the moment
has as much power to initiate genuinely fresh perspectives on the theological tradi-
tion as it does to fabricate passionately conceived simulacra of salvation as, perhaps,
survival. No doubt serious theological thinking always needs to remind itself that the
most apocalyptic ‘seeing’ stands, in some manner, to be bedazzled by the look-alike;
and this precisely because in such a rapture one is brought face-to-face with that
desire that has not been satisfied and perhaps may even remain chronically dissatis-
fied. As Balthasar concludes: ‘The “program” of the Lamb, true to the earth by being
truly humilis (i.e. close to the humus), can be popular with neither right nor left. It
cannot be built into earthly programs; it does not offer enough for them and it cannot
be exploited’ (Balthasar 1972: viii).

References

Balthasar, H. Urs von 1972 Man in History: A Theological Study (London: Sheed and Ward).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 1982 The Glory of the Lord, Volume I: Seeing the Form (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 1984 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume II, Studies in
Theological Style: Clerical Styles (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 1986 The Glory of the Lord, Volume III: Studies in Theological Style: Lay
Styles (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 1988 Theo-drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume I: Prolegomena
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 1991 The Glory of the Lord, Volume V: The Realm of Metaphysics in the
Modern Age (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 1992 The Theology of Karl Barth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 1993a Mysterium Paschale (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 1993b My Work: In Retrospect (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 1994 Theo-drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume IV: The Action (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 2004a Love Alone Is Credible (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press).
Balthasar, H. Urs von 2004b Epilogue (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press).
Dickens, W.T. 2003 Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics: A Model for Post-Critical
Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press).
Donoghue, D. 2004 Speaking of Beauty (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Ferré, F. 1996 Being and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics (New York, NY:
State University of New York Press).
Hadot, P. 2006 The Veil of Isis. An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature (Cambridge, MA:
The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press).
Healy, N.J. 2005 The Eschatology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Being as Communion (Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
Jenkins, W. 2008 Ecologies of Grace: Environmental Ethics and Christian Theology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
210 Ecological Hermeneutics

Merchant, C. 1982 The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (London:
Wildwood House).
Milbank, J. 1997 The Word Made Strange. Theology, Language, Culture (Oxford: Blackwell).
Oakes, E.T. and Moss, D. 2004 The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Potter, D. 1994 Seeing the Blossom (London: Faber & Faber).
Riches, J. 1996 ‘Balthasar’s Sacramental Spirituality and Hopkins’s Poetry of Nature: The Sacrifice
Imprinted upon Nature’, in D. Brown and A. Loades (eds), Christ: The Sacramental Word.
Incarnation, Sacrament and Poetry (London: SPCK): 168–80.
Sideris, L.H. 2003 Environmental Ethics, Ecological Selection and Natural Selection (New York,
NY: Columbia University Press).
White, L., Jr 1967 ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155: 1203–207.
Williams, R.D. 2004 ‘Balthasar and the Trinity’, in E.T. Oakes and D. Moss (eds), The Cambridge
Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 37–50.
Williams, R.D. 2007 ‘Balthasar, Rahner and the Apprehension of Being’, in M. Higton (ed.),
Rowan Williams, Wrestling With Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology (London:
SCM): 86–105.
 Chapter 15

Between Creation and Transfiguration:

The Environment in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition

Andrew Louth

Every evening – in theory as the sun is setting, and indeed in practice on the Holy
Mountain and many other monasteries – Orthodox Christians throughout the
world celebrate the service of Vespers. It begins with Psalm 103 (104, in the Hebrew
enumeration), a song of creation.

Bless the Lord, my soul! O Lord my God, you have been greatly magnified. You have clothed
yourself with thanksgiving and majesty, wrapping yourself in light as in a cloak, stretching
out the heavens like a curtain, roofing his upper chambers with waters, placing clouds as his
mount, walking on the wings of the wind, making spirits his Angels and a flame of fire his
Ministers, establishing the earth on its sure base; it will not be moved to age on age. The
deep, like a cloak, is its mantle; waters will stand upon the mountains . . . How your works
have been magnified, O Lord. With wisdom you have made them all, and the earth was filled
with your creation . . . All things look to you to give them their food in due season. When
you give it them, they will gather it.

Vespers marks the beginning of the liturgical day, following the Hebrew custom of
beginning the day in the evening. The day moves from the setting of the sun, through
the coming night, to the approaching day: liturgically we move from darkness to
light, to welcome the light of the coming day, as a symbol of the phos anesperon,
the ‘light without evening’, or the unfading light of the Kingdom. This, it seems to
me, lays down the two poles of Eastern Orthodox reflection on the environment,
the created order in which we are placed as human beings: creation and the coming
revelation of a light that transfigures. This reflects an emphasis characteristic of all
Orthodox theology, found, for example, in all the great Orthodox theologians of
the last century – Sergii Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, Dumitru
Stăniloae – whatever other differences they may have had: a sense that the great arc
of God’s economy moves from creation to transfiguration or deification, and that
the lesser arc, that we are all too often obsessed with – from fall to redemption – lies
under this great arc, and finds its true meaning only in relation to it. Too often, it
has seemed to the Orthodox, Western theology has become so concerned with the
movement from fall to redemption that it has lost sight of the fact that all this takes
212 Ecological Hermeneutics

place in the created environment, that rests on God’s Word, in contrast with which
human sin belongs strictly to the creaturely realm and cannot challenge what God
has established through his creative Word, even though Eastern tradition sees human
sin as having had cosmic consequences. Metropolitan Philaret has a marvellous
image of creation – frequently quoted, or sometimes mis-quoted, by both Lossky and
Florensky – in which he says that ‘the creative Word is like an adamantine bridge,
upon which creatures stand balanced beneath the abyss of divine infinitude, and
above that of their own nothingness’ (Philaret 2003: 268). We find in the Orthodox
tradition a profound sense of the integrity of creation, based on the fact that it is
founded on God’s created word. Creation . . . and transfiguration. For the purpose of
creation is to declare the glory of God, as another psalm of creation has it (Ps. 18.1
LXX [Ps. 19.1]): to declare God’s glory by becoming a theophany, a manifestation of
God; and the symbol of this is the event in Christ’s life known as the Transfiguration.
So, let us explore a little the Orthodox understanding of creation and transfigu-
ration, and then go on to explore two other concepts that underlie this linking of
creation and transfiguration: the notion of the logoi of God, the divine principles
of meaning written deep in the created order and the notion of Sophia, the Divine
Wisdom, which became highly controversial in Russian theology in the first third of
the last century, and is finding something of a revival nowadays.
It is, I think, impossible to overemphasize the importance for Orthodox theology
of the doctrine of the creation of the cosmos out of nothing by God’s Word. Creation
out of nothing entails, first of all, that there is nothing in the creature that is not cre-
ated, which means that everything we are we owe to God, there is nothing in us that is
independent of God. Being created is, then, first and foremost a privilege, something
that calls forth from us a fundamental attitude of thanksgiving. To realize the truth
of creation is to realize the beauty and wonder of the created order. Being created is
not a handicap or a disadvantage. As Nicolay Berdyaev (1937: 27) remarked, ‘There
can be no question of the work of a great artist being poor, low and insignificant
simply because it is created’. Among created beings, humans have a unique privilege:
that of being able to know that they are created, to be conscious of the fact. We can
acknowledge that with thanksgiving, or we can resent it, and attempt to endow our
own natural view of the world – from our own perspective – with some metaphysical
significance, as if the world really turned around us and our priorities, and in this
way turn away from the creator. If, however, we turn from the creator, the source
of our being, there is nowhere real to turn. And so we turn inwards, to a world
centred on ourselves, a world of unreality. This is how St Athanasios (1971: 11)
understands it in the early chapters of his Contra Gentes (C. Gent), and he remarks:
‘I call unreality what is evil because what has no real existence has been invented by
the conceits of men’ (C. Gent 4). If we turn away from God, we turn to a realm of
unreality, of nothingness. This is what Philaret means by the image already quoted:
the creatures on the adamantine bridge of the creative word are poised between the
‘abyss of the divine infinitude’ – which draws them into being – and that of ‘their
own nothingness’ – that is ultimately threatening.
 Between Creation and Transfiguration 213

To acknowledge the creator is fundamentally an act of prayer, so it is no surprise that

in The Way of the Pilgrim, as the pilgrim learns to pray the Jesus prayer, he finds that

The prayer of my heart gave me such consolation that I felt there was no happier person on earth
than I, and I doubted if there could be greater and fuller happiness in the kingdom of Heaven.
Not only did I feel this in my own soul, but the whole outside world also seemed to me full of
charm and delight. Everything drew me to love and thank God: people, trees, plants, animals. I
saw them all as my kinsfolk, I found on all of them the magic of the Name of Jesus. Sometimes
I felt as light as though I had no body and was floating through the air instead of walking.
Sometimes when I withdrew into myself I saw clearly all my internal organs, and was filled
with wonder at the wisdom with which the human body is made . . . (French 1954: 105–106)

The doctrine of creation, then, means that our created environment is touched by the
hand of God, is a place where we can encounter God, and still in some way bears
the traces of the paradise of delight that God intended his creation to be. Human
sin obscures our perception of this, and encourages an attitude to the created order
that ceases to take seriously the fact that it is created, seeing it rather as a resource
to be exploited for our own purposes. As we do that, we begin to misconstrue the
world around us, our own attitude becomes destructive, we cease to see the world as
a gift, and instead begin to compete one with another in fashioning our own worlds,
which encroach on one another, so that it becomes a matter of contention whether
this is mine or yours, as we forget the reality that it is God’s – and so both mine and
yours, as a gift to share, or neither mine nor yours, as a possession to grasp and hold.
It is a striking fact of Church history that, as Christianity emerged in Roman
society, what was distinctive about it was not just its confession of the crucified Lord
as the one who rose from the dead, but also the Christian confession of God as crea-
tor. They were seen to be linked together. Salomina, the mother of the Maccabaean
martyrs, on whose lips are placed the first explicit confession of creation out of
nothing – ‘look at heaven and earth . . . and recognize that God did not make them
out of things that existed’ – assures her last son that ‘the Creator of the world, who
shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy
give life and breath back to you’, through resurrection (2 Macc. 7.28, 23). The one
who created the world out of nothing could well be believed to raise the dead. Against
traditional paganism that took the world of men and gods for granted as an ultimate
reality, and against various forms of gnosticism that attributed this world to a God
either malevolent or incompetent, but not the true Father of the Lord Jesus Christ,
Christians believed that the one who hung on the cross and rose from the dead was
the one through whom the created order had come into being. Though the terms
have changed, it seems to me that our situation today, in a world of exploitative
consumerism and the dream of life as something that can be confected, is not that
different from that of our Fathers in the faith in the second century. The doctrine
of creation out of nothing by God is a radical doctrine with radical consequences.
There is more, however, to the Patristic – and Orthodox – understanding of
214 Ecological Hermeneutics

creation than creation out of nothing. Much of what we have outlined above is read-
ily to be seen in the Genesis account of creation, especially the so-called ‘first’ account
(Gen. 1.1–2.3): the created order is good, kalos, and created by a word, with no sug-
gestion that God has had to impose his will on recalcitrant material. But the Fathers
read the Genesis account with what was for them a contemporary understanding of
the cosmos, which meant one derived for the most part from Plato’s Timaeus. Ideas
in that dialogue that contravened their understanding of God were discarded: the idea
that God imposed his purpose on pre-existent matter that only yielded ‘for the most
part’ to the Creator’s intentions, the notion that the cosmos is itself a living being,
as are the celestial bodies. But much else they retained – mainly, I think, because it
was simply part of current contemporary wisdom. So the idea that the cosmos was
made out of the four elements; what we call a ‘Ptolemaic’ picture of the cosmos,
with the earth at the centre, surrounded by the planetary spheres and at its furthest
limit the fixed sphere of the stars: these ideas they retained. It was something almost
unconscious. A striking example can be found in the first chapter of St Gregory
of Nyssa’s vastly influential De hominis opificio [On the Making of Human kind]
(opif.). He begins by quoting Gen. 2.4 – ‘This is the book of the generation of heaven
and earth’ – and then continues in the rest of the chapter to give an account of the
Ptolemaic system of the universe, with the heavy earth at the centre surrounded by
planetary and stellar spheres, the latter revolving at an alarming speed. The transition
from quoting the Scriptures to expounding a view of the universe stemming ulti-
mately from Plato’s Timaeus is unconscious. The most important idea, however, the
Christian Fathers took from the Timaeus was the notion of the cosmos as modelled
on the human, so that the human can be called a ‘little cosmos’, a microcosmos, to
use the coinage of the Renaissance, suggesting that there is a profound correlation
between the cosmic and the human. They found this idea in the Genesis account of
creation by observing that the human came last, and that he was created by God
not just with a word, but with deliberation: ‘Let us make man’, says God, ‘after our
image and likeness’ (Gen. 1.26). The human came last, because the cosmos had been
prepared for him, as a kind of ‘royal lodging for a future king’ (opif. 2.1), and it
was because the human had been created in the image and likeness of God, that the
human was in some sense a mediator between God and the created order, the ‘bond
of creation’. So the human, for the Fathers and for subsequent Orthodox theology,
is a final ornament of creation, but also deeply implicated in its fate. The decay and
corruption of the cosmos is due, in some way, to human sin and disobedience to
God that has prevented the human from fulfilling its role as the centre point of the
cosmos, the bond of creation. The human and cosmic are mutually implicated, the
one in the other. The human story is a story with cosmic implications; the cosmic
story a human one. It is this mutual correlation that provides what one might call
a matrix for the Incarnation. God incarnate as human is not some alien incursion
into the cosmos, but rather the presupposition that makes possible the true destiny
of humanity – to become God.
All this becomes important when we turn to look at the transfiguration of the
 Between Creation and Transfiguration 215

cosmos. Creation is the presupposition of our existence; it is where we start from.

Our destiny is transfiguration. We can do no better than look at the way in which the
Greek Fathers, especially, interpret the Gospel account of the Transfiguration. The
key to patristic understanding of the Transfiguration can be seen in the sixth-century
apse mosaic at the Monastery of St Catherine on Sinai (then, and for most of the
Middle Ages, called the Monastery of the Burning Bush, near to which the monastery
is situated). In the centre of the apse Christ appears transfigured, flanked by Moses
and Elias, with the three Apostles at the foot of the mountain, overwhelmed and
amazed. In two roundels to the side of the apse there is depicted Moses, before the
Burning Bush on one side and on Mount Sinai itself, receiving the tablets of the Law.
To anyone with any familiarity with Patristic interpretation of Moses’ ascent of Sinai,
what is suggested by these juxtapositions is obvious. Christians from the time of
Clement of Alexandria, inspired by Philo, had interpreted Moses’ ascent of Mount
Sinai in terms of the soul’s ascent to the contemplation of God. The revelation at the
Burning Bush, soon interpreted by Christians as a symbol of the perpetual virginity
of the Mother of God – the most palpable of all theophanies that did not, however,
breach her bodily integrity – followed by the ascent in the dark clouds of Sinai to
the ‘place where God stood’ (Gen. 24.10): all this is interpreted of the mysterious
encounter between the soul and God, mysterious because God remains one who is
sought but never found. The mosaic of the Transfiguration in the monastic church at
Sinai superimposes, as it were, two mountains: Mount Tabor and Mount Sinai, the
mount of God’s revelation with the mount of the soul’s search for God.
So, too, does St Maximos in his several interpretations of the Transfiguration that
we find in his early works.1 The three Apostles represent faith, hope and love, the
qualities required of Christian discipleship. Elias, Moses and Christ represent what
Evagrios had called the stage of ascetic struggle (praktiki), natural contemplation
(physiki) and theologia, contemplation of God Himself – the three stages of the
soul’s progress towards God. In the account of the Transfiguration, the evangelists
draw attention to the radiant face of the Christ and his shining garments. Maximos
makes a play on meanings with the word for face, prosöpon in Greek, which also
means person. The radiant face of Christ, on which the disciples cannot look, is the
hidden mystery of the being of the Divine Person that he is: beholding the light that
reveals and blinds, the disciples acknowledge the divinity of Christ by apophatic
theology, that denies any human access to the being of God himself, revealed in the
face. The shining garments of Christ are creation and Scripture: the created order in
which the God is revealed through the divine principles, the logoi of creation, and the
Scriptures in which God is revealed through the verbal logoi of the text. This repre-
sents cataphatic theology: words, ideas and images which enable us to say something
about God. Transfiguration, then, sums up everything that theophany represents:
God’s self-manifestation in creation, in his communication of himself in revelation,

1 Maximos discusses the Transfiguration in the following works: Centuries on Theology and
the Incarnate Dispensation (CT) II. 13–16; Questions and Answers 191–92; Amb. 10.
216 Ecological Hermeneutics

and ultimately in the communication of his own personal being in the Incarnation.
Not only that, though, but also the capacity to receive, understand and participate
in God’s self-communication, something made possible only by all the demands of
the spiritual life, the renunciation of self-centred snatching at the divine mystery,
the ingrained passion to possess, together with the cultivation of a patient waiting
on God and his word, a letting-go of the self in the divine mystery. Transfiguration
is ultimately nothing less than the return of the creature to God, a return in which
the creatures and the whole of creation discover their own deepest meaning. In this
transfiguration, the human once again discovers its role at the heart of the created
order, the human once again becomes priest of the creation, through his own capacity
to think and understand, to pray and to relate. What this means ultimately, indeed
what this means penultimately, is far from clear, and teases us out of thought.
I need to pause here, as I have presented a picture that is dense with meaning and
full of allusive links. I have done this, not to confuse or impress, but because it seems
to me that it is characteristic of the Byzantine imagination – that modern Orthodox
theology tries, at best, to emulate – to hold a number of interrelating themes together,
so that theology itself becomes almost iconic: something to look at, explore, puzzle
over and ultimately to respond to. Transfiguration, as I have presented it, is similarly
complex, and it might help if I attempt to list some of its components. First of all, to
speak of transfiguration as the goal and purpose of creation is to suggest a genuine
transformation, but not a transformation into something else, rather it is a transfor-
mation that reveals the true reality of what is transfigured. Christ is revealed as how
he really is; the creation, that he has assumed in the Incarnation, is similarly revealed
as what it truly is, not as a backdrop to the drama of revelation and atonement. One
of the leading ideas of St Maximos’ theology – equally important in the speculative
and ascetic theology of his early period and in the Christological controversies of his
later years – is that ‘nothing natural can be opposed to God in any way’ (Opuscula
theologica et polemica [Opusc.] 3). This is fundamental to his defence of the full
humanity of Christ: there is nothing in human nature that is opposed to God, and
so nothing that the Word of God does not assume, including a human will. But it
is also fundamental to his understanding of our experience of human nature. The
ascetic ideal, that he pursued, does not involve any kind of repudiation of human
nature. The flight from the world that monasticism entails is a flight from our limited
and debased conception of the world: so that we can see the world as it truly is. At
every turn, we come back in Maximos’ thought to the conviction of the integrity
of the natural. But there are two other aspects of the concept of transfiguration I
want to underline. First, in the image of the mountain, the cosmos is the place of
our encounter with God: this is why, it seems to me, the Greek Fathers, including
St Maximos, see the episode of the Transfiguration as an epitome of the spiritual
life – reminding us of the virtues of faith, hope and love, or of the way in which
we reach contemplation of God, through an ascetic struggle that enables us, first of
all, to contemplate the created order itself. I am a little hesitant (unlike some of my
Orthodox colleagues) in drawing on William Blake, who made such individual use
 Between Creation and Transfiguration 217

of the ideas that attracted him, but the expression ‘cleansing the doors of perception’
seems to me to sum up what is required in our human encounter with the world in
which we live. The doors of perception that lead out on to the world have become
encrusted with our own concerns to the extent that they can no longer be opened,
we can no longer, through our senses, pass to any real encounter with the world of
God’s creation; what we encounter is what we want to make of it. To see the cosmos
as transfigured is to see it as it really is. Secondly, in this encounter with creation
transfigured, we encounter Christ himself, Christ as revealed in nature and revela-
tion, which is what is meant by the Byzantine interpretation of the shining garments
as nature and Scripture. Christ is clothed, as it were, in the garments of nature and
history, the history of God’s encounter with the human to which the Scripture bears
witness. But the shining garments are shining because of the light that transfigures,
a light that shines in its purity from Christ’s face, and dazzles, even as it draws us
into a face-to-face encounter with Christ.
There are two ways, as I have mentioned, in which the understanding of the
cosmos as existing between creation and transfiguration have been drawn out in
Orthodox theology: the doctrine of the logoi of creation, especially associated with
St Maximos the Confessor,2 and the notion of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, especially
associated with Russian theology at the end of the nineteenth/beginning of the
twentieth century.
Let us begin with the doctrine of the logoi of creation. The very word logos causes
problems: it is a very special word in Greek. Theodor Haecker, the lay Austrian
Catholic theologian who died at the end of the Second World War, once suggested
that in every language there are one or two untranslatable words – he called them
Herzwörter, heart words – in which is concentrated something of the genius of the
language. In Latin, it is res, usually translated ‘thing’; in German, Wesen, ‘essence’; in
French, raison, ‘reason’; in English, sense. In Greek it is, he suggested, logos (Haecker
1958: 131–32). It can be translated, according to context, word, reason, principle,
meaning; but this fragments the connotation of the Greek word, which holds all these
meanings together. There is a lot that could be said about the history of the word logos
in Greek thought, but I shall simply dwell on its use in Greek Christian thought. The
universe was created by God, through his Logos, which is identical with the second
person of the Trinity, the Son of the Father. To say that the universe is created by the
Logos entails that the universe has a meaning, both as a whole and in each of its parts.
That ‘meaning’ is logos: everything that exists has its own logos, and that logos is
derived from God the Logos. To have meaning, logos, is to participate in the Logos
of God. Behind this lurks a Platonic idea, that everything exists by participating in its
form, or idea, which is characterized by its definition; the Greek for definition (in this
sense) is, again, logos. These Platonic forms, or logoi, to call them by what defines
them, are eternal. In the period between Plato and St Maximos much water had flowed

2 On this topic see Dalmais 1952, Van Rossum 1993, Tollefsen 2008: 64–137.
218 Ecological Hermeneutics

down the history of ideas, and for Maximos, because the world has been created by
God through his Logos, it can no longer be regarded as a pale reflection of eternal
reality, as with Plato’s world. The created world has value, meaning, beauty, in itself:
because God is the supreme craftsman, his creation is supremely lovely. The beauty
and meaning is found in the logoi: so the logoi, in one sense at least, are created: they
belong to the created order. In another sense they are uncreated, because they are, as it
were, God’s thoughts, or intentions, or, to use the words Maximos borrows from the
early sixth-century Dionysios the Areopagite, ‘divine predeterminations and wills’.3
So the logos of a created being means what it is, what defines its nature – Maximos
speaks of the logos tës phuseös, meaning or definition or principle of nature – but
this means what God intends it to be, what he wills, what he predetermines. This
final point needs to be underlined: the divine logoi are expressions of the divine will.
Here we find perhaps the most important point at which Maximos, building on his
Christian predecessors, advances beyond Plato. For Plato, beings participate in the
Forms; for Maximos created beings participate in God through the logoi, but these
logoi must also be seen as expressing God’s will and intention, for each created being,
and for the cosmos as a whole. There is a dynamism about Maximos’ understanding
of God’s relationship to the cosmos through the logoi, that is lacking in Plato; the
cosmos itself is moving towards fulfilment, and that fulfilment is ultimately found in
union with God, from whom it has received being. This opens out into an aspect of
Maximos’ thought of which we can only catch glimpses: on the one hand, these logoi
are inviolable, they may be obscured by the fall, but they cannot be distorted – as we
have seen, ‘nothing that is natural is opposed to God’ (Opusc. 7: PG 91.80A). But on
the other hand, these logoi are not static, certainly not if we take into account the fact
that they represent God’s will for each creature. Maximos assumes that natures are
fixed – all his contemporaries did – but his thought is open to the idea of evolution,
say, as a way of expressing God’s providence, and certainly in the case of human
beings, who possess rational freedom, the meaning of each human logos is expressed
through what he calls logoi of providence and judgement, by which God’s providential
intention is expressed through a working together with free human actions (synergeia).
But to understand Maximos properly, we have to add something else that we have
already begun to adumbrate. For if human beings are created in the image of God,
and it is the Logos of God that communicates the divine nature, that displays
God’s image, then this means that human beings are fashioned after the Logos of God,
something manifest in the fact that human beings are logikos, the adjective from
logos, usually translated as ‘rational’, but really connoting something much broader
and deeper. One could say that human beings, as logikos, are capable of discerning
meaning, maybe even conferring meaning (is that the implication of the story of
Adam naming the animals?); it certainly includes freewill, which Maximos designates
by the Greek word, autexousia, which means fundamentally ‘authority over oneself’.

3 Cf. Dionysios, Divine Names 5.8, quoted by Maximos, Ambigua (Amb.) 7 (PG 91.1085A).
 Between Creation and Transfiguration 219

Because human beings participate in the divine Logos, they are logikos, and are
therefore capable of discerning meaning, that is logos: they are capable of discern-
ing the logoi of creation, the whole depth of meaning that can be found in creation
in all its manifold splendour: this understanding of the cosmos he calls phusikë
thëoria, natural contemplation. But alas, because of the fall, human beings can no
longer fulfil this their role as priests and interpreters of creation: they fail to achieve
understanding, and the limpid meaning of the cosmos becomes dark obscurity. What
is needed is for the Logos himself, the Son of God, to assume rational humanity, and
to renew the human function as bond of the cosmos from within, so to speak. That is
the purpose of the Incarnation: through being born of Mary, the Mother of God, the
Logos of God lives through human existence from within, renewing it in the course
of his life, finally confronting the ultimate meaninglessness of death, and giving it
meaning in the resurrection. But that is only part, though the most important part, of
the story, for this renewal worked by the Incarnate Word of God has to be appropri-
ated by all those who are baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ, and this
appropriation takes place through participation in the sacramental life of the Church
and through the ascetic struggle of the Christian life, the overcoming of vices and
growing in virtue. This entails that the personal life of struggle against temptation,
and growing in virtue, is not simply a personal matter, what Michel Foucault has
called ‘souci de soi’, care for the self, it is a matter of cosmic significance, for such
ascetic struggle restores the human capacity of being priest of nature, interpreter of
the cosmos. This is true for Maximos in various ways, but one that is immediately
relevant here is that through ascetic struggle the Christian attains a state of serenity,
and one of the fruits of that serenity is to be able to discern the logoi of creation: to
see the cosmos as God intended it, to have our capacity for spiritual sight restored.
Spiritual sight enables us to attain understanding, and this understanding involves
more than an expansion of our knowledge (though it does not exclude that): the
understanding gained here involves an inner transformation – requiring personal
effort, personal asceticism – that opens us up to that which we know (or the One
whom we know), so that it is through participation that our understanding is deep-
ened. How far such participation can go – Maximos certainly speaks of it in terms
of union with God and even deification or theosis, ‘becoming God’ – is a natural
question to raise here. For Maximos this participation in God is through the logoi
(and therefore through the Logos himself, for ‘the One Logos is many logoi and the
many logoi one’: PG 91.1081B) remains creaturely participation, and only takes
place through grace: however deeply one comes to participate in God, one remains
a creature, and that movement of participation, or deification, is only possible in
response to God’s prior movement towards us in incarnation (in any of its forms).
But the point of mentioning participation in this context is less to raise such
questions than to draw attention to the kind of understanding attained through
participation in God through the logoi. Just as we can only understand Scripture if
we let it call in question the smallness of our ideas and the narrowness of our desires;
so we can only understand the logoi of the cosmos if we renounce any attempt on
220 Ecological Hermeneutics

our part to understand the world as material for human exploitation, and seek to see
it as expressive of the Logos of God. Maximos’ doctrine of the logoi of creation is
not simply a way of expressing the immanence of the divine will, but also a way of
finding a place for human understanding of that will as expressed in creation – a way
of human understanding that has its own ascetic demands of patience and objectivity.
The doctrine of the logoi reveals a cosmos suffused with divine meaning. It seems
to me that it was something similar that the Russians were trying to express with
their sophiology, as it came to be called. To simplify, I shall simply discuss Fr Sergii
Bulgakov, the one around whom the controversy came to revolve, not that other
protagonists – such as Solov’ev and Florensky – are not interesting, but simply for
reasons of space. With all of them, we have a sense of an ancient tradition coming to
the aid of modern man, who is attracted by the Promethean promise of what humans
might now achieve through technology. Bulgakov is, I believe, best approached
through his autobiographical reflections; his formal statements on sophiology are
heavy with the conceptual weight of nineteenth-century German idealism, especially
in the form it took with Schelling. Nowadays, this seems to me to present barriers
to understanding him: why should we have to think through the dark weavings of
an out-dated philosophical system?
One thing that is striking about Bulgakov’s spiritual journey – sharing in this with
Solov’ev and Florensky – is the importance of personal experience, in his case of art
and nature. First, his account of an experience from the days of his early manhood,
attracted by the Marxist vision to see the natural world as a source of economic
wealth through the ‘industry’ of agriculture.

For a decade I have lived without faith and, after early stormy doubts, a religious emptiness
reigned in my soul. One evening we were driving across the southern steppes of Russia, and
the strong-scented spring grass was gilded by the rays of a glorious sunset. Far in the distance
I saw the blue outlines of the Caucasus. This was my first sight of the mountains. I looked
with ecstatic delight at their rising slopes. I drank in the light and the air of the steppes. I
listened to the revelation of nature. My soul was accustomed to the dull pain of seeing nature
as a lifeless desert and of treating its surface beauty as a deceptive mask. Yet, contrary to my
intellectual convictions, I could not be reconciled to nature without God. (Bulgakov 1976: 10)

This marked the beginnings of Bulgakov’s return to the faith of his childhood and his
ancestors. The revelation of the beauty of nature was something he could not deny,
nor, however, could he accept it with his atheistic convictions: he realized that, as he
put it, he ‘could not be reconciled to nature without God’. The reconciliation took
many years. Another step on the way occurred three years later, in Dresden. He says:

It was a foggy autumn morning. I went to the art gallery in order to do my duty as a tourist.
My knowledge of European painting was negligible. I did not know what to expect. The
eyes of the Heavenly Queen, the Mother who holds in her arms the Eternal Infant, pierced
my soul. I cried joyful and yet bitter tears, and with them the ice melted from my soul, and
 Between Creation and Transfiguration 221

some of my psychological knots were loosened. This was an aesthetic emotion, but it was
also a new knowledge; it was a miracle. I was then still a Marxist, but I was obliged to call
my contemplation of the Madonna by the name of ‘prayer’. I went to the Zwinger Gallery
early in the mornings in order to pray and weep in front of the Virgin . . . (Bulgakov 1976: 11)

This step involved loosening the strings of his heart – through an aesthetic experience
that led him to the experience of prayer, and not just a ‘form of words’, but tearful
prayers from the depths of his heart. The appreciation of nature, the melting of a
heart frozen by a purely rationalist way of looking at reality: these led Bulgakov to
embrace once again the faith. The person of Christ does not stand obviously at the
centre of this experience, rather it is the vulnerable beauty of nature and the tender
gaze of the Mother of God. And it is this that lies, I would maintain, at the heart
of Bulgakov’s notion of the Divine Wisdom, Sophia. His clearest words on this are
found in his account of another vision, somewhat later than the ones related. In
January 1923, having just been expelled from Russia at Lenin’s decree, alongside
other non-Marxist intellectuals, he found himself standing in the Great Church of
Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, then a mosque.

Human tongue cannot express the lightness, the clarity, the simplicity, the wonderful harmony
which completely dispels all sense of heaviness – the heaviness of the cupola and the walls.
A sea of light pours from above and dominates all this space, enclosed and yet free. The
grace of the columns and the beauty of their marble lace, the royal dignity – not luxury, but
regality – of the golden walls and the marvellous ornamentation: it captivates and melts the
heart, subdues and convinces. It creates a sense of inner transparency; the weightiness and
limitations of the small and suffering self disappear; the self is gone, the soul is healed of it,
losing itself in these arches and merging into them. It becomes the world: I am in the world
and the world is in me . . . This is indeed Sophia, the real unity of the world in the Logos, the
co-inherence of all with all, the world of divine ideas, ÁŦÊÄÇË ÅǾÌŦË. It is Plato baptized by the
Hellenic genius of Byzantium – it is his world, his lofty realm to which souls ascend for the
contemplation of Ideas. The pagan Sophia of Plato beholds herself mirrored in the Christian
Sophia, the divine Wisdom. Truly, the church of Hagia Sophia is the artistic, tangible proof
and manifestation of Hagia Sophia – of the Sophianic nature of the world and the cosmic
nature of Sophia. It is neither heaven nor earth, but the vault of heaven above the earth. We
perceive here neither God nor man, but divinity, the divine veil thrown over the world. How
true was our ancestors’ feeling in this temple, how right they were in saying that they did not
know whether they were in heaven or on earth! Indeed they were neither in heaven nor on
earth, they were in Hagia Sophia – between the two: this is the µ¼Ì¸Æŧ of Plato’s philosophical
intuition. Hagia Sophia is the last silent testimony to the future ages of the Greek genius: a
revelation in stone . . . The church of Hagia Sophia is Plato’s realm of ideas in stone rising
above the chaos of non-being and subduing it through persuasion: the actual pleroma, all as
a single whole, pan-unity. Here it is manifested and shown to the world. O Lord, how holy,
how marvellous, how precious is this manifestation! (Bulgakov 1976: 13–14)
222 Ecological Hermeneutics

This extraordinary account draws together themes we have already encountered, and
expresses the idea of creation as touched by God with his Sophia, as it were, so that
nothing that exists can be thought of as alien to God; all that exists feels the presence
of Sophia, and manifests God’s holiness, revealing his presence.
‘The environment in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition’: that title may have created
the expectation of some direct engagement with environmental problems from a
fresh perspective, and readers may by now be feeling disappointed. In my view, the
contribution of Eastern Orthodoxy to the pressing questions of the environment is
not to be sought in any specific solutions, not thought of by others, but rather in
our faithfulness to a sense of the holiness of the created order, and a sense of the
holiness of the human being. Such a sense of the holiness of the created undermines
any view of the world as pure nature, opposed to God – an idea I would not want to
characterize as typical of post-scholastic theology (though some would), but rather
the result of the kind of amnesia that a Christianity too focused on minute argu-
ments about grace can so easily succumb to. It is not as merely human (or ‘all too
human’) that we should regard our fallen human condition, for it is already on the
brink of transformation – transfiguration – by the One who, as we sing often during
Eastertide, has come ‘to raise up fallen Adam’.

References

Athanasios 1971 Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

Berdyaev, N. 1937 The Destiny of Man (London: Geoffrey Bles).
Bulgakov, S. 1976 A Bulgakov Anthology: Sergius Bulgakov 1871–1944 (J. Pain and N. Zernov
[eds]; London: SPCK).
Dalmais, I. H. 1952 ‘La théorie des “logoi” des creatures chez S. Maxime le Confesseur’, Revue des
Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 36: 244–49.
French, R.M. 1954 The Way of a Pilgrim (London: SPCK)
Gregory of Nyssa De hominis opificio (opif.) (PG 44.124–256).
Haecker, T. 1958 Hirtengedichte, Vergil: Vater des Abendlandes (Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg:
Fischer Bücherei).
Maximos Ambigua (Amb.) 10 (PG 91.1125D–1128D).
Maximos Centuries on Theology and the Incarnate Dispensation (CT) II. 13–16 (PG
90.1129C–1132C);
Maximos Opuscula theologica et polemica (Opusc.) 3 (PG 90.48D).
Maximos 1982 Questions and Answers, in J.H. Declerck (ed.), Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca
10: 132–35, 191–92.
Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow 2003 Izbrannye Trudy, Pisma, Vospomunaniya (Moscow: St Tikhon’s
Orthodox Theological Institute).
Tollefsen, T. T. 2008 The Christological Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Van Rossum, J. 1993 ‘The ÂŦºÇÀ of Creation and the Divine “energies” in Maximus the Confessor
and Gregory Palamas’, Studia Patristica 27: 213–17.
 Chapter 16

Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics

Jeremy Law

The theology of Jürgen Moltmann has always been situated theology. It has been
theology forged in the creative pressure between the anvil of the particular account
which the Christian faith gives of the history of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit, and the hammer of present circumstance. More specifically, it has long been
ecological theology. This has been explicitly so since at least 1972 and the publication
of The Crucified God, the second of Moltmann’s first trilogy of major volumes.1 Here
industrial pollution of nature was seen as one of four vicious circles of death aris-
ing from a one-sided focus on economic values, profit and progress (CG2 329–31).
The implicit grounding for a theology that supported ecological concern, however,
was already to be found in Theology of Hope (1964), Moltmann’s first, and, in
this author’s view, still his greatest major work. This is because the eschatological
prospect of the new creation of all things, entailed in Jesus’ resurrection, concerns
‘the future of the very earth on which his cross stands’ (TH 21). Ecological attention
has remained a prominent feature of Moltmann’s thinking ever since.

The Nature of the Ecological Crisis

What Moltmann terms the ‘scientific and technological civilisation’ (WJC 63 et pas-
sim) of the contemporary Western world is responsible for the ‘ecological crisis’. Its
‘reckless exploitation of natural resources is destroying the natural foundations of
life’ (CJF 51). The consequences of this project manifest themselves in the physical
environment. Extinctions, pollution, desertification, water shortages and climate
change are its hallmarks (HTG 71). This physical manifestation of the crisis also

1 It is this first trilogy, and the associated smaller publications, which constitute Moltmann’s
‘early theology’. By ‘later theology’ is intended his series of ‘systematic contributions to theo-
logy’ (TKG xi) which began with The Trinity and the Kingdom of God (1980) and continued
formally until Experiences in Theology (2000). This series has effectively been prolonged,
however, in a succession of later volumes, the most recent of which is his autobiography, A
Broad Place (2007).
2 Abbreviations are used for the titles of Moltmann’s primary texts. The bibliography provides
a key to their interpretation.
224 Ecological Hermeneutics

contains an inevitable social cost: ‘The Western standard of living cannot be univer-
salised. It can only be sustained at the expense of others: at the expense of people
in the Third World, at the expense of coming generations, and at the expense of the
earth’ (GSS 93).
For Moltmann, however, the primary location of the ‘ecological crisis’ is to be
found in neither the physical environment nor its social consequences. It is a crisis of
values. In fact, it is a religious crisis, a crisis of that in which people in the Western
world place their trust (GSS 95). ‘The crisis we are experiencing is therefore not just
an “ecological crisis”, nor can it be solved by purely technical means. A change in con-
victions and basic values is as necessary as a change in attitudes in life and life-style’
(CJF 53). When the ‘ravaged earth’ is understood not merely as human environment
but as creation destined to be God’s environment, then such a ‘nihilistic destruction
of nature’ is revealed as ‘atheism put into practice’ (HTG 75). Again, the unfettered
demand of the modern scientific and technological civilization for ‘progress’ and
‘growth’ (GinC 28) is nothing less than a death-drive (CG 331; SofL 97):

Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ and the growth-orientated ‘increase in life’ manifests a climber mental-
ity which is contrary to nature, destructive of nature, and suicidal; it aims to tread underfoot
anyone who is weaker, or different, or alien, and it digs its own mass grave. The German ‘will
to power’ ended up in two world wars, in Verdun, Stalingrad and Auschwitz. (EinT 149)

Precisely because the ‘ecological crisis’ is seen to be rooted in a particular human

self-interpretation, and so calls for an urgent re-evaluation of values, there is a public
role for theology (SW 49). Theology can make its contribution, and this chapter will
seek to unfold how Moltmann attempts an ecological hermeneutic of theology to
achieve just this. It is an urgent task. Moltmann consistently holds open the question
of whether the ‘ecological crisis’ is reversible. His own personal experience (of the
Second World War, and of retirement)3 has been that ‘in every end a new beginning
lies hidden’ (IEB 35). This is also a profound theological principle. It can be seen
in the resurrection of the crucified Christ, the continuing epicentre of Moltmann’s
theology. Yet when Moltmann examines the ‘creeping ecological catastrophe’ within
the rubric of this pattern (IEB 33–52) there is silence concerning a new beginning.
With the ‘ecological crisis’ human life has entered an ‘End-time’ condition in which
its very future existence is threatened (CJF 72; cf. WJC 45–46; CofG 208; GSS 117).

Anthropological Theology

The ‘will to power’, that Moltmann diagnoses to be at the root of the ‘ecological
crisis’, also extends to the attitude people display towards their own bodies (GSS 15).

3 For details see BP 13–15, 335–63.

 Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics 225

We treat our bodies as we do our cars (CJF 75). Our bodies are subjugated to the
demands of the will and alienated from their own intrinsic rhythms with disastrous
consequences for both our health and our attitude to sickness (GinC 270–77). ‘The
alienation of the human being from his bodily existence must be viewed as the inner
aspect of the external ecological crisis of modern industrial society’ (GinC 48). This
inner dimension of the ‘ecological crisis’ is not merely a worthy additional observa-
tion, rather it points to the fundamental Cartesian dichotomy between the thinking
subject (res cogitans) and the rest of the extended world (res extensa), including the
subject’s own body. It was within this bifurcated world that modern, liberal theology
sought refuge in the subjective realm of human ‘history’, leaving the realm of ‘nature’
to the rapidly advancing exact sciences (GinC 31–32). But this reduction of theol-
ogy’s compass to human existence, this reduction of theology to ‘anthropological
theology’,4 carries a set of consequences which means that, far from being a source
of challenge to the values which have led to the ‘ecological crisis’, anthropological
theology becomes a contributor. It does so because it effectively separates human
existence from the rest of creation. Thus, God’s presence and revelation are discerned
in human history, not in nature. It is the soul which possesses God’s Spirit and image,
not the body. Consequently, anthropological theology is in danger of producing ‘a
godless view of nature and a natureless view of God’ (CJF 75). Salvation, within
this purview, is merely salvation of the soul, and begins to look like a Gnostic myth
(CofG 259–60). ‘A doctrine of God which leads to a cleavage in reality [between soul
and body] is not a doctrine of God the Creator’ (SofL 37). An important strand of
Moltmann’s endeavour is, therefore, the attempt to burst apart this Cartesian prison
and bring the language of theology into direct confrontation with the extended world
once again.

Biblical Contingence and Universal Relevance

Of programmatic significance for Moltmann’s theological method is the following

statement from the essay ‘Theology as Eschatology’ (1970):

Christian theology speaks of God with respect to the concrete, specific, and contingent history,
which is told and witnessed to in the biblical writings . . . as long as the dialectical unity of
particular history and special historical mediation with the universally relevant that pertains
directly to everyone can be retained, that is, as long as the unity of Jesus with God and of
God with Jesus can be retained Christianity is alive. As soon as the dialectical unity between
history and absolute is broken, Christianity disintegrates. (TasE 1–2)

4 Moltmann’s more common use of ‘anthropological’ as a qualifier is in relation to Christology

(see, for example, WJC 55–63). He does though extend it to theology as such (for example,
IEB 161).
226 Ecological Hermeneutics

Moltmann is determined that the biblical portrayal of Jesus Christ, in all its specific
and contingent detail, should come to shape, and not merely illustrate, theology’s
claim to speak on a level that is universally relevant. He thus rejects what he calls
the ‘palimpsest’ technique which reads the biblical story of Jesus as the answer to an
imposed, allegedly universally relevant, question (HP 3–30). For the cosmological
theology of the patristic era this was the question: ‘[H]ow can finite being participate
in Being that is infinite . . .?’ (WJC 47). For anthropological theology operating in the
wake of the ‘turn to the subject’, and examined above, it was the question of where
to discover true human authenticity (cf. WJC 56–57). Thus, respectively, Jesus either
becomes the incarnation of the God who has been independently interpreted as the
inverse of the world (infinite, eternal, immutable and the rest), or Jesus becomes the
projection screen for images of human self-realization sourced from elsewhere (WJC
61). Both of these portrayals find themselves in tension with the identifying biblical
details of a Jesus who suffers, and dies godforsaken (WJC 51–53, 61–63).
What Moltmann requires is an interpretative horizon that not only reaches to
the universal plane but which is also an inherent part of the biblical presentation of
Jesus. This he finds in the horizon of eschatological promise,5 the promise of new
creation. The resurrection of the crucified and dead Jesus constitutes the enactment
of the promise of new creation in the midst of present creation. It is the incarnation
of the transformation of creation, in creation. Moreover, it is the source and ground
of this future. What Moltmann terms ‘biblical identifiability’ (WJC 41) flows from
perceiving the resurrection of Jesus as the defining ground of theology. In this way,
God is defined as ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom. 15.4), the
one who raised him from the dead (Rom. 4.24). Jesus is the Christ in, and not apart
from, this eschatological history of God (cf. Rom. 1.4). The Spirit is the power of
resurrection (Rom. 8.11). And salvation comes from participating in the death and
resurrection of Christ (Rom. 6.3-11). Not surprisingly then, and notwithstanding the
broadening interests of Moltmann’s theology over time, the cross and resurrection
of Jesus stand at its very centre. This is as true of Theology of Hope (1964)6 as it
is of The Coming of God (1995),7 Moltmann’s return to eschatology thirty years
later. Thus Moltmann can affirm that the universal relevance of Christ,8 and so his
relevance to a world under ecological threat, is the eschatological future he projects
and will realize (WJC 119).

5 One of the jewels of Theology of Hope is a seven-part analysis of just such promise
(103–105).
6 ‘For Christian faith lives from the raising of the crucified Christ, and strains after the
promises of the universal future of Christ’ (TH 16).
7 ‘Christian eschatology has its foundation in the experience of Christ’s death and resurrection’
(CofG 261).
8 Müller-Fahrenholz worries that the comprehensiveness of Moltmann’s universal vision
may contain a ‘disguised claim to domination’ over against other perspectives (2000: 232).
Perhaps significantly, therefore, in relation to the world religions, Moltmann writes: ‘[they]
too must subordinate themselves to the preservation of this world’ (GSS 133).
 Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics 227

Why Bother with Scripture?

We are now in a position to appreciate Moltmann’s interest in, and response to, a
fundamental question: why should one bother with the biblical texts at all? And more
specifically for our purposes, why turn to the Iron Age texts of Scripture in order to
develop a response to the twenty-first-century issue of the ‘ecological crisis’? What
can they know of carbon footprints and genetic modification? Moltmann shapes his
general response quite sharply:

In modern hermeneutics the question generally asked is how texts belonging to the tradition
should be interpreted, not why we should interpret them at all, or what compels us to explain
and apply them . . . Only a view of reality in the context of promissory history discloses the
need to interpret and apply the subject of the texts to the present day. The historical view of
history has no knowledge of this, and existential hermeneutics only that it is possible, not
that it is necessary. (EinT 103)

It is the promissory character of Scripture that makes it relevant. The biblical histories
of promise and gospel point eccentrically beyond themselves to the new creation, to
the coming kingdom of God (EinT 125). They point to an end when ‘it is written’
becomes ‘it has happened’ (EinT 127).
It is this future-open character of Scripture which prevents a Biblicist approach to
the text. If the ‘matter of Scripture’ is this promise of new creation, then God’s Word
cannot be bound to the historical context of its origination. Rather, ‘[o]nly what goes
beyond the times in which the texts were written and points to our future is relevant’
(EinT xxii; cf. EH 46). The interpreter is thus afforded a creative liberty over against
texts which are subject to their own time, as he or she seeks to follow out the trajec-
tory of promise they trace towards the horizon of the new creation, a task that must
inevitably utilize the faculty of imagination (cf. GinC 4, 65; HP vii). This approach
also provides a mediating path between what Moltmann terms a ‘hermeneutics from
above’, which, in Barthian fashion, emphasizes the absolute sovereignty of the divine
subject in revelation, and a ‘hermeneutics from below’ which places the emphasis on
the role of human subjectivity, seeing the text as a historically, socially and culturally
conditioned expression of human faith (EinT 140–42). Mediating the dialectic is
Moltmann’s ‘Trinitarian hermeneutics’ (EinT 144) which comprehends Scripture
as the root to participation in the forward-moving Trinitarian history of God with
the world. It therefore contains both movements ‘from above’ (God’s action) and
‘from below’ (human response) as it perceives Scripture as the mode of access to
integration, through the Spirit, into the eschatological history of Christ, which
brings us to the Father (EinT 143–45; cf. TKG 73, 89–90, 122–28; GinC 242–43;
SofL 204).
A fascinating insight into the difference between Moltmann’s approach to
Scripture and that of a New Testament exegete, albeit one highly sympathetic to
Moltmann’s theology, is afforded by his dialogue with Richard Bauckham in God
228 Ecological Hermeneutics

Will be All in All (1999). Moltmann writes: ‘Taking account of exegetical discipline,
I can develop my own theological relationship to the biblical texts; for theology is not
a commentary on the biblical writings, and commentaries on the biblical writings are
not a substitute for theological reflection’ (GAA 230). Moltmann has little time for
exegetical detail for its own sake, even when Bauckham makes some astute points.
Rather, building upon what he takes to be the broad theological concern of the texts,
he seeks to build a bridge between exegesis (what the text meant) and theological
reflection (what the text means in the context of today). In explicating this further,
Moltmann articulates what amounts to a hermeneutic spiral: (1) read the texts and
ask what they are saying: what is their subject and concern?; (2) try to comprehend
this subject and concern within the mental categories of today; (3) check this com-
prehension again against the text. Theology, he assures us, cannot be dictated to by
text or by exegete (GAA 230–31)! Clearly, though, Moltmann needs, and desires, to
protect himself from the accusation of an arbitrary imposition on the text that would
take him back to the ‘palimpsest’ hermeneutic we have seen him reject.9

Return to Origins

In the context of the ‘ecological crisis’ where anthropological theology appears to have
nothing to contribute, or worse, has become a factor in the crisis itself, Moltmann’s
commitment to the relevance of the biblical text leads him to a re-examination of
what the doctrines of creation and redemption might contribute in the light of the
biblical sources that originally helped fashion them. The doctrine of creation, he
asserts, ‘must be exposed to the criticism of the present day, so that it may arrive
at its own origins . . . The more clearly the experiences and recognitions, questions
and impasses of the present situation are recognized and accepted, the more clearly
and unequivocally belief in creation can speak’ (GinC 22). The same holds for a
re-evaluation of redemption: ‘Only in an age of ecological crisis can the promise of a
new heaven and a new earth be heard again after the narrow view of anthropological
theology which could only consider the realm of human subjectivity. The old images
come to life once more’ (IEB 161).
What then are the key biblical motifs to which Moltmann turns in an attempt
to construct a theology which can speak to the crisis of values which has led to the
present ecological impasse? We shall briefly examine five which occupy a recurring
place in his thought.

9 See GAA 231–32 for Moltmann’s attempted rebuttal of Bauckham’s specific exegetical
criticisms. The reader can judge the success or otherwise of this effort. I judge the debate
fairly evenly matched.
 Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics 229

A. Genesis 1.26-28.

Moltmann traces one of the root causes of the destructive posture of human beings
towards nature to a misinterpretation of what it means to link human beings made
in the image of God with the call to dominion over all living creatures. Foundational
culprits in this respect are Francis Bacon and René Descartes who, in the words of the
latter, saw the natural sciences as the route to restoring human beings to the status of
the ‘lords and possessors of nature’, so imaging the all-powerful God of Renaissance
nominalism (GinC 26–27). Moltmann seeks to overturn such an understanding in
a number of ways.
First, Moltmann offers a series of exegetical observations. Given that there are two
accounts of creation in Genesis, what Gen. 1.28 means by ‘subdue’ and ‘dominion’
must be read in the light of Gen. 2.15’s ‘tilling and keeping’ (SW 47). Following
Odil Steck (2008 [1978]), Moltmann also suggests that ‘subdue the earth’ is in fact
a dietary command and ‘have dominion’ a call for humanity to act as justices of the
peace in creation (GinC 29–30). Another tack is to emphasize the importance of
community, both by seeing the God to be imaged as Trinity (GinC 216, 241) and by
noticing that Genesis 1 and 2 point to humanity as one creature within a community
of others, on which humanity is irreducibly dependent (GinC 185–88). This dovetails
with Moltmann’s Christological conditioning of what image means. If Christ is the
measure of the image of God, and a model of the exercise of dominion, then what is
envisaged is a servanthood aimed at community. Gen. 1.28 then becomes, ‘free the
earth through community with it’ (SW 50; cf. FofC 129; GinC 227–28).
Secondly, and slightly in tension with the first approach, Moltmann seeks to
impose an eschatological conditionality on the description of the human role in
relation to nature offered in Genesis 1. Given that creation is an open system (FofC
115–30), and so creation-in-the-beginning is but the first stage of a continuing ‘proc-
ess’ that points forward, beyond itself, towards the consummation that God will
bring: ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ cannot be the last word on the subject of human
destiny (SW 47, cf. FofC 129). Indeed, God in Creation (1985) offers an expansion
of imago Dei into imago Christi and finally Gloria Dei est homo as what it means to
be human unfolds within the eschatological process of God with the world.
Moltmann also traces the misappropriation of Genesis 1 to the medieval distinc-
tion between the image of God in the reasonable soul and mere traces of God in the
body and other created things (SofL 36). Picking up on the reference to ‘male and
female’ (Gen. 1.27), Moltmann asserts that God’s image does not correspond to the
soul detached from the body but to, ‘men and women in their wholeness, in their
full, sexually specific community with one another’ (SofL 94). In other words, the
image has to do with bodily existence (CJF 78–79), with a humanity rooted firmly in
the world.
230 Ecological Hermeneutics

B. Genesis 2.1-3

The scriptural motif of the Sabbath is perhaps the most far reaching of those
employed by Moltmann. Indeed, he can speak explicitly of his intention to develop
a ‘sabbath doctrine of creation’ (GinC 6). The Sabbath motif becomes a way to
de-centre the place of both humanity and work, which have taken centre stage in the
traditional Western ‘six days’ account of creation (GinC 276). It can thus become an
effective tool of ecological reform. Key to his interpretation is the recognition that
‘it is only the sabbath which completes and crowns creation’ for here ‘the creative
God comes to his goal’ (GinC 6; cf. CofG 264). For Moltmann, the Sabbath rest of
God constitutes an anticipation of the redemption of the world (GinC 276) because
it points to the final indwelling, resting, of God in creation (Rev. 21.3) which forms
the inner ground of the world’s redemption (GinC 288; cf. CJF 84; TJ 53–54).
Exegetically, Moltmann grounds this understanding in the observation that the
Sabbath, in contrast to the other days of creation, has no following night (GinC 276).
It thus holds a permanent meaning for all the days of creation. Additionally, there
is an anticipatory progression to be discerned that runs from the Sabbath day to the
Sabbath year (Lev. 25.1-7), to the Jubilee (Lev. 25.8-17) and on to the messianic
end-time (Isa. 61.1-11) (GinC 289–90). To observe the Sabbath rest is thus not
about gaining strength for Monday and the demands of work, it is rather a point of
orientation that reveals the meaning of existence itself (OC 70–72).
In fact, the Sabbath undercuts the economic valuation of life. Its rhythm of regular
restful interruption acts against the relentless economic pressure for ‘flexible working’
(EinT 315). Moreover, humanity is set free from ‘the striving for happiness and from
the will for performance and achievement’ (GinC 286). In the Sabbath year the land
‘is no longer weighed up and assessed according to its utility for human beings’, but
rather ‘comes to itself’ and is respected in its dignity as God’s creation (SofL 97). In
this way the Sabbath becomes a means to distinguish between the world as nature
(open to human exploitation) and creation (GinC 276).10
By abolishing the distinctions introduced by the world of work (cf. Exod. 20.8-11),
the community of creation is restored, for the Sabbath rest is universal; in the Sabbath
year it extends to include the earth itself (GinC 285). This lateral extension of the
Sabbath rest means that even through it is defined primarily in terms of time, one
day in seven, it also reaches out to include space. For Moltmann it thus becomes a
way to hold together history (time) and nature (space) (EinT 314), the very things
which anthropological theology, following the Cartesian division of the world, let
disastrously fall apart.
Space and time are also integrated in Jesus’ proclamation and enactment of
the kingdom of God, which Moltmann, in the light of Lk. 4.16-21, interprets as
the messianic Sabbath (WJC 91, 119). Jesus introduces a different quality of time

10 Moltmann’s emphasis on creation as a dual world of heaven and earth (GinC 158–84) can
also be considered a component of his strategy to distinguish ‘creation’ from ‘nature’.
 Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics 231

(GinC 291), the imminent Kingdom of God (cf. Mk. 1.15) which has as its inner
content a new experience of space, the unparalleled closeness of God (cf. WJC
97–99). Jesus’ messianic peace brings an end to violence, the fundamental force that is
inimical to life (WJC 127–30). Thus for Moltmann, to follow Jesus – drawing on the
whole set of Sabbath resonances outlined above – is to seek to end the exploitation
of the earth by engaging in ecological reform (WJC 121–22).
While Moltmann’s ecologically motivated emphasis on rest is to be welcomed, one
is left wondering whether the intimation of the (eschatological) end in the beginning,
which the Sabbath constitutes, might not short-circuit the value of a creation that
becomes and evolves. Must not the value of creation’s defining activity be asserted
alongside the value of its sheer existence? In other words, might not the six days be
more emphatically linked to the seventh?

C. Psalm 104.29-30

This text grounds Moltmann’s understanding of the Spirit as the power of creation,
in Calvin’s phrase the ‘wellspring of life’ (SofL 35). A creation created ex nihilo, in
marked contrast to the working assumption of the natural sciences, does not form the
basis of its own existence. It is, therefore, constantly threatened by the fate of nothing-
ness and only exists as it is preserved by the ‘source of life’, the Spirit (HTG 72, 75).
More specifically, for Moltmann, creation exists through the ‘unceasing inflow of
the energies and potentialities of the cosmic Spirit’ (GinC 9). The Spirit thus forms
the inner continuity of the community of creation, and it does so in such a way as to
anticipate God’s final eschatological indwelling (GSS 104). Consequently, within this
pneumatic frame of reference, the world constitutes a unity that cannot be thought
apart from God. The earth cannot so easily, then, be reduced to mere ‘raw materials’
to serve human economic activity.

D. Proverbs 8.22-36

In a world threatened by the ‘ecological crisis’ Moltmann can claim that the most
urgent task for theology is to rediscover the wisdom of God in nature (CJF 15, cf.
GinC xi). As Prov. 8.35-36 has it, ‘For whoever finds me finds life . . . but those
who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death’. As was the case in the
reflection of the early Church, so also for Moltmann, this text can be used as a basis
for considering both the role of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Focusing on the former,
if Christ is taken to be the mystery of the world, the cosmic wisdom through whom
all things exist (cf. Col. 1.15-20), then the one who reveres Christ must also revere
all things in him (HTG 73, cf. GSS 103). Thinking now about the latter, this text
can ground the concept of creation in the Spirit which Moltmann seeks, following
Calvin’s intimations, to take up and develop more fully (GinC 10–11). In either case
this text can be used to justify the immanence of God in the world.
232 Ecological Hermeneutics

E. Romans 8.19-26

This passage is used extensively by Moltmann, but essentially only to make one
fundamental point. Humanity and creation share in a common plight, and hope for
a common liberation (CG 335; GinC 189). This community of hope is rooted in
the Spirit (GSS 81–82): ‘[T]he Spirit of God himself represents believers and crea-
tion in their sighs for liberty through his “sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26)’
(GinC 69). To ‘the redemption of our mortal bodies’ (v. 23), for which humanity
awaits, corresponds the ‘hope that creation itself will be set free from its bondage
to decay’ (v. 21) which Moltmann takes to be the power of transience (HTG 70–72;
CofG 276), the irreversibility and mortality of time. This companionship in hope
means that redemption cannot be conceived as something which separates and
distinguishes between humanity and nature: ‘In physical terms, believers are bound
together in a common destiny with the whole world and all earthly creatures. So
what they experience in their own body applies to all other created things’ (GinC 68).
Moltmann suggests that this shared destiny should lead theology to an interest in
those sciences which reveal nature’s irreversible time structure such as biological
evolution and cosmology (GSS 82).

Transforming Theology

In unfolding Moltmann’s interpretation of these five biblical motifs we have already

begun to touch upon the way in which the fundamental themes of theology are
transformed to serve an ecological purpose. Within the limits of the space available,
the aim now is to offer an elucidation of some central themes which emerge from
this process.

(A) Re-conceiving God’s Relationship With the World

Over against pantheism in which creation is dissolved in God, and atheism in which
God is dissolved in the world, Moltmann seeks to pursue a Trinitarian panentheism
(cf. GinC 98). ‘An ecological doctrine of creation implies a new kind of thinking
about God. The centre of this thinking is no longer the distinction between God and
the world. The centre is the recognition of the presence of God in the world and the
presence of the world in God’ (GinC 13). A monotheistic conception of God as one
who utterly transcends the world had led, in Moltmann’s view, to the secularisa-
tion and de-sacralization of the world, as being something totally other than God.
Clearly such a view does little to restrain the exploitation of the natural world.
Moltmann counters this with a Trinitarian view of creation as taking place by God
(the Father) through God (the Son) and in God (the Holy Spirit). While maintaining
a sense of God’s transcendence, this perspective introduces a balancing emphasis on
God’s immanence in the world (HTG 72–73). It also replaces a notion of God as
 Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics 233

subjugating subject with ‘a God in community, rich in relationships’ (GSS 101; cf.
GinC 14). For humanity created to reflect the nature of God, this Trinitarian account
suggests a way of relating to nature that contrasts strongly with that of economic
domination. This interrelationship between the pattern of God’s own life and the
ideal mode of human interaction with the world is deepened through Moltmann’s
use of perichoresis, the notion of the mutual indwelling of the Trinitarian persons in
one another. Moltmann gains this insight from the increasing interest in Orthodox
theology that colours his later work. ‘[T]he high priestly prayer of John 17.21 . . .
“that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they
also may be in us” . . . can become the foundational saying for theological ecology’
(GSS 101–102).
The conception of Trinitarian persons as ‘existing-in-relation’ (TKG 172) comes
to shape a notion of creation as ‘in-existence’ (CofG 301). The ecological web of
existence, where one creature exists in, with and out of others, is thus rooted in the
being of God. More, in the Spirit, this intricate web is interpenetrated by the Creator
himself. The Spirit is ‘the immanent transcendence in all things’ (CJF 58), ‘the infinite
in the finite, the eternal in the temporal, and the enduring in the transitory’ (SofL 35).
Moltmann draws on the Greek derivation of ‘ecology’ (oikos) to suggest it can mean
‘a doctrine of the house’ indicating, in turn, creation’s inner secret: the indwelling
of God (GinC xii).
In Science and Wisdom (2003), Moltmann describes his theological journey from
earlier to later work in a subtitle: ‘From the God of Hope to the Indwellable God’
(SW 111; cf. EinT 313). What this represents, in part, is Moltmann’s own ecologically
motivated corrective of his earlier labours. He is concerned that the eschatological
vision of Theology of Hope could be seen to operate within a historical paradigm
(albeit significantly chastened) which has proved incapable of holding humanity and
nature together:

It was only slowly, at the beginning of the 1970s, that we became conscious of the simple fact
that human history is located within the ecological limits of this planet earth, and that human
civilisation can only survive if it respects these limits, and the laws, cycles and rhythms of the
earth. If humanity disturbs, and ultimately destroys its environment, it will annihilate itself.
As we became aware of the ‘limits of growth’ . . . we found ourselves facing a problem with
the all-dominating category of historical time. (EinT 314)

The developing emphasis in Moltmann’s theology on the reciprocal indwelling of

God and the world can thus be read as a counteracting of this possible unintended
outcome of his earlier thinking.
This strategy entails the risk, however, of realized eschatology, of reading the end
goal of redemption, which as early as Religion, Revolution and the Future (1969) was
‘the earthly and visible inhabitation of God in a new creation’ (RRF 33), back into
present creation where ‘we have to speak of the marvel that the infinite God himself
should dwell in his finite creation, making it his own environment’ (GinC 150).
234 Ecological Hermeneutics

This is not a risk that is ever fully realized, it must be said, because Moltmann has
numerous ways of safeguarding the qualitative difference between the new creation
and present existence. Perhaps one of Moltmann’s most robust defences of this dif-
ference stems from his conviction that the new creation demands a transformation in
the transcendental conditions of time to overcome the present problem of transience
(CofG 26). Yet, when Moltmann draws on the Kabbalisitc notion of zimsum11 to
speak of an initial self-contraction of God to open up space within himself for crea-
tion to exist (TKG 108–11; GinC 86–93, 114–17 et passim), or when, in his more
Hegelian moments, he seems to make the Spirit the determining subject of evolution12
(GinC 16, 19, 98–100),13 this risk of realized eschatology becomes more threatening.

(B) Ecological Christology

With the writing of The Way of Jesus Christ (1989), Moltmann explicitly aims at ‘a
post-modern christology which places human history ecologically in the framework
of nature’ (WJC xvi). This is because, in the context of the ‘ecological crisis’, Christ,
and the salvation he brings, must be presented for ‘the whole threatened earth and
all individual created beings, in their common peril’ (WJC 46, cf. 64). It means
asking, ‘[w]ho really is Christ for dying nature and ourselves today?’ (WJC 68).
The result is a new emphasis on ‘the bodily nature of the Christ who died and rose
again’ (WJC 247) since the body serves as the meeting point between human history
and the natural world (WJC xvi). The perspective from which the Christ-event of
cross and resurrection is viewed shifts accordingly. The ‘historical-eschatological
theology of resurrection’ gives way to the ‘historical-ecological theology of rebirth’
in the Spirit (WJC 247), as the paradigm ‘history’, from Moltmann’s earliest theol-
ogy, is once again broadened out to explicitly include nature. Strongly contrasting
with Theology of Hope, where he was at pains to stress the radical dialectic between
cross and resurrection (for example, TH 197–98), the emphasis now falls on the
continuity of the process of resurrection through use of the category of ‘transition’
(WJC 248). Resurrection is the process of the completion of creation and less of a
radical interruption. Within this process human history can only be consummated
in the ‘resurrection of nature’ (WJC 254–56).
This focus on all-inclusiveness also pertains to Jesus’ suffering and death. Jesus
dies the death of everything that lives (WJC 169) and his sufferings must be viewed

11 For an analysis of Moltmann’s highly selective use of Isaac Luria’s zimsum conception see
Deane-Drummond (1997: 202–205). Its fundamental problem however, is that it turns God
and creation into ontological rivals for the same space, thus failing to take account of the
essential qualitative difference between the two.
12 Deane-Drummond is also concerned about the biological foundation of such statements
(1997: 274, cf. 218–21).
13 Moltmann’s explicit method here is to project back from the experience of the Holy Spirit in
the New Testament Church (which might also be the source of an anticipation of the saving
future) to the presence and efficacy of the Spirit in creation generally.
 Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics 235

within the perspective of the sufferings of dying nature (WJC 194–95). It is this which
makes his resurrection a sign of universal hope (WJC 170).
Moltmann enthusiastically takes up and develops the cosmic Christology of
Joseph Sittler (WJC 276–82). Christ is the mediator of creation (1 Cor. 8.6), the one
in whom all things are made and hold together (Jn 1.1-3; Col. 1.15, 17; Heb. 1.3).
Christ’s death effects a universal reconciliation (Eph. 2.16; Col. 1.20; 2 Cor. 5.19).
Moltmann adds his own particular nuance, however, by means of a threefold dif-
ferentiation: Christ is the ground of all things; the ‘moving power of evolution’;14
and the redeemer of the whole creation process (WJC 286). Without explanation
of how this might be reconcilable, Christ, we are informed, is not only the ‘moving
power of evolution’, but also a victim of evolution among other victims (WJC 296).
Additionally, ‘[i]f Christ is to be thought of in conjunction with evolution, he must
become evolution’s redeemer’ (WJC 297). The attempt to find a Christological read-
ing of evolution is admirable, but the results are somewhat confusing.15

(C) The Scope of Redemption

One way of unfolding Moltmann’s eschatological doctrine of creation is to ask about

the scope of redemption. How inclusive is creation’s future? Moltmann’s answer is
as broad as is imaginable. His hope for the future embraces the universe, extending
beyond humanity to ‘animals, plants, stones and all cosmic life-systems’ (WJC 258).
‘If we were to surrender hope for as much as one single creature, for us God would
not be God’ (CofG 132). ‘Nothing that God has created is lost. Everything returns
in transfigured form’ (HTG 78; cf. WJC 239, 303; CofG 70, 251, 265). Nulla salus
sine terra! No salvation without the earth! This is Moltmann’s cry (CofG 274).
Moltmann’s theological logic is this: if the Redeemer is none other than the Creator,
then God would contradict himself if he did not redeem all that he has made (CofG
259). On the basis of this promised future, ‘[t]his earth, with its world of the living, is
the real and sensorily experienceable promise of the new earth’ (CofG 279; cf. GinC
56, 60–65, 204). Thus the whole of the concrete, exploitable world has a future on
which human activity should not foreclose.16

14 Nowhere does Moltmann spell out what this means, nor do we learn how Christ’s role relates
to the Spirit as the determining power of evolution that we have already met.
15 In her very recent Christ and Evolution (2009), Celia Deane-Drummond traces Moltmann’s
difficulty here, in part, to his use of a broadly narrative approach to a theological appropria-
tion of evolution (2009: 44–49). Her alternative turns on a development of Hans Urs von
Balthasar’s category of theodrama.
16 While the redemption of every last aspect of the created order is a powerful way to underline
the value of the world in an age of ecological threat, it raises important theological questions.
It is open, for example, to Bauckham’s (1995: 210) ‘marigold objection’: must every last
marigold, every last blade of grass find its way to eternal life? Bauckham also points out the
way in which the salvation of everything, along with Christ’s death in the place of all living
things, makes any form of moral distinction between the claims of living organisms highly
problematic (1995: 210–11).
236 Ecological Hermeneutics

Christologically grounding this comprehensive future is Moltmann’s conception

of resurrection as re-uniting that which death divides and separates (WJC 263–73).
More particularly for our purposes, this must be read as an implicit corrective
of anthropological theology’s Cartesian deficiencies. Resurrection in the Spirit
overcomes the divisions between: (a) body and soul; (b) a person and the stages of
their temporal development (diachronic resurrection); (c) person and community,
since bodily existence is social existence; (d) the generations, which has important
implications for sustainability; and (e) human civilization and nature, founding a
partnership on the way to a common goal.
If, however, God is to redeem all things in the end, so that nothing is lost, could
this not become a means to justify present inaction? Use nature as you will, abuse her
resources as you wish, because ultimately God will make things good.17 Moltmann is
able to counteract this conclusion by means of his understanding of anticipation. The
new creation that transcends present creation is, nevertheless, immanently present
in God’s liberating action in the world through Christ and the Spirit (CPS 189–90;
WJC 97–98). It is in this intervening realm of anticipation that the Church exists.
While there remains a ‘not yet’, there is present in Christian existence a ‘no longer’
(for example, no longer under law) and an ‘already’ (for example, already forgiven)
(CPS 193). Moreover, the future can be said to be present in action which is obedi-
ent to God’s transforming intention (CPS 191). Thus, ‘[i]f Christian anticipation is
directed towards the resurrection and eternal life, then it will encourage everything
in history which ministers to life, and strive against everything that disseminates
death’ (CPS 196).
Christian anticipation concerns the construction of representations of what is to
come (CPS 195), resistance and protest against that which contradicts this future
(EinT 26–27; cf. TH 227) and solidarity with those who presently suffer (FofC 54).
Human action, though, has definite limits: ‘Human beings cannot redeem nature,
and nature cannot redeem human beings. The divine redemption must reach them
both’ (WJC 272; cf. CJF 6).

Conclusions

Moltmann may be short on concrete practical suggestions in the face of the ‘ecologi-
cal crisis’.18 Yet this does not mean that his ecological hermeneutic of theology is to
no avail. Moltmann is after something larger; he wants to change the future.

17 A parallel concern with historical inactivity lay behind the criticisms of Theology of Hope
mounted by Alves (1969: 59–60) and Gutiérrez (1988: 124).
18 He does, however, suggest having a day a week without work and without car use, imple-
menting a system of regular sabbatical years rather than early retirement, and encouraging
the use of fallow land in agriculture (CJF 66; cf. GinC 296).
 Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics 237

Through changes in the horizon of expectation of the project ‘modernity’ we can make
changes in its course . . . If we do not want the future to become in a few decades nothing
but the past, we shall have to introduce our misgivings into the expectations of ‘the modern
world’. (CofG 290)

If the ‘ecological crisis’ is essentially a crisis of human values, and here he is surely
correct, then theology can become a powerful agent of ecological reform. Moltmann
has two key weapons in his armoury. The first is the eschatological orientation of
his early theology which is never surrendered. Put boldly, creation, the whole of
creation, has a future with God. It cannot, therefore, be treated as disposable. Its
future confers upon creation an inalienable (if undifferentiated) dignity. Secondly,
this perspective finds reinforcement in the relational emphasis of his later work. The
perichoretic life of the Trinity comes to condition Moltmann’s conception of the rela-
tion of God to the world (GinC 258). It also fashions the ideal form of relationships
within creation, inherently grounding humanity, and humanity’s future, in, and not
apart from, the community of creation. Significantly, both these themes – the future
and relationship – find a common root in the doctrine of the Trinity; for the pattern
of God’s life is the blueprint of creation’s future redemption.
What then of the legitimacy of his hermeneutic method? Moltmann will always
frustrate exegetes, just as he has been frustrated by them (EinT xxi–ii), because he
will always want to go beyond the text, from, as he says, what it meant to what it
means (GAA 230). And here it is not just what the text means in isolation (even taking
account of its broader contextual and historical location) that interests him. The text’s
significance is what it can contribute to an overarching model of God’s developing
relationship with the world as this impacts upon the questions of the day.19 In fact,
Moltmann’s rejection of ‘scientific’ exegesis, as a substitute for theology, could be seen
as paralleling his rejection of the dominating, objectifying modes of knowledge which
have served to separate humanity from nature and so contributed to the ‘ecological
crisis’. In its place, Moltmann wishes to know in order to participate (cf. GinC 2–4).
Participation in the web of life and participation in the Trinitarian history of God with
the world (the object of biblical hermeneutics) thus become corollaries of each other.
Moltmann’s committed stance places his approach close to, but not identical
with, Juan Segundo, one of the founding liberation theologians. For Segundo, the
hermeneutic circle is ‘the continuing change in our interpretation of the Bible which
is dictated by the continuing changes in our present day reality’ (1998: 8). It is thus
the task of theology to ‘designate as the Word of God, that part of divine revelation
which today, in the light of our concrete historical situation, is most useful for the
liberation to which God summons us’ (1998: 33). Moltmann’s move from text to

19 It thus seems a little unfair of Deane-Drummond (1997: 211) to criticize Moltmann’s

Christological reading of the Genesis account of creation on the grounds that it prevents the
text’s authentic voice being heard. Moltmann is about something else for which synthesis is
the essence of his method (cf. GinC 53–54).
238 Ecological Hermeneutics

theology, however, saves him from the danger of distortion through over-selection
while losing nothing of the commitment to context. There is no need for a desperate
scrabble around in Scripture searching for possibly ecologically relevant texts, as if the
text were the thing in itself. Rather, Moltmann’s theological approach enables him to
focus on the overarching redemptive movement of Scripture which reaches out towards
the universal horizon of new creation (Isa. 65.17; 2 Cor. 5.17; Revelation 21–22).
Keeping faith with Scriptural intention in this way means maintaining theological
continuity through risking new language. This, Rowan Williams has suggested
(1987: 234–37), is one of the lessons of the Council of Nicaea (325 ce). The Church
Fathers found it necessary to go beyond Scripture, in the employment of the term
homoousios, in order to remain true to what they believed Scripture said about Jesus’
relation to the Father. In a parallel fashion Moltmann understands that biblical theo-
logy will necessarily entail employing theological models that cannot be justified, in
every respect, directly from the text. Here the towering example is the doctrine of
the Trinity which is so central to Moltmann’s ecological hermeneutics. Faithfulness
to the text, then, means moving forward within the theological vector that the text
projects, reaching out for that which is the cause, ground and hope of Scripture.

References

Alves, R. 1969 A Theology of Human Hope (New York: Corpus).

Bauckham R. 1995 The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).
Bauckham, R. (ed.) 1999 God Will be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark).
Deane-Drummond, C. 1997 Ecology in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen).
Deane-Drummond, C. 2009 Christ and Evolution: Wonder and Wisdom (London: SCM).
Gutiérrez, G. 1988 [1971] A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1967 [1964] Theology of Hope [TH] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1969 Religion, Revolution and the Future [RRF] (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons).
Moltmann, J. 1970 ‘Theology as Eschatology’ [TasE] in F. Herzog (ed.), The Future of Hope:
Theology as Eschatology (New York: Herder & Herder): 1–50.
Moltmann, J. 1971 [1968] Hope and Planning [HP] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1973 [1971] Theology and Joy [TJ] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1974 [1972] The Crucified God [CG] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1975 The Experiment Hope [EH] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1977 [1975] The Church in the Power of the Spirit [CPS] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1978 The Open Church: Invitation to a Messianic Life-style [OC] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1979 [1977] The Future of Creation [FofC] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1981 [1980] The Trinity and the Kingdom of God: The Doctrine of God [TKG]
(London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1985 [1984] God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation [GinC] (London:
SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1989 Creating a Just Future [CJF] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1990 [1989] The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions [WJC]
(London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1991 History and the Triune God [HTG] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1992 [1991] The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation [SofL] (London: SCM).
 Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Hermeneutics 239

Moltmann, J. 1996 [1995] The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology [CofG] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1999a [1997] God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology [GSS]
(London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1999b ‘The Bible, the Exegete and the Theologian’, in R. Bauckham (ed.), God Will be
All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann [GAA] (Edinburgh: T&T Clark): 227–32.
Moltmann, J. 2000 Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology [EinT]
(London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 2003 Science and Wisdom [SW] (ET 2003; London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 2004 [2003] In the End – the Beginning [IEB] (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 2007 A Broad Place: An Autobiography [BP] (London: SCM).
Müller-Fahrenholz, G. 2000 The Kingdom and the Power: The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann
(London: SCM).
Segundo, J.L. 1998 [1975] The Liberation of Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis).
Steck, O.H. 2008 [1978] World and Environment (Eugene: Wipf and Stock).
Williams, R.D. 1987 Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London: Darton, Longman & Todd).
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 Part III

Contemporary Hermeneutical Possibilities

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 Introduction to Part III

Christopher Southgate

Our consideration of the contemporary scene is informed first and foremost by our
perception that theologizing about the environment and humans’ place in it – and
hence the need to grapple ecotheologically with the range of understandings offered
by the scriptures – has come to stay. Ecotheology may remain a sub-discipline of the
main theological enterprise; it may continue to lack the influence that it merits; but
few now would see its pursuit as spurious or marginal in the way that might have
been possible fifty years ago. Thus also the sub-sub-discipline of ecological herme-
neutics has gained in stature and perceived importance – it has its own Consultation
at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, owing much to the work of
the Earth Bible project; it has spawned collections of essays including this present one.
This final part of the book ends with a wide-ranging and methodologically focused
coda from Ernst Conradie. Before this come essays by Harry Maier and Stephen
Barton, both engaging with the role of eschatology in the contemporary debate, and
a broader reflection on sustainability from Tim Gorringe.
On a colleague’s door in the Department of Theology and Religion at Exeter is a
cartoon of a man with a placard proclaiming ‘The End is Nigh’ and underneath ‘I’m
unable to go into details’. It is a fair charge against much Christian reflection that
it has been obsessed with salvation (without drawing adequately on the resources
offered by the contemplation of creation) and yet has been unable to offer any great
insight as to what that salvation might mean for the creation as a whole. Yet it is
the more alarming – at least as viewed from an academic perspective in the UK – to
contemplate the various premillennial and postmillennial schemes that do profess to
know the detail of the end-times. Maier offers an elegant taxonomy of such schemes
as they have worked themselves out in the North American experience, that unique
colonial experiment in which settlers were able to appropriate (not without violence)
a great ‘wilderness’ of huge natural resource, all the while reading their activity and
vocation very much in biblical, and indeed in eschatological terms. Maier shows how
this ‘reading’ spans a spectrum from postmillennial optimism about the human role
in bringing in the eschaton to the premillennial pessimism more characteristic of the
late nineteenth century, and that each element of that spectrum has its correlate in
contemporary attitudes towards the environment. These range from a deep suspicion
244 Ecological Hermeneutics

of environmentalism as tainted by the New Age, through a call to ‘tend the garden’,
to a sense of the perfectibility of creation in which the ‘fallen’ wilderness can be
transformed by human effort. Particularly interesting – and hopeful, from my own
perspective – is Maier’s identification of a new shift among younger evangelicals
away from ‘traditional hot-button [social] issues’ to a new agenda of environmental
care stemming from a microcanon of key texts, and enabling a re-reading of biblical
apocalyptic.
In an essay that also grapples with the issues raised by the New Testament’s
eschatological material, Barton presses the question: where, in a scriptural and
inescapably eschatological faith, can (ecological) wisdom be found? He concludes
that there are three distinguishable tasks that inform the search for Christian wisdom
– the historical-exegetical, the theological-hermeneutical and the personal-ascetical.
In each category he uses an exemplar – Richard Hays, Kathryn Tanner and Richard
Bauckham, respectively – to show what can be achieved in that area. This is not so
much spectrum drawing as triangulation – by showing the strengths and limitations
of Hays and Tanner, in particular, Barton is able to mark out helpful ground for
further exploration, insisting that it be ground-based on ‘the central affirmation that
underlies New Testament apocalyptic: hope in God grounded in the resurrection of
Christ now present in the Spirit’. Wisdom, too, must be sought in dialogue with the
insights of contemporary science, chilling though those are in terms of the ultimate
future of both earth and cosmos. Helpfully, too, Barton shows how the liturgical
practice of the Church, in praise and eucharist, can be a source of formation in
wisdom, a wisdom that knows both how to mark time and to keep (Sabbath) time.
Gorringe’s reflection is ‘earthed’ very directly in the question as to how humans
can with justice continue to feed themselves, to till and to keep the garden. He sees
agriculture as ‘in biblical perspective, the paradigm of all human work’; only such
nourishing work, done in the spirit of the commandments, will offer a future to
humanity. Working from the Revised Common Lectionary’s texts for Rogation,
Gorringe offers a range of biblical perspectives that mark out the healthful from
the oppressive, the destructive and the unsustainable. The Bible’s ‘long rumours
of wisdom’ include the insistence that the land belongs to the Lord, and therefore
should not – must not – be completely commodified or ‘cornered’. The essay ends
with an interpretation of the word epieikes in Phil. 4.5, and an insistence (common
to so many efforts to interpret the Bible as a resource in the ecological crisis) that
our environmental problems are spiritual, not merely a matter of expediencies, or
even simply of morality.
That in a sense begs the question the book began with and ends with – how,
when the exegetical, theological, personal and political tasks are fused in a Christian
response to the ecological crisis, can the Bible function to transform human practice,
imagination, spirit, in ways that further authentic peace, authentic hope?
In other writing some of us have characterised the range of hermeneutical
approaches in use in ecotheological writing in terms of readings of recovery, and
of two types of resistance – resistance to the environmentalists’ agenda in the name
 Introduction to Part III 245

of the Bible, and of (elements in) the Bible in the cause of what are taken to be
ecological virtues. Horrell, Hunt and I have gone on to seek to locate a hermeneutic
between the strategies of recovery and resistance (Horrell et al. 2010). This resulted
in an approach owing much to the insights of Ernst Conradie into the importance of
doctrinal/hermeneutical ‘keys’ or ‘constructs’ or ‘lenses’. So it is fitting that the last
word in this volume goes to Conradie and his understanding of the hermeneutical
task. His essay sets out a broad analysis of the way in which biblical interpretation
operates, and a programme for ecological biblical interpretation.
Strikingly, Conradie prefers to reserve the term ‘hermeneutics’ for ‘a second-order
and disciplined reflection on the praxis of interpretation’. His own essay provides an
admirable example. A particularly notable emphasis is his sense that biblical texts
are not merely read, they move and change lives, they function through worship and
preaching and live in the imaginations of those who cannot read. More technically,
Conradie explores the ways interpretative strategies overcome the distance between
text and context, and it is here that he deploys his concept of what he now prefers
to call ‘doctrinal constructs’ – well-tried conceptual tools, models and metaphors
that can shape interpretation. He goes on to show that a cluster of such constructs
is likely to be needed to guide the task of Christian ecotheology. Finally, and no less
importantly, Conradie insists that ecotheology not content itself with answering a
narrow set of questions, but attempt a reformulation of Christian doctrine as a whole.
This is an expansive note on which to end this collection of explorations. We
hope the reader will have found much stimulation, and some challenge, within these
pages, and we look forward to the continued conversation to which they give rise.

Reference

Horrell, D.G., Hunt, C. and Southgate, C. 2010 Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in an Age of
Ecological Crisis (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press).
 Chapter 17

Green Millennialism: American Evangelicals,

Environmentalism and the Book of Revelation1

Harry O. Maier

In his now classic essay Lynn White, Jr traced the origins of the contemporary eco-
logical crisis to the beginning of the Bible and its injunction to have dominion over
creation (1967: 1205). Christians and Jews have given enormous attention to offering
a rejoinder to White’s argument, if only to show that it is a fundamental misreading of
the Genesis account to interpret it as license for the human exploitation and disregard
of the well-being of creation. But it may be that White’s attention on the beginning of
the biblical narrative as the root of the ecological crisis was misplaced. For as Frank
Kermode reminds us, endings are at least as determinative as beginnings in sustain-
ing the actions, motivations and goals of characters and unfolding narratives, and
in shaping the dispositions humans bring to make sense of their brief span of years
and months and days. ‘Apocalypse depends on a concord of imaginatively recorded
past and imaginatively predicted future, achieved on behalf of us, who remain “in the
middest”. Its predictions, though figurative, can be taken literally, and as the future
moves in on us we may expect it to conform with the figures’ (Kermode 1967: 8).
If at its beginning the Bible commands the human creature to govern creation, so at
its ending it imagines ‘a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the
first earth had passed away’ (Rev. 21.1). Genesis begins in a garden, but 2 Peter 3
ends creation with fire, promising that the Lord will come like a thief ‘and then the
heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved’ (v. 10)
and that ‘the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with
fire’ (v. 12). Figurative predictions taken literally: are not eschatological expectations
determinative of the way Christians view and treat the environment?2

1 I would like to acknowledge the contribution of David Horrell, Cherryl Hunt and
Christopher Southgate, who offered insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper
during a stay at the University of Exeter. I am grateful to David Taylor for his help in the
research of this essay. All biblical references are from the NRSV unless otherwise stated.
2 See especially Finger 1998; Trusdale 1994; Curry-Roper 1990 for a general sketch of the
eschatological frameworks most associated with care for and resistance to the natural
world. See similarly, Granberg-Michaelson 1984: 105–17. Trusdale, Curry-Roper and
Granberg-Michaelson predict an inverse correlation between a literal belief in Jesus’ Second
Coming as an interruption of history and concern for the environment. As we will see below,
the evidence is far more complex than the linear relationship they argue.
 Green Millennialism 247

Revelation is patient of widely differing versions of the end of history and hence
of a present way to make sense of the meantime. On the one hand, there are the texts
that represent the destruction of creation: for example, the visions of natural calam-
ity of Revelation 8 and 16, as well as those from elsewhere in the New Testament
that promise calamities on earth and in the heavens. On the other hand, there are
those texts that reveal God transforming an old creation with the new, for which all
physical creation longs and hopes. The Bible’s eschatological texts can be read both
for continuity and discontinuity between the old world and the new. This invites
conflicting senses of an ending. Certainly this is the case among those historical and
contemporary Americans this essay will take up, Evangelicals who have lived and
continue to live ‘in the middest’ of a peculiar sense of an apocalyptic ending and the
environmental considerations that ending encourages.3 The Apocalypse has loomed
large in shaping the American civic and religious imagination and it is not surprising
to discover that it plays a significant role in shaping American attitudes towards the
environment. On the one side are those who urge abandonment of environmentalism
as a misconceived and misplaced concern. For example, Todd Strandberg argues, ‘If
environmentalists want to do some lasting good they would be wise to devote their
energy to evangelizing lost souls’. Indeed, ‘[w]ithout the transforming power of Jesus
Christ, the environment will be resigned to its determined fate [sic]’.4 On the other
hand, however, are those who link eschatological hope with the transformation
of the present creation. Thus, Douglas Moo argues, ‘In Rev 21.5, God proclaims,
“I am making everything new!” he does not proclaim, “I am making new things.”
The language here suggests renewal, not destruction and recreation’ (2006: 455). In
what follows I take up these differing senses of an ending and show how eschatology
and theological interpretation of the natural world are intimately interconnected in
American Evangelicalism. The Book of Revelation as well as other eschatological
texts and themes from the Bible have had a profound influence on the way Americans,
and especially Evangelicals, have viewed the environment and how the faithful are
to relate to creation. Predictably, many have used Revelation to urge the faithful to
abandon creation; intriguingly, however, a large minority of Evangelicals argue that
Revelation invites the faithful to the care of creation, even if differing philosophical

3 The terms ‘Evangelical’ and ‘Evangelicalism’ I use in what follows to describe a broad
trans-denominational American religious movement that traces its origins to the religious
revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which subscribes to the state-
ment of belief of the National Association of Evangelicals (http://www.nae.net/index.
cfm?FUSEACTION=nae.statement_of_faith; accessed 1 April 2009). This essay explores
Evangelicalism’s belief ‘in [Jesus’] personal return in power and glory’ and the way readings
of Revelation that sustain that belief affect environmental considerations. In what follows I
distinguish Fundamentalism from Evangelicalism; Fundamentalism traces its origins to an
anti-Modernist Evangelical revivalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
In contemporary usage, especially in the secular media, ‘conservative Evangelicalism’,
‘the Religious Right’, and ‘American Fundamentalism’ are often erroneously treated as
synonyms. For a good overview of the various terms, see Johnston 1991.
4 See T. Strandberg, ‘Bible Prophecy and Environmentalism’, Rapture Ready (www.rapture
ready.com/rr-environmental.html; accessed 11 March 2009).
248 Ecological Hermeneutics

and theological convictions lead its members to disagree with one another about
the forms such care is to take and the goals it is to achieve. Will the millennium
be green? American Evangelicals answer that question differently and in doing so
invite an investigation of the uses of apocalyptic and eschatological biblical texts,
theological tradition, and contemporary experience in the construction of religious
identity and civic engagement.5

Revelation in the Wilderness

John’s Apocalypse has loomed large in the considerations of the natural world
that have accompanied Christians through four centuries of the settlement and
development of North America. To assess the place of Revelation and eschatology
in contemporary Evangelical reflection on the environment and environmentalism
it is necessary first to offer a sketch of the varying and changing attitudes towards
the natural world championed first by Puritans and then taken up by successive
generations of Evangelicals. Conflicting senses of an ending have shaped the way
Americans have viewed and treated the natural world around them. The Puritans
who escaped religious persecution in Great Britain located both their exile and their
arrival in a new continent with the help of apocalyptic timetables. Cities with names
like Salem reflect the way some Puritans interpreted their presence in the wilderness
of North America with the help of the Bible’s rich wilderness traditions. Surrounded
as they were by the hostile, papist French and their Amerindian allies, Puritans
like Edward Johnson (1598–1672) found shelter in the view that their residence in
America’s wilderness was the fulfilment of Rev. 12.14 where the serpent cast down
from heaven chases the mother ‘into the wilderness . . . where she is nourished for
a time and times, and half a time’ (Stoll 1997: 26). Guided by apocalyptic theology
and Calvinist injunctions to rule creation, Johnson considered North America as a
wilderness to till, garden and make ready for God who was to come and inaugurate
the thousand-year reign of Christ and erect the New Jerusalem (Stoll 1997: 64–71).6
This view, which is broadly classed as postmillennial because it expects humans to

5 For an excellent review of the history of the debates that have divided American Evangelicals
over environmental causes, see Simmons 2009: 50–57; also, Larsen 2001, who traces
Evangelical treatment of environmentalism since the publication of Schaeffer’s Pollution
and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology (1970), which he argues inaugurated
Evangelical engagement with secular environmentalism. As early as 1971 the National
Association of Evangelicals in Resolution on Environment and Ecology (www.nae.net/index.
cfm?FUSEACTION=editor.page&pageID=199&IDCategory=9; accessed 24 March 2009),
endorsed an Evangelical environmentalism. In 1979 Evangelicals founded the Au Sable
Institute in Michigan, as a centre of Evangelical scholarship dedicated to Christian environ-
mentalism in Evangelical perspective. See www.earthcareonline.org/creation_care_websites.
pdf (accessed 24 March 2009) for Evangelical statements on the environment from the 1970s
onward.
6 See also Nash 2001: 24–43, who discusses the link with Calvinism.
 Green Millennialism 249

establish the conditions for the millennial reign of Christ promised in Rev. 20.4,
dominated American eschatological preaching until the second half of the nineteenth
century when it was supplanted by a far more pessimistic view of the human capacity
to transform wilderness and the social order into a more perfect union. Both Cotton
Mather (1663–1728) and Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) considered the domestica-
tion of nature as part of the necessary preparation for establishing the conditions to
welcome Jesus’ promised millennial reign, even if they interpreted the New Heaven
and Earth of Rev. 21.1 as a sweeping away of the old creation to make way for a
new. Evangelical revival united with the taming of a seemingly endless wilderness
represented the cultivation of the inner and outer world to make ready the coming
reign of Christ promised in Revelation (Stoll 1997: 71–76, 79–83).
Earthquakes in New England as well as the military successes of New France
led some among the generation after Mather and Edwards to give up the optimistic
view that humans could create the conditions for the Second Coming. This view, the
premillennialist framework, is opposite to the postmillennial one: Christ’s second
coming is not assured through human strategizing and planning and steady progress,
but is an interruption of history after which Christ inaugurates his millennial reign.
While the premillennialist framework would in due course be hostile even to modest
attempts to ameliorate the present world order and by the early twentieth century
be associated with expectations of extreme and inevitable ecological devastation, in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was still wedded to a profound ecological
vision of nature tamed and domesticated as anticipation of what was still to come.
Indeed, steady progress in cultivating and taming the American wilderness, together
with successes in the Revolutionary War, were taken as outward signs that it was
among the Americans that the millennium would be erected (Bloch 1985: 33–50).
In the eighteenth century, American revolutionaries formulated a potent union of
republican values with the steady exploitation of the seemingly unending abundance
of North America’s natural resources to reinforce the idea that among the Americans,
God’s new Israel, God would establish the Jerusalem of Revelation 20.
Post- and premillennialists may have disagreed whether the millennium would
come before or after the Second Coming, but they agreed on the notion of a Manifest
Destiny that God had given the United States to bring civilization to the rest of the
continent and ultimately the world (Tuveson 1968: 91–136). What oriented and
steered both pre- and post-millennialists, however differing their eschatological
expectations, were the ideals of Baconianism and the Enlightenment convictions
of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. The former affirmed the power of nature
to teach moral and scientific lessons and bring human progress through empirical
observation; the latter affirmed that the starting point for common sense was true
for all times, cultures and socio-economic locations (Marsden 1982: 83–84). Even
in its most pessimistic periods, the steady progress of converting wilderness to a
peaceable garden won through learning nature’s lessons and a non-speculative, literal
reading of the Bible remained the guiding vision of a divinely established Arcadia
planted on American soil. Edward Hicks’ painting of 1834 entitled The Peaceable
250 Ecological Hermeneutics

Kingdom, though painted by a Quaker, expresses the realized natural eschatology

of an American infused with a particular reading of the Apocalypse and prophecies
believed to be fulfilled in the artist’s own life. As representation of the ecological
vision of harmony depicted in Isaiah 11, it also expresses the ideals voiced by the
contemporary interpreters of Revelation: the domesticated animals and children
lying alongside and playing among predators in the painting’s foreground exegetes
the meeting of colonizers and American Indians in the background. Here is a vision
of ecological and social wilderness tamed and harnessed for the sake of a colonial
civilization in anticipation of a new world to come.7
There is not room here to offer a full discussion of the reasons for the profound
shift in eschatological beliefs from relative optimism towards deep pessimism among
Evangelical Christians in the second half of the nineteenth century. Its transformation
included a new negative attitude towards the environment that continues to shape
the contemporary Evangelical debate concerning the environment and its care. The
violence of the Civil War, social dislocation as a consequence of industrialization
and urbanization, economic depression, difficulties in integrating vast numbers
of immigrants into American society, economic exploitation of the working class
through laissez-faire capitalism, the perceived threat to traditional beliefs by the
rise of Darwinian science and the ascendancy of historical critical biblical exegesis
and a resulting revision of Christian theology: all these contributed to a profound
pessimism among latter-day Evangelicals.8 They became in due course militantly
opposed to the postmillennialist vision of an earlier generation now championed by
advocates of the Social Gospel who agitated for social reform and government inter-
vention to overcome social ills. And they became divisive with those premillennialists
of an increasingly bygone era of civic theology who expressed their discipleship by
working for an improvement of society while time remained. Such efforts these
later premillennialists judged deeply flawed and doomed to disappointment. What
is remarkable in postbellum American Evangelicalism is the increasing emphasis on
the discontinuity of the New Heaven and Earth of Rev. 21.1 with the present ones
and the turn towards the salvation of individuals as the only appropriate form of
Christian discipleship. Here Baconianism and Common Sense philosophy continued
to hold sway, but now, wedding a profound historical pessimism with a futurist
premillennialism, Evangelicals sought to exegete from contemporary social chaos,
and from the environmental decay and devastation of industrialization around them,
evidence of divine wrath for human sinfulness as a harbinger of the Parousia Jesus
promised and the New Testament prophesied. Premillennialist preachers sought to
convince audiences that the world was ripe for judgement. The signs of its condemna-
tion were well anticipated by the ecological disasters foretold in the cataclysms of
the Book of Revelation; the Bible plainly described them and anyone with enough

7 For utopian ideals, pastoral visions, and the Book of Revelation in late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century American Christianity, see Tuveson 1968: 52–90.
8 For a definitive account see Weber 1979: 82–104.
 Green Millennialism 251

common sense could see them unfolding all around them. If in earlier generations
nature was a book from which to learn lessons for the betterment and progress of
humankind, nature now became the mirror God used to reflect human sinfulness
back to itself and a divine whip to bring repentance before the inevitable conflagra-
tion and annihilation of a tired and used up earth. In doing so, premillennialists
played on the values of what Alexis de Tocqueville called ‘enlightened self-love’
when he visited the continent and overheard the sermons of Evangelical revival in
the 1830s. Self-interest he argued bound citizens together in a common democratic
cause of liberty (de Tocqueville 2003: 609–13).
John Nelson Darby (1800–1882) and Cyrus Scofield (1843–1921) were leading
nineteenth and twentieth century proponents of these apocalyptic points of view and
their work transformed an earlier American premillennialism already disposed in that
direction into a militant rejection of any human attempt to ameliorate the present
world order. Darby divided history into a series of dispensations or different epochs
represented in biblical history in which God offered differing means of salvation.9
The present dispensation – the Age of Grace – will end with the Rapture (the spirit-
ing away from the earth of Christ’s true believers), which will inaugurate The Great
Tribulation – the persecution of a remnant church – and rule of the Antichrist, ending
with the Battle of Armageddon of Rev. 16.16, and the consequent inauguration of
Christ’s millennium described in Rev. 20.2. Darby indefatigably championed this
schematization of the end and in turn won the allegiance of hundreds of revivalist
preachers, most notably Dwight L. Moody who in 1886 founded the Moody Bible
Institute in Chicago which in due course became the American centre for promoting
prophecy belief in the imminent Second Coming and which in turn was instrumental
in transforming the face of American Evangelicalism in the decades that followed. In
1909 Cyrus Scofield, converted by revivalist-dispensationalist preaching, published
his Scofield Reference Bible solidifying premillennialist dispensationalism through
mass publication (by 1967, 10 million were in print; between 1967 and 1990
Oxford University Press sold an extra 2.5 million copies [Boyer 1992: 97–98]). The
Fundamentalist wing of the American Evangelical movement further spread these
ideas with the publication between 1910 and 1915 of 12 tracts collectively titled The
Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truth, sent to some 3 million Protestant church lead-
ers. The premillennialist dispensationalists of the first half of the twentieth century
unleashed jeremiads decrying mistaken notions of human progress, materialism,
capitalism and political attempts to stave off an inevitable coming conflagration.
Many dispensationalist preachers from the later nineteenth century onwards
have taught that the New Heaven and Earth of Rev. 21.1-2 will be a restored and
revived present earth. Scofield envisioned a creation healed from the marring effects
of human ‘avarice, . . . ruthless use of [nature’s] power, [and] unequal distribution of

9 See http://www.biblebelievers.com/Dispensation_Chart.html (accessed 29 April 2009) for a

chart showing the dispensations.
252 Ecological Hermeneutics

her benefits’.10 Like contemporary interpreters, these dispensationalists interpreted

the conflagration of 2 Pet. 3.10 not as an annihilation of creation but its purification
from the effects of evil and sin. However, as environmentalist issues came to public
attention in the post-WWII period, Dispensationalist Evangelicals not only doubted
the ability of an already doomed humankind to deal effectively with environmental
problems, they wondered whether attempts at international cooperation in the care
of the planet was the means of creating the right climate for a one-world government
and the rise of the Antichrist, the dictator who will be Satan’s vice-regent to rule the
earth and persecute a remnant church until his reign is ended by Christ’s coming.
However much earlier twentieth century Dispensationalists affirmed notions of
transformation, suspicions of environmentalist causes have increasingly encouraged
a more disjunctive view of the relation between the old and new creations.
On this account environmentalism is deeply suspect as a subterfuge for a hidden
agenda. Constance Cumbey connects environmentalism with an international New
Age movement from which Christians are to distance themselves, and chastizes
green Evangelicals for the way their promotion of environmental causes reveals
how far they have strayed from saving Christian doctrine (Cumbey 1983: 63, 15,
162–69). Pat Robertson, televangelist Dispensationalist preacher and candidate for
the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, linked environmentalism with
globalism and the erosion of the nation state in the movement towards a new global
order. Indeed, he considers such movements as an attempt on the part of Satan to
undermine American economic power and political power to thwart worldwide
evangelism (Robertson 1991: 176, 192–97, 267–68; similarly, 1990: 225–27). In fact,
Robertson celebrates the New Heaven and Earth of Revelation 21 as a place where
free enterprise will flower free from government intervention and regulation under
the presidency of Jesus Christ! Other writers think that one of the attractions of the
coming Antichrist will be to solve environmental problems as a means of winning
support and deceiving the nations.
Ultimately, from this perspective, there can be no hope for environmentalist causes
because the Book of Revelation reveals a different picture of the future. Hal Lindsey, the
most published popular Dispensationalist in American history, interprets Revelation
as predicting ‘the death of world ecology’ in the visions of ecological devastation in
Rev. 8.6-13 (1974: 126–35). Following this theme, others link human afflictions like
boils and sores to the depletion of the ozone layer and the effects of radiation from
a coming nuclear war. For Lindsey the wages of sin are pollution and environmental
death; human fatality and suffering arising from ecological devastation fulfils the
prophecy that God (using natural causes) is ‘destroying . . . the destroyers of the
earth’ (Rev. 11.18). William Badke (1991: 149), in a rare Dispensationalist apology
for Christian environmentalism, contends that creation is the mirror of human sin
and that ecological disaster is the sign of humankind’s fallen condition. Indeed, ‘in

10 Cited by Boyer 1992: 335; for discussion of dispensationalist treatment of the environment
generally, see 331–39.
 Green Millennialism 253

seeming contradiction to his purposes . . ., God in certain circumstances attacks his

earth’ in order to ‘call us to repentance and salvation’. Pollution’s only real solution is
Christian conversion. Only Christians fully understand why humans should work to
care for the earth, because they know its creator and the Creator’s love for the planet
most clearly. So they should not expect very much from labouring among unrepentant
sinners for the good of the planet: ‘uncreation . . . will consume the earth and lead to a
new creation’. This leads some to draw direct links between natural catastrophes and
politics: a recent YouTube video for example links weather disasters, like Hurricane
Katrina, with American foreign policy decisions that allegedly undermine the national
security of the State of Israel.11 This introduces a decidedly Deuteronomist thematiza-
tion to America’s relation with the environment: even as God used environmental
disaster to punish the Israelites and the nations around them for impiety, so in God’s
providential arrangement of the ascendancy of America to protect Israel, God uses
the natural world as means of reward and punishment. This leads to an account of
the natural world completely immune to environmental critique or analysis.
Ecological disaster, environmental degradation and pollution are all either the
result of human sin, or are God’s punishment for it. Either these are harbingers of
the Second Coming, revealing human wickedness, or faith in the Second Coming is
the only way to escape these disasters. But in traditional Dispensationalist preaching
there is no way to stave off sin’s disastrous consequences either for humans or planet
earth. To attempt to do so is to stand in the way of a divinely appointed end and
God’s plan for a new heaven and earth. Christians should distrust environmentalism
as a distraction. Elver Voth calculates that even with far greater levels of consumption
among industrial and developing nations, there are more than enough resources to
last until the Second Coming of Christ. The maths shows that Christians should not
worry about the environment since the end is so imminent. Rather they should focus
on missions and limitless growth:

Premillennial theology sets proper limits on time projections so that the earth’s resources are
adequate to complete an assigned task at depletion rates even far greater than current rates. In
response to the Great Commission, I say, forget conformity to those elements of environmental
advocacy intended as impediments to growth in evangelical missions, and let the missions
grow, and grow, and grow. (Voth 1982: 64)

Green Millennium versus Rapture Culture

These ideas with their long historical legacy are the backdrop for a lively debate
among contemporary American Evangelicals concerning the environment, environ-
mentalism and the correct way to understand the contribution of eschatology to

11 www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNrONw2dopU (accessed 27 March 2009).

254 Ecological Hermeneutics

considerations of the natural world and its preservation. The debate is especially
intense since so many Americans are premillennialist, literal readers of the Book of
Revelation. A 2002 Time/CNN poll found 36 per cent of Americans believe the Bible
should be read literally and 59 per cent believe the events prophesied in the Book of
Revelation will happen as described.12 Another poll conducted by the Pew Research
Centre in 1999 found that 44 per cent of Americans believe that Jesus will return in
their lifetime.13 Studies consistently show that the more literally American Christians
read the Book of Revelation and expect an imminent Second Coming, the less likely
they are to show concern for environmental issues, and the more likely they are to
be skeptical or hostile towards environmentalism, especially when it is linked with
governmental agencies.14
However, in contrast to those points of view just represented, there is a growing
number of Evangelicals who resist a premillennialist reading of Revelation that
invites Americans to give up on an old creation in eager anticipation of the new
one to come. ‘So long as evangelicals hold to an eschatology that understands the
world to exist under a divinely imposed death sentence’, writes Alan Trusdale, ‘we
should expect no major change in their disposition towards the environment or the
environmental movement’ (1994: 117). He consequently encourages a complete
revision of American eschatological thinking in a way that makes room for environ-
mental concerns. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson criticizes premillennialism for leading
to quietism and neglecting the biblical exhortation to ‘the task of bringing God’s
shalom, justice, and peace to the creation . . .’ (1984: 109). Instead, he champions
amillennialism – the view traditionally associated with the eschatological ideas of
Augustine and his Reformation interpreters, Luther and Calvin. For complex reasons
Augustine and his successors tended to spiritualize their eschatology, and for this
reason Dispensationalism in particular has tended to reject the amillennialist escha-
tology as not reading Revelation’s visions of the end of the world literally enough.
Granberg-Michaelson’s amillennialism, however, champions the physical creation as
worthy in its own right as the place where God’s reign is inextricably interwoven,
albeit in a hidden way. Revelation in particular and New Testament eschatology in
general does not advocate a disjunction between the old creation and the new, but the

12 www.time.com/time/covers/1101020701/story2.html (accessed 20 March 2009).

13 www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl6.htm (accessed 20 March 2009).
14 Guth et al. 1995. Similarly, Guth et al. 1993; Shaiko 1987. However, it is not clear from
the statistical analysis whether it is the case that political affiliation or religious conviction
is more determinative in opposition to environmental causes among Evangelical Christians.
Do they resist environmental causes because they belong to political movements that value
freedom over government intervention, or do they belong to such movements because of
their religious beliefs? For a refusal to assert simple lines of cause and effect, see Kanagy
1995; Eckburg and Blocker 1996; Boyd 1999; Woodrum and Hoban 1994. This is consist-
ent with other studies that find a negative correlation between premillennialism and belief
in the efficacy of political participation to solve the world’s problems: Wilcox et al. 1991.
Nevertheless, the consensus is that literalist eschatology is inversely correlated with concern
for the environment.
 Green Millennialism 255

transformation and full revelation of the new world to come already present in the
natural world. His amillennialism is not spiritual, but physical and environmentalist.
Granberg-Michaelson is representative of what we might call a green Evangelical
environmentalism. It too arises from a long tradition of Evangelicalism on the
American continent, one that reaches back in celebration of the natural world as
a gift God commands to care for and preserve.15 In fact, far from retreating from
public life and societal concern to await the coming of Jesus, for over forty years a
differently minded series of American Evangelicals have been leading voices on behalf
of Christian churches promoting environmentalist causes both nationally and in their
denominational bodies. Here Revelation’s many visions of creation in turmoil and
renewed are not read to wed newspaper headlines to biblical texts, nor to demon-
strate the inevitability of environmental annihilation and conflagration, but to see
how they affirm God’s faithfulness to the transformation and reconciliation of a crea-
tion once cursed by, with and through human sin (Gen. 3.17) through renewal and
salvation. Rather than emphasizing the disjunction of the old creation with the new,
traditional among Dispensationalist Evangelicals, they argue for their continuity and
the transformation of the old creation into the new.16 ‘What does God’s good future
look like?’ asks Steven Bouma-Prediger. The answer: earthly. ‘Heaven and earth are
renewed and are one. God dwells with us, at home in creation’ (2001: 115–16).
Calvin DeWitt, the founder of the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies – a
centre that occupies the mainstream of American Evangelicalism and is dedicated
to the sound application of its principles and theology, and especially its biblical
interpretation, to what it describes as ‘creation care’ – also discovers in Revelation
reason to be green: ‘All who follow Jesus follow the example of the one who makes all
things new, the one who makes all things right again (Revelation 21:5)’ (2008: I-31).
That observation appears in the recently published Green Bible – an NRSV edition
of Scripture that marks each ‘green’ passage of the Bible in green print, in order to
disclose the pro-environmental themes of Judaism’s and Christianity’s foundational
texts.
The Evangelical Environmental Network, founded in 1992 to promote a Green
Evangelical vision, cites Rev. 21.1-2 as scriptural warrant for its concerns, as well
as Rev. 11.18: a time of divine wrath is coming ‘for destroying those who destroy
the earth’.17 Such opinions represent a transformation of American Evangelicalism,

15 See for example, official denominational statements (accessed 25 March 2009) of premil-
lennialist Dispensationalist churches such as the Seventh Day Adventist Church (http://
www.adventist.org/beliefs/statements/main_stat54.html) and of the Assemblies of God
(http://ag.org/top/Beliefs/contempissues_02_environment.cfm), both of which insist on the
responsible care of creation even as they insist upon end-time scenarios. The Adventists do
not share the Assemblies of God’s belief in an annihilated old creation replaced with a new,
but expect rather the physical world’s renewal.
16 Finger (1998: 14–36), insightfully charts the interpretation of biblical texts reflecting the
disjunctive and those affirming a more continuous view in various forms of Evangelical
eschatological expectation.
17 www.creationcare.org/resources/scripture.php (accessed 26 March 2009).
256 Ecological Hermeneutics

especially among its younger generation, that signifies a shift away from traditional
hot-button issues (abortion, the debate over evolution, prayer in schools, homo-
sexuality, etc.) towards a different set of interests in a socially engaged conservative
Christian faith (Rice and Choi 2008). These ‘green’ Evangelicals weave together
a tapestry of New Testament texts to argue for Christian environmentalism.
The Evangelical Environmental Network, for example, lists texts often cited by
Evangelicals championing the environment: the Colossian ‘Christ Hymn’ (1.15-20);
the description of a groaning creation awaiting salvation in Rom. 8.19-23;
2 Cor. 5.17 (with the critical variant, ‘all things are new’); the Parable of the Talents
(Mt. 25.14-30; Lk. 19.12-28); the apokatastasis of all things (Acts 3.21); com-
mandments to love neighbour and care for the poor (Jn 13.34; Mt. 25.31-46); texts
affirming the Son’s agency in creation (Jn 1.1-3; Heb. 1.2-3; 1 Cor. 8.6b); statements
affirming creation as reflecting God’s glory and will (Rom. 1.20-23); and that rec-
onciliation includes all things cosmic, created and human (Eph. 1.10); as well as the
release from bondage (Lk. 4.18-19). Additionally it cites Hebrew Bible eschatological
portraits – especially from Isaiah (on which Rev. 21.1-4 is based) – of harmony with
nature to depict salvation and concord of humans with God and creation (Isa. 5.1-2,
11.1-9, 55.12-13, 65.17-25).18
The uses of these texts represent a skilful application of an Evangelical biblical
hermeneutics that interprets Scripture with Scripture to recover the plain meaning
of biblical revelation. In the absence of a notion of canon within the canon, or
tradition as guide to interpretation, foregrounding one set of texts over another here
makes room for re-reading an apocalyptic biblical tradition that prima facie is less
friendly to Christian environmental considerations, such as those more disjunctive
visions of ecological disaster found in the Revelation and elsewhere (especially in
Revelation 8, 16 and 2 Pet. 3.10). Such foregrounding also strategically counters a
heavy emphasis on the Fall, the cursed earth of Gen. 3.17 and notions of depravity
favoured especially in the Reformed theological systems out of which Evangelicalism
traditionally emerges.
In the revivalist preaching of earlier generations, visions of environmental calam-
ity accompanied jeremiads exposing human wickedness as a means of persuasion
to contrast the old life of sin and death – in which creation also participates – with
the new one of salvation and life brought through repentance. Cosmic and natural
disaster – the typical literary characteristics of apocalyptic – found pride of place
in a homiletical tradition that urged listeners to throw off an old order doomed to
punishment to embrace a new one. Stephen D. O’Leary has insightfully represented
this as the ‘tragic frame’ in the American millennialist rhetorical tradition designed
to win and reinforce consent (1994: 68–69). Green Evangelicals, without renouncing
the call to repentance and conversion to a personal relationship with God through
faith in Jesus Christ, mine the tradition for a different portrait of the new life in

18 See www.creationcare.org/resources/scripture.php (accessed 31 March 2009) for texts;

similarly, Zerbe 1991; also, Wise 1991; Ro 1993: 8–11.
 Green Millennialism 257

Christ. Here the tragic frame gives way to what O’Leary exegetes as the more comic
mode of millennial rhetorical persuasion: environmental catastrophe and so on are
episodic in the larger narrative of improving not only one’s own private condition,
but that of society’s as well. Conversion and salvation are social and environmental
even as they are a vertical restoration of a relationship with God broken through
sin. This version – to the degree it is premillennialist – returns adherents full circle
to an antebellum premillennialism that considered societal improvement as a neces-
sary component for preparing for Jesus’ Second Coming. These Evangelicals note
that, notwithstanding his emphasis on humanity’s sinful condition, Calvin took a
dim view of human exploitation of the natural world, celebrated the creation in
his Institutes and New Testament commentaries and insisted in his Commentary
on Genesis that humans so work out their salvation that they leave the world in a
better condition for the next generation.19 Loren Wilkinson, one of the founders of
the contemporary Evangelical green movement, criticizes the classic Reformed notion
of the stewardship of the earth’s natural resources as encouraging a quantitative and
mechanistic relationship with creation that falls short of recognizing that humans are
not above creation but a part of it. Instead, he prefers the terms ‘earthkeeping’ and
‘stewardship of creation’ to describe humankind’s divinely commissioned ecological
responsibility (1991: x).
This has engendered no small debate among Evangelicals, especially since environ-
mentalism has traditionally been a cause championed by those left of the American
political centre.20 Some on the right have urged their green brothers and sisters to
stay out of environmental science and to resist accepting correlations it considers
dubious between global warming and greenhouse gas emissions; to keep to missions;
the championing of family values; and traditional Evangelical causes like opposition
to abortion and homosexuality.21 The Bible hardly allows a complete dismissal of
values of environmental stewardship and accordingly they affirm the importance of
wise stewardship but do so in a way they believe consistent with the market capital-
ism they argue best reinforces conservative religious values and is most likely to help
realize God’s intentions for the global order, as well as the preservation of the nuclear

19 See for example, Peter Bakken in an Au Sable Institute discussion of stewardship (www.
clas.ufl.edu/users/bron/PDF--Christianity/Bakken--Stewardship.pdf; accessed 9 July 2009),
Michael Sleeth’s use of Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis to support an Evangelical envi-
ronmentalism (http://www.servegodsavetheplanet.org/?page_id=22; accessed 9 July 2009),
and the use of Calvin by the Evangelical Environmental Network in support of Christian
environmentalism (www.creationcare.org/responses/faq.php; accessed 30 March 2009).
20 See the excellent survey by Fowler 1995: 45–57.
21 See for example, Colson 1993; Coffman 1994; Burkett 1993: 39–51.
258 Ecological Hermeneutics

family.22 This Evangelical position links with the ‘Wise Use’ response to environmen-
tal challenges associated preeminently with the work of secular writer Ron Arnold.23
It affirms the divinely appointed role of humans to exercise dominion over creation
in a responsible way. In opposition to the Evangelical Environmental Network’s
statement promoting the care of creation, proponents of this view have formulated
The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, a position endorsed by a
broad coalition of conservative Jews, Roman Catholics and Christians who champion
marrying environmentalism with the values of a free market economy.24
In advancing causes such as this, Wise Use Evangelicals also reach for the New
Testament and especially the Book of Revelation. E. Calvin Beisner, co-author of the
Declaration and national spokesperson for Alliance, has been the leading Evangelical
critic of the green Evangelical movement. He discovers in John of Patmos’ vision of
a heavenly Jerusalem with its tree and river of life in the heart of the city a vision
that encourages humans to exercise their appointed role as the lords of creation to
engage in a global conversion of wilderness into garden, perfecting the nature God
has created through science, technology and progress (Beisner 1997). In this Beisner
follows the more traditional Reformed path of viewing Christian responsibility to
the world as the stewardship of natural resources. He walks a well-trodden path of
the American conservative right’s appropriation of Calvinist economic conceptions
that promote the pursuit of wealth as part of God’s plan for a redeemed humankind
to convert a wilderness marred by sin and corruption into a garden of economic
productiveness.25 For George Grant, a conservative economist steeped in Calvinist
tradition, for example, ‘The Bible shows the righteous man starting with a corrupted

22 Thus, for example, ‘Focus on the Family: A Statement on the Environment’ (www.family.
org/sharedassets/correspondence/pdfs/PublicPolicy/Environmental_Statement.pdf; accessed
26 March 2009), posted on the website of James Dobson’s conservative religious organiza-
tion, Focus on the Family: ‘we tremble to consider the consequences to a nation that spends
billions for pure air and water, yet whose land – among other ills – is polluted by the blood
of more than 40 million innocent preborn children.’ Gary Bauer articulates its point of view
in a chapter entitled ‘The Green Monsters of Environmental Extremism’ (1996: 119–29).
23 See for example, Arnold 1996: 15–26. Perhaps the most famous of Wise Use Evangelicals
was James Watt, secretary of the environment in the Republican administration of Ronald
Reagan, who wedded economics with management of national parks by endorsing logging
of their forests and mining of their resources. Watt forcefully expresses an Evangelical appro-
priation of Wise Use when he writes, ‘being a good steward involves decisions on the use of
resources as well as the preservation of resources’ (author’s emphasis; Watt 1982: 103). The
language of ‘resources’ is noteworthy in the economic representation of the environment and
its uses for human development, and contrasts sharply with the ‘creation’ language favoured
by Wilkinson, DeWitt and others of the Evangelical Environmental Network and its allies.
24 The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship (www.cornwallalliance.org/
articles/read/the-cornwall-declaration-on-environmental-stewardship/; accessed 24 March
2009), published by The Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship (ICES) and the
Acton Institute, ‘an ecumenical think-tank dedicated to the study of free-market economics
informed by religious faith and moral absolutes’ (www.acton.org/; accessed 24 March 2009).
James Dobson for example is one of its signatories, as is Pat Robertson.
25 Nash (2001: 24–43) furnishes a classic account of the role of Calvinism in treatment of the
American wilderness; Lienesch 1993: 94–138.
 Green Millennialism 259

earth: thorns and thistles (Genesis 3:18) . . . [H]e takes it from a wilderness into a
garden . . . The Bible is the story of Paradise Restored’ (Grant 1986: 122). Similarly,
Beisner argues that humans have been appointed by God to rule over creation and
express a dominion that will, with God’s illumination, improve the natural world.
Also Reformed is his critique of writers like Wilkinson and DeWitt, and the authors
of the Evangelical Statement on Creation Care, for their failure to write of the curse
of God upon creation, the effects of the Fall on the natural world and their passing
over texts that show God bringing about natural calamity to punish sin and idolatry
(Beisner 1997: 19–23, 53–57). The Bible reveals a creation languishing under the
curse of sin, incomplete without the human ingenuity that seeks to reverse it as a
sign of things to come. Revelation, like the rest of the biblical witness, discloses a
creation incomplete without its human and divine improvement and the realization
of its full potential (Beisner 1997: 115). Elsewhere, Evangelical signatories to the
Declaration invoke Francis Bacon – a name historically at the hermeneutical heart of
American Evangelical Bible reading – to lend support to humankind’s transformation
of a sinful wilderness into a sanctified garden. ‘Man by the Fall fell at the same time
from his state of innocence and from his domination over creation. Both of these
losses, however, can even in this life be in some parts repaired; the former by religion
and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences.’26 Disagreeing not so much with green
Evangelical ends as means, these Evangelicals nevertheless reject as unsound the view
that champions a disposable old creation on the way towards the new one. Theirs,
as the quotation from Bacon indicates, centres in the notion of the perfectibility of
creation and the indispensable human contribution towards achieving that ending.
While there are predictably shrill voices raised in protest against even this paler
green version of an Evangelical environmentalism, support for greening the mil-
lennium vision has come even from the premillennialist corner of the American
Evangelicalism most usually associated with rejection of environmentalist causes.
The Book of Revelation is patient of widely diverging interpretation; while its visions
of ecological carnage can be read as emphasizing the disruption of the old creation
on the way to the new, it is possible also to emphasize that the new creation remains
the creation nevertheless. As we have already seen, even Moody and Scofield, who
encouraged the most disjunctive interpretations, still anticipated the new creation as
a transformation of the old. In the same vein, some contemporary premillennialist
Dispensationalists like Billy Graham (1984: 220) actively promoted the environ-
mentalist movement as consistent with God’s will for creation and a Christian call
to social activism. Many Dispensationalists have opposed anti-environmentalist
Evangelical critics by arguing that the new creation inaugurated by Jesus after the
coming Tribulation will be a renewal of nature, not a replacement of it. This urges
care of the creation as an anticipation of the order to come (for example, Beal 1994).
This is consistent in fact with a main emphasis of Dispensationalism – namely the

26 Beisner et al. 2000: 66, quoting Bacon’s Novum organum scientiarum (52), a treatise that
has been highly influential in Evangelical interpretation of the Bible and the natural world.
260 Ecological Hermeneutics

working out of God’s purposes not only spiritually, but also in physical history.27
These considerations are given a direct ecological application especially in ‘pro-
gressive dispensationalism’ where one discovers a formal articulation of creation
care (Saucy 1993: 13–35). As the name implies, this Dispensationalism revises earlier
models that have traditionally treated the dispensations of grace dividing history into
discrete and separable ages. Instead, they argue for a growing transformation of one
dispensation into another, with each prior age accumulated and carried forward into
the next. On this account, the care of creation now more emphatically than in earlier
forms of Dispensationalism anticipates the age to come. On this progressive view,
the privileged locus of environmentalism in this world, as indeed for all aspects of
advocacy for justice, is the Church, the place where God’s will and grace are most
directly revealed and manifested.
Already in 1970 Francis Schaeffer, in a book widely acclaimed as inaugurating the
Evangelical environmentalist movement, argued that the Church was ‘the Pilot Plant’
for anticipating God’s future redemption of creation that is fully to come (81–93). In
a seminal essay, David Turner frames this notion in a progressive Dispensationalist
scheme that insists on Christian commitment to the renewal of creation in anticipa-
tion of the end of human history (1992: 264–92). This ‘even now but not yet’ model
of Dispensationalist eschatology celebrates the Church as the present revelation of
the Kingdom of God. Christian advocacy for creation and for neighbour expresses
the healing and justice Jesus will bring with him in the new millennium.28
Richard Young agrees with those Dispensationalists who argue that the only
solution to the environmental crisis is Christian conversion, but this does not lead
him either to speculation as to how newspaper headlines herald the events of the
Book of Revelation, nor to a dismissal of environmentalism. Rather, he celebrates
a creation slowly healed from sin, greeted by the new creation of humankind in the
Church. Predictably, he rejects the biocentric model of secular environmentalism as
insufficient from a Christian perspective. More surprising, however, is his critique
of premillennialist models of ecological stewardship that link creation care with
benefiting humankind and working for its future – the viewpoint championed, for
example, by William Badke, as well as Calvin Beisner (though in a not-explicitly
Dispensationalist framework) and others like Pat Robertson and James Dobson
inclined by their political and economic views to endorse the Cornwall Declaration
and the Wise Use movement. Their problematic common denominator is a
‘theanthropocentrism’ – the placement of humankind and its divine redemption
and God’s plan for human thriving at the centre of creation, if necessary even at the
cost of the natural world. As such these models participate in the curse of creation
because they still continue to place humankind’s, rather than God’s, interests at the
centre of creation and human existence. In opposition to this, Young champions
theocentrism as the true biblical account of humankind and nature: ‘Theocentrism

27 For an excellent overview and orientation, see Finger 1998: 17–24, with bibliography.
28 See similarly, Blaising and Bock 1993: 232–301.
 Green Millennialism 261

teaches that God is the center of the universe and that He alone is the Source and
Upholder of meaning, purpose, values, and ethics, as well as the unifying principle
of the cosmos’ (Young 1994: 128).
Young’s green millennialism discovers in the story of redemption, and in the
realization of God’s promise in the full restoration of a creation inaugurated even
now in the life of the Church, an invitation to the whole natural order into relation-
ship with God. Like Schaeffer and others, he sees the life of the redeemed gathered
in the Church as the revelation of a humankind that, following the kenosis of the
Son’s incarnation, has emptied itself of anthropocentric power and arrogance for the
sake of love not only of neighbour but also for all creation (Young 1994: 171). This
anticipates the healing of the nations and the planet revealed in Revelation’s final
vision (22.1-5). A premillennial interruption of history is not an invitation to give
up on creation or the world:

God expects His people to take care of the earth; yet at the same time the Bible predicts that
the heavens and earth will be remade. Properly understood, this does not pose a tension
between the present and future. God still loves His creation and is not going to destroy
it. It is the evil principle God hates and will purge as He remakes heaven and earth. God’s
eschatological intervention to purge the corrupting elements does not nullify our present
responsibility for taking care of His creation. It should rather encourage the opposite. We are
to assist in the purging of evil and the reclamation of the earth. The earth is still of value to
God, and we are still to be faithful stewards, helping nature be all that God intended in the
face of ever-present evil. (Young 1994: 155)

From a green Evangelical perspective, this represents a promising development of

a Dispensationalist tradition that has been inclined to give up on an old earth even
as it hopes for the promised new one. It creatively deploys O’Leary’s comic frame
of apocalypse – namely the role of jeremiad in bringing about repentance and ref-
ormation (here environmental repentance) – to participate in the happy outcome of
creation promised in Revelation’s final chapters. However, it has had its critics. As
Thomas Finger argues (1998: 27, 32), the ecclesiocentrism of these eschatological
applications to ecological issues can lead to restrictions on considering the value of
the natural world outside of an anthropocentric soteriological scheme, as well as
on involvement with secular environmentalist causes because they do not fit into
its timetables and because of pessimism concerning humankind’s capacity to solve
ecological challenges. It nevertheless represents an intriguing way a movement – best
known for retreat from social engagement – discovers in apocalyptic theology a
reason for involvement in social causes. This represents a profound transformation
of a tradition of Apocalypse interpretation.
In articulating their arguments in this way, progressive Dispensationalism, as well
as those versions of Evangelical faith that promote a green world in the light of a
future revealed in Revelation, puts its finger on the pulse of an American Evangelical
movement inclined towards privatizing belief as a means of coping with seemingly
262 Ecological Hermeneutics

intractable social and political problems, or engaging contemporary challenges with

a view to a relatively narrow set of interests and concerns. In a qualitative investiga-
tion of Evangelicals who are devotees of Dispensationalist literature, especially the
premillennialist Left Behind series, Amy Johnson Frykholm (2004) describes con-
temporary popular Evangelicalism in America as belonging to a ‘Rapture Culture’.
Rapture Culture devours apocalyptic as a means of securing a certain future in an
uncertain present, and to shore up religious beliefs challenged by secularism. She
has discovered that most believers in the imminent return of Jesus think his com-
ing will be either when they are old or just after they die. With a certain future to
come, whose signs can be read in environmental disasters and political events even
now, these Evangelicals discover an impetus to engage in evangelism and to join the
battle against evil secular forces that have legalized abortion, protected the rights of
homosexuals, forbidden prayer in school, promoted the teaching of evolution and
so on. Indeed, by linking global evangelism with the military and economic security
of the United States, Rapture Culture finds an apocalyptic window for its adherents
to engage in particular forms of social activism, even as the forces of evil gather to
bring the creation to an apocalyptic ending.29 However, the disjunction of the coming
age with the present one leads these Evangelicals towards a social engagement on
terms that paradoxically favour freedom from government policies to solve global
problems and that advance economic and social policies favouring individualism and
self-interest. The powerful allegiance of conservative private values with distrust of
the government as often a secular force for evil leads to a deep distrust of environ-
mentalism and those who would preserve an order destined for annihilation.
Those Evangelicals, including green premillennialists, who read the Book of
Revelation as transformation rather than replacement of the present creation urge
a different mode of political and social engagement upon America’s conservative
Christians. Creation care, not creation annihilation; justice, not quietism; engage-
ment, not retreat – all in ways that encourage a green Christian faith – invite an
American Rapture Culture to a new model of political and religious engagement.
The green Evangelicals who read the Book of Revelation for the signs of divine
future that includes a creation groaning with birth pangs represent a new chapter in
the centuries-long history of American millennialist engagement. They anticipate a
green millennium that thoughtful Evangelical environmentalism can even now begin
to secure. ‘Jesus is coming, so plant a tree!’ (Wright 2008: I-79).

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29 See also, Lienesch 1993: 157–260; Harding 1994.

 Green Millennialism 263

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 Chapter 18

New Testament Eschatology and the Ecological

Crisis in Theological and Ecclesial Perspective

Stephen C. Barton

Introduction

This is an essay on the hermeneutical problems and possibilities that arise in

attempting to find wisdom from the past in a time of crisis. The crisis is that of
global ecology. The potential source of wisdom is Christian Scripture – especially
the eschatologically charged texts of the New Testament – interpreted in the light of
theology and ecclesial practice.
That there is an ecological crisis needs little elaboration here. As Peter Scott
(2000: 89) has put it: ‘A set of crises or breaks in human relations with otherkind
and non-human nature has come to occupy a central, if rather ill-defined, place in
the concerns of Western humanity.’ Four indicators of the crisis have been identified
(Northcott 2001: 209–10): first, the mass extinction of species due to human activ-
ity, with the consequent reduction in the biodiversity that sustains the intricate web
of life; second, climate change due to global warming caused especially by carbon
dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels; third, the pollution of the planet
by industrial, post-consumer and chemical wastes, a consequence of which is the
thinning of the earth’s protective ozone layer; fourth, soil erosion and desertification
caused by deforestation, over-intensive industrial farming and overgrazing, and
affecting growing areas of the planet.
Speaking of species loss alone, philosopher Stephen Clark (2000: 96, 114) writes
as follows:

[T]he rate of species loss is between a thousand and ten thousand times the usual. We do not
know – and probably will not know until it is far too late – if too many key species are being
eliminated for the whole to survive in any form hospitable to us. ‘One planet, one experiment.’
. . . Sometime in the next century, we will have pulled so many threads out from life’s tapestry
that the whole begins to fray.1

1 The quotation comes in Quash 2004: 305–306.

 New Testament Eschatology 267

If they are the indicators of ecological crisis, the list of causes – those, at least, for
which humankind may be said to be responsible – includes: the rapid increase in
the human population (to over six billion); the deleterious consequences of the
industrialization of the world’s economies; technological advances which enhance the
human capacity to adapt and devastate the physical environment; the globalization
of production and consumption to unsustainable levels; the instrumentalization of
nature to meet human wants and needs; a related, pervasive anthropocentrism that
sets human life apart from and over other life forms; and, at an underlying ideological
level, the consequences of late modernity, including the capacity of capitalism ‘to
disembed human life from prior attachments to place, custom and tradition which
in the past helped to conserve the environment’ (Northcott 2001: 211).
As to possibilities of survival and change, suggested strategies have been numer-
ous; but none has gained centre ground (Scott 2000: 90–91). Some seek to apply
the liberatory traditions of the Enlightenment to ecological problems. Others seek
to de-centre humanity, emphasizing instead the need for what is called a ‘relational,
total-field image’. Others mount a political exposé of the contradictions of capitalism,
caught between accumulation on the one hand and, on the other, the degradation of
the environment upon which that accumulation depends. Others advocate a theory
of social justice that incorporates the theme of space. Yet others advocate a ‘critical
ecological feminism’ that seeks to overcome patriarchy’s domineering mastery both
of nature and of women.
It is against this alarming backdrop that we are seeking Christian wisdom from the
New Testament. However, it is worth acknowledging, that, at least in general terms,
the issues would be the same in consideration of imminent natural or man-made
catastrophe of any kind, whether ecological or nuclear or military or whatever. The
general issue is the relation between the eschatological texts of the New Testament
and the moral life. The threats and risks posed by the increasing likelihood of catas-
trophe may make things more urgent, but they do not change the basic theological
issue, which is how to live the moral life in light of the knowledge of the end, above
all, the end of all things in God.
In a recent essay on ‘Eschatology and Ethics’, Kathryn Tanner captures well the
bewildering array of feelings and postures generated by Christian beliefs about the
‘last things’:

What one believes about the end of things affects how one feels about the world in which
one lives and one’s attitude towards efforts to make the world a better place. Disgust and
appreciation for the life one leads, contentment and discontentment with one’s lot, resignation
and resistance to the social order, hope and despair of change, eagerness and reluctance to take
action, optimism and pessimism about bettering human life, triumphalism and humility about
what has been achieved so far, are all associated at one time or another with the theology of
the last things. (Tanner 2005: 41)

Given such striking tensions and contradictions, our question as Scripture-reading

268 Ecological Hermeneutics

theologians must be this: can we read New Testament eschatology in a way that
undergirds and motivates a positive commitment to environmental care, or does the
character of Christian hope inevitably mute such concern? Of course, lying behind
this question is the suspicion that New Testament eschatology – in some of its aspects,
at least – is fundamentally pessimistic about the future of the world; that, if heaven
and earth are to pass away (even if to be transformed into something better), a posi-
tive theological and psychological commitment to environmental care is undermined.
On the surface of things, this suspicion appears well founded. On the one
hand, there is considerable evidence from the New Testament to suggest that early
Christians believed that the end of the world – in the sense of the dissolution of the
material cosmos – was imminent. In the case of Paul, for example, the imminence
of the end justifies an ethic of detachment from mundane ties, since ‘the appointed
time has grown short . . . [and] the present form of this world is passing away’
(1 Cor. 7.29-31). The ‘Little Apocalypse’ of Mark 13 has Jesus say: ‘But in those
days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its
light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will
be shaken.’ A kindred mentality is expressed in 2 Pet. 3.10-13:

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a
loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is
done on it will be disclosed. Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of
persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening
the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved,
and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new
heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.2

At the same time, as well as the apocalyptic eschatology of early Christianity, there is
plenty of evidence to suggest that Christians down the ages continued to believe in a
literal, cataclysmic end of the world and that many (maybe most) still do so today.3
Even in as utilitarian and technocratic a society as the contemporary United States,
there is a pervasive Fundamentalist millenarianism – with roots in seventeenth cen-
tury Puritanism and growth points in the Great Awakening, the Revolutionary War,
the Civil War and subsequent moments of significant social change – that exerts a
powerful influence at the highest levels of religious and political life (cf. Jewett 1984).
In past decades, this has produced in some circles a certain pessimistic determinism
about the likelihood of the end of the world through a nuclear holocaust. Today,
anxiety about a nuclear holocaust has been replaced or overlaid by anxiety about
ecological catastrophe.

2 Other such texts include Heb. 1.10-12, 12.25-28; Rev. 20.11, 21.1. For a thorough treat-
ment, see Adams 2007: 133–251.
3 From a burgeoning literature, see, for example, Bull 1995; McGinn 2000; Thompson 1997.
A succinct Christian comment is Bauckham 1999.
 New Testament Eschatology 269

For Christian individuals and communities concerned about the environ-

mental crisis and committed to environmental care, this situation invites serious
self-examination. By what authority and upon what grounds may Christians engage
in action for the good of creation if their scriptures offer little by way of encour-
agement, let alone command? Is the anthropocentrism of the New Testament in
particular so strong as to deflect attention away from concern for the environment?
Put more strongly, is Christian eschatology so world denying – even escapist – as to
render Christians mute when it comes to the fate of the non-human species and the
material world?
If such a conclusion is to be resisted, and if positive Christian warrants for envi-
ronmental care are to be found, substantial critical work has to be done. As I seek to
show, some of this work will be biblical-exegetical, asking: what do these texts mean?
Some of the work will be theological-hermeneutical, asking: how might we read
these texts reasonably today in ways which accord with and display the Christian
gospel? Some of the work will be personal-ascetical, asking: what performances of
Scripture do we as Christians need to master, what processes of formation do we
need to embrace, that will predispose us towards true discernment and right action
for the common good, including the good of creation? In what follows, each of these
three dimensions of the task is opened up by means of case studies of recent scholarly
contributions that offer fruitful avenues for discussion and reflection.

The Biblical-Exegetical Task

A significant contribution of a biblical-exegetical kind is that offered by leading New

Testament scholar Richard Hays (2000) in his essay, ‘New Testament Eschatology
at the Turn of the Millennium’. Acknowledging with evident embarrassment the
‘millennial fever’ of millions of his fellow Americans at the turn of the millennium, yet
troubled at the same time by the rejection or downplaying of biblical eschatology and
the doctrine of the Second Coming that has taken place by way of liberal theological
backlash, Hays seeks to shore up an understanding of the Christian gospel for which
the apocalyptic dimension – shorn of millenarianism – is and remains absolutely
fundamental. Against the liberal backlash, Hays stakes his claim thus:

[S]uch a reaction [against the New Testament’s apocalyptic imagery] is both hasty and
self-defeating, for apocalyptic categories are neither peripheral nor dispensable; they stand at
the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as proclaimed and interpreted by the New Testament
writers. The resurrection itself is an apocalyptic event, and it can be understood as a saving
event for the world only within the framework of the New Testament’s dialectical already/
not yet eschatology. Thus, Christians who scoff at apocalyptic are sawing off the branch on
which they sit – or, to give the metaphor a more biblical turn, tearing out the roots of a tree
of which they themselves are the branches. Apocalyptic narrative and apocalyptic expectation
are integral to the logic of the gospel. (2000: 116)
270 Ecological Hermeneutics

However, given (with Ernst Käsemann) that ‘apocalyptic is the mother of Christian
theology’, how, asks Hays, are Christians to respond to the delay of the Parousia and
the non-fulfilment of eschatological hope? In responding to this age-old question,
Hays begins by identifying three unsatisfactory strategies.
First, there is what he calls, ‘the Johannine option: eternal life now’. Here, Hays
identifies in John’s Gospel an emphatic ‘realized’ eschatology, itself a reinterpretation
of traditional, future eschatology to meet the needs of second-generation believ-
ers needing assurance of salvation. But, against Rudolf Bultmann’s attribution of
remaining elements of future, ‘unrealized’ eschatology in the Gospel to a conservative
‘ecclesiastical redactor’, Hays argues, not only that the manuscript evidence offers
no warrant for excision, but also that these future-oriented passages, along with
future-oriented themes in the First Letter of John, provide ‘the temporal framework
within which the realized eschatology must be understood: i.e. the eternal life that
the believer experiences in the present points forward to a final consummation in the
resurrection at the last day’ (Hays 2000: 119).
Hays’s reluctance to allow John’s distinctive realized eschatology its full weight
has point. He waves the red flag of ‘incipient Gnosticism’ to warn against reading
John as offering ‘an unqualified eschatology of eternal life in the present’, since then
the Gospel would appear as ‘unconcerned about the fate of God’s created world, the
physical body, and the suffering that we will still experience in the present time’ (Hays
2000: 119). He also identifies Bultmann’s approach in wanting to trim the text of its
Jewish apocalyptic eschatology as a kind of Marcionism. Instead, to be interpreted
responsibly, the text has to be read in ways that do justice to its elements of future
eschatology as well as its more distinctive realized eschatology.
The second strategy for dealing with unfulfilled eschatological hope that Hays
deems unsatisfactory is that of driving a wedge between Jesus and the gospels, a
strategy he associates particularly with the Jesus Seminar and its ‘discovery’ of
a ‘non-eschatological Jesus’ (Hays 2000: 120). According to this approach, the
original, non-eschatological teaching of Jesus was reinterpreted by his followers in
terms of Jewish apocalyptic: but Jesus himself – as evidenced (controversially!) in
early Q traditions and the Gospel of Thomas – is to be seen as ‘an itinerant sage, a
teacher of subversive wisdom and spirituality, more like a Cynic philosopher than an
eschatological prophet’ (Hays 2000: 121). In this way, the problem of non-fulfilment
is dissolved, at least so far as Jesus is concerned. Instead, it is an artificial problem
created by the early church.
This second strategy is analogous to the first. Whereas the Bultmannian ‘Johannine
option’ implicitly drives a wedge between John and the Synoptics (or between John
and more future-oriented New Testament texts), the ‘Jesus Seminar option’ drives a
wedge between the Synoptics and Jesus. If you like, the wedge is driven in just one
stage further back. The criticisms Hays offers are twofold. In historical terms, it is
difficult to justify a method which distinguishes a non-apocalyptic Jesus so clearly
both from John the Baptist who preceded him and those followers after him who
passed on our earliest (apocalypticized) traditions about him. In terms of theology,
 New Testament Eschatology 271

the elimination of future eschatology undermines the gospel by displacing a concep-

tion of God active in the world bringing his salvific purposes to fulfilment. It also
erodes the foundation of the church’s confession by its devaluation of the canon of
Scripture.
The third unsatisfactory strategy Hays identifies is that of N.T. Wright, and
is dubbed, ‘apocalyptic eschatology historicized’ (Hays 2000: 122). In striking
contradiction of the ‘Jesus Seminar’ strategy, this approach prescinds from denying
an apocalyptic eschatology to Jesus. On the contrary, it happily accords historical
authenticity to all such material, but interprets it as symbolic language for events to
come in the immediate historical setting of first-century Israel as a consequence of
Jesus’ own activity. The problem of non-fulfilment of end-time warnings and hopes
is solved, not by denying to Jesus such warnings and hopes, but by claiming that by
the time the gospels were written they had, in fact, been fulfilled already in Jesus’
death and resurrection and, finally, in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple
in 70 ce. Wright acknowledges, nevertheless, that not all New Testament texts can
be historicized in this way: above all, the expectation of a future return of Jesus is
quite explicit in texts like Acts 1.10-11, and in Paul as well. So for Hays, what is
unsatisfactory in Wright’s account is that, precisely because it historicizes end-time
expectation, it is unable to give an adequate account of what remains unfulfilled and
of the persistence of suffering and evil in Christian experience.
It may well be the case, furthermore, that Hays’s criticism of Wright does not go
far enough. If, as Edward Adams (2007) has argued, the apocalyptic language used
by Jesus and the early Christians resists historicization in a socio-political direction
and is explained more plausibly as symbolic of literal end-time cosmic catastrophe
and dissolution – most likely with a view to radical transformation in a new crea-
tion – then the problem of non-fulfilment is greater still.
Instead of these three unsatisfactory strategies, Hays re-asserts his central claim:
‘The gospel is intelligible only within a narrative world shaped by biblical apocalyptic
hope’ (Hays 2000: 125). He then proceeds to lay out seven reasons why the church
needs an apocalyptic eschatology: first, to carry Israel’s story forward in terms of
the historical fate of the Jewish people, and therefore in defence of God’s biblically
narrated faithfulness to Israel; second, so that the cross of Christ can be understood
in a larger context as a saving event for the world through an ultimate, future triumph
over evil and death; third, to enable the gospel’s political critique of pagan culture and
to direct the church away from accommodation with the values of an unjust world;
fourth, to help the church keep awake and so resist complacency and triumphalism;
fifth, to affirm the body and material creation on the understanding that God will
redeem what God has created; sixth, to ground the church’s Spirit-empowered mis-
sion in a space in time designated ‘the last days’; seventh, to enable the church to
speak with integrity and truthfulness about suffering and death as both real, but in
the light of resurrection hope, not final (Hays 2000: 125–31).
Hays appears to be conscious that, however impressive this list of reasons why
the church needs apocalyptic eschatology, the question remains: but is it true? His
272 Ecological Hermeneutics

responses are the conventional ones. To the objection that literal apocalyptic hope has
been disconfirmed by the grinding passing of millennia, Hays offers a straight rebuttal
by appeal to the construal of time offered in 2 Pet. 3.8-10 (‘with the Lord one day is
like a thousand years . . .’). To the objection that scientific cosmology has displaced
the mythic cosmology of apocalyptic, he argues (with N.T Wright and, before him,
George Caird) that apocalyptic language has to be interpreted metaphorically in
accordance with the literary conventions of its own time: ‘The images refer to real
events in the future (i.e. the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead), but the
details of the description are imaginative constructions that should not be pressed
literalistically’ (Hays 2000: 132).
He then concludes with a powerful plea for the recovery of ‘unabashed apocalyptic
theology’ of an explicitly ‘intratextual’ kind (i.e. one that involves living within the
apocalyptic frame of reference of the New Testament text): ‘I would suggest that
the New Testament’s story leads us to affirm, in a strong literal sense, the ultimate
glorification of Jesus Christ as Lord over all creation, the resurrection of the body,
God’s final judgment of all humanity, and “the life of the world to come” in true
justice and peace’ (Hays 2000: 133).
Appreciative though I am of Hays’s attempt to tread a line between liberals and
fundamentalists, certain reservations remain. Briefly, I wonder if it is possible to
discriminate reasonably between apocalyptic language that ‘should not be pressed
literalistically’, on the one hand, and an apocalyptic narrative of salvation to be
affirmed ‘in a strong literal sense’, on the other. A better interpretation of biblical
apocalyptic as a whole has to be found. Whatever form that takes, this will be one
that gives central place to the central affirmation that underlies New Testament
apocalyptic: hope in God grounded in the resurrection of Christ now present in the
world as Spirit.
Second, we are surely at a stage where a contemporary hermeneutic of the New
Testament takes the postmodern turn seriously, i.e. takes seriously (if also critically)
contemporary suspicions regarding the enclosure of meaning in universal, grand
narratives, and is open instead (or in addition) to alternative ways of reading, ways
that are more local, plural, performative, even parodic (cf. Adam 1995). Because
Hays is still engaged in modernist debates with the likes of the Jesus Seminar, the
consequence is that, in refusing the alternatives they offer, he has to defend instead a
theology which, with its summons to return to an ‘unabashed apocalyptic theology’,
sounds pre-modern, while simultaneously giving room for what he says to be taken
hostage by ‘back-to-the Bible’ fundamentalists, Christian Zionists and the like.
Third, and related, I do not believe that we can make headway in understanding
the Christian doctrine of ‘the last things’ without attending to intellectual develop-
ments in the natural sciences. Hays has managed to write an essay on ‘New Testament
Eschatology at the Turn of the [Third] Millennium’ without engaging with those
realms of human knowledge and understanding (to do with time, space, matter and
energy) which have made such dramatic advances in the last half century. I do not
deny that all of this is a tall order. Nor would I begin to claim for myself the necessary
 New Testament Eschatology 273

competence. But reading Hays has helped clarify for me the kinds of inquiry and
engagement that appear to be needed if the eschatological perspectives of the New
Testament, the creeds and the liturgy of the Church are to connect in a compelling
way with the current crisis.

The Theological-Hermeneutical Task

From Hays’s biblical-exegetical approach, I turn to one which is more theological-

hermeneutical. It is the work of Kathryn Tanner, already cited, whose own approach
from a systematic theological perspective, developed in two recent essays (Tanner
2000; 2005), is well worth our attention, not least for the contrast it offers with that
of Hays. Strikingly, both her essays involve a direct theological engagement with the
natural sciences. Her point is this. In the face of the scientific consensus ‘that death
is the end toward which our solar system and the universe as a whole are moving’,
Christian theologians can respond in basically one of two ways. On the one hand,
they can create a kind of gap in naturalistic proposals, a gap that leaves room for
the action of God. Then the theologian can propose either that God as Creator and
Redeemer will overcome the natural forces of cosmic entropy and intervene to avert
disaster, or that God will use cosmic self-destruction to bring a new heaven and earth
into being. Such responses allow traditional, future-oriented eschatologies to remain
unaffected, since they avoid conflict with scientific end-of-the-world scenarios. It is
basically a case of future, this-world eschatology either bypassing, or acting to trump,
the scientific evolutionary perspective.4
The other approach (and the one that Tanner herself here adopts) is to accept the
scientific account on its own terms, and to ask ‘what a Christian eschatology might
be like if scientists are right that the world does not have a future. Is it really the
case that such an end is simply incompatible as it stands with Christian hopes for
the world?’ (Tanner 2000: 224). Her suggestion is that theologians do in relation to
endings what they have done in relation to beginnings, i.e. that they do in relation to
eschatology what they have done in relation to the doctrine of creation. In the case
of creation, and taking fully into account what science and philosophy say about
beginnings and the process of origination, they have argued that what needs to be
affirmed theologically is that the world belongs to God and exists in relation to
God. Similarly, in relation to eschatology. What needs to be affirmed theologically is

4 In a significant statement, Tanner (2000: 223) elaborates thus: ‘The consummation of the
world is not brought about by the world. A gap exists between the results of world processes
and the world’s consummation, a gap to be bridged by a God with the power to reverse those
results, the power to bring what is otherwise absolutely unexpected into existence – say, a
world that knows neither loss nor suffering. Or, a grace-motored continuity, rather than
a continuity of purely natural processes, spans the world as we know it and the world to
come: the world moves without any great interruption to its consummation but it does so
only in virtue of divine powers not its own.’
274 Ecological Hermeneutics

neither an end-of-world scenario that contradicts or trumps science, nor a spiritual-

ized eschatology that absolves itself of concerns for this world, but what she calls ‘a
more comprehensively cosmic eschatology . . . comprehensively cosmic in the sense
that its preoccupations would not center on the world of the future but on the world
as a whole and on an ongoing redemptive (rather than simply creative) relation to
God that holds for the world of the past, present, and future’ (Tanner 2000: 225).
On this basis, the striking move she makes is away from a narrowly temporalized
understanding of Christian eschatology to a de-temporalized understanding – to one
that is more spatialized in conception and practice. Tanner acknowledges the con-
tribution of Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope (1967) in returning eschatology
to the heart of Christian theology and deepening ‘the future orientation of action
in modern movements for social change’ by setting the historical process in the
context of the in-breaking of God’s future; and she implies that this temporalized,
future-oriented understanding made good sense in the context of modernity, char-
acterized as it was by the rise of historical consciousness and powerful movements
for reform and social change (Tanner 2005: 44–45).
In the context of postmodernity, however, what is needed, according to Tanner,
is an eschatology more attuned to questions of space than time, more given to geo-
graphy than temporality, more about making connection in a world of movement
and fluidity than of progress towards a new future. Such an eschatology would also
be more in tune with the intransigent pessimism which characterizes contemporary
life, pessimism which includes the likely inevitability of ecological disaster:

Naturalism is now associated more with fatalism than with confidence in the powers of human
achievement: death, transience, and failure seem simply the irremediable stuff of life. Things
will ultimately come to a bad end of cosmic proportions if the physicists are right: dissipation
or conflagration is our universe’s sorry future. (Tanner 2005: 46)

According to Tanner, a de-temporalized eschatology is better able to accommodate

postmodernity’s less optimistic worldview. What is more, it can do so without loss
of hope in God and without undermining the imperative of progressive social action.
What it requires, however, is ‘uncoupling the eschaton from hopes for the world’s
future. We have our hope in God whether or not things are likely to turn out well
in the end, whether or not things are likely to turn out badly in the end’ (Tanner
2005: 46).
Already in the Old Testament, she points out, there are notions of life and death
that relativize the religious significance of the cessation of the biological life of the
individual (cf. also Levenson 2006). There is, for example, the notion of life as
fruitfulness, longevity and communal flourishing, and death as barrenness, oppres-
sion, social fragmentation and isolation. Related to this, there is a conception of life
and death as alternative ‘ways’ or patterns of existence arising out of how one is in
relation to God (cf. Deut. 30.19-20). There is also the sense that the life of the indi-
vidual carries on in the life of the community, in the form of progeny and communal
 New Testament Eschatology 275

memory. Above all, a number of texts (e.g. Job 1.21; Deut. 32.39; Ps. 139.7-8) affirm
that ‘the dead are not cut off from God because God is the Lord of both life and
death’ (Tanner 2000: 228). In sum, the most important senses of ‘life’ and ‘death’
have to do with relation with God, a relation which is seen, in various ways, to
transcend biological death: and this may have implications for reflection beyond the
biological death of the individual to reflection on the death of the cosmos.
Crossing over into the New Testament, what Tanner proposes by way of a more
relational or spatialized eschatology is one that readers of the New Testament would
recognize as close in important ways to the Christ mysticism of the Fourth Gospel in
particular, but arguably of Paul as well. The key phrase for Tanner is ‘eternal life in
God’, understood as a new level of relationship with God, transcending the relationship
with God that creatures enjoy by virtue of their creatureliness. Thus, just as the doctrine
of creation ‘refers to a relationship of dependence upon God which holds whether
or not the world has a beginning, and whatever the worldly mechanism by which it
may have come to be’, so the eschaton, understood as ‘consummation in the good’,
has to do with ‘a new level of relationship with God, the final one surpassing what we
are simply as creatures, beyond which there is not other. Eschatology’s fundamental
interest is in the character of this relationship to God and not in what the world is like
or what happens to it considered independently of that relationship – say, at its end’.5
Importantly, the model for life so understood is the incarnation: ‘Jesus is the one
who lives in God, the one who is all that he is as a human being without existing
independently of God, the human being whose very existence is God’s own’ (Tanner
2005: 48). And just as Jesus’ life in God was displayed in a life given over to action
for the world’s good (without concern for success or failure), so also Christians,
united with Christ’s life by grace through the Spirit, are called and enabled to act in
the world in accordance with the gift of eternal life they have received and in which
they dwell.
In other words, Tanner rejects the idea that a de-temporalized eschatology has
apathy or passivity in the face of evil and injustice as inevitable corollaries:

One is led to see the way the world currently runs as an insufferable, unacceptable affront,
not by the disparity between the present and God’s coming future, but by the utter disjunction
between patterns of injustice, exclusion, and impoverishment, which make up the realm of
death, and the new paradigm of existence empowered by life in God as a force working in the
present. In short, complacency is ruled out not by a transcendent future but by a transcendent
present – by the present life in God as the source of goods that the world one lives in fails to
match. (Tanner 2000: 234; cf. also 2005: 54)

5 Tanner 2005: 47–48. Cf. also 49: ‘Eternal life is not the endless extension of present existence
into an endless future, but a matter of a new quality of life in God, at the ready, even now
infiltrating, seeping into the whole. Eternal life is less a matter of duration than a matter of
the mode of one’s existence in relation to God, as that calibre of relation shows itself in a
new pattern for the whole of life.’
276 Ecological Hermeneutics

Tanner’s distinctive ‘spatialized’ approach to the doctrine of the ‘last things’ is

certainly noteworthy. While not denying completely the temporal aspect, it avoids
some of the problems of overly temporalized eschatologies that have been, at best,
problematic, at worst, downright dangerous in Christian times past and present. It
resonates with the spatial connotations of the biblical idea of ‘the kingdom of God’
as the universal realm of God’s sovereign power. In relation to recent scholarship on
eschatological texts, it fits well with that understanding of apocalyptic which brings
to the fore the more mystical aspects of its intuitions about earthly reality seen from
the perspective of heaven (e.g. Rowland 1982). It is grounded theologically in a
well-nuanced notion of ‘life in God’, reflected already in the Old Testament, fully
revealed in the incarnation, and offered unconditionally as gift to the world through
union with Christ. It can claim serious warrant in the New Testament in the ‘realized’
eschatology and Christ mysticism of the Fourth Gospel. It takes the findings of the
natural sciences with full seriousness, and is a position worked out in dialogue with
them in a way that displays rational credibility. It resonates deeply with the contem-
porary cultural turn to spatiality and connection characteristic of the postmodern
condition, mentioned earlier. Finally, it offers a profound motivation for action for
the good in the present – understood as what life in God is all about – irrespective
of success or failure, irrespective also of the world’s prospects.
Nevertheless, as I have reservations about Hays’s position, so also I have reserva-
tions about Tanner’s. Briefly, they are as follows. First, while cognisant of her attempt
to engage intelligently with the natural sciences, I wonder if Tanner is wise to spurn
theological approaches to naturalistic accounts of beginnings and endings that seek
to create space – in her words, a ‘gap’ – for the action of God. It is one thing laudably
to offer a theology that avoids the reductionism implicit in a ‘God of the gaps’, where
the idea of God shrinks every time a ‘gap’ is filled. It is another to surrender discourse
about beginnings and endings tout court to the terms offered by scientific naturalism
and its accompanying pessimism. Along with the potentially serious moral and moti-
vational consequences for environmental concern and action of such a surrender, this
kind of position threatens the hope in God that is at the core of Christian conviction
precisely because the naturalistic account is deemed not to be the whole story or the
best way of telling the story. To say that ‘[w]e have our hope in God whether or not
things are likely to turn out well in the end, whether or not things are likely to turn
out badly in the end’, surely departs radically from the central Christian conviction
that, because of Christ crucified, risen and coming again, all in the end ‘shall be well’.
Second, Tanner’s concern to ‘de-temporalize’ Christian eschatology in favour of
a more ‘spatial’ paradigm, while helpful in drawing attention to important aspects
of the invitation to ‘life in God’ characteristic of biblical faith with its climax in the
incarnation, overplays the distinction between temporal and spatial paradigms at
the expense of the former. Telltale here is what appears to me to be a very significant
– and theologically-speaking, fatal – omission: particular attention is drawn to the
incarnation, but not to the resurrection. Proper attention to the resurrection as the
revelation in present space-time reality of the glorious future of a creation redeemed
 New Testament Eschatology 277

by the Death-defeating death of the Son of God and transformed by the Spirit is the
essential corollary of the incarnation. Indeed, without the resurrection as its fulfil-
ment, the incarnation – indeed, creation as a whole – is unintelligible, Christianly
speaking. Tanner’s failure here to engage with eschatological texts as weighty as
1 Thessalonians 4, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15 and the book of Revelation, not
to mention the strong orientation on the future in the teaching of Jesus, is a serious
omission.6 However, it is not a matter simply of citing Paul or the Seer as having a
more ‘temporal’, future-oriented eschatology over against John as having a more
‘spatial’, present-oriented eschatology, for in all three of these New Testament wit-
nesses eschatology interpreted in the light of Christ crucified and risen has elements
both temporal and spatial.7
Third, if Hays can be criticized for allowing his interpretation to become captive
to concerns characteristic of modernity, Tanner may be judged to be attempting
an alignment with postmodernity the benefit of which is quite ambiguous from
a Christian point of view. In so far as an alignment with postmodernity involves
downplaying temporality – especially in its past and future aspects – the prospect
of repentance for historic ills in time past and of moral action for the future good
of creation in anticipation of a greater good still to come, is seriously compromised.
To sum up so far: in focusing – appreciatively but also critically – first on Hays
and then on Tanner, I have offered examples of two of the three approaches to
the task of discerning wisdom from Christian scripture and tradition in a time of
ecological crisis that I identified as important at the outset – the biblical-exegetical
and the theological-hermeneutical. It may be inferred, on the basis of what I have
said to this point, that significant enrichment comes when the biblical-exegetical and
the theological-hermeneutical tasks take place in engagement with each other. With
such an engagement, Hays’s biblical-exegetical work might escape the rather claus-
trophobic confines of biblicism in its various (liberal and conservative) forms, and
Tanner’s theological-hermeneutical work might be less prone to attend one-sidedly to
the immanent spatial aspects of existence at the expense of the temporal, less prone
also to interpret creation and incarnation without new creation and resurrection.

The Personal-Ascetical Task

But neither the biblical-exegetical nor the theological-hermeneutical is sufficient as

an exposition and display of biblical eschatology in its full ecological significance.
A third dimension remains to be opened up, that of the personal-ascetical – to do, that
is, with the processes of formation and discipline that Christians need to embrace if

6 For a recent exegetical examination of eschatological texts in the New Testament in relation
to the question of the environment, cf. Moo 2006.
7 For example, on spatial and temporal dimensions in the Apocalypse, see Gilbertson 2003,
especially chs 4 and 5.
278 Ecological Hermeneutics

they are to be predisposed towards true discernment and right action for the common
good, including the good of creation, in a time of crisis. To put the issue succinctly
and in a way appropriate to matters ecological and environmental set against the
horizon of God’s grace: how does one receive the gift? What patterns of life, ordering
of needs, and ways of being in the world (in every sense of ‘world’) constitute an
appropriate response to the gifts of God in creation, Christ and the Spirit? By what
practices and performances may the gift of life in God be signified and sustained?8
Here I concur with that emphasis in recent Christian ethics that finds a significant
(but, of course, not the only) answer – especially at the symbolic and cultural levels
– in the practices and performances of the corporate life of the church (cf. Hauerwas
and Wells 2004; also, Wannenwetsch 2004). Ordered according to an economy of
grace given articulation in a startling biblical narrative of divine self-dispossession (cf.
2 Cor. 8.9), the church itself is a school for learning those performances of Scripture
which issue in the self-dispossession required to receive and live the gift.

Liturgical Formation 1: Joining Voice with Creation – The Benedicite

One example, related particularly to the deep-rooted problem of anthropocentrism, is

that offered by Richard Bauckham in his essay of 2002, entitled, ‘Joining Creation’s
Praise of God’. The answer Bauckham offers to the question of how to receive and
live the gift is: to acknowledge the divine Giver by offering an apposite gift in return
– the gift of praise and thanksgiving. One form this gift takes is the liturgy of the
church. In particular, in the words of the canticle known as the Benedicite – taken
from the Greek additions to the book of Daniel, and based on Psalm 148 – the church
joins with creation, as part of creation, to bless God. Striking, for present purposes,
is the fact that, in its context in Daniel, the canticle is placed on the lips of the three
young Jewish sages as they walk in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace – in other words,
in a place of danger and at a time of crisis. Instead of anxiety for their own fate at
the hands of a local despot, they display confidence in the God who is sovereign over
all creation and invites creation’s praise:

O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Heavens, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Waters that be above the Firmament, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for
ever.
O all ye Powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever . . .9

As Bauckham (2002: 46) points out, of the thirty verses, each summoning one cat-
egory of God’s creatures to praise God, only the last seven are addressed to humans:

8 Important on the idea of (what I have called) ‘practices and performances’ is Adam 2006.
9 The language is that of The Book of Common Prayer (1662) of the Church of England.
 New Testament Eschatology 279

‘all the others [are addressed] to non-human creatures from the angels, through the
heavenly bodies, the elements of the weather, the mountains, the plants, the waters, to
all the living creatures of water, air and earth.’ There is, in other words, a strong rec-
ognition of ‘fellow-creatureliness’, with humans joining in the whole creation’s praise
of God: ‘In this common attribution of glory to the one Creator there is no hierarchy
or anthropocentricity. Here all creatures . . . are simply fellow-creatures expressing
the theocentricity of the created world, each in [their] own created way, differently
but in complementarity’ (Bauckham 2002: 48). Thus, in the practice of sharing in
creation’s praise of God, a practice shaped by liturgy and modelled – played out,
performed – in the lives of saints like Francis of Assisi, the possibility opens up of
responding to the gift of life in ways that, instead of destroying the gift, offer it back,
in all its distinctiveness and diversity, to the Giver. Of course, such ‘offering back’ will
not be confined to the symbolic actions of the liturgy: rather, it will flow over from
the liturgy of the gathered community to the liturgy of everyday life.

Liturgical Formation 2: Bringing Creation’s Gifts to the Giver – The Offertory

A second example is the liturgy of the Eucharist – in particular, the Offertory, that
point in the service (in the Church of England, at least) when the bread and wine
are brought to the altar. The words spoken over the bread and wine by the president
evoke the economy of divine grace which makes life possible;10 and the words of the
people express the appropriate response.11 In a helpful commentary which draws
attention to how the liturgy is a schooling in the economy and ecology of grace, Ben
Quash says this:

In these liturgical exchanges the congregation learns to think about the whole creation (in
connection with these specific gifts of the creation) as belonging to God (‘Lord of all creation’).
It learns in appropriate humility . . . to acknowledge that it ‘has’ these gifts only because
of life-giving forces wholly in excess of its own control (‘through your goodness’; ‘which
earth has given’) . . . Perhaps more than anywhere in Christian liturgy, this moment of the
‘presentation of the gifts’ highlights the wondrous possibilities latent in material things – the
things of the earth, God’s non-human creatures. They are themselves to be the vehicles of
‘life’ and ‘salvation.’ They are treated with reverence (carried in procession, no less) and
placed on the altar. And the overriding emphasis is that they are not our servants, they are
God’s blessings, and it is by his relation to them (not our manipulation of them) that they
bring life. (2004: 311–12)

10 ‘Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation; through your goodness we have this bread to
offer; which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread
of life. // Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation; through your goodness we have this
wine to offer; fruit of the vine and the work of human hands. It will become for us the cup
of salvation.’
11 ‘Blessed be God forever.’
280 Ecological Hermeneutics

What is so profound about the liturgy, as exemplified in an example such as this, is

the sheer intensity with which it displays the ordering and connectedness of creation
in the economy and ecology of divine grace in space and time. What is so striking
also is the way Scripture and theology find their place – indeed, are transposed into
a new key – as they are embodied and performed in the gathering of the people to
join with creation as part of creation to voice creation’s praise. It is this intensity and
this transposition that generate the moods and motivations necessary for morally
responsible living as God’s creatures in God’s creation.

Liturgical Formation 3: In Time with Creation and Redemption – Sabbath/Sunday

As a third and final example of the personal-ascetical task – of what scripturally rooted
practices and performances shape Christians in ways appropriate to the giftedness of
created life – I draw brief attention to one more dimension of ecclesial life: sabbath
observance and its Christian eschatological extension or transposition, Sunday (cf.
Heschel 1951; Moltmann 1984). Both sabbath and Sunday are about the discipline
of life in time, making space in time – above all, about the ordering of human time in
harmony with God’s time. Both are eschatological, linking beginnings and endings.
The sabbath roots the life of a community in the divine gift of creation, in imitation
of the God who rests after the work of creation (cf. Gen. 2.2-3; Exod. 20.8-11).
Sunday, ‘the Lord’s day’, the day of resurrection, roots the life of a community in
the divine gift of new creation. Both speak also of liberation. Sabbath liberates the
human and non-human community from incessant toil, for the purpose of rest and
renewal (cf. Deut. 5.12-15). Sunday speaks of the liberation of humanity and all crea-
tion from sin and death for participation as the ‘new creation’ in eschatological rest,
which is life in the Spirit. Jürgen Moltmann articulates the sabbath’s all-embracing
significance well:

The peace of the sabbath is peace with God first of all. But this divine peace encompasses
not merely the soul but the body too; not merely individuals but family and people; not only
human beings but animals as well; not living things alone, but also, as the creation story
tells us, the whole creation of heaven and earth. That is why the sabbath peace is also the
beginning of that peace with nature which many people are seeking today, in the face of the
growing destruction of the environment. But there will never be peace with nature without
the experience and celebration of God’s sabbath. (1984: 277)

What Moltmann says reinforces my point. The fundamental ecclesial practice of

marking time and keeping time, this locating of our action through time in God’s acts
of creation and liberation, is a profound pedagogy in how to receive the gift of time
in ways that are life-giving and life-sustaining – that is to say, in ways that accord
with the character of the divine gift-giver as the source of all life.
 New Testament Eschatology 281

Conclusion

My aim has been to address hermeneutical questions arising from the attempt to
engage with New Testament eschatology as a source of wisdom for responding to
the ecological crisis that faces us today. In making the attempt, I have posited that at
least three overlapping and inter-related tasks are necessary – what I have called the
biblical-exegetical, the theological-hermeneutical and the personal-ascetical. Each
one has been explored through engagement with recent, exemplary work in the field.
The biblical-exegetical, in critical interaction with views that attempt either to
‘over-spiritualize’ or ‘over-literalize’ biblical eschatology, confirms the dominant
influence of resurrection faith and end-time hope on the first Christian writers’
interpretations of the significance of Jesus for the life of the world and the fate of
the cosmos. The theological-hermeneutical, engaged with contemporary cultural
sensibilities and with conceptions of the fate of the cosmos according to the natural
sciences, seeks to offer a way of mitigating the often world-denying orientation of
Christian hope by developing a more profound notion of ‘eternal life in God’. The
personal-ascetical opens up some of the ways in which the habits and disciplines
formed in the worship and common life of the church – informing and informed by
scripture interpretation and theological insight – make appropriate response to the
ecological crisis possible. If the preceding exploration has any merit, it is perhaps
in the identification and critical elaboration of these three tasks in the demanding
business of seeking Christian wisdom at this critical time.

References

Adam, A.K.M. 1995 What is Postmodern Biblical Criticism? (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress).
Adam, A.K.M. 2006 ‘Poaching on Zion: Biblical Theology as Signifying Practice’, in A.K.M. Adam,
S.E. Fowl, K.J. Vanhoozer and F. Watson, Reading Scripture with the Church. Toward a
Hermeneutic for Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic): 17–34.
Adams, E. 2007 The Stars will Fall From Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the New Testament and
Its World (LNTS 347; London: T&T Clark).
Bauckham, R. 1999 ‘Approaching the Millennium’, Anvil 16/4: 255–67.
Bauckham, R. 2002 ‘Joining Creation’s Praise of God’, Ecotheology 7/1: 45–59.
Bull, M. (ed.) 1995 Apocalypse Theory and the End of the World (Oxford: Blackwell).
Clark, S.R.L. 2000 Biology and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Gilbertson, M. 2003 God and History in the Book of Revelation. New Testament Studies in Dialogue
with Pannenberg and Moltmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Hauerwas, S. and S. Wells (eds) 2004 The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (Oxford:
Blackwell).
Hays, R.B. 2000 ‘“Why Do You Stand Looking Up Toward Heaven?” New Testament Eschatology
at the Turn of the Millennium’, Modern Theology 16/1: 115–35.
Heschel, A. 1951 The Sabbath. Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York, NY: Noonday).
Jewett, R. 1984 ‘Coming to Terms with the Doom Boom’, Quarterly Review 4: 9–22.
Levenson, J.D. 2006 Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel. The Ultimate Victory of the God
of Life (New Haven, CN/London: Yale University Press).
282 Ecological Hermeneutics

McGinn, B. 2000, J.J. Collins and S.J. Stein (eds) Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism (New York, NY:
Continuum).
Moltmann, J. 1967 Theology of Hope. On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian
Eschatology (London: SCM).
Moltmann, J. 1984 God in Creation. An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (ET; London: SCM).
Moo, D.J. 2006 ‘Nature in the New Creation: New Testament Eschatology and the Environment’,
JETS 49: 449–88.
Northcott, M. 2001 ‘Ecology and Christian Ethics’, in R. Gill (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 209–27.
Quash, B. 2004 ‘Offering: Treasuring the Creation’, in S. Hauerwas and S. Wells (eds), The Blackwell
Companion to Christian Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell): 305–18.
Rowland, C. 1982 The Open Heaven. A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity
(London: SPCK).
Scott, P. 2000 ‘The Future of Creation. Ecology and Eschatology’, in D. Fergusson and M. Sarot
(eds), The Future as God’s Gift. Explorations in Christian Eschatology (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark): 89–114.
Tanner, K. 2000 ‘Eschatology Without A Future?’, in J. Polkinghorne and M. Welker (eds), The End
of the World and the Ends of God. Science and Theology on Eschatology (Harrisburg, PA:
Trinity Press International): 222–37.
Tanner, K. 2005 ‘Eschatology and Ethics’, in G. Meilander and W. Werpehowski (eds), Oxford
Handbook of Theological Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 41–56.
Thompson, D. 1997 The End of Time. Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium (London:
Minerva).
Wannenwetsch, B. 2004 Political Worship. Ethics for Christian Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University
Press).
 Chapter 19

Keeping the Commandments: The Meaning

of Sustainable Countryside

Tim Gorringe

In the beginning was the Word. As a Jew that was a very obvious place for John to
begin because from the start Israel’s existence was defined by the telling of stories.
This story telling constitutes what David Ford (1992) has called ‘a long rumour of
wisdom’, a sense of being engaged by the Lord of history, the origin and end of all
things, and of responding to that engagement. To be Jewish or Christian today is to
share, to dwell within, that long rumour of wisdom. The church witnesses to and acts
out of this long rumour of wisdom and in so doing contributes to the conversation
of the human race about where we are going and how we are going to get there, a
conversation we know as ethics. This conversation includes doctrines, philosophies,
ideologies, but it is primarily a matter of stories because the Logos of Jn 1.1 is not
so much rationality as imagination, the creative imagining of all things into being,
and of God’s engagement with the world. In the beginning was the imagination,
the story telling, of God, which is why, in the Christian Scriptures, we have a book
of stories, and why when Christians meet together, we tell a story: ‘On the night in
which he was betrayed . . .’.
Israel’s story tellers knew nothing about the division between sacred and secular, of
what today we call ‘the separation of powers’. They were not philosophers, interested
in penetrating beyond appearances to eternal verities. They believed God engaged
them in the minutiae of daily life: this is the substance of what we call ‘the law’,
Torah. For Israel, and for Jesus, God is concerned with the ordering of every aspect
of human life – agriculture, economics, politics, community, criminal justice, sexual-
ity, house building, the lot. But no blueprints for any of these things were revealed.
In Scripture we already listen in to a debate. When we say, ‘God reveals Godself’,
we do not mean that God speaks through a megaphone of enormous dimensions,
or even through a whisper into the ears of specially religiously gifted souls. We are
talking about a long process of discernment, of argument and theological struggle, of
constantly testing the long rumour of wisdom. ‘Two Jews, three opinions’ is already
true in the Hebrew Bible.
All this remains true in the Messianic writings, those writings which witness to
Jesus Messiah. Our earliest writings tell of fierce conflict between Peter and Paul
about the way in which things ought to go (Gal. 2.11-14). A little later four gospels
284 Ecological Hermeneutics

emerged, the product of four different communities with different worries and differ-
ent emphases. In the documents we find in the Messianic writings there are strongly
different theologies though all agree that, as Hebrews puts it, ‘in these last days God
has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom
also he created the ages’ (Heb. 1.2), which I take as a rhetorical way of speaking of
the significance of Jesus in the history of salvation rather than as an early statement
about ‘pre-existence’. The struggle to understand that fact led to the emergence of
what we know as ‘the doctrine of the Trinity’, which is, for Christians, the gram-
mar of God’s engagement with all that is not God. The doctrine, or as it is called in
Greek, the symbol, is a koan which represents the faith that God creates all things,
reconciles all things and redeems all things. Put differently, what ‘I am who I will be’
means is that the being and end of all things, ‘God’, is encountered in the bringing
of order out of chaos, in the reconciliation of persons and communities, and in hope
that God’s glory will finally irradiate all things and that everything that we do should
be shaped by that hope.
It follows that ‘Christian ethics’ is an imaginative engagement with the stories
and ruminations which give distinctiveness to this particular community. In regard
to any issue Christians will interrogate contemporary sciences of every kind with
these stories, and interrogate the stories with the sciences. The interrogation goes
both ways but the interrogation from the side of Scripture has a twofold priority.
First, it is part and parcel of the identity of the community called ‘Church’. Second,
the Church associates revelation with Scripture. Revelation is ‘what we cannot tell
ourselves’ (Barth). This applies primarily to the story of the cross, but also to the rest
of Scripture as that is read through the cross.
The somewhat counterintuitive assumption behind this process is that wisdom,
by which is meant the things which make for life, is to be found in the stories.
‘Counterintuitive’ because the Christian story can be read as a history of exclusion
and oppression – witch burnings, burnings of heretics, odium theologicum, mission
riding on the back of colonialism and so forth. The pathos of enlightenment derived
from precisely this fact. Here and there, there are genuine marks of progress which
derive from the Church – the founding of hospitals, provision of education, care for
the homeless and for prisoners, but the balance is more in the red than the black. If
we persist in attaching significance to this story telling it is on the cumulative grounds
summarized by phrases such as ‘grace rather than law’, ‘justice, mercy and truth’,
‘the image of God’, the priority of forgiveness, the foolishness of God, the resurrec-
tion of the body. Such phrases sketch out a vision of life in freedom that transcends
the bigotry of Christian history and they suggest that freedom is only attainable in
relation to the origin and end of all things that is not part of the created order.
The interrogation of human life by Scripture and of Scripture by human life takes
many forms. It has a scholarly form, though this is not primary. The primary form is
the exposition of Scripture in the Sunday or Sabbath ‘sermon’, a feature of Christian
practice inherited from the Church’s Jewish roots. Very often this will involve teasing
out a single verse or phrase of Scripture and trying to understand its significance for
 Keeping the Commandments 285

the lives of the hearers. This procedure differs from proof texting in that the verse or
phrase concerned is read in the context of the ongoing lectio divina, the reading of the
whole of Scripture by the community. It is part of an ongoing rumination in which
the entire text is consulted. Preaching week in, week out on the whole canon, in a
lectionary which brings together Hebrew Bible, epistles and gospels, means that the
part is read by the whole and the whole by the part, that there is a continuing inter-
rogation of the whole text. One does not lift out a particular verse in order to prove
a point but, in the context of ongoing rumination one seeks to learn from Scripture
what resources there might be for reflecting on any given issue. It is in this sense that
I wish to consult familiar texts to interrogate the idea of sustainable countryside. I do
this in a context where 80 million more human beings are added to global popula-
tion each year, where the amount of fertile land shrinks through desertification and
urbanization, where the number of areas seriously water-stressed grows each year and
where climate change will almost certainly threaten food production in some of the
world’s currently fertile areas. If ethics is intergenerational then the question about
how grandchildren and their children will be fed, whether a decent quality of life
will be open to them, is urgent. This is the question of sustainable countryside. The
question of feeding people has always been a priority, as general famines occurred
five or six times a century, and the Church used Rogation Sundays to think about
these issues. From the texts used for these days I begin with Gen. 2.15.

God put human beings in the garden to till and keep it.

The word ‘garden’ (gan) here is, of course, a metaphor for the whole earth but this
vision of the earth is as a garden. From the sixteenth century on, with the rise of
the industrial city, this came to be visualized as countryside. The most perfect vision
of countryside, in fact, comes from Rubens, around about 1620.1 In the nineteenth
century, so Raymond Williams (1976: 81) tells us, the word ‘countryside’, originally
borrowed from Scots to describe a specific locality, became applied to the whole
rural life and economy. But countryside also became a place to go for a walk. We are
told – I don’t know how they arrive at the statistics – that in Britain at least a third
of the population go for walks in ‘the country’ on summer weekends. This practice
has its origins in the Romantic retreat to the country from the choked and filthy city.
It must have to do with the pace of industrialization and Britain’s smallness of scale.
John de Gruchy records the astonishment of rural Africans at the idea that anyone
should choose simply to ‘go for a walk’!2 If you have to walk ten or twelve miles for
water every day the need for a little exercise is not so self-evident. In the past fifteen

1 ‘Summer’, in the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh.

2 In personal conversation.
286 Ecological Hermeneutics

years it has evolved still further. The ‘countryside’ is where stressed-out city slickers
can go to refresh themselves before going back to sweat at the stock exchange; it is
the place where quality-of-lifers live, and threaten to sue if your cockerels wake them
up in the morning, or your cows make the roads dirty. Now the garden of Genesis 2 is
clearly a place of pleasure and refreshment: in Revelation it is described as ‘paradise’
(Rev. 2.7), a Persian loan word most perfectly instantiated in the Mughal gardens
of Kashmir, places of exquisite beauty created for the erotic delight of a handful of
rulers. But the idea of a walled garden or a park captured the Western imagination to
such an extent that very humble inner city areas still have their ‘pleasure gardens’.3 To
the extent that we can identify the garden of Genesis 2 with the paradise of Revelation
these elite understandings of the countryside are justified.
However, the dominant way of speaking of the land in Scripture, ’erets, refers not
to a pleasure garden but to the fundamental means of production, the foundation of
all human economy. This has been forgotten since the late eighteenth century when
heavy industry overtook the importance of farming in Britain and then in the rest of
Europe and North America. The conceit grew that farming was secondary, a minor
part of the economy. This was possible because food production was pushed out of
sight by the invention of refrigerated shipping in 1873. Food was now produced by
colonial labourers on the other side of the world. All of a sudden, however, as demand
for grain has exceeded grain stocks for the past five years, and as the world’s most
populous nation, China, has lost the capacity to feed itself, food security has moved
back to centre stage. The benefits of financial speculation, or of service industries, are
doubtless beyond praise but even the fattest city cat quickly becomes a dead city cat if he
or she can’t eat. That possibility is concentrating minds. It takes us back to Gen. 2.15.
Human beings were put into the garden to till and to keep it. The verb translated
‘till’ here is the verb ‘abad, a key word in the Hebrew Bible. It means to work, serve
or worship. It is not only human beings who do this, but God as well. ‘I have not
made you serve’, says God in Isaiah, ‘but you have made me serve with your sins’
(Isa. 43.23-24; author’s translation). The noun from it is ‘ebed, servant, fundamental
for the theology of second Isaiah and taken up by Jesus in Mark: ‘the Son of Man
came not to be served but to serve’ (Mk 10.45). Serving, in Scripture, is key to
understanding what it means to be human, and farming, serving the earth, serving
the whole human community, has always been a paradigmatic expression of that.
The verb ‘to keep’, shamar, is likewise fundamental. It is the word invariably
used for keeping God’s commandments. It is the root of the word Cain uses in reply
to the divine question: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ (Gen. 4.9). To keep in this sense
likewise goes to the very heart of human identity. To be truly human is to keep my
neighbour; it is to keep the commandments and thus to keep the gift, God’s earth.
Keeping the earth, in fact, is the practical application of keeping the commandments.
Since the Neolithic revolution most humans have been engaged in growing food,

3 For example, the ‘pleasure gardens’ in Heavitree and St Thomas, Exeter.

 Keeping the Commandments 287

and this was true beyond the middle of the twentieth century. Only in the past
50 years has the balance tipped towards urbanization and industrialization. Still,
worldwide, two and a half billion people work in agriculture, so it is still the world’s
largest single source of work and, from a biblical perspective, the paradigm of all
human work. This has been forgotten in the cheap energy economy in which we have
been living for the past two centuries. We are governed by people who think food
comes from supermarkets, or is provided by posh restaurants. The real work, they
think, is done in the city, which is the source of ‘wealth creation’ – by which is meant
betting on what is going to happen to currencies or to commodities in a month or
year from now. But this is not work, in the biblical sense, and it is not true wealth
creation either. In fact it is condemned in Scripture as the service of mammon. What
is praised is work which serves the human good, which serves the human community.
Growing food, farming, is the paradigm of that work. Proverbs has a good deal to
say about lazy and careless farmers, but its advice is directed at producing good
farmers. A good farmer is one who cares for his or her land, crops and stock, who
serves them. You cannot be a good farmer and dominate. The good farmer cares
for and nurtures his or her land and stock: s/he husbands them. Good husbandry is
the heart of all farming. Alternatively put, the good farmer keeps the land by keep-
ing the commandments, which establish practices of justice and respect. There are
practices of domination in farming, and they are the road to ruin. Those who argue
that they are the true path of the future are siren voices we must not listen to. Only
the ancient practice of service, of nourishing work, of keeping the commandments,
will give us a future. In this respect the foolish byword of recent years, ‘farming is
a business like any other’, needs to be dropped. It is not a business like any other.
Rather, it is an example of what business ought to be and to look like, or at least, it
is when it is done properly.
From an engagement with Gen. 2.15, then, we derive quite considerable grist for
the sustainable mill. A sustainable countryside, the wisdom of the text suggests, is a
well-husbanded countryside, and one where an understanding of the fundamentals
of all human flourishing has priority. You could object that an agnostic like Colin
Tudge, in So Shall We Reap (2003) reaches similar conclusions without recourse
to Scripture, but as the title of his book suggests, even agnostics have sensibilities
shaped by our texts.

II

The Revised Common Lectionary sets Deut. 8.1-18 for Rogation Days and Deut. 28.1-14
for Harvest. Both of these texts make the contrast, fundamental to Deuteronomy,
between a way of life and a way of death. The curses in 28.15-16 read:

If you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and
decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: You will
288 Ecological Hermeneutics

be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will
be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves
of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed
when you go out.

To make this more precise I turn to what I take to be a younger text, Lev. 18.3-5,
which reads,

You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as
they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not follow their statutes.
My ordinances you shall observe and my statutes you shall keep, following them: I am the
Lord your God. You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live:
I am the Lord.

Genesis, Deuteronomy and Leviticus all form part of Torah, that is, ‘teaching’ or
‘instruction’. This instruction, which has a narrative frame, is concerned with what
makes for life and what destroys it. This means, inevitably, that it is concerned with
economics. Do not do as they do in Egypt, which relied on a slave economy. Do not
do as they do in Canaan, an economy of city kings dependent on trade. You shall
observe my statutes – for example in keeping the Jubilee year which deconstructs
debt and makes sure that families never permanently get alienated from land, the
means of production. What might this mean in relation to a sustainable countryside?
First, Egypt and Canaan can be read as metaphors for oppressive structures, in
this case, oppressive structures of trade and production. What would this mean in
our world? The fate of farming over the past 30 years gives us a good idea. It is part
of the overall way in which the market works, or rather doesn’t work. The reason
that 800 million in the world today are starving is not due to poor distribution, but
to tariffs, balance of payments, the ability to pay, and so forth. The world overseen
by the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the world which cannot address poverty
because to do so breaks the dogma of free trade. The crisis of farming, in which
millions of farmers all over the world have been driven out of business over the
past 30 years, is part of this whole insane economy. Do not do as they do in Egypt:
this was about then, and is about now, a specific way of organizing economy. For
example, what we call globalization is a system where giant corporations acquire
assets transnationally with a view to making profit. These assets include food and
water. The issue of the economy is a fundamental question about who controls the
means of production, and primarily food, and for what reason. Six corporations
handle 85 per cent of world trade in grain. Brewster Kneen, Canadian beef farmer
and food campaigner, writes:

If five or six corporations have control over every seed of all major commercial crops planted
anywhere on earth, this is totalitarian. Add to seeds control over the genetics of all major
lines of commercial animals and it will be somewhat more totalitarian. Then engineer all the
 Keeping the Commandments 289

genetics – plant or animal – to be hybrids, sterile or both, and the achievement will be without
question totalitarian. It will amount to the occupation of the land – the earth itself – by foreign
troops and their local mercenaries.
At the other end of the chain there is a growing occupation of the land by a handful of
global supermarket chains, and an occupation of the supermarkets themselves by transgenic
foods and food products, unlabelled, so that the public cannot identify the invaders and thus
avoid and reject them. (Kneen 1999: 179–80)

Food and water, the foundations of life, become part of an economy which is a form
of competitive power game. One of the main reasons for the huge fall in the number
of farmers worldwide is that farmers have been unable to make a living. Farmers
have been put on the rack by having to sell their product at less than the cost of
production. The regulations in Deuteronomy 15 and Leviticus 25 were put in place to
regulate production and consumption, to see that producers and consumers received
a fair wage and paid a just price. This was Torah. To swap Torah for the gospel of
the market is to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage.
Secondly, the question about a sustainable countryside is a question about the
most efficient form of farming, and this is an ethical issue, an issue of life and death.
For sixty years now all the arguments have been in favour of industrialized (oil-
driven) farming. It has delivered a great deal in terms of cheap food. Those in favour
of small-scale farming or permaculture have been marginalized. But in a post-carbon
world the question of whether small mixed-use farms are more efficient than big
monocultural units is moot. To suggest this is not to forget the terrible drudgery
involved in much traditional farming. It is a realistic question about how the world
is going to be fed. It is not identical with the argument over the virtues of organic
farming either. It is going back to Leviticus and suggesting that good husbandry is
the key to human flourishing. Jules Pretty (2002) has documented the growth of com-
munity food systems and rural partnerships around the world which both develop
more vibrant local communities and are involved in real increases in agricultural
productivity using locally adapted and sustainable technologies.
From my second text I have taken a word about the kind of economy to avoid,
and the kind to look for, if we wish to flourish. I am making analogies between
ancient oppressive economies and contemporary ones. The ground for this might be,
as commentators such as Lewis Mumford or Walter Wink suggest, that the psychic
structures behind oppression remain more or less the same. To appeal to Torah,
then, is to situate oneself within a tradition of resistance to such structures, to find
resources for doing so there.

III

I turn now to Leviticus 25, a text which has shot to prominence because of the theme
of the Jubilee Year but which has a great deal to tell us about sustainable countryside.
290 Ecological Hermeneutics

Verses 18-22 read:

You shall observe my statutes and faithfully keep my ordinances, so that you may live on the
land securely. The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live on it securely.
Should you ask, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our
crop?’ I will order my blessing for you in the sixth year, so that it will yield a crop for three
years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating from the old crop; until the ninth
year, when its produce comes in, you shall eat the old.

It has been pointed out that this could not make sense agriculturally so it is suggested
that it refers to a year when labour was pooled to clear waste land in order to increase
the amount of land available for farming. This is a pragmatic reading and, as Ton
Veerkamp notes, the provisions of this text will hardly convince pragmatic people
either then or now. But the sense of the text is rather a challenge to the logic of produc-
tion as something self-standing, as serving its own purposes. It is an expression of the
‘principle of hope’ and warns that if human beings think that they can manage land
and resources on arbitrary principles which they themselves devise they will end up in
the house of slavery. The point of the sabbath year is to cut through the self-evident
logic of production (Veerkamp 1993: 98). Never has this text been more relevant
than it is today. The tremendous growth in population, in technological capacity and
in food resources has all ridden on the back of cheap energy. Very early on it was a
clergyman, Thomas Malthus, who raised the question of finitude. The warning that
for everyone to live at the level of today’s North Americans we need three planets is an
updated version of Malthus’ gloomy predictions. His warning was not heeded; instead
people behaved, and continue to behave, as if cheap energy were infinite: there is no
end to the party. No, say the authors of Leviticus, that is not the case. You cannot take
resources for granted. For two centuries, in destroying the ecological basis of produc-
tivity we have been sawing off the branch on which we sit. The logic of production
is not self-evident. The need to respect our ecological basis is what is given to us in
the text.

The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and
tenants. (Lev. 25.23)

Veerkamp calls this perhaps the most important verse in Scripture (1993: 98). The
denial of absolute possession of the land, on the ground that ‘the land is mine’, means
that there are no absolute property rights, and that therefore no class structure is
other than provisional. ‘In every society there is a God, that is, that which finally
undergirds everything, the ground order, and at the same time the limiting instance
of the right to property’ (Veerkamp 1993: 101). The term naHaläh, which is crucial
to the Naboth story, is used in relation to the share of land of the family (Mic. 2.2;
Ruth 4.5), of the clan (1 Kgs 21.3-4; Lev. 25.10), of the tribe (Josh. 13.8) and of the
whole people of Israel (Deut. 32.8-9). It understands the land as gift and trust. Land,
 Keeping the Commandments 291

for the biblical writers, is not a form of private property with its exclusive character
and absolute right of use and abuse. Israel did not have this right, at least according
to the authors of Leviticus. Bas Wielenga comments:

The land is the aim of YHWH’s ways with Israel. It is and remains his gift, and the fruits of its
soil are his blessing. It is meant to be the basis of a new society, of fellowship in freedom and
equality. Such a gift is necessarily demanding. The fellowship in freedom is threatened by the
development of inequality and class contradictions in society. When landlordism and slavery
take hold of society freedom gets lost. The gift of freedom-in-the-land requires therefore
obedience to YHWH’s Torah which instructs the people to restrict the strong and strengthen
the weak through proper institutions and a practice of solidarity. (1981: 125)

Such institutions were the remission of debt provisions and the limitation of domestic
service. The remission codes are based on faith in YHWH, the God who frees from
Egypt. That YHWH is God means that the gods of possession are not absolute.
This continues to apply to land, as Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital
(2000) makes clear, but it goes beyond land. Where Leviticus speaks of land we
must understand the basic means of production. ‘The land is mine’ means that the
fundamental means of production cannot be alienated. Of course, ‘the land is mine’
does not stop at common ownership of the means of production. It implies, more
fundamentally, an attitude of respect and gratitude, precisely what is intended by
the command in Gen. 2.15 to serve and keep the earth. But it also implies common
ownership of the means of production.

Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land. (Lev. 25.24)

The idea of redemption here refers to the go’el relationship, according to which it
is the task of a kinsman to restore a family’s fortunes, as we see in Ruth. In what
Veerkamp calls the ge’ulläh ordering of society it is the task of every member of
society to act as if each were his next of kin. This was essential if, due to debt, people
had become oppressed. The text links redemption to land, a point important for
Christians in countering a millennium at least of spiritualizing accounts and making
clear how redemption applies in the real world. It means two things: (1) freedom
from debt, where debt means loss of any stake in the means of production and
(2) freedom for a share in the productive process. In a situation where the means of
production (‘land’) are cornered, owned by the few, used for the profit of the few,
then ‘the land’ is unredeemed, not part of the common treasury which is there for
the maintenance of life for all people. To corner it, to have it unredeemed, is both to
subject life to capital, and therefore a form of idolatry, but also to invite complete
social collapse as it makes the mistake of all ‘big’ owners in failing to understand
the mutual indebtedness of the whole of society, without which we simply collapse.
No society built on expropriation is ultimately sustainable.
292 Ecological Hermeneutics

IV

From Torah I turn now to Wisdom, and Prov. 8.1-5:

Does not wisdom call,

and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
‘To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
O simple ones, learn prudence;
acquire understanding, you who lack it.

Wisdom here is fear of the Lord, it is obedience to Torah. It is quite different to

knowledge or technique. In verse 5 the verb is bin, to cause to understand. The
priority of the search for understanding suggests to us that the assumption that
technique, for example the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops, is what
is going to save us is questionable. Let us consider this in relation to GM technology.
This involves the insertion of an alien gene into a plant to give it a certain trait, for
example vitamin enrichment and drought tolerance. It bypasses conventional breed-
ing and brings about combinations of genes that would not occur naturally. No one
knows the upshot of this technology. It is not necessarily a guarantee of better yields:
conventional soya is still outperforming GM varieties and GM technology is likely
to lead to monocropping and the loss of plant genetic diversity. The main problem,
however, is that it puts too much power over food into too few hands. Control is
the central issue. Because of corporate control over the food chain GM technology
could worsen rather than improve prospects for hungry people. The director of
Novartis – one of the world’s biggest biotech companies – said: ‘If anyone tells you
that GM is going to feed the world tell them that it is not . . . To feed the world takes
financial and political will – it’s not about production but about distribution’.4 There
is an issue here about what constitutes true wisdom. This does not involve the denial
of science, but it does involve learning wisdom and in the Hebrew view this would
always preclude corporate control of the food chain. The shrill voices which tell us
that to obstruct GM technology is equivalent to genocide are actually voices which
want more control and bigger profits on world markets. They are the voices of ‘the
nations’ whose ways have to be shunned.
Here I suggest that sustainability involves wisdom and that this in turn warns us
against totalitarian control.

4 Cited in Madeley (2002: 64). The remark was made at a public meeting in Norfolk in 2000.
 Keeping the Commandments 293

I turn finally to a text from the Messianic writings, Phil. 4.5: ‘Let your epieikes be
known to all’. Epieikes is today translated ‘gentleness’, which is possible, but the
older ‘moderation’ seems better. It belongs to a group of words ‘opposed to unbridled
anger, harshness, brutality and self expression’ and represents ‘the wise man who
remains meek in the face of insults, the judge who is lenient in judgement, and the
king who is kind in his rule’ (Bauder 1980: 256). In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle
uses it for ‘equity’. It seems proper to me, therefore, to extend its use beyond human
relationships to our relationship to what we call ‘the planet’ in general. As such it
raises the question of lifestyle, and more particularly of the need to recognize limits.
What would epieikes mean in a world of vast inequity? We can ask who decides
who can enjoy what, and at what cost? Since huge numbers mean huge impacts,
addressing inequalities in global consumption is essential if ecological damage is to
be contained. As has been repeatedly said over the past 20 years, if we all lived like
the average Canadian or American, we would need at least three such planets to live
as we do. Facing up to that fact is profoundly difficult because the quest for more
constitutes the spiritual centre of the capitalist world. A meeting of economists in
1987 rejected the very idea of limits which could not be taken care of by capital. To
accept the reality of physical limits (the carrying capacity of the earth) is to accept
the need to limit greed and acquisition in favour of economic justice and sufficiency.
The problem breaks down into a number of sectors. First, the astronomic rise of
world population, from something like 800 million in (say) 1750 to 6.5 billion today
has ridden on the back of cheap energy – first coal, and then oil and gas. It is cheap
energy which has enabled us to feed these growing numbers. Modern agriculture
is dependent on oil. It has been calculated that if the whole world farmed like the
West then, quite apart from cheap flights, two- and three-car families, and all the
other things we take for granted, oil reserves would be exhausted in 30 years (Jones
2001: 2). So effective has mechanized agriculture been that we have had butter
mountains and wine lakes set aside and farmers as park keepers. The struggle for
survival which was still obvious in the 1880s (just see Flora Thompson in Larkrise
to Candleford) has been entirely forgotten. The supermarket society, only just over
30 years old, has accustomed us to think that shelves overflowing with the food of
the whole earth, at bargain basement prices, will be with us forever.
However, as previously noted, population increase is accompanied by a decrease
in the amount of fertile land. One response to this dilemma is to say that human
beings will come up with something. It’s the Micawber principle: something will turn
up. Such confidence overlooks the fact that whole civilizations have disappeared
because they outgrew their basic resource potential. It seems, for example, that this
was part and parcel of the decline of the Roman empire. Something may turn up:
let’s hope it does. Let’s put far more effort and investment into renewable energy
than we are doing at present. But banking on it? This is not the Micawber principle:
it’s the ostrich principle.
294 Ecological Hermeneutics

The question is about epieikes understood not simply as a moral but as a spiritual
problem. ‘No order can save us which simply limits the excesses of our greed’ wrote
Rudolf Bahro. ‘Only spiritual mastery of the greed itself can help us. It is perhaps only
the Prophets and Buddhas, whether or not their answers were perfect, who have at
least put the question radically enough’ (1989: 25). Schumacher already recognized
this in Small is Beautiful. ‘The cultivation of needs’, he wrote, ‘is the antithesis of
wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends
to increase one’s dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control,
and therefore increases existential fear’ (1974: 23). ‘Does not wisdom call, and does
not understanding raise her voice? . . . For whoever finds me finds life and obtains
favour from the Lord; but those who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love
death’ (Prov. 8.1, 35-36). Can we respond to wisdom, to instruction, to Torah, or
are we condemned, as some think, to a new dark ages? The decisions we make with
regard to agriculture and the countryside will be among the most crucial of the next
thirty years. Those who take their ethical guidelines from Scripture will not make
those decisions but they have something to contribute to them, and in the emerging
new world perhaps faith communities with roots to the earth, which understand
about serving the earth, are once again going to have a crucial role to play.

References

Bahro, R. 1989 Overcoming Social and Ecological Disaster (Bath: Gateway).

Bauder, W. 1980 ‘Humility, Meekness’, in C. Brown (ed.), Dictionary of New Testament Theology
(vol 2; Exeter: Paternoster): 256.
de Soto, H. 2000 The Mystery of Capital (New York: Basic Books)
Ford, D. 1992 A Long Rumour of Wisdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Jones, A. 2001 Eating Oil: Food Supply in a Changing Climate (Sustain/Elm Farm Research Centre).
Kneen, B. 1999 Farmageddon (Gabriola: New Society).
Madeley, J. 2002 Food for All (London: Zed).
Pretty, J. 2002 Agri-Culture (London: Earthscan).
Schumacher, E. 1974 Small is Beautiful (London: Sphere).
Tudge, C. 2003 So Shall We Reap (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Veerkamp, T. 1993 Autonomie und Egalität: Ökonomie, Politik, Ideologie in der Schrift (Berlin:
Alektor).
Wielenga, B. 1981 It’s A Long Road to Freedom (Madurai: TTS Press).
Williams, R. 1976 Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana).
 Chapter 20

What on Earth is an Ecological

hermeneutics? Some broad parameters1

Ernst M. Conradie

Is the Bible ‘Filled to the Brim’ with Ecological Wisdom?

Ecological theology from within a Christian context may be understood as an attempt

to retrieve the ecological wisdom embedded in the Christian tradition as a response to
environmental threats and injustices (see Conradie 2006a). At the same time, it is an
attempt to reinvestigate, rediscover and renew the Christian tradition in the light of
the challenges posed by the environmental crisis. As a result, every single theological
sub-discipline has been subjected to scrutiny with newly found ecological sensitivities.
Until recently, most contributions to ecological theology from within the field
of biblical studies were shaped by two related factors. First, they were aimed at
defending Christianity against the accusations of Lynn White (1967) and other
secular critics that Christianity is irredeemably anthropocentric and bears ‘a huge
burden of guilt’ for the ecological crisis. Secondly, they tried to retrieve some
ecological wisdom from the biblical texts. The assumption was that the Bible can
indeed offer profound ecological wisdom but that this has all too often remained
hidden or implicit. Accordingly, the task of exegesis is to uncover such ecological
wisdom.
Such studies have typically focused on a few favourite texts such as Genesis 1–2;
the theme of the covenant (e.g. Gen. 6–9); the Sabbatical laws (e.g. Lev. 25); Job
37–39; some of the Psalms (8, 19, 24, 98, 104); some prophetic texts such as Isa. 9–11,
40, 65, Ezek. 36, Joel, Amos; some of the sayings of Jesus (e.g. in Mt. 6.28-30,
10.29-31); Rom. 8.18-23, Col. 1; and Rev. 21–22. The selection of these texts is quite
understandable since they deal explicitly with nature or with a theology of creation.
The insights on ecological wisdom emerging from these contributions cannot
be discussed here. Some comments regarding the hermeneutical approach that is
followed in this regard are important though:

a. The selection of some favourite texts may unintentionally reinforce the perception that

1 This essay draws on a number of earlier contributions on the subject of an ecological biblical
hermeneutics. See Conradie 2004; 2006b; 2009.
296 Ecological Hermeneutics

ecology is indeed a marginal concern in the Bible. The focus may be far too narrow. It
only relates to an aspect of creation theology or, more specifically, to the relationship
between human beings and nature. Accordingly, an environmental concern is one aspect
of a Christian ethos, but it does not touch the heart of the Christian gospel. By contrast,
a retrieval of the ecological wisdom in the Biblical traditions has to be doctrinally
comprehensive. This implies that texts dealing with creation, providence, humanity, sin,
redemption, the church, the sacraments and eschatological consummation have to be
retrieved from an ecological perspective.
b. Another way of broadening the scope of such a retrieval of ecological wisdom is to
trace the Bible for references to the earth, mountains, hills, air, waters, rivers, soil, trees,
animals, birds, insects, etc. (as highlighted in the The Green Bible, recently published by
HarperCollins [2008]). It is important to read the whole Bible through ecological lenses.
This soon leads to the discovery that the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is indeed
‘filled to the brim’ with ecological overtones. The earth and all its creatures are intimately
interwoven with God’s loving care for humanity.
c. As we will see below, such a retrieval of the ecological wisdom in the Bible has to consider
the suspicion that the biblical texts do not necessarily support an ecological ethos. This
calls for a more critical hermeneutics in which it is not presupposed that the Bible must
be ‘rescued’ against its critics.

What on earth, then, would constitute a relatively more adequate form of ecological
hermeneutics? Over the last decade a corpus of literature responding to this question
has become available. These include a few early contributions (see Van den Brom
1998), the various volumes of the Earth Bible project (edited by Norman Habel),
some responses to that (see Conradie 2004; 2006b), publications emerging from
the seminar on ecological hermeneutics hosted by the Society for Biblical Literature
(see Habel and Trudinger 2008) and now the Exeter project on ‘Uses of the Bible in
Environmental Ethics’. In this contribution I will explore one crucial aspect of such
an ecological hermeneutics, namely the role of interpretative strategies.

Why Hermeneutics?

Hermeneutics is best understood as a systematic and disciplined form of second-order

reflection on the praxis of interpretation. This is done in a number of academic dis-
ciplines which reflect on various forms of interpretation – for example in the context
of philosophy, literary criticism, law, biblical studies and theology. Likewise, ethics
is a discipline that reflects on moral judgements (on ethos), while linguistics reflects
on language and semiotics on the meaning of signs.
Without this distinction the word ‘hermeneutics’ is used in a myriad of ways,
merely contributing to the confusion around what interpretation entails. Following
insights from liberation theology, this distinction is based on the difference between
acting and reflecting, between the concrete and the relatively abstract, albeit that
 What on Earth is an Ecological Hermeneutics? 297

reflecting is itself a form of acting. While interpretation is something practical,

hermeneutics is more theoretical. This suggests that interpretation is of primary and
hermeneutics of secondary importance.
Hermeneutical reflection typically arises when the meaning of something becomes
obscure. The emergence of an ecological hermeneutics is a sign that biblical inter-
pretation (in church, society and the academy) has been subject to ‘systematically
distorted forms of communication’ (Habermas). Such distortions remain largely
subconscious. Ecological hermeneutics therefore follows upon the insights of the
‘masters of suspicion’, namely Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, who have identified such
systematic distortions with respect to economic oppression, power relations and the
subconscious.
In the case of ecological hermeneutics such distortions have been described in
various ways. Following Lynn White’s famous critique, some have seen the problem
in terms of the anthropocentrism that pervades the Christian tradition. Others have
focused on the deep sense of alienation between humankind and otherkind. Larry
Rasmussen (1996: 75–89), for example, speaks of the ‘apartheid habits’ that humans
in industrialized societies have adopted, seeing ourselves as an ecologically segregated
species. Yet others have focused on various forms of domination in the name of
differences of gender, race, class, culture, education and species. Ecofeminists have
analysed what is termed a set of ‘interlocking dualisms’ which are based on such
differences and which reinforce one another in multiple ways. On this basis Christian
theologians have called for an ecological reinterpretation of the doctrine of sin (see
Conradie 2005a) – which may be understood as a radicalized version of such secular
reflections on systematically distorted forms of communication.
Calls for an ecological hermeneutics that can overcome anthropocentrism (for
example) have posed a serious problem for biblical scholars. The problem is that the
biblical texts themselves are by no means free of such anthropocentrism. They were
written by human beings and reflect various human interests.
Liberation theologians used to argue that the Bible is ‘on their side’ in the struggle
for liberation amidst oppression. They could draw on numerous biblical texts in
support of their cause, dealing with issues of poverty, economic inequality, injustice
and oppression. However, black theologians such as Itumeleng Mosala (1989) have
realized that this is not necessarily the case. All too often the biblical texts not only
address class interests but reflect them as well. They were written from the perspec-
tive of the ruling class and often legitimize their interests. Accordingly, the Bible is
called a ‘site of struggle’ where contemporary interpretations come into conflict with
each other.
This insight was radicalized by feminist theologians. They too could draw upon
some favourite texts to support the cause of the liberation of women. However, many
could not escape the conclusion that the biblical texts were written within a patri-
archal context and more often than not reflect patriarchal interests. The Bible consists
of a corpus of books written predominantly by men, reflecting a male-chauvinist
perspective and serving primarily male interests. Thus the Bible can be used as a
298 Ecological Hermeneutics

weapon against women’s struggle for liberation. In the words of Elisabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza (1986: 35): ‘the source of our power is also the source of our oppression.’
This prompted a two-pronged hermeneutics, including both a hermeneutics of
suspicion and of reconstruction (see Eaton 1996; 2000).
The form of ecological hermeneutics adopted in the Earth Bible series may
be regarded as a radicalized form of such a hermeneutics of suspicion. This was
prompted by what Norman Habel describes as exegetical ‘cherry picking’, namely
biblical interpretation that draws upon some favourite texts in support of environ-
mental causes. The problem is that this invites a shallow reading of the texts on
the prior assumption that there is ecological wisdom embedded in the text. The
anthropocentric orientation of these texts is thus underestimated.
The suspicion articulated in the Earth Bible project is that ‘biblical texts, written
by humans to meet human circumstances, will reflect human interests at the expense
of the non-human Earth community’ (Earth Bible Team 2002: 1). It suspects that
biblical texts show a preoccupation with human well-being and that the interests of
other creatures are as a result marginalized. It therefore seeks to ascertain whether the
voice of ‘Earth’ is silenced or liberated in the production, transmission and interpreta-
tion of particular biblical texts. Here the earth is not so much a topic in the text but
a voice or (often marginalized) presence in the text that has to be listened to. In this
way, earth becomes a subject (with a voice in its own right) and not so much a theme
(topos) in the biblical texts. This calls for a reflecting with earth and not so much
about the earth, in the same way that feminist biblical scholars would want to read
the Bible in solidarity with oppressed women and not for them (Habel 2000a: 34).

The Task of Hermeneutical Analysis

Hermeneutical analysis is called forth when interpretation has gone awry – in the
same way that a doctor is asked for a diagnosis only when the patient becomes ill.
Admittedly, while ecological hermeneutics (as an academic discipline) is prompted
by such distortions, it is not necessarily free of such distortions. Hermeneutics can
come to the aid of interpretation gone awry, but it cannot replace the primary need
for interpretation.
How, then, should the act of interpretation be understood? In my view, interpreta-
tion is a form of praxis, a way of continuously re-appropriating and responding to the
significance of signs in everyday life. Interpretation is therefore, like jurisprudence,
a practical skill.
This is of vital importance for biblical interpretation, given the rhetorical thrust of
these texts. They are misunderstood if they are merely studied at a distance. They not
only teach (docere); they also move (movere): they change people’s lives, for better
or for worse. biblical interpretation cannot be reduced to deliberate and explicit acts
of reading and studying the Bible. Instead, it takes place in countless other ways as
well – including the liturgy, doxologies, sermons, confessions, sacraments, hymns,
 What on Earth is an Ecological Hermeneutics? 299

prayers, catechism, testimonies, various ministries and missions (within Christian

communities) and parenting, moral decision-making, stewardship, economic activi-
ties, media reports, films, public speeches, etc. It takes place in the academy and in
faith communities, but also in civil society, wherever people live and work. In this
sense the Bible is also ‘read’ through the imagination of the illiterate. The point is
that the Bible is not only interpreted when it is read; its meaning is appropriated
through many more indirect but highly influential ways, whether it is actually read
or not, consciously or subconsciously, in word and in deed, in what is done and left
undone, for better but often also for worse. This insight is indeed crucial in order to
assess the uses of the Bible from an environmental perspective.
Hermeneutical reflection entails an ever more detailed analysis of the factors that
may influence interpretation. Following the work of several South African colleagues
I have proposed a conceptual map where the following seven groups of factors which
shape biblical and theological interpretation are identified (Conradie 2008: ch. 4). On
this basis one may also identify seven sets of criteria for relative adequacy in biblical
interpretation (see Conradie and Jonker 2001):

c) Traditions of interpretation d) Spiral of ongoing interpretation

Source

f) Contemporary
context of origin
a) Historical

context
b) TEXT
Message

Receiver

e) In its rhetorical context

g) The world of hidden interpretative interests “beneath” each of these aspects

a. The world-behind-the-text (the complex history of the production of the text and the
socio-historical and the rhetorical contexts within which that took place).
b. The world-of-the-text (various literary features of a text, its co-text and its rhetorical
thrust as reflected in the text itself).
c. The world-in-front-of-the-text (traditions of interpretation created by the text, including
the confessional traditions, their liturgies, creeds, confessions and practices).
d. The act of interpretation and re-appropriation itself.
e. The rhetorical thrust of the act of interpretation and appropriation (within contemporary
interpretative communities, an interpretative culture).
f. The contemporary context (societal challenges, changing circumstances).
g. The world ‘below’ interpretation (interpretative interests and sub-conscious ideological
distortions that influence each of the other aspects).
300 Ecological Hermeneutics

Interpretative Strategies

In order to reflect on a responsible way of using the Bible in environmental discourse, it

will be necessary to investigate one crucial dimension of biblical interpretation in more
detail, namely the act of re-appropriation. In the Exeter project with its focus on the uses
of the Bible in environmental ethics it was recognized that such re-appropriation may
be subject to moral judgement (see further Horrell et al. 2008). Here I will investigate
the interpretative strategies that are typically employed in the act of re-appropriation.
The notion of interpretative strategies should not be confused with exegetical
methods or with the wide range of approaches to biblical interpretation (see Jonker
and Lawrie 2005). Interpretative strategies refer to the ways in which readers
establish a link between some aspects in the biblical text and some aspects of their
context. The notion of interpretative strategies should therefore be understood in a
technical sense: it refers to the ‘techniques’ used by readers to overcome the (histori-
cal) distance between the text and a contemporary context. The question is how this
appropriation takes place.
Indeed, one of the most intriguing aspects of theological interpretation is the very
possibility of relating biblical texts in all their plurality and ambiguity to an equally
complex contemporary context. It is quite remarkable that one would even dare to do
this. Yet, that is precisely the task at hand, for example, in any sermon, in Christian
education and in moral instruction somehow derived from the Bible.
David Tracy has suggested that this is de facto possible through the power of
what he calls an analogical imagination. Interpretation can only take place when
some analogies, that is, similarities-amidst-differences, are identified, in the case
of Christian interpretation between the biblical texts, the Christian tradition and
a contemporary context. Tracy (with Paul Ricoeur) refers to the classic axiom of
Aristotle in this regard: ‘To spot the similar in the dissimilar is the mark of poetic
genius’ (Tracy 1981: 410). The ability to identify these similarities, and to express
them in an accessible form (image), is based on the power of the imagination.2
Although the notion of reading or interpretative strategies is often used in literature
on biblical hermeneutics, specific ‘strategies’ to spot such similarities (to link text and
context) are very seldom described or analysed in any detail. Following various con-
tributions in recent South African literature, I suggest that one may identify especially
three interpretative strategies popularly employed to establish a bridge between text and
context. In each case some form of similarity between text and context is constructed.
One such strategy is to identify something of abiding value in the text that may
still be relevant today. Here one may look for ‘eternal truths’ or ‘moral principles’
that are uncovered (or demythologized) in the text and appropriated more or less
directly in one’s contemporary context. For example: ‘Unlike Jonah, one should
always obey God’s commands.’

2 For an in-depth analysis of the notion of an ‘analogical imagination’, emphasizing the

identification and imaginative expression of analogies, see Conradie 1992.
 What on Earth is an Ecological Hermeneutics? 301

Another strategy is to identify analogies between the type of situation described in

the biblical narratives and experiences in our own context. Thus: ‘Jonah was asleep
in the boat amidst a fierce storm. Likewise, we also experience many storms in life.’
Since few would want to follow Jonah’s example of asking to be thrown overboard
exactly, this allows ample room for almost any moral to be deducted from the
similarities in the stories.
A third strategy identifies certain promises in the text and anticipates the fulfilment
of God’s promises anew in our context. ‘If God was willing to spare the people of
Nineveh and their animals, could we not hope that God would spare us too, espe-
cially in the context of a loss of biodiversity?’ One may observe that this third strategy
allows for a more dynamic reading of the text, taking historical changes into account.

The Pervasive Influence of Doctrinal Constructs

Although such strategies are widely used, they can easily become distorted, often
yielding rather crude appropriations. However, the identification of such similarities
does not take place in a coincidental way. They are discovered through long-standing
theological traditions that have developed the necessary conceptual tools that may
help Christians in interpreting the Bible. One may argue that such crude appropria-
tions have prompted theologians throughout the history of Christianity to construct
conceptual models to facilitate this process.
Such models are typically based on the dominant beliefs, doctrines, values,
customs, and habits of ecclesial traditions and communities. They are not derived
directly from the biblical texts or from the contemporary world, but are precisely
the product of previous attempts to construct a relationship between text, tradition
and context. Since such models are typically shaped by the dominant theological
motifs within a particular tradition, it may be helpful to refer to them as doctrinal
constructs.
Such doctrinal constructs play a crucial role in interpretation. They have a triple
function: they provide a strategy to identify both the meaning of the contemporary
context and of the biblical texts. They therefore (and simultaneously) enable an
interpreter also to establish a link between text and contemporary context. Doctrinal
constructs are not only employed to find similarities but to construct similarities,
to make things similar (idem-facere), if necessary.3 The scope of such doctrinal
constructs is often quite comprehensive: they purport to provide a clue to the core

3 According to Ricoeur (1978: 148), the creation of metaphorical meaning does not only
involve the identification of existing similarities. It also involves an association of semantic
fields that have hitherto been considered as quite different from one another. It is thus
necessary to make these semantic fields similar: ‘But we miss entirely its semantic role if
we interpret it in terms of the old association by resemblance . . . The assimilation consists
precisely in making similar, that is, semantically proximate, the terms that the metaphorical
utterance brings together.’
302 Ecological Hermeneutics

meaning of the contemporary context as a whole and the biblical text as a whole.
The dangers of simplification and a far-reaching harmonizing of differences in an
analysis of both the Bible and the contemporary context are quite apparent. However,
this may be inescapable since any act of interpretation requires the identification of
some form of similarity-in-difference.
Such doctrinal constructs typically have a soteriological focus and an ethical thrust.
As is widely recognized in ecumenical hermeneutics, there is a conflicting diversity of
such doctrinal constructs that cannot be easily reconciled. In a report on the Fourth
World Conference on Faith and Order (Montreal 1963) this was clearly articulated:

In some confessional traditions the accepted hermeneutical principle has been that any portion
of Scripture is to be interpreted in the light of Scripture as a whole. In others the key has been
sought in what is considered to be the centre of Holy Scripture, and the emphasis has been
primarily on the Atonement and Redemption, or on the justification by faith, or again on the
message of the nearness of the kingdom of God, or on the ethical teachings of Jesus. In yet
others, all emphasis is laid upon what Scripture says to the individual conscience, under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit. In the Orthodox Church the hermeneutical key is found in the
mind of the Church, especially as expressed in the Fathers and in the Ecumenical Councils.
In the Roman Catholic Church the key is found in the deposit of faith, of which the Church’s
magisterium is the guardian. In other traditions again the creeds, complemented by confes-
sional documents or by the definitions of Ecumenical Councils and the witness of the Fathers,
are considered to give the right key to the understanding of Scripture. In none of these cases
where the principle of interpretation is found elsewhere than in Scripture is the authority
thought to be alien to the central concept of Scripture. On the contrary, it is considered as
providing just a key to the understanding of what is said in Scripture. (WCC 1998: 15)

There are indeed numerous examples of such doctrinal constructs that facilitate
biblical interpretation. In my view one may identify especially three such constructs
that have been extremely influential in the history of Christianity. All three of these
examples focus on the Christian message of salvation – which is crucial in any
attempt to link text with context. In the paragraphs below I draw on but also adapt
the famous analysis of three types of atonement by Gustaf Aulén (1931/2002).
First, many have interpreted the message of salvation in terms of victory over the
forces of evil, destruction and death. Here a number of metaphors are employed to
indicate how a particular threat is overcome: liberation from political or economic
oppression, release from captivity (being held ransom), overcoming a military threat,
healing from life-threatening diseases, feeding in a context of famine, exorcism from
evil spirits and ultimately victory over death itself. All these concepts suggest the need
for victory over some or other threat, typically based on the resurrection hope. In
each case such victory may retrospectively be attributed to God.
Secondly, the message of salvation may be understood in terms of the healing
of various broken relationships. The root of such alienation may be attributed to a
distorted relationship with God. Here another cluster of concepts is used to indicate
 What on Earth is an Ecological Hermeneutics? 303

how such healing is possible, including ‘satisfaction’ and ‘penal substitution’, but also
sacrifices, confession of guilt, forgiveness and reconciliation. The focus is typically
on the cost of reconciliation and therefore on the symbol of the cross.
Thirdly, one may mention various concepts focusing on the moral influence of the
biblical narrative. They provide us with the inspiration, the energy to do good, to
transform society through appropriate policies towards some or other moral vision,
perhaps towards ‘justice, peace and the integrity of creation’. Several biblical symbols
may play roles here, including God’s Law, the teachings of Jesus, his incarnation, life
and ministry and the instructions in the Pauline corpus of letters.
One may easily expand the list of such doctrinal concepts on the basis of theologi-
cal movements emerging over the past 50 years. In each contemporary theological
school there is some or other key concept that helps its adherents to connect text,
tradition and context: liberation from oppression, relationships based on mutuality
and reciprocity, ecological wholeness and so forth. For example, the notion of ‘lib-
eration’ may help one to see the emancipatory thrust of the text, the liberating and
oppressive sides of a theological tradition and current forms of oppression in church
and society. The vision of liberation helps one to see such oppression for what it is.
One implication of this analysis is that it is simply not possible to ‘jump’ from
a biblical text to a specific problem in the contemporary context without the use
of such doctrinal constructs. Doctrine plays a crucial integrative role in shaping a
tradition of interpretation through various practices of repetition and habituation.
It also plays a crucial role in the act of appropriation, in the fusion of horizons (see
also Thiselton 2006: 723–24).
While biblical scholars, quite rightly, have been dismayed by the way the Bible
has been used and abused in systematic theology (by reading support for various
doctrines into biblical texts), there has been an unhelpful tendency among some to
pretend that faith convictions (and Christian doctrines reflecting on such convictions)
do not play an inevitable, necessary and crucial role in interpreting and appropriating
biblical texts.4 While some may prefer to avoid or even to resist traditional doctrinal
distinctions at all costs, newly constructed doctrines surface in emerging theological
traditions through the persistent use of interpretative strategies. This indicates that it
is facile to suggest that Christian hermeneutics is value-laden while secular pluralism,
or a retreating from making theological judgements, is somehow value-free. The
hegemonic control over biblical interpretation by ecclesial institutions may have been
merely replaced by the similarly hegemonic control of secular academic institutions
(Thiselton 2006: 13). This confirms the pervasive, if often highly ambiguous influ-
ence of Christian doctrine and ethical categories in biblical interpretation. What is
required here is not denial but discernment – to recognize the role of such doctrinal
constructs and to exercise (moral) judgement where these constructs distort text,

4 Despite such a denial, biblical scholars themselves often employ doctrinal categories that they
find more to their liking. One example of this is West’s consistent use of the soteriological
category of ‘liberation’ in the ‘liberation hermeneutics’ that he promotes (see West 1991).
304 Ecological Hermeneutics

tradition and context and where they are abused to legitimize domination.
A few further comments on the role of such doctrinal constructs are important
here:

a. The identification of the role of these doctrinal constructs may clarify the rather diffuse
use of the word ‘hermeneutics’. It is often employed to describe the results of a particular
interpretation of the Bible – instead of a theory of interpretation (i.e. at a meta-level).
It has, for example, become customary to talk about a feminist hermeneutics, a black
hermeneutics of liberation, an ecological hermeneutics or even a reformed, Pentecostal,
African or a Lutheran hermeneutics. Technically, these uses of the concept hermeneutics
do not indicate a new or a different theory of interpretation but refer to the use of specific
doctrinal constructs.
b. These examples make it clear that doctrinal constructs have both a constructive and an
ideology-critical function. They enable interpreters to identify and construct the mean-
ing of the text (and the context) but they also provide a tool to evaluate the available
evidence and to unmask distortions in any of the seven factors involved in the process
of interpretation.
c. The choice of doctrinal constructs will necessarily lead to a distortion of both text
and context. Such distortions may well be ideological in the pejorative sense of the
word. A hermeneutics of suspicion towards such constructs is therefore much needed.
However, this is hampered since such doctrinal constructs also influence the selection of
ideology-critical tools. They prescribe to their users what they should be suspicious about.
d. Another danger of such doctrinal constructs is that they could lead to fixation, to a
certain rigidity in the tradition of interpretation. Then they regulate the interpretation of
the Bible according to the so-called ‘rule of faith’ as determined by ecclesial or academic
authorities. Any re-reading of the texts would then merely confirm what one knew would
be there in any case. The text itself can yield no surprises, no challenges, no shock or
amazement, no revelation; God’s Word can no longer be heard anew.

Especially in the Reformed tradition it was therefore maintained that the living Word
of God cannot be captured in any single formula, a system of dogmatic truths, an
underlying rule of faith, a canon within the canon (not even justification through
faith), a Scriptural centre, confessions, catechisms, beloved themes or key concepts.
Although Scripture should be read as a whole and in terms of its central focus, to
capture this centre in any way would tend to replace the actual reading of the biblical
texts (see Smit 2007).
To conclude, such doctrinal constructs inevitably play a crucial role in the contem-
porary re-appropriation of biblical texts. This also applies to secular interpretations
where traditional beliefs have merely been replaced by a different set of convictions.
If so, it becomes important to recognize the role that they do, in fact, play and to
reflect on the relative adequacy of such constructs.
 What on Earth is an Ecological Hermeneutics? 305

Doctrinal Constructs and an Ecological Hermeneutics

In times of social stability there are usually ‘plausibility structures’ (Peter Berger)
in place that suggest the relative adequacy of doctrinal constructs to their users. In
times of rapid social change there emerge uncertainties around the validity of such
constructs. This does not imply that they are no longer used, only that their meaning
is no longer self-evident. Users then begin to emphasize the dissimilarities between
text and context and themes that are neglected. Such a doctrinal construct can no
longer aid biblical interpreters to connect text, tradition and context. Such times call
for hermeneutical reflection.
The looming threat of environmental disaster may be regarded as one such
challenge that is calling the use of our dominant doctrinal constructs into question.
Whenever such a new challenge appears on the horizon, biblical interpreters typically
draw on the cluster of symbols that they are familiar with in order to respond to such
a challenge. In discourse on ecotheology one may identify especially three dominant
doctrinal constructs that are widely employed (see Conradie 2006a: 119–38):
First, some would emphasize a sense of human responsibility. The gravity of the
environmental crisis requires an appropriate response. This may be understood in
purely secular terms as a responsibility towards, but may also be described as a
response to God’s call. A number of biblical metaphors may be used to express such
a responsibility, for example: the call to obedience to a divine command; human
dominion correlated with a strong emphasis on human uniqueness; a more humble
sense of stewardship for possessions that are not our own (which assumes positions
of considerable power and authority); human priesthood understood as a way of
mediating between God and creation; a sense of vocation; and an ecclesial covenant
with God with responsibilities and blessings that would flow from that.
The controversial term ‘stewardship’ illustrates the use of such doctrinal constructs
to help interpreters to see a way of connecting text (Gen. 1.27-28) with context. The
word stewardship does not appear in the text itself. Nevertheless, it has become a
common key used to interpret the meaning of the Hebrew words kabash (‘subdue’)
and radah (‘rule’). At the same time it captures the need to address economic injus-
tices and ecological degradation in the contemporary context. It establishes a link
in this regard on the basis of the sense of responsibility implied in the metaphor of
stewardship.
Many criticisms have been raised against such a notion of stewardship, for
example that it is too hierarchical, too managerial, too androcentric, aimed at those
in positions of power, not visionary enough and that it portrays God as either a
patriarch or an absentee landlord (see Conradie 2005b). Such criticisms again sug-
gest that all doctrinal constructs have to be subjected to a hermeneutics of suspicion,
albeit that such suspicion is often derived from a particular doctrinal construct. In
essays discussing Gen. 1.26-28, Norman Habel (2000a: 31, also 2000b; 2008: 5–8)
adamantly concludes that the claim that the mandate in this passage has been mis-
understood, suggesting that it can best be interpreted in terms of a benign model
306 Ecological Hermeneutics

of stewardship, is untenable.5 It also remains to be seen whether such a sense of

responsibility will be powerful enough to encourage people to address a challenge
such as climate change. Covenantal promises are all too often broken.
Secondly, some would emphasize a sense of the sacred. They would typically suggest
that the earth itself is a sacred gift from God that we are called to treasure and keep. For
many the gift itself is holy. It provokes a sense of awe, mystery and distance (even fear
and trembling). It is untouchable and should therefore not be exploited or ruined for
selfish gain. Others would emphasize the holiness of the Giver, namely God. One may
also explore the ecological significance of the category of sanctification. Accordingly,
the Holy Spirit does not only sanctify the lives of individuals and Christian com-
munities, but indeed the whole earth. Such an approach is often characterised as
‘sacramental’ in order to suggest that water, bread and wine can become carriers of
God’s presence. They symbolize the kind of respect which humans should show to
everything on earth. This approach often draws on patristic and medieval mysticism to
speak to the heart, to inspire a vision of the sacred and to express an ecstatic experience
of communion. Again, the sense of the holy plays a heuristic role since it helps biblical
interpreters to contrast the sense of the sacred with acts of environmental sacrilege.
This sense of the sacred may also help to explore commonalities with other religious
traditions, including various forms of indigenous or pre-Christian spiritualities. Again,
one may wonder whether a retrieval of the sacred will be powerful enough to resist
the forces of industrialization. Throughout the centuries, societies in which nature
was regarded as sacred have nonetheless destroyed their natural habitation whenever
economic incentives to do so emerged. A sacramental approach can also be somewhat
naive and perhaps too romantic in calling for a return to a bygone era.
Thirdly, some would focus on the need for an appropriate vision for the future (cf.
the third interpretative strategy identified above). This is quite understandable since
environmental concerns (such as climate change) are often future orientated. This
may be correlated with biblical motifs that also speak about the future. A crude form
of such an approach is where ‘predictions’ identified in the Bible (often in apocalyptic
texts) are regarded as being ‘fulfilled’ in contemporary or imminent events. A more
sophisticated approach would be to focus on God’s promises (not predictions) in the
text and to explore the social impact of Christian hope arising from such promises.
Either way, on this basis one may articulate an appropriate vision for the future,
derived from the biblical texts and appropriated for the current context. Examples
would include discourse on economic growth, the eradication of poverty, the UN’s
millennium goals, sustainable development, cultural evolution (including technologi-
cal progress), ecojustice and so forth. Although such visions are in conflict with each
other, the strategy employed for reading the Bible in each case is similar.
In each of these cases some or other form of similarity is identified in the tension

5 By contrast, the fifth principle of the Earth Bible project proposes a sense of mutual custodi-
anship, albeit that some of the criticisms raised against stewardship may apply to the notion
of custodianship too.
 What on Earth is an Ecological Hermeneutics? 307

between text and context. The relative adequacy of each of these constructs may be
tested in terms of their ability to do justice to the biblical text, the contemporary
context and the ecclesial tradition.

Doctrinal Constructs Employed in the Earth Bible Project

As noted above, the ecological hermeneutics employed within the context of the Earth
Bible project may be described as being predominantly a hermeneutics of suspicion
and retrieval.6 It investigates whether there is a concern for earth community in the
text or whether earth is being treated unjustly in the text. It also offers an incipient
‘hermeneutic of retrieval’ by seeking to discern and retrieve alternative traditions
about earth or the earth community that have been unnoticed, suppressed or hidden
and that may help the earth community to flourish again (Earth Bible Team 2002: 1).
It facilitates a retrieval of alternative traditions that hear the voice of the earth and
that value the earth as more than a human instrument. In this way it seeks to allow
the often marginalized voices of Earth to be heard again (Habel 2000a: 35).
The Earth Bible project thus explores the biblical texts from the perspective of
earth. In order to clarify this perspective, the Earth Bible team identified the following
six guiding ecojustice principles for biblical interpretation:7

a. The principle of intrinsic worth: the universe, earth and all its components have intrinsic
worth/value.
b. The principle of interconnectedness: earth is a community of interconnected living things
that are mutually dependent on each other for life and survival.
c. The principle of voice: earth is a subject capable of raising its voice in celebration and
against injustice.
d. The principle of purpose: the universe, earth and all its components, are part of a dynamic
cosmic design within which each piece has a place in the overall goal of that design.
e. The principle of mutual custodianship: earth is a balanced and diverse domain where
responsible custodians can function as partners, rather than rulers, to sustain a balanced
and diverse earth community.
f. The principle of resistance: earth and its components not only suffer from injustices at
the hands of humans, but actively resist them in the struggle for justice.

In my view these six ecojustice principles have a similar heuristic function as the doc-
trinal constructs discussed above. Together, they provide a creative and constructive
key to read and appropriate the biblical texts within a context of economic injustices

6 Habel (2008: 4–5) adds ‘identification’ as a second step between suspicion and retrieval. This
refers to the possibility of human readers identifying (sympathetically or antipathetically)
with their non-human kin as portrayed in the text.
7 See Habel (ed.) 2000: 42–53 and Eaton (2000) for a detailed discussion of these principles.
308 Ecological Hermeneutics

and environmental destruction. Note that a certain normative priority is attributed

to the set of ecojustice principles. They are employed to judge both the validity of
the text and contemporary culture. Eaton (2000: 63) notes that this priority of the
principles over the texts is indeed appropriate. Likewise, the emancipatory interests
of women have priority over both misogynist texts and power structures.
One could even argue that these six ecojustice principles provide nothing less than
a ‘small dogmatics’. The first two principles on the intrinsic worth (instead of the
utilitarian value)8 of all matter and on interconnectedness form an incipient doctrine
of creation. The emphasis on the earth community and kinship between all creatures
could also be read as a revised and more inclusive ecclesiology (see Earth Bible Team
2000: 44–46). The third principle on voice (a vital aspect of human personhood)
could be read as an anthropology where the voices of humans are situated among
(and therefore not necessarily privileged9) the varied modes of self-expression or
silent communication of others in the earth community and beyond (Ps. 19). The
fourth principle on design, purpose and an orientation towards an implicit goal is an
(immanent) eschatology in the making. It describes the inherent tendency of matter
towards life and of life towards increasing diversity, complexity and symbiosis (Earth
Bible Team 2002: 5–6). The fifth principle on mutual custodianship and partnership
challenges earlier anthropologies based on dominion and stewardship and constructs
a doctrine of providence and an ecological ethics upon a recognition of the ways in
which earth as the ‘immediate agent of sustenance, support and creative energy’ has
sustained humanity and other forms of life (Earth Bible Team 2002: 10). The sixth
principle on resistance acknowledges the impact of evil and injustices, suggests the
focus of an alternative doctrine of sin accordingly (on the distortion of the human
ability to see God’s glory in creation, see also Habel 1998: 119), and locates the
sources of redemption from such injustices in the ability of earth to offer resistance.
As the Earth Bible Team (2000: 53) notes, ecosystems are not necessarily fragile, but
have a limited yet ‘remarkable capacity to survive, to regenerate and adapt to chang-
ing physical circumstances in spite of human exploitation and short-sighted greed’.
The vision articulated in these six ecojustice principles is bold, audacious, uncom-
promising and attractive in many respects. A number of striking features of this ‘small
dogmatics’ may be identified. First, there is no reference to ‘creation’ or creatures,
precisely in order to avoid any reference to or assumption of a Creator. This is indeed
a radically this-worldly ‘theology’ (if it could be called that) with no reference to
divine presence (immanence) in the world, not to mention a recognition of the pos-
sibility of divine transcendence. As may be expected, any categories reminiscent of the
particularity of Christianity (except the focus on the Bible itself) are avoided in order

8 See the discussion by Earth Bible Team (2002: 8–10) on the distinction between intrinsic
worth, utilitarian value and the notion of ‘added value’.
9 The privileging of some voices above others calls for the supplementary principle on
ecojustice – precisely because of the conflicting agendas among those humans who wish to
function as the mediating voice of the ‘voiceless’ earth in human decision-making processes.
See Eaton 2000: 67.
 What on Earth is an Ecological Hermeneutics? 309

to allow for a more universal (?) appeal of such an ecological hermeneutics, especially
in a secular context and in conversation with other faith traditions.10 On this basis
there can be no suggestion of references to God the Father (or Mother), Jesus Christ
or the Holy Spirit, not to mention theological constructs such as trinity, incarnation,
cross, resurrection, justification, sanctification, ecclesiology, sacraments or eternal
life. The contrast between the ‘small dogmatics’ of the Earth Bible project and the
Nicene Creed could scarcely be starker.
I have no intention of testing the orthodoxy of the Earth Bible’s ‘small dogmat-
ics’ or to supplement the six principles with doctrinal allusions or to legitimate its
principles by planting a cross on its fertile soil or to baptize them in the name of the
Father, Son and Spirit. That would not only be cheap, but would also be a form of
colonization and conquest and would not recognize the resistance against what is
perceived as doctrinal meddling in biblical exegesis (which, if my argument holds,
is more or less inevitable). It would also fail to see the quite deliberate attempt to
appeal to a wider readership. However, in the hope to find a wider appeal, it curiously
abandons the attempt to be persuasive within the traditions that have kept the read-
ing of these texts alive. At the same time, the emergence of such a ‘small dogmatics’
raises one’s curiosity precisely because it illustrates the inescapability of such doctrinal
constructs very well. It also invites further critical reflection. Clearly the six ecojustice
principles cannot be regarded as sacrosanct or in a Platonic way as eternally abiding
principia. If biblical scholars feel the need to construct their own ‘dogmatics’ because
the doctrinal constructs provided by constructive theologies are no longer plausible,
this calls urgently for cooperative efforts and inter-disciplinary work.

In Search of Relatively More Adequate Doctrinal Constructs

What, then, could an ecological biblical hermeneutics entail? Given the argument
on the use of doctrinal constructs above, it seems to me that we need to search for
relatively adequate constructs in order to do justice both to the rich plurality within
the biblical texts and the contemporary demands of ecojustice and sustainability.
There are several attempts in contemporary ecotheology to identify or construct
concepts that can fulfil such a function.
One such example is the notion of the ‘liberation of creation’ – as used for example
by the Latin American theologian Leonardo Boff (1995). One may develop this into
a fairly comprehensive notion that would address the tensions between God’s good
creation, the suffering of the vulnerable in creation due to (human) oppression,
prophetic critiques of such oppression and the hope for the liberation of creation. In
addition, one may seek to clarify the Christological and pneumatological content of
this notion. The strength of this construct is its ability to confront the socio-economic

10 See Habel 2000a: 38 and Habel 2004: 8, where this motivation is explicitly mentioned.
310 Ecological Hermeneutics

forces that lie at the roots of the current environmental crisis. Its weakness is related
to its fairly narrow soteriological focus – for example not bringing into play the role
of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Another example is the emphasis on wisdom that is prominent in the work of Celia
Deane-Drummond (2006) and several others. Here the cardinal virtue of wisdom
is portrayed as a key to Christian earthkeeping, confronting an attitude of mastery
and control over nature. In feminist discourse this is often contrasted with notions
of male dominance. There are, of course, numerous references to the significance of
wisdom in the biblical texts. Moreover, if one takes the personification of wisdom in
the book of Proverbs and John 1 into account, it may be developed Christologically.
One may also refer to the strange wisdom of the cross, the wisdom of the Father’s
providence and the work of the Spirit to lead us into wisdom. On this basis the
notion of wisdom can be developed into a fairly comprehensive construct that can
do justice to text, tradition and the need for responsible decision making amidst
environmental challenges.
A third example is the metaphor of ‘the whole household of God’ that has emerged
in ecumenical literature over the last decade or two (see Conradie 2007). The power
of this metaphor lies in its ability to integrate especially three core ecumenical themes
on the basis of the Greek word oikos (household) – which forms the etymological
root of the quests for economic justice (amidst the inequalities and multiple injustices
in the current neo-liberal economic order), ecological sustainability (amidst the
degradation of ecosystems) and ecumenical fellowship (amidst the many divisions
that characterise Christianity worldwide). This construct also helps to integrate
several concerns on the social agenda of the church. Such ecumenical discourse on
the whole household of God is best understood within the context of the whole work
of God (creation, providence, redemption, re-creation) which has traditionally been
described as the ‘economy of God’, from which the term ‘economic trinity’ has also
been derived. On this basis, it may serve as a theological root metaphor to explore
a wide variety of other themes – an ecological doctrine of creation based on the ind-
welling of God’s Spirit in creation; an anthropology of stewardship (the oikonomos)
or one of being ‘at-home-on earth’; an ecclesiology focusing on being members of
the ‘household of God’ (Eph. 2.19-22); or, alternatively, an ecclesiology based on
the notion of being sojourners (paroikoi) who are precisely not at home (yet); an
understanding of the Eucharist as the table fellowship of the household gathered
together, the need for God’s Word spoken at the table; and an eschatology expressing
the hope that the house which we as humans inhabit (the earth) will indeed become
God’s home. It has also been used for a pastoral theology towards the edification of
the household (oikodomë) (see Müller-Fahrenholz 1995), and an ethics of ecojustice,
inhabitation, homemaking, hospitality and sufficient nourishment.
 What on Earth is an Ecological Hermeneutics? 311

Conclusion

It is unlikely that any one doctrinal construct will ever be satisfactory. What is
required here is perhaps not a single category but a cluster of such constructs, a box
full of tools that may be used wherever helpful. What we need is a reconstituted ‘hori-
zon’ that will enable us to relate with each other a) the biblical roots of Christianity,
b) the subsequent history of the Christian tradition (in its rich complexity and its
distortions), c) the content and significance of the Christian faith, d) a set of ethical
categories and e) the increasingly dramatic challenges of environmental degradation.
This hermeneutical ‘horizon’ would be constituted by a complex set of convic-
tions, visions, values, virtues, stories, priorities and practices, which are shaped by
the Scriptures and which themselves shape the interpretation of Scripture, which may
well be in tension with each other, vying for a certain priority, but which together
would constitute where ecumenical Christianity stands. For Christian communities,
as ‘people of the book’, this hermeneutical horizon will be shaped in multiple ways by
the whole corpus of biblical texts and themes – not so much as a fixed moral deposit
but as a precious record of what it meant in previous times and places and under
varied conditions to be a ‘people of the way’ (see Birch and Rasmussen 1989: 32).
This sense of orientation, if taken literally, would direct the interpreting community
to the Orient, to Jerusalem, to Calvary.
This suggests that an ecological biblical hermeneutics should go hand in hand
with an ecological reformulation of Christian doctrine. This cannot be narrowly
focused on a revisiting of creation theology but calls for a review of all aspects of the
Christian faith. In my view, there are especially four crucial areas where Christian
piety has often inhibited an environmental ethos, spirituality and praxis, namely
a worldless notion of God’s transcendence, a dualist anthropology, a personalist
reduction of the cosmic scope of redemption and an escapist eschatology.11 Any
ecological theology will remain shallow unless an adequate response to these four
problems can be provided.
This task is taken up in many contributions to ecological theology focusing on the
content and significance of the Christian faith. It is also the task of an international
collaborative research project entitled Christian Faith and the Earth which is cur-
rently underway and which will culminate at an envisaged conference to be held
in Cape Town in August 2012. This project offers some hope for such a thorough
ecological transformation of the content and significance of the Christian faith. Such
a task will indeed be crucial also for an ecological biblical hermeneutics.

11 See Conradie 2005b and 2006a for an outline of this agenda for ecological theology.
312 Ecological Hermeneutics

References

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Atonement (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock).
Birch, B.C. and L.L. Rasmussen 1989 Bible and Ethics in the Christian Life (Minneapolis: Augsburg).
Boff, L. 1995 Ecology and Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books).
Conradie, E.M. 1992 ‘What is an Analogical Imagination?’, The South African Journal of Philosophy
11(4): 103–12.
Conradie, E.M. 2004 ‘Towards an Ecological Biblical Hermeneutics: A Review Essay on the Earth
Bible Project’, Scriptura 85: 123–35.
Conradie, E.M. 2005a ‘Towards an Ecological Reformulation of the Christian Doctrine of Sin’,
Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 122: 4–22.
Conradie, E.M. 2005b An Ecological Christian Anthropology: At Home on Earth? (Aldershot:
Ashgate).
Conradie, E.M. 2006a Christianity and Ecological Theology: Resources for Further Research (Study
Guides in Religion and Theology 11; Stellenbosch: SUN Press).
Conradie, E.M. 2006b ‘The Road Towards an Ecological Biblical and Theological Hermeneutics’,
Scriptura 93: 305–14.
Conradie, E.M. 2007 ‘The Whole Household of God (oikos): Some Ecclesiological Perspectives: Part
1 & 2’, Scriptura 94: 1–28.
Conradie, E.M. 2008 Angling for Interpretation: A First Guide to Biblical Theological and
Contextual Hermeneutics (Study Guides in Religion and Theology 13; Stellenbosch: SUN
Press).
Conradie, E.M. 2009 ‘Interpreting the Bible Amidst Ecological Degradation’, Theology 112: 199–207.
Conradie, E.M. and L.C. Jonker 2001 ‘Determining Relative Adequacy in Biblical Interpretation’,
Scriptura 78: 442, 448–56.
Deane-Drummond, C.E. 2006 Wonder and Wisdom: Conversations in Science, Spirituality, and
Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation Press).
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Perspective of Earth (The Earth Bible, 1. Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/
Pilgrim Press): 38–53.
Earth Bible Team 2002 ‘Ecojustice Hermeneutics: Reflections and Challenges’, in N.C. Habel and
V. Balabanski (eds), The Earth Story in the New Testament, (The Earth Bible, 5. London
and New York/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 1–14.
Eaton, H. 1996 ‘Ecological-feminist Theology’, in D.T. Hessel (ed.), Theology for Earth Community:
A Field Guide (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books): 77–92.
Eaton, H. 2000 ‘Ecofeminist Contributions to an Ecojustice Hermeneutics’, in N.C. Habel (ed.),
Readings from the Perspective of Earth (The Earth Bible, 1. Sheffield/Cleveland, OH:
Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim Press): 54–71.
Habel, N.C. 1998 ‘Key Ecojustice Principles: A theologia crucis Perspective’, Ecotheology
5–6: 114–25.
Habel, N.C. 2000a ‘Introducing the Earth Bible’, in N.C. Habel (ed.), Readings from the Perspective
of Earth (The Earth Bible, 1. Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic Press/Pilgrim
Press): 25–37.
Habel, N.C. 2000b ‘Geophany: The Earth Story in Genesis 1’, in N.C. Habel and S. Wurst (eds),
The Earth Story in Genesis (The Earth Bible, 2. Sheffield/Cleveland, OH: Sheffield Academic
Press/ Pilgrim Press): 34–48.
Habel, N.C. 2004 ‘The origins and challenges of an ecojustice hermeneutics’, in T.J. Sandoval and
C. Mandolft, Relating to the Text: Interdisciplinary and Form-Critical Insights on the Bible
(New York: Continuum).
Habel, N.C. 2008 ‘Introducing Ecological Hermeneutics’, in N.C. Habel and P. Trudinger (eds),
Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics (SBLSS 46. Atlanta, GA: SBL): 1–8.
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Habel, N.C. and P. Trudinger (eds) 2008 Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics (SBLSS 46. Atlanta,
GA: SBL).
Horrell, D.G., C. Hunt and C. Southgate 2008 ‘Appeals to the Bible in Ecotheology and Environmental
Ethics: A Typology of Hermeneutical Stances’, SCE 21: 219–38.
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Interpretation (Stellenbosch: SUN Press).
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Eerdmans).
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(London: SCM).
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Theology: The Rich Variety of Theology and Hermeneutics (Pretoria: Van Schaik): 433–50.
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African Context (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications).
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Ecumenical Reflection on Hermeneutics (Faith and Order Paper No. 182; Geneva. WCC).
This page intentionally left blank
 Index of Biblical References

Entries in bold indicate substantial discussions

OLD TESTAMENT (including Apocrypha) 2.4 78, 214

2.5 137n. 13
Genesis 2.7 136, 137
1–11 16, 34, 42n. 17 2.15 4, 229, 285–7, 291
1–9 15, 23, 25–7 2.16-17 90
1–3 18, 138 3 129, 130, 138
1–2 129, 295 3.6 90
1 6, 21, 23–30, 35–6, 51, 59, 3.17-19 88, 89, 90
62, 116, 137, 140–53, 167, 3.17 255, 256
189, 229 3.18 259
1.1-2.4a 34, 36 3.21 34n. 4
1.1-2.3 214 4.4 24
1.1-2 124, 140–1, 143 4.9 286
1.1 78, 141–3 6–9 111, 295
1.2 142–3 6.11-13 36
1.4 116 7.23 80
1.10 116 8.1 80
1.12 116 8.17 80
1.20-6 144 8.22 116
1.20-1 147 9 27, 35, 37, 40
1.22 76 9.1-7 26, 35
1.24 147 9.1-4 29
1.26-8 2–4, 6, 88, 118, 143, 147, 9.2 23, 26, 79
151, 191–2, 229, 305 9.3 23–5, 36
1.26 124, 135, 138, 140, 146, 9.4 37
154, 198, 214 9.8-17 37
1.27-30 26 9.9-17 5
1.27-8 305 9.12 80
1.27 22, 144, 229 24.10 215
1.28-30 23, 34–6, 176 49.10-11 80n. 12
1.28 4, 22–3, 25–6, 30, 34, 76,
229 Exodus
1.29-30 26 1.7 22
1.29 22–4, 26–7 3.14 159
1.30 23, 26, 147 20.8-11 230, 280
2 137, 189, 229, 286 23.9-12 29–30
2.1-3 230–1
2.1 78 Leviticus 16, 33, 37
2.2-3 280 1.2 38
2.4b–3.24 88 1.3 42
2.4b-7 192 1.4 41
316 Index

1.10 42 26.21-5 37
3.1 42
3.2 41 Deuteronomy
3.6 42 5.12-15 280
3.8 41 7.12 76
3.13 41 8.1-18 287
4 39 15 289
4.3 42 20.19-20 30
4.4 41 22 30
4.15 41 26.15 76
4.23 42 27.17 47
4.24 41 28.1-14 287
4.28 42 28.4-5 76
4.29 41 28.15-16 287–8
4.32 42 30.19-20 274
4.33 41 32.8-9 290
5.15 42 32.39 275
5.18 42
6.6 42 Joshua
8.14-15 39 13.8 290
8.14 41 18.1 22
8.18 41
8.22 41 Ruth
9.2 42 4.5 290
9.3 42
12 39 1 Kings
14.1-7 41 1.33 81
14.10 42 21 47
14.48-53 41 21.3-4 290
15 39
15.31 39 2 Kings
16 39 5.10 71
16.1-22 41
16.15-19 39 Job 17
18.3-5 288 1.10 64
18.24-8 38 1.21 275
22.19 42 3.1-10 61
22.21-5 42 4.8 61
22.21 42 6.5 60
23.12 42 9.25-6 61
23.18 42 12.7-10 56
25 289–91, 295 12.7-8 56, 64
25.1-7 230 12.10 76
25.8-17 230 26.12 80
25.10 290 28 63–4, 65, 67
25.18-22 289–90 28.24 63n. 18
25.23 38, 290 37–39 295
25.24 291 38–39 57n. 5, 64–5
26 38 38 64–5
26.4 76 38.7 64
26.6 37, 79 38.8 64
26.11-12 38 38.25-30 59n. 13
26.19-33 38 38.28-30 65
 Index 317

38.31-3 65 146.10 77
38.34-8 65 147.8 76
38.39 65 147.9 76
38.41 5, 76 148 77, 278
39.14-15 65
40–41 66 Proverbs 17
1.1 58n. 9
Psalms 6.6 60
8 295 8 64, 66–7
11.4 77 8.1-5 292
18 5 8.1 294
19 295, 308 8.5 292
19.1 212 8.22-36 231
19.4-6 76 8.22-31 135
24 295 8.22 67
29 59 8.31 67
36.6 76 8.35-36 231, 294
51 173 10.1 58n. 9
65.9-11 76 11.28 60
67.6 76 15.17 60
72 54 15.19 60
72.12-14 54 16.20 62–3
72.16 54 17.27-8 66
78.15-16 78 25.14 60
78.23-5 78 25.23 60
90.4 110 30 58n. 11
93 77 30.15-33 61–2
95.5 135
96.3 77 Ecclesiastes 17
96.10 77 1.1 58n. 9
96.11-13 77 1.4-9 61, 62
97.1 77 1.5-7 65
98 295 1.12 58n. 9
98.7-8 77 3.18-21 64
98.9 77 3.21 64
102.25-7 116 7.6 61
103.19-22 77, 78 10.1 61
103.19 77
104 5, 59, 211, 295 Isaiah
104.7 80 1.3 46
104.13 76 5 47
104.21 51 5.1-2 256
104.27-8 76 5.8-10 47
104.29-30 76, 231 9–11 295
107.38 76 9.6-7 117
139.7-8 275 11 51, 250
145 77 11.1-9 26, 256
145.5 78 11.6-9 79, 88
145.9 76 11.7-8 26
145.10-12 77 11.9 26
145.10-11 78 21-26 112
145.13 77, 78 24 54
145.15-16 76 24.1-13 49
318 Index

27.1 80 Hosea
30.27 113 2.18 51, 79, 88
32.15-20 117 2.21-2 51
33 54
33.9 54 Joel 54, 295
33.14-16 54 1.15 2
35.1 79
35.6-7 79 Amos 295
40–66 77 1.7 64
40 295 1.10 64
40.4 66 1.12 64
41.14 46 1.14 64
41.18-19 79 2.5 64
43.19-21 88 5.18-20 2
43.23-4 286 8.8 64
51.3 79
51.6 116 Micah
52.7 117 1.2-4 109n. 8
55.12-13 88, 256 2.1-2 47
60.17-22 117 2.2 290
61.1-11 230 2.4 47
64.1-3 109 2.5 47
65 295
65.17-25 26, 256 Nahum
65.17 110, 238 1.3-5 109n. 8
65.25 26
66.2 110 Habakkuk
66.15-18 109 2.4 84
3.3-15 109n. 8
Jeremiah
4 54 Zephaniah
4.23-6 50 1.18 113
8.7 46, 78 3.8 113
40.4 113
Haggai
Ezekiel 1.9-11 50
8.6 38n. 7 2.15-19 50
8.12 38n. 7
9.9 38n. 7 Zechariah
10.18-20 38n. 7 3.10 47
11.9-12 38n. 7 8.12 88
12.1-6 38n. 7 9.9-10 80–1
12.17-20 38n. 7 14.1-5 109
15.7 38n. 7 14.4-5 109n. 8
20.38 38n. 7
22.15 38n. 7 Malachi
34.25-31 88 1–4 112
34.25 79 3.1-4 109
34.26-39 79
34.28 79 2 Maccabees
36 295 7.23 213
39.23 38n. 7 7.28 213
 Index 319

4 Ezra 14.67 80
7.11-12 88
8.51-54 88 Luke
9.19-20 88 1 134n. 8, 137
1.35 137
NEW TESTAMENT 1.55 109n. 4
1.72 109n. 4
Matthew 2.40 72
1.18 137 2.52 72
1.20 137 4.16-21 230
5.35 133 4.18-19 256
5.45 76 7.22 79n. 10
6.9-10 77–8 10.21 75
6.26 76 12.6-7 76
6.28-30 76, 295 12.24 76
7.6 73 12.27-8 76
8.20 73 12.39 110
10.29-31 76, 295 19.12-28 256
11.6 79n. 10 21.20 72
11.25 75
11.27 133 John
19.9 75 1.1-14 133–5
21.5 80–1 1.1-3 235, 256
21.18-21 81 1.1 189, 283
23.30 109n. 4 1.3 133, 134, 167
23.32 109n. 4 1.10 134
24.43 110 1.11 134
25.14-30 256 1.12 134
25.31-46 256 1.13 134, 137n. 16
1.14 104n. 11, 133
Mark 1.15-18 134
1.13 79, 80n. 11 1.18 133
1.15 231 1.19-34 134
3.14 80 4.20 109n. 4
4.3-8 76 6.31 109n. 4
4.26-32 76 9.7 71
4.35-41 80 12.24 208
4.36 80 17.21 233
4.39 80 13.34 256
5.10-13 81
5.18 80 Acts
10.6 75 1.10-11 271
10.45 286 3.13 109n. 4
11.1-10 80 3.21 256
11.12-14 81 3.25 109n. 4
11.20-1 81
12.30 148 Romans
13 268 1.2 85
13.8 3 1.4 226
13.24-7 110 1.16-17 84, 92
13.24-5 3 1.18-32 85
13.30 109 1.18 84
13.31 116 1.20-3 256
320 Index

1.21 89 8.14-16 90
1.24 89 8.15-16 88
3.21-6 85, 92 8.17 85
3.28 92 8.18-30 90
4.1-23 85 8.18-25 111, 115
4.21-5 92 8.18-23 295
4.24 226 8.18 85, 88
4.25 85 8:19-26 232
5–8 85, 88, 92 8.19-23 5, 256
5.1-11 85 8.19-22 18, 83–93
5.1-4 88 8.19 88, 90
5.1 92 8.20-1 88, 90, 116n. 17
5.3-5 90 8.20 89
5.6-11 92 8.21 89, 232
5.6-10 85 8.22 88, 90
5.9-10 84 8.23-5 88
5.9 84, 91 8.23 86–8, 90, 92, 232
5.10 91 8.26-7 88
5.12–8.4 91 8.26 90, 232
5.12-21 85, 91 8.28-30 88
5.12 86, 137n. 13 8.29 87, 136
5.14 136 8.31-9 85
5.15-21 92 8.31-2 92
5.15-17 86 8.32 85
5.15 91, 92 9.5 109n. 4
5.17 91, 92 10.5-13 92
5.19 92, 137n. 13 10.9-13 84
5.20 91 11.36 100
6.1–7.6 92 12.1-15.13 87
6.1-23 86 12.1 87
6.3-11 226 12.2 87
6.4 92 12.5 105
6.6 86 15.1-3 92
6.11 92 15.3 92
6.12 86, 92 15.4 226
6.13 92, 93 16.22 87
7.5 86
7.14-25 86 1 Corinthians
7.14 86 3.6 76
7.18 86 7.29-31 268
7.24 86 8.6 235, 256
7.25 86 10.16 105
8 277 12.27 105
8.1-4 86 15 84, 87, 277
8.3-9 86 15.22 136, 137n. 15
8.3-4 91 15.23-8 100
8.3 87 15.36 208
8.4 92 15.42-4 208
8.6-8 86 15.45 86, 91, 92, 137n. 13
8.10 86, 87 15.46 137n. 15
8.11 86, 226
8.12-13 86–7 2 Corinthians
8.13 86 3.6 142
 Index 321

4.4 135 3.6 102n. 8

4.16 144 3.10 100, 136
5.17 92, 238, 256 3.24-5 102n. 8
5.18 92 4.12-13 95
5.19 235 4.18 95
5.21 93
8.9 278 1 Thessalonians
12.7 86 1.10 84
4 277
Galatians 4.16-17 3
2.11-14 283 5.2 2, 110
3.26-8 88 5.4 110
4.3-10 100 5.23 148
4.14 86
6.15 92 1 Timothy
4.10 140
Ephesians
1.10 256 Hebrews
2.16 235 1.2-3 256
2.19-22 310 1.2 189, 284
4.9 199 1.3 235
4.17 89 1.10-12 116, 268n. 2
12.25-8 268n. 2
Philippians
2.6-8 92 2 Peter
2.7 206n. 8 1.4 110, 116n. 17
2.8 92 1.20-1 109
4.5 244, 293–4 2.1 108
3 4–5, 111n. 10, 112
Colossians 18–19 3.3 109, 118
1 295 3.4-13 108–12
1.1 95 3.4-10 112
1.4 98 3.4 109
1.5 102n. 8 3.5-13 19, 108–20
1.7-8 95 3.5-9 109
1.9 98, 100 3.5-6 116
1.15-20 5, 231, 256 3.5 113
1.15 135, 140, 189, 235 3.7 108, 113–15
1.16 103 3.8-10 272
1.17 105, 189, 203, 235 3.8-9 110
1.18 105 3.8 118
1.20 103–4, 106, 235 3.10-13 268
1.26-7 102n. 8 3.10-12 113–14
2.1 95, 99 3.10 4, 110, 112, 114–15, 246,
2.2 100 252, 256
2.10 104n. 10 3.11-13 110
2.12 102n. 8 3.11-12 117
2.16 98 3.11 112, 114
2.18 98 3.12-13 118
2.21 98 3.12 108, 112, 114, 246
2.23 98 3.13 108, 114–15
3.1 102n. 8 3.14 117–18
3.3-4 102n. 8
322 Index

1 John 16.16 251

2.13-14 189 20 249
20.2 251
Revelation 3, 208, 246–64, 277, 20.4 248
296 20.11 268n. 2
2.7 286 21-22 5, 110, 238, 295
3.3 110 21 252
4.7 132 21.1-4 256
8 247, 256 21.1-2 251, 255
8.6-13 252 21.1 80, 116, 198, 246, 249, 250,
11.18 252, 255 268n. 2
12.14 248 21.3 230
16 247, 256 21.5 247, 255
16.15 110 22.1-5 261
 Index of Names

Entries in bold indicate substantial discussions

Abel, 24, 36 Baruch, Second Apocalypse of 88

Abraham 41n. 15, 48, 85, 133 Basil of Caesarea 140–2, 145–50, 152, 153
Adam, Adamic 34n. 4, 36, 83, 84, 86, 88–92, Bauckham, R. 9, 18, 70, 76n. 9, 80n. 11,
136–8, 152, 174, 177, 218, 222 81–2, 104, 107, 109n. 5, 113, 114, 117n.
Adam, A. K. M. 139, 272, 278n. 8, 281 18, 119, 227–8, 235n. 16, 238–9, 244,
Adams, E. 4, 6, 9, 11, 19, 96, 106, 108–9, 113, 268n. 3, 278–9, 281
114, 116, 118–19, 268n. 2, 271, 281 Bauder, W. 293, 294
Ahab 47, 48 Bauer, G. 258n. 22, 263
Albertz, R. 29, 31 Baumgarth, W. P. 157, 165
Alexandre, M. 142, 153, Bayer, O. 168, 179
Allison, D. C. 81n. 14, 82 Beal, R. S. 259, 263
Alves, R. 236n. 17, 238 Beauchamp, P. 26, 31
Ambrose 142, 150 Beck, H. 117n. 20, 119
Amery, C. 22, 31 Behr, J. 147, 148–9, 150, 151, 153
Anderson, B. W. 4, 11, 36n. 6, 44, 59, 68 Beisner, E. C. 3, 11, 258–9, 260, 263
Aquinas, T. 10, 124, 154–65, 169, 180, 206 Berdyaev, N. 212, 222
Aristotle 97, 99, 156–7, 163, 165, 293, 300 Berry, R. J. 6n. 8, 11, 12, 69
Arnold, R. 258, 262 Bigg, C. 109n. 7, 119
Athanasios 212, 222 Birch, B. C. 312
Attfield, R. 64, 68 Bird, M. 110n. 9, 119
Augustine, Augustinian 23–4, 140, 142–3, Bishop, E. F. F. 81n. 13, 82
149–50, 152, 153, 155, 171, 190n. 12, Blaising C. A. 260n. 28, 263, 264
254 Blake, W. 216
Aulén, G. 302, 312 Blenkinsopp, J. 2n. 2, 11
Bloch, R. H. 249, 263
Bacon, F., Baconianism 159, 207n. 9, 229, Blocker, T. J. 254n. 14, 263
249–50, 259 Blumenberg, H. 170n. 5, 179
Badke, W. B. 252, 260, 263 Bock, D. L. 260n. 28, 263, 264
Bahro, R. 294 Boersema, J. J. 96, 107
Bakken , P. 257n. 19 Boff, L. 309, 312
Balabanski, V. 7, 9, 11–12, 18, 19, 82, 94, 95, Bornkamm, H. 167n. 2, 174, 177, 179
96, 106–7, 119, 312 Bouma-Prediger, S. 5, 11, 108n. 1, 111n. 11,
Balthasar, H. Urs von 10, 125, 138n. 18, 139, 112, 119, 255, 263
196–210, 235n. 15 Boyd, H. H. 254n. 14, 263
Baranzke, H. 2n. 2, 11 Boyer, P. 251, 252n. 10, 263
Barr, J. 2, 4, 11, 53n. 3, 55, 57, 68 Bragg, M. 200
Barth, K., Barthian(ism) 10, 52, 125, 138n. Brague, R. 95, 96, 107
17, 169, 173, 181–95, 197, 198, 209, Briggs, C. A. 31
227, 284 Bright, J. 57n. 3, 68
Barton, J. 9, 16–17, 46 Brown, C. 117n. 20, 119, 294
Barton, S. 10, 243, 244, 266 Brown, F. 25, 31
324 Index

Brown, W. P. 57, 66, 68 Deane-Drummond, C. 57, 62, 63n. 18, 68,

Brunner, E. 184–6, 194 155, 163, 165, 234nn. 11–12, 235n. 15,
Bulgakov, S. 125, 211, 220–1, 222 237n. 19, 238, 310, 312
Bull, M. 268n. 3, 281 Delitzsch, F. 25, 31
Burkett, L. 257n. 21, 263 Dell, K. J. 9, 17, 56, 56n. 1, 58, 60n. 14, 62–4,
Bury, R. G. 95n. 2, 107 68
Busch, E. 182n. 2, 185n. 4, 194 Dennis, J. 113n. 12, 119
Byrne, B. 9, 18, 83–5, 86, 88–93 Descartes, R., Cartesian 23–4, 126 185, 225,
229–30, 236
Cain 36, 286 Devall, B. 56, 68
Caird, G. 5, 272 DeWitt, C. B. 6, 255, 258n. 23, 259, 263, 265
Calvin, J. 169, 179, 254, 257 Dickens, W. T. 198n. 3, 209
Carson, R. 1 Dionysios the Areopagite 218
Charles, N. J. 49n. 2, 55 Dobson, J. 258nn. 22 & 24, 260
Chidester, D. 170n. 5, 179 Dodd, C. H. 74, 82
Chilton, B. 77, 82 Donoghue, D. 209
Choi, J, 256, 264 Douglas, M. 40n. 12. 44
Chrysippus 101, 113, 116 Driver, S. R. 31
Chrysostom, J. 146, 149, 152 Dunn, J. D. G. 85, 89
Cicero 102 Dyer, K. 3, 11, 108,
Cizewski, W. 150, 153 Dyrness, W. A. 65n. 22, 68, 179, 180
Clark, G. 150–1, 153
Clark, S. R. L. 266, 281 Earth Bible Team (as authors) see Index of Subjects
Clarke, A. 25, 31 Eaton, H. 298, 307n. 7, 308, 312
Cleanthes 113 Echlin, E. P. 72, 75, 82
Coffman, M. S. 257n. 21, 263 Eckburg, D. L. 254n. 14, 263
Collins, J. J. 102, 107, 282 Edwards, J. 249
Colson, C. 257n. 21, 263 Elijah 47
Conradie, E. M. 6, 7, 8n. 12, 10, 11, 243, 245, Enoch, first book of 88, 112
295, 296, 297, 299, 300n. 2, 305, 310, Epaphras 95
311n. 11, 312 Epictetus 113
Cooper, J. W. 105n. 12, 107 Epicurus 95
Copernicus, N. 183 Erasmus, D. 177
Corsini, E. 148, 153 Evagrios 215
Courtonne, Y. 141, 153 Evans, J. 98, 100, 107
Cranach, L. 171 Eve 34n. 4, 36, 138, 152, 174, 177
Cranfield, C. E. B. 88–9, 93
Crisp, O. 190n. 12, 194 Faricy, R. 70, 82
Cumbey, C. 252, 263 Farrow, D. 136n. 10, 138n. 17, 139
Curry-Roper, J. M. 246n. 2, 263 Ferré, F. 201, 209
Finger, T. 5, 11, 108n. 1, 111–12, 114, 119,
Dalmais, I. H. 217n. 2, 222 246n. 2, 255n. 16, 260n. 27, 261, 263
Darby, J. N. 251 Fitzmyer, J. A. 89, 93
Darwin, C., Darwinian 21, 63n. 18, 250 Florensky, P. 212, 220
David (King), Davidic 48, 58n. 9, 80 Florovsky, G. 211
Davids, P. H. 109n. 3, 119 Ford, D, 107, 190, 194, 283, 294
Davies, B. 159, 165 Foucault, M. 219
Davies, D. 42, 44 Fowler, R. B. 257n. 20, 263
Davies, W. D. 81n. 14, 82 France, R. T. 110n. 9, 119
De Gruchy, J. 285 Francis of Assisi, Franciscan 2, 177, 279
De Soto, H. 291, 294 French, R. M. 213, 222
De Tocqueville, A. 251 Fretheim, T. E. 63n. 17, 65n. 21, 66n. 23, 67n. 24, 68
De Vos, P. 4, 11 Freud, S. 297
 Index 325

Freyne, S. 70–5, 82 Houston, W. 36n. 6, 44–5

Frykholm, A. J. 262, 263 Hunt, C. 6n. 9, 8, 10, 12, 123, 245, 313

Galileo 183 Irenaeus 10, 115, 123, 127–39

Gieniusz, C. R. 85, 93 Isaac 41
Gilbertson, M. 277n. 7, 281 Isaac, G. L. 168, 180
Gilders, W. K. 39n. 10, 44
Gill, R. 155, 163, 165, 282 Jacob, B. 190n. 14
Gorringe, T. 10, 243, 244, 283 Jelen, T. G. 265
Grabbe, L. 39n. 10, 44 Jenkins, W. 160, 165, 188n. 11, 194, 195,
Graham, B. 259, 263 196n. 1, 200, 209
Granberg-Michaelson, W. 4, 11, 68, 246n. 2, Jenson, P. P. 39n. 10, 45
254–5, 263 Jewett, R. 83, 93, 268, 281
Grant, G. 258–9, 263 Job 56, 57n. 5, 64, 66
Gregersen, N. H. 167n. 2, 175, 177, 180 John the Baptist 270
Gregory of Nyssa 140, 142, 145, 147–50, 152, Johnson, E. 248
153, 214, 222 Johnston, R. K. 57, 68, 247n. 3, 264
Guth, J. L. 254n. 14, 263 Jonah 300–1
Gutiérrez, G. 236n. 17, 238 Jones, A. 293, 294
Jones, J. 70, 82,
Habel, N. C. 7, 8, 11–12, 55, 57, 63n. 18, 68, Jonker, L. C. 299–300, 312–13
82, 93, 94, 95, 104n. 11, 106–7, 119,
181, 195, 296, 298, 305, 307, 308, 309n. Kanagy, C. L. 254n. 14, 264
10, 312–13 Kant, I., Kantian 205, 207n. 9
Habermas, J. 297 Käsemann , E. 270
Habito, R. L. F. 106n. 14 Kelly, J. N. D. 110, 112
Hadot, P. 207n. 9, 209 Kermode, F. 246, 264
Haecker, T. 217, 222 Kierkegaard, S. 182
Hagen, K. 170, 180 Kinzelbach, R. 27–31
Hahne, H. 83, 88, 90, 93 Kiuchi, N. 39n. 10, 41, 45
Hall, D. J. 4, 12 Kneen , B. 288–9, 294
Harding, S. 262n. 29, 263 Koerner, J. 171, 180
Harrison, N. V. 145, 146, 149, 153 Kraftchick, S. J. 109n. 5, 114n. 14, 119
Hatina, T. R. 110n. 9, 119
Hauerwas, S. 278, 281, 282 Lamberty-Zielinski, H. 2n. 2, 11
Haydn, J. 46 Lang, B. 67n. 24, 68
Hays, R. B. 244, 269–73, 276–7, 281 Lapidge, M. 101–2, 107, 114, 119
Healy, N. J. 206n. 8, 209 Larsen, D. K. 248n. 5, 264
Hedrick, C. W. 74n. 7, 82 Law, J. 10, 126, 223
Hegel, G. W. F., Hegelian 234 Lawrie, D. G. 300, 313
Heide, G. Z. 108n. 1, 111, 112, 119 LeBlanc, J. 155, 164, 165
Heidegger, M. 199, 207 Leftow, B. 159, 165
Henke, R. 141, 153 Lenin, V. 221
Herder, J. G. 24 Leske, A. M. 70, 82
Hermisson, H-J. 58, 68 Levenson,, J. D. 274, 281
Heschel, A. 280, 281 Levin, D. M. 170n. 5, 179–80
Hicks, E. 249 Levison, J. R. 84, 93
Hoban, T. 254n. 14, 265 Lienesch, M. 258n. 25, 262n. 29, 264
Holsinger-Friesen, T. 136n. 12, 139 Lindberg, C. 176, 180
Hooker, M. 99n. 4, 107 Lindsey, H. 252, 264
Hopkins, G. M. 202 Linzey, A. 45, 82, 153, 154, 156, 162, 165
Horrell, D. G. 1, 3n. 4, 5n. 6, 8, 12, 109n. 5, Linzey, S. 265
113, 114, 119, 245, 300, 313 Loader, W. 70, 82
326 Index

Locke, J. 24 Moltmann, J. 10, 125–6, 198, 223–39, 274,

Logan, A. H. B.130n. 1, 130n. 2, 139 280, 281–2
Lohfink, N. 4, 12, 22–3, 25, 31 Moo, D. J. 4, 12, 108n. 1, 111–12, 119, 247,
Lohse, B. 171, 173, 180 264, 277n. 6, 282
Long, A. A. 113n. 13, 117, 119 Moody, D. L. 251, 259
Lossky, V. 211–12 Mora, V. 73, 82
Louth, A. 10, 125–6, 211 Morgan, J. 9, 16, 17, 32, 38n. 8
Lovelock, J. 101n. 6 Mosala, I. J. 297, 313
Loyola, I. 72 Moses 48, 50, 58n. 9, 133, 142, 215
Lucas, E. 4–5, 12, 108n. 1, 111n. 11, 112, 119 Moss, D. 10, 125, 196, 197, 210
Ludlow, M. 10, 124, 140, 147, 153 Müller-Fahrenholz, G. 226n. 8, 239, 310, 313
Luria, I. 234n. 11, Mumford, L. 289
Luther, M., Lutheran 10, 124, 166–80, 254, Murray, R. 48–51, 53–4, 55, 70, 79, 82
304
Naboth 47, 48, 290
McCalla, A. 21, 31 Nash, R. F. 248n. 6, 258n. 25, 264
McClymond, K. 41n. 14, 45 Neumann-Gorsolke, U. 25n. 1, 26n. 2, 31
McCormack, B. L. 182n. 2, 187, 195 Neyrey, J. H. 109, 114n. 14, 117n. 19, 119
MacDonald, M. Y. 105n. 13, 107 Nietzsche, F. 224, 297
Macdonald, N. 34, 35n. 5, 45 Noah 16, 35–7, 79, 80, 109
MacDonald, N. B. 190n. 12, 195 Northcott, M. S. 70, 81, 82, 155, 163, 165,
McFague, S. 105, 107, 209 266–7, 282
McGinn, B. 268n. 3, 282
McGrath, A. E. 172, 180 O’Leary, S. D. 256–7, 261, 264
McIntosh, A. 191, 195 Oakes, E. T. 197, 210
McKibben, B. 5, 12, 57, 62n. 16, 67, 68 Oberman, H. 169, 180
MacRae, G. 117, 119 Origen 140–1, 144–7, 149–50, 153
Madeley, J. 292n. 4, 294 Orpheus 207n. 9
Maier, H. O. 3, 10, 104, 107, 243–4, 246 Orr, D. 3, 12
Malthus, T. R. 290 Otto, E. 30, 31
Mangina, J. L. 182n. 2, 194 Overstreet, R. L. 111n. 11, 119
Marcion, Marcionism, Marcionites 130, 132,
135, 270 Palmer, C. 6, 12, 65n. 20, 68–9
Marcus, J. 80n. 11, 82 Panaetius of Rhodes 99
Marlow, H. 58n. 7, 68 Pannenberg, W. 198
Marsden G. M. 249, 264 Patrick, D. 5, 12
Marx, K., Marxist 128, 220–1, 297 Peacocke, A. 65n. 19, 69
Mary, Mother of God 134, 137–8, 215, Pelikan, J. 167, 169n. 3, 171, 180
219–21 Pesch, O. 169, 180
Maschke, T. 170, 180 Peter 108n. 2, 132, 283
Mason, S. 37, 45 Philaret, (Metropolitan) D. 212, 222
Mather, C. 249 Philo 19, 95, 99, 103, 109, 113, 115, 116,
Maximos 125, 215–18, 219–20, 222 215
May, G. 59n. 12, 68 Plato, Platonic, Platonism 19, 23, 95, 98–104,
Meier, J. P. 77, 82 106, 109, 135, 214, 217–18, 221, 309
Merchant, C. 198, 210 Plutarch 116
Metzger, B. M. 134n. 6, 139 Poole, M. 24, 25, 27, 31
Mikhalkov, N. 32 Posidonius of Apamea 99–100
Milbank, J. 197n. 2, 210 Potter, D. 200–2, 204–5, 207, 208, 210
Miles, M. 170, 180 Pretty, J. 289, 294
Milgrom, J. 39, 44, 45 Purdue, L. 58, 63n. 18, 66, 69
Min, Y-J 62n. 15, 68
Minns, D. 131n. 4, 139 Quash, B. 266n. 1, 279, 282
 Index 327

Rasmussen, L. L. 297, 311–13 Steinmetz, D. 170, 180

Reagan, R. 258n. 23 Still, T. D. 102n. 8, 107
Regan, R. J. 157, 165 Stoll, M. 248–9, 264
Renan, E. 72n. 3, 72n. 5, 82 Stordalen, T. 34n. 3, 45
Reuling, H. 146, 153 Strandberg, T. 247
Rice J. 256, 264 Stuckenbruck, L. T. 98, 107
Riches, J. 197, 199, 210
Ricoeur, P. 300, 301n. 3, 313 Talmon, S. 43n. 17, 45
Ro, B. R. 256n. 18, 264 Tanner, K. 244, 267, 273–7, 282
Robertson, P. 252, 258n. 24, 260, 264 Taylor, C. 23–4, 31
Robinson, J. A. T. 104, 107 Tertullian 115
Rogerson, J. 4, 6, 9, 15, 16, 17, 21, 36n. 6, Thiselton, A. C. 303, 313
39n. 11, 40n. 12, 42n. 16, 45 Thompson, D. 268n. 3, 282
Rolston, H. 158, 165 Thompson, F. 293
Rowland, C. 276, 282 Thompson, G. 10, 125, 181
Rubens, P. 285 Tollefsen, T. T. 217n. 2, 222
Runia, D. T. 95, 99, 103, 107 Tracy, D. W. 300, 313
Russell, D. M. 4, 12 Trudinger, P. 7n. 10, 8, 12, 107, 195, 296,
Russell, J. S. 111n. 10, 119 312–13
Trusdale, A. 246n. 2, 254, 264
Salomina 213 Tudge , T. 287, 294
Santmire, H. P. 10, 21, 31, 66, 69, 124, 166, Turner, D. L. 260, 264
167n. 2, 178, 179, 180 Tuveson, E. L. 249, 250n. 7, 264
Satan, Devil 79, 138, 170, 252
Saucy, R. L. 260, 264 Valentinus, Valentinian 115, 123, 130–3, 135,
Schaeffer, F. 248n. 5, 260–1, 264 138
Schmid, H. H. 58n. 10, 68 Van den Brom, L. J. 296, 313
Schreiner, S. E. 179, 180 Van der Horst, P. W. 113, 116, 119
Schumacher, E. 294 van Kooten, G. H. 95–6, 100, 104n. 10, 107
Schüssler Fiorenza, E. 298, 313 Van Rossum, J. 217n. 2, 222
Schwanke, J. 169, 180 Veerkamp, T. 290–1, 294
Scofield, C. 251–2, 259 Vergil/Virgil 83, 102
Scott, P. 266–7, 282 von Arnim, H. 107
Scroggs, R. 84, 93 Von Rad, G. 21, 57n. 6, 58, 60, 69
Segundo, J. L. 237, 239 Voth, V. H. 253, 264
Seneca 113
Sessions, G. 56, 68 Wannenwetsch, B. 278, 282
Shaiko, R. G. 254n. 14, 264 Watson, F. 10, 123, 127, 132n. 5, 136n. 11,
Shillington, V. G. 72n. 4, 82 139, 188n. 10, 195, 197, 202, 281
Sideris, L. H. 200, 204, 208–9, 210 Watt, J. 258n. 23, 264
Simmons, J. A. 248n. 5, 264 Weber, T. P. 250n. 8, 264
Sittler, J. 235 Webster, J. 182n. 2, 187n. 7, 195
Sleeth, M. 257n. 19 Wells, S. 278, 281, 282
Smit, D. J. 304, 313 Wenham, G. J. 34n. 3, 41n. 15, 45
Solomon (King) 58n. 9, 72, 76 West, G. O. 303n. 4, 313
Solov’ev, V. 220 Westermann, C. 74, 82
Sophia, 131, 212, 217, 221–2 White, L. Jr 1, 2, 3, 6, 11, 12, 21, 25, 31, 53,
Southgate, C. 6nn. 8–9, 8, 10, 12, 243, 245, 55, 57, 69, 123, 155, 165, 181, 195,
313 196n. 1, 210, 246, 264, 295, 297, 313
Stăniloae, D. 211 White, R. S. 82
Stavrakopoulou, F. 9, 15 Wielenga, B. 291, 294
Stead, G. C. 103n. 9, 107 Wilcox, C. 254n. 14, 265
Steck, O. H. 229, 239 Wilkinson, L. 11, 257, 258n. 23, 259, 265
328 Index

Williams, R. 285, 294 Wright, N. T. 99n. 4, 110n. 9, 111, 116,

Williams, R. D. 150, 153, 199, 205, 206n. 8, 119–20, 262, 265, 271–2
210, 238, 239 Wurst, S. 7n. 10, 11–12, 57, 68, 312
Willis, T. M. 39n. 10, 45 Wynn, M. 10, 124, 154
Wink, W. 289
Wise, D. S. 256n. 18, 265 Young, R. A. 260–1, 265
Wittenberg, G. H. 48n. 1, 55
Wood, D. 188n. 9, 195 Zachman, R. C. 179, 180
Woodrum, E. 254n. 14, 265 Zeno of Cittium 101–3, 106, 113
Wordsworth, W. 24 Zerbe, G. 256n. 18, 265
Wright, G. E. 21 Zimmerli, W. 58, 69
 Index of Subjects
(excluding names)

Entries in bold indicate substantial discussions

air 3, 22, 27, 34, 35, 50, 51, 56, 62n. 15, 76, birds 18, 22, 30, 32, 34, 50–1, 56, 73–4, 76,
114, 143, 168, 191, 213, 220, 258n. 22, 143–4, 154, 168, 172, 296
279, 296 blood 24, 32, 35–7, 39, 41, 54, 61, 66, 104,
allegory, allegorical 74, 124, 133, 140–6, 134, 258n. 22
149–51, 198n. 3,
amillennialism 254–5 capitalism 176, 250, 251, 257, 267
androcentricity 181, 305 carbon 227, 266, 289
angels 79–80, 98–9, 129, 130, 211, 278–9 Catholic, Roman 198, 217, 258, 302
animal(s)/beasts 4–5, 16, 23–7, 29, 30, 32–7, chain of Being 155, 163, 208
40–1, 46, 51–2, 56, 59n. 13, 60–6, 72–5, chaos 42, 49–50, 58–9, 64–6, 71, 79–80, 97,
78–81, 111, 124–5, 128, 140, 143–52, 221, 250, 284
154–6, 158–60, 162–4, 166, 168, 172–3, Christology 17, 19, 96, 100, 103–6, 125, 134,
177, 191–2, 204, 213, 218, 235, 250, 136–7, 141–3, 149, 182, 189, 199–200,
280, 288, 296, 300; 208, 216, 225n. 4, 229, 234, 236,
in the service of humans, 157–8, 162–3 237n. 19, 309–10
sacrifice 16, 24, 32–45 cosmic 19, 96, 103–6, 126, 235
anthropocentrism 7, 15, 17, 20, 56, 125, ecological 234–5
128–9, 168, 174, 181–4, 186, 188, climate change 127, 223, 266, 285, 306
191–4, 260, 267, 269, 278, 297 commandment(s) 37, 244, 256, 283, 286–7
anthropology, anthropological 58, 66, 86, Cornwall Declaration 258, 260
105n. 12, 126, 136n. 10, 173, 181, cosmology, Christological see Christology,
200n. 6, 203–5, 208, 224–6, 228, 230, cosmic
236, 308, 310–11 countryside 283–94
anthropomonism 123, 129–30 covenant 5, 17, 42, 57, 85, 125, 181, 188–91,
Anti-Christ 251–2 295, 305–6
apocalypse 102, 246–8, 250, 261, 268, cosmic 17, 48–55
277n. 7 Noahic see Noah in Index of Names
apokatastasis 256 creation
ascetics, asceticism 146, 150, 215–16, 219–20, doctrine of 59n. 12, 155–6, 181, 184,
244, 269, 277–8, 280–1 188, 189, 190n. 12, 193, 199,
atheism 224, 232 212–13, 228, 230, 232, 235, 273,
atonement 216, 302 275, 308, 310
Au Sable Institute 248n. 5, 255, 257n. 19, ex nihilo, out of nothing 59, 111n. 11,
authority 7, 15, 146, 148–9, 218, 269, 302, 115, 117, 212–13, 231
305 new 5, 92, 110, 111n. 11, 115, 117,
126, 223, 226–7, 233–4, 236,
beasts see animals 238, 252–3, 259–60, 271, 277,
beauty 66, 125, 141, 145, 147, 149–50, 152, 289
179, 196–210, 212, 218, 220–1, 286 crucifixion 86, 104, 131, 134, 172, 199, 213,
biodiversity 63n. 18, 266, 301 223–4, 226, 276–7
330 Index

day of the Lord 2, 108, 110, 118, 268 Evangelical Environmental Network 255–6,
deep ecology 56 257n. 19, 258
deification 211 evangelicals, evangelicalism 3–4, 8, 104, 244,
Devil see Satan in Index of Names 247–62
diet 24, 36, 51, 98, 229 Evangelicals, National Association of 247n. 3,
dispensationalism 251–62 248n. 5
doctrinal constructs 10, 245, 301–11 evolution(ary) 65n. 19, 126, 155, 166, 218,
dominion 2–4, 6, 22, 25, 33–4, 57, 65n. 20, 232, 234–5, 256, 262, 273, 306
80, 124–5, 128, 140–53, 154–6, 163, extinction 27, 223, 266
176, 178, 198, 229, 246, 258–9, 305, 308
see also radah Fall 89–90, 116n. 17, 123, 125, 129–32,
dualism/dualistic 1–2, 101, 105n. 12, 116, 135, 138, 144, 146–9, 152, 173–5, 177,
161, 297, 311 197n. 2, 211, 218–19, 256, 259
fall/redemption model 129, 132, 138
Earth Bible (as project) 6–8, 11–12, 55, 68, farm, farmer, farming 40, 47–8, 73–4, 81, 146,
82, 93–5, 106–7, 119, 243, 296, 298, 150, 177, 193, 266, 286–90, 293
306n. 5, 307–9, 312 Father (God) 75–7, 99, 106, 133, 136–7, 149,
Team (as authors) 7, 8, 11, 94n. 1, 298, 167–8, 213, 217, 223, 226–7, 232–3,
307, 308, 312 238, 309–10
ecclesiology 105, 171, 308–10 Fathers, Church 10, 104, 115, 124, 140, 143,
ecojustice 8, 94n. 1, 95, 127, 306, 309–10 151–2, 213–16, 238 see also patristics
hermeneutic 7–8 feminism, feminist 128, 267, 297–8, 304,
principles 7–8, 307–9 310
ecological/environmental crisis 2, 21, 24–5, fig tree 47, 50, 72–3, 81
27, 29, 31, 57n. 5, 123, 125–6, 127, 181, fire 4, 19, 54, 61, 64, 98, 102, 108–15, 127,
196–8, 223–5, 227–8, 231, 234, 236–7, 161, 211, 246, 268
244, 246, 260, 266–7, 269, 277–8, 281, Fundamentalism, fundamentalist 3, 193n. 3,
295, 305, 310 247n. 3, 251, 268, 272
economics 22, 27–8, 42, 73, 176, 220, 223, futility 88–90
230, 213, 233, 249–50, 252, 258, 260,
262, 283, 288, 293, 297, 299, 302, Gaia 101n. 6, 200
305–7, 309–10 Galilee 70–4, 80
ecosystems 27, 33, 59n. 13, 67n. 25, 94, genetic modification 277, 292
101n. 6, 308, 310 global warming 1, 127, 257, 266
ecotheology, ecotheologians 2, 7, 10–11, 20, 35, glory, theology of 124, 172–3, 176, 179
44, 105, 123–6, 127, 181–2, 188, 196n. 1, GM see genetic modification
197, 204, 208–9, 243–5, 305, 309 Gnosticism 87, 104n. 10, 115, 117, 130,
ecotopia 79 136n. 10, 213, 225, 270
Eden(ic) 32, 34n. 3, 36, 163 God, doctrine of 171, 225
ekpurösis 102, 113, 115–16 gospel(s) 18, 70–82, 83–5, 93, 95, 99, 100,
elements (of cosmos) 4, 39, 80, 104n. 10, 108, 104, 123, 129–30, 132–4, 138, 140–1,
110, 114–15, 150, 171, 214, 246, 261, 167, 215, 227, 250, 269–71, 275–6, 283,
268, 279 285, 289, 296
ends (teloi) 2, 24, 145, 154, 156–9, 162, 259 grace 5, 83–4, 91–3, 129, 170, 172, 175, 184,
see also teleology, telos 189, 200, 202, 208, 219, 221, 222, 251,
environmental ethic(s) 6, 16, 18–19, 47, 55, 260, 273n. 4, 275, 278–9, 280, 284
116, 155–6, 181, 188n. 11, 194, 200n. 5, ecology of 200, 279
296, 299 grass 32, 60, 65n. 20, 76, 145, 168, 220,
eschatology, eschaton 18–19, 77, 81, 83–5, 235n. 16
102, 104, 108–9, 112, 117–18, 167, 169, Green Bible, The 5–6, 8, 12, 255, 263, 265,
177, 223, 225–7, 229, 231, 233–5, 237, 296
243–4, 246–50, 253–65, 266–82, 296, groaning of creation 18, 83, 88–90, 179, 256,
308, 310, 311 262
 Index 331

Hellenism, Hellenistic 19, 59n. 12, 85n. 1, liberation 20, 85–7, 90, 111, 136n. 10, 170,
94–107 179, 232, 236, 237, 267, 280, 296–8,
hermeneutic of retrieval 307 302–4, 309
hermeneutics of suspicion 298, 304–5, 307 likeness (of God/the divine) 90, 131, 135, 137,
household 40, 310 143–4, 146–7, 149–50, 159–60, 163, 214
human nature 28–30, 35, 144–6, 149–51, 216, liturgy, liturgical 54, 141, 197, 198n. 3, 211,
266 244, 273, 278–80, 299
logos, logoi 101n. 6, 102n. 7, 103, 105, 133–5,
image of God/divine 2, 22, 124, 135–6, 138, 151, 202–3, 207–8, 212, 215, 217–20
140, 143–52, 160–2, 177, 199, 218, 229, Lord’s prayer 77–8, 95, 175, 213
284
immanence of God/divine 59, 101, 102n. 7, Manichees 142–3, 150
124, 166, 174, 178, 220, 231–3, 236, 308 Manifest Destiny 249
impurity see purity meat 16, 23–6, 34, 36–7, 146, 150
Incarnation, 124, 125, 134–8, 151–2, 206n. 8, Messiah 48, 80–1, 283
214, 216, 219, 226, 261, 275–7, 303, miracles 18, 75, 78, 221
309 mountain(s) 26, 50, 54, 65, 75, 111, 158, 166,
injustice 48, 275, 295, 297, 305, 307–8, 310 192, 197, 211, 215–16, 220, 279, 293,
interconnectedness (of creation) 7, 18–19, 95, 296
102n. 7, 106, 124–5, 150, 152, 200n. 5, multiply 22, 34–7, 43n. 17, 143
247, 307–8 mutual custodianship, principle of 7, 306n. 5,
instrumentalism 23, 89, 181, 192, 251, 267 307–8
intrinsic worth/value of non-human creation 7,
19, 28, 307–8 Nag Hammadi 155
Israelite(s) 16, 22, 29, 33, 35, 38–40, 43, 49, narrative, biblical 129, 135, 246, 278, 301,
58n. 8, 59, 80, 253 303
creation 6, 21, 25, 123, 130, 184, 188,
Jerusalem 78, 80, 110, 111n. 10, 133, 170, 190–1
271, 311 Genesis 135, 189–91
New 248–9, 258 natural theology 125, 181–2, 184–6, 188–9
Jesus Seminar 270–2 naturalism 274, 276
Jubilee 230, 288, 289–91 new age 3, 85, 244, 252
justice 8, 37, 48, 52, 54–5, 67, 135, 169, 229, new earth, new heaven 5, 19, 104, 108, 110,
244, 254, 260, 262, 267, 270, 272, 275, 112, 114, 117, 178, 198, 228, 235, 246,
283, 284, 287, 293, 303, 307, 310 see 249–53, 268, 273
also ecojustice
justification 83, 85, 92, 172–3, 176–9, 302, ocean(s) 59n. 13, 80, 159, 166, 168, 205 see
304, 309 also sea(s)
oikos 1n. 1, 105, 207, 233, 310
kabash 22, 25–6, 28, 30, 192, 305 see also organic farming/husbandry 75, 289
subdue Orthodoxy (Eastern) 211–22
keep (as in shamar) 229, 244, 257, 285–7,
290–1, 306 panentheism 126, 199, 232
Kingdom of God/Heaven 18, 70, 74–81, 211, pantheism 105, 199, 232
213, 223n. 1, 227, 230–1, 260, 276, 302 parables 71–2, 74–6, 78, 256
see also peaceable kingdom paradise, paradisal 79, 80n. 12, 81, 149, 213,
286
land 16, 22, 27, 29–30, 38, 40, 42, 43n. 17, parousia 109–10, 111n. 10, 250, 270 see also
47–8, 50, 54, 58, 63, 65, 72, 75, 135, Second Coming
144, 150, 230, 236n. 18, 244, 258n. 22, patriarchy 99, 181, 267, 297, 305
285–91, 293 patristics 103n. 9, 124, 140–53, 213–15, 226,
Last Day(s) 168, 169, 175 306 see also Fathers, Church
Left Behind series 262 peaceable kingdom 18, 51, 79–80, 249
332 Index

perichoresis 126, 233, 237 Sabbath 30, 96, 98, 190, 230–1, 244, 280,
personification 18, 57n. 4, 61, 86, 310 284, 290
pets 40 Sabbath year 29, 230, 236n. 18, 290
pigs 73, 81 sacraments 105–6, 167, 171, 219, 296, 298,
plant(s) 23, 27, 34–6, 56, 60–1, 73–4, 76, 78, 306, 309
145, 147, 160, 163, 164, 166, 175, 213, sacred 44, 283, 306
235, 262, 279, 288–9, 292 see also trees sacrifice see animal sacrifice
politics 253, 283 sanctuary 38–42, 44, 190
pollution 29, 39, 44, 48–9, 198, 223, 248n. 5, Satan see Index of Names
252–3, 258n. 22, 266 science/scientific 1, 2, 8, 21, 27, 31, 57–8, 63,
population 27, 267, 285, 290, 293 see also 97, 101n. 6, 106, 115, 166, 182, 183,
multiply 187n. 5, 196n. 1, 197, 198, 204, 207n. 9,
postmillennialism 243, 248–9 208, 223–5, 229, 231, 232, 233, 237,
predation 26, 36, 163, 250 244, 249–50, 257–9, 272, 273–4, 276,
premillennialism 243, 249–51, 253–5, 257, 281, 284, 292
259–62 sea(s) 3, 22, 34–5, 51, 56, 61–4, 65n. 21, 71,
priest, priestly 33–44, 49, 55, 148, 190, 192, 80, 135, 142, 143, 145, 154, 191, 221 see
233 also ocean(s)
of creation/nature, humanity as 125, Second Coming 246n. 2, 249, 251, 253–4,
148–9, 216, 219, 305 257, 269 see also parousia
progress 21, 215, 223, 224, 249, 251, 258, secularization 24, 52, 60n. 14, 129, 189, 232,
274, 284, 306 247n. 3, 248n. 5, 258, 260–2, 283, 295,
Protestant 24, 104, 125, 129, 182, 183, 186, 297, 303–5, 309
188, 251 servants, humans as servants of the rest of
providence 76, 100, 116, 145, 154, 162, 218, creation 125, 192–3, 229, 286
296, 308, 310 shalom 5, 53, 117, 254
Puritans 24, 248, 268 Sinai 48–9, 52, 85n. 2, 215
purity/impurity 37–41, 96, 98, 117, 147 slave, slavery, enslavement 29–30, 78, 86–7,
91, 288, 290–1
radah 22, 25–6, 28, 30, 192, 305 see also social gospel 250
dominion Son (of God) 85–6, 110, 132–6, 143, 149, 176,
Rapture 247n. 4, 251, 253, 262 189, 197, 217, 219, 223, 232, 277, 284,
reconciliation 117, 284, 303, 310 286, 309
of humanity with non-human creation/ Sophia see wisdom and Index of Names
nature 27–8, 79 220 soul 98, 100, 103, 131, 146–9, 151–2, 171,
of people to God 78, 106 175, 211, 213, 215, 220–1, 225, 229,
of whole creation with God 5, 19, 100, 236, 247, 280, 283
103–4, 235, 255–6, 284 Spirit, cosmic 221, 231
recycling 118, 127 Holy 135, 142–3, 186, 198n. 3, 202,
redemption 18, 70, 83, 87, 90, 92, 123, 125, 223, 231–2, 234n. 13, 302, 306,
129–30, 132, 135, 138, 175, 197, 211, 309
228, 230, 232–3, 235–7, 260–1, 280, in relation to creation 92, 135, 137,
291, 296, 302, 308, 310–11 142–3, 179, 202, 231–6, 272, 280,
Religious Right 247n. 3 306, 310
renewal, of the earth/present creation 5, 19, stage, creation as 123, 125, 129–30, 132, 189,
75–9, 112, 117, 247, 255, 259–60 see 191–3,
also transformation stars 64, 65, 98–9, 110, 114, 166, 167, 172,
resurrection 90, 92, 130, 213, 219, 223, 177, 214, 268
276–7, 280–1, 284, 302, 309 stewards, stewardship 3–4, 6, 10, 15, 65n. 20,
righteousness 54, 84–6, 92–3, 110, 112, 116, 111, 118, 257–8, 260–1, 299, 305–6,
136, 268 308, 310
Rio Earth Summit 196 stoicheia 4, 114 see also elements
river(s) 62n. 15, 192, 258, 296 Stoicism 19, 95–6, 99–106, 113–17
 Index 333

subdue, subduer 2, 22, 25, 34, 89, 143, 188, tree(s) 23, 30, 34, 47, 49–50, 62n. 16, 72–4,
229, 305 see also kabash 78, 81, 168, 172, 177, 201, 213, 258,
subjection of creation/animals (to futility) 262, 269, 296
88–90, 154 Trinity 103n. 9, 105, 126, 143, 149, 167,
sun 62, 72, 75–6, 110, 114, 167–8, 172, 177, 206n. 8, 208, 217, 223n. 1, 227, 229,
178, 211, 268 232–3, 237–8, 284, 309, 310
supernatural 198, 203
universalism, of God’s promise to Abraham
technology 2, 21–3, 32, 57, 207n. 9, 220, 85
223–4, 258, 267, 289–90, 292, 306 urbanism, urbanization 48, 250, 285, 287
teleology of creation 156–62
telos 156–7, 160, 163, 189 see also ends vegetarianism 23–8, 34, 41, 51, 146, 150,
temple in Jerusalem 17, 34n. 3, 37–40, 50, 53, 191n. 13
78, 81, 271 voice, of non-human creation/earth/animals 7,
theophany, creation/nature as 125, 199–200, 62, 192, 280, 298, 307–8
207–8, 212, 215 principle of 7, 307–8
till (‘abad) 244, 248, 285–6
Torah 96, 283, 288–9, 291–2, 294 web of life 17, 67, 94, 104n. 11, 237, 266
transcendence 24, 59, 105, 125, 131, 174, 198, wilderness 3, 18, 59n. 13, 65, 67, 78–80,
202–3, 208, 232–4, 275, 308, 311 243–4, 248–50, 258–9
transfiguration 211–12, 215–16 wisdom 17, 55, 56–69, 73, 75, 97–100, 135,
transformation, of the earth/present creation 145, 147, 173, 211–14, 217, 221, 231,
4–5, 19, 66, 79n. 10, 88, 92, 108, 233, 244, 266–7, 270, 281, 283–4, 292,
110–15, 116, 118, 176, 216, 226, 234, 294, 295–6, 298, 310
247, 252, 255, 259, 262, 271 see also Wise Use 258, 260
renewal World Council of Churches 48, 313