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There is one point that
must be made clear at the outset. The Church does not exist to serve
secular ends, even the noblest of secular ends. It cannot serve as a
vehicle for putting across the message of the environmental movement, or
of any other movement. The Church will always have a different emphasis
from any movement or pressure group in this world because it operates on
a different scale - not just global, but cosmic. As citizens, many of us
will agree that environmental concerns should be at the top of the
social and political agenda. But we shall also understand that the
Church can never make an issue such as protection of the environment, or
social justice, central to its preaching: not because we can live
according to the Gospel without these things, but because these are
works which will be "added unto us" as we "seek first the Kingdom of
Heaven". The importance of these things is incalculable, but it is
derivative. For this reason, attempts within the Church to look deeply
into our own tradition and see what it entails for our use of the
material world are absolutely crucial. They must never be seen as a
theological distraction from the "real" task of cleaning up pollution,
starting recycling schemes and lobbying politicians to stop building yet
more roads.
The urgency of the environmental problems must never be allowed to
obscure the Church's cosmic perspective (correspondingly, it would be a
cynical distortion to suggest that this cosmic perspective is
trivialized when we worry about stopping air pollution from the local
factory or using recycled paper). There is a potential danger in love
and concern for the earth that we must guard against: even God's
creation - that creation he looked upon, and saw that it was very good -
risks becoming an idol if we cherish it and value it apart from Him. To
quote from Alexander Schmemann:
"Man has loved the world, but as an end in itself and not as transparent
to God ... The natural dependence of man upon the world was intended to
be transformed constantly into communication with God in whom is all
life ... When we see the world as an end in itself, everything becomes
itself a value and consequently loses all value, because only in God is
found the meaning (value) of everything, and the world is meaningful
only when it is a 'sacrament' of God's presence ... The world of nature,
cut off from the source of life, is a dying world." (For the Life of the
World, SVS Press, New York, 1973.)
Seen in this perspective, the struggle for the mere physical survival of
this fallen world is a pointless exercise, a perpetuation of death. We
save a species from extinction - but all the individuals of that species
currently alive will be dead in a few years just the same, and the
species itself may eventually become extinct anyway. For us, therefore,
protection of the environment cannot be merely a desperate attempt to
hang onto the status quo, to preserve at all costs a life which is by
its nature transitory. No, our love for the frail things of God's
material creation makes sense only as a sign - a sign that God comes
into His world to give life and not death, and that our appointed task
is to preach this good news to all creation. This vitally important
difference of perspective should not lead us to be dismissive or
suspicious of others who care deeply for the created world. Rather, it
reminds us that their care and reverence needs to be taken a step
further. It is precisely the Three Children who would not worship the
creation rather than the Creator who gives us our model, crying out to
the earth and the mountains, the plants, the seas and rivers, sea
creatures and birds and all beasts, "All ye works of the Lord, bless the
Lord; sing and magnify Him forever".
1. Man and his environment - a spiritual problem
One of the great breakthroughs made by the environmental movement is the
recognition that the roots of human destruction of the environment are
to be sought not just in actions, but in our most deep-seated attitudes.
Certainly, it is possible to look at the environmental crisis largely in
utilitarian terms. The ozone hole brings increased risks of skin cancer,
polluted rivers and dying fish threaten people's health and livelihood,
the destruction of rain forests exacerbates the greenhouse effect as
well as destroying many plant species that might prove to have medicinal
value. But as one thinks seriously even just about man's needs, the
basic requirements for survival - breathable air, drinkable water,
non-toxic food - keep shading off into other needs, harder to analyze
but no less real - for beauty, for space, for contact with the living
world around us. And this is already to recognize that man is more than
a statistical unit: his welfare cannot be reduced to economics and
technology. It is not enough for him to keep alive by consuming the
world around him: he needs a relationship with it that is not purely
utilitarian and consumptive. It is this relationship that has gone
drastically wrong in what are ironically called "developed" societies.
Increasing numbers of people are drawn to the conclusion that our
destruction of the environment is merely one symptom of a whole set of
human attitudes to the rest of nature which are necessarily
unsustainable because they are profoundly misguided. (Examples of such
attitudes are the ideas that we can alter entire ecosystems with
impunity, that the world has value only as "raw material" to be
exploited for economic gain, or that a catastrophe for other species
will leave us unaffected). And many go a step further to see in these
attitudes a serious spiritual problem.
The mess we have made of the world, then, has forced on many people a
recognition that we are not the all-powerful masters of the laws of
nature: we are creatures, part of the created world, and we cannot treat
the rest of the world as if it is our property to use however we like. A
belated recognition, to put it in theological terms, that the promise
"You shall not surely die ... you shall be gods," (Gen. 3:5) is a snare
and a delusion. This would not have been a revelation to many people
before the "Enlightenment" and the industrial revolution; but for the
modern industrialized world, it is an amazing reversal. This is an
opening which we must be prepared to seize, preaching the truth both of
man's creatureliness, and of his unique God-given responsibility for the
whole of material creation. One way that other Christians are trying to
do this is by inventing new forms of worship which "affirm" material
creation. I do not believe that we have any need to do this; but we do
need to make an effort to understand, and to show to others, the full
implications of the way that our Church tradition already experiences
the world as a vehicle for God's grace, transparent to Him. The quest
for a new environment ethic, with its radical rethinking of man's place
in the world, has the potential to be truly providential opportunity for
Orthodox witness to today's world. But we shall not be able to make use
of this opportunity unless we realize the obstacles that have to be
tackled first.
To put it bluntly, many people concerned about the environment see the
Christian tradition as the source, not of the solution, but of the
problem. In its most extreme form, this line of argument actually sees
the root of the present crisis in the supposed "license for
exploitation" provided by the commandment to "Fill the earth and subdue
it, and have dominion over every living thing" (Gen. 1:28). This
suggestion has been refuted often enough, with profound and detailed
explanations of what this mandate does and does not mean in the
Christian understanding. Here, I want to underline only that there is a
serious historical objection to this negative interpretation of the
Christian tradition. If exploitation is built into the Christian
understanding of man's relationship with the rest of nature, it is very
hard to explain why a Christian civilization with the expertise and
sophistication to build Agia Sophia or invent Greek fire should have
totally failed to develop exploitative technologies or policies as we
know them today. Far from having its origins in the in the heyday of
Christian civilization, the exploitative mentality seems to have gained
currency only after the "Enlightenment", which marks the decline of the
Christian influence on the way people looked at themselves and their
place in the world.
Another variant of this argument discounts Christianity as the possible
source of an environmental ethic on the grounds that it is
"anthropocentric". The following summary of the views of an American
lecturer in ethics is typical: "Judeo-Christian anthropocentrism must
open up to a spiritual sense of our place in nature and of earth as the
sacred work of the Creator," and it continues, "at present, we find it
nearly impossible to grasp that we live in a world that we did not
create and cannot control". But it is not easy to make a convincing link
between this misconception, and faith in the God who challenges man,
"Where were you when I laid the foundations to the Earth? Tell me, if
you have understanding ... Have you commanded the morning since your
days began ... do you give the horse his might ... is it by your wisdom
that the hawk soars, and spreads his wings towards the south?" (Job
38:4, 12, 16; 39:19, 26). Obviously, from the Christian point of view,
the idea that man is in ultimate control of the world is possible only
if you leave God out of the picture. Central to the Christian
understanding of the World is not man, but God. It is in Him, the Master
and Creator of all, that we relate to each other and to all the other
creatures that He has made. It is in His image that we have dominion
over all other living creatures. Indeed, the ancient Syriac translation
of the relevant verse in Genesis (1:26) makes the connection crystal
clear by saying, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, in
order that they may have authority...".
Whatever "dominion" we have is in the image of God, the God "who is King
forever and has wrought salvation in the midst of the earth" – which
means on the Cross, in the ultimate humility of His death for the life
of the world. Certainly, the teaching of the image of God in man gives
man a high dignity, as well as commensurate responsibility. So that if
one tries to distill from Christianity a 'world view' or theory of man's
place in nature without reference to God, the result is likely to look
"anthropocentric". But such a "world view" is no longer the Christian
faith. The Christian faith is not actually designed, so to speak, to
make sense apart from God.
Given the frequency with which the charge of anthropocentrism is made,
it is hardly surprising that a number of Christians have accepted it and
feel the need to apologize for it. I would suggest that, rather than
apologize for the undoubted place of honor that we ascribe to man, we
should be prepared to defend it and to explain why it is not to the
detriment of the rest of creation.
Christianity certainly stresses the special position of man in relation
to God and to the rest of creation. This contrasts with religious which
are considered, in some quarters, more "environmentally sound" - such as
those which identify certain animals with divine spirits, or which teach
the reincarnation of the soul in various other creatures (though it is
unclear to me how the dignity of an animal would be enhanced by
regarding it as a potential human that failed to make the grade). There
are two aspects of the Christian view of man that I want to comment on
here.
Firstly, man is seen as uniquely placed to manifest and mediate the
praise of God from the rest of the natural world. In the words of
Leontius of Cyprus:
"... through all creation visible and invisible, I offer veneration to
the Creator and Master and Maker of all things. For the creation does
not venerate the Master directly and by itself, but it is through me
that the heavens declare the glory of God ... through me the waters and
showers of rain, the dews and all creation, venerate God and give Him
glory."
This is not to deny that there is a real link between God and His
non-human creation. On the contrary: if the potential for praising God
were not built into the very structure of created things, we should not
be able to manifest it. In fact, what we have is a kind of synergy of
created beings: all creation bears the stamp of God's glory, but by His
economy it is given to man to bring this potential to its fulfillment.
Adherents of other religions - or none - may disagree with this
evaluation of man's place in creation: but a license for exploitation it
certainly is not. On the contrary, this understanding of man's
responsibility seriously circumscribes the ways in which he can
legitimately use material creation. In its high assessment of man's
role, it embodies a realism which can best be understood from the
negative side. What I mean is this: man's crucial role as mediator
becomes tragically clear when we see his unparalleled capacity to
obscure the glory of God in nature, to drown God's handiwork under the
debris of his own greed and arrogance.
Secondly, the teaching about man in general has always been balanced in
the tradition of the Church by teaching about man in particular – that
is, our neighbor. This does not exclude showing neighborliness also to
other creatures - we may recall the story of St. Sergius of Radonezh
giving his last piece of bread to a bear, because it could not be
expected to understand the meaning of fasting. But it might well
exclude, for instance, telling a famished traveler that there was
nothing to eat because the bear had prior claim. This stress on the
importance of man, not as an abstract entity but in the person of the
brother or sister standing in front of us, is something that we must
insist on. It may be able to serve as a much-needed bridge between the
human suffering of people whose immediate basic needs - for food, fuel
or livelihood - conflict with the interest of the environment, and an
environmental agenda which often seems to put their welfare some way
behind that of whales, tigers or rosy periwinkles. This perception of
conservationist priorities is often less than fair, and sometimes due to
deliberate misrepresentation - but it can cause great bitterness and
polarization. We recognize, certainly, that radical disruption of the
natural environment is in one's ultimate interests. But any approach
which sacrifices the person to the principle, seeing other human beings
as inevitable casualties for the sake of a greater good, will be
profoundly alien to us. Awareness of the spiritual dimension of the
environment crisis, coupled with a reluctance in some quarters to take
the Christian tradition as a basis for an environment ethic, creates a
dangerous vacuum. This vacuum is filled all too often by eastern
religions or by a "New Age" synthesis of religious and spiritual beliefs
ranging from earth-mother worship to reincarnation to divination with
crystals. Let me be perfectly clear: there are large numbers of
environmentalists who have no sympathy whatsoever for this kind of
spirituality. But the danger it poses is twofold. On the one hand, it
leads some people to see any concern with the environment as
neopaganism and nature worship, and therefore a threat to our faith. On
the other hand, New Age spirituality, with its very prominent emphasis
on respect for the earth and all its creatures, can actually seem an
obvious and attractive option for environmentally aware people looking
for a spiritual home. The tragic irony of the situation is this: so many
of the elements that people value in the New Age movements - harmony of
man with nature, a sense of the sacred permeating creation, the dignity
of the material world - are so richly represented in the authentic
Christian tradition, if only they had ever really encountered it. This
is all the more reason for us to recall that it was to a pagan world
that St. Paul preached the identity of the Unknown God, and to take up
his example.
"Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love
every leaf, every ray of God's light! Love the animals, love the plants,
love everything. If you love everything you will perceive the divine
mystery in things. And once you have perceived it you will begin to
comprehend it ceaselessly, more and more every day. And you will at last
come to love the whole world with an abiding universal love. Love the
animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy.
Do not therefore, trouble it, do not torture them, do not deprive them
of their joy, do not go against God's intent. " Starets Zosima in the
novel The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
"Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there
he put the man he had formed And the Lord God made all kinds of trees
grow out of the ground - trees that were pleasing to the eye and good
for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil." From the book of Genesis
2. Do we need to save the earth?
If we are looking for points of contact with the environmental movement,
we may well start by noting the prevailing terminology. Today, instead
of hearing about "developing" or improving our natural environment – or
even "protecting" it - we increasingly hear about saving - the whale, or
the rain forests, or the earth itself. Of course, "to save" means many
things, not necessarily closely connected with salvation in a
theological sense. But all senses of saving have one thing in common:
the implication that the situation is desperate. Commenting on the
meaning of salvation, Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes:
"A drowning man, a man whose home is engulfed in flames, a man falling
over the edge of a cliff does not pray for comfort or comforting words,
but for salvation." And yet, he continues, "...we have stopped viewing
ourselves as beings who are truly perishing, beings whose life is
rushing inexorably towards meaningless collapse..."
The interesting thing to note is that this is probably rather less true
today than when it was written a few decades ago. "Meaningless collapse"
is a fate that we can very envisage for the whole of our civilization
and for earth itself as a viable habitat for ourselves and many other
creatures; and the fact that this will come about, if it does, through
our own fault, raises the question of salvation from the power of death
in acute form. This is the point at which the Church should be offering
its own view of what we have to do to "save the earth". Compared with
the view of most secular environmentalists, the task as we see it will
be at once more radical and less formidable.
For us, what the earth requires (along with all of creation) is indeed
salvation in the fullest sense. It does not need simply to be relieved
from the worst depredations of human poverty or greed and allowed to
regulate its own climate and ecosystems without interference: it needs
to be "set free from bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of
the sons of God" (Rom. 8:21). To address environmental problems on a
purely functional level, without repentance, might if successful ensure
the continued survival of humanity and many other species - but it would
be doing no more than to control the symptoms of the malaise.
On the other hand, we can confidently affirm that, in a sense, we do not
have to save the earth. This is where we can provide a desperately
needed message of hope amidst the sense of doom and almost paralyzing
pessimism that so often characterizes warnings about the state of the
environment. It is not that these warnings are alarmist: often far from
it. But they make us feel dwarfed by the enormity of the problems, the
insignificance of any individual's contribution, the weight of
complacency and lack of political will - not to mention the agonizing
conflicts of interest when people's entire way of life is tied in with
polluting industries, destructive patterns of agriculture or hunting of
threatened species. In human terms, the task seems hopeless - until we
realize that it is not up to us to save the earth. It is not up to us
because the earth, along with all creation is saved in Christ. Of course
this does not mean that we have no responsibility - because what I am
talking about here is a matter of synergy. We are responsible for doing
everything in our power to work out that salvation in all our dealings
with the world - to work with God's purpose and not contrary to it. But
we should be in no doubt that God who made the world out of nothing is
able to rescue our planet from the brink of destruction, even when our
most careful scientific predictions suggest that the cause is hopeless.
The clear understanding that we humans are reaping the consequences of
our very own actions should in no way cause us to lose heart – that
would be to deny the possibility of repentance and forgiveness. We may
recall that in the prayers of the Litya, we implore the Lord "to turn
away from us the righteous chastisement that impends against us, and
have mercy upon us". This basic confidence in God's saving power will
not diminish either our sense of urgency, or our dedication to finding
ways of undoing human damage to the earth and its creatures. But it does
enable us to do all these things, in the words of St. Isaac the Syrian:
"... humbling ourselves always, and giving the glory to Him who works
with us in everything and is the cause of our victory; and placing
ourselves in His hands in the struggle, saying to God, 'Thou art mighty,
Lord, and Thine is the struggle. Fight and conquer in it, Lord, on our
behalf'. Because the power that works with us is never defeated."
If we need to sound a note of alarm for those who are complacent, the
note of hope for those who are acutely aware of the environmental crisis
is no less timely. Indeed, the programs prescribed even to keep
greenhouse gasses and other forms of pollution at current levels can
seem an austere and joyless list of prohibitions. But for a very
different model, we need only to look at the way we use material things
in our liturgical life. The fasts certainly give us an example of a
frugal - though by no means joyless - use of resources, schooling us to
accept even the simplest of foods with thankfulness. But fasting is only
one aspect of liturgical life; we also feast. There are times when we
also learn how to give thanks for the abundance of good things, earthly
as well as heavenly, that God has bestowed on us - while the awareness
that these are always gifts should prevent abundance from leading to
contempt. And, yes, love does sometimes involve waste in material terms:
we need only think of the of the mounds of flowers brought to church for
Easter, or Holy Friday, or the Exaltation of the Cross. But this lavish
use of the world has nothing in common with the waste of resources that
accounts for so much of the environmental damage in more affluent
societies. The latter sees resources as ours by right, guaranteed to
remain freely available as long as we can pay for them. By contrast,
when we use flowers and branches to adorn the church we are (or should
be) offering something precious back to Him who "opens His hand, and all
things are filled with good". When we take first-fruits of the material
world not for our own consumption, but to offer them back to God, it is
an expression of our confidence that the "rich have become poor and gone
hungry; but they that fear that the Lord shall not lack any good thing".
3. In a global village, who is my neighbor?
Revelations in the recent years of the ways in which we have affected
our environment have made us learn the hard way something that we should
know as a basic truth of Christian anthropology: we are members one of
another, part of the same body, and what each of us does affects the
rest of mankind. Even if we have always tried to live according to this
belief, the environmental movement is in large part responsible for
giving us a whole range of new examples of what it means in practice. We
can now see, not only ways in which our affluence deprives the poor of
their basic needs, but ways in which it inflicts on them what they need
least of all, such as a toxic landfill or a power station on their
doorstep. We are also made increasingly aware of the links between
environmental degradation and economic pressures. These may be pressures
of poverty, where people have to clear irreplaceable forests in order to
grow food for a year or two, or a country is forced into the
environmentally devastating monoculture of cash crops to service
crippling foreign debts. Or they may be pressures of affluence, where
large numbers of people are employed in the manufacture of inessentials,
which have to be made less durable and sold to more and more people who
don't need them in order to preserve jobs. Either way, we can no longer
escape the realization that each of us plays some part in this complex
economic network.
All this raises in a new and acute form the question, "Who is my
neighbor?" Once we have the opportunity to learn how even our private
choices of food, clothing and goods can benefit or harm people whom we
shall never meet, we cannot shrug off our responsibility towards them
simply because they live on the opposite side of the world. Avoiding
harm to others by my choices can seem so complicated as to be hardly
worth attempting, and we certainly cannot all become experts in the
intricacies of international trade. But I believe that we can and should
take advantage of the information available to us and act on it as best
we can - not in a doctrinaire way, such as by boycotting certain
products on principle whatever the awkwardness caused to our immediate
neighbor, but as an expression of love and care for the neighbor whose
life touches ours only indirectly. To dictate positions that should be
taken in economic affairs is not the role of the Church - but to
encourage awareness of the consequences of our actions is surely a
legitimate exercise. When in many ways we are acutely conscious of
living in a "global village", it is not honest to dismiss this awareness
of our place in a global economic network as "meddling in politics" and
imagine that we can be responsible only towards those with whom we are
in daily personal contact.
As we learn more about the effects of our actions on others, we must
expect to be challenged to live out our faith in new ways. Perhaps the
most striking example of this is the question of population. We can
learn very little about the pressures on our environment before
realizing that virtually every problem is exacerbated by the weight of
human numbers. Activities, which have been largely sustainable for
millennia, such as small-scale farming, become destructive when there is
no longer enough suitable land to go round. Let it be quite clear: we
are not talking about encouraging a materialistic outlook in which
"quality of life" is measured in terms of modern conveniences and
high-tech gadgets. We are talking about saving millions of people from
abject misery. If this is materialistic, it is the same "materialism" as
obliges us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked instead of giving
them edifying tracts about the unimportance of material things. If we
accept this reality, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that one way of
furthering this basic work of charity is voluntarily to limit the size
of one's own family.
Recognizing the effects on others of even so intimate a matter as how
many children we have is just one instance of the profound change in
thinking that the environmental movement is bringing about among many
people in the industrialized world. Understanding the roots of the
global crisis spells an end to individualism - a recognition that
cooperation, not competition, is the way forward. Nothing of the earth's
bounty is "my own":
"This cursed and abominable phrase comes from the devil", as Chrysostom
says with typical directness, "we cannot say 'my own light, my own sun,
my own water'".
At the same time, environmental thinking takes us beyond an impersonal
collectivism, with the recognition that "small is beautiful" and that
problems need locally appropriate solutions that are on a human scale.
Of course, I am not claiming for a moment that either of these
aberrations - individualism or collectivism - is dead. On the contrary:
the pressure to exploit whatever and whoever one can for profit, coupled
with the terrifying power of a few multi-national companies to impose a
uniform culture of consumerism on the entire world, has never been a
greater threat. But in the environmental movement we find a powerful and
articulate ally in the struggle against these tendencies. It provides a
climate in which people may be receptive to a model of human society
that is in the image of the Holy Trinity - a society of persons in
relationship, neither isolated as individuals nor subsumed into a
faceless collective. The historically close connection of the Orthodox
Church with various national cultures puts the local Churches in a
unique position to lead the quest for local solutions to environmental
problems.
4. A way forward or a way back?
There is a wide measure of agreement on the problems the world faces,
and on some of the practical steps necessary to alleviate them. But when
it comes to principles for guiding a sustainable way of living for the
future, the discussion can resemble that of a party of lost travelers at
a crossroads: everyone knows they are going the wrong way, but no one
can agree which road to take instead.
Some environmentalists seem to hark back to a golden age when
hunter-gatherers killed their prey with respect and had minimal
environmental impact. (There were fewer of them, which helped). Of
course, nobody imagines that we could all return to such a way of life;
but it is seen as a model, along with the nature religions that such
cultures often professed.
This "back to nature" argument is superficially attractive. There is no
doubt that without our ability to manipulate nature, we should not have
got ourselves or the world around us into the present mess. It is not
simply that we have been motivated by greed or arrogance. Even our most
benign interferences with the natural order, such as the eradication or
control of childhood diseases, turn out to have some negative
consequences for the environment and for its inhabitants. Technological
advances at work and labor-saving devices around the house manage to
leave us with less, not more, time for the important things of life.
They make it even harder to appreciate the worth of the task in hand,
whatever it may be: we are constantly encouraged to think only of
results, and to want them as quickly and conveniently as possible. Yet
we seem to be locked into a cycle of tinkering more and more with the
natural order. Even conservationists trying to restore "natural"
habitats discover that they cannot just leave everything to nature as if
man had never interfered; the most they can do is intervene judiciously
to simulate natural conditions. We have created a legacy of destruction
that will not go away even if we stop adding to it from this moment; in
many cases, it will get worse unless new technologies are devised to
ameliorate it. This suggests that the only realistic way out is a way
forward, by devising more and more sophisticated ways of counteracting
our own influence on the earth.
Perhaps the most striking case of such development is the new technology
which some people hail as the answer to many of our environmental
problems. I am not talking about genetic engineering involving humans,
where grave ethical problems are widely recognized, but about
manipulation of crops and perhaps of livestock. I would offer the
personal view that this is an example of an inadmissible "mastery over
nature" precisely because it is anthropocentric - it suggests that we
can relate to nature and use it for our benefit without reference to
God. What we are taught about the consequences of Babel combines with
what we know about the consequences of many previous scientific
"breakthroughs" to suggest that we cannot disturb the natural order to
this extent with impunity. And our creatureliness is every bit as
important a part of the natural order as the food chain.
Does this mean that, after all, the only way out is back? That the
attempt to solve environmental problems with more technology is not
legitimate, and therefore not viable in the long term? The answer, I
believe, is no. The inventive and adventurous use of nature by man is
not an aberration, but something fundamental to his nature.
This brings me to my final point. Some of the statements of
conservationists leave us with the impression that the problem is, quite
simply, man - and that the only way to protect some part of the
environment is to restrict all normal human activity there. Of course,
restricting certain human activities may be very necessary. But we must
bear in mind that the Lord put Adam in a garden "to till it and keep it"
(Gen. 2:15). He did not put him in a wilderness park with strict
instructions to picnic in designated areas only and to keep off the
grass. Of course, there is a vast and fateful difference between the way
we use the world in our fallen state, and what God intended. But this
does not invalidate the basic point: man is a part of nature, not as
just another animal, but precisely as man - a creature who makes
ingenious and creative use of the world around him, - and in this way
gives glory to God. The "dominion" that is given to him starts with the
"beasts" within himself, as St. Gregory of Nyssa makes plain, it is no
use ruling over the wild beasts outside while we give free rein to those
within us. This defines the sense in which we must indeed find our way
"back to nature" - to the true nature of man, who is creative but also
created. Perhaps the greatest gift the Church can give to those who love
God's creation and are deeply ashamed of man's part in its destruction
is the witness of the Saints - that man can be the means of restoration
for the world, not by trying to merge in with other animals and leaving
no mark on the world, but by becoming more fully human. There are few
better ways to express this truth than by pointing to the icon – that
extraordinarily audacious use of elements of the material world combined
by human artifice to become transparent to God. In the words of Bishop
Basil (Osborne) of Sergievo:
"... the icon bears witness to the fact that there is a way back for man
... that he is not condemned to an ever-increasing estrangement from God
or to the creation of an ever more opaque world. There is a corner that
can be turned. Man can create forms that help God to be present in this
world."
It would be no exaggeration to say that the message of the environmental
movement is a call to repentance. To be sure, this "repentance" begins
as a change of heart for the sake of survival. But there is no reason
why it should not prepare the way for us and others to heed the message
to repent and believe in the Gospel. If I have spent time on aspects of
the environmental movement which may be disturbing to some Orthodox, it
is because these need to be confronted and dealt with openly, rather
than left as excuse for some people to dismiss environmentalism as a New
Age heresy. I do not believe that concern for God's material creation
should be confined to a small group of Orthodox who are already involved
to some extent in the environmental movement. I believe it is one of the
most vital ways in which we are called to bear witness today to our
faith in the living Savior of the world.
*Copyright: *Printed by Orthdruk Orthodox Printing House, Bialystok,
Poland, 1996.
The author. Dr. Elizabeth Theokritoff is an Orthodox theologian and
writer from England.
The paper was originally written for the Syndesmos Orthodox Youth and
Ecology Seminar, in Neamt, Romania, April 1994.
*Source: *The Orthodoxy and Ecology Resource Book is produced by
SYNDESMOS, The World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth.
*Editor: *Alexander Belopopsky and Dimitri Oikonomou
© 2003 Greek
Orthodox Archdiocese of America
www.goarch.org <http: www.goarch.org>
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