Giving Back to Nature

[No biblical rationale can] justify the mindless affluence of consumer society. To impose austerity on a society may be unwise, but it is even more unwise to impose affluence on a nation through hidden persuasion, and to make some people more affluent than others. In taking what is given by “nature,” we should be careful to give back to “nature” what it needs to maintain its integrity and to supply the needs of the future.

~ “New Testament Foundations for Understanding the Creation,” Au Sable Forum paper, Mancelona, Michigan, 1985.

Why Creation is Incomprehensible

Creation is not fully comprehensible in as much as we are unable to stand outside that creation to gain perspective of the creation as a whole…. Even if we had a vantage point from which we could see the diastemic creation as a whole, since the creation is a contingent reality dependent upon the Creator, it cannot be comprehended in a clear and distinct object in itself. Any understanding we can thus have of the relation between Creation and Creator has to be necessarily indistinct.

~ “The God-World Relationship,” in Cosmic Man: The Divine Presence, Sophia Publications, New Delhi, India, 1980, p. 219.

Stewardship Versus Dominion

Replacing the concept of dominion with the concept of stewardship will not lead us very far, for even in the latter the hidden possibility of the objectification and alienation which are the root causes of the sickness of our civilization… We would still be reducing nature to “nothing but,” that is, nothing but an object given into our hands for safe keeping and good management.

~ The Human Presence, p. 84, as quoted in Ian Bradley, God is Green: Ecology for Christians, Image Books-Doubleday, 1992, p. 94.

The Concept of Nature

The biblical approach to creation does not pit humans against creation, but acknowledges that we too are creatures. The language of the Bible makes no provision for the modern concept of the environment or of man as separated from the rest of creation. “Nature,” in the sense of non-human self-existent reality does not occur in the Old Testament; it is a concept alien to the biblical world.

~ Quoted in Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, ed., Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth, Eerdmans, Publ., Grand Rapids, MI, 1987, p. 86.

Respect for the Created Order: A Christian Duty

Christians cannot say that nature is to be worshiped. Christians would say that the created order, not nature, is to be respected as the order that has given birth to us, sustains us, and will still be the framework for our existence when the whole process of creation-redemption has been consummated. We respect the created order both because it comes from God and is sustained by him, and because it is the matrix of our origin, growth and fulfillment as human beings. But we do not worship the creation. We have to tend the creation, use it for our own sustenance and flourishing, but we also have to respect it in itself as a manifestation of God’s creative energy and cooperate with God in bringing out the full splendor of the created order as reflecting the glory of the Creator.

~ “New Testament Foundations for Understanding the Creation,” Au Sable Forum paper, Mancelona, Michigan, 1985.

Bio

Metropolitan of Delhi in the Indian Orthodox Church and a former president of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Paulos Mar Gregorios chaired the 1979 World Council of Churches Conference on “Faith, Science and the Future” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. He is known for his lively translations of the Bible into English, but particularly for his emphasis on the seriousness of environmental problems and the responsibility of the Church to address this dimension of religious and social insensitivity through a return to the traditional Christian understanding of creation. In the early 1970s he was one of the first modern Christians leaders to call for a Christian theological response to ecological problems.

Humanity is on the Wrong Path

Every crisis is a judgement, a call to see where things have gone wrong and to seek to set matters right, both within our consciousness and in society. The environmental crisis, the economic crisis, the crisis of justice, the crisis of faith, the employment crisis, the monetary crisis, the crisis of militarism — all these are symptoms not only that humanity has to yet become what it has to be, but also that we are on the wrong track.

~ The Human Presence: Ecological Spirituality in the Age of the Spirit, Amity House Press, Amity, NY, 1989, p. 3.

How we Know that our Modern Vision is Defective

The chariot of human development has gained momentum but seems to be running amok without a charioteer.  We know that consumerism is bad, but what can we do except go on consuming more and more? We know that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, but what can we do except live with our guilt and lend an occasional hand to the poor?

The affairs of the world are largely in the hands of people who are expert at making money, waging war, and playing politics. Our age is characterized by the absence of true charisma among the leadership of the nations and churches of the world…. We know that our vision of reality is defective because of too much reliance on science and technology, but what alternatives can we develop?

~ The Human Presence: Ecological Spirituality in the Age of the Spirit, Amity House Press, Amity, NY, 1989, p. 3.

The Concept of Nature

The concept of “nature” is totally alien to the Hebrew tradition. Those who have too easily credited Christianity the Old Testament doctrine of creation with making it possible for western civilization to know and control nature should note that the Hebrew had no notion of something “out there” which they were to set about “desacralizing” and then dominating.

~ The Human Presence: An Orthodox View of Nature, The Christian Literature Society, Madras, India, 1978, p. 19.