Theology

Creation: Stewardship or sacrifice? Why either/or?

St. Al

I have mentioned before that we have a couple of conferences on climate change coming up at Penn State. One that we as the honors college are hosting and one that I as a scholar and clergy am participating in. The former is “Educating for Sustainability” and the latter is “Stewardship or Sacrifice? Religion and the Ethics of Climate Change” and the panel that I am chairing is “The theology of stewardship and sacrifice in response to climate change.”

Religion is about many things, but central to most religious traditions is a code of ethics – a proper way of responding to God, to one another and to the world around us. In this session academics and religious leaders representing a variety of traditions (Rosemary Bertocci, Christian Brady, Nina Beth Cardin, David Johnston, and Sandra Strauss) dip into the great reserves of wisdom bound up in the stories of creation, life and rebirth. But climate change is more complicated than merely caring for our environment, it may require a completely different way of thinking about the theology of stewardship and sacrifice as we respond to the ethical challenge of our age. After a break, Mark Wallace, professor at Swarthmore College and author of Green Christianity, will respond to the panel presentation and lead discussion.

One of the challenges before us (or me as the chair setting the tone) is that I think I am going to take umbrage at the dichotomy presented. A classic academic move to make others think how clever I am, to be sure, but really, with my recent musings on the creation narratives I am not sure that these are the terms that we want. If nothing else the terms are, as my colleague developing the conference pointed out, archaic to most outside religion.

Take sacrifice for example. Our mind might go first either to Abraham and Isaac, if we are biblically minded, perhaps even Leviticus, or to Jimmy Carter asking us all to put on a cardigan. Now that The Love Boat is no longer on we don’t have ship’s stewards to jog our memory. But stewardship is a term we actually use quite a lot in development/fundraising circles. “We must steward the gifts we have been given,” in order, of course, that the donor will give us additional gifts. Still, I am probably being very pedantic and should just stick with the terms.

Stewardship

Leaving aside for the purposes of this discussion what Gen. 1-3 tell us about God, there are a two of very key messages that both creation narratives have regarding this world and our role in it.

The first is that all of this was created for humanity. Whether we are talking about the orderly and well-structured account in Gen. 1 or the prosaic and earthy description in Gen. 2 the world, the plants, animals, all the cosmos were created to provide a habitat for humanity.

The second point of agreement is that part of humanity’s responsibility from their moment of creation is to take care of this creation.

Gen. 1.28 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.”

Gen. 2 offers a very similar role for the man in the garden of Eden.

Gen. 2.15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

I have already written elsewhere that while some are uncomfortable with the notion of humanity subduing and having dominion over the creatures the context of Gen. 1 makes it clear that humanity’s role, our role, is to mirror that of God who is a caring and benevolent ruler. The man’s task of tilling and keeping is very similar. The role of humanity is to be that of caretaker and protector. Indeed, the Hebrew term usually translated “to keep” שמר has a fundamental sense of “protecting” and “preserving.”
Needless to say, this then should serve as an obvious basis for an environmental movement to be embraced by all Christians and Jews who consider the Bible as authoritative. Caring for this world is what it and we were created for, the earth and all its inhabitants to provide us sustenance and we to tend to it.¹

Strawmen along the golden road.

So I am often surprised when I am told by my green friends that it is religionists and particularly conservative Christians who stand in the way of our bringing about effective policies with which to combat climate change. I have been told that it is because of the subdue/dominion language of Gen. 1 (“the world was created for us and we can do with it what we want”) or on the other end of the time line that since we will have a new heaven and earth when Jesus returns, it really doesn’t matter what we do with this world now. (And after all, we have more important things to worry about such as evangelism.)

Yet when I did digging for a similar panel discussion two years ago I could not find any conservative Christian using Scripture to justify our not taking steps to care for the environment. I found folks like Jerry Falwell, a conservative Christian, to be sure, who opposed environmental legislation, did so on political and social grounds. If one were cynical one could say that Falwell might have tried to use Scripture to justify his political views but the very fact that he did not is a strong indication that such a reading of the Bible was too extreme, even for him.

So I think we have to be careful to not conflate conservative political views with conservative religious convictions. (And there are many who are “liberal” politically who are not necessarily on board with many environmentalist’s goals and plans.) Since the exegetical maneuvers suggested above have not been widely used, at least as far as I have found, why should they be offered as possible interpretations?

Religious objections

Are there really any religious objections that Christians or Jews should be concerned with regarding movements to protect the environment? Well yes, I think there may be. I would no go so far as to accuse anyone of paganism or New Age movements (unless they embrace and claim that identity which many do) but I do think that the emphasis upon the Earth and our “saving” it can lead to misplaced priorities and perspective. We certainly are to care for creation, to tend and protect it, but as the Bible makes clear this creation is just that, a creation, something made by a Creator.² There may be concern that by focusing so much energy on the creation we begin to elevate it above the devotion that the Creator deserves. Yet this is no different than any other unbalanced focus of our attention. Our jobs, family, appetites, can all become our focus of worship and service if we allow them.

Common ground, holy ground

Returning then to the texts, conversations about a Christian (and I would suggest also Jewish) response should begin at the Beginning. Gen. 1-2, however one interprets the “mechanics” of creation, so long as the discussants agree that these texts are in some way authoritative, can serve as a base upon which further discussion can be fruitful built. Needless to say (but I shall say it anyway), there will still be many disagreements about implementation and politicization. I think, however, there should be little debate though about our role in impacting nature. (Even if one does not believe that automobile exhaust is causing a hole in the ozone, for example, all that exhaust cannot be good, so we should look for alternatives.)

Another area of emphasis that I know others at the conference will have is the impact of global warming upon the poorest of the planet. We saw, for example, the kind of death and destruction brought to coastal regions in Asia by the tsunami. No one (that I know of) is suggesting that was the result of climate change, but if the rise of oceans scenarios famously depicted in Al Gore’s film should occur the loss of life among the poor would be devastating. Global warming might also cause severe drought leading to famine and so on. Again, I think that any Christian would and should agree that we are charged to care for those most in need. The challenge in that discussion is not finding the common ground of concern for the poor and needy, rather many feel that the causation is not clear particularly since it is projected into the future.

Are their prophets among us? Perhaps. And how do we determine the truth of a prophet?³ We return to scripture. Why not start at Gen. 1?

I would be the first to argue that this is not our first calling, but it is still a fundamental element of our nature and being. [↩]
For those just joining this discussion, I have stated elsewhere I am not worried about a 6 day creation or evolution. Those just aren’t relevant questions. [↩]
Deut. 18:21-22 [↩]

On the need to criticize God

Sep 28th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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John Hobbins has a great post, short but very poignant, reminding us that “believers must complain about and criticize biblical texts.” He rightly points out that it is incumbent upon the faithful to do so. I have written in several places about exactly this with respect to Lamentations. The fact that the poets express their anger with God and their disbelief at their condition, even while confessing their sin, is not a sign of failing faith rather it is the ultimate expression of commitment.

They key is the hermeneutic employed:

What matters is the context in which complaints and criticism occur. Do I make the criticism because I expect God or scripture to answer my questions and I will not rest until I find my rest in God and his Word? Or because I’ve decided that God and his Word are something I need to protect myself against, because I’ve found a higher standard of truth by which to judge them both?

When one no longer questions God or takes up the challenge of the Bible then faith is no more, but so long as the conversation continues the relationship remains.

Genesis 1 – The image of God

Sep 27th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

1 comment

Continuing my series on Genesis 1 I am going to cheat just a little bit. This is something I had written for a silent retreat back many years ago now. Someday it will go into that book I have mentioned before. But this is a slightly different form and it certainly continues my thoughts on Genesis 1 and moves us towards another larger theme I will begin to address as we compare and contrast Genesis 1 with chapters 2-3.

The Image of God

Genesis 1 presents humanity as the pinnacle of creation. We are the last things created and everything else was created for us. But we are more than just the last (or first) among equals. We are significantly different than the rest of creation, we were created in his image. (The plural, “let us make man,” is a possible reference to the angelic host or perhaps even to the Trinity.) But what does that mean? For millennia many people better than I have struggled to understand what exactly it means to be made “in the image of God.” One example of a concise answer can be found in the Episcopal Church’s catechism.

Human Nature:

Q. What does it mean to be created in the image of God?
A. It means that we are free to make choices: to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God.

There are many ways that we could look at this and indeed, the “freedom to make choices” is a fundamental truth that lives in tension with God’s sovereign call and ultimately results in the tragic events of Gen. 3. But here I would like simply to note two things that stand out within this passage and should challenge us in our lives.

1) Just as God is the pre-eminent ruler of everything that exists, so he has appointed us to be rulers over this creation.

Gen. 1.28 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.”

When God blesses humanity, the only difference between the blessing that they receive and that of the other animals is the command that they “subdue the earth” and have “dominion” over its creatures. In the same way in which God has dominion and rules over all of the cosmos (even that which is unseen by us) we, humanity, are to be like God in that we will rule over the earth and its occupants. Note that there is already an understanding within Genesis that this will not be an easy task. The term “to subdue” connotes physical struggle and effort that would be required of humanity to work the soil even before the fateful events of Genesis 3.

The notion that humanity is ruler of all has not been very popular of late. As the western world has become more egalitarian and as our understanding of the magnitude of this cosmos has increased there has been a trend to view ourselves as merely one small specie among many. We are no greater or lesser than the dolphins, we have simply evolved along a different path which has allowed us to be more destructive of our surrounding environment. Genesis, neither Chapter One nor Two, agrees with this view.

[Comic after the jump.]

(more…)

More on myth

Sep 21st, 2009

by Christian Brady.

4 comments

My previous post generated a series of hearty responses from Alan Lenzi (whom I am sorry to see will no longer be blogging). He has a number of good points which I do not have the time or desire to address individually, it has been a very busy week with another one starting tomorrow, but I followed up by asking him simply, “Do you consider “myth” as in some fundamental sense untrue?” His response was as follows.

Myth is paradigmatically true for those who have accepted it. It is both the model of some aspect of their communal flourishing and a model for its future perpetuation. And therein lies the dynamic.

(I added the emphasis.)

This is why although I certainly accept the term “myth” as a suitable literary description of Gen. 1-3 I do not use the term since, as Alan has affirmed, most understand that term is meaning that the text is fundamentally untrue. Saying that it is true “for those who have accepted it” while also rejecting explicitly or implicitly the truth that the text is conveying is simply condescending.

As I have said in my earlier posts I do believe that Genesis 1-3 are true on many, many levels. In so doing I realize that Alan and others may think that I have “unduly privileged the Bible,” which would be true if I were claiming to treat the Bible and Enuma Elish as the same. But I am not. So I do not use the term myth, not because I am mollycoddling my audience where I should be educating them, but because as defined I do not think the term applies.

Finally, Alan tried to make a comparison of the use of the term “myth” with that of “theology.”

Consider your use of “theology” with regard to rabbinic texts. It would be suspicious if you called rabbinic ideas about the deity “superstition” and reserved “theology” for only Christian texts. Rabbinic notions of the divine are theology for you, even if you don’t believe it all, because that is the label you use to mark out certain notions. And by doing so, you implicitly align your findings with and thereby participate in a broad, inter-cultural conversation about human thoughts through history of super-human entities. Likewise when I talk about the theology of enuma elish or whatever. If we reserved “theology” for only Christian theology (i.e., “true theology”), then we have failed as scholars to deal even-handedly with the data.

The fundamental difference here is that “theology” is a descriptive term, whereas “myth” has become freighted with judgment about the narrative under consideration. Theology is “the study of the nature of God and religious belief.”¹ So we can talk about the study of any “theology” and that is a very different thing than “doing” theology. When we employ the term myth we are immediately placing upon the texts in consideration certain value judgments.

PS – Chris Heard of Higgaion recently suggested “cosmogeny” instead of myth. I think that could work. Any other suggestions?

New Oxford American Dictionary [↩]

Atheology

Sep 17th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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Such a thing does exist, as many of you know, but the discussion in my previous post makes me wonder about those who claim to do theology without affirming the faith of the tradition that they study. Why bother?

Please don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe that one can, as I do, be a scholar of religions whether or not one is an adherent to any faith or that particular faith. I am not suggesting, for example, that Alan Lenzi cannot “approach the Bible and religion as products of human culture that can be fully interpreted and explained without recourse to theological assertions.” Of course he can. I myself spend most of my research time on rabbinic literature but I am not Jewish. In fact, much of my work has focused upon considering the theology of the targumim. In so doing I am studying someone else’s theology, but I am not “doing” theology myself.

But I know of those who consider themselves theologians but who do not accept the basic tenets of the given faith that they are ostensibly working within. I just don’t get it. That would be religious studies, wouldn’t it?

(“I no you di’ int!” Oh, yes I did!)