This is the second in a series of weekly Lenten pieces on environmentalism.
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In this post, I want to consider the idea of Creation itself and our place within the created order, particularly what the beginning chapters of Genesis can tell us about our role in today’s ecological landscape.
One of the problems we come across in reading historical texts is that we often exist in a different cultural context and view things through different conceptual frameworks that the authors and original audiences of those texts. Nowhere does the average American Christian run up against this difficulty on a more regular basis than when encountering the Bible, yet I think we frequently underestimate what can and does get lost in translation when we in the post-Enlightenment West try to make sense of a collection of texts from the ancient Near East.
Whatever we may think as post-Enlightenment Westerners, we need to dig into the ancient cultural context in which a text like Genesis was written if we want to know just what information is trying to be communicated and how. While some of us have a tendency to see the beginning of Genesis as being a very literal physical and temporal description of creative processes, this may say more about our cultural and interpretive frameworks than those of the author(s) and what they meant to communicate.
Instead, John H. Walton argues in The Lost World of Genesis One that the creation story of that chapter should be interpreted in its original context as being primarily about functional cosmology – that is, that for its ancient Hebrew author(s) and audience, the seven days of creation are about the establishment of the functions of various components of the cosmos, such that their very existence is bound up not in their materiality but in the functions they fulfil.
Peter Enns makes a similar point in his book, Inspiration and Incarnation, arguing that our obsession with human origins vis-à-vis Darwinian evolution causes us to mistake the kind of literature we are reading and its purpose for both author(s) and audience.
Both support their theses by making use of a significant number of other extraordinarily similar texts from surrounding cultures. For neither does this mean that the biblical accounts are based on these other texts, but rather that they are similar because they come from similar cultural contexts that used similar language and imagery to say things about their gods, and that these texts can tell us about how Genesis fits into broader cultural and cosmological understandings.
As such, I’m going to set aside the issue of whether or not Genesis is an account of the physical details of human origins altogether as having comparatively little relevance to the actual topic at hand, which is our place in the created order with respect to today’s ecological needs. Rather, those concerns are most powerfully addressed by the functional cosmology that provides the original context and message for Chapters 1-3.
For Walton the seven days of creation in Genesis 1 and the following accounts in Genesis 2-3 ultimately represent the process of temple inauguration in ancient Near Eastern cosmology as echoed in a number of other ancient texts, with the completed cosmos as a temple – the dwelling place of God – and humanity installed as its priests and stewards.
Like the later Tabernacle and Jerusalem Temple, which reflect its imagery, the Garden of Eden’s serves as a microcosm of the cosmic temple and as the center of sacred space into which Adam is placed in a priestly role. English translations of the Bible tend to understand Genesis 2 as involving Adam being put into the Garden of Eden to work the ground and be its caretaker, but Walton believes that there’s more to it than this. In The Lost World of Adam and Eve, he argues that the words in Genesis 2:15, cbd and šmr, variously translated as “work” and “take care of” in the NIV and “till” and “keep” in the NRSV, refer not to agricultural work here but to priestly worship that maintains the proper relationships of cosmic order.
Walton continues, writing that,
Adam’s role must be understood in light of the role of priests in the ancient world. When we read the Bible, we often think of priests as ritual experts and as those instructing the people in the ways of the Lord and the law. That is true, but those tasks fit into a larger picture. The main task of the priest was the preservation of sacred space. They preserved sacred space by
- instructing people regarding what sacred space requires of them (purity standards for each zone of sacred space, behavior appropriate to scared space) so that its sanctity can be maintained
- offering sacrifices in the appropriate ways at the appropriate times and with appropriate gifts so that its sanctity may be preserved
- guarding sacred space and sacred objects found therein so that their sanctity is preserved
- keeping out anything that would compromise or corrupt the sanctity of sacred space
- serving as mediators who make the benefits of sacred space available to the people (thereby extending sacred space) and who assure that the gifts of the people get to God
This final point of humanity as mediator is key to a historical Christian understanding of our place in the created order that seems to much more developed in the Eastern Church than here in the West, certainly among Protestants. For Eastern Orthodox theologians, the priestly role of humanity is not only a key theological point but is inherent in our very being, as humanity’s dual nature as both a physical creature and a spiritual being in the image of God unites Heaven and Earth as a microcosm of the created order and a mediator through which God unites Himself with His earthly creation.
For example, fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nyssa writes,
Now, by a provision of the supreme Mind there is an intermixture of the intellectual with the sensible world, in order that nothing in creation may be thrown aside as worthless, as says the Apostle, or be left without its portion of the Divine fellowship. On this account it is that the commixture of the intellectual and sensible in man is effected by the Divine Being...God, taking dust of the ground, formed the man, and by an inspiration from Himself He planted life in the work of His hand, that thus the earthy might be raised up to the Divine, and so one certain grace of equal value might pervade the whole creation, the lower nature being mingled with the supramundane.
Likewise, Theodore of Mopsuestia suggests that humanity’s interaction with and use of the rest of Creation should be a blessing to it:
Wanting to make one cosmos of the universe and to epitomize in one being the whole creation, which is composed of such diverse natures…God constituted humankind as the link of all things. This is why [God] has brought everything back for their use, in order that the entire creation might be united in them and they might be for it a manifest pledge of friendship.
What then of God’s command to Adam and Eve to “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”? While it has often been used to prioritize the interests of humans over those of the rest of Creation, the priestly role of humanity in Genesis speaks out against the idea that this is a license for unbridled exploitation. Walton writes,
Adam was given access to…sacred space as a priest in order to be involved in preserving its sanctity and mediating its benefits. Sacred space was also the center of order, because order emanates from God. The idea that people would “subdue” and “rule” is based on the idea that they would have a continuing role as God’s vice-regents (in his image) to preserve order and to extend it under God.
One could argue that exploitation of Creation for their own perceived gain rather than for God’s purposes is a core part of Adam and Eve’s sin. Seen through the lens of Genesis and later theologians like Gregory and Theodore, their sin is not merely spiritual, as it is often de facto treated, but deeply bound up in the physical world. (We will see more of this is the following weeks as we examine how physical creation plays into New Testament narratives of salvation, transfiguration, resurrection, eschatology, and the Kingdom of God.)
As Adam and Eve turned from their priestly roles, not only was fellowship with God broken, but so was our relationship with other creatures, with the whole created order itself. The cosmic order of Eden, as well as the reflections of theologians like Gregory and Theodore, suggest a harmony with nature far from our relationship to it in the modern world. It seems that we as a species are recapitulating Adam and Eve’s sin far more closely than we even realize.
If Creation is God’s temple and if, as Psalm 24:1 states, "The Earth is the Lord's and everything in it," what does that mean for how we treat the Earth and the other creatures in it?
By trashing the environment and driving countless species to extinction, are we desecrating His temple in which we are meant to serve, mocking God in His own house? Aren’t we supposed to be the very guardians and caretakers of that house?
We would be heartbroken, maybe deeply angry, if we found the church we attend had been brutally ransacked and vandalized. Why do we rarely seem to feel anything remotely like that about environmental destruction and ecological tragedy?
Passionate care for the Earth and its creatures is not at its root a replacement for God, as some strangely see it: it is rightly a form of His worship.
Next week we will consider environmentalism as it relates to Christ’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” and the human costs of ecological degradation and disaster.
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