Redacted Dominionism

A Biblical Approach to Grounding Environmental Responsibility

Cone

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781630870379
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Critiques of the environmental ramifications of the early Genesis narrative by environmental thinkers such as Aldo Leopold, Ian McHarg, and Lynn White underscore a long-standing tension between the environmental movement and Western Christianity. The evangelical community, especially, has been at odds with the environmental movement, in grounding its theology of human relations to nature on the Genesis narrative--a narrative the environmental community views generally as contributing negatively to environmental matters. Redacted Dominionism is a literal interpretation of the early Genesis narrative that recognizes human relations to nature are based on theocentric themes. Redacted Dominionism understands humanity as initially given dominion over nature, by virtue of the image of God in humanity, but that human disobedience to God tarnished that image, and human qualification for dominion was lost. Post-fall, the dominion mandate is never repeated in Genesis and seems even to be replaced. Redacted Dominionism offers an important biblical approach to understanding human responsibility to God for how we interact with His creation.

1

Tension Between Evangelical and Environmental Thought

In a September 2008 article titled, “Evangelicals Go ‘Green’ with Caution,” The Barna Group discusses the results of a study pertaining to evangelical attitudes toward the environment.1 For purposes of the study, The Barna Group, which is itself positioned within the evangelical community, characterizes evangelicals as those who “met the born again criteria . . . plus seven other conditions . . . saying their religious faith is very important in their life today; believing they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; believing that Satan exists; believing that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works; believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; asserting that the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today.”2 For the sake of simplicity and clarity, despite its obvious limitations, this characterization will be assumed in all following references to the term “evangelical.”3

The Barna Group’s study finds that “millions of [American] evangelicals—often perceived to be on the sidelines of the green movement—have recently become more environmentally conscious. Yet evangelicals do so with some skepticism about the environmental movement.”4 The study notes skepticism on the part of evangelicals in three particular areas: (1) concern about media hype regarding global warming; (2) doubts about the role of humans in climate change; and (3) concern that proposed solutions would harm people, especially the poor in developing nations.5 The study finds that 90 percent of evangelicals “would like Christians to take a more active role in caring for creation,” though only 27 percent firmly believe that global warming is happening.6 These two statistics, considered together are telling, as they reflect a willingness on the part of evangelicals to consider the importance of environmental issues, while at the same time underscoring a suspicious posture on the part of evangelicals toward at least aspects of the environmental movement.

It might be taken for granted that, because the evangelical community (EC) already shares a fairly high level of concern, the remedial focus—if the perceived immobility of the EC is to be overcome in favor of a more environmentally friendly perspective—should be to raise awareness within that community regarding the seriousness of ecological crises. Still, this writer suggests that those outside the EC should consider another approach altogether.

Earlier critiques of Christian attitudes toward the environment were leveled not at the amount of data adherents of the Christian worldview possessed, but rather at core interpretive mechanisms of the worldview itself. Popular literature has driven a wedge between environmental concerns and Christianity, not necessarily by suggesting that Christians lack understanding of the ecological consequences of dumping toxic waste in rivers, for example, but by suggesting that Christians believe they have theological warrant for environmental irresponsibility. The popular narrative has been that the Bible does not provide a suitable grounding for environmental responsibility, and that its adherents must seek an alternative grounding if they are to be ecologically considerate. It should come as no surprise that the environmental gospel has been met by the EC with skepticism. The popular critiques to this point have largely demanded a worldview reconstruction that is simply incompatible with a community that believes that “the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches.”7 Notable among many others, Aldo Leopold, Ian McHarg, and Lynn White all question, to differing extents, the Bible’s contribution to environmental concerns.

Aldo Leopold was a forester and game manager, by profession, whose book, A Sand County Almanac, became “the bible” of the emerging environmental movement and the seminal text for the advent of environmental ethics in academic philosophy. Leopold laments that “our Abrahamic concept of land” was wholly incompatible with conservation ideas.8 He elaborates in a later context that, according to the biblical concept of land, “Land . . . is still property.”9 He views the Decalogue as beneficial in relating individual to individual, and the Golden Rule as relating the individual to society, but asserts that, even though Ezekiel and Isaiah spoke negatively regarding despoliation of land, there has not yet been affirmed (in the Bible or anywhere else) an ethic relating man to land, animal, and plant.10 It seems no overstatement to say that he perceives the Christian worldview to be systemically deficient in the realm of environmental concerns. In Leopold’s estimation, it seems the Bible contributes to an environmental apathy and provides no ethic to remedy the ailment. Further, Leopold’s pronouncement that “only the most superficial student of history supposes that Moses ‘wrote’ the Decalogue; it evolved in the minds of a thinking community, and Moses wrote a tentative summary of it for a ‘seminar’”11 illustrates that his vantage point is from a worldview that does not consider the Bible as the product of divine inspiration—a position incompatible with that of the EC.

Ian McHarg’s comments are not unlike Leopold’s, though they are certainly more pointed and strident. As an influential landscape architect and writer, involved in both theoretical and practical aspects of environmental planning, he critiques the “Western anthropocentric-anthropomorphic tradition in which nature is relegated to inconsequence.”12 He acknowledges, like Leopold, that Judaism and Christianity have shown concern for the relationships of man to man, but have been of little or no benefit in dealing with man and nature relationships, especially because, McHarg alleges, the Judeo-Christian worldview has “traditionally assumed nature to be a mere backdrop for the human play.”13 He credits the literally interpreted Genesis creation account as representing “man [as] exclusively divine, man given dominion over all life and nonlife, enjoined to subdue the earth.”14 The world has merely instrumental value in supporting man’s drama, and “reality exists only because man can perceive it.”15

Lynn White Jr. was a historian of medieval technology. His famed and controversial 1967 paper, “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis” perhaps best illustrates that early critiques were incompatible with foundational tenets of the EC, as it launched a scathing critique of certain religious underpinnings of Western attitude toward nature, and was met with immediate enthusiasm by those already suspicious (to say the least) of doctrinal tenets that seemed to ground Western thought firmly in anthropocentrism.16 White’s essay “implicitly set the theoretical agenda for a future environmental philosophy,”17 in a number of ways, and remains profoundly influential if only as a provocative point of entry for discussion of environmental ethics.18 Creditable initially to White’s evaluation of the Judeo-Christian ethic and of Christianity, the perception that Christianity is culpable for environmental destruction and has proven useless in countering that destruction has become a cliché in the environmental movement.19

Though White indicts Christianity as a primary culprit for environmental degradation, it is not readily apparent whether he is critiquing only particular aspects of Christian experience, community, tradition, or textual grounding as individual components, or whether he is appraising all of these collectively. Peter Harrison describes White’s project as focusing on “what the text was taken to mean at certain periods of history, how it motivated specific activities, and how it came to sanction a particular attitude toward the natural world.”20

The evidence of White’s essay confirms that Harrison’s understanding is well founded. White introduces his discussion with the admission of limited knowledge of the true cause of or severity of the ecological crisis, saying, “The history of ecological change is still so rudimentary that we know little about what really happened, or what the results were.”21 In light of the uncertainty, there is at first no suggestion for coping with the problem. Asking and answering his own important question, he remarks, “What shall we do? No one yet knows” (ibid., 1204). White blames “the presuppositions that underlie modern technology and science,” and suggests the current crisis is “the product of an emerging, entirely novel, democratic culture.” He questions “whether a democratized...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Tension Between Evangelical and Environmental Thought
• Chapter 2: Evangelical Presuppositions and Methodology
• Chapter 3: Four Interpretations of the Early Genesis Narrative
• Chapter 4: Framing the Argument
• Chapter 5: Lynn White’s Seven Claims Regarding the Genesis Narrative
• Chapter 6: Considering Anthropocentrism: Definitions and Models
• Chapter 7: Considering Genesis 1–2
• Chapter 8: Value Theory in Genesis
• Chapter 9: Considering Genesis 3–9
• Chapter 10: Conclusion: An Objection and a Proposal
• Bibliography