The Bible in Environmental Ethics: A Re-Visioning of Rachel Carson’s
Apocalyptic Language in Silent Spring
Kristel A. Clayville
When Rachel Carson first published Silent Spring, it was seen as a call for
people to pay attention to even the smallest and seemingly invisible parts of nature
as integral to the functioning of the natural world. It is indeed hard to get people to
see something they haven’t seen before, but what Carson achieved was in fact
different, and harder: in Silent Spring, she does not only call for previously ignored
minute parts of nature to be included in the dominant paradigm, but in fact urges
her readers to reject that paradigm wholeheartedly, in favor of a different approach
that is, by her account, necessary for a true appreciation of nature, as well as for a
genuine understanding of what is at stake in the environmental crisis. Likewise,
Carson’s fellow environmentalist Holmes Rolston asserts that, “‘Seeing’ is universally
‘seeing as.’ We interpret what we see in order to see it.” These two short sentences at the
beginning of Rolston’s section on models, patterns, and paradigms in religious and
scientific thinking are pithy. Drawing on both modern philosophy (Heidegger) and his
own Reformed tradition (Calvin), Rolston describes our reality as metaphorically
structured, thus suggesting that humans are fundamentally interpreting creatures. He also
uses a visual metaphor, drawn from Calvin, to give further detail to how we humans
structure our reality. Thus, our interpretations are not simply about the past or the
contemporary moment, but they give us a vision, or a horizon toward which to move.
Yet, the question remains: which lens or lenses are we going to use to focus and give
clarity to our vision? Or to put it differently, which symbolic forms and structures are we
going to use as our interpretive context, providing us with a focal point on our horizon?
Much work in environmental ethics has abandoned religious lenses or symbolic forms
with the exception of apocalyptic language; moreover, the apocalyptic language of
contemporary environmental ethics is often traced back to Silent Spring. But unlike
contemporary writers, Rachel Carson did not use apocalyptic language simply to evoke
emotional responses from her readers; rather, Carson used it to counter the dominant
narrative of human progress and the implied ethics that were drawn from the biblical
creation story.
In this essay, I propose that Rachel Carson, like Holmes Rolston, was
commenting on the structure of human perception and understanding in Silent Spring,
and that her use of apocalyptic language was a response to her cultural and intellectual
environment, as well as an attempt at correcting our vision of human-nature relations and
our interpretive frameworks. In short, Carson saw humans as fundamentally interpreting
creatures and sought to grind lenses to correct our vision. In doing so, Carson drew on a
historical form of apocalyptic and its ethical foundations to counter the general
assumption that human progress comes through the domination of nature. Thus, her
apocalyptic language is both a source of ethical thinking embedded in the form of her
argument, and is a counter-narrative to the diluted and generalized readings of the biblical
creation story that funded and rationalized much of human scientific progress. By
drawing on apocalypticism, Carson counters one biblical tradition and its ethical
implications with another, and in doing so, she ultimately puts pressure on the assumed
form of discourse in which the creation story participates. In the end, Carson’s
apocalypticism alters our vision not only of the world around us, but also of the biblical
text that led to our anthropocentric vision, thereby opening up new potential
interpretations to aid and accompany our altered vision.
This essay will proceed by 1.) addressing the received narrative of human progress
and its biblical foundation as part of Carson’s intellectual and cultural environment; 2.)
discussing Carson’s use of apocalyptic language as part of the macro-structure of her
argument and as a response to the narrative of human progress; and 3.) specifying the
consequences of Carson’s apocalyptic response for readings of the biblical creation story
and its potential uses in environmental ethics.
1. The Biblical Creation Story: Human Progress at the Expense of Nature
Rachel Carson’s intellectual and cultural environment was saturated with the
narrative of human progress, many times at the expense of nature. The most well-known
scholarly article to point toward the source of this narrative was Lynn White’s “The
Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis,” which argued that Christianity and Judaism
were responsible for the predominant worldview based on the dualism between humans
and nature. This Judeo-Christian worldview puts humans at the center of concern and
value as “created in the image of God,” and further encourages humans to use nature to
exhibit such dominance and to achieve human oriented ends. While White’s critiques are
not particularly nuanced, he provided two critiques that have shaped the debate about the
use of the Bible in environmental ethics. First, he identified a set of relationships between
biblical text, Judeo-Christian tradition, worldview, and human action. Second, he pointed
to Genesis 1:26-28 as the main problematic text that underscores human distinctiveness
from nature, and human dominion over nature. These two problems work together to
show that what we think about the Bible and how or if we think with it has a direct effect
on contemporary worldviews.
White’s critiques sparked a significant recovery effort on the part of biblical
scholars and theologians, who began to offer new interpretations of Genesis 1:26-28 in an
effort to reform how we think about nature. But, while the problem identified by White is
the relationship between biblical text, Judeo-Christian tradition, worldview, and human
action, the responses were predominantly organized around the discussion of human
being—in part because they were organized around reinterpreting what it means to be
created in God’s image. The assumption was that if we could figure out what it means to
be made in God’s image, then we could move from there to defining moral and immoral
action. Other thinkers, particularly those without any prior allegiance to religious texts or
traditions, saw in White’s critique a call for abandoning religious texts altogether.
Carson’s Silent Spring undermines both of these positions by decentering humans as the
starting point for discussions of morality, and by confronting inherited interpretations of
biblical texts head on.
While White’s seminal article post-dates Carson’s death, I contend that White’s
description of the role of the Bible and the worldviews it encouraged saturated Carson’s
intellectual and cultural environment. In fact, on my reading of Silent Spring, Carson
jumpstarts the conversation about the use of the Bible in environmental ethics prior to
Lynn White’s article and in a sophisticated and subtle way; namely, by using a competing
strand of the biblical tradition as a corrective lens to the received narrative of progress.
Carson was not a biblical scholar, nor was biblical interpretation at the forefront of her
work, but her intellectual environment included conversations about biblical
interpretation and its relationship to human action in contemporary culture, and therefore
intentionally or not, her work is a response to this environment.
The contours of the narrative of human progress to which Carson responded are the
inheritance of the biblical literalism that began in the Early Modern period and are
characterized by the shifting definitions of “subdue” and “have dominion” in Genesis
1:26-28. While “subdue” and “have dominion” may seem like transparent terms to the
modern reader, the Patristic and Medieval interpreters read these terms as psychological
and spiritual symbols. Generally, “having dominion” over nature referred to controlling
your own human nature and desires in the Patristic period, while in the Medieval period
dominion was interpreted as seeking knowledge about nature. Natural objects mentioned
in the biblical text functioned as symbols that referred to spiritual realities. In both cases,
“having dominion” was about reaching toward another world, not about controlling the
existing material world. In these earlier periods, the literal readings of these texts are
subordinated to the spiritual and moral readings. In the 17th century, with the rise of
Protestantism, interpretive upheavals abound. As Peter Harrison notes, Protestants
emphasized the Word of God, with the consequence that words alone have referential
meaning. Thus, the words about nature in the text could not refer to spiritual realities or
parts of the human soul—they referred directly to their analogues in the material world.
Harrison goes on to argue that “subdue” and “have dominion” were part of a larger
theological project of restoring nature after the Fall. Not only had humans suffered the
Fall, but nature had also become more difficult to live in and work with. In fact, the view
of nature as full of weeds and pests that Rachel Carson ascribes to “the man with the
spray gun (85)” is similar to the view of nature as fallen and in need of restoration.
Biblical literalism in its theological context blended with the rise of science, which was
employed in the restoration project.
In Lynn White’s view, and what I argue is Rachel Carson’s context, the literal
reading method became dissociated from its restorative theological context, and
consequently the reading method took on a life of its own. Without its theological
moorings, the literal reading method could be used to justify innumerable scientific
advancements under the guise of “subduing” and “having dominion” over nature as part
of human action that is in accord with being “made in the image of God.” In public
discourse much of the theological context was obscured and White’s argument took the
form of criticizing the ethics in the Bible as if they were normative for Judaism and
Christianity. While many thinkers have countered White’s claims, the point here is
simply to paint the background landscape of Carson’s intellectual and cultural
environment.
The ethics that White and others see in the biblical creation story and permeating
culture are anthropocentric and depend on hierarchy and an inanimate description of
nature. The ethics are anthropocentric in that only human needs and desires determine the
scale of values and appropriate actions. Moral considerability is part of a hierarchical
scale based on the days of creation, with the assumption that the simpler parts of nature
were created earlier and the more complex parts of nature were created later. This
anthropocentric logic places humans at the pinnacle of creation due to complexity, but
also due to being “made in the image of God.” Nature is the inanimate backdrop against
which humans exercise their godliness. Human actions in nature are justifiable because
the material world exists simply for human consumption. Moreover, the understanding of
history that this reading implies is one of continual progress. Over time humans become
progressively more skilled at being god-like and have even more control over nature.
Progress begets progress without end. Though the theological context of these ethics has
been stripped away, it is worth noting that if the theological context remained, then the
view of history would be qualified by having a theological telos, or end. Human
dominion over nature would be part of a restoration project, such that progress is in
service of returning to an earlier and more pristine version of both nature and humanity,
and the relationship between the two. Within the theological context, history is parabolic
rather than linear and unending. Furthermore, in the theological context, human action
within history has an effect on the course of history, while in the theologically barren
reading human action effects the human movement toward godliness, but it does not
change the course of history. History, like nature, can be seen as a simple stage for
human action.
Carson’s investment in countering the narrative of human progress is easily
discerned in Silent Spring’s dedication, epigraph, and concluding paragraph—the
passages that frame her argument. Carson dedicates Silent Spring to Albert Schweitzer,
giving a prominent place in her own text to his following words, “Man has lost the
capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.” These words
from Schweitzer not only show Carson’s indebtedness to his theology of the reverence
for life, but also give her book a plan. Carson aims to correct our vision so that we will be
able to foresee the consequences of our actions, and possibly forestall them. Schweitzer’s
words, on my reading, serve as a program for Silent Spring.
In addition to the dedication, Carson includes two epigraphs in Silent Spring. The
first epigraph is by Keats and provides the inspiration for the book’s title and the title of
some of its chapters. The second epigraph, by E.B. White picks up on the themes of
“subdue” and “have dominion.” E.B. White writes, “I am pessimistic about the human
race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into
submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to
this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially.”
Submission and dictatorship mark the human relationships to nature that are untenable
long-term and must be addressed. Furthermore, White points out that the human attitude
of dominating nature leads to new kinds of technologies, which ultimately lead humans to
flee the planet. While Silent Spring itself is a response to this epigraph, Carson also
addressed these issues elsewhere. In a speech entitled “The Real World Around Us”
given in 1954, Carson states the problem pointedly:
Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself,
with steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water. Perhaps he is intoxicated with his own power,
as he goes farther and farther into experiments for the destruction of himself and his world. For this
unhappy trend there is no single remedy—no panacea. But I believe that the more clearly we focus our
attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction
(Lost Woods 163).
We have distanced ourselves from nature and fled to a world of our own creation. Carson
offers the initial corrective step of refocusing our perceptions of the world around us.
This refocusing will not only change our perceptions of the place of humans in nature and
with respect to technology, but will also change the kinds of knowledge that are sought:
knowledge of nature rather than knowledge from and at the expense of nature.
Human power and its effects on the environment and consequently its boomerang
effect on humans is an enduring theme in Carson’s late work. In writing to her friend
Dorothy Freeman about how unsatisfied humans seem to be with life on this planet alone
or in accommodating ourselves to this planet, Carson writes:
I suppose my thinking began to be affected soon after atomic science was firmly established…in preSputnik days, it was easy to dismiss so much as science fiction fantasies. Now the most farfetched schemes
seem entirely possible of achievement. And man seems actually likely to take into his hands—ill-prepared
as he is psychologically—many of the functions of ‘God (qtd. in Freeman 248-9).
Scientific developments have changed our perceptions of our own abilities. But our
scientific knowledge alone does not prepare us for the consequences of scientific
capacities. For Carson, modern science is moving us toward being god-like, which is a
subtle interpretation of how the biblical creation story functions culturally in her time.
The themes of perception and how we think about ourselves reverberate in the final
paragraph of Silent Spring. Carson writes:
The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and
philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and
practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming
misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that
in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth (Silent Spring 297).
The disjunct between how we think about ourselves and the power we wield over nature
has created an interpretive lacuna with ethical consequences. Philosophy and science
along with technological know-how must develop in parallel. Carson was surely aware
that the development of science could not necessarily be slowed with a single book, yet
philosophy and ethics could be provoked to make heroic strides to catch up to the pace of
scientific and technological development. Paradoxically, this involves a return to the
sources of our ethical thinking. Carson makes this shift explicitly in her 1962 graduation
address at Scripps College, where she was unambiguous about the sources of the
arrogance that she warned against in Silent Spring. She writes,
In the western world our thinking has for many centuries been dominated by the Jewish-Christian concept
of man’s relation to nature, in which man is regarded as the master of all the earth’s inhabitants. Out of this
there easily grew the thought that everything on earth—animate or inanimate, animal, vegetable, or
mineral—and indeed the earth itself—had been created expressly for man (Of Man and the Stream of Time
7).
Later in that same speech Carson refers to this attitude as “self-oriented philosophy” that
has worked itself into the “shadows of the subconscious.” The prevalence of this
domineering attitude requires that we be more concerned about whether we should do
things that we now know we can do, and that science be held to higher standards. In
addition she ends the address with a charge to the next generation to be more aware of
what happens in the natural world. She writes, “Instead of always trying to impose our
will on Nature we should sometimes be quiet and listen to what she has to tell us (ibid
10).” Carson’s own apocalyptic language aids in this goal by animating nature and deemphasizing humans, thereby giving nature enough agency to require that we pay
attention to her.
2. Carson’s Apocalyptic Language
Rachel Carson responds to the aforementioned intellectual and cultural context by
countering the dominant biblical creation story and its concomitant ethics with the
powerful language of apocalypticism and its associated ethics. But in order to understand
Carson’s apocalyptic language as a response to the context described above, the
distinctive nature of her apocalyptic language must be fleshed out and analyzed
differently than it has been in previous studies of Silent Spring.
Carson has been contextualized as part of a larger stream of apocalyptic discourse
in the United States after World War II, and as bringing the genre of apocalyptic to
science writing from fiction of the time. She has been called the founder of
environmental apocalypticism, and she has been read alongside the biblical books of
Revelation, Daniel, and 1 John, yet her blending of apocalyptic language and with a
future vision that also draws on the historical past aligns her more closely with the
biblical prophets. The strategy of reading Carson mentioned above contextualizes her
within an eschatological apocalyptic tradition, but this reading simplifies her ethical
project by systematically discounting the form of her argument, which bears little
similarity to eschatological ethics. I contend that Carson’s apocalyptic language draws on
the prophetic dimensions of apocalypticism rather than on the eschatological dimensions,
and therefore posits a more nuanced ethics and relationship to history than has previously
been acknowledged. Furthermore, her relationship to prophetic apocalypticism is
communicated through the form of her argument. Before turning to the macro-structure
of Carson’s argument in Silent Spring, a brief overview of previous scholarship on
Carson’s apocalypticism with an emphasis on the relationship between history and ethics
they imply is in order.
Much has been made of the apocalyptic language in Silent Spring. Carson’s
language choices have been used to characterize the text as emotional rather than
thoughtful. Many of these critiques have been considered a part of the sexism that Carson
faced as an outspoken female scientist of her time. William Darby’s review of Silent
Spring refers to Carson as “overly emotional” and suggests that her book is merely a “list
of anxieties.”1 Michael Smith, writing for Time magazine, characterizes the book as an
“emotional outburst.”2 These insults to Carson’s work are also dismissals of her work due
to its apocalyptic language, and they stem not only from sexism, but also from a
prejudice against religion in a post-Enlightenment scientific world. Yet Carson was a
literary stylist who paid great attention to the medium of her message. For instance, in
explaining her choices in writing Under the Sea Wind, Carson writes:
I believe the most popular books about the ocean are written from the viewpoint of a human observer…I
was determined to avoid this human bias as much as possible….So I decided that the author as a person or
a human observer should never enter the story, but that it should be told as a simple narrative of the lives of
1
2
William Darby.
Michael Smith.
certain animals of the sea. As far as possible, I wanted my readers to feel that they were, for a time, actually
living the lives of sea creatures.3
Here Carson demonstrates a rational basis for her stylistic choices. Rather than giving
emotional or sentimental reasons for her choices, she talks about the impact on the reader
that she can have by shifting the narrative point of view. Carson is aware of her power as
an author to create worlds for the reader to inhabit. This is not only due to her own
approach to reading, but also to her witnessing of the narrative impact of the biblical
creation story and how the perceived point of view and genre of the story constrict our
thinking about nature.
In a volume devoted to Carson’s rhetoric, Christine Oravec analyzes Carson’s
inventional process for “A Fable for Tomorrow,” which is the opening chapter of Silent
Spring and also the focus of most of the attention given to Carson’s use of apocalyptic
language. Oravec studies the various drafts and materials that Carson consulted and
produced during the writing of this chapter of the book and demonstrates that Carson
molded the language to fit her audience and that she was highly conscious of the form of
her argument.4 By highlighting the intentional crafting of Carson’s argument and writing
style, Oravec’s insights provide significant counterweight to the charge of mere
emotionalism in Carson’s use of apocalyptic language. Oravec’s study suggests that the
apocalyptic voice reflects an intentional use of a historical form rather than a spontaneous
and intemperate response.
A language-oriented analysis of Carson’s apocalyptic also appears in Lawrence
Buell’s Environmental Imagination, which argues among other things that the genre of
3
4
Lost Woods, 55-56.
Oravec.
environmental apocalypse in American writing began with Silent Spring.5 Buell describes
Carson as blending the American pastoral tradition with that of apocalyptic, and as using
the master metaphor of the web, which emphasizes the integrity of relationships within
the natural world. Carson’s “web of life” works against anthropocentrism and the
hierarchy of relationships posited by the literal readings of the biblical creation story.
While apocalypse provides the necessary change in perception by arousing the
imagination, Buell also asserts that in the American tradition, pastoral logic undergirds
the environmental apocalypse because there must be an untouched antecedent state of
existence that depicts a peaceful coexistence with nature in order for the metaphor of
apocalypse to be meaningful. If we were ceaselessly at war with nature, then the shift to
using apocalyptic language would be meaningless. While Buell’s study points out that
Carson was mainly interested in the perception of environmental problems, and that she
sought to change the common understandings of the problems, it does not take into
account the relationship between history and ethics that animates Carson. Buell’s
description of the relationship between the apocalyptic elements in the book and the
pastoral suggests that Carson advocated a romantic return to a pristine beginning. But it
seems unlikely that she would have sacrificed what that pristine beginning required,
specifically scientific inquiry. Her call was for restraint of human power, not a return to a
pre-scientific time. In fact, her conclusion to Silent Spring bemoans the primitive outlook
coupled with technological advances, but does not condemn the pursuit of knowledge or
scientific progress more generally.
While the study of Carson’s apocalyptic language has neglected ethics, the studies
of her ethics have avoided her apocalyptic language. Philip Cafaro argues that Carson
5
Lawrence Buell.
avoided complicated ethical arguments and instead focused on “simple appeals to widely
held values,” and encouraged experiences of nature as the foundation for ethical
relationships with it.6 He claims that her plea for restraint rests on three equal
foundations: considerations of human health, the moral considerability of non-human
beings, and the value to humans of preserving wild nature and diverse landscapes. These
foundations of ethical relationships with nature are rounded out by the themes of
critiquing the sole focus on the economy, a critique of the human war on nature, and her
warnings concerning the increased artificiality and simplicity of the nature around us. If
Carson advocates any ethical imperatives, Cafaro suggests that they are drawn from her
non-anthropomorphic position, and that they are: “Respect Nature! Know Nature! Place
yourself in proper perspective!”7 Carson conjoins the intellectual and ethical challenges,
not unlike many earlier ethical traditions in which knowledge of the good leads to right
action.8 She suggests that knowledge or science become the key to human activity, and
that knowing about nature will lead to an altered relationship with it. The general tone of
Silent Spring and Carson’s ongoing use of war imagery suggest to this reader that she did
not have the optimistic view of humanity that this theory of ethics requires. Ultimately,
for Carson, moral failing is not merely an intellectual failing, though knowledge is a
necessary component in cultivating a moral attitude toward nature.
While Cafaro gives a robust philosophical account of Carson’s environmental
ethics in Silent Spring, he argues that religion did not play a large role in the ethics that
Carson advocated. Cafaro notes that Carson was interested in provoking a sense of
wonder in her readers and that experience is fundamental to her ethics, but neither of
6
Cafaro.
Cafaro.
8 Informational footnote on previous ethics?
7
these central features of her work have religious roots in Cafaro’s reading, though he
does allow that for Carson the term reverence could be related to intrinsic value, but that
does not add a theological layer to his interpretation of her ethical outlook in Silent
Spring.
While Cafaro does not see religion as a major component of Carson’s writing and
ethics, Lisa Sideris probes Carson’s early childhood influences, many of which were
religious in kind. Sideris convincingly shows that religion was a part of Carson’s life; her
mother was devout; she read nature stories with biblical undertones; and she was
influenced by Albert Schweizer and his theology of reverence for life.9 Along with
Carson’s Calvinistic roots, Sideris sees in Carson a Jobian perspective that decenters
humans and focuses on the vastness of nature. Humans are not only decentered, but are
small and insignificant compared to the vastness of the ocean and the movements of the
wind. Like Calvin, Carson is focused on knowledge of the world as a good, and thus
argues that knowledge leads to reverence and humility, which are essential to her vision
of proper human-nature relationships. As Sideris herself notes, apocalyptic language is
part of the religious tradition to which Carson subscribed and could be seen as a
rhetorical form that helps us to cultivate a sense of wonder.
Though Cafaro and Sideris do not see the apocalyptic language as a direct source
of ethics, scholarly attention to the apocalyptic language in Silent Spring only aids their
arguments. The imperatives that Cafaro discerns in Carson’s work can only be put into
action if the apocalyptic language she uses is taken seriously as part of her argument and
not simply a flourish. The apocalyptic language is part of our historical knowledge and
becomes a path to attaining new knowledge about ourselves and the natural world. Unless
9
Sideris.
we can see the natural world through Carson’s eyes as animate and reacting to human
action, then her imperatives have no force behind them and cultivating a sense of wonder
becomes significantly more difficult. Sideris discerns in Carson’s de-centering of human
life a Jobian perspective in her work. I concur and think that this Jobian perspective
facilitates a sense of wonder that Carson’s apocalyptic language reinforces. While the
Jobian perspective and the apocalyptic language work together to produce a sense of
wonder for Carson’s reader, the ethical and historical backdrop of these traditions are
quite different. On my reading, the Jobian perspective relies on the theological backdrop
of God intentionally and selectively animating nature to use against Job. The apocalyptic
language that Carson uses also has a theological backdrop, but the God of this theology is
not as close to nature. This God has animated nature for its own sake, not for selective
use against humans. In apocalyptic traditions, the theological backdrop allows nature to
speak for itself rather than only at the whims of God. Put succinctly, nature in the book of
Job is an extension of God and God’s will, while in apocalyptic traditions, nature retains
some agency and animation from the time of creation, and can therefore respond without
God’s direction. Nevertheless, the Jobian perspective of the human in relation to nature is
prevalent in Carson’s work. I am simply arguing that the Jobian perspective specifically
on nature is not readily discernable in her work, but rather that a description of nature as
always animated and ready to defend itself lies behind her apocalyptic language.
On my reading, Carson’s apocalyptic language has intentional argumentative
force and this observation only reinforces the arguments in previous studies of Carson’s
environmental ethics. Simply combining the studies of her apocalyptic language and
those of her environmental ethics does not account for the way her apocalyptic language
shapes the content of her ethical argument. Ultimately, a combination of the current
studies on Carson’s language and ethics suggests that Carson advocated eschatological
thinking regarding nature; in this paradigm human action toward nature is not particularly
encouraged because there is no psychological disposition to act. Human action in history
does not change the course of events. Eschatological thinking emphasizes divine action
and the perpetual deferral of resolutions to human problems. Many of the language
oriented analyses of Carson’s work see her apocalyptic language as a source of
eschatological thinking, but that reading cannot account for the ethics that Cafaro and
Sideris attribute to Carson, nor can it yoke the form of argument with the content. The
eschatological dimension of apocalyptic implies specific descriptions of the world that in
turn imply certain ethical claims. First, it posits an end or goal toward which history is
moving. Second, it is characterized by metaphysical and moral dualisms that lead to a
vision of embodied evil forces that are seen as agents of change. History itself is a flow of
events to be weathered and often influenced by the good and evil sides. Humans can align
themselves with a side, but are not true agents in the world. Ethically, choosing a side is
the appropriate end of human action.
The prophetic dimensions of apocalyptic language imply a different relationship
between history and ethics. The prophetic worldview and speech is set against the
backdrop of previous harmonious relations that have now become disordered. They were
not perfect, but they were functional. For example, the prophet Amos chides the Israelites
for making worship perfunctory and for the social injustices that they are inflicting on the
poor.10 He calls them back to a previous moment in which their actions were in
conformity with God’s laws, which stand in as normative. The people to whom Amos
10
Amos chapter 5.
speaks have many choices to make. They are not simply choosing a side, but rather are
called to investigate their own actions and to reform them. They are called to be better
versions of themselves, for which there is a historical precedent. In prophetic discourse,
history is not depicted as barreling forward while people decide whether to be on the side
of ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ Instead, history is a source of previous moral action that can be
revisited and used to encourage future moral action.
Eschatological apocalypticism posits an ethical model in which human action in
the physical world is amoral; that is human action is without efficacy and is therefore not
judged. In contrast, prophetic apocalypticism entails an ethics that prizes human action.
In the eschatological model, a single moment of choice at the right time is the only
measure of human morality. In the prophetic model, one must be able to see the past,
present, and future as they are related to human activity in the physical world. In short,
different structures of perception are at play in these models of history and ethical action.
Eschatological apocalypticism requires seeing the situations that confront one as beyond
human control, while prophetic apocalypticism requires one to hold memories of the past,
present experience, and future vision in tension prior to making a decision for action. In
prophetic apocalypticism, one has obligations to the past and the future, making history a
relevant locus of inquiry. Most importantly, eschatological apocalypticism advances a
supernatural goal at the expense of the natural world and human ethics, while prophetic
apocalypticism concerns itself with the natural world and the current situations in interhuman affairs and human-nature relations.
As mentioned earlier, Carson’s use of the prophetic elements of apocalypse is
most notable in her view that history can be affected by human actions, and in the form of
her argument, which weds apocalyptic language with prophetic rhetorical devices and the
two paths trope known from Deuteronomic writings in the Bible and from Early Christian
texts such as the Didache. The form of Carson’s argument is the corrected vision in that it
demonstrates a hermeneutical stance that incorporates ancient and scientific forms of
reasoning, and only then opens up into the two paths trope. In order to see the possibility
of two paths, one must first be able to see the world as Carson describes it. Thus her
apocalyptic visions not only import some ethical content from the genre of apocalyptic,
but also serve as a lens for viewing the world that could be used in service of other types
of environmental problems. In fact, one might suggest that other authors began trying to
provide similar lenses. This view of the world—the lenses that Carson grinds for us—
facilitates seeing the world both as animate nature and the cumulative product of human
action.
It is not only the relationship between history and ethics posited by Carson
that pushes her apocalyptic language toward the prophetic; it is also the form of her
argument, which draws heavily on the forms of argument used in biblical prophecy.
To further elaborate on this point, the form of Carson’s argument will be analyzed
alongside those of the prophet Amos, who was chosen due to his use of multiple
genres of speech and forms of argument in such a short piece of writing. In addition,
Amos’ concerns are not far from those of Carson. Both are interested in how the
social, broadly defined, relates to the natural. Moreover, Amos prophesied in a time
of prosperity, not completely unlike the prosperity marked by scientific advances in
Carson’s America. The forms of argument that Amos and Carson use are hallmarks
of speaking to the prosperous and urging them to change their behavior even
though the evidence they expect to see to warrant change is absent.
Amos
Form of Argument
Carson
1:2, 4:7-11
Apocalyptic (Vision)
A Fable for Tomorrow
Only implied
Hortatory
Obligation to Endure
2:12, 4:1, 5:11-13, 5:2127, 8:4-6
7:14-17
Indictment
Chapters 3-6, end of 7
Prophetic Authority
Chapter 7
1:3-2:16 (Oracles
against nations), 7:1-9,
8:1-3, 8:9-14
6:12, 8:9-10
Prediction of Doom
and Destruction
Chapters 8-14
Perversion of the
Natural Order
Chapters 15-16
5:14-15 (Two Paths
Trope)
7:2
Call to Action
Chapter 17 (Two Paths
Trope)
NONE
9:9-15
Prophet’s Intercession
on Behalf of the People
Restoration
NONE
The table above organizes chapters in Carson’s Silent Spring and verses in Amos
according to a traditional and accepted set of prophetic arguments. While there is
considerable overlap, and much of my argument is that the overlap is significant and
intentional (even if unconscious), there are differences that enrich our understanding of
Carson’s project.
The apocalyptic visions at the beginning of Amos and Carson differ appreciably
in content. The apocalyptic language in Amos is both natural and historical—natural in
its reference to the failing of crops and historical in it references to previous disastrous
events the Israelites have endured. Carson uses an imaginary place that was once
harmonious and lively, but then quickly transforms that vision into one of misfortune and
death due to the human silencing of nature. The tenor of prophetic speech is one of
judgment. Amos points out the Israelite’s social and religious depravity, but in a
straightforward manner. Carson adds a layer of despair to her apocalyptic vision. It is as
if thwarting this impending reality will take a herculean effort.
A hortatory speech is an incitement to action, but prior to motivating people to
act, there must be a common concern that creates a collective identity. Carson’s second
chapter functions to create a common concern for those who are reading the book.
Further, she refers to those reading her book as “the public,” and she works to situate
herself in that group, while also moving outside of it to bring necessary information about
the environment into the group. While establishing her insider and outsider status in “the
public,” Carson also develops a third group of people: the narrow specialists who cannot
see the big picture. This section informs the public that it is being deceived and rallies
them, through their obligation to continue living, to be less complacent, and seek more
knowledge. A duty to self opens up into a claim of rights against others. Carson then
situates herself as a reliable source to provide them with knowledge. The hortatory is
absent in Amos because it is implied by context. The prophecy is to a specific group of
people who already share an identity. To put it bluntly, the Israelites know what their
obligations are, while Carson’s diverse audience is uncomfortable with the concept of
obligations, much less specific and collective obligations. That being said, Amos works
to navigate both insider and outsider identities himself, as is required by the prophet.
Indictment is a contemporary and legal word for the expression of disapproval
concerning the actions of the people. For Amos, the legal context of the word is
appropriate, given that the accusations Amos levies against the Israelites are in contrast to
their religio-legal duties. For Carson the indictment proceeds as a list of problems in the
environment that “the public” does not see or know about. She describes the current state
of the problem in different ecological systems, but reserves much of the judgment for
“the specialists” and “the man with the spray gun” and “the chemical manufacturers” and
“the control me in state and federal governments.” In this way, throughout the indictment,
the public and Carson are on the same side of the issue. The indictment blends with the
establishment of prophetic authority in chapter 7, but by the end of chapter 7, the public
is also indicted. After describing the horrible death that squirrels experience due to
ingesting chemicals, Carson writes, “By acquiescing in an act that can cause such
suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished as a human being?”11 Now
that the public has some knowledge of the situation, they are also responsible for the
consequences.
Both Amos and Carson seek to establish their authority. For Amos authority flows
from his relationship with God. God has shown him things, and thus he offers privileged
information about God’s inner thoughts and future actions. Carson constructs authority a
little differently. The authority of the prophet suggested by Carson in chapter seven
connects to human ethics. She writes:
The credibility of the witness is of first importance. The professional wildlife biologist on the scene is
certainly best qualified to discover and interpret wildlife loss....Yet it is the control men in state and federal
governments—and of course the chemical manufacturers—who steadfastly deny the facts reported by the
biologists and declare they see little evidence of harm to wildlife. Like the priest and the Levite in the
biblical story, they choose to pass by on the other side and to see nothing. Even if we charitably explain
their denials as due to the shortsightedness of the specialist and the man with an interest this does not mean
we must accept them as qualified witnesses.12
While Amos’ messages from God serve as the source of his authority, Carson talks about
authority in terms of groups of people. Those with knowledge about the interrelatedness
11
12
Silent Spring 100.
Silent Spring 86.
of ecological systems, and those who study it for its own sake should have authority over
environmental issues. As it is, business and governmental interests control what happens
in the environment. Carson adeptly carves out authority for herself as a member of such a
group, but does not claim sole authority. By using the term witness, she further highlights
the significance of seeing what is in front of you and interpreting it for what it is. Her
project is one of aiding in our interpretive abilities. Carson’s use of the Good Samaritan
drives home this point. The structures we use to view the world determine what we see.
The Levite and the Priest don’t see the man in need as a neighbor, while the Samaritan
does.13
Predictions of doom and destruction and the perversion of the natural order are
not readily distinguishable categories for Amos or Carson. Some of the predictions of
doom and destruction in Amos are part of a sub-genre of prophecy known as the oracles
against the nations. The others are Amos’ description of what God has shown him about
his plans for Israel.14 In each destruction is complete and includes the destruction of
nature and social institutions. The perversion of the natural order in the book of Amos is
best seen in the rhetorical question in verse 6:12, “Do horses run on rocks? Does one
plow the sea with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of
righteousness into wormwood….” Here, rather than nature actually becoming an unstable
and unreliable system, unnatural human interactions with nature are used to shed light on
the perversion of the social system. Later in chapter 8, God’s judgment takes the form of
making nature act in unpredictable ways, such as making the sun go down at noon. For
Carson, the predictions of doom and destruction rely on drawing out the long-term
13
Luke 10: 25-37. Interestingly, this is a parable that Jesus recites in reply to a question by an
expert in law.
14 These passages are part of the Day of the Lord genre.
consequences for ongoing environmental destruction. In chapters 8-11 she writes about
the contamination of different ecological systems and the actual and potential
consequences. Chapters 12-14 focus specifically on the human toll due to the changing
environment. Within chapters 8-14 there are many passages that refer to the perversion of
the natural order. For example, in writing about cancer in chapter 14, Carson describes in
brief the process of cell division and that research suggests radiation and chemical
exposure are responsible for abnormal cell division. In the previous chapter she wrote
about the potential dangers to humans’ genetic heritage due to chemical exposre and
toxicity. While cancer may be a natural process, Carson argues that cellular dysfunction
and genetic changes are influenced by the addition of unnatural chemicals to the
environment. In short, they are perversions. Chapters 15 and 16 offer a linguistic play on
the idea of the perversion of the natural order. For those reading her book, the idea that
nature would fight back and adapt itself to the changing chemical balance is somewhat
perverse. It is a picture of nature that lacks stability, but underscores the agency of nature
to react to humans.
The Call to Action, closely related to the Indictment, appears in both Amos and
Carson as a version of the two paths trope. Carson’s view of history and human action are
rooted in prophetic apocalypticism, while her approach to the future builds on this and
opens into the two paths trope. Carson builds on this ethical model by combining the two
paths trope with it. Again, this trope is not unknown to ancient religious texts.
Deuteronomy is most notable among the biblical texts for suggesting that there are two
paths for humans to take. One example is Deuteronomy 30: 15-20:
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of
the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways,
observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the
Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you
do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you
shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. (I call
heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and
curses. Choose life so that you and your descendents may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and
holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the
Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.)
The two paths are delineated by adherence to God’s laws. Within that simple binary
structure of life and death there is also a detailed course of action. Consequences are also
spelled out. The choice of life and death will be played out in the natural worls, such that
the trope has an ecological component. Later in the Didache the trope is taken out of this
context and applied only to community membership, becoming a non-ecological trope.
The final two categories in the table, the prophet’s intercession on behalf of the
people and the restoration, are not elements of Carson’s argument. Carson included
earlier aspects of prophetic apocalypticism in her argument, but changed the content to
include scientific thinking, while also changing the order of these parts of the prophetic
argument. In short, she takes an old rhetorical form and massages it into a form that can
carry scientific data and can underscore human action even more than the biblical
prophets do. She and the prophets osscillate between predictions of ruin and the potential
for restoration, which rests on human action alone for Carson, and which is a blend of
human action and divine beneficence for the prophets. Here, it is clear that some of the
parts of prophetic argumentation rely on a theological backdrop that cannot be adapted to
a scientific worldview. The prophetic intercession to God and the restoration of the
people by God undercut the efficacy of human action in the world, and so they find no
home in Carson’s argument.
The Biblical Creation Story Revisited
With the corrective lenses that Carson supplies, we can return to the biblical
creation story and interpret it anew. Countering the common tradition of interpretation of
Genesis with the prophetic aspects of the apocalyptic tradition sheds new light on the
biblical creation story itself. It suggests that while the ideas within it may serve as the
stasis from which Carson worked, the text itself should not be read in isolation. Genesis 1
becomes descriptive of our current context rather than a normative vision of a prelapsarian world. Genesis loses the normative status as a vision of the past that we should
work toward to restore. Instead Genesis becomes descriptive of current human
psychology that funds the uses and abuses of nature. Genesis 1 moves to being the stasis
that humans should move from rather than the normative vision they are moving toward.
The corrective to our Genesis-context is the prophetic tradition and it animation of nature.
Carson underscores the power of human action to create the world that funds our
imaginations.
Carson pushes the reader toward this interpretation by contextualizing Genesis
within a larger whole and diminishing the significance of any one text. No single
tradition can be lifted out of the text as if it stands for the normative stance toward nature.
There are mythic, poetic, legal, and prophetic texts that contribute to our understanding of
nature in the biblical world. By letting one be normative, we narrow our vision into a
dysfunctional myopia. She also showed that letting one of them rein had devastating
consequences for the earth. While the bible is not normative for Carson, it is not
irrelevant. It is part of our cultural heritage. She expands our field of vision through her
use of apocalyptic language by broadening how we look at our cultural artifacts and how
give them a voice in society. The literal reading of the Bible without its theological
context can do much damage. Even with its theological context it can be corruptive and
corrosive if it is lifted up as the lone perspective.