FOR DISCUSSION ONLY – NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
Toward One Christian Way of Thinking about Conservation and Land Management
September 6, 2013
Harry Blamires, Recovering the Christian Mind: Meeting the Challenge of Secularism, 1988
We live in a culture tending to view “nature” at arm’s length (“objectively”), where nature yields no
deeper meaning than what we can establish empirically. God is irrelevant to analysis, and only relevant,
if then, to making ethical choices.
What cosmology/worldview/theoretical framework might christians use in understanding (obtaining
knowledge) of nature and analyzing conservation issues, and what might be some of its implications?
How might we think about conservation and land management within a Christian analytical framework?
Might this result in a conservation approach that differs from secular approaches in more than
motivation?
A tentative cosmology
God is a Trinitarian community comprised of three paradigmatic relationships
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These relationships are characterized by:
o 1) total giving to the other, and
o 2) total receptiveness and responsiveness to the other
God is Love, this total giving and responding
God’s most fundamental activity is that of creating
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God sustains the world
We are part of creation, not separate. There are only 2 fundamental biblical categories in the
cosmos: the Creator and the created
God’s creation includes both social and biophysical order, as well as matter, energy, time and
space
Creation is an ongoing process including innovation, unpredictability and open-endedness
(Freitheim, p. 7)
God is intimately involved in the creative process, but also allows that process freedom
Creation is incomplete and will culminate in a new heaven and earth possessing significant
continuities with the current creation
While transcendent, God also is immanent. God is everywhere/in all things, drawing all things
together in interrelationships.
Creation is iconic, a Book of Nature
Human actions have physical and spiritual impacts
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Our inability to fully respond to God’s love wreaks havoc with the world, explaining on a deep
level the “environmental crisis” and social injustice
Our inability to respond fully to God, and the consequences thereof, is related to our lack of
personal engagement with the rest of creation
The Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus
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God became part of creation and the created order, not just a human being
“God so loved the world that he gave….” God loves the entire created order, including its
creatures, interrelationship, and its ordering
God is doing something completely new, which we can only barely glimpse
Some implications:
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To know God fully we need to be fully in relationship with God’s creation and vice-versa.
This relationship implies personal engagement and openness, an I/Thou.
God is active in the world and responds to us, particularly as we become more and more engaged
with, and transformed by, God.
God cares about all creation, not just humans.
God cares about the order and harmony of creation, including human society.
We need to think in systems of interrelationships.
Human actions have cosmic implications.
Humans have a special role to play in creation, and therefore corresponding obligations to fulfill.
God does surprising things. Serendipity and surprise are part of creation, especially since
Christmas and Easter.
We cannot pretend to have it all figured out…”there be mystery out (and in) there!”
The ways we obtain knowledge may require some rethinking. We may need to re-examine
“objective” empiricism and, therefore, the methods of science in light of our personal engagement
with nonhuman creation. What happens when it starts to speak back to us…?
Given that we believe that we can use prayer in various forms to heal people, we might be able to
use these or similar tools to heal nonhuman creation.
We need to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit and humble before God and creation as
we proceed.
Further reading:
Terence E. Fretheim. God and World in the Old Testament. Nashville: Abingdon, 2005.
Gottfried, Robert. Economics, Ecology, and the Roots of Western Faith: Perspectives from the Garden.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995.
Vincent Rossi. “Sacred Cosmology in the Christian Tradition.” The Ecologist. January, 2000.
http://nrccc.org/site/Topics/Resources/Theology/sacredCosmology_Rossi.html
Vincent Rossi. Review of Sharrard’s Human Image: World Image. Firmament, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Spring 1993).
Philip Sherrard. “Human Image: World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology.”
Firmament, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Spring 1993). An abridged version from the Introduction to Sherrard’s book of
the same name published by Golgonooza Press, Ipswich England, 1992.
Tom Sine. “Waking Up to the Captivity of the Christian Mind.” Firmament, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Spring 1993).
Excerpted from Chapters 2, 8 and 9 of Sine’s book, Wild Hope: Crises Facing the Human Community on the
Threshold of the 21st Century. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1991.
Nicholas T. Wright. Surprised by Hope : Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the
Church. NY: HarperOne, 2008.