I happened along Francis Schaeffer’s excellent short book Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology. I will offer a short summary of some of his many profound points made therein.
His argument begins by connecting religion with ecological position. He describes an article where a history professor argued that Christianity, with the view that man was given dominion over the earth, poisoned the modern post-Christian view that created the ecological mess; changing this religious base would resolve the problems. Schaeffer agrees fully with this second part, the first he later shows is not fully representative of a proper Christian view.
Schaeffer moves on to describe two ideas that have been prevalent as a basis for ecological positions. The first he examines is pantheism. In this vein, he examines an article that calls for recognition of morality as extending to humankind’s full environment, including the natural world, instead of the traditional view of just person-to-person. In a broader sense, the pantheistic view sees the essence of mankind and nature as one and the same. Although he recognizes the merit of this position in putting humankind and the natural world on the same plane of existence, he shows that it, by failing to enjoy the particulars of being human or nature, reduces the universe to an absurd system.
He also offers a rebuttal of Platonic dualism, especially in the context of the modern church. He explains that a Christianity concerned only with a “higher” spiritual life, seeing nature as only a proof of the greatness of God, essentially say that God’s creative work is insignificant! I enjoyed very much this story:
…Some years ago I was lecturing in a certain Christian school. Just across a ravine from the school there is what they call a “hippie community” (though they aren’t real hippies!). On the far side of the ravine one sees trees and some farms. Here, I was told, they had pagan grape stomps. Being interested, I made my way across the ravine and met one of the leading men in this “Bohemian community.
We got on very well as we talked of ecology and I was able to speak of the Christian answer to life and ecology. He paid me the compliment (and I accepted it as such) of telling me that I was the first person form “across the ravine” who had ever been shown the place where they did, indeed, have grape stomps, and the real pagan image they had there, which was the center of the rites. …
Having shown me all this, he looked across to the Christian school and said to me, “Look at that; isn’t that ugly?” And it was! I could not deny it. It was an ugly building, without even trees around it. The thing was ugly!
It was then I realized what a horrible situation this was. When I stood on Christian ground and looked at the Bohemian people’s place, it was beautiful. … Then I stood on pagan ground and looked at the Christian community and saw ugliness. That is horrible. Here you have a Christianity that is failing to take into account man’s responsibility and proper relationship to nature.
So then what is a Christian view of ecology? Schaeffer says right away: Creation. God created everything, both the human and natural, therefore both mankind and the world “are equal in their origin”. Recognizing God as creator, our relationship to the natural world is through him; in Schaeffer’s language “upward” instead of “downward.
Schaeffer goes on about the implications of this. Recognizing God as Creator, in whom all things have their being, means that neither mankind nor the natural world is autonomous. Things have no meaning in themselves; rather because they were created by God, they have the role that God assigned to them. Therefore the Christian sees the natural world, in its natural God-given order, as good. This means God (and we also, if we are wise) deals with things in their own way, as diverse beings with their own function.
Interestingly, he identifies the ascension of Christ as a central part of the affirmation of the worth of the natural. Christ’s natural body in the ascension, became hidden in the unseen, “spiritual” realm. As such, the two “worlds” of the physical and spiritual are not antithetical, but are both good parts of God’s creation.
Thus the Christian view satisfied what Schaeffer identified as needed: it explains why humans ought to feel an affinity with nature, and respects the diversity in kind that exists.
