Earth Process and the Wish for Human Exemption
by Keith Helmuth
Issue #25, Spring 1997, p 14-15
In 1967 Lynn White Jr., historian
of technology and Medieval culture, published an essay titled, The Historical
Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, in which he identified the Biblical
tradition of human dominion over the Earth as the origin of the environmental
trouble we are now in. This essay marked the opening of a discussion
on ecology and the Bible which is still gaining momentum and is now widely
recognized as critically important for understanding and possibly altering
our culture's eco-destructive behavior.
During this discussion many Christian
thinkers have rallied to the defense of "dominion" by casting it in a stewardship
mode. In addition, the Bible has been diligently combed in search
of passages which reflect any degree of ecological understanding.
Most of the references which can be read in this light are found in the
Hebrew scripture and amount to a forceful reiteration of the fact that
"the Earth is the Lord's," "all flesh is as grass" and that humans are
accountable to God for the use they make of Creation.
From the standpoint of ecology, this re-reading of the Bible quickly runs
into a limitation. The context of understanding is still ownership
-- God's ownership and human management. Good management -- is certainly
better than bad management. But management remains management and,
with regard to what we now know about the ecological complexity of the
Earth, the idea of human management is a stunningly arrogant delusion.
Revising our understanding of dominion and rehabilitating a theology of
Creation is not likely to alter the fact that the ethos of domination permeates
Western culture. The technology and economics which are poisoning
and disabling the Earth have come straight out of our Biblically-dominated
culture. There is no escaping this accountability. The issue
is obviously complex and involves a good deal more by way of cultural context
than just the Bible. But the language of the Bible is, as Northrup
Frye has so eloquently demonstrated, the "great code" of Western Civilization.
There is no blinkering the fact that this code is deeply enmeshed in the
tangles of domination.
A growing range of cultural studies has shown that the categories of thought
through which we organize our understanding of the world, and the structures
of language through which we express that understanding, have been shaped
by the ethos of domination. The urge to dominate is undoubtedly a
pre-Biblical behavior. But the Biblical injunction to march under
the banner of a progressively widening dominion, has amplified this tendency
into such cultural prominence as to have become a virtual worldview, a
generally unconscious assumption about the natural order of things and
relationships.
The problem of dominion, however, is just the tip of the theological iceberg.
Looking deeper, there are two other configurations of feeling, thought,
and language, intrinsic to the Biblical world-view, which are of even greater
significance with regard to ecological dissonance. They are the misunderstanding
and stigmatizing of death and the wish for exemption from the basic conditions
of Earth process.
Before outlining these elements of the Christian worldview, another question
should be asked. What is the basic metaphor of the Bible? What
is the pervasive storyline which has been carried in the Biblical tradition
-- a storyline which has been shaped to an astounding range of uses for
good and ill?
THE BASIC METAPHOR of the Bible
is this: History has an intention. In the Hebrew scripture the intention
is focused on bringing a chosen people together in the knowledge of the
one God above all gods. In the Christian scripture the intention
of history is the defeat of death, the ending of death's dominion over
life.
The chosen people story flows from the wish for special status in the fabric
of Earth's social ecology -- special status in relation not only to other
life forms, but in relation to other human groupings as well. The
defeat of death story is the core of the wish for exemption from the conditions
of Earth process.
These two cultural psychologies, these two transcendent wishes, deeply
inform Judeo-Christian tradition and its utopian secular derivatives, such
as, Marxism, various socialisms, capitalism, and technological utopianism.
In combination they have driven the social and economic behavior which
has set the stage, and has now dramatically raised the curtain on the disabling
of Earth's biotic environments.
The Christian misunderstanding and stigmatization of death is a more difficult
problem, with regard to ecological integrity, than is the ideology of dominion.
A whole theology of evil, sin, punishment, and salvation is anchored in
seeing death as an enemy. In a still further theological twist, Christian
doctrine developed the view that since death was pervasive throughout
Earth process, Earth itself was in a "fallen" state. Earth was seen
as beholden to the power of evil and in need of redemption.
This unfortunate doctrine can, of course, be refuted from within the Bible
itself, since God is clearly recorded as having declared Creation to be
"good." The only part of it God is reported to have regretted making
is the human. But despite this recovery, we are still left with the
powerful assumption that death is the great enemy of life.
The antidote to this profoundly anti-ecological view is not difficult to
demonstrate. We are dealing with an error in language, thought process,
and logic -- an error with great emotional and behavioral consequences.
Think of the numerous times you have heard and used the expression "life
and death." This expression sets up an opposition which seems self-evidently
intrinsic to the natural order of things, a polarity which seems to come
from the very dawn of our culture.
IT TAKES only a moment's
reflection, however, to realize the monumental error of this expression
and the whole skewed psychology of the culture behind it. Death is not
the opposite of life. Death is the opposite of conception and birth.
Life is the realm which contains them both. Birth and death are the
way life hands itself on from generation to generation, from community
to community. Birth and death are like right and left hands folded
into each other for the presentation of a gift. When this realization
dawns over us, our siege mentality in relation to death releases its grip
and we have the opportunity to stand at ease.
This mentality surrounds the story of the Children of Israel at the level
of competition with other peoples and emerges in Christianity in relation
to death and the place of death in Earth process. This sense of opposition,
battle, victory and domination which has powered Western Civilization in
its geographic and technological exploits, has now proven to have been
a singularly inappropriate way of relating to Earth process. An appropriate
understanding of death and the abandonment of the siege mentality may,
perhaps, foreshadow the emergence of a truly ecological culture.
In addition to the defeat of death, there is, throughout the Bible, a more
generalized wish for exemption from the Earth's normal conditions. The
occurrence miracles feed the wish for exemption. After the removal
of the Israelites from Egypt, the miraculous plays a relatively minor role
in Hebrew scripture. But in the Christian scripture, the miraculous is
not only high profile, but comes to be the whole point. The suspension
of the house rules, a waiver of compliance with the Earth's normal conditions,
is seen as the culminating and authenticating component of the Christian
story.
Psychic attachment to the possibility of miracles is not in itself a problem.
Strange things do seem to happen. But to rest the entire case of eternal
truth and the Divine-human relationship on an exemption from the Earth's
normal conditions is to open the door on a staggeringly difficult theological
task. The Christian story of salvation was thus detached from any
Earth-based reality and failed to generate an ecologically grounded ethic.
Its theological credibility became increasingly diminished as the culture
of science, technology, and economic development gained ascendancy.
What did not become remote, however, was the Biblically rooted wish for
human exemption. It was no longer a matter of waiting for miracles.
Miracles could now, increasingly, be designed and produced -- made to order.
Through the accumulation of wealth and the control of technology, the social
relations and economic behavior characteristic of ecological adaptation
could more and more be set aside in favor of privilege and aggrandizement.
If water could no longer be turned into wine, wine could certainly be made
to appear, quite magically, on the tables of the rich without requiring
one iota of their personal energy.
AS WE SAY, "the rest is
history." Nothing succeeds like success. And the success of
the rich in creating a system of exemption from the fundamental tasks of
personal, family, and community maintenance within a sustainable ecological
context -- this huge technological success -- became the miracle of a new
secular religion to which a new "chosen people" began to aspire.
Thus, we have traveled deep into the logic of consumerism, a logic which
is poisoning the planet.
Do I really think all this can be laid on the doorstep of the Bible?
Not quite; the issue is far more complex in terms of cultural influences
at work throughout our history. But I do think the development of
Western culture cannot be understood without careful scrutiny of the Biblical
code and the worldview which flows from it.
The Bible is central to our culture and is a deep formative influence even,
or perhaps especially, on those who have never given it much thought.
The Bible study reflected here is an effort to rescue our heritage.
It is, after all, the only scripture we have. I am suggesting that if we
disentangle and extract the anti-ecological elements of the Biblical worldview,
then the truly vital and enduring values of our heritage -- namely compassion
and justice -- may shine through and help us build reasonably harmonious
social ecologies within the various wild ecologies of the given, ongoing
Creation.
Keith Helmuth is a market farmer, community development activist and
writer who lives in Houlton, Maine. A member of the New Brunswick Friends
Meeting, he is active in regional and national Quaker programs and was
a Quaker delegate to the World Council of Churches' Convocation on Justice,
Peace and the Integrity of Creation in Seoul, Korea in 1990.
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