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four most important biblical passages for a Christian enviromentalism, The
Trinity Journal, Fall 1998 by Bullmore, Michael A
I. INTRODUCTION
In the upper reaches of Michigan's lower peninsula near the small town of Mancelona stands the Au Sable Institute, an evangelically based education center for promoting a Christian environmental stewardship. The philosophy of the Au Sable Institute reads in part as follows:
The Board, faculty, and staff of the Au Sable Institute confess that God is owner of all. Humankind is not the owner of that over which it has authority. Human authority is more that of trustee than owner. The scope of this trust is global. Since all creatures depend on the earth for life, health and fulfillment, stewardship is the responsible use and care of creation. This is a clear and repeated testimony of Scripture.1
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It is the purpose of this article to focus exclusively on this clear and repeated biblical testimony. While previous articles in this series have attended to scientific, political, and historical dimensions of the environmentalism issue there has been as yet no closely focused examination of biblical material on the issue in this venue.2
It is not as though no biblical attention has been paid elsewhere. There is an encouraging recent growth in both the amount and the quality of writing addressing environmentalism from a more purely scriptural perspective.3 Much of this material, however, has arrived in the form of book-length treatments or collections of essays each dedicated to various parts of the biblical witness. It is our belief that it will prove useful to Christian teachers, and especially pastors, to have a more compact and more easily accessed treatment of the most essential biblical materials. Hence our focus on the "most significant" passages.
In their article "Evangelicals and Environmentalism: Past, Present, and Future," Grizzle, Rothrock, and Barrett share the results of a national survey of pastors in which the participants were asked, "What are the most important obstacles to further development of an effective philosophy of creation that involves appropriate environmental concern and action by evangelicals?" The most cited "obstacle" (identified by well over half the participants) was "the lack of teaching and preaching on the environment, particularly the failure to develop a robust theology of the creation."4 This lament is voiced repeatedly by those committed to getting a responsible Christian presence felt in our society as it addresses issues of environmental concern.5
It is therefore the intention of this article to be something of a primer for pastors and teachers who have a desire to include as a part of their larger ministry of public instruction and encouragement, truth concerning mankind's responsibility before God toward his creation (a desire we would want to encourage in all pastors and teachers) but who to date have not had the opportunity adequately to study and process the potentially overwhelming amount of material dedicated to the subject. In short, this article gathers and begins to operationalize the foundational biblical thought necessary for a faithful Christian proclamation regarding the environment.
At this point it may be necessary to address a fundamental question. Why is it important to preach and teach this? Shouldn't we concentrate our limited time on the more pressing concerns of the gospel and Christian life? While the "environmental issue" is one of particularly poignant current concern about which Christians should be able to think and speak from within a Christian perspective, if for no other reason to engage in potentially productive discussion, if it is considered separately, as some interesting topic, it does pale in comparison to the importance of other Christian categories. It is only when it is seen as of a piece with our larger responsibility before God that it assumes the place of something worthy of our time and careful consideration. A piece of history from the environmentalism debate will be instructive for us here.
Soon after the emergence of "environmentalism" as a movement, accusations were leveled against Christianity, blaming it for the current ecological crisis.6 As a Christian voice began to be raised on the issue of environmentalism, much time was spent refuting these accusations. It now appears that those accusations, at least in some scholarly quarters, are being retracted. However, at least some Christian writers were willing to own some blame. In response to the attempt by some Christian writers to place the blame at the feet of irresponsible Christians in order to protect Christianity as a set of ideas, James Nash insisted,
It will not do to draw a neat distinction between Christianity and Christendom, between the faith itself and perversions of it by its practitioners. That distinction may be formally or logically true, as I agree, but it is facile and unconvincing when applied to history. We cannot so easily distinguish between the faith and the faithful.
Despite Nash's warning, my attempt in what follows is to focus on "the faith" as set forth in the Scriptures, independent of its practice by Christians. By so doing I am seeking to contribute to a more faithful expression of true Christianity by those who call themselves Christian. The fact that many Christians have become captive to a world view that unduly elevates economic progress makes it absolutely necessary for Christian pastors and teachers to address the matter head-on-and for better or worse the issue of environmental stewardship is integrally involved in this clash of world views. Thus, preaching and teaching a Christian environmentalism can, in our day, play a significant role in facilitating the movement of people away from lives of self-interest and toward an earnest devotion to a Christian way of life, and must occupy a place in the total teaching of Christians to pursue and honor the accomplishment of the purposes of God in his earth. The mandate to care for the earth, a mandate fundamental to man's being and seminal in his relationship to God, has not been abrogated. Environmental stewardship is therefore a matter of both Christian obedience and Christian piety. And, it is our confidence that a clear and straightforward teaching is presented in Scripture upon which morally responsible teaching and action can be based.8
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