Lesson 7 Flashcards
Dominion as stewardship
-An alternative way of thinking about the environment can be found in the views of those Christians who argue that to have ‘dominion’ over the environment really means that humans should act as ‘stewards’ of the entire environment – as caretakers of God’s creation, fully responsible to God in that duty.
-The world belongs to God because God created it, along with humans. As the most intelligent species, humans have a responsibility to look after it, because they alone have been made in God’s image.
Dominion in the bible
-This way of thinking is also rooted in the Bible.
-The focus here is not on the ‘Fall’ of the world from perfection but on those statements in Genesis that God viewed his creation as ‘good’ (Genesis 1:4.10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).
-According to this view, the environment has intrinsic value because God made it, and, by definition, it must therefore reflect God’s goodness.
Quotes from the bible about stewardship
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy before the Lord (Psalm 96:11-13)
What does Christian’s being made in gods image mean?
Being made in God’s image, Christians have a responsibility to look after the world, and they have a duty to reflect God’s love for its goodness.
Augustine’s ‘Principle of Plenitude’.
-This principle began with Plato, and it suggests that all the forms of existence that are possible in the universe will exist somewhere.
-St Augustine used a version of this principle to suggest that a universe with many species is much better than a universe with only one, because having a huge variety of species shows the depth of God’s power and the beauty of his creation.
-Creation is perfect because of this range and diversity, which reflect God’s omnipotent creativity.
What does augustines approach mean for humans?
-humans are therefore just one of an infinite range of entities, both organic and inorganic.
-The natural environment includes all of heaven and Earth, including lakes, rivers and seas, mountains and the atmosphere.
-Levelling of the rainforests and pollutionof lakes, rivers and seas has reached crisis proportions, and much of the natural beauty of the landscape has been spoiled.
-If the entire environment belongs to God, then stewardship must be of the entire environment, and not just of humans and other animals.
Increasing stewards
-It is probably the case that a changing understanding of the effects of human activities on the environment has brought about the increased popularity among Christians of the idea that they should be stewards of the natural environment.
Victoria Harrison
-Victoria Harrison (focusing on Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity):
-‘By the end of the twentieth century, many had come to believe that this situation posed an immediate threat to the continuation of life on the planet.
-Given the possible magnitude of this threat, it is not surprising that religious thinkers from each of the Abrahamic faiths felt the need to address some of the issues.
-The result was eco-theology, which consists in an attempt to develop a theology that can respond to the environmental crisis.
Lynn White Jr
-Lynn White Jr argues that many of the problems at the root of the environmental crisis have been shaped, in the Western world, by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, particularly by its belief that humans have dominion over the environment as a whole.
-Not all Christian thinkers accept this, since some argue that the crisis has developed because of our increasingly secular and scientific / mechanised culture, where our ethics have not kept up with our technological ability.
Sallie McFague
-Christian feminist writer who argues that the current environmental crisis is largely the product of patriarchal Christianity, where God is seen as transcendent and apart from the world, which encourages humanity’s subjection of nature.
-We need to develop new models of God, particularly where God is immanent and involved within the entire world, so that Christians see the world literally as God’s body.
-The response of Christian organisations in promoting the idea of stewardship of the environment has been widespread.
Christians as stewards of animals and the natural environment
-Changing understandings of the effects of human activities on the environment have affected the role of Christians as stewards of animals and the natural environment.
-From the late twentieth century to the present, we have come to understand that the degradation of the environment has reached crisis proportions.
Examples of degradation?
-global warming
-water pollution
-soil pollution
-radioactive pollution
-human population pollution
Global warming
-Global warming, where the burning of fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas, has produced toxic gases that contribute to an overall increase in the planet’s average temperature.
-The Earth’s temperature is kept warm by the ‘greenhouse effect’, where certain gases in the atmosphere prevent the Sun’s energy from bouncing back off the Earth’s surface, and this effect has been increased by burning fossil fuels.
-increase in temperature has resulted in a huge meltdown of the ice at the. Earth’s poles.
-Sea levels have been predicted to rise by around 90 cm by the year 2100 and by considerably more thereafter.
-prediction that three-quarters of the UK will be submerged.
-effects on low-lying areas will be catastrophic. Huge storms are becoming common: in 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused a storm surge that breached the New Orleans flood barriers, inundating three-quarters of the city and killing over 1,300 people.
Water pollution
-Water pollution has increased drastically
-for example, by the increased release of waste products like sewage and factory chemicals into river drainage systems, much of which then ends up in the sea.
-Oil pollutes the seas and oceans, killing millions of seabirds and fish every year.
-Freshwater systems are polluted by industrial settlement and the introduction of dams, which often submerge large areas of natural beauty, with a resultant loss of biodiversity.
Soil pollution
-Soil pollution occurs when chemicals are released by accident or by design.
-Some of the worst soil contaminants include herbicides and pesticides, produced on a large scale by the farming industry and on a local scale by people using them in their own gardens.
-There is much concern about the long-term effects of genetically-modified crops, not least in their possible effects on biodiversity.
