The destruction and despoiling in our time of so many aspects of our environment through deforestation, salination and air and water pollution has led many thinking people to reconsider the relationship between human beings and their environment. Is the relationship one of master of servant? Has everything been created simply to be of service to human beings? Have human beings as masters and owners the right to do with the environment what they please? Or is the relationship more properly one of stewardship, with humans not owning the environment but acting as managers of it? Stewardship suggests less possibility of radical change than with the master-servant relationship and may involve closer working with nature. However, some of our spectacular failures in managing the environment have led numbers of people to reject the stewardship model and to prefer the term “custodianship”. This description of the relationship between humans and the environment suggests less disruption to the environment and brings us closer to the approach adopted by most indigenous peoples, notably our Australian Aboriginals. For the Aboriginals there is no question of their possessing the land; rather are they possessed by the land. Consequently they respect the land and act merely as custodians of it. The word “custodianship” implies preservation of things as they are, or at the very most ensuring that our activities respect the principle of sustainability.
In considering this question of the relationship between humans and their environment, and how this relates to our Christian faith, we should note two things.
First, we should be fully conscious of the importance of the issues involved. The attitude we adopt toward our environment has very practical consequences. We are not dealing with semantic niceties here, but with attitudes that may lead to disasters. To mention just two disasters that have involved Australian companies in recent years: the Ok Tedi project in New Guinea and the pollution of the Danube by gold mining upstream. Both of these disasters could have been prevented by greater respect for the environment and consequently greater care. When ex-President Bush several years ago approved oil drilling in the pristine Alaskan wilderness I suspect that he was influenced much more by an attitude of the human right to exploitation rather than by ideas of stewardship or custodianship.
The second thing we should note is that, when we as Christians talk of the environment and of our relationship to it, we are talking of what we believe to be God’s creation. Too often in the past we have treated God’s creation as something neutral or inert to be acted upon and exploited, rather than as a living gift from God to be enjoyed and respected. Perhaps we should insist on talking more about “God’s creation” than about the neutral, inert “environment”. “Environment” is, after all, a fairly colourless word, which fails to convey the magnificence and vibrant life of God’s world.
The Bible has quite a lot to say about attitudes to God’s creation. We find many references in the creation stories of Genesis, in the Psalms, and in the book of Job, particularly in the last chapters. I would like to explore one aspect of what the Bible says about creation and human attitudes towards it. Specifically I would like to deal with a word which has become very contentious in some quarters and which, taken out of context, has led to sometimes disastrous misunderstanding about the attitudes that Christians take to the environment. I would like to deal with the word “dominion” and the connotations that it has.
There are a certain number of references in the Bible involving the word “dominion” that seem to support an attitude of domination over the environment by humans. They are often quoted by those who are anxious to exploit the environment in some way. Perhaps the best-known reference is Genesis 1:28, where we read:
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
These words are echoed in Psalm 8:
You have given [humans] dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. (v.6-8)
What is the meaning of “dominion” in these contexts, and what are the implications for our relationship with God’s creation? Over several centuries in the colonising period Western powers found in these biblical verses a justification—or an excuse—for the careless exploitation of natural resources in different parts of the world. The verses are still today used to justify deforestation and mining in ecologically sensitive parts of the planet. Has not God created all this for the benefit of humankind? Some people, intent on pursuing development and so-called progress at all costs, still in our day repair for justification to verses such as these.
In view of these ecologically irresponsible interpretations of the biblical verses, it is not surprising that in recent times the references made to the “dominion” over the natural world accorded by God to humans in Genesis and the Psalms have attracted considerable attention in certain quarters. This has been particularly evident among Green groups, university departments of ecology, and others concerned at the damage that humans have been causing to the environment. The question has been asked: Don’t the references to “dominion” over the natural world give divine sanction to the abuse of the environment that we have witnessed over a prolonged period? Is not Christianity—together with the whole Judeo-Christian tradition that takes the Bible as its Holy Scripture—part of the environmental problem rather than part of its solution?
These provocative but basically reasonable questions, which obviously call for a convincing answer, have taken on greater point from the reference in Genesis 1:28 to “subduing” the earth. What precisely does “subduing the earth” mean? Some people even see the injunction to Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” as at least contributing from a religious perspective to contemporary over-population problems in some countries. Certainly some Christian churches have traditionally taken this verse as providing encouragement for the creation of big families.
Questioning of the biblical text along these lines and examination of its influence on attitudes over the centuries give considerable urgency in our age to addressing from a Christian perspective the question of the position of humans in the natural order. This is one of the key issues that has led to the rise of the discipline of Ecotheology and institutions such as Earth Ministry.
There are several things to be said about Genesis 1:28 with its references to “dominion” and “subduing the earth”.
The first point to note is that we need to put the verse from Genesis into its proper context. Genesis 1:28 occurs in a context of creation which sees the world created by God as good or very good. Following verse 28, in verse 31, we read: “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” The created order is seen by God as very good. The tone is one of celebration, praise and gratitude. Such a tone is captured beautifully in Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. Consequently the destruction, pollution, or careless use of God’s creation is, in the context of Genesis, to be seen as at best rank ingratitude and at worst a serious sin against God. If we wish to remain faithful to the spirit of the creation narrative, then respect for the environment becomes not an optional extra of our faith but an important recognition of the good gifts that we have received. Consequently, God’s granting to humans of dominion should be seen in the context of this recognition of the goodness of creation.
The second point to note is that the reference to “dominion” in Genesis occurs immediately following the verse which states that humankind was created in God’s image:
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them. (v.27)
As you are no doubt aware, many explanations have been given for this reference to “God’s image”. Some have seen it as relating to human beings’ possession of a soul, others relate it to human reasoning ability. But at the very least it signifies that there is, for the compilers of this tradition, something essentially divine in humans that has been communicated by God. In this Genesis context of creation I believe that this divine quality, communicated by the words “in God’s image”, at least partly refers to the creative abilities of humans. Humans share with God the capacity to create. As God created the world, so humankind is also endowed with the capacity to create in conformity with God’s will. This is what I believe is meant by “being made in the image of God”.
This is the context in which “dominion” is used in the following verse 28. Humans share with God the creative impulse and they are invited to exercise “dominion” responsibly in this context. Seen in this light, destruction or pollution of God’s creation is not only a denial of the goodness of God’s creativity but also a distortion of the true nature of human beings, related as this nature is to God’s creativity. “Dominion” should be viewed from this point of view. Having dominion over the various elements of creation does not mean exploiting them as one pleases. Rather does it mean exercising one’s God-given creative abilities in conformity with the example that God has shown in creation.
A third point of importance to note is that the second creation story in chapter 2 of Genesis contains the verse:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. (v.15)
This verse tends to be ignored by those who seek divine sanction for unrestricted and often irresponsible development. On the one hand, the verse proclaims that humans have divine sanction, and consequently the right and responsibility, to till the earth in order to benefit from its fertility. This is, of course, partially a recognition of the need for agriculture, but its applicability extends further than that to other areas of human endeavour. However, what we should note in particular in this verse is that Adam is also given the responsibility to “keep” the garden in which he finds himself. Use it he may, but he must also ensure that he treats it with respect and ensures the sustainability of his activities over the longer term. The terms “having dominion” and “subduing the earth” that we find in Genesis 1:28 need to be seen alongside the injunction to “keep” the garden. These terms can in no way be used to sanction the environmental vandalism that we still see in various parts of the world.
We live in a world where deforestation and pollution are everyday realities, despite some hopeful signs on the horizon. Governments, including our own, are caught between the need to maintain economic prosperity—with the abuse of the environment that this seems to involve—and the need to be ecologically responsible. In the ensuing debate the Christian church should raise its voice to proclaim the message of respect for creation that its Scriptures and its traditions contain. We need not only to refute the arguments of those who use the Bible out of context, as in the interpretation of “dominion” and subdue” that we have dealt with. We need also to rediscover, reclaim and retell all the positive things that we have inherited from our Christian past. This is the considerable contribution that we as Christians can make to the important environmental debate of our time.
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