The human race in the last quarter of the 20th century suffers seriously because of worsening ecological problems. If nature does not recover balance, man will encounter troubles caused by a lack of food and other natural resources, and by ecological catastrophes that could kill many people or even all of humanity.
Some observers have found traces of a new ecoreligion in leftist-radical circles of the contemporary ecological movement. Proponents preach a pantheistic outlook as well as a pagan concept of nature.
In the Boston Herald article, "The Earth Movement Discovers Its Pagan Roots", Don Fedder wrote that some representatives of the ecoreligion blame the Judeo-Christian tradition for the present ecological crisis. They argue that as long as Christianity affirms that man is the ruler of nature, it is placing him above all creation. Consequently, he can study can nature with science and submit nature to his will with technology. They conclude that Christianity deserves the blame for the current ecological crisis.
This all sounds fairly extreme. Man's Christian obligations to nature are based on the belief that God is the Creator of the world and all things, that He fills it, that He loves His creation, and that He exercises His providence over it. The Bible teaches that human beings are created in the divine image. In the definition of St. Paul, man is God's fellow laborer in the world. By emulating God, man is obliged to love nature and care for its order, purity, and good estate. This obligation means that the dominion of man over nature admits, and even presupposes, a knowledge of science and technology. In no sense does man has the right to abuse or destroy the gifts of nature.
The Christian account of the Creator of the universe and creation of the world lies in the Book of Genesis, chapters 1-3. This narrative is magnificent. The words that accompany the individual acts of creation are And God saw that it was good. The writer of this narrative points to the primordial goodness of what God created. This conviction pervades the Bible. Saint Paul, for example, says, every creature of God is good.
On the sixth day of creation, God created man according to His own image and likeness. God called man to love nature as a sacred gift and to care for it responsibly, mindful that this love was one commandment of God, given in the first pages of the Bible. God blessed the first man and woman, and said to them: Fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the seas and the flying creatures of heaven, and all the cattle, and all the earth, and all the reptiles that creep on the earth. Subdue and have dominion. These words cannot be read as serving the ideology of "waging war on nature." These words were also spoken to man before his fall into sin.
God gave man creative freedom. In the words of Fr. Georges Florovsky, Creaturely freedom is disclosed first of all in the equal possibility of two ways: toward God and away from God [in Creation and Redemption, "Creation & Creaturehood" (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Co., 1976), p. 48]. God created man as a free being, to follow His divine will, or to act contrary to it. God made human self-determination lawful, said Saint Gregory the Theologian. The fall into sin, which used freedom for evil, opposing human will to the divine will, served as the cause of man's falling away from God. The fall into sin had destructive consequences for man himself and for all creation.
Here is what God says to Adam after his fall: Cursed is the ground in thy labors; in pain shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. The earth is cursed by God because of man; through man all creation was plunged into a fallen state. This is what Saint Paul was speaking of when he wrote All creation was made subject to vanity . . . [it] groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. Saint John Chrysostom, commenting on this passage, stresses that creation was made subject to vanity, that it became corrupt precisely because of man.
In antiquity and in Middle Ages, nature was a living and direct manifestation of God's omnipotence, a source of awe and reverence for people. This is the way things were. But the coming of the era of the ideology of humanism, free of all manifestations of religion, developed an entirely new relationship to nature. Almost everything that surrounds us now is a product of human activity in our time. We are accustomed to this, and assume that it impossible to live any other way. Man has appropriated for themselves the title creator, and they cannot easily recall the heavenly Creator. Man experiences pride. He boasts of the works of his hands and his efforts to attain greater things.
Here we see a problem. Satisfaction of the daily necessities of man so easily becomes the satisfaction of his caprices. Crossing that boundary into caprice brings one towards evil activity, no matter what humanistic slogans are recited. No achievement, not even those that may seem to have a good end, can please God when they harm others of God's creatures. Two World Wars have shown how to subdue men as well as nature. The higher intellect of scientific and technological progress allowed certain people to destroy millions of fellow human beings. Scientific and technological progress must be subjected to the morality.
Many concrete phenomena contain positive qualities, inasmuch as they were given to us so that we might increase what is good. For example, wealth and marriage are, in and of themselves, positive values, explored variously by different people. Money may be used charitably, but man can also transform it into a tool of sin for egotistical or criminal objectives. Sexual relations were given to continue the human race and to express love. They may also be directed toward evil. Whether good or bad depends on free moral choice.
Mankind's abuse of authority and responsibility does not make the concepts bad themselves. On the contrary, man must intelligently and responsibly direct his acts, avoiding irresponsibility in every way possible. In relation to his own habitat, man must wisely and economically administer the gift given to him by God Himself.
The ecological crisis has reached catastrophic proportions in countries that were forced to live under atheistic communist regimes. Atheistic Marxism-Leninism-Humanism, taken to absurd lengths, tried forcibly to supplant God from society, allegedly for the good of man himself. Announcing that man must stand alone, Marxism-Leninism proclaimed and then used force for the ideals of scientific progress, industrialization, and the subjection of the powers of nature.
Moscow News reports that ecological catastrophe confronts Russia. About 70 million people in cities are breathing polluted air, exceeding norms by at least five times. We can see genetic defects and nationwide degradation. Christianity teaches that restoration of the wholeness of creation and the salvation of mankind, lies in Jesus Christ, the God-man. Only though the incarnate God can man arrive at the deification of his own creative nature and of the whole created world. Man cannot by his own powers regain the fellowship with God that he lost. The salvation of man is brought about by God, for God Himself so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. But God cannot help man his will. Man must respond to the love of God by denying himself, by repentance, and by following Christ, laboring together with God, for the salvation and the deification of the created world. In this collaboration, in this synergy, lies the key to the acquisition of righteousness and peace between God and oneself.
Both radical humanism and ecology set moral criteria. Yet they differ from the Christian world view in principle. The radical slogan of Humanism is "Man for himself," self-realization without God. Yet man's "I myself" without God, apart from God, is inauthentic. We forget the words of St. Augustine, When man lives according to man, and not according to God, he is like the devil. The paradox of Christianity is that for man to reach self-fulfillment, he must deny himself out of love for God and his neighbor.
Archpriest Victor Potapov