From Cross Currents Spring
1985 pp. 49-53
Christian
Responsibility for Nature and Freedom
Editorial note: This is a condensed response to a debate
that goes back at least to Max Weber’s Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of
Capitalism (1904) — and probably to St. Augustine’s The City of God (begun
413). In its typically modern form, the
issue concerns the extent to which Christianity has exercised a formative
influence on Western economic and technological development. Most recently, the work of the American
historian Lynn White, Jr. (see especially his “The Historical Roots of Our
Ecological Crisis” [1967] and Medieval Religion and Technology [1978]),
and broadsides by German philosopher Carl Amery (See Das Erde der Vorschung [1972],
translated into French as Fin de la providence [1976]) have raised the
issue anew. Christianity has been accused,
in White’s words, of bearing “a huge burden of guilt” for the conquest of
nature and, as Amery and others have implied, of responsibility for creating a
decadent, individualistic social culture.
(For a good brief discussion of these works from a non-Christian, a
Christian, and a Jewish perspective see the “Symposium on Religion and the Rise
of Technology,” Research in Philosophy and Technology, vol 6 [1983], pp.
175-204.) Ellul, incorporating elements
of such charges, provides a succinct response that summarizes his own reading
of Christian history, and his “ethics of freedom.” The article appeared in Combat Nature, whole no. 54
(Jan.-Feb. 1983). pp. 16-17.
It is common today to blame Christianity for contributing to
the deterioration of nature and the rise of the centralized authoritarian
state. Although the argument is often
oversimplified and exaggerated, it contains an element of truth which can be
summarized as follows: Christianity has played with fire and gotten burned.
The
scenario can be quickly sketched. The
preaching of Jesus (following Moses and the prophets) proclaimed a total
liberation of humanity: from powers, legal systems, social morality,
religion. As a result Christianity (I
mean the real thing practiced by the first Christian generations)
Cross Currents 49
freed people from prevailing religions — on the condition
that, from the beginning, it was not and would not itself become another
religion. If destroyed the traditional
sacredness attached to things and to nature.
Then it proclaimed the complete and free mastery of humanity over the
environment, over the world, in which human beings seem to belong in total
control. God emancipated humanity. And this fact was all the more remarkable in
that this unknowable, ungraspable God is also absolutely transcendent. Finally, Christianity individualized in the
extreme; the value of the individual was raised above that of any social
group. What counts in Christian
preaching is the “thou” separated from the crowd, from the masses.
This
nevertheless created an unlivable situation.
For every point mentioned so far, the Christian message contains a
counterpoint. People are freed from
everything, yes, but this freedom is inconceivable without a conversion to God
and a life within the love of God and neighbor. People become individuals, yes, but this change is viable only if
together with others they form a new community, of a different type, set up in
another manner that in the past and able to replace all others: the
church. We receive unlimited control
over the world which is no longer sacred, yes, but on condition that this world
is understood as the creation of God.
The sacred is no longer within the world, but the world, being
the work of God, the gift of God, should be totally and perfectly
respected. Yes, but as I have already
said, this God is transcendent — in saying which, we must not forget that he is
incarnated in Jesus, so that we have the image of God on earth. He is as close (and even more so) as the
gods of other religions.
In this way
Jesus’ preaching destroyed the whole ancient order, but reconstructed a
new order. His followers were not
thrown into the void, the desert, the “what-ever-you-want.” They were given new roots in religion as
well as in morality, politics, and an attitude towards nature. But these roots, which should have allowed
the reconstruction of a world based on liberty and love, did not take hold. And it is here that everything went haywire.
People
profited from the message of Jesus without accepting all the consequences,
without submitting to the orientation of creation in a new world of new
obligations and indications. They were
liberated from everything, and at the same time called to build a new society,
a new morality (of love and liberty), and to establish a relationship of
respect in which the interests of other people and thins would come before
their own. And always there were to
make known the presence of God, a God both absolutely transcendent and, in
Jesus Christ, absolutely present.
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Yet the drama that has taken place has been one of
destruction without a corresponding construction.
The world
which was reconstructed found itself with an authoritarian state, the preaching
of Jesus changed into a religion, the church made into an oppressive religious
society, and the individual on his own except for external social
controls. With regard to nature, people
came to consider themselves absolute masters.
This was the failure. Social
institutions outweighed grace at the time when the seeds of anarchic freedom,
unrestrained individualism, amorality, and exploitation were sown.
When the
barriers erected by faith and by the primitive church were eventually destroyed
by the weakening of spirituality, by the institutionalization of the church,
the implications of Christianity became visible and effective. Thus it is true that Christianity has played
a historical role in contributing to the deterioration of nature and the rise
of the authoritarian state, but only to the extent that it has lived through
the destructive aspects of Jesus’ preaching and that, with few exceptions, the
new person, the new world, and new relationships failed to be born. Now, in our present situation with regard to
nature and freedom, Christianity has an even greater part to play. It is not at all a question of going back to
the Middle Ages, to Christian domination in a “Christian” society. Such an idea is ridiculous. What is needed is an authentic re-thinking
of the biblical message to see how it can be inserted into the contradictions
and dialectic which now obtain between nature and freedom. In this regard I would like to suggest three
simple lessons.
The first
concerns the idea of management or stewardship. Since nature is no longer sacred, man is taken to be the lord of
nature. But the essential thing has
been forgotten: This nature is the creation of God, who handed it over to Adam
and Eve — not to do as they pleased, but to manage and care for in the absence
of God.
What does
this mean? From the perspective of the
Hebrew Scriptures it means two things.
It means that God des not want to rule over his creation directly; he
does not want creation to be an object that runs exactly the way he sets it up
like some automatic mechanism. God
places people in nature precisely so that everything will not be submitted
mechanically to some over-riding power, but in order “to give room to
play.” This in turn means that humanity
(in the image of God) is called to act toward creation in the same way God
does, although without his total power.
And this God is given the name love.
If God created, it is through love; if he gives independence to
creation, it is through love. We must
treat nature in the same way, managing it not for blind and
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egotistical profit, but through love. Such are the implications of the first
chapters of Genesis.
With this
understanding we are a long way from any interpretation implying some absolute
human control. For the manager or
steward clearly has to account for his stewardship. The same idea returns over and over again in the teachings of
Jesus. Human beings are accountable:
they must answer to someone. And even
if we do not accept biblical faith, this point should be retained: human beings
manage the world for someone else — whether it be the rest of humanity or
future generations. We live today at a
time when this responsibility has burst forth into full view, and we are now in
danger of being judged by the consequences of our actions.
The second lesson I would draw from
the Bible is as follows. Human beings
appear to be limited from three points of view. They are subject to finitude, thresholds, and boundaries.
Finitude
refers to the fact that we and the world in which we find ourselves have a finis. There is a limited amount of time in which
we are born and die. Growth is
finite. Resources are finite. Space is finite. This is the way life is, and we cannot do anything about it. From beginning to end the Bible gives us
this teaching and requires us to accept living under such conditions. Each time we try to escape, a catastrophe
results. Finitude is a strict
limitation on our freedom. It makes us
participate in the necessity of nature.
Furthermore,
there are “thresholds” (as illuminated by Ivan Illich), i.e. points at which
some tendency is reversed, where the increase in something produces an effect
contrary to what was expected — as when an excess of medication produces a new
illness. We have here an “Automatic”
reaction which is another limit to our freedom. The Bible likewise provides plenty of examples to warn that we
must be careful to keep our actions from going beyond such thresholds.
Finally, there are “boundaries” with
regard to the possibilities of human freedom.
Limits or boundaries are the ultimate expression of human freedom, which
chooses not to do what can be done.
After all, when “thou shall not kill” becomes a boundary to human
action, then true humanity becomes possible.
Certain actions are possible, but for reasons that are self-chosen and
self-imposed, we freely decide not to exercise these actions. It is at this point that we are truly free,
and not when we extend our actions, our power, or our strength
indefinitely. In other words, when we
establish either a law, a morality, or a rule of conduct and set ourselves some
path, it does not matter which. Only
then does here arise a responsibility for management or stewardship: with the
nature we have been given we can do may things, so that we must
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place boundaries on ourselves in order not to risk
everything. The Bible is an expression f this kind f choice.
This brings
us to our third element. I have just
discussed the example of voluntary limited power. This is precisely the example of Jesus, who always chose
non-power (which goes much further than non-violence). If there is an “imitation of Christ” it can
only be along these lines. The choice
for non-power, however, calls into question our manner of dealing with nature,
animals, and other people, the foundations and patterns of our military and
technicized society, and finally our idea of freedom as autonomy, absolute
independence, sovereignty, etc. The
choice of non-power is also our freedom in relation to our “natural
tendencies.” Nature provides an example
of the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. If we play this game (as we have done),
power is increased indefinitely, since we are conditioned purely and simply by
necessity. Such a way of life expresses
a fatality. On the contrary, in the
midst of this world of fatality, we must introduce a freedom which can be
expressed only in the decision for non-domination, non-violence, non-alienation
from the other, and non-exploitation (whether of the natural environment of
other human beings).
I think
these three lessons sum up the whole biblical message. The catastrophe has been that Christians
have rejected such a way of life. They
have profited from autonomy without assuming responsibility, respect,
non-power, expressions of love. If
Christians were to return to the source of the biblical message and recover
these basic givens, then they would provide stronger reasons than ever before
for ecology and, at the same time, with the conviction that his is the teaching
of God, they would introduce into the ecology movement the courage and hope
necessary to sustain this difficult enterprise.
Translated by KATHERINE TEMPLE and CARL MITCHAM
Cross Currents 53