The Starting Point for Our Caring Responsibility of the Environment

Anthropocentrism?

　　In recent years, the Chinese church community has been showing much more concern for the environment. Many Christians practice what they preach by adopting a green, low-carbon lifestyle for all of their basic necessities. But why should we be concerned about the environment? Why should we live a green, low-carbon life? Is it because the church is gradually awakening to the fact that humanity should not merely look to our own interests but also to the interests of the environment, extending the commandment of “love thy neighbors” to “love the earth”? Is this because the church is gradually awakening to the fact that as a religion of love, Christianity should not be anthropocentric and be instead more considerate toward other creatures? These are questions worth considering.

　　Even if we emphasize that human love should not be confined to humans but should also extend toward the earth and everything else on it, is that also another form of anthropocentrism? It implies that there is a mere unidirectional relationship between humankind and the ecological environment: we can help preserve the diversity of other creatures and the sustainability of natural resources, yet not the other way around. For example, we claim to protect the environment as if presuming that it is humans who work to preserve the environment, but failing to mention that the environment is also preserving humanity. We may even neglect the fact that we protect the environment as a way to protect ourselves, because humans are flesh and blood, and our existence cannot be detached from our physical bodies. Then, isn’t that another kind of anthropocentrism?

Mankind, the Climax of God’s Creation?

　　We must therefore deeply reflect on the mutual relationship between humanity and the ecological environment, in particular bearing in mind that the ecological environment is essential to the existence of humans, and not just focusing on the one-sided picture of human caring responsibility for the ecological environment. This one-sided picture is often expressed in the modern world as humans being the masters of the earth, controlling its condition with our thoughts and consuming its resources with technology. Yet in the relationship between mankind and the earth, the two parties fundamentally bear no differences, except that humans are placed on top of all creatures and we consider ourselves the greatest of God’s creations.

　　Indisputably, humans were created last chronologically, but does that imply the value of humanity is much greater than everything else? Can value be determined from the chronological order in which everything was created? Or does the sequence of creation as stated in Genesis 1 actually suggest that lives cannot exist until a suitable environment is provided? As Richard Bauckham, a New Testament scholar, pointed out, “… the work of the third day has to follow that of the second, and the environments have to be created before their respective inhabitants. What is lacking, however, is any sense of building towards a culmination. Humans, the last creatures to be created, have a unique role within creation, but they do not come last because they are the climax of an ascending scale.” ^* Then, how do humans really relate to the environment?

The Relationship between Humans and Nature

　　Genesis 2 depicts another picture of creation, expressing how humankind was made. “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground” (Gn 2:7a).^† This shows how humankind and other livestock, insects, and wild animals are connected to a certain extent in terms of what we were all made from, since they were all produced from the earth (Gn 1:24-25) and not created from something entirely different. Moreover, unless we consider the flesh as only prisons for our souls and not as a component of our lives, we cannot speak as if we can live detached from the earth. In fact, God put the man He had formed in the garden He had planted (Gn 2:8). Therefore, on the one hand, humankind itself, comprised of dust within, is composed of natural elements; on the other hand, humankind is living in nature without, and cannot survive without this environment. Hence, humankind cannot be detached from nature within or without, being inseparable from it; otherwise, this would be a dualistic anthropology.

　　This is why the Son of God needs to become flesh among us to deliver us. The betrayal of humans against God was an act of the whole persons; therefore, God cannot just save our souls and forsake our flesh. The way Jesus Christ saved us corresponded to how humans sinned. He saves our souls as well as our flesh. Therefore, the early church not only validated the deity of Jesus, but accentuated that He was also fully human, since what Christ has not assumed, He has not saved. Moreover, for humans’ souls and flesh to be saved, the earth on which we live and everything else on the earth also need to be saved; or else this would be a dualistic soteriology. No wonder the apostle Paul said, “[in hope] that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:21).

　　Salvation as such is holistic and universal. As written in the Gospels, after being resurrected from the dead, Jesus appeared in flesh, not as an awakened soul, before His many disciples. He was in a glorious body which would no longer suffer from death. Later on, the confession that “I believe…the resurrection of the body” was made in the Apostles’ Creed. Then, we can understand why both new heavens and new earth are what the eschatological future holds for us as mentioned in Revelation. What the Godhead is going to save and consummate is both heavens and earth. Not only will the heavens be renewed, so will be the earth. All that had been created will be transformed into perfection, leaving nothing behind.

　　Examining from the perspectives of creation, salvation and eschatology, we realize how inseparable humans and the ecological environment genuinely are. Humans are not meant to survive without everything else that has been created, as from the beginning of time, to the time when humans fell, until the eschatological consummation. That is where we should begin when contemplating our caring responsibilities for the environment.

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^* Richard Bauckham, The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010), 14.
^† All Scripture quotations are taken from the ESV.