Review: Caring for Creation by Calvin B. DeWitt

First Quarter 1998

[Excerpts from the 1996 Kuyper Lecture book with responses by Richard Baer, Thomas Derr, and Vernon Ehlers]

Three Big Questions

Can Christianity provide an effective response to the need for human care of creation? It depends on the answers we give to the big questions. These are the three big questions we must ask in this global crisis if we confess that Christ is the Creator and the Great Integrator and Reconciler of all things.

Question 1: Is Jesus Christ Lord of Creation?

Through Jesus Christ, God created the world, holds everything together, and reconciles all things (Col. 1:15-20). Followers of Jesus Christ have known this remarkable teaching of Colossians from the beginning.

The Scriptures make it clear that the claims of Jesus Christ on the world are comprehensive. It is the claim made by the one who made the world, holds the world together, and reconciles the world. The comprehensive claims of Jesus Christ on the world derive from his being its Author, Integrator, and Harmonizer.

My conclusion [in answer to the first question] is this: Jesus Christ is Beautiful Savior, but more than that, Jesus Christ is King of Creation.

Question 2: Is Creation a Lost Cause?

Abraham Kuyper has a contribution to make here. It comes by way of an exposition he gave in 1903 of John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world"), over half a century before our recognition of a crisis, even before any popular understanding of ecology or "the environment."

"So God loved the world, that He gave it His Only-begotten Son... God loves the world. Of course not in its sinful strivings and unholy motions...But God loves the world for the sake of its origin; because God has thought it out; because God has created it; because God has maintained it and maintains it to this day We have not made the world, and thus in our sin we have not maltreated an art product of our own. No, the world was the contrivance, the work and the creation of the Lord our God. It was and is His world, which belonged to Him, which He had created for His glory, and for which we with that world were by Him appointed. It did not belong to us, but to Him. It was His. And it is His divine world that we have spoiled and corrupted.

"And herein roots the love of God, that He will repair and renew this world, His own creation, His own work of wisdom, His own work of art, which we have upset and broken, and polish it again to new luster. And it shall come to this. God's plan does not miscarry, and with divine certainty He carries out the counsel of His thoughts. Once that world in a new earth and a new heaven shall stand before God in full glory"

Clearly, then, creation is not a lost cause.

Question 3: Who Are We Following When We Follow Jesus Christ?

We sometimes sing, "Christ shall have dominion, over land and sea." Jesus Christ, the Lord of creation, is our model for dominion, but what is that model? The apostle Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Philippians, 2:5-8: "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!"

We may conclude from this that human beings are distinctive with respect to other species in their exercise of dominion over creation. To the extent that being made in the image of God confers upon human beings what is distinctive with respect to other species, the exercise of dominion is part of the consequence of humans being made in the image of God. The proper exercise of dominion by human beings who seek truly and fully to mirror God's wisdom, love, and justice, is stewardship. So human beings should make every attempt to overcome the forces that would compel them to dominate creation, and by diligently seeking creation's integrity, vigorously and prayerfully pursue a life of stewardship with God's Kingdom as its goal.

The biblical imperative then is for stewardship in behalf of God's Creation no matter what its condition. Christian environmental stewardship is not crisis management but a way of life. God's call to serve and keep the garden is our calling no matter whether it is our vegetable garden or the whole of creation, and no matter if it is being degraded, staying the same, or improving. Caring for creation is much like caring for families—in sickness or health, in riches or poverty, in crisis or harmony. And this caring must be done wisely.

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Public Policy Concerns

by Thomas Sieger Derr

Awareness of environmental problems does not lead automatically to one political approach. It is true that many of the most apocalyptic alarmists take a radical approach to public policy, which one of their critics, Ronald Bailey, has labeled "millennialist." We must adopt wholly new ways of living, they say, and had better start right now with government leading the way. Regulation, planning, and central authority are needed, nationally and even internationally, to restrain the negative ecological impact of private, selfish decisions and actions. In short, in the perennial tug between freedom and order, this group of environmentalists has opted for order.

This is the sort of environmental politics which tends to be suspicious of capitalism and the market economy, but there are other kinds more favorable to the economic system we know in this country. One such approach is what we are actually doing now, and represents the state of current public policy: use tax incentives and user charges to bring about improvements piecemeal. Polluters will clean up their act if effluent charges make pollution costly; and they will add the clean-up costs to the price of their product, as is proper in a market economy. Tax breaks are used to offset the lost opportunity cost of not developing wild land, combining the self-interest of owners with the desired environmental goal. Direct regulation has a place here, but mainly as a backup, to accomplish what more positive incentives cannot do as easily.

There is another approach which takes the usefulness of self-interest to its logical conclusion, and does away with regulation altogether.This is the so-called "free-market environmentalism," whose theory is that if we privatize resources and allow their exchange in the market, their owners will preserve them, practicing the sustainability which is to the ecological benefit of all. After all, one does not destroy one' s own productive capital. Proponents do not like the gradualist approach of tax and fee incentives, because there the government is still determining the environmental goals. Better to leave these goals to the free determination of free individuals, lest in matters ecological we fall back into the errors of central state authority from which many countries are only now emerging.

Faced with these competing social visions, the Christian conscience is not without resources, though a definitive answer is not supplied by our faith, either.

I cannot pretend to resolve the tensions here, for they are permanent. I know that moral suasion has its limits, and that an adroit use of self-interest can be harnessed to the common good. At the same time, however, we cannot give up on appeals to selflessness. Other-regarding love, "agape," is, after all, the Christian behavioral norm, even if we sinful humans compromise it all the time. Thus, I am fully in accord with DeWitt's appeal to selfless love in the service of stewardship of the earth. I simply want to bring out some of the tensions and ambiguities involved in translating this ethical imperative into public policy.

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0verall, DeWitt asks the right questions. My comments should be understood more as a word of caution than as a deep disagreement with him. Yes, it is wrong for Christians to view nature only in utilitarian and exploitative terms. Yes, we insult God when we insult his creation. Yes, we ought to try our best to keep the Lord's Behemoth. On the other hand, we need to be wary of those forms of environmentalism that treat nature as ultimate reality and human beings as a blight on this fragile planet. We need to be especially on guard against those environmental educators who insist on pressing a kind of neo-paganism or pantheism on public school children in the name of saving the earth. Many of the values of these radical environmentalists are subversive of Christian faith and antithetical to the gospel. Animals are not as valuable as human beings. Contrary to most radical environmentalists, human beings are not just like all other animals. We are not simply part of nature, but transcend nature in that we can share in a conscious relation with the God who is transcendent as well as immanent.

Because God values nature for its own sake and because human beings will suffer if we mistreat nature, we must radically modify how we live and think. Balancing human interests and the interests of non-human nature will demand hard thinking, but it is imperative that we remain faithful to all aspects of our tradition.

Can we afford to preserve all of roughly 100 species of snail darter? Perhaps, but as a Christian I would not be willing to sacrifice much in human well being to do so. Do Christians have simple and definite answers to questions of species preservation and other complex environmental issues? Obviously not, but at least this much is clear: DeWitt has pushed us in the right direction, and we are all deeply indebted to him.

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Christians and the Environment

by Vernon J. Ehlers

As evangelicals, we can be grateful that a proper Christian (and for that matter, Jewish) interpretation of Scripture leads to the strong conclusion that we have a major responsibility not only to use the resources of the earth but also to maintain and preserve them as we till and keep the Lord' s garden. It is indeed a puzzle why this was not recognized by the Christian community until after environmental problems became serious enough that they literally screamed for a reevaluation of our attitudes and beliefs.

Perhaps the most important environmental issue we must confront is the increasing population growth. Returning to the Spaceship Earth metaphor, we all recognize that an Apollo space capsule or a shuttle vehicle has a certain designated carrying capacity. We normally fail to realize, however, that planet earth also has a carrying capacity, although it is certainly much less accurately defined than the capacity of a space vehicle. Furthermore, the carrying capacity of planet earth is highly dependent upon the standard of living we wish to attain. The higher the standard of living, the lower the population carrying capacity of the planet.

Once again, this is a difficult issue for many Christians. Some are reluctant to use any contraceptive means themselves, and many more are reluctant to suggest that others should limit the number of children they bear. Yet, if we do not face this common responsibility, we will be depriving future generations of the opportunities we ourselves have enjoyed. One may wish to argue about the exact carrying capacity of the earth, but there is no question that there is an upper limit of some sort. It behooves us to recognize this and to seek to change attitudes so that we can ensure that all peoples are properly fed, clothed, and cared for.

Unfortunately, abortion has come to be regarded by some nations as the answer to this problem. I believe Christians have to speak out firmly against this abomination. At the same time, I believe that this places upon us the responsibility to encourage other means of controlling reproductive rates, rather than simply fighting abortion alone.

[Calvin B. DeWitt is professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Richard A. Baer is professor of environmental ethics at Cornell University. Thomas S. Derr is professor of religion at Smith College. Vernon J. Ehlers is a Member of Congress from western Michigan.]