four most important biblical passages for a Christian enviromentalism, The

Trinity Journal, Fall 1998 by Bullmore, Michael A

This rule is both a reflection of God's own righteous rule and an expression of God's purposes for all who bear his image and exercise his dominion. . . Clearly, goodness and fertility are assumed to be natural characteristics of the earth, and the man and the woman are merely to facilitate and enjoy this bounty.33

In a similar vein, essayist Wendell Berry has supplied a helpful categorization. He speaks of two possibilities in man, "exploitation" and "nurture." Because of the usefulness of these terms to our present discussion I will allow Berry to develop his idea completely.

Let me outline as briefly as I can what seem to me to be the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive a stripminer to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health-his land's health, his own, his family's, his community's, his country's. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible: the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order-a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, "hard facts"; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.34

Berry's comments serve as something of a parable for us. When God commanded man to "rule over" creation he commanded him to do so as a nurturer, not as an exploiter.

It is in the light of this understanding of Gen 1:26-28 that the more specific responsibility given to Adam as recorded in Gen 2:15 makes most sense. Adam is placed in the garden to serve (abad) and preserve (sa-mar) it. He is, in other words, to exercise his dominion over the garden by managing it so as to preserve it, to enable it continually to achieve those purposes God has for it. Thus his dominion is one of service, serving-cultivating and protecting-the creation and thereby serving the creation's owner.

C. Gen 9:8-17

The contribution of Gen 9:8-17 is single and simple but essential to a Christian environmentalism.

God has established an everlasting covenant with all living creatures of every kind wherein he has promised never again to destroy them by the waters of a flood.