four most important biblical passages for a Christian enviromentalism, The

Trinity Journal, Fall 1998 by Bullmore, Michael A

The persistently repeated reference to each "kind" of animal tells us that God's blessing and his earnest encouragement continually to produce offspring was addressed to individual species. The writer takes pains to let us know that God clearly had every "kind" in mind. God blessed, he states, "every winged bird according to its kind." Unless we want to accuse God of duplicity, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that it is possible for man to be fruitful and multiply and each animal species to be fruitful and multiply at the same time. One should not negate the other. On the contrary, part of man's responsibility is precisely to preserve the God-intended fullness of creation. Historically what has stood in the way of this preservation is man's wrongful exercise of his dominion, a subject to which our passage now bids us turn.

The discussion of man's role and responsibility toward creation grows out of two well-defined moments in the Genesis narrative.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Gen 1:26-28)

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (Gen 2:15)

It is clear from these passages, especially the first, that man has been given some form of supremacy over the rest of creation. What is in question is the nature and purpose of that supremacy. Proponents of some form of Christian environmentalism have rightly accused their detractors of focusing too exclusively on the "dominion" passages in Genesis 1 and failing to honor the contribution of Genesis 2. On the other hand, some Christian environmentalists have been guilty of a too quick conflation of these texts, such that "have dominion" has been made to equal "take care of."26 While certainly Gen 2:15 should inform our understanding of Gen 1:26-28, it needs to be noted that these two passages are not addressing the exact same point. Each needs to be understood on its own terms, and each needs to be given freedom to make its contribution to the larger issue of man's responsibility toward creation.

In their historical overview of the relationship between the Christian church and environmentalism, Grizzle, Rothrock, and Barrett list the "subjectionist perspective" as that which has defined the church's stance toward the environment for most of its history. They suggest that this position derives its primary inspiration from Gen 1:28, seeing it as "a call to bring the non-human environment into subjection for the purpose of facilitating human expansion."27 While clearly the terms "rule" (rada)and "subdue" /baN) speak of mastery, and clearly these words spoken to man make of man a creature of singular status commissioned to exercise a God-given authority, the subjectionist position is, just as clearly, a result of misinterpreting these words. The call to rule over and subdue creation simply cannot bear the meaning "strong, forceful subjugation,"28 given the context in which these words are spoken. God told Adam and Eve to "fill the earth and subdue it" by which he meant that man should exercise his God-given authority (i.e., "rule") over the earth as he gradually came to occupy more and more of it. And certainly, especially after the Fall, some of this exercise of authority would have to find expression in "forceful subjugation," for after the curse the creation would possess a resistance to man's dominion.29 But it is one thing to exercise physical and technological prowess over a garden or a cow or a grouse or a trout. It is something very different to "rule" in this way over all "the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Just how does one "forcefully subjugate" the great host of neo-tropical warblers?30 How the Arctic Tern with its almost unbelievable pattern of migration? And why would one want to?