Orthodoxy & Creation
The Nature of Creation
The Orthodox Christian Greek Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, has given a number of eloquent and incisive addresses in recent years on the subject of ecology. For instance, in his address Revelation and the Environment, AD 95 1995, he makes the fundamental point that science and theology need each other and should be partners. “We ought not to divide the one reality”. Instead, if they work together it will bring us hope instead of despair. Furthermore, this cooperation will “release healthful energies for restraint and change”.
In contrast, an example of the sort of conclusions which scientists will come to without this cooperation can be seen in the August 1998 edition of Sky & Telescope. Two Astro physicists, Fred C. Adams and Gregory Laughlin wrote an article giving an overview on the current opinion of how the universe as we physically know it will end. The question from a scientific point of view depends on the density of the universe. Several types of observations have been made this year which appear to be conclusive that this density is less than a critical value which would enable the universe to remain flat. In other words, the often mentioned speculation of a "big crunch", where the universe will eventually turn in on itself to return to a black hole by the force of gravity, will probably not happen. Instead, it seems that the universe will gradually expand and dissipate within a huge time scale.
These observations have led the authors to a number of conclusions. In the first place, just as when Copernicus realized that the earth is not at the center of our solar system, they have concluded that the solar system has no special place in the space of the entire universe. The same holds for the vast expanses of cosmic time. Thus, they conclude that “this principle exorcises the last vestiges of anthropocentric thought”. Further, they speculate that general modern day concerns such as nuclear destruction, ecological catastrophes, mutant viruses, asteroid impacts and even the possibility of space stations, or in other words, man's future survival, are still subject to the prospect that all matter, consciousness and purpose will dissipate and annihilate. Therefore, they say that all this speculation on man's survival “holds and inordinate fascination” and that the future of life should be left to the future. This view is fairly representative of scientists who reject God as being part of the scheme of creation. Scientists such as Adams and Laughlin choose to ignore the whole question of our future survival by reflecting on the immensity of time. If one chooses to avoid the challenge of our future survival, surely one can only come to a conclusion of despair.
Interestingly, in his article, Patriarch Bartholomew also tackles the question of defining the future. He says that there are two types of future9. The first is the more familiar one, “which is entirely constructed out of a past and present and which will itself become past”.
The second type of future is “beyond our control” and “will come upon us”. The former, though important, can stifle future possibilities. Yet, we all have foretastes of what the future may be, and of that which perceive the unknown. Again, if we only look at one aspect of the future, our grasping of it will be dimmed. The article by Adams and Laughlin uses the first concept of the future to come to the conclusion that the ultimate future will be simply one of dissipation and annihilation. Are we going to reject these future perceptions, however, for the sake of some imagined philosophical respectability?
Due to Existentialism and Empiricism, many adhere to a philosophy which claims to presume that any other conclusion than destruction of the universe is nothing but a psychological prop to alleviate our sense of “angst”. In like manner, Adams and Laughlin choose to draw no conclusions about the future, almost rejecting any wish of people to mold the future. In contrast, Orthodoxy believes that what is needed is not a fatalistic resignation which lives with this angst but an acceptance that we are responsible for the gap which we experience between ourselves and the cosmos. We also hold to the future expectation that this gap will ultimately be filled at the Parousia. Unless we make this distinction in regard to the future however, we will very easily fall back into this sense of resignation and ultimately despair, which is precisely what Adams and Laughlin seem to have done.
Patriarch Bartholomew makes the point that we live in a microcosm of essential interdependence and science has helped us to understand it. We must face the issue though, that we live in a fallen state and that we have a role to play in restoring it. Our aim should be to attain a pollution free world as well as a healing of nations. Adams and Laughlin seem to almost want to ignore this challenge, citing our seeming insignificance in cosmic time and space. Eventhough they are right in claiming anthropocentricism has made us lose sight of our relationship to whole cosmos, one cannot therefore conclude that a theocentric cosmic viewpoint is invalid. In fact, Orthodoxy believes it is only when we recognize that it is because we have transgressed the beauty of this cosmos that we can genuinely direct our energies towards healing this gap. To deny that we have transgressed will only take us back to the same futile path which has reinforced our fear and uncertainty about the future. This path has led to all sorts of injustice and pollution and these effects will become even more aggravated as technology progresses.
Yet, we cannot also escape the fact that we are part of a continuum of Salvation History in which we share a common home. As Christians, we believe that we have been saved from this path of futility. Metropolitan John of Pergamon says that the Divine Liturgy is the prime vehicle to be used in this restoration. At the heart of the liturgy, we offer back to God the same creation in which we find ourselves. In recognizing that God is the creator we displace our arrogant stance that we are the masters of everything. In offering creation back to God, we recognize that we do have a special place in this cosmos. The book of Genesis says that we have dominion over creation. The Orthodox Church is quick to point out that this “dominion” is meant in the sense of the Kingdom of God and before the fall, which was a loving custodianship of creation, not domination. This means that we are stewards and therefore servants of God's creation. Creation depends on us. We must realize that it became “subject to futility” because of us.
In his address at the Environmental Symposium at Santa Barbara, California, in 1997, Patriarch Bartholomew again highlighted the Eucharist as the central vehicle for this restoration. By refusing to “view life and the world as a Sacrament of Thanksgiving and as a gift of constant communion with God on a global scale, we sin against the world and continue to live in our insecurity”. We cannot restore our fallen state without the Eucharist. It is at the very center of our worship and will heal us of this sin. Apart from offering back creation to God, it anticipates the final state of creation. For ourselves, we receive the living presence of God back as a blessing. The entire universe participates in a cosmic liturgy or celebration of life, which we see in the “symbiosis of life's rich biological complexities”. The fact that we are conscious of these relationships is what defines man’s relationship to the rest of the cosmos.
Yet, for this Eucharistic celebration to be fully effective, we must first recognize that there is this gap between ourselves and the Creator and then we must acknowledge our responsibility for the gap. We must move from our arrogance which attempts to fill the void of our sense of powerlessness. Instead, in recognizing the void, we must repent and ask God's help to restore creation. This is why in the Eucharist, we offer back to God what is already his own. Patriarch Bartholomew makes the point that instead of initially asking for wisdom and strength, we should first ask for “tears of repentance”. It is through these tears that we can then be motivated to make the next step of living an ascetical life. In contrast to this, forms of greed manifest themselves everywhere on both small and large scales on our planet. Only an acknowledgment of tears of repentance on an equivalent global scale will be sufficient for human kind to turn the tide of ecological destruction.
By repenting, we acknowledge God's beauty in creation and express our love of life in creation. The more we understand the complexity of the cosmos and its relationship to creatures and ourselves, the more we will love this beauty. We will all the more also see the need to ask for forgiveness of our abuse of it. In regard to the Eucharist, the more we see our need for repentance, the more effective will our offering of creation be. If an ascetic way of life is embarked upon, the first step will be a voluntary restraint from consumption by individuals. It will free us from greed and an attitude of arrogant supremacy. But, coupled with this, asceticism inevitably acquires a communal attitude of mind where we respectfully use material goods. In contrast, greed and excessive consumption lead to estrangement from the land, life, ourselves and God. It causes us to be out of touch with ourselves which makes us indifferent to the abuse of material goods.
Historical Background
Metropolitan John Pergamon, in his address titled, “Orthodoxy and Ecological Problems: A Theological Approach”, makes some pertinent comments on the history of ideas on this subject. He notes that initial Biblical thought had “a positive view of the natural world and of our human bodies. Thus, creation was initially seen as good and the material world as worthy of survival."
The first philosophical influence to change this was Gnosticism. It distinguished between the material world, which is bad and the true and real world, which is spiritual. This led to a school of thought from Alexandria in the East which exclusively emphasized the spiritual world. In the West, especially through St. Augustine, who was himself influenced by Neo Platonism, it was believed that only the spirit and the soul, which could go to heaven, mattered but not the body, which was corrupt. This ultimately led to Scholasticism, which regarded reason as man's distinguishing feature and what made him in God’s image. Thus, nature had no intrinsic value in itself and was at the disposal of reason for our spiritual and mental capabilities.
Protestantism went a step further and used Genesis to justify human domination of the natural world and this has strongly led to the contemporary view that human beings have the right to exploit natural resources. This has in turn developed into utilitarianism and hedonism where nature simply becomes the raw material which we use to achieve this individual happiness and this outlook has led to a sense of individualism which is completely contrary to Genesis' description of man’s relationship to nature.
The Biblical does not describe man as an individual but as a person. In contrast to an individual who does not need to relate to other people or, to nature for that matter, a person is one who partakes of nature and has a sense of being in communion with nature. We have to come to grips with this difference if we hope to overcome our ecological problems.
Science has done much to break down the anthropocentric perch on which man has placed himself. For instance, Darwinianism has shown that reason is not unique to humans and Scientific Cosmology has shown that we do not have a particularly unique place in either cosmic space or time.
Yet, in moving from an anthropocentric position, there has been a tendency for scientific thought to resort to Pantheism as a replacement for it. This has largely been brought about because Western Christianity separated the natural order from the supernatural. It also presumed that God does not interfere with the laws of nature and that the world evolves autonomously using these laws. Again, the type of conclusion outlined by Adams and Laughlin is influenced by this train of thought. For them, God is either unknowable or scientifically unverifiable and thus irrelevant to what we can conclude. At the same time, nature which we can verify seems to be able to take care of itself. Our short term future is therefore irrelevant because we are just one of a myriad of galaxies with a myriad of life forms and they will all end up in nothingness!
Orthodoxy believes that the only valid approach is a Theocentric one. As Dimitri Popescu says, Orthodoxy asserts “paradoxically both God's transcendence opposite creation and His immanence in creation”. Thus, the “world is not autonomous but theonomous, because it comes from God and it returns to God who preserves an inner connection with his creation through his uncreated energies”. He goes on to say that Biblically speaking, Christ has a two fold relationship with the world as the Logos. The first, as Creator by which everything was made. The second, as Redeemer “by which the world was recreated through his incarnation, sacrifice, resurrection and ascension to heaven”. Thus, he is not just another wise religious founder but a Divine Person who created and renewed the world.
Thus, the world has a spiritual dimension as well as a material one but it is fragile and precious. Human beings have the “responsibility of sanctifying and referring back to God his creation, so that it may live forever”. In accepting this responsibility, people must realize that it will take much repentance and sacrifice for this to be fully realized in the Divine Liturgy that we celebrate.
Ecology on the local level
As important as it is to reflect theologically on Ecology, the task still remains to apply this to the local level.
Our parish is a small one of 55 families with a diversified ethnic makeup who are mostly state workers, business or retired people. The first question regarding our parish is what can be done on the church site to reflect the ascetical aims mentioned above.
The site itself covers an area of nearly two and a half acres of which the building church and hall take up about half an acre. It was a shock when I first arrived three years ago to find that nothing was being done with the remaining acres. There were no trees at all and perimeter of the property was enclosed by a dilapidated fence. It has always been one of my major concerns that something be done to utilize the property from an ecological point of view.
It is an understatement to say that the parish community is not especially sensitive to ecological issues. In the past the parish has consisted of blue collar workers who struggled for their own survival let alone maintaining on active parish community. After the church was built in 1956 the attitude seemed to prevail that they would only do the minimum to keep the church doors open. Most of the families went to Protestant churches before the church was built and a utilitarian approach towards the property seems to have prevailed. Thus, all they ever wanted to do with the property was mow the church lawn.
In the time since I have been pastor, the same minimalist approach has continued but even trying to upkeep the lawns has met with resistance. There have been some community social problems not far from the vicinity of the church and the neglect of the church grounds has been justified on the basis that the parish wants to move its location.
It seems that the first step in trying to bring about a change will be to reeducate the parish about its role in restoring this small patch of creation and reoffering it to God.
Metropolitan John of Pergamon, in his address mentions five basic theological dimensions which need to be related to in day to day church life. These principles must be instilled into the church community and become a way of life.
Firstly, the world had a beginning and was created out of nothing. It is not eternal however but fragile and must be approached with reverence, fear and trembling.
Secondly, God entrusted this careful handling to human beings. Man was created to be a microcosm of creation and therefore act as priests of creation in which we have “the unique mission and great responsibility of uniting God and the material world”. Our task is not just to preserve creation but to purify it and elevate it to the level of divine existence.
Thirdly, when Christ became incarnate for the salvation of mankind, he did not just save the human species but the rest of creation as well.
Fourthly, the Eucharist itself must be seen to be an experience which is a cosmic event. “The Orthodox Christian, by constantly experiencing the Eucharist, affirms that the material world must survive and be redeemed from whatever prevents it from developing into a world which will unite finally with God.”
Lastly, the church's ascetic experience must turn from its mistaken present day negative experience which rejects or depreciates the material world, to a positive one in which we refrain from inordinately exploiting it for individual pleasure. We are also supposed to share in the suffering of the whole of creation which we love and respect.
In applying these principles to every day life in the church the following steps may help in bringing the parish to a deeper sensitivity to these important issues
A starting point can be the beginning of the Liturgical Cycle on September 1, to help the community realize that the environment is an important part of their liturgical and spiritual life. Further, there are particular moments during the Divine Liturgy, such as before the Epiclesis or the offering of bread and wine, from which the connection of the cosmos can be pointed out.
Another, is the architecture of the church itself as well as the iconography within it. Much can be said regarding their connection with creation. Also, the liturgical prayers of some of the major feasts often include our relationship to God in creation. In particular, the blessing of water for the feast of the Baptism of the Lord and the feast of Pentecost have very specific references to the cosmos.
One of the main teaching vehicles can be through a series of written articles in the church bulletin or newsletter. Perhaps also, adult education groups could discuss these themes on a regular basis. Occasional seminars with the teachers of Sunday School would also help.
It would take a full year of discussion and reflection to effectively raise the consciousness of the parish community to come to the next step of repentance to God for our sins against creation. In terms of an itinerary, the first anniversary of September 1 could be used as a repentance service. We often talk about repentance on an individual level and also a family or community level but the sense of repentance towards the whole cosmos, making the community aware of its special role towards creation needs to be highlighted. It is from this point that a new awareness of fasting and asceticism can be instilled. Although, by necessity, the parish is already frugal in its spending, a sense of asceticism within the family unit can be used to extend into parish life. Just as with works of charity we must acquire a sense of giving towards the community, so too, the parish must develop a sense of giving towards creation.
Having highlighted these themes over an extended period of time, it would be hoped that the parish will want to embark on some projects of their own to beautify the parish site and maintain it better. Our youth group can be a very effective driving force in creating positive projects.
Another major step would be for the parish to become involved in some community ecological projects. Again, probably the easiest group organize for this would be the youth group where they could be involved in clean up days etc. They could also help parents to become more conscious of the many forms of wastage which are part of everyday American life. On a larger scale, there are many opportunities to help the community at large to become sensitive towards ecological issues. The Hudson River in Upstate New York, for instance, has become infamous for its pollution. One can feel a sense of powerlessness in trying to deal with these issues. Yet, if one were to attempt to do something with one segment at a time within the local area, a lot could be done. For instance, the Empire State Plaza complex which employs four and a half thousand workers daily, is a major source of pollution into the Hudson River. Perhaps a project could be developed where by all the individual, government agencies and affiliated companies could be made more conscious of what is thrown out as rubbish down sinks and drains and into the river. Any major community project like this would galvanize the parish community and make it a leader within the general community.
Conclusion
One may wonder initially what connection the views of astro physicists and even a general theology on ecology would have on the local level. If one only looks at the local level, often the deeper issues are missed. The influence of science is profound today and by commenting from an Orthodox theological perspective, on what is a typical view point of many scientists, it is hoped that it will place the local issues in context. Attitudes at all levels need to be addressed and I have no doubt that the influence of science filters down to our church level even if it is only through our school students. The ultimate reason for embarking on any change in practices and attitudes at the church level is to make it more of what it should be, which is the Body of Christ. Creation calls out to us to be renewed and we must attempt to do this in every way we can. In this way we help to fulfill our mission to be disciples of the Risen Christ.
