As a kind of follow up to yesterday’s post, I’ve been thinking a bit more about what a Christian environmental (or better “creation”) ethic might look like that steers between anthropomorphism and misanthropy.

I think a key concept here is theocentricity. A theocentric ethic would recognize that human beings, while perhaps the most valuable creature we know of, are not the center of the universe. Many theologians have been de facto anthropocentrists in claiming that all other creatures are essentially here for our use, but this isn’t quite what the Bible says and it’s in conflict with what I regard as some of the best insights of the Christian tradition.

What a theocentric view of the world would emphasize, I think, is that creation ultimately exists for God’s sake. As philosopher Stephen R.L. Clark puts it:

Some modernist theologians explain the apparent failings of our present world as God’s chosen way of creating rational individuals. Everything, by their account, exists for us to use. The God of orthodoxy has no need of secondary causes of this sort. Whatever He creates, He creates for its own sake, because He chooses to. Some have held that He created every possible creature; others that He actualizes only some real possibilities; others again that even God the Omniscient cannot inspect all possible, so-far non-existent, beings (because there can be no criteria for their identity beyond what God makes real in creating some `of them’). Whatever the truth of this, we can be confident that He creates exactly what He wants, for its own sake or `for His glory’. Nor does the God of orthodoxy need to make particular creatures co-existent: as far as we can see He may have randomized creation, since His chosen must, in any case, relate to anyone at all who is their neighbour, irrespective of their nature or their merits. Nor does He select for special treatment just those creatures that a finite observer might expect: nothing in the long ago determined Him to raise up mammals, hominids, or Abram. So orthodox theocentrism is far less committed to the notion of a Visible Plan than atheistic critics have supposed.

Creatures exist first and foremost because God wants them to. They are pronounced by him as “good”; they have value in their own right. And they have lives to live, or forms of existence, that aren’t reducible to how they may be of use to us.

Arguably one of the main sources of our mistreatment of the natural world and the creatures that dwell therein is the view that all of nature is one vast “resource” for our use. Once our fellow-creatures are reduced to the value they have as resources, it’s virtually impossible for us to see them as existing in their own right and for their own sake. A theocentric perspective would view them as existing for God, as having their own lives to live that aren’t automatically forfeit to human whim or even need.

Still, the Bible tells us that human beings are created in the image of God, and that they are given “dominion” of the earth. For many environmental thinkers this is the “original sin” of western civilization. This dominion has led ineluctably to the exploitation of nature (and, perhaps, the exploitation of women, children, and non-white races who have all too often been identified with “nature” over against the “male” principle of rationality that has frequently been taken to be the meaning of God’s image in us).

Recent theologians, however, have questioned whether this is an accurate understanding of what the Bible means by dominion and the imago Dei. In their essay “The Chief End of All Flesh,” Stanley Hauerwas and John Berkman write:

[T]he only significant theological difference between humans and animals lies in God’s giving humans a unique purpose. Herein lies what it means for God to create humans in God’s image. A part of this unique purpose is God’s charge to humans to tell animals who they are, and humans continue to do this by the very way they relate to other animals. We think there is an analogous relationship here; animals need humans to tell them their story, just as gentiles need Jews to tell them their story.

This idea of humans telling animals their story seems not unlike the notion sometimes expressed by theologians that human beings are the “priests” of creation. We give voice to the praise of God that is properly given by all creatures.

Another rethinking of the imago Dei and “dominion” is offered by Andrew Linzey who reconceptualizes the role of humans as the “servant species.” For Linzey this is essentially a Christological clam: Jesus, who came to serve and not to be served, is the true image of God and, as such, this stance of service is normative not only for our relations with each other, but for our relationship with creation. “Dominion” means that we are deputized as it were to rule over creation in accordance with God’s will; but the nature and character of that will is expressed in the life of Jesus, a life of self-giving love.

Even with these qualifications of traditional ideas of human uniqueness in mind, I think most of us still want to affirm some kind fo qualified anthropocentrism. Human beings, we feel and think, simply are more valuable than other creatures, and it would be morally abhorrent to suggest sacrificing a human life to save the life of an elephant, or a redwood, or what have you. And this hierarchy does seem grounded in the kinds of characteristics that different creatures display: the human capacities for rational judgment, moral action, self-giving love, and spiritual awareness do seem to set us apart from animals, even if the line isn’t quite as bright and distinct as we used to think.

Another fact that has to be considered is what I would call the particularity of our loves. There’s a tension in ethics between the duties we owe to other people as such and the duties we owe to those who are especially close to us, even though that closeness may seem to be the result of morally irrelevant characteristics such as accident of birth. Nevertheless, rare is the ethicist, much less normal person, who would claim that our duties to all are identical. I have a greater duty to care for my own children or parents than I do for strangers in some distant country. Similarly, we might suggest that we have greater duties to our “kin” who are our conspecifics. I owe more to a fellow human than to a non-human animal not just because she ranks higher in some objective hierarchy of being, but because we are more closely related. If the strength of our duties of care radiates outward from kith and kin to more distant relations, I don’t see why the same might not be said with respect to other species.

So, it seems to me we have two principles that need to find a place in any satisfying ethic of “creation care.” The first is a theocentrism that puts our claims in perspective. We are one kind of creature among many, and all other creatures don’t exist merely for our sake. The other is a qualified anthropocentrism which recognizes the greater value of human beings, both in an objective sense and as a consequence of our greater solidarity with those to whom we are more closely related.

More to come…