Ecology And Apocalypse
Pollution and Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology, by Francis Schaeffer (Tyndale House, 1970, 125 pp., paperback, $1.95), Brother Earth, by H. Paul Santmire (Nelson, 1970, 236 pp., $4.95), This Little Planet, edited by Michael Hamilton (Scribner, 1970, 241 pp. $6.95), and The Doomsday Book, by Gordon Rattray Taylor (World, 1970, 335 pp., $7.95), are reviewed by Wilbur L. Bullock, professor of zoology, University of New Hampshire, Durham.
During the past few years we have been deluged with books, magazine articles, TV programs, and political speeches warning us of a variety of environmental crises such as pollution, famine, and overpopulation. Ecology, previously a little-known term for an obscure branch of biological science, has now become a household word. The environment has achieved equal status with race, poverty, and the Viet Nam war as an emotional issue with the younger generation, as well as in many political campaigns. That there are deep ethical implications is readily apparent. Yet, except for a few anti-pollution campaigns and some emotional controversy over abortion and birth control, the Church—and especially the evangelical sector—has been strangely silent. If this silence indicates a desire to handle a critical matter with a carefully reasoned approach, then the silence could be helpful. However, we cannot remain silent forever.
Four basic questions must be answered as we tackle the theological aspects of the ecological crises. What is the historical background of the present concern with environmental problems? Are these problems “for real” or have we been subjected to emotional exaggerations by prophets of doom? What is the biblical view of man’s relation to nature? And finally, what should our attitudes and actions be if in confronting these crises we wish to remain faithful to our primary objectives as followers of Christ? The four books under consideration here provide answers—at times vague—to these questions.
“The historical roots of our ecological crisis” have been widely discussed in environmentalist circles ever since Professor Lynn White, at the 1966 meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, attributed the crisis to the “Christian dogma of creation” and to “orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature.” (Schaeffer, though he deals more with the philosophical and less with the historical, includes the complete text of White’s paper in the appendix to Pollution and the Death of Man.) In what is perhaps the strongest chapter in This Little Planet, Professor Clarence Glacken traces the dominant human attitudes toward nature, with emphasis on changes during the nineteenth century. Although he, like White, indicts the Judeo-Christian view of man’s dominance over nature, he spends most of his paragraphs on recent developments. The transition from the Romantic period, when nature was considered holy and its beauty used as proof of the existence of God, is traced through Count Buffon, James Hutton, and the young Charles Lyell to the serious concerns of George P. Marsh in his Man and Nature (1864). Glacken describes the development of urban, industrial societies and the beginnings of the technological blight on the environment, citing people as diverse as Dickens, Engels, and Ruskin.
In Brother Earth Santmire reviews the historical perspectives. He relates two conflicting ethics of the past, “the ethic of adoration” and “the ethic of exploitation,” to the twentieth century “cult of the simple rustic life” and “cult of compulsive manipulation.” The former cult he views as the heritage of Thoreau, Emerson, and Muir; he expresses this theologically as the worship of Baal. (This theme of “nature worship” as seen in modern trends towards pantheism is considered in some detail by Schaeffer.) Compulsive manipulation is the end result of the somewhat paradoxical combination of the mechanical view of nature, the Puritan dogma of man over nature, and capitalistic economics. Unfortunately, the Church has all too often been a partner in this cult, which Santmire considers theologically as the domain of Mammon.
Glacken admits that tracing the history of ideas about man and nature is difficult and necessarily selective. However, the outline he presents in his chapter in This Little Planet, together with Santmire’s views, is important background reading for the Christian who would like a historical perspective on the ecological crises. Many evangelical Christians will be a bit unhappy with some of these views. However, we need to realize that the problem is not simple and that the Christian Church has often been passively and even actively involved in desecrating our God-given environment. Schaeffer also emphasizes the Church’s culpability, giving several case histories.
Persons on both the radical right and the radical left still claim that all this talk about pollution and overpopulation is either a Communist plot to destroy capitalism or a capitalist plot to eradicate Negroes and poor people. Therefore, we continue to need detailed accounts of the full scope of the problems. But many of these accounts either overstate or distort various aspects of the crises. This distortion becomes extremely serious since, when false alarms are exposed for what they are, we are in danger of dismissing the coming catastrophes.
Both Taylor’s The Doomsday Book and the anthology This Little Planet compile the many facets of the environmental crises in the late twentieth century. Taylor quotes some ominous passages from Revelation 7, 8, and 9 even before he gives his acknowledgments and table of contents. From there on his book is a detailed account of all the horrors, possible and farfetched, that have been predicted for the future. His subtitle is “Can the World Survive?,” and the book is described as a “terrifying roll call of man’s sins against earth as she plunges toward a future of sterility and filth,” Some of the terrors are highly unlikely, exaggerated, or mutually exclusive. For example, as we are rightly reminded of the dangers inherent in climate control, there is as much evidence that we will burn up as that we will freeze to death as a result of man’s conscious and unconscious manipulation of climate. Many of the horror stories concerning pesticides and other noxious chemicals in the environment are overstated. Taylor asserts that DDT is a proven cause of cancer and that it seriously interferes with photosynthesis in the ocean. Both these charges against DDT have now been discredited by competent authorities. DDT has been a blessing and a curse, but to Taylor it is just another example of man’s careless and thoughtless desecration of nature. Such distortions distract from his discussion of some of the real problems. Taylor includes valid evidence against DDT. He has good treatments of asbestos as a serious pollutant, of the world food problem, and of the population problem. His analysis of the credibility of population forecasts is excellent. It is true that the extremely high predictions have been all too accurate; if they have erred at all they have often been too low! Furthermore, affluent, comfortable American Christians should be disturbed by the substantial evidence that the present world population is too high if our goal is a standard of living for the whole world that approximates the standard of the average American.
Four chapters in This Little Planet are likewise devoted to outlining the awesome implications of our ecological problems. Their authors, people who are directly involved with the environmental problems they discuss, have written in a sober, realistic vein and have attempted to assess the moral and ethical implications. Ecologist Paul Sears considers “The Injured Earth” and physicist-clergyman William Pollard writes about “God and His Creation.” Both authors fault man for his thoughtlessness and irresponsibility. Sears describes the physical, chemical, and biological threats to the world we live in; he closes with a warning of “a complete and apocalyptic end of civilization.” Pollard emphasizes the serious depletion of natural resources as well as pollution and overcrowding. He clearly points out that man cannot “escape from his God-given dominion over the rest of nature.” Ivan Bennett, an M.D., and theologian Roger Shinn give thoughtful analyses of the food-population problem and make provocative suggestions about the ethical implications. These authors illustrate one of the difficult paradoxes of the ecological crisis complex. Sears and Pollard, concerned mainly with pollution, tend to canonize Rachel Carson (Silent Spring) when they remind us of the harmful effects of DDT and other pesticides. On the other hand, Bennett (who served as chairman of the Panel of World Food Supply of the President’s Science Advisory Committee) says, in writing of ways to meet the critical food shortages, “It will also be necessary to develop and utilize new, high-yielding plant varieties, to develop and utilize plants with a higher quality of protein, to increase the use of fertilizers and pesticides, and to use improved farm machinery” (italics mine). Careful study of ecological problems reveals other aspects in which the solution of one crisis (in this case, famine) will require aggravation and intensification of another (pollution by pesticides and fertilizers).
Faced with these gloomy and disturbing prospects for the near future, we need to re-examine the whole biblical perspective of man’s relationship with nature. In This Little Planet the authors never quite approve of White’s condemnation of “orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature”; yet they tend to comprehend only a part of the biblical view of man’s God-given dominion over nature. Pollard, for example, states that “the primitive nature religions enshrine an element which we desperately need to recover.” While there is mention of the biblical imperative for wise stewardship, there seems to be little awareness of the high regard for nature expressed in the Bible, especially in Job and the Psalms. I was particularly disappointed in Conrad Bonifazi’s chapter, “Biblical Roots of an Ecologic Conscience.” Despite his numerous quotations from the Bible and references to Hebrew and Greek words, it seems to me that Bonifazi does not give a clear picture of the biblical roots of these problems and their solutions. He is too preoccupied with demonstrating the weaknesses of orthodox Christianity, and he assigns too much of the Scriptures to the realm of myth and symbolism.
I appreciated far more Santmire’s treatment of the whole question of man and nature in a Christian perspective. After demonstrating that the Church has been involved to some degree in the cult of the rustic life and to a considerable extent in the cult of compulsive manipulation, Santmire considers the biblical view of man’s place in nature. In succeeding chapters he elaborates on this biblical view as he considers the “creative rule of God” and the “created realm of God,” with frequent references to Calvin and Luther. To Santmire, the reformers—in contrast to Barth and Bultmann—and the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments give a clear balanced view of man, nature, and the triune God.
After explaining why neither pantheism, a St. Francis type of Christianity, nor platonic Christianity will solve the ecological problems, Schaeffer presents a biblical view based on man and nature as unique creations of God. Both Santmire and Schaeffer emphasize the biblical picture of man as one with nature in God’s creation. At the same time, man is separate from nature by virtue of his God-given spirituality. For those interested in studying the biblical perspective on man and nature as it applies to our day, I enthusiastically recommend both Schaeffer and Santmire. Evangelicals may be a little uncomfortable with Santmire’s reference to the “priestly writer” instead of Moses and his use of “Deutero-Isaiah.” However, as an evangelical zoologist who has been much depressed at times by the awesome, apocalyptic implications of the ecological crises, I came away after reading Santmire with a desperately needed sense of hope and joy. He does not deny the problems; rather he puts them in a biblical perspective and comes up with calm assurance that God is in control. This is not new, in theory, to the believer, but often the people who understand the magnitude of mankind’s problems in the twentieth century do not see the sovereignty of Almighty God. And, alas, too many people who accept the omniscience and omnipotence of God are totally unaware of the catastrophic proportions of the ecological crises.
All the authors except Taylor try to point the way toward a Christian pattern of action. Schaeffer especially seems to come through with a balanced combination of social action and gospel proclamation. His last chapter, “The Christian View: The Pilot Plant,” is “must” reading for everyone concerned with the roles of the individual Christian and the Church in the trying days ahead. For Schaeffer, the Church “ought to be a pilot plant concerning the healing of man and himself, man and man, and man and nature. Indeed, unless something like this happens, I do not believe the world will listen to what we have to say.… The Christian Church ought to be this ‘pilot plant,’ to exhibit that in this present life man can exercise dominion over nature without being destructive” (italics mine). Santmire does not come through as strongly here, but both men get specific enough to make the reader a bit uncomfortable. For example, in considering the Christian “pilot plant” in relation to strip mining and highway construction, Schaeffer suggests that “as Christians we have to learn to say ‘Stop!’ Because, after all, greed is destructive against nature at this point and there is a time to take one’s time.” In the same vein Santmire warns that “if this corrective use of man’s dominion is to be anything more than pious talk, moreover, we must be prepared to make thoroughgoing changes in our social mores and social structures.… An ever increasing productivity can no longer be the criterion of national health; if anything it must henceforth be the criterion of national disease.”
These and other corrective measures are drastic and disconcerting. Certainly, if we accept the historical background and the scope of these potentially catastrophic problems, we should not be surprised that solutions are going to require drastic and unpleasant measures. Recognizing the biblical basis for both the problems and the solutions does not make this aspect of the crisis any simpler: it does, however, lead us to a view in which we can be both realistic and confident about the ultimate outcome. We may not be able to avoid world catastrophes of unprecedented proportions, but when they come we will be prepared to meet them.
To this reviewer there remains one puzzle. Secular writers on the problem often tend to be apocalyptic in their assessment of pollution, overpopulation, and famine. Some even quote Revelation, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and other ominous-sounding portions of Scripture. But neither Schaeffer nor Santmire considers a possible relation between the current crises and apocalyptic judgment. I was rather surprised that Schaeffer, who also wrote Death in the City, passed over this possibility. I do not mean to encourage date-setting. But isn’t it just possible that the end times predicted in Scripture and the catastrophes we are being warned of by the ecologically oriented may have something in common? One possible explanation for this oversight is that neither Schaeffer nor Santmire really comes to grips with the population problem; and it is the alarming acceleration in population growth that threatens the solutions proposed for most of the other problems.
In summary, I recommend This Little Planet for anyone who wants a reasonable presentation of the scope of the ecological problems. It has a calmer approach than The Doomsday Book and also provides a moral and ethical perspective that goes beyond social and political action. For a brief presentation of a biblically Christian analysis, with some practical advice for Christian action, I recommend Pollution and the Death of Man. (With it comes the bonus of reprints of two secular, humanistic papers that have had profound influence on the ecologically oriented intellectuals of our day.) And I recommend Brother Earth as a more detailed and equally stimulating view of the historical and theological perspectives.
Feeding Fires
The Gospels Without Myth, by Louis Evely (Doubleday, 1971, 167 pp., $4.95), and The Myth of Christian Beginnings, by Robert L. Wilken (Doubleday, 1971, 218 pp., $5.95), are reviewed by Watson E. Mills, associate professor of philosophy and religion, Averett College, Danville, Virginia.
New vistas for the study of the New Testament were opened in 1941 with the presentation and circulation in mimeographed form of Rudolf Bultmann’s essay Neues Testament und Mythologie. He called for a radical reinterpretation of the Christ event in terms that would be acceptable to modern man—terms that would eliminate the mythological language but preserve the essential message of the New Testament. Since this famous essay first appeared, the doctor of Marburg has been a central and highly influential figure in New Testament studies. Two recent books are illustrative.
Louis Evely, the best selling Roman Catholic author of the sixties, sets forth a “new” approach to the Gospels that attempts to do the kind of thing Bultmann called for three decades ago. Evely sounds more than slightly Bultmannian when he asks, “Is it essential to the fact of the resurrection that Christ’s tomb be empty?” and when he labels the virgin birth a “maladroit fable.” Such statements will be fuel for fire for those who already have serious reservations about demythologizing. With justification, many ask if demythologizing isn’t really desupernaturalizing.
The chapter on “interpretation of miracles” is interesting. Here the author predictably suggests that miracles and visions should be understood as natural phenomena. But there are some fascinating tidbits scattered throughout the chapter. For example, Evely draws an unusual parallel between the stilling of the storm episode in the Synoptic Gospels and the plight of Jonah while on board the ship. Admittedly, this accounts at most for the literary form and is not determinative for interpretation.
Robert L. Wilken, the first Protestant to teach theology at a Catholic university, shows how each theological generation does in fact demythologize the New Testament; however, in attempting to restore the biblical faith, theologians actually reinterpret that message to meet the needs of their day.
“Relevance” is now a common battle cry. Some totally resist innovation in any form, while others seek change simply for the sake of change. The disturbing result is that the institutional church often finds itself defending what nobody is against and criticizing what nobody advocates!
Newly Published
Infallible? An Inquiry, by Hans Kung (Doubleday, 1971, 262 pp., $5.95). One of the most prominent Roman Catholic theologians contends that under no circumstances is the pope infallible. Unlike the Protestant Reformers (and traditional Catholic belief), he contends that Scripture is not infallible either, but he does believe it to be “the standard by which all … proclamation and theology are constantly to be measured” (see editorial, page 27).
Process Philosophy and Christian Thought, edited by Delwin Brown, Ralph E. James, and Gene Reeves (Bobbs-Merrill, 1971, 495 pp., paperback, $6.95). Twenty-five selections from nineteen thinkers, mostly approving the views associated with Whitehead and Hartshorne. Valuable for those wishing a first-hand introduction to this “new” approach to theology.
Why Not Creation?, edited by Walter E. Lammerts (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1971, 388 pp., $7.50). Two dozen technical articles from the 1964–68 issues of the Creation Research Society Quarterly.
The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity, by Richard N. Longenecker (Allenson, 1970, 178 pp., paperback, $5.45). A professor at Trinity offers a high-level scholarly presentation, making full use of relevant Qumran and Nag Hammadi materials in offering his views on a much debated subject.
The Letters of John, by Dale Moody (Word, 1970, 136 pp., $3.95). An extremely helpful commentary for anyone planning to preach, teach, or seriously discuss these epistles.
Responsible Freedom: Guidelines for Christian Action, by L. Harold DeWolf (Harper & Row, 1971, 366 pp., $10). After surveying ethical systems past and present, the dean of Wesley Seminary offers some general principles and, thankfully, some guidelines to their application in such areas as family, environment, business, government, and international relations. Very readable and worthwhile.
The Constructive Revolutionary: John Calvin and His Socio-Economic Impact, by W. Fred Graham (John Knox, 1971, 251 pp., $7.95). An important study of the great Reformer’s social ethics, in theory and practice. Insists that Calvin’s impact on society was not simply indirect and that his strictly theological thought is not his only major contribution.
New Dimensions in Teaching Children, by Robert G. Fulbright (Broadman, 1971, 144 pp., $4.95). Sunday-school teachers of elementary-school-age children will find this book of great practical value.
Reconciliation Through Christ (Judson, 1971, 479 pp., $5) and Sent Into the World (Augsburg, 1971, 165 pp.). Representatives of most of the world’s Baptist and Lutheran denominations convened in July, 1970, in Japan and France, respectively. These books summarize what happened.
Love Song, by Sherwood Eliot Wirt (Harper & Row, 1971, $4.95). The editor of Decision magazine offers a new translation of Augustine’s Confessions. All who have not read the older translation or have found it difficult should try this one. And those who know the Confessions well will appreciate the freshness of Wirt’s effort.
Family Relationships and the Church, edited by Oscar E. Feucht (Concordia, 1971, 239 pp., $6.50). A thorough survey. The first half deals with both Old and New Testament positions and then gives a short history of the family up to the present. The last half concentrates on the changing family patterns in North America. Each chapter concludes with a summary. The viewpoint is Lutheran.
The Thought of Rudolf Bultmann, by Andre Malet (Doubleday, 1971, 440 pp., $8.95). Translated from the French edition of 1962. Heartily endorsed by Bultmann himself as a systematic exposition of his thought.
Some of the above books will later be reviewed at greater length.
