Bauckham on Bible and Biodiversity

In 2010 theologian and biblical scholar Richard Bauckham published a book called Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the community of creation. It is short (178 pages) and covers the surprisingly (to some) strong scriptural bases for taking our responsibility and privilege to care for creation seriously. I highly recommend it. Around the same time, he gave this talk on biodiversity, which summarises some of the main themes of his book. The book covers more ground than this, but the talk might give you a taste.
H/T Mike.

Below are my notes on the talk, which are generally the parts of it that struck me as interesting, new and/or put well, without trying to be comprehensive:

----

Introduction: We are confronted by mass extinction of species today, likely to keep getting worse. What do the scriptures have to say to this situation?

1. OT recognises biodiversity
The poetic account in Genesis 1 repeats the formulaic phrase "of every kind" or "according to their kind".

2. God delights in biodiversity
God saw that it was good. The sheer abundant diversity is one of the major focuses of the passages and God delights in that. Also in Job. Final chapters of Job are a panoramic tour of the creation in the imagination.

3. All creatures live to glorify God
Whole of creation worships God. This is the corollary of God's delight in his whole creation. Animals don't have words, or even consciousness in many cases. Simply by being themselves, they bring glory to God. Other creatures are fellow-worshippers.

In the ancient world, many people worshipped creatures. Creatures are creatures, not gods who should be worshipped. On the contrary, the creatures themselves worship God and our proper response is to join in their praise of God.

This is thus a de-divinised creation, but not a de-sacralised creation. Non-human creatures are not divine, but they are sacred to God. Creatures are our fellow-worshippers (Psalm 148), therefore don't instrumentalise them, reducing them to merely a tool to use in the satisfaction of our desires.

4. Various creatures have specific habitats
Psalm 104 is a picture of interdependence. Some creatures depend on others for their life. A first step in the direction of recognising ecosystems. Can't consider each species independently of others.

5. Human kinship with other creatures
Humans have sometimes been elevated above the natural world as though we didn't belong to it. We've tried to relate as demi-gods, rather than fellow creatures. Catastrophic results. Humans are distinctive among the creatures, but the creation narratives make our kinship with other creatures quite clear. Genesis 1 places creation of humans on the same day as creation of all other land animals. We don't get a day of our own. Genesis 2 offers a more vivid and emphatic depiction. Ontological relation signified by a play on words: 'Adam (man) from 'Adamah (ground/dirt/soil). We are earthy creatures. We belong with the earth and with the other creatures of the earth. Other creatures are not dispensable.

6. Humans and other creatures are fellow creatures in the community of the earth
A community of creatures is worth highlighting as a useful model for thinking about our place in creation. Term is not from scripture, but like many of the terms we use to talk about what the Bible teaches, I think it encapsulates a way of thinking which we do find in scripture. Most potent expression of this concept is in Genesis 9, which records a covenant between God and the earth's creatures. All the creatures of earth are interested parties. With them, we form the community sharing a common home. We have no right to evict others from the home that God has given us. Let us have no illusions about this community, which contains much conflict and violence. These are not eradicated in the Noahic covenant, but they are restrained; a price is put on life. God doesn't surrender his intention that his creatures should share the earth that he has given. This covenant is the first step towards renewing and perfecting.

7. Adam as the first taxonomist
Genesis 2: unlike Genesis 1, animals come after Adam. Naming them is not an act of authority but of understanding.

8. King Solomon as naturalist
The embodiment of wisdom. And he spoke of trees.

9. Subdue the earth
The double blessing/command at the end of Genesis 1 implies two distinct relationships: relationship to the earth vs relation to other living creatures. Humans are to subdue the earth, exercise dominion over other creatures.

In understanding these words, first note that it is not only humans which are told to multiply and be fruitful and fill, birds and fish are too. We can assume that creatures of the land are also to be fruitful and multiply.

However, only humans are told to fill the earth and to subdue the earth. Only by means of agriculture were humans able to fill the earth (to live in large portions of available land). To subdue is to take possession and till the soil to make it produce more food than it would otherwise do.

Are humans to supplant other animals? Humans are told that the produce of the earth is not intended to feed them alone, but also the living species of the earth. We are not to fill the earth and subdue it to the extent of leaving no room for the other creatures. Other creatures have a right to use of the soil. Human right is not unlimited but must respect the rights of other creatures. We are one creature among others.

10. Dominion
This second command in relation to other creatures tempts us to forget our own creatureliness and to set ourselves over against the other creatures. This is only possible if we take it out of context. Dominion is a role within creation, not over it. Other creatures are first and foremost our fellow creatures. Our distinctive role can only take place once we appreciate that. Dominion is not the only way we relate to other creatures. Dominion means a caring responsibility, not exploitation. This is widely agreed. We have a responsibility for our fellow creatures. This is a royal function and so it is worth recalling the only passage in the Law of Moses that refers to the role of a king within the people of Israel and there it is emphasised that the king is one amongst his brothers and sisters, one amongst his fellow Israelites (Deuteronomy 17.14-20). The king is not to be exalted above his subjects, and in the same way humanity is to wield authority for the benefit of other creatures.

11. Dominion begins from appreciating God's valuation of his creation.
This is an implication of the Genesis 1 six day creation account. Before we humans read of our responsibility for other living creatures, we are taken through a narrative of creation that stresses God's delight in each stage of his work. We are invited to share God's appreciation of his creation before we learn of our distinctive role within it. Our approach to exercising dominion should be rooted in that fundamental appreciation of the created world as God has made it.

12. Dominion is to be exercised in letting be just as much as in intervention
We are used to thinking of dominion as activity. In modern period, human task conceived as constant ongoing activity to transform the world into one that would suit us much better. Dominion seemed to require from us constant interfering with creation and constant attempts to change and transform it. Now, there is little left that hasn't been affected by human activity. There is a lot we would really like to preserve as it is. It is vital that we re-conceive Genesis dominion as letting be. This is clear later in the Mosaic Law in discussions of how to relate to the land and its creatures. Notice the Sabbatical institutions. First a weekly Sabbath: no work even by domestic animals. Also a Sabbatical year: fields, vineyards and orchards left to rest. So that the poor of your people may eat and wild animals. Even within the cultivated part of the land of Israel wild animals are expected to live. This is a symbol of respect for nature.

UPDATE: I took these notes some months ago while listening to the talk online at the link above. Some proportion of the above text is verbatim quotes from Prof Bauckham, though I now don't remember which parts are summaries of his message and which are his exact words. I think that all the titles at least were his own, and many of the phrases are likely to be either precisely or somewhat close to his words. If anyone has a problem with these notes as they stand, then please let me know so that I can adjust them.

Why be green? Ecology and the gospel I

A series in three parts
Part One: God the materialist
Part Two: The renewal of all things
Part Three: Three steps towards heaven on earth

Part One: God the materialist
Australia's ex-prime minister Kevin Rudd famously described climate change as “the greatest moral challenge of our generation”. It was an exaggeration, of course, and one that has already come to haunt him.

The greatest moral challenge of this and every age is whether we will trust the God and Father of Jesus Christ or an idol of our own construction, whether we will love our neighbour as ourselves, or love ourselves to the harm of our neighbour, whether we will hope in the Spirit who raises the dead, or submit to the spirits of denial, despair and desperation in the face of death.

Within this moral challenge, what place do the real threats found in today’s massive and wide-ranging ecological degradation have for a disciple of Christ? Not just climate change, but biodiversity loss and extinctions, fresh water stress, deforestation and the destruction of other habitats, resource depletion, desertification, soil degradation, ocean acidification, overfishing, disruption of the nitrogen cycle, invasive species: the list goes on and on and investigating any of these issues in greater detail is a task that is both alarming and depressing. Many honest observers despair for the future of life as we know it. Is concern about such matters a distraction from the gospel or even a dangerous false agenda proposed by pantheist environmentalists?

The short answer is that Christian discipleship cannot be reduced to ecological responsibility, but nor can it be divorced from it. The good news of Jesus remains good news even in the face of ecological catastrophes, and is good news to those anxious about a world under increasing strain from the effects of our collective activities.

Let us take a quick walk through some key scriptural and theological concepts here.

God is a materialist. Matter matters to God. He made a physical world teeming with all kinds of life that he declared “good, very good”, and which he blessed so that it might become even more abundant (Genesis 1). The pinnacle of creation was not humanity, but the seventh day of rest (Genesis 2.1-4). He made humanity not to plunder the riches of the earth, but to serve and keep it (Genesis 2), to share with all the living beings in his blessing of fruitfulness and to join with them in praising the Creator (Psalm 148). If our “filling” of the earth undermines God’s blessing on other creatures, then we’re doing it wrong.

Being creatures amongst a good creation means that we belong with the dirt: from dust we came, and to dust we will return (Genesis 2.7; 3.19; 18.27; Ecclesiastes 3.20). Like all living things, we are dependant upon the Spirit of life and so members of the community of creation. Being a creature amongst creatures means acknowledging that the world, though stunningly bountiful, is not infinite, and its ecosystems, though remarkably resilient, are not invulnerable; to claim it is so would be to deify the created order, since only God is truly inexhaustible. And it means acknowledging the goodness of life beyond humanity, and indeed our shared dependence upon the provision of God; we flourish or wither not just like the flowers of the field, but with them. Israel learned the hard way that the land’s bounty or scarcity was connected to their faithfulness to God’s good instruction (Deuteronomy 28).

Mary's melody: a revolutionary hope IV

God didn't choose his people because they were great (Deuteronomy 7.7-8). He chose them because he loved them, and he loved them because he loved them. He made promises to them because he wanted to. God doesn't choose the best people, he chooses whomever he wants.

God chose Mary. And when he did that, he did exactly what he always does, and what he's promised he'll keep on doing. He chose the foolish things, the weak things, the despised things, so that no-one can boast (1 Corinthians 1.27-29).

And when Mary’s son hung spread-eagled and naked on a wooden weapon of mass destruction, lifted up to the scorn of all, a failed messiah, a condemned criminal, an abandoned nobody – God was still doing what he always does.

The humble lifted high, the proud brought down. This is what God is like. This is what his king Jesus is like. This is what his kingdom is like: many who are first will be last and many of the last will be first (Mark 10.31). God turns the world upside down to set it the right way up. This is God’s revolution.
Eight points for naming the iconic Sydney building in the image. No points for explaining its relevance to the post.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII.

Hurtado on early devotion to Jesus

How did Jesus become a god?
Last night I went to Macquarie University with some friends from church to hear Professor Larry Hurtado from the University of Edinburgh offer a one-off seminar on Early devotion to Jesus. It was an excellent summary of reams of material from his enormous Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (2003) and his more recent popularisation How on Earth did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus.

The key claim put forward during the evening was that astonishing devotion to Jesus started almost immediately amongst Jewish believers in Jerusalem, rather than being a later development of more Hellenized Gentile converts from, say, Antioch. Hurtado claimed that more christological innovations occurred within the first handful of years after Jesus' death than in the subsequent seven centuries of theological debate during which orthodoxy was hammered out. Saul of Tarsus, for instance, was already persecuting followers of the Way for their deviant devotion to Jesus by the mid-30s.

Such devotion was not restricted to theological affirmations holding Jesus to be Israel's Messiah (and more), but was also expressed in a range of devotional practices unique amongst the Judaism of the time, such as singing hymns about Jesus, the invocation and confession of his name, prayer through and in the name of Jesus (and even occasionally to Jesus), the ritual use of his name in baptism, the sacred common meal at which Jesus was believed to preside ('the Lord's table') and prophecy in the name of Jesus (cf. Deuteronomy 13 and 17 on what to do with prophets who speak in the name anyone other than YHWH). The inclusion of Jesus with God in such corporate devotional practices was the largest discontinuity with contemporary Jewish worship for the nascent Messianic fellowship. Examples abound of second temple texts in which angelic beings eschew worship (including, for example, Revelation 19.10), so the fact that the Lamb receives it (Revelation 5.13) distinguished him from all other divine agents for the early Christians.

Yet this was no Greco-Roman apotheiosis of an outstanding individual, no addition to a pantheon of gods, since Jesus was worshipped by monotheists who continued to claim the label. Jesus was not to be worshipped apart from the Father, he had no special times or places, no separate altars or cultus, and his titles place him in reference to the Father: Son, Word, Image. Indeed, the claim of early Christians was that offering worship to Jesus was the new divinely-mandated way of worshipping aright the one God (cf. John 5.23).

At the same time, the form and focus of the canonical Gospels emphase that the one receiving the worship is the same human figure who was put to death by Pilate. This is in contrast with, for example, the Gospel of Thomas, which shows almost no interest in Jesus' historical setting and experience.

After some discussion of the social and political implications of devotion to Jesus for the early Christians (a topic overlooked in his 2003 tome, but which the shorter book treats briefly), Professor Hurtado finished his presentation with an extended discussion of Christian iconography in the second and early third century. This was both the most novel and most speculative aspect of the seminar, being only distantly related chronologically and thematically to the rest of his material. I might post more on it later.
Five points for the name of the building in the top image and its (tenuous) link to 'early' Christian devotion. Second photo by HCS.

One does not live by bread alone...

Having baked (and eaten) a lot of fresh bread recently, I consider this far from self-evident.

One command or two?

Loving God and neighbour

      When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
      “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
      He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

- Matt 22.34-40 (cf. Mark 12.28-34)

I used to think love was a zero-sum game. To love God more, I had to love other things less. To love any created thing too much was to threaten my first priority of loving God. And so all horizontal loves had to be kept partial, conditional, hedged by constant vigilence, lest I get too attached to a secondary good and so distracted from the highest good.

But Jesus' affirmation of the first and greatest commandment from Deuteronomy 6.5 will not allow such an understanding. God is not simply to be loved with more of my heart than anything else, but with all. There can be no love, no loyalty, no joy, no delight and affection for anything but God. This command is totalising. Leaving aside for the moment the issue of whether love can be commanded at all, this is a shock to human pride. No longer can I feel quietly confident of having more or less kept God number one, and kept other things back down at least as far as second in my affections. This is a command I cannot keep without a new heart, undivided and unalloyed.

This command makes Christianity an offense, for the God of which Jesus speaks is not any old deity according to how we might prefer to imagine a higher power. He is speaking of the one he calls 'Father'. The one his people identified as Yahweh, who brought them out of slavery in Egypt. It is this God that Jesus demands we love with all that we are: heart, soul, mind and strength. Not four different kinds of love, but a fourfold repetition of all of us.

But, and this is crucial, Jesus doesn't stop there. Incredibly, after the universe that is the first and greatest command, he says that there is a second. What room is left? What love is still available? What has not been claimed and owned for all time by the first commandment? This second commandment he says is 'like' the first. Like in what way? "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Like the first, it is taken from Israel's Law (Torah), this time from Leviticus 19.18. Like the first, it is demanding and difficult: how can I be as concerned for the needs of one whom I don't always see, whose thoughts and needs I often don't know? But I'm not sure that this is how the second command is like the first.

I wonder whether it is like the first because it is a translation of it, a paraphrase, an explanation, a gloss? I love God not in competition with loving our neighbour, but precisely by loving my neighbour. In 1 John 4.20 we read Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The visible manifestation of our love of an invisible God is to love what we can see. Wholeheartedly. The one love embraces both objects simultaneously. Love is not a zero sum game. The commands do not collapse into one, but they are mutually interpreting. I am to love my neighbour more in order to grow in love for God. And the converse is also true: unless I am also loving this God, then I am not really loving my neighbour.
Ten points for the country in which the original artwork is located.
Some readers may have been confused by the final paragraph of my previous post Thanks. It was missing a link to Ben Myers, which is now fixed.