White Robed Monks of St. Benedict

The Eucharist and Ecology

The idea of living in an environment, a surrounding habitation, which is necessary for the sustenance of life, is not as new as we might think. The ancient world, in some ways, was more conscious of its vulnerability to the forces of nature than we are now. Certainly compared to the eighteenth century where a predominant Deist complacency tended to depict the universe as a well-oiled machine, which could be relied upon to run smoothly, no matter what. So efficient was this machine that God did not need to intervene in its running. This sort of confidence was really a confidence placed in the universe, rather than God who was seen as increasingly irrelevant. The ancient world saw the earth as a rather threatening place which was quite unlike the rest of the universe. The region of the stars was quite secure, ordered, tranquil. The stars revolved on great invisible circles. This was why they were regular, and repeated the same movements. The possibility that it might be the earth, which was moving and not the stars, was not unknown in the ancient world. Aristarchus of Samos had suggested this in the third century B.C. It was rejected as much for psychological reasons, as for scientific reasons. If the earth revolved round the sun then the earth was not the exception to the rule of order, which the ancients supposed.

In the universe of Ptolemy, the earth was not so much the centre of the universe as its bottom, the place where the debris of the universe fell. This place was subject to disease, earthquakes and so forth. But the rest of the universe was increasingly perfect and a source of comfort to others. This is what the Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras, meant when he said that the reason we were alive was so that we could watch the stars. The Hebrew mind was a bit different. The whole universe was a creation of God, brought out of chaos by God. God transcended this order and established it by his word. This was quite different from the Greeks for whom the Gods were part of the universe, a higher part but not above it. It was even more different from the Babylonians for whom their great God, Marduk, one of many, brought order out of the chaos after a profound struggle.

If we look at Genesis, there is no hint of a struggle. The Universe does what God wishes it to do. He simply speaks and it happens. If there was still disorder then that was because God allowed it. This was because he wished to co-operate with human beings in order to bring about that order. So Adam is created out of the ground, Adamah, in Hebrew, and so he was made to till the ground which he belonged to. He is put in a garden, which in Hebrew really means an enclosed Garden. His sin too caused him to be cursed in terms of his working with the ground. Genesis 3:17-19 "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, `You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Adam is cursed by the difficulties of farming and by his being sentenced to return to the ground from which he came. Dust here, used on Ash Wednesday in the famous saying, "Remember, Man, that you are dust and unto dust you shall return" would be better translated as Soil. Soil you are and to Soil you shall return. To the hebrews, ecology would mean the maintenance of a human order over against the wilderness. Their writing is full of fear that the wild animals might come into the human enclosures making it an unclean place.

This is not because the Hebrews hated animals or saw themselves as somehow disconnected from the animal kingdom. Psalms 8 and 104 should dispel that notion but they had a strong sense of proper place. Each thing should be in its proper place, each thing had a position in the world which is why the enclosure was the ideal sort of garden or farm for them. The threat to the environment comes from sin. Not directly, in the sense of being indifferent to the needs of the land, but by being severed from God. God is the source of the well being of the land, he is the basis of their ownership of the land. There is no doubt that humanity is at the top of the tree, in relationship to the rest of the natural world. The world is for human beings. Yet God governs this world, not people, and the people depend on God. Sometimes though the natural world will suffer because of the sins of the people.

With the Eucharist there is a certain spiritualising of these concerns. The new world overcomes the limitations of the old, the world of the risen Christ overcomes its limitations. Yet this new world is not transformed in its nature. Even though Christians believed that the resurrected body would overcome all human limitations, this was because of the power of the Spirit, not because of a change in the fundamental nature of the body. This might seem like an irrelevant change but in fact it is important in two respects to make this distinction. Firstly God does not change the nature of anything but perfects it. Secondly the perfection which those risen in Christ receive is a perfection of the mind. The mind, fully attuned to God's will becomes capable of making nature serve the purposes of God and humanity. This is only possible if we allow ourselves to be transformed in Christ. So while we live in this world, we prepare for that spiritual transformation which will have an impact on the natural world by showing due respect for this world now. The Eucharist therefore does not allow us to disregard the needs of nature, assuming that it will be fixed by the resurrection but insists that we are good stewards now of the world which truly belongs to God.