This is not a strict transcription, it's me listening to the lecture and picking out the salient points as I understand them, although Fr. Andrew is very well-measured in his words and rarely do I want to omit or edit what he says. When I've added my own 2 cents, I've enclosed them in parentheses.
Here goes.
What you couldn't find was any discussion of the theology of the ecosystem. Instead it was a secular, data-driven, analytical, and deeply entwined with the competing interests of politicians, competing nation-states, great corporate powers, and environmental celebrities.
There is no common vision, only competing interests. To quote from the Bible: Without a vision, the people perish.
The dominant assumption behind the debate over the Environment is that it should be a scientific analysis of the earth's climate and ecosystem, addressed by systematic policy solutions to engender systemic change for the better.
But the underlying vision of the earth that undergirds this approach is rarely questioned or even articulated.
Summary thesis of this talk: A proper view of Environment is as a cathedral which extends out into the whole cosmos whose dome is higher than the heavens and whose altar is this earth.
In the popular mind The Environment means this planetary ecosystem, with no reference to the rest of the solar system or even the universe. It is "out there," external to us, something we are inside, a planetary container. It is something that we can regard as an object. It can therefore be studied, analysed, measured, adjusted, etc. But this objectification creates problems on several levels.
Because the environment is an object, Science will necessarily take as detached an approach as possible. It will almost necessarily leave out questions of inner meaning and human participation.
An objectified environment doesn't mean anything, it just is what it is. It's just a machine. And the job of the scientists is to give us information about it, to tell us how to fix it, or at least not break it.
We think we want to save it, but we don't discuss why. Except maybe in sentimental or blandly aesthetic terms. The only real moral element within this framework is fear. That we should be afraid of environmental damage that we or our descendants won't be able to live here.
A question lost in the debate is,What makes the environment worth preserving?
There are 2 answers that are often assumed in the objectified framework, which make up the two sides of the debate.
1. Stewardship. Regards the environment as a tool to be used for our benefit as the owner. A more thoughtful stewardship is preferred in order to maximize yield and use, but in the end it is Mans' to do with as he pleases. Associated with conservative politics and popular among evangelical Christians.
But this Christian view does not particularly safeguard the environment, since many of them believe the end of the world is near, that Jesus will be coming back soon. In the early 1980's, James Watt, the US Undersecretary of the Interior took steps to permit massive exploitation of natural resources, often including strip mining and the sell-off of national forests. The Wall Street Journal asked him if he was worried about future generations and their ability to live in and enjoy the land. Watt replied, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns."
The Stewardship approach basically boils down to an economic argument which is expressed in utilitarian terms. We ought not to exploit the land too much since it will limit our ability to exploit it in the future. This outlook does not take into account the nature of this material world, or what Man's proper role toward it is. The environment is a possession, and the good person tries to manage his possession wisely. This morally weak approach has been widely criticised in the modern Environmental movement. And rightly so, because it is so vulnerable to abuse.
Those who have studied political thought will recognize that there is nothing conservative in this dedication to endless economic development. Little gets conserved in the relentless pursuit of growth. Conservatism as a political outlook used to be about memory, now it's about progress.
(Morgan's note: This has been the unquestioned view of every Protestant (most of Evangelical character) church I've ever been in. Mars Hill (Seattle) springs to mind as being hard on this point, but that may just be because Driscoll's tendency to shout makes them seem harder on everything.)
2. The opposite answer to what makes the environment worth preserving, is to put it above mankind. It can be summed up in the statement: "The earth does not belong to man, rather man belongs to the earth." This is the philosophy associated with political liberalism. The basic M.O. is to limit or remove man's influence from the ecosystem. A guiding question for this philosophy is, "How do we remove man?"
An extreme expression of this view advocates for mass suicide (I recall reading some articles on this very idea while in college.) And while most people who hold this philosophical position won't go that far, there is a general nihilistic tendency to preference the natural world over the human, and to pit the two against each other. After all, how can people justify putting spikes into trees and endanger the lives of loggers? They have placed a greater value on plants and rocks and animals than human life.
In this view, the only man who has any value is the "noble savage." The movie Avatar is a great example of this expression. (I find a parallel view among many friends and family regarding race: Western, white, capitalist oppressor versus noble native. But race is another topic.)
But there is something inherently wrong with a philosophy which eliminates or degrades those who hold to it. For one thing, an ethics based on this view of the environment is impossible to implement with any consistency without planetary-scale genocide. Believers of this philosophy are left to live with a guilt that they are not able to completely eliminate their impact on the natural world.
In it's political expression it is committed to more and more regulation and curtailment of civilization. Thus liberalism is not truly liberal.
Likewise man relates to God from a similar state of disunity; seeking some sort of negotiation with divinity whereby he can get what he wants; whether it is prosperity, social justice, eternal salvation, or something else. In essence, spirituality is some kind of transaction. We can see this also in non-Christian spirituality in the west such as neo-paganism and Wicca, whose adherents tend to be environmentally conscious, but are still focused on getting some kind of results.
A theology which is focuses on doing certain acts to get certain results is essentially dedicated to magic, whether it be Christian or pagan magic.
But the Orthodox Christian church with its 2000 year tradition does not divide world up like American popular culture and the European Protestantism underneath it do. Rather there are only two kinds of existence: the created, and the uncreated.
Man and the earth belong to created existence. While only God is uncreated. Some may be tempted to point out that there is a disunity of vision here too, that in this case it is Man and the Earth against God. This would be true, but for Orthodox Christianity the central miraculous paradox of the faith is that the uncreated being took on created being. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, uncreated, infinite, invisible; took on created, finite, visible form. God became man. That man now has not just the possibility to simply be in an economic relationship with God, but of actually being in deep union, and communion with God. This idea, the Incarnation of God is where the Orthodox Church finds it's vision of Ecology.
To clarify, Orthodoxy is not pantheistic, which is the belief that God is everything, or everything is God. Rather Orthodoxy is panentheistic, God is in everything. Everything is not God, since there is a radical difference between the created and uncreated, but God is nevertheless in everything. But how can this be? Since the essence of God is held by traditional Christians to be unknowable. The Bible says, for instance that, "no man has seen God at any time." Since that is true, that how can be said to be present in His creation except in only the most inaccessible sense. Yes He may be present, but since He is unknowable, how can His presence be accessed?
Orthodoxy's answer to this question is what is called the Essence and Energies Distinction.Yes, the essence of God is beyond knowing, but He is completely knowable in His divine energies. That is, His activity and presence in creation. God's energies are not created effects, but are God Himself, they are uncreated. And they are not only knowable, but they may be participated in. Thus, human beings can become, as it says in 2Peter, "partakers of the divine nature." God is therefore both completely transcendent and unknowable, yet immanent and knowable by means of participation. As a result, Orthodoxy's understanding of man's relationship to God is not transactional or legalistic, as is most common in western Christianity. Rather, the basic sense of man's position in regards to God is in terms of union, communion, or participation. Or to use another term, interpenetration.
And since man is part of the created order, God's action and presence in creation, will also be in terms of interpenetration.
End Part 1 of 2.
To summarize:
- The common view is of the environment as something external to us.
- The common Conservative/Protestant (which is dominant in US) form of this is the Stewardship model which is basically economic: We should use the environment to best effect.
- The common Liberal/secular view is to value humans somehow less than nature: We should focus on reducing the effect people have on the natural world.
- Both have flaws because they start with an objectified view of nature.
- Orthodoxy starts with a different distinction. It is not man and nature, but created and uncreated.
- Orthodoxy has a doctrine of the Incarnation of God, believing that God became fully man in the person of Jesus.
- God is also present, through His energies, in all of creation.
- Man is called to union and participation with God. Likewise, our relationship to nature will be by similar means.
To find out what that means, stay tuned for the next transcription on this topic.
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