Aldo Leopold - Caring for this Good Earth

Key Ideas of Conservation

Aldo Leopold (c.1887-1948) was a naturalist who was ahead of his time. He was an early advocate for conservation and naturalism in America. Having been taught at Yale's School of Forestry to manage land he left with the strong feeling that land should not be managed but left wild. That it was important to save the wild places as they are and to protect them from the encroachment of man. His overall rule was to connect people back to the land so that they may understand its value and importance.

He wrote a thin journal of his experiences A Sand County Almanac over a 12 year span documenting his thoughts, observations, and philosophy. From this study arose the following ideas:

What is the Land Ethic? - To retain and preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community in partnership and preservation of the land. It is positive concept that we must work towards at all times in planning and development, living and being, connecting and integrating.

What is Conservation? - Conservation is the state of harmony between men and the land.

What are the 3 key ideas behind a Land Ethic?

1. Land is a community of all living things.

2. Land is to be loved and respected.

3. Land creates an ongoing awareness of the connection between it and humans.

What should be our response to promoting a Land Ethic? - Public conservation efforts have little chance of success until private individuals, organizations, and corporations feel a strong personal relationship for the health of the land. Promotion of this relationship may take many forms.

Greenfire is a promotional film describing Aldo Leopold's conservation efforts. It may be found here.

Wikipedia Bio - Aldo Leopold

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

But when we see land as a community to which we belong,

we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

- Aldo Leopold



“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants,

and animals, or collectively: the land... In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo Sapiens

from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect

for  this fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”

- Aldo Leopold



“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. But when we see land

as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

- Aldo Leopold

“A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe]

he is writing his signature on the face of the land.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac



“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” 

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

“No matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows,

one can never learn all the salient facts about any one of them.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River



“We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty

for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.”

- Aldo Leopold, Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold

“The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of 

whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have

become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac



“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.

One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery,

and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, the stability, and beauty of the

biotic  community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

- Aldo Leopold

Caring for Grasslands of the Earth

“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them.
Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural,

wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.”

- Aldo Leopold

“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.”

- Aldo Leopold

Caring for the Seas of the Earth

“Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that
that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River

“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology,
but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”

- Aldo Leopold



“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent

this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet;

one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may

say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one.”

- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River

“Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we

had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.

Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”

- Aldo Leopold

Earth Care Interconnectivity

“To those who know the speech of hills and rivers straightening a stream is like shipping vagrants -
a very successful method of passing trouble from one place to the next. It solves nothing in
any collective sense.”

- Aldo Leopold, For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays And Other Writings

“Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off
his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators... The land is one organism.”

- Aldo Leopold



“At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree

useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.”

- Aldo Leopold

“Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... creation of new wilderness
in the full sense of the word is impossible.”

- Aldo Leopold




Join your local chapter or conservation group today

promoting earth care and regeneration

Aldo Leopold: The Land Ethic

Aldo Leopold: Conservation Movement

Wildlife - Conservation: The Life and Legacy of Aldo Leopold
The GreenFire Film Project

Discussions in Science and Religion - Week 5: "A Theology of Wholeness"

Today's topic brings with it decades-old lectures at university lecterns as I listened to discussions ranging from Behavioral Psychology to Biological Neurosciences, from Sigmund Freud to Carl Jung, from Jean Piaget to Carl Rogers, and their theories of psychoanalysis and development, identity and being, self and conscience. The arguments today continue to explore the many debates put forth from long ago re human vs. animal consciousness; or what might distinguish personality from character, intelligence from habit; or how the developmental stages of life are marked from early childhood to adulthood; or even if there is such as thing as morality or ethical responsibility? These items in themselves are difficult enough to decide let alone to try to discover when adding to its complexity how human development might have occurred along the many pathways of evolutionary biological development of the brain and its consciousness.

Evolutionary Consciousness and the Sense of Being - Is Man Unique?

To begin with, the bible theologian might ask "How unique is man in his consciousness and being? Too often we simply assume that God's image (Imago Dei) in man marks off all other discussions to any similarities between man and the animal kingdom. However, we might then ask just what do we mean by this Imago Dei that resides in man? We know of no beasts as consciously ruthless or deceptive, as knowingly brutal or inhuman, as corrupt or greedy, as man can be... making of man more beast than human. And if this be so, then how is it that we retain the image of God when so little evidence of this divine image seems present in our dispositions with one another: from father to son, from man to woman, clan to clan, tribe to tribe, nation to nation? Are we so sure of our pedantic truisms and knowing identity as to believe it will hold upon any further examinations?

Carl Jung contemplating "Wholeness"

"Assuredly," says the bible scholar, "sin but marks man's being, making of him more animal than human." Which if so, then naturally leads to the discussion of why is man sinful in his acts when the animal that does similar and is not - even in the act of killing? Which then brings us to the idea of human consciousness or conscience, its definitions and capacities, boundaries and limitations, its qualities or complexity. However, upon examining the many examples within the animal kingdom this very same quality of human-like conscience can be found from elephant herds to dolphins, from apes to pets, making our distinctiveness as all the less remarkable than what we first thought.

So then how does one approach this seeming nebulous idea of human uniqueness especially when it is harshly presented through strict evolutionary terms? And yet, quite curiously, it is this very idea of biological, evolutionary, development that can help us towards understanding the similarities and dissimilarities which exist between the human anatomy and that of the animal kingdom. And through the application of biologic neuro-science we might break away from our non-scientific pre-conceptions - however biblically-supported they may seem to be - to better help us ask more well-defined questions than we might fro A purely metaphysical (or philosophical) basis of argument.

Many times the studied scientist might first ask (i) how similar might man be to the animals before then asking (ii) how dis-similar man might be. And if we proceed apace to the first, then we must state flatly that the idea of "culture" is not unique to humans for the animal kingdom likewise has its own "cultures" however they are comported. And if, by our definitions of "culture" we might mean the ability to speak a kind of language, or to use and handle tools for the sustenance of life, we must be willing to comparatively study whether these abilities are likewise found within the larger presence of the animal kingdom. For if they are, then the human animal (man) is not so far off from animals than we have thought ourselves to be - even as one would presuppose based upon the evolutionary charts of mammalian development. Firstly, whether through verbal, or non-verbal communication, the animal kingdom is rife with examples of communicating with itself from mother to infant, from pride to flock. Even as  tool-usage is as pervasive from Chimpanzees to ants, birds to bees. Moreover, there is also a form of social learning and responsiveness within the animal kingdom no less than within humanity's social abilities. As such, all of this has been numerously documented, debated, fretted over, and discussed through the lenses and spectacles of cognitive and social science.

(Original) Elephant Paints Self Portrait

Elephant Painting An Elephant

Nor might we attribute greater brain complexity to the formation of human consciousness - though some would ask whether complex brains produce a qualitative difference between humans and the animals. Not many years ago (say the 18th century and thereabouts) there was the silly notion of the "animality" of the human species. That is, the idea for instance, that the white male was less "animal" than the white female. Or even, the white race was less close to the animals than other non-white races. And because of these ignorant ideas religious oppression and slavery raged on, poverty ran rampant, and people died for lack of compassion, while kings and queens dined upon the fatted calf, safe and warm within their castles of perdition, and the jolly man in the street died for lack of bread and care.

And from these early accounts, if not by our very own accounts today that are as similarly marked off by pestilence and pride, warfare and inhumanity, we must ask "Who is the more naked? Is it man or is it beast?" Modern studies in sociology have shown that the dignified, well manner human becomes too easily a beast when his environment is compressed within shared closeness, tight spaces, and want of resources. How many times have we walked through an eager, pressing, crowd to discover mothers' with baby carriages, or wheelchair-bound loved ones, callously stepped upon, disdainfully pushed away, or cussed aloud for being in the way? Or, in the supreme examples of oppressive governments ruthless killing fellow human beings which they consider as mere animals in acts of hedonistic butchery and genocidal rage? Certainly the thin veneer of civilization is too quickly stripped away from man's shoulders of dignity to leave our species much less godly in its inhuman treatment of one another when thrust into the very modes of survival. One could also cite numerous books about lifeboat ethics, or of a lot of highly civilized, castaway, British boys read of in Lord of the Flies. Or even Elie Wiesel's titled book Night with its resultant horrors from German oppression:

"Night is a work by Elie Wiesel about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, at the height of the Holocaust and toward the end of the Second World War. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the father-child relationship as his father declines to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful teenage caregiver. "If only I could get rid of this dead weight ... Immediately I felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever." In Night, everything is inverted, every value destroyed. "Here there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends," a Kapo tells him. "Everyone lives and dies for himself alone."^[1] - Wikipedia

From these many apt illustrations we must then ask, "How unique, or how glorious, is man, when he breaks past his civilized veneer and socialization to become more animal-like and less human? Or more madman like than sane?" Even so, biological psychology might observe at man's eating habits or infidelities from a learned, evolutionary, environment where there were few sustaining resources held against the competitive demand of species survival. But then again, we must also add to these pictures the pithy ideas of self-awareness, empathy, bonding, and relationships while always asking ourselves whether we have any level of choice, ability, or human agency (as a subject) in the manner in which we might cognitively decide our future, if at all. Or if all has result from sheer biologic mechanism as determined by brute survival or instinct? And if so, whether we have any responsibility towards one another regarding the megalomanic futures we might envision for ourselves and our planet?

So then, what are the keys to being human? Are they wonderment? Speculation? Dreaming? Is it a capacity for continuing human development through evolutionary evolvement? Hence, Erik Erikson's "Eight Stages of Human Development." Or, Jean Piaget's "Scale of Intelligence" from simple to complex. Or even, Lawrence Kohlberg's "Stages of Moral Development." Each asking questions like what challenges the human capacity for social learning? Why do grooming techniques matter between us? Or that of dress and deportment? Or whether it is possible to create rich environments for growth and development against the devolving scales of warfare (PTSD), tolerated poverty and malnourishment. Which is a good question to ask because from studies of stricken, malnourished children caught in oppressive conditions, or adults enduring the same in poverty or within war zones, psycho-sociological neuro-studies have shown how shock and stress can greatly degrade the human system backwards away from any kind of progressive cognitive development across many, if not most, of the human developmental life stages. Begging the question just what is civilization, or what might we expect in the development of future civilizations, if basic humanitarian needs are not met or exceeded? And what might be expected within the evolutionary progress of the human species given these too frequent, and broad experiences, across mankind?

But say some, technology is what distinguishes man from beast! And yet scientific studies have shown again just how misinformed this reasoning can be, misunderstanding at best, that technology is always neutral to the progress of human development. That technology can as easily de-personalize humanity as it can uplift (or re-personalize) humanity. Consider science's discovery of the atom and how quickly it was used to develop the atomic bomb so much more quickly than it was used to create energy-efficient atomic power plants. The one usage kills and devastates whole biotic ecologies while the other provides warmth and light in the simplest of biomes. And thus, technology as a "tool" can be used either for good, or for ill, and is not a distinguisher of man from beast except in its novelty and complexity.

The Cognitive Science of Neurology

So when we come to Philip Clayton's multi-layered chapter on the neurosciences - neurophysiology, neuroimmunology, neurochemistry, neuropharmacology, or even neuropsychology - he works necessarily through several positions that science has attempted in creating a physical explanation of the human conscience through strict material reductionism (eliminativism), a modified version of it (epiphenomenalism), and a fuller metaphysical explanation of human consciousness (emergent systems perspective).

1 - Eliminativism which reduces all to mere biological signal and gene without any regard to the interconnectedness of the total organism. Hence there is no such thing as thoughts or wishes, yearnings or obligations. Our entire experience deceives us, and all the world "outside" is but illusion... or so say popular philosophers like Daniel Dennett. "There is no self. There is no such thing as listening and conversation. That all is reduced to whatever neurons travel into the head via the optic nerve or auditory canal as mechanistic signal." Strict physiological brain functioning must not be otherwise be explained:

"Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. Some eliminativists argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level.^[1] Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.^[2]

"Eliminativism stands in opposition to reductive materialism, which argues that a mental state is well defined, and that further research will result in a more detailed, but not different understanding.^[3] An intermediate position is revisionary materialism, which will often argue that the mental state in question will prove to be somewhat reducible to physical phenomena - with some changes to the common sense concept." - Wikipedia

2 - Epiphenomenalism is the idea that mental experiences and feelings do exist... so long as they don't do anything. Hence, if a quality arises out of a system but does not in turn influence that system, it is known as an epiphenomena (or quasi-phenomena). This cognitive approach would be yet another explanation of the physical processes of consciousness.

"Epiphenomenalism is the theory in philosophy of mind that mental phenomena are caused by physical processes in the brain or that both are effects of a common cause, as opposed to mental phenomena driving the physical mechanics of the brain. The impression that thoughts, feelings, or sensations cause physical effects, is therefore to be understood as illusory to some extent. For example, it is not the feeling of fear that produces an increase in heart beat, both are symptomatic of a common physiological origin, possibly in response to a legitimate external threat."^[1]    - Wikipedia

Making Sense of it All

As can be seen from the too-shortened paragraphs above, the nub of the question is whether we, as humans, are bundles of neurons to the nth degree, or if our sense of our conscious being - our values, hopes, dreams, expectations, and so forth, might have any greater "physicality" beyond the mere wiring in our heads.

Simplistically I think it is just that... the wiring in our heads that God has created through the elongated process of evolution which has provided for a more elaborate, more developed superstructure of the human being so that the whole becomes greater than its parts. As such, our mental network (or wiring, as I called it) and its interconnectedness has created a "non-physical" consciousness giving to us our sense of self beyond mere neurons and signal.

3 - Emergent Systems Perspective. The newest buzzword amongst evolutionary scientists - known as the "emergent systems perspective" has created not only a souped-up version of the connectedness between micro- and mega- evolutionary biospheres, but always has leant deep implications for the explanation of our human brain's self-awareness or consciousness (cf. Clayton, pp 94-96, 109ff). The embedding of systems-within-systems works not only for the evolutionary development of life (cf, the recent article on "Why All the Fuss over Earth's Remarkable Cambrian Explosion?) but is a pattern established within the development of the brain itself within animals and within humans.

And from this developmental pathway comes the idea of human agency as culpable and responsible for making sense of his/her environment as before the Creator God Himself in loving display of grace and provision. Moreover, society itself can detect its own agency collectively, and when done correctly is seen in the outcomes of more people being able to eat, reproduce, and safely survive their environment.  These socially evolved factors are known as "value-blooms" that are either reinforced via success, and may appear through the cultural preferencing of ideology, religion, or the various forms of social organization and activity (what are known as human culture and heritage, family values, and social distinctions).

The greater idea here for the Christian believer is that within the very process of evolution itself, God has worked within the physical wiring of humanity its sense of self, of an awareness of a Being greater than itself - an awareness that is both spiritual and religious. And when we get together in our common social groupings it feels "natural" to us to talk about God and spirituality, even as it feels unnatural to us not do the same. It is all due to the evolutionary wiring within.

Conclusion - A Theology of Wholeness

Hebrew, "Shalom"

And lastly, in the collection or combination of all these things - from emergent systems to religious metaphysics - the image of God has become implanted within us. And more than that, God's very heart and divine passion has become implanted within our breast. Man has not merely been made in the image of God but he was made to enact God's image whereby God's Imago Dei becomes our Missio Dei. That is, God's image becomes our self-same passion, and thus, it becomes our mission. An image that is not simply something we have or possess but something we must enact, or do, in order to fulfill our divine imaging. We must enact goodness and blessing, love and hope, goodwill and cheer, in confidence and trust against a creation broken by sin of God's Imago Dei. And ripped away from God's Missio Dei.

When (evolutionary) human conscience was birthed (however and wherever that came to be in evolutionary history as we have here tried to describe in this article) so became man's awareness of his fallenness and apartness from his God (see my erstwhile theologic article, How God Created by Evolution: A Proposed Theory of Man's Evolutionary Development). Our sense of needing God's re-creation is a shared sense by all of humanity. And it is a thing that this earth requires in itself if we are to live on in our present state of human existence. In essence, even as sin has broken our relationship with God, self, others, and creation (Man's 4 Stages of Brokenness and Healing), even so God's Spirit re-creation brings reclamation and healing to God Himself, even as it brings well-being to ourselves, to our community of neighbors, and to this earth's polluted and dis-connected ecology (sic, the beneficial entanglement of biotic environments). This then becomes a theology of wholeness and completeness, of divine presence and majesty, of necessity and arrangement.

Consequently death doesn't define us even as life itself does define us. We have been invited into God's image to become inseparably identified with His mission as Life-giver. This is where Christian anthropology meets Christian eschatology; and human distinctiveness becomes nested within God's beautiful re-creation of life giving to Christian science the theology and teleology that it seeks. And hence, religion is not uniquely evil, nor faith fundamentally flawed, but are uniquely re-imagined through God's ever-present re-creation and inspiration involving morality, ethics, ecology and religion. We do not live in a valueless, meaningless universe but in a universe requiring our hospital engagement to its atheistic separation from itself. Even as it requires divine contingency and guidance lest we become inseparable to this purposefully decreed divine mandate by God to nature and man. We hear it. We see it. We feel it. Let us now act on it. Letting God's imago dei become our mission dei.

R.E. Slater

October 4, 2013
edited October 5, 2013

Index to past discussions -

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"

Discussions in Science and Religion - Week 3: Recap - "The Problem of Evil"

HighGravity Religion and Science: wk 3 Emergence, Eco-everything, and Evil
http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/09/26/highgravity-religion-and-science-wk-3-emergence-eco-everything-and-evil/

by Jonnie Russell
September 26, 2013
Comments

This week we dove into the world of biology, perhaps the most contentious field of Religion and Science interaction. I’m thinking some of my recaps have been a bit much (length-wise), so I’m going to try to be brief here, and lean into the reaction-and-question part a bit more.

Recap:

Philip began our discussion with a look at the aspects and functions that ancient cosmogonies played.  They are our oldest stories–grand narratives that sought to give shape to a view of life and the world.  It is in this context that we presume the biblical creation narrative should be read, as an attempt to flesh out a way to see life and creation. Tripp, highlighted how Augustine (though he’s done his fair amount of damage) got this right, focusing on the figurative force rather than the literal elements of the narrative.

Emergence. This is the frame and terminology in which Philip couches the manifold evolutionary process that unfolds in creation. From proteins to small group primates and beyond, the phenomenon of emergence pervades our reality. Simply defined, emergence can be understood as complexity unfolding. It is a process whereby things that evolve remain dependent on and are influenced by the earlier evolutionary history, but are simultaneously more than the entities/forces they depend on. In this way, they have a genuine newness and novelty that is not fully reducible to or explained in terms of their substrates (i.e. smaller or more simple bits–or more fundamental forces). Philip’s whirlwind 17 minute cosmic story showed the “tremendous emergent structures” we now have. Life, for example, is a radical emergence of certain chemical systems.

A critique often leveled at emergence helps specify a crucial component  for a genuine [strong position of] emergence. Put simply, it’s the claim that the emergent qualities have not top-down or unique causal powers.  A real explanation of what's happening will be explained by the more fundamental parts. [Thus,] nothing new is explanatory going on in life, for example, just more complex combinations of stuff that is causally determined by genetics, etc. So, the definitive need for emergence is genuine top-down causal impact.

The genetic determinism of the “new synthesis” in biological studies in the 1930′s and 40′s proposed to have found the explanatory link between Darwinism’s processes of random variation and selective retention and transitions between generations with the discovery of the gene.  It was the gene, via the structure of DNA, that served to pass the randomly selected (successful) genes on and therefore motor the evolutionary development of reality along. This, at bottom was conceived as a reductive process that causally began and ended with ‘selfish’ individual genes (Dawkins’ famous terminology from the 70′s).

But… this project was flawed because it failed to appropriately think the environment within which the organism exists. In reality, organisms are part of complex environments that they co-create with other organisms around them, and in turn are created by the environment itself.  Ecosystem commingling, systems theory, and a profound reciprocal interconnectivity (remember this term from week one?) are the processes that determine reality…at every level.

Therefore, reality betrays a co-constitution  at every level. We are co-creators of each other and our broader world. As Philip notes, this is ripe ground upon which to think the God/world relation in a participatory and co-creative nature wherein it is not simply God and his human creatures co-creating, but all of the created order in that intertwined way creating and interconnected as a ecosystem– a macro-creational ecosystem that mirrors small-scale ecosystems we explore in the evolutionary process. In other words, whatever God is doing, we are full-fledged participators in (or frustrators of?) the making of the world, and not only us, but all created reality bears a responsibility for our world.

React:

- Tripp raised a great (and very difficult) question about the problem of evil in the context of the evolutionary process.  Why the unimaginable amount of waste, suffering, and massive extinctions? Why this shape of the evolutionary process which seems to contains such egregious evil? Philip alluded to a kind of theodicy response (he might shy away from that term) which essentially says that God wanted the kind of world and relation to it that included this co-creational element, which presumably necessitates accepting the existence of random suffering and epochal extinctions over the universes billion year development. In other words, the suffering and evil we have is an inherent product of having the God/world relation we do.

Now, Philip might want to nuance this or reject that logic as implicit in his argument, but I find it difficult to swallow. It sounds similar to the more classical free will defense theodicy, which argues that evil is the byproduct of the freedom required to have the loving familial kinds of relationships with us (very anthropocentric in its classical construction) God wants to have. The trouble with this logic is that it just pushes the question back a step in the sense that we are told that in Philip’s case, this co-creational, intermingled world has a necessary byproduct of evil that could not be otherwise. So, that reality, that truth, is more fundamental–the arche-truth of the cosmos–than God and the God/world relation? The puzzle is similar to the tired old "divine command vs. divine reason" arguments about morality: is something right because God commands (it issues from God’s will), or does God choose it because it’s right (issuing from some reason God too seems subject to). I’ve always leaned towards divine reason (if forced into the binary), but it creates a puzzling logic of some arche-reality of fundamental logic more binding, more in control, more universally present, than God. Help me here Philip. I’d love to hear your thoughts or a tweak to the way I’m characterizing your response.

-Perhaps this logic assumes a crude form of creation ex nihilo in the sense that I’m imagining God as prior to an order which will be brought into being, but what’s prior to that, even prior to God, is the universal truth that x begets y: a ecosystemic, co-creational world, necessitates incalculable waste and suffering. What might a non-creational ex nihilo account that you might want to chase down do for your reasoning here?

- On a less interrogating note, I am fascinated by the eco-theological emphasis in this discussion, particularly the way it ennobles the rest of the created order with a creational power and genuine relation to God. Ellen Davis recently was at Fuller to give one of their annual lectures and she touched on very similar themes  in the Old Testament.  Her fundamental idea was that there is a covenant triangle between God, Israel/humanity, and the land/rest of creation. Now of course, the distinction might be a bit too strong between humans and the rest of creation, but she points to a profound way in which the land, particular the agricultural world of Israel is profoundly included in the covenantal language in parts of the Old Testament (Joel, some Psalms, Hosea, and other places).  The three points of the triangle hang together in the sense that God has covenanted, created bonds and is committed to, the whole of the world. God is even said to suffer along with the land, something that echos Sallie McFague’s recent focus on land as a kind of “least of these” in our time. In Terrance Fretheim’s language, creation beyond the human form is given a kind of “interiority”, we might say genuine subjectivity akin to our own.

These ideas seem to cohere very well with your ecosystemic thought where responsibility is dispersed to all of us in a genuine sense. I’m not sure if we will get there in this class, but I’d love to hear you flesh out how you think through this kind of responsibility.  Do you consider it a kind of interiority/subjectivity? Is panpsychism or panexperientialism–the idea that the mental or experiential aspects we have, in some sense, go all the way down through lesser forms of complexity in matter–the way to go here?

Index to past discussions -

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"

An Interview with N.T. Wright: The New Ecology, the God of the OT v. NT, Open Theism, Sexuality, Biblical Interpretation, and More

Ask N.T. Wright... (response)

http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/ask-nt-wright-response

 

by Rachael Held Evans

June 11, 2013

 

This afternoon I am thrilled to host one of today’s best known and respected New Testament scholars, N.T. Wright, as a guest in our ongoing reader-conducted interview series.  Last week you submitted over 300 questions for Wright, but we could only pick 6 as our esteemed guest is busy wrapping up work on the much-anticipated Paul and the Faithfulness of God and its two companion volumes, Pauline Perspectives and Paul and His Recent Interpreters. (You can pre-order all on Amazon.)

 

Wright is the author of over 100 books, including the popular Surprised by Hope and Simply Christian. His full-scale works—The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God,  The Resurrection of the Son of God, and the forthcoming Paul and the Faithfulness of God—are part of a projected six-volume series entitled Christian Origins and the Question of God. He is also the author of multiple articles, essays, and sermons, many of which you can access here. (Wright usually publishes as N.T. Wright when writing academic work, or Tom Wright when writing for a more popular readership.) Wright was the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England from 2003 until his retirement in 2010. He is currently Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

 

Like a lot of you, I’ve been hugely impacted by Wright’s work and am so grateful for the ways in which he has helped me love Scripture, and the Christ to whom it points, better. One thing I have always appreciated about him is his commitment to teaching God's people, not just the intellectual elite, but all who want to know and follow Jesus.

 

Thank you for your many excellent questions.

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From S. Kyle: Dr. Wright: You have argued, particularly in Surprised by Hope, that the bodily resurrection and the physical nature of the coming consummation of the Kingdom opens up to us a legitimate basis for physical action in the world: the things we do in the body and on this planet for good, really do matter. How exactly do these things 'last' into the eschaton? How seamless is the relationship between the now and the not-yet? What seems especially tricky to me here is doing things that have implications outside of the Church. Do the parts of the physical world we preserve through our ecological work literally remain into the eschaton? What about securing justice for non-believers who will ultimately, we would posit, be judged eternally? Most fundamentally: how exactly do your eschatological views, particularly in teasing out these details, provide a well-supported basis for a Christian social ethic?

 

The continuity between our present now/not yet time and the ultimate eschaton is deeply mysterious, since the only model we have for it is the resurrection of Jesus himself – with the wounds of the nails and the spear evidence of that continuity.

 

There is much about which we must say we do not know and we quite possibly cannot know at the moment. What we can know and do know is that we are called to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God, and I don’t see that as e.g. doing something wrong if those for whom we do justice and mercy turn out to spurn God’s love for themselves. The point of justice and mercy anyway is not ‘they deserve it’ but ‘this is the way God’s world should be’, and we are called to do those things that truly anticipate the way God’s world WILL be.

 

The fact that God has promised to put the world right in the end, the fact that he has raised Jesus from the dead having defeated the power of evil on the cross, and the fact that he has called us to participate in that death and resurrection and, by the spirit, to be agents of his blessing in the world (see the Beatitudes!) indicates clearly enough that our ‘social ethic’ (what a lot of muddles are contained in the background to that truncated phrase!) is rooted in God’s act in Jesus, aiming for his final completion of his restorative justice, implemented in part by us here and now. Part of gospel obedience is precisely that we do NOT know in the present the answer to questions like this. See Matthew 25: “‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you…?”

 

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From Jessica: A struggle of mine recently has been reconciling (or rather trying to reconcile), the seemingly violent and vindictive God of the Old Testament with the non-violent, "love your enemies," Jesus. How would you put those two radically different views of God, together?

 

An old question but best answered by a fresh reading of Isaiah 40-55 on the one hand – the greatest outpouring of divine love and mercy you can imagine – and of, say, John’s gospel on the other, in which when the spirit comes he will convict the world of sin in righteousness and judgment.

 

Beware of false either/or divisions. Of course there is a problem in, for example, the book of Judges. My view is that when God called Abraham he knew he was going to work through flawed human beings to bring about redemption . . . and that the fault lines run forward then all the way to the cross, the most wicked thing humans ever did and the most loving thing God ever did. Once we figure out how all that works (probably never!) we will understand the rest. Part of the problem the way the question is posed is by assuming that we can abstract an ethical ideal from one part of scripture and use it to judge the actions of God in another part of scripture, as though scripture were given us so we could form such dehistoricized abstract ethical judgments! Life just isn’t like that.

 

For more, see my response to a similar question posed by Andrew Wilson.

 

 

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From Kurt: Hi Dr. Wright, First, allow me to admit that your writing and speaking has been the most influential thing in my theological, missional, and spiritual journey in the last 10 years. Before I was introduced to your work, I was convinced that Christianity was all about pie in the sky and leaving this world - not redeeming it. Discovering Romans 8 and a God who groans with creation for its ultimate redemption - [re]new[ed] creation - changes everything! For showing me this - along with various other things about the historical Jesus, the apostle Paul, and theology in general - I am truly grateful.

 

I do have a question for you: I am wondering if you would be willing to "show your cards" when it comes to open theism? Most of my friends who are open theists, Greg Boyd and others, are very influenced by your work. Certainly, nothing you have said seems to contradict such a God of possibilities. In fact, your reading of Abraham and Israel as God's "plan B" actually helps give us a framework for thinking about such things. Even so, what would your thoughts be on open theism? I realize that you may not agree with this position of mine, but I would be intrigued to hear some your observations. Thanks for your continued ministry to the church!

 

Open theism is not something I have done a lot with and to be honest (and it’s late at night and I’m busy). I strongly suspect this is one of those classic American either/or questions that is forcing theology into a box. I never use the language of ‘Plan B’, certainly not about Abraham and Israel; in fact I often quote the Rabbi who envisaged God having Abraham in mind from the start. I don’t want to sign a blank check (or cheque as we spell it), especially when it’s written in dollars not pounds. Go figure!

 

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From Steve: What is sexuality like in the kingdom of God? Is everyone in Heaven going to be heterosexual? And if NOT, what are the implications of that for how we live here and now?

 

Freud said sex was laughing in the face of death. Jesus said that in the new world, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; having passed beyond death into resurrection, with no prospect of death, there will be no need for reproduction and hence we may assume no desire for it, just as now as a 64-year old I no longer have a desire to play rugby though there was a time when I lived for it. (Not a good analogy but never mind.) Also, be careful of equating ‘kingdom of God’ with ‘in Heaven.’ Read 1 Corinthians 13 and figure out what Paul is saying about that which lasts into the resurrection life and that which doesn’t.

 

The key thing of course is that throughout the New Testament it is assumed that what God has done in Jesus is new CREATION in which the original plan of Genesis 1 and 2 is gloriously fulfilled. (See Mark 10 and elsewhere.) And beware of language that assumes categories like ‘heterosexual’ and similar terms are now solid and fixed entities which are somehow established. They are modernist constructs which already many postmoderns are rapidly deconstructing. Don’t build houses on sand. ["I assume Wright is referring to modernistic sand." - r.e. slater]

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From Heidi: Because Rachel is such a voice for women in the blogosphere, I would love for you to address gender inequality in the church and bring a better reading to the passages that have been used as weapons on women for generations.

 

I’ve done this in various writings some of which are available on the web. The best place to start is with this article, “Women’s Service in the Church: The Biblical Basis.”

 

An excerpt, regarding Mary of Bethany:

"I think in particular of the woman who anointed Jesus (without here going in to the question of who it was and whether it happened more than once); as some have pointed out, this was a priestly action which Jesus accepted as such. And I think, too, of the remarkable story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10."

"Most of us grew up with the line that Martha was the active type and Mary the passive or contemplative type, and that Jesus is simply affirming the importance of both and even the priority of devotion to him. That devotion is undoubtedly part of the importance of the story, but far more obvious to any first-century reader, and to many readers in Turkey, the Middle East and many other parts of the world to this day would be the fact that Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet within the male part of the house rather than being kept in the back rooms with the other women. This, I am pretty sure, is what really bothered Martha; no doubt she was cross at being left to do all the work, but the real problem behind that was that Mary had cut clean across one of the most basic social conventions. It is as though, in today’s world, you were to invite me to stay in your house and, when it came to bedtime, I were to put up a camp bed in your bedroom. We have our own clear but unstated rules about whose space is which; so did they. And Mary has just flouted them. And Jesus declares that she is right to do so. 

She is ‘sitting at his feet’; a phrase which doesn’t mean what it would mean today, the adoring student gazing up in admiration and love at the wonderful teacher. As is clear from the use of the phrase elsewhere in the NT (for instance, Paul with Gamaliel), to sit at the teacher’s feet is a way of saying you are being a student, picking up the teacher’s wisdom and learning; and in that very practical world you wouldn’t do this just for the sake of informing your own mind and heart, but in order to be a teacher, a rabbi, yourself. Like much in the gospels, this story is left cryptic as far as we at least are concerned, but I doubt if any first-century reader would have missed the point. That, no doubt, is part at least of the reason why we find so many women in positions of leadership, initiative and responsibility in the early church; I used to think Romans 16 was the most boring chapter in the letter, and now, as I study the names and think about them, I am struck by how powerfully they indicate the way in which the teaching both of Jesus and of Paul was being worked out in practice…."

An excerpt, regarding 1 Timothy 2

“When people say that the Bible enshrines patriarchal ideas and attitudes, this passage, particularly verse 12, is often held up as the prime example. Women mustn’t be teachers, the verse seems to say; they mustn’t hold any authority over men; they must keep silent. That, at least, is how many translations put it. This, as I say, is the main passage that people quote when they want to suggest that the New Testament forbids the ordination of women. I was once reading these verses in a church service and a woman near the front exploded in anger, to the consternation of the rest of the congregation (even though some agreed with her). The whole passage seems to be saying that women are second-class citizens at every level. They aren’t even allowed to dress prettily. They are the daughters of Eve, and she was the original troublemaker. The best thing for them to do is to get on and have children, and to behave themselves and keep quiet."

"Well, that’s how most people read the passage in our culture until quite recently. I fully acknowledge that the very different reading I’m going to suggest may sound to begin with as though I’m simply trying to make things easier, to tailor this bit of Paul to fit our culture. But there is good, solid scholarship behind what I’m going to say, and I genuinely believe it may be the right interpretation."

"When you look at strip cartoons, ‘B’ grade movies, and ‘Z’ grade novels and [classical] poems, you pick up a standard view of how ‘everyone imagines’ men and women behave. Men are macho, loud-mouthed, arrogant thugs, always fighting and wanting their own way. Women are simpering, empty-headed creatures, with nothing to think about except clothes and jewelry. There are ‘Christian’ versions of this, too: the men must make the decisions, run the show, always be in the lead, telling everyone what to do; women must stay at home and bring up the children. If you start looking for a biblical back-up for this view, well, what about Genesis 3? Adam would never have sinned if Eve hadn’t given in first. Eve has her punishment, and it’s pain in childbearing (Genesis 3.16)."

"Well, you don’t have to embrace every aspect of the women’s liberation movement to find that interpretation hard to swallow. Not only does it stick in our throat as a way of treating half the human race; it doesn’t fit with what we see in the rest of the New Testament, in the passages we’ve already glanced at."

"The key to the present passage, then, is to recognise that it is commanding that women, too, should be allowed to study and learn, and should not be restrained from doing so (verse 11). They are to be ‘in full submission’; this is often taken to mean ‘to the men’, or ‘to their husbands’, but it is equally likely that it refers to their attitude, as learners, of submission to God or to the gospel – which of course would be true for men as well. Then the crucial verse 12 need not be read as ‘I do not allow a woman to teach or hold authority over a man’ – the translation which has caused so much difficulty in recent years. It can equally mean (and in context this makes much more sense): ‘I don’t mean to imply that I’m now setting up women as the new authority over men in the same way that previously men held authority over women.’ Why might Paul need to say this?"

"There are some signs in the letter that it was originally sent to Timothy while he was in Ephesus. And one of the main things we know about religion in Ephesus is that the main religion – the biggest Temple, the most famous shrine – was a female-only cult. The Temple of Artemis (that’s her Greek name; the Romans called her Diana) was a massive structure which dominated the area; and, as befitted worshippers of a female deity, the priests were all women. They ruled the show and kept the men in their place."

"Now if you were writing a letter to someone in a small, new religious movement with a base in Ephesus, and wanted to say that because of the gospel of Jesus the old ways of organising male and female roles had to be rethought from top to bottom, with one feature of that being that the women were to be encouraged to study and learn and take a leadership role, you might well want to avoid giving the wrong impression. Was the apostle saying, people might wonder, that women should be trained up so that Christianity would gradually become a cult like that of Artemis, where women did the leading and kept the men in line? That, it seems to me, is what verse 12 is denying. The word I’ve translated ‘try to dictate to them’ is unusual, but seems to have the overtones of ‘being bossy’ or ‘seizing control’. Paul is saying, like Jesus in Luke 10, that women must have the space and leisure to study and learn in their own way, not in order that they may muscle in and take over the leadership as in the Artemis-cult, but so that men and women alike can develop whatever gifts of learning, teaching and leadership God is giving them."

"What’s the point of the other bits of the passage, then? The first verse (8) is clear: the men must give themselves to devout prayer, and must not follow the normal stereotypes of ‘male’ behaviour: no anger or arguing. Then verses 9 and 10 follow, making the same point about the women. They must be set free from their stereotype, that of fussing all the time about hair-dos, jewellry, and fancy clothes – but they must be set free, not in order that they can be dowdy, unobtrusive little mice, but so that they can make a creative contribution to the wider society. The phrase ‘good works’ in verse 10 sounds pretty bland to us, but it’s one of the regular ways people used to refer to the social obligation to spend time and money on people less fortunate than oneself, to be a benefactor of the town through helping public works, the arts, and so on."

Read the rest here, and see also this video related to Romans 16: 

 

N.T. Wright on Women in Ministry 5

 

 

 

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From Mark: In these theological/political times, where it seems so important to be in the right "camp" lest we be cast out from fellowship with others because we do not hold the "correct" views, how do you suggest moving forward toward greater unity, rather than greater division?

 

Beware of ‘camps’.

 

In the U.S. especially these are usually and worryingly tied in to the various political either/or positions WHICH THE REST OF THE WORLD DOES NOT RECOGNISE. Anyone with their wits about them who reads scripture and prays and is genuinely humble will see that many of the issues which push people into ‘camps’ - especially but not only in the U.S. - are distortions in both directions caused by trying to get a quick fix on a doctrinal or ethical issue, squashing it into the small categories of one particular culture. Read Philippians 2.1-11 again and again. And Ephesians 4.1-16 as well.

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From Laura: Can you and Francis Collins write more awesome songs together? Pretty please!

 

You never know!  The two we’ve written so far happened more or less by accident.

 

 

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Thanks for the questions and sorry these answers are brief! Good wishes to one and all. And say a prayer for all the final editing and production of the big book on Paul!

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Thanks again for your questions! You can check out every installment of our interview series—which includes “Ask an atheist,” “Ask a nun,” “Ask a pacifist,” “Ask a Calvinist,” “Ask a Muslim,” “Ask a gay Christian,” “Ask a Pentecostal” “Ask an environmentalist,” “Ask a funeral director,” "Ask a Liberation Theologian,"  "Ask Shane Claiborne," "Ask Jennifer Knapp," and  many more— here.