An Open Letter to the Environment

Sigve Tonstad has written an important editorial on the environment for the Spectrum magazine website. You can read the entire article here. Below are a few excerpts:

Dear environment,

You are losing.

I am trying to say it kindly. Indeed, the forces amassing against you are greater and more formidable than you imagine. I say this as a friend, speaking the truth even when it hurts. And yet I would not have written if I had nothing else to say. Your pain is grave enough as it is. My reason for writing is not to tell you what you already know or to say that the situation is worse than you think, even though it is. I am writing to remind you that there is hope, that you must not give up, and that you must not cease giving voice to your hope...

...there are deep-rooted theological reasons for your plight. In the realm of theology, you have been left out almost entirely. No less a theologian than Gerhard von Rad, perhaps the leading interpreter of the Old Testament in the twentieth century, held that the Creation account in Genesis is little more than an afterthought. In his view, the real meat of the biblical story is, as you might guess, the story of human salvation (Heilsgeschichte). You were not invited to the table in this version of things; this retelling has no interest in the earth and in non-human creation. It is not an accident of history that the most voracious meat-eating culture in history is found in countries that claim a Christian legacy.

Has it been lost on us that, in the Creation account, human beings are not relating to sentient non-human beings as though they are meant to be our food? (Gen 1:29-30). Has it been lost on us that God’s first blessing in the Bible is a blessing on non-human creation, setting up a pattern for the blessing God will bestow on human creation and finally on the Sabbath? (Gen 1:20-23, 28; 2:1-3). How have we allowed the difference between us and you to obscure the organic bond that connects us? We are, as you will certainly remember, earthlings. Our stories are linked at the point of origin, as it is written. “The Lord God formed man [’ādām] from the dust of the ground [’ādāmâ], and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man [’ādām] became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). Let there be no doubt that we are closely related! Indeed, when our lives come to an end, we return to you, to the earth from which we are taken (Gen 3:19).