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Rev Dr L Lee Levett-Olson  Ecotheology recognises that creation is not at our disposal. We are not free to abuse it, wound it or discard it. As guests by God’s invitation, we have an honoured place, but we share that place with every other living creature.
Unpack the issues...
The word ‘economics’ comes from oikos – ‘household’. The whole discipline of how money and markets work rests on what makes households thrive. Households are struggling as the so-called economic meltdown gathers momentum. How can we make our own budgets balance when the world’s biggest financial players are going bust — or being rescued by taxpayers? These market troubles bring new excuses to put off action on the environment, with the claim that the economy has to take priority over ecology. Yet the root words are the same: economics concerns household budgets, and ecology (also from oikos) concerns our planetary household. Homes need money, but also a healthy environment. The two are not opposites but linked approaches for a well-managed and sustainable home. Churches have come late to this awareness, yet Christian scriptures and traditions have always recognised the link: healthy dwelling in the planetary home we call creation. Now, at last, there seems to be an awakening religious concern about the health of the earth. Ecotheology adds another dimension. The name implies something quite profound: Creation is God’s household. The earth does not belong to us, but to God. In Leviticus 25:23, God commands that “land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; you are strangers and sojourners with me.”  The Hebrew, words for humans in this verse are gerim wa toshavim. That literally means ‘aliens and guests’ — we are not at home in creation, and yet we are precisely at home, by divine invitation. God makes us welcome but we have no place by right. In that same chapter, God warns if we mistreat the land, God will expel us from it: the rights of the land outweigh the wrongs of its human visitors.
Ecotheology recognises that creation is not at our disposal. We are not free to abuse it, wound it, or discard it. As guests by God’s invitation, we have an honoured place, but we share that place with every other living creature. Our sharing goes deep. In the first creation story (Genesis 1), human beings emerge on the same sixth day as every land animal, from the tiniest insect to the greatest wild beast. There is no separate ‘day of creation’ for humankind. Even our gender, part of the way we represent “the image of God, male and female,” is also represented by the animals created with us. In the second creation story (Genesis 2), the kinship goes deeper still. God’s own hands shape an ‘earthling’ from the ‘earth’ (adham from adhamah), then God brings it to life by breathing Spirit “into its nostrils.” The link with the earth is our very essence. Then God forms “every living creature” in exactly the same way: hands shaping mud, breath into nostrils. Only Eve is different, but she shares with Adam and with all other animals the label God has given: companions in the garden. We share earth together, its origins, its wellbeing, its destiny. John 1 reminds Christians that Logos (the Word) formed us and all things — everything that exists was made, like us, by Logos. And Logos comes to be one with all flesh (the Greek word sarx does not mean ‘human’) so all flesh can find wholeness. Ecotheology helps us understand who we are — Biblical wisdom for God’s creation and our place in it, sharing in substance and blessing with all other creatures and the earth itself. Hastening extinctions, as Australians are doing more quickly than people on any other continent, violates our core identity. And ecotheology helps us understand who God is — we cannot see God fully with only human eyes. God was in creation from the beginning, hands and breath and word, shaping and working and resting and delighting: part of the cosmos, sharing its suffering. God shapes, through Christ, the ongoing redemption of creation — to the furthest limits of the universe. And God shares creation in the coming age of blessedness restored — a creation fully alive, in harmony: multicultural choirs and strange living creatures, flowing rivers and flourishing fruit, lions and lambs sleeping peaceably together. Ecotheology reawakens us to our call as Christians: we inherit the First Commission: to tend the garden of earth with the same intimate care as our maker we read the earth story in the Bible, where ‘the healing of nations’ happens through the natural environment (Revelation 22) we hear the earth story from Jesus, who began amongst animals in wilderness and finished on a mountain peak we share the earth story with pioneers of faith: Bonaventure and Francis, Dame Julian and Christina Rossetti and we proclaim the earth story against all that devours, discards, despoils, destroys.
Creation is God’s household, and we are honoured guests. Here in Australia there are other hosts, too. Ecotheology opens us to Indigenous wisdom, caring for God’s household together as one. Australian Christians have a profound ecotheology message to proclaim to our land: heaven and earth are full of God’s glory. Hosanna in the highest!
Rev Dr L Lee Levett-Olson is principal of Nungalinya College, Darwin. His most recent work in the area of ecotheology includes a presentation at the International Society for Biblical Literature in Auckland, July 2008, and a short piece in Colloquium on related themes.
Unpack the issues...Discussion points As we go live with this edition, we are facing a global financial crisis. What is your understanding of how the economy relates to ecology? Can we afford to prioritise the latter in the midst of an economic downturn? "Creation is God's household." What does this mean for you? How does ecotheology help us understand who we are?
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