chapter3:Other Inadequate Answers
Pantheism is not the answer. If the West turns to pantheism to solve its ecological problems, the human will be even more reduced, and impersonal technology will reign even more securely. But having said that, let us quickly add that a poor Christianity is not the answer either. There is a “Christianity” which gives no better answer than pantheism: Byzantine, pre-Renaissance Christianity, for instance. This Byzantine concept was that the only truly valuable thing is heavenly—so high, so lifted up, so holy that only symbols were used. For example, they never painted a real picture of Mary; the icons and mosaics are only symbols of her. The only thing that really mattered in life was the heavenly. This kind of Christianity will never give an answer to the problem of nature, for in this view nature has no real importance. So there is indeed a form of Christianity that has no proper emphasis upon nature.
At a certain point in history, as the medieval died and Renaissance man was born, Van Eyck began to paint nature. Likewise, in the marvelous Carmine Chapel in Florence, Masaccio went beyond Giotto and began to paint nature as real nature. At that point they could have gone toward a truly Christian art, because there is a real place for nature in true Christianity. Those who followed Van Eyck and his backgrounds, and Masaccio painting in the round with the proper light and so on, could have gone either way—toward a truly Christian art, in which nature had a proper place, or toward humanism.
Pantheism is no answer for a proper view of nature, but one must understand that just any kind of Christianity is no answer either; not a Byzantine Christianity, nor a Christianity based on a nature/grace dichotomy. Neither will produce an answer. Nor is there any answer in the concept of nature and freedom held by JeanJacques Rousseau or Kant. In all these areas one searches in vain for the Christian answer, or any real answer (even if Christian terms are used), and this includes any real answer for a proper view of nature.
But of course there exists a different kind of Christianity. The Christianity of the Reformation does give a unified answer, and this answer has meaning not only in speaking about heavenly things, but also about nature. God has spoken; and because of this, there is a unity. This gave the unity of the Reformation, in contrast to the nature/grace nonunity of the Renaissance. It turns upon the fact that God has spoken and told us something about both heavenly things and nature. On the basis of God’s speaking, we know something truly of both universals and particulars, and this includes the meaning and proper use of the particulars.
This unity has not come from a rationalism, a humanism, in which man is generating something out of himself, gathering and looking at the particulars and then trying to make a universal, whether it be a philosophic universal, or Leonardo da Vinci trying to paint the “soul.”The Reformation believed what the Bible says: that God has revealed truth about Himself and the cosmos, and that therefore there is a unity. The Westminster Confession of Faith (of the seventeenth century) said that God has revealed His attributes, and these are true not only to us but to Him. We have a knowledge which is true both to us and to God. To us it is true but not exhaustive knowledge, as God is infinite and we are finite. But it is true, since God has spoken about Himself and about the cosmos and about history. This is the kind of Christianity that has an answer, including an answer about nature and man’s relationship to it.
One feels this already in the paintings of Dürer, who in fact was painting a few years before Luther spoke out. As the late Professor Rookmaaker of the Free University in Amsterdam pointed out, Dürer went through a humanistic period, and then he rejected the humanistic answer and came up with the Biblical answer, and in that answer he knew what to do with nature.
One can also think of the post-Reformation Dutch painters, who painted nature beautifully and in its proper place. Without question, the greatest Dutch painting is that in which nature, the world as it is, had a tremendously important place. With the following of Van Eyck in the north (prior to the Reformation) and Masaccio in the south, Renaissance painting did not go in the right direction; it went into humanism that came to a dead end in modern man. Modern man does not have any answer for nature either in his painting or his use of nature in life—just as he does not have any answer for man. But the Dutch painters after the Reformation were able to give nature its proper place, the Reformation having restored a unity on the basis of the revelation of God.
It is well to stress, then, that Christianity does not automatically have an answer; it has to be the right kind of Christianity. Any Christianity that rests upon a dichotomy—some sort of Platonic concept—does not have an answer to nature; and we must say with sorrow that much orthodoxy, much evangelical Christianity, is rooted in a Platonic concept. In this kind of Christianity there is only interest in the “upper story,” in the heavenly things—only in “saving the soul” and getting it to Heaven. In this Platonic concept, even though orthodox and evangelical terminology is used, there is little or no interest in the proper pleasure of the body or the proper uses of the intellect. In such a Christianity, there is a strong tendency to see nothing in nature beyond its use as one of the classic proofs of God’s existence. “Look at nature,” we are told; “look at the Alps. God must have made them.” And that is the end. Nature has become merely an academic proof of the existence of the Creator, with little value in itself. Christians of this outlook do not show an interest in nature itself. They use it simply as an apologetic weapon, rather than thinking or talking about the real value of nature.
An extreme example of this attitude can be found in what the Dutch Christians have called the Black Stocking Calvinists in Holland. These have a tradition that they may treat their animals cruelly because the animals do not have a soul and are not going to Heaven. They would claim to be very, very orthodox, but actually they are not orthodox. Theirs is Christianity in a perverted form. As far as creedalism is concerned, they may be very strong, but they will actually beat and kick their animals because in their view the animals do not have souls or a heavenly destiny. Thus they are not worthy of kind treatment. This is a sub-Christian view concerning nature.
One can find deficient concepts in less extreme forms in many places. Some years ago I was lecturing in a certain Christian school. Just across a ravine from the school there was what they called a “hippie community.” On the far side of the ravine one saw trees and some farms. Here, I was told, they had pagan grape stomps. Being interested, I made my way across the ravine and met one of the leading men in this “Bohemian” community.
We got on very well as we talked of ecology, and I was able to speak of the Christian answer to life and ecology. He paid me the compliment (and I accepted it as such) of telling me that I was the first person from “across the ravine” who had ever been shown the place where they did, indeed, have grape stomps and to see the pagan image they had there. This image was the center of these rites. The whole thing was set against the classical background of Greece and Rome.
Having shown me all this, he looked across to the Christian school and said to me, “Look at that; isn’t that ugly?” And it was! I could not deny it. It was an ugly building, without even trees around it.
It was then that I realized what a poor situation this was. When I stood on Christian ground and looked at the Bohemian people’s place, it was beautiful. They had even gone to the trouble of running their electric cables under the level of the trees so that they couldn’t be seen. Then I stood on pagan ground and looked at the Christian community and saw ugliness. Here you have a Christianity that is failing to take into account man’s responsibility and proper relationship to nature.
So pantheism is not going to solve our international ecological problem. Lynn White’s position is not going to solve it because it is obvious in practice that man really does have a special role in nature that nothing else has. And, third, a Platonic view of Christianity is not going to solve it. Here, unhappily, Lynn White is right. He looks back over the history of Christianity and sees that there is too much Platonic thinking in Christianity where nature is concerned.
Now, what is the genuine, Biblical view that will give a sufficient base for solving the ecological problem? What should be our attitude to and our treatment of nature? What is the Biblical view of nature? Let us now consider that question.