Holy Agrarianism: A Christian Environmental Ethic
“We have been given the earth to live, not
on, but with and from, and only on the condition that we care properly for it”
– Wendell Berry[1]
We are
mudmen. Molded from the soil and ensouled by Divine breath, humanity was given
the monumental duty to image the Creator. In Hebrew, the word for “man” has its
root in the word for soil. Man is inextricably linked to both the land from
which we were formed and the God who formed us.
Theology does an excellent job describing that first relationship, but
not so much on the second. Ecological ethics wrestles with our relation to the
land, but that often fails to take into account the God who gave it to us. Scripture
provides the framework for environmental ethics better than any other. The
Bible portrays an ontological agrarianism rooted in God’s sovereignty which
ought to compel the Church into hopeful action.
Agrarianism can be defined as “a way of
thinking and ordering life in community that is based on the health of the land
and of living creatures.”[2]
This worldview is characterized by gratitude for what has been entrusted to our
care and a reverential respect for the sanctity of God’s creation.[3] The
Bible is an agrarian book. Of course, it is more than just an agrarian manual.
Yet its approach to land, community, and duty is profoundly holistic. Such a way of thinking is predominant among
the biblical authors. We read that man
is supposed to be in holy landed community with God and neighbor. Humanity is
intended to live rightly with God and the land. To make such a point, this paper will first discover
the ontological purpose of humanity in relation to God and creation. Next, we
will see how that should look lived out in righteous community through the Law.
Lastly, we will take a look at how Christians can use this ethic to speak into
the environmentalist conversation.
Ontological purpose
in Genesis
Mankind is ontologically bound to the soil from which we
came. We are dust destined to rejoin the dust. The words for man and soil are
interrelated: “the first man is called Adam because he was taken from the adamah
[soil].”[4] The
moment God created man, He imbued our existence with a purpose: “Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish
of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over
all the earth” (Gen 1:26). We are made to image God, to serve as His vice-regents.
God defines what that looks like. Just as God is the gracious sovereign over
all the cosmos, humans are to exercise stewardly dominion over the things of
the earth. Our duty to care for the soil and things of the soil is united to
our ontological purpose to reflect God.
God put us in the garden to husband it and to expand it. We had the joyous responsibility to imitate
the First Gardener by expanding Eden to the ends of the earth. The wording of Genesis 2 implies that only
Eden was fully cultivatable, and the rest of the world was a barren wilderness
(Gen 2:5). The author of Genesis suggests a correlation between the destitute
barrenness of the earth outside Eden, with the absence of man: “No small plant
of the field had yet sprung up—for… there was no man to work the ground” (Gen 2:5-6). We are made for the earth and the earth is
made for us. Humanity is not alien to earth. We are a necessary part of the
global biome. God originally made man as sub-gardener to cultivate and grow
ecosystems in imitation of Him.
As sub-gardeners, men and women are given dominion over the
rest of creation in the Genesis narrative. The Bible has faced no end of
criticism for phrasing man’s role to the rest of creation in language of
dominion. For example, the conservationist Aldo Leopold blamed Genesis’s
treatment of land and dominion for the environmental degradation in his day: “Conservation
is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of
land.”[5] But,
properly understood, dominion is far from an excuse for exploitation, but a
call to regal responsibility.
Baumgartner notes of the Hebrew verb ‘dominion’ “the basic meaning of
the verb is not to rule; the word actually denotes the traveling around of the
shepherd with his flock.”[6] Our dominion is not tyranny, rather it is a
vigilant duty. Similarly, the commands subdue and keep, in context, denote
stewardship and care.[7]
Man was to order all things to God’s plan (subdue) and nurturing care for it by
cultivating it (keep). We are not to have a standoff approach to nature. Our
role is to exercise godly dominion by caring for what God has entrusted to us.
The last peek at man’s ontological relation to the rest of
creation from Genesis that I will draw out has to do with man’s first job in
paradise. Before Adam ever picked up a hoe, or plucked a fruit, God tasked him
with naming all the other creatures of the land. Adam was not expected to just
lightly fabricate some sounds to randomly correspond with the animals paraded
before him. God tasked Adam to name and know creation. In near eastern culture,
names were sacred things which correspond to deep realities. In naming all the
creatures, Adam began the enduring human work of intently knowing creation so
that we can rightly steward it.
Genesis equips us with a valuable baseline for all agrarian
ethics. Our relationship to the land and other creatures is not tangential,
rather it is deeply part of our created purpose and identity. We should care
for creation and the community of the land because that is part of our created
end. Men and women have an ontological duty of dominion. But humanity is not
the sovereign master of the ground we tend. We are stewards because the land is
the Lord’s. All the created world, including mankind, belongs to the Maker, who
has designed us as his royal gardeners. A humble, submitted stewardship ethic
naturally flows forth from the twin principle of ontological duty and submitted
stewardship.
Land Ethic in the Law
Just as Genesis gave the basis for
an agrarian ethic, The rest of the Torah then shows how the tripartite
relationships and human duty should look, lived out in community. In the Torah,
the relation between man, land, and God is codified in the covenants. The Adamic
covenant introduces the tripartite relationship between God, man, and the
earth. God enlists man from the ground to care for the creatures of the ground
and spread the garden for His name’s sake. The Noahic covenant reaffirms man’s agrarian
duty, and God covenants with man and the rest of nature to never again flood
the whole earth. Genesis records God extending this covenant: “Behold, I
establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with
every living creature that is with you”(Ge 9:9–10). We are included in this
tripartite relationship as Noah’s heirs, and thus have a duty to every living
creature and the God who delivered our forefather. In addition, God made a covenant with the
heirs of Abraham promising them a specific land which would be holy because God
would be with them. But Abraham’s descendants would not receive the land of
promise immediately, only after delivering them from slavery in the fertile
land of Egypt, would God instruct the Israelites in how man is to live in
relationship to their Creator and land.
We know from Genesis that we are
meant to be God’s stewards over creation, but what does that look like lived
out? The rest of the law provides us a glimpse at what a holy agrarian society
would look like. The Mosaic Covenant was “designed to bring the social order
into accord with the natural order of creation.”[8] While some of the law was ceremonial to
distinguish the people of Israel as God’s own, and others were meant to teach
about the purity of God, the moral law can serve as a universal and timeless
glimpse at what is good, true, and beautiful. The lifestyle entailed by the law
given at Sinai is distinctly agrarian. Laws detailed how to cultivate and
nurture the soil, care for animals, and serve the community. From the Books of
the Law, we can glean a distinctly holistic environmental ethic.
Throughout the book of Deuteronomy, a
refrain is driven home over and over again:“…that you may live long in the
land.” The people of Israel were to live in the land in a manner fitting their status
as God’s chosen. The word they received detailed the conditions of living upon
their promised land. If they failed to abide in the law, they could not abide
in the land. Before entering the land, Moses warns the people of Israel: “[if you do] not obey the voice of
the Lord your God… you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to
take possession of it”(DT 28:6). The land of Canaan was a gift, but a
conditional one. In order to live in the land, they had to be in right
relationship to God, their community, and the land. Humans are only able to
flourish in the land by the grace of God. God gave the Israelites the context
to demonstrate to all the world what humanity was supposed to be: holy stewards.
1st Agrarian Principle: Dependance.
In a brilliant reframing of expectation, God refers to the
semi-arid climate of the promised land as a deliberate blessing. Moses declares
to the people of Israel about to receive their long-anticipated land: “the land
that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks
water by the rain from heaven, a land that the LORD your God cares for. The
eyes of the LORD your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to
the end of the year” (Dt 11:11). Even
though it would be harder to live in the arid climate of Israel compared to the
flood plains of the Nile, God says that it is better for now the Israelites
will have to depend on Him. The land is holy because God cares directly for
it. He waters it and stewards it. As
long as the Israelites live rightly in relation to God and the land, they will
thrive.
The Sabbath principle is by far the most revolutionary
ecological gift God gave to His people at Sinai. Through His own example at the
creation of all things, God set a precedent at the very foundation of the
cosmos. After creation, God rested and thus we are too, as His image bearers.
Every week, the faithful are reminded that all they have, is not their own, and
that they ought to rest in Him who is master of all. The bulwark against
overwork and greed reverberated throughout the torah. Once a week there was a
sabbath day. Once every seven years there is a sabbath year. After seven cycles
of sabbath years God gave a keystone year of Jubilee. The sabbath principle was more than just a
vacation policy, but a covenantal way of life rooting people in their proper
tripartite covenantal relations.
Fundamentally, the sabbath is a rhythm of worship, dedicating
all to the Lord. The Decalogue dictates: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it
holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a
Sabbath to the LORD your God” (Ex 20:10). Here “holy” is used in the sense of
something set apart, an offering exclusively for God. All work should, of
course, also be dedicated to the Lord, but the seventh day is something more.
It is a sacrifice. Before even engraving His law on the granite of Mount Sinai,
God demonstrated the purpose of the sabbath. After leaving Egypt the Israelites
lived on a bounteous supply of manna and quail which God generously provided
six days out of the week. But on the seventh day they were to live on the extra
they had gathered on the day prior. If they were tempted to doubt God’s
provision and tried to keep extra beyond the sabbath, it would be consumed by
maggots (Ex 16:23). God was teaching His people to abide in Him, and not hoard
resources for themselves. This principle of rest extends not only to all
workers and foreigners, but also to animals as well. God’s rest was for all
creation. Just as he had rested after creating all, all were to faithfully
abide in His providence.
The sabbath year and the year of Jubilee extend this
principle into a legal system, which if enforced, would ensure a grace-filled
equitable society. Over a thousand years before He would preach the sermon on
the mount, God made clear the upside-down nature of His kingdom compared to
that of the world. Just as with the sabbath year, the land was to be rested every
jubilee year and allowed to regrow. All cycles prone to abuse were to be
routinely broken. Landownership was restored to families. Enslaved people were
set free and debt was canceled. Rather than reward the selfish accumulation of
power and wealth, the mosaic law actively promoted the holistic sustainability
and equity of the community. On what grounds could God demand such an upheaval
of an economic reset? Because it was His land. And He knew his people needed to
be reminded of it: “the land shall not be sold in perpetuity for the land is
mine,” God declares to Israel; “you are resident aliens with me!” ( Dt 25:23).
Israel was merely a tenant. God would not tolerate injustice on his land and
demanded that His people routinely exercise their dependance on Him. They had
to trust that in the 49th and 6th years God would provide for them.
3rd Agrarian Principle: Common Good.
Based on the right of His
ownership, God further promoted a revolutionary agrarian ethic which
prioritized the care of the poor and refugees through agricultural
practice. “When you reap the harvest of
your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge…. neither shall
you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the
poor and for the sojourner” (Leviticus 19:9-10). Here God demands what could be
seen as mandatory wastefulness. The corners of the field are to be left
unharvested. These mandatory leftovers, not only enshrine a regenerative
farming practice, but more importantly creates something of a social safety net
for refugees and the impoverished in the community. The book of Ruth
practically illustrates the blessing of such a law. God cares for Ruth and
Naomi, although poor and outsiders, through this agrarian law. The outcastes
and destitute are given a place in God’s land, provided for by his farmer
servants. Such a practice is indicative that the agricultural goal of the
Israelite farmer, was not maximizing profits, but caring for the ground and
providing for the common good.
4th Agrarian
Principle: Agricultural holistic sustainability.
God’s agrarian ethic provides protections for even animals
and trees. Lost livestock is to be returned. And until the owner can be found,
the animals are to be cared for at the finder’s expense (Dt 22:10). Oxen should
not be deprived from their food while working for man(Dt 25:4). Two different
animals should not be used together in playing as that makes it more difficult
for both (Dt 22:10). Even wild birds are
protected: “If you come across a bird's nest in any tree or on the ground…You
shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may
go well with you, and that you may live long.” (Dt 22:6-7). Biblical law
enshrines a principle of sustainability by ensuring that a wild avian
population is always partially preserved. Humans can consume animals, but they
should do so only in a manner which cherishes and stewards the ground. We are
to engage with even the natural world around us by cultivating an enduring
legacy for future generations. Even in the destructive course of war, fruit bearing
trees are to remain untouched. A scorched earth policy, however strategically
advantageous, is forbidden due to the destruction to the land and future
generations (Deut 20:19-20). There is a respect given to the rootedness of the
natural world. This sustainability prioritizes long lasting environmental
decisions for the greatest benefit of the community. The Israelites do not have
the right to destroy the trees because they trees are a part of God’s community
of peace.
5th
Agrarian Principle: Family centrality.
Although the purpose for agrarian ethics in the torah is
honoring God and providing for the common good, it is individual families which
take responsibility. If one family’s livestock “causes a field or vineyard to
be grazed over, or lets his beast loose and it feeds in another man’s field, he
shall make restitution from the best in his own field and in his own vineyard”
(Ex 22:5). Even in a society which so highly values the common good, some
degree of private property and individual familial responsibility undergirds
that. An overgrazed field, or runed harvest spells doom in an agricultural society.
Thus, it was the responsibility of the herdsman to make restitution to the neighbor
he had harmed even if only inadvertently. Likewise, families were also
protected through the guarantee of returned property and the command to buy
back anything an impoverished relative has to sell off. Land stays largely
within families and those families have the responsibility to look after their
own. Holy agrarianism is socially communal but not collectivist. There is a
safety net build into familial duty, which protects the vulnerable while
respecting provide property.
Failure
However beautiful this vision of an agrarian life, and no
matter how much in accord it is with God’s natural law and our fundamental
duty, it ended in failure. Israel could not keep up their end of the
bargain. Injustice and exploitation
infected the land. The sons of Jacob swept away the provisions and safeguards
meant to bless and point back to God. Because of this wicked apostacy, the land
and the creatures of the land suffered. When the tripartite relationship broke,
both man and the rest of creation suffered. The people saw this environmental
degradation and lamented asking God why.
He answered that it was because they had rejected His way to live in the
land: “Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one
passes through? The LORD says: “Because they have forsaken my law that I set
before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it”(Jr 9:12-13).
The promised land had become degraded and corrupted to the point that it
resembled the wilderness their fathers wandered in more than the land of milk
and honey. The law was not just some collection of whims from a cosmic arbiter,
but rather, displayed the holy life man was to live in relation to others,
creation and his Creator. Instead of living on the way which would lead to the
flourishing of the whole landed community, man, and Israel in particular,
rebelled. This rebellion did not just harm them, but all creation.
Prophets like Jeremiah continually called the people back to
the agrarian ideal of God’s holiness. If they would but reject their oppression
and unrighteousness, God would take them back and nurture them toward the end
He made them for. But these warnings
went largely unheeded, and just like the Canaanites before them, the Israelites
corrupted the land by their sin. Hosea wrote “There is no faithfulness or
steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; Therefore, the land
mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and
the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away” (Hosea
4:1-2). The assigned stewards of the
land no longer acknowledged the God to whom it belonged. Thus, the land, here
portrayed anthropomorphically, weeps and suffers. The land itself has been
sinned against by a perverted dominion. The rest of the creatures suffer from
man’s evil. Man sinned against both God and nature and broke the tripartite
relationship.
God could not allow such evil to endure unpunished. Therefore,
just as Israel had become just like the prior wicked inhabitants of the land,
they would meet the same fate: exile. The chosen people never even kept the
jubilee years, and thus God had to enact his judgement: “the land shall enjoy
its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land;
then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate
it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you
were dwelling in it” (Lev 26:34-35).
Because His people failed to abide in Him on the land, God exiled them.
The exile lasted 70 years. God cared for the land, such that he directly
ensured that it would enjoy the rest his treacherous stewards had deprived of
it. Even if man failed as caretakers, God is still the Great Gardener.
Environmental Ethics and the Church
The legacy of the contemporary church
is often no better than that of its forebearer Israel. As a society, we in the
west routinely rebel against God by violating our covenantal responsibility to
the earth. Christianity has undoubtedly shaped our culture, and enabled the
widespread erosion of our planet’s health. In his famous essay The
Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis, Lynn White argues that “Christianity
made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference,” and places the blame on “the Christian dogma of
man's transcendence of, and rightful master over, nature.”[9]
Such a theology, which was derived from the bible is not just neutral to the
environment but an active detriment. He and those who come after him agree that
“Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt”[10]
for our current ecological crisis. We as the church should take these criticisms
seriously. We should repent if our theology and practice has led to the abuse
of God’s own land. Such actions would violate our mission to life as a redeemed
people of God. Indeed, Christ warned of the coming vineyard owner who is coming
back for a reckoning from His tenants. When He comes back will we be able to
give an account for how we have cared for His property?
As of now, our case does not look too good. In regard to how
we live out our faith, the criticisms of White and his colleagues are right on.
Christians are largely apathetic to their duty to the earth. Evangelicals in
particular have written of environmentalism as a partisan issue with no bearing
on their religious duty. A hyper-spiritualizing of our doctrine has led to an
unbiblical apathy in regards to our responsibility to the soil.[11] Due
to a particular eschatological interpretation, the refrain of “well its all
going to burn anyways” is not unfamiliar in church. The Christian life is
viewed predominantly as a spiritual quest for the afterlife with little time for
such dirty matters as ecology. Instead, it is often western Christians enabling
environmental degradation through their indulging of an industrial
consumeristic lifestyle. The natural world can far too often be seen as merely resources
waiting to be turned into commodities for out profit. This earth will burn, so we may as well make
ourselves comfortable as we wait for heaven.
The reality of how we live our faith, however, is worlds away
from what the Bible actually teaches. White, Leopold and the rest are gravely
mistaken in their assessment of the environmental thrust of the Bible. As I
showed above, the Bible conceives of humanity as God’s servants of the land,
living in community. We as Christians may not always care about the
environment, but the Bible certainly does. Even the whole “it will burn” argument
is not compelling based on scripture. Jonathan Moo compellingly argues 2 Peter
3 is not about the complete and utter abolition of the earth, but rather God's
purifying fire of judgment that will resurrect all things.[12] More
importantly, we are not going away to heaven, heaven is coming here. What
better joy could we have than in sharing in just a little bit of the Savior’s
work and point others to the hope we have. Compared with the other two dominate
approaches to the environment, Biblical agrarianism is best grounds for a holistic environmental
ethic.
As a society we cannot afford to carry on under the presumption
of the consumeristic industrialist notion. Life is not about individually
securing convenience at whatever cost. The view that the world is a machine and
that all things are to be consigned to their economic values, in fact, devalues
all creation.[13]
Such a greed-filled world view is unsustainable and has unsurprisingly caused
the modern world to drift toward environmental catastrophe. The world is not a machine
and only continuing with such an industrial mindset will damage what we have
left of God’s creation. We are not autonomous individuals using machines to
extract profit, but members of a community with interdependent responsibilities
to the ground, others, and our Creator.
Likewise, the secular environmentalists struggle to come up
with a compelling ethical system supporting their beliefs. In is not uncommon
to hear a different sort of utilitarian calculus behind secular environmentalism:
“we only have the one earth” is often the battle cry. Essentially, humans
should care for the earth because it is advantageous for our species to have a
thriving ecosystem. However, this is a rather empty ethic for environmental
stewardship. Why should we care if other parts of the ecosystem suffer for our
pleasure. If all penguins went extinct, we would have no real reason to care
any more than a polar bear.[14]
No environmentalist actually abides by the belief that we are just another
animal. Deep down they know we have a responsibility to steward all the earth
for some greater purpose than our own. We can all agree that modern industrialism
is inherently selfish, exploitive, and only works in an outdated conception of
infinite resources. But this environmental utilitarianism, however, is no good
way of viewing our responsibility to, and our difference from the rest of
creation. We have a responsibility to
order and keep even the most insignificant creature in God’s land.
A Biblical agrarianism is superior to other contemporary view
due to more than just its ability to promote holistic stewardship compellingly
and comprehensively. In addition, we have something most environmentalists could
not even dream of: enduring hope.[15] While
others begin to panic, bemoaning running out of time, the Christian agrarian
caries on stewarding as normal. We press on because we are rooted in our sure
hope of our Savior’s return to restore all things. The little gardens we’ve
been tending will just be a foretaste of the resurrection He will work on the
earth. God will renew the earth and cleanse
it from all sin and corruption. Until that glorious day we will steward what He
has entrusted us, pointing others to the great hope we have. We should be just
like Jeremiah, who in the middle of a destructive siege, went and bought a
field. Even though he would never live to see the fruit of that field, he knew
that God would fulfill his promise and the coming generation would be restored
to the land. We too should faithfully carry one fulfilling our ontological
roles, in keeping with God’s ultimate plan of restoration.
Saving the environment should never replace the gospel as our
central mission in the Church. However, part of the gospel is that Christ restores
all things, including creation and our roles as godly stewards. Creation care
is part of the Christian life because it is a way to live out gospel hope.
Biblical agrarianism fulfills our created roles as image bearers of God, by
compelling us to gratefully live in God’s land. The Bible does not spell out the answer to every
environmental problem, but it guides through defining our duty, and by giving
us examples. We see in Genesis, humans are fundamentally gardeners, ordering
creation for God’s glory. It is part of the definition of Man that we should
care for creation. The Law shows us examples how a holy environmental ethic is embodied.
The Church can now take those examples and live in such a way that our hope
shines as a beacon to a despairing world. Amen.
We ask, would you give us all a reverence
for the earth as your own creation, that we may steward it well in the service
of others and to your honor and glory. ~ Anglican Prayer
[1] Wendell Berry, Ellen F. Davis, Scripture,
Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading Of The Bible, 1st edition
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) xi.
[2] Ellen F. Davis, 1.
[3] Wendell Berry and Paul Kingsnorth,
The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry, Reprint edition
(Counterpoint, 2019), 136.
[4] Michael D. Coogan, A Brief
Introduction to the Old Testament: The Hebrew Bible in Its Context, 2nd
edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) 47.
[5] Aldo Leopold and Barbara
Kingsolver, A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There,
Illustrated edition (Oxford University Press, 2020) viii.
[6] Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, The
Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (2 Vol. Set): Unabdriged
Edition in 2 Volumes (Brill, 2001), 1190.
[7] Douglas J. Moo and Jonathan A.
Moo, Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World, accessed
September 14, 2022, 7.
[8] John Cobb Jr. et al., Ecotheology
in the Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Divine
and Nature, ed. Melissa Brotton (Lexington Books, 2016), 38.
[9] Lynn White, “The Historical Roots
of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155, no. 3767 (1967): 1203–7.
[10] White, 1206.
[11] LAUSANNE MOVEMENT, Creation
Care and the Gospel: Reconsidering the Mission of the Church (Peabody,
Massachusetts: Hendrickson Academic, 2016), 109.
[12] Lausanne, 36.
[13] Berry and Kingsnorth, The
World-Ending Fire, 135.
[14] Example inspired by William F. Baxter, People or
Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution, 1st edition (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1974).
[15] Lausanne, Creation Care and the
Gospel, 41.
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