God created humanity to have dominion over the Earth, and placed them in the Garden of Eden. The interesting thing about the Garden is that it was not the whole Earth, nor was it even all of Eden:
Genesis 2:8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Considering that mankind’s purpose before the fall was to multiply and subdue and rule over the whole earth, this implies that the Garden was not intended to be mankind’s “forever home”.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
The best way I can consider to reconcile this is to view the Garden as an example of how humanity was to rule and subdue the Earth. To turn the Earth into a Garden of Eden.
Since Adam’s fall, of course, we have utterly failed in our dominion. We gave over dominion of the Earth to the Devil, who ruled over the Earth for the entire Old Testament period. It is no wonder that humanity lived so far out of harmony with the Earth, burning up its resources and depleting its soil.
That said, the dominion command was reiterated by God to Noah after the Fall, and therefore it cannot be held that this command was disrupted by the Fall.
Genesis 9:1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.
However, since Christ has now been given dominion over all of the Earth (Matt 28:18), we can understand that humanity’s purpose has been restored, under the guidance of our King, the new Adam, Christ. Now we therefore should go out and rule the environment with the attitude and responsibility of a master gardener.
In radical environmental circles, the current dogma is that man is the cancer of the planet. Under girding many of the political controversies of our day is an unbiblical view of reality which assumes that everything in the world is on an equal footing, with the odd exception of man. This is what drives contemporary environmentalism. At the same time, environmental extremists cannot help but reveal a faint acknowledgment of the existence of this cultural mandate because we are somehow responsible to fix everything. But in the Christian view the problem is not pollution, but rather sin. We must take care not to simply react to contemporary extremists, animal rights nuts, etc. Our position is to be the biblical one, and not a reactionary one.
Doug Wilson - Heaven Misplaced
Well said. We are not the problem; sin is the problem. That said there is a problem. We should be overcoming man’s sin against the environment as we seek to overcome man’s sin against all other things.
One of the fundamental failures of world-conforming evangelicals is that they wish to hold us accountable to the Word in this context (that we should seek to be stewards of the environment, and that it is permissible to use collective action to accomplish these goals) and yet they fail to want to apply the word to human sin against other humans, such as drug use, adultery or the various sexual disorders that plague us. Many would even not countenance the use of government power to protect the unborn from wanton murder.
If it is never acceptable to impose our doctrines on others through the use of the political process (hah!) then we should never do so with environmental concerns or worries about the material state of the poor. To do so is simple inconsistency. Either we are willing to use politics to put limits on human sin, or we are not. There is no third option.
However, it is still the case that we cannot fix human sin with mere legislation. Law cannot save, only the gospel of Christ can save. Outlawing environmental degradation will likely make an impact, but far less of one than is required by God. What is required by God is that we see this as our purpose and fight to develop a sustainable, life and environment affirming way of life. However, this must also be done in such a way that does not conflict with the more important goal of glorifying God and the similar goal of human flourishing.
We are to be kings, not slaves, to our world. We do not accept that “natural” is the best option, though we ought to be humble in our attempts to impose our own order upon it. But the world of the future, when mankind has seen real dominion take root, will not resemble the world after the Fall. It will resemble the Garden that God planted for us, in Eden. Simple refusal to engage the planet is as much a dereliction of duty as our desire to exploit it.
Permaculture
These guys are nutty hippies, but man do I love their work. You just have to read past all the crazy, and you will see that this is one group of people fanatically dedicated to the development of technology and technique that will allow human flourishing in tandem with environmental concern.
Despite my extreme disagreements with some of the things they put forth, both on philosophical and practical grounds, I have nothing but respect for a person who wants to make the world a better place. Paul Wheaton, who is one of the leading lights of the movement had an excellent point that I will paraphrase: if you want to see a better world, don’t complain about what other people are doing, do something different yourself.
Or more colloquially: be the change you want to see. The unique insight of Wheaton and his fellow travelers is that it is unrealistic to expect people to just accept a crappy and terribly limited way of life. Rather than seeking to eschew technology and human development, they seek to increase it in a way that accrues benefit both to the people doing it and to the planet around them.
Here’s Wheaton’s 72 Bricks to Build a Better World. The language is salty, but I suggest you give it a listen. At times you will say this guy is nuts, and at times you’ll say, “Man I want to try that”. Either way, an approach like this where someone is offering practical real world suggestions to try and improve the dominion that man has over his planet is laudable, even when it’s crazy.
I think the vague premise behind “permaculture” is fundamentally a Biblical concept of dominion. We cannot cease existing; we cannot get rid of the benefits of the modern world. What we can do is evolve out of them into a civilization that lives in greater harmony with their physical environment. This means we must bend all of our creativity and effort into finding ways to live in deeper harmony with the planet, so that we can be faithful stewards of what God has given us.
A fool and a non-believer will think that human flourishing and material well-being is in opposition to environmental health. A Gardener will know that the best fruit comes from the best tended and most healthy garden.
Be a gardener.