Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation

“A ‘Tradition’ That Never Existed”: Orthodox Christianity and the Failures of Environmental History

136 Aparticular understanding of historical Christianity’s approach to nature is now accepted in the academic study of environmental history (here defined to mean any account of the man-nature relationship that engages the realm of history) and among the general public throughout much of the world. The present paper explores this understanding with particular reference to English-language scholarship, to demonstrate that it depends on a failure to integrate or, often, even acknowledge Orthodox Christian history , and to argue an imperative for historians, ethicists, theologians, environmentalists , religious leaders, and members of the general public to come to terms with that neglected Orthodox history, whether or not they are Orthodox or even Christian themselves. The White Thesis Any discussion of historical Christianity’s approach to nature must begin with Lynn White Jr., a medieval historian and professing Christian whose article “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” appeared in the journal Science on March 10, 1967. Its lasting importance lies in its argument for the particular, and particularly pernicious, impact of Christian belief on the natural world. Christianity, White claims, “bears a huge burden of guilt” for the contemporary environmental crisis, because in Christian belief the natural world has no other purpose than to serve man’s needs. “Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen,” for in it “man shares, in great measure, God’s transcendence of nature. Christianity . . . not only established a dualism of man and nature “A ‘Tradition’ That Never Existed”: Orthodox Christianity and the Failures of Environmental History Jurretta Jordan Heckscher T H E F A I LU R E O F E N V I RO N M E N TA L H I S TO RY 137 but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.” White cautions that he is painting with a broad brush. He notes that the differing approaches of Eastern and Western Christianity meant that “the implications of Christianity for the conquest of nature would emerge more easily in the Western atmosphere,” because the Greek East saw nature “primarily as a symbolic system through which God speaks to man,” an “essentially artistic” approach that precluded the development of modern science and technology. In the modern West, science and technology were “cast in a matrix of Christian theology” and have exploited nature in accordance with it. “Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious,” White concludes, “the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.” He discerns no hope for a reform of Western Christian attitudes in those of the Christian East. Instead, hope rests in the unique legacy St. Francis of Assisi and in Christianity’s fundamental revision: we must “find a new religion, or rethink our old one.” The Evidence of History The effect of White’s essay—of what may be called the White thesis—was immediate, immense, and enduring. Within five years of its publication, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” was being hailed as “a modern classic” and recognized as “an article of faith for many conservationists, ecologists, economists, and even theologians.” Much of its power lay in its sharpening and clarifying suppositions already embedded in historical analysis . The critique of Christianity’s anthropocentric indifference to nature extends at least as far back as Ludwig Feuerbach and Max Weber. By 1954, the young Paul Shepard could note that viewing nature as benevolent “might be contrasted to the orthodox Christian viewpoint that nature is evil or at best features isolated symbols of divinity.” In fact, White’s was merely the most influential of several similar contemporaneous critiques of Christianity. Among historians, perhaps inevitably, White’s bold analysis has been modified by a set of widely accepted criticisms. Large-scale human destruction of the natural environment has occurred in many non-Christian cultures ; indeed, destructive environmental interventions on at least a limited scale may well be the human norm. Christianity is not alone among major religious traditions in its attenuation of nature, and in comparative perspective the relationship between a culture’s religious affinity for nature and its disturbance of the natural environment is far from clear. Definitive conclusions about the influence of a religion’s official teachings cannot be drawn 138 J U R R E T TA J O R D...