Along with reinterpretation and criticism, ecotheology offers vital new contributions to religion’s ongoing evolution. Fashioned at a time when technology was limited and human effects on nature worked very slowly, it is not surprising that Talmudic rules or models of Christian virtues are not adequate to what we face, and what we are doing, now. As the fall of the Second Temple required a new kind of Judaism, and the encounter with a world of different faiths deeply affected Christianity, so the environmental crisis calls for critical theological creativity. As Norman C. Habel puts it for Christianity, but in terms that can be extended to every other tradition, along with saving souls and liberating oppressed communities, “Christians now face a third mission: healing earth."
Consider, for instance, the simple but profound idea of “eco-kosher,” as proposed by social activist Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Jewish scholar Art Green. The traditional Jewish laws of kashrut were based on biblical dietary regulations. Certain animals (pigs, shellfish) are outlawed entirely, certain foods that can be eaten separately cannot be eaten together (meat and milk), and certain foods cannot be eaten at certain times (leavened bread during the eight days of Passover). The driving idea behind this is that all aspects of life must be ordered according to God’s will, the intake of food no less than prayer, family, and social relationships. What Green and Waskow have done is extend this concept to environmental matters. Waskow asks, “Is it ‘kosher’ to drive an SUV? What would happen if our rabbis said in sermons that an SUV is no more kosher than a ham sandwich, and a lot more destructive to the earth and humankind? Would people storm out—or change?” He expands his challenging question to tomatoes drenched in pesticides, windows that waste heat, and banks that invest in polluting companies, thereby redefining “kosher” to signify a “good practice” based on “the deep well-springs of Jewish wisdom about protecting the Earth.”
Art Green has suggested that vegetarianism may be a “kashrut for our age,” for which there are reasons “just as compelling . . . as the reason for the selective taboos against certain animals must have been when the Community of Israel came to accept these as the word of God.” For Green, these reasons include factory farming’s disastrous ecological consequences, inherent cruelty, and effects on human health. His response is also rooted in the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, in which Jews were “treated as cattle rather than human beings.” “A vegetarian Judaism,” he tells us, “would be more whole in its ability to embrace the presence of God in all of Creation.”
Protestant theologian and past president of the American Academy of Religion Sallie McFague has explored new ground for Christian thinking in an ecological age. One of her most thought-provoking ideas is the simple but profound suggestion that we look on the earth as the “body of God.” McFague begins by turning to the long-lost “organic” tradition in Christianity, which viewed the church as the “body of Christ” and saw this body firmly rooted in the earth. Building on the organic model, McFague proposes a more relational, less hierarchical image in which all the parts are valued and humans do not get special place. The holiness of the earth, she argues, derives from basic Christian doctrine: if God can become flesh, there is no reason that flesh—and by extension all of life—cannot become Godly. Further, if God is not “in the world,” how could we ever have a relationship with Her? Where else would God be? Yet God’s presence, for McFague, is less a matter of initial design, like a clever craftsman who makes a beautiful watch and then retires to observe it from a distance, than of an active and permeating spirit. God is the “aliveness” of creation, including “the breath that enlivens and energizes it.”
This perspective actually resonates with many biblical passages that depict God as an ever present force rather than a remote Designer: “You make the grass grow for the cattle, and herbage for man’s labor . . . the trees of the Lord drink their fill.... When you send back Your breath, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth”. Protestant theologian Mark Wallace stresses the biblical descriptions of the Holy Spirit as a natural presence: as bird, fire, and wind. “All things,” insists Wallace, “are made of Spirit and are part of the continuous biological flow patterns that constitute life on our planet.” We may note that thinkers like McFague and Wallace are enlarging the range of ways God can be experienced. For them, the aloof, commanding, patriarchal Father figure of tradition or the distant Designer of later periods are not the only, and certainly not necessarily the best, models of God on which to hang our spiritual hats. We can seek God deeply and passionately, yet need not be limited to such images.
Buddhist Perspective of Nature
