Biblical Principles and Environmental Ethics
A conversation with Calvin B. DeWitt
From the Environmental Review Newsletter Volume Three Number Ten, 1996
Introduction:
In response to attempts in Congress to weaken the Endangered Species Act, a spokesman for the
Evangelical Environmental Network, Professor Cal DeWitt lobbied Congress to strengthen rather than
weaken it, likening the Endangered Species Act to a modern day Noah's Ark. The Bible teaches that people
should serve and keep the creation, that creatures and ecosystems not be relentlessly pressed (sabbath
principle), that provision must be made for the flourishing of the biosphere (fruitfulness principle), and that
people should act on what they know is right.
In a scientific journal, Professor DeWitt argues that our environmental problems are at root ethical
problems; technical and legal approaches are not sufficient in themselves; they must be joined by ethics put
into effective practice. Churches must join in the work of assuring the continued integrity of the biosphere.
It has been written that the environmental crisis is a result of the Judeo-Christian teaching; the Bible
exhorts people to be fruitful and multiply and to have dominion over the Earth. DeWitt argues that this is a
misinterpretation of Biblical language; rather, the Bible has a longstanding stewardship tradition which
stresses responsibility for nature. The Bible has powerful ecological teachings that support an ecological
worldview.
ER: Professor DeWitt, what is your academic training?
CD: My Ph.D. is in zoology from the University of Michigan, where I also took a Masters in biology. As a
child I came up through the Christian school system in Grand Rapids and then on to Calvin college; pretty
much all my education has had a theological context. I am a professor of environmental studies at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison where I teach principles of environmental science, field investigations in
wetland ecology and research methods in land resources. I am also director of AuSable Institute where I
spend three months each summer. The Institute serves forty Christian colleges and universities in the US
and Canada with transferable credit to their home institutions. And from 1972 to 1977, I was an official in
my town of Dunn, including town chairman, when we developed and put into place a land stewardship
plan.
ER: Were you alienated from your scientific colleagues because you came up through a Christian
educational system?
CD: No. And it probably has to do with the kind of education I got, one which affirms science, the arts,
politics, and involvement. My schooling was largely in the Reformed tradition in Christianity which sees
one's work as being in the world, rather than apart from it. At Calvin College we were encouraged to be
good scientists, musicians, artists, teachers, doctors. Science was never suspect. The president of Calvin
expected their graduates to go on to the university and get into the most rigorous graduate programs.
ER: In your paper you refer to the Judeo-Christian biblical tradition, without which western civilization is
inexplicable.
CD: This is a phrase used by a secular environmental ethicist, Max Oelschlaeger, in his reference to the
Bible. Not long ago however, he was severely critical of the Bible and Christianity, regarding these as a
major cause of our environmental problems. His initial position was that Jewish and Christian teaching
were the roots for the ecological crisis. That was based on a 1967 article by Lynn White Jr. called The
Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis, in Science magazine, in which he put the blame of domination over
the environment to Jewish and Christian teaching. That is the most widely reprinted article ever published
in Science, and the notion of a biblical tradition of human dominion over nature became the dogma:
dominion is the root cause of our environmental problems.
Lynn White was an historian at the University of California and a mainline Christian, and was being
critical of his own tradition. He concluded that we either have to revitalize our old religion or invent a new
one. He was not a scholar of Scriptures but he was attempting to come to grips with why we have an
ecological crisis. His hypothesis received a great deal of approval because it simplified the cause of the
crisis. This article has been used in practically every course in environmental studies, and still is.
When this article was first published it struck me that this idea had elements of truth. However, it tore
at everything I had learned from and about scriptural teaching. So I generated my own hypothesis that the
Judeo-Christian tradition must have embedded within it strong environmental teachings in order to survive
for several millennia. Starting with that hypothesis I began to explore the Scriptures in ways that extended
what I had done as a youth and as a young assistant professor at the University of Michigan. I began by
using the Bible in hard copy, but soon purchased computerized versions, including Greek and Hebrew and
began probing them to test my hypothesis. I discovered that the Bible is in many respects an ecological
book, rich in ecological teachings.
The substantial core of biblical environmental teaching comes down to three principles: earthkeeping,
fruitfulness and sabbath, particularly sabbath for the land. As I put this work into print, I sought to bring
these findings across the spectrum of interested readers, including those who might argue for and against
Lynn White. But the news conference in Washington D.C. on January 31, 1996, in which I likened the
Endangered Species Act to Noah's ark, seemed to galvanize people across the full spectrum of opinion. For
people who would take the Bible literally, it made them question, To whom do they answer? To their
political party? To a government leader? To an economist? Or to their Creator? A sobering question.
Moderate and more liberal folk, on the other hand, were reminded of a story they already knew but
had not thought much about; when they unpacked it for its truth and got past arguments like: Could all the
animals fit on the ark? or, How big was the ark? or, Did it really land on Mt. Ararat? The Noah story
speaks of the worth of species and the time and effort that is reasonable to try to save them. The Noah
story also addresses the question, Is saving species more important than saving people? It depends. If you
are people who respect God and creation, you may be just as important as a species. If not, you might be
lost along with the drowning animals.
ER: Oelschlaeger seems to have changed his mind about the role of Christianity and the environment.
CD: Yes. He says "I think of religion, or more specifically the church ... as being more important in the
effort to conserve life on Earth than all the politicians and experts put together. The church may be, in fact,
our last, best chance. My conjecture is this: There are no solutions for the systemic causes of ecocrisis, at
least in democratic societies, apart from religious narrative." He says in the next paragraph,
"Environmentalists generally, I think, will be skeptical of this claim. To them, religion is the cause or part
of the cause of ecocrisis. After all, they argue, Judeo-Christians believe that they have dominion over the
Earth and do not believe that they are an integral part of biotic communities. And in any case, we need
science and especially new technologies to solve environmental problems. How could religion be relevant?
... My claim is not that religion alone can resolve the environmental crisis, but that it has an irreplaceable
function in the process.
Oelschlaeger's book was the first case of a key environmental philosopher - himself not religious -
discovering what I had been working with: the power of biblical teaching for addressing environmental
problems. He refers to the Bible as the Great Code. On page nine he says, "I follow the lead of those who
argue that the Bible is the Great Code apart from which, the existence of Western culture becomes almost
incomprehensible - as implied in the oxymoron plotless story". He is saying, you cannot make sense of the
art in the middle ages without reference to the Bible, that you cannot fully grasp Shakespeare unless you
recognize that he is quoting extensively from the Geneva Bible. You can say the fly in the ointment is that
the Bible does not have anything to say about our problems, but the fly in the ointment is a phrase from
Shakespeare taken from the Geneva Bible.
ER: What do you mean by the earthkeeping principle?
CD: On earthkeeping, the reference there is to Genesis 2:15 where Adam is expected to till and to keep the
garden. To till, is the Hebrew word 'abad; elsewhere in the Bible outside of agricultural context, this word
gets translated, serve. So we read in "Choose ye this day whom you will serve ('abad,) as for me and my
house we will 'abad Jehovah." In Genesis Adam is asked to 'abad the garden. The idea is that the garden -
the creation - serves us and other creatures by providing habitat, food and shelter, and beauty. And in turn
we must serve it. So there is this idea of con-service, con-servancy, con-servation.
The rabbinic approach to biblical texts is, Turn it about, turn it about, for everything you need to
know is in it. Unlike the scholarly rabbis, modern-day readers will likely pass by this verse quickly.
However this textual stuff is meant to be chewed on. And after abad, the next piece to chew on is the word
to keep, which is a translation of the Hebrew word shamar. That word is best known in the blessing of
Aaron in Numbers 6:24, "The Lord bless you and keep you." The Lord bless you and shamar you. When
that blessing is invoked for people, it expects God to keep them with physiological integrity, with
psychological integrity, with proper connections with family, relatives, other human beings, soil, air, land,
water.
There is a second word in Hebrew that also means to keep, but it means to keep as one would pickles
in a jar. In Genesis 2:15 the shamar word is used, the one meaning to keep in dynamic integrity not the one
meaning keep as one would pickles in a jar.
There is a Jewish environmental organization Shomrei Adamah, meaning keepers of the Earth, that
promotes stewardship of creation. Shomrei is a variant of the word shamar. This is a long standing Jewish
concept as well as a word roughly similar to the word stewardship, and a richer one.
If you read Genesis 2:15 in the Hebrew, you read it for what it says. But put into English we see these
words through the eyes of their translators. That is not to say there are some translators who have not
worked in a more literal way. There is an 1898 version of the Bible called Young's Literal Translation of
the Holy Bible, that translates the word abad as serve, that Adam was asked to serve the garden, published
long before our present-day ecological concern.
What comes from unpacking this passage in Genesis 1:28 and seeing it in the context of the rest of the
Bible is that dominion - whatever we have called it - really means service. In the Christian tradition the
example of dominion as service is given in Philippians 2:6-8 of Jesus Christ who, "Counting equality with
God a thing not to be grasped, he takes the form of a servant and is obedient even until death, yes death
upon a cross." Genesis 1:28 by itself which says people are given dominion, can certainly be misinterpreted
as domination, but as soon as you get to the next chapter, Genesis 2:15, service comes in and then in the
New Testament you see the one who has been given all dominion take the form of a servant. You can
hardly take the example of Jesus as someone who forcefully dominates.
The Amish are a powerful present example of taking these teachings and practicing them as biblical
earthkeepers without fanfare. Yet they are a people who adhere to biblical teachings on land stewardship.
They are good at preserving land and producing abundantly. They are by-and-large, biblical earthkeepers,
inspired by the Scriptures to keep creation.
ER: What about the fruitfulness principle?
CD: The best known biblical passage that has to do with this says "And God blessed them and said unto
them, be fruitful and multiply, be fruitful and increase in number." People often will see that as directed to
people. It is in Genesis 1:28, but in Genesis 1:22 the same blessing, Be fruitful and multiply, is given to the
fish and to the birds. The teaching in the first chapter of Genesis is that everything in all creation must be
fruitful, and it must fill the Earth. The Hebrew word for fill is male'; to fulfill, to bring up to the bounteous
brim. Male' is used when rivers are filled to their banks. The biblical idea of fruitfulness is fulfillment,
bringing something up to its intended flourishing. That is why in some English translations, Genesis 1:28
goes like this, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth." Replenishment is a better sense of the
word male'. All life should flourish, not just human beings. There is a reference in Genesis 1:20 to
fruitfulness of other species. And so, six verses later in Genesis 1:28, the reader already knows the blessing
has been given to more than human beings. Thus, there is no way you can argue that human beings alone
should be fruitful. It is the flourishing of the whole creation that is important.
The fruitfulness principle is more dramatically taught in the story of Noah (Genesis 6 through 9). This
story answers a series of questions about the relative importance of saving species and people. Noah as a
faithful person and Noah's family is saved; but all the others - the unfaithful ones - are lost in the flood.
Then Genesis 9 describes God's covenant with all creatures and all creation never to destroy them again
with a flood. The covenant is with every creature, with the Earth, with all of life. This is repeated time and
time again. One of the rules in scriptural interpretation is if the message keeps repeating, it is important;
that is what is happening with this passage.
One further teaching on fruitfulness which I think is very powerful is given in Ezekiel 34:18; it is
right at the core for modern-day application: "Is it not enough for you to feed on the green pastures, must
you also trample the rest with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink the pure water? Must you also
muddy the rest with your feet?" The idea is that you may partake of the fruit of creation but you may not
mess up the rest of it.
And in Deuteronomy: "When you come to a mother bird on her nest,you may take the eggs or the
young but you may not take the mother." This too is a fruitfulness passage. Stated negatively, the principle
is, Do not destroy. Positively, it protects the fruitfulness of creation.
Finally, there is the passage in Revelation 11:18 which also bears on fruitfulness. Here, after the
sounding of the seventh trumpet of the Last Judgement, the words are spoken, "The time has come for...
destroying those who destroy the Earth." This is a gripping passage for any one who takes the New
Testament seriously.
Most everything in the Bible on Earthkeeping is an invitation; there is a wonderful invitation to enjoy
the world, to partake of its fruits, to preserve its fruitfulness, to keep the Earth. But it is an invitation that if
declined, has profound consequences. Deuteronomy 30 reflects this: "I set before you this day life and
death, blessings and curses, now chose life."
ER: The sabbath seems like a continuation of the fruitfulness principle.
CD: Yes. In fact all three principles, earthkeeping, fruitfulness, and sabbath, are completely interwoven.
Sabbath is a means of assuring fruitfulness. Also, the sabbath allows you to keep the Earth without having
to know everything you might otherwise have to know. If you keep one-seventh of the land unoccupied, or
you give land its rest every seventh year, you don't have to know all the frogs and toads and insects; you
are creating enough of a buffer that the likelihood is that you are going to save many species, but you are
also going to allow for restoration, regeneration and recuperation. One of the ideas behind protecting
wilderness is, if you have enough set aside, you don't have to know all the species. It is when you get
down to postage stamp size refuges that you have to tally everything, and that gets to be a rough task.
That sabbath principle is put forth as law in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20, "Remember the sabbath
day and keep it holy. Six days thou shalt labor and do all thy work but the seventh is a day of solemn rest
unto the Lord; in it you should not do any work, none of the members of your family, those who work for
you, and neither should the animals under your care." The reason for that is that God rested from creation
on the seventh day. No matter who you are, if you are God, an animal, a human being, a slave, an
employee, all of you must get off the treadmill so you can come to enjoy the creation and give it its needed
rest. The way to do that is, you create nothing, you destroy nothing and enjoy the fruit of God's good
creation. We keep rediscovering that principle even in a secular society. If we don't observe this principle
we burn out and are compelled to rediscover it. I think the sabbath principle recognizes that within human
beings, animals, and plants, we cannot continue to press ourselves or others relentlessly.
Most powerful for environmental purposes, the teaching on sabbath in Exodus 23, is given the law of
sabbath for the land: the land itself must observe a sabbath rest. That is emphasized and re-emphasized in
Leviticus 25 and 26, where it is re-enforced with the warning that if these commands and ordinances are
not observed, that the land will no longer support people; they will be driven off. And then the land, when
the people must leave, will take its own sabbath, the sabbath it did not have when people occupied it.
In our day, we see this happening. People who have abused farmland for years finally must abandon
it. The forest here at AuSable Institute is like that. The whole area was deforested at the turn of the
century. When I come here in the summer, I experience a peaceful feeling. But then, this feeling becomes
mixed with the realization that here is land taking its sabbath.
ER: How do you think Biblical ethics fit with the more secular land ethic Aldo Leopold was developing in A Sand County Almanac?
CD: I think it is important to see Leopold's land ethic in developmental terms. He began as a forester, then
he realized we can do with animals what we do with trees; that is, set goals for an animal population and
engage in what he called game and wildlife management. But he moved from this to wildlife ecology when
he wrote a Fierce Green Fire Dying; he began to understand the significance of predation in maintaining
the health of the animal populations. Next, he moved from wildlife ecology toward the land ethic, from
narrow biocentrism to dealing with the fabric of the landscape in relation to what is ecologically ethical.
Leopold was evolving in his thinking and it is hard to say where he would have gone in his
broadening scope. I personally think he would have come by now to incorporate Colin Russell's
understanding of the need to go beyond ethics to address the human predicament.
Colin Russell, a leading historian of science in the United Kingdom, has just written a book called, God, Humanity and the Environment. He concludes that the environmental problem is not merely an ethical
one, which Leopold had come to see, but a problem is of what Russell calls the human predicament: when
we know what we should do, we still don't do it. All of us know people who knew they should not drink
themselves to death, yet did so. It is Colin Russell's conclusion, unpalatable as it might seem, that biblical
tradition is the only one that addresses the human predicament substantially enough to make a difference.
It all comes down to how are we going to address this basic human problem. We have tried to do it
by law and with only moderate success.
Take tax laws for example: we develop a means for funding the common good, but soon find
ourselves trying to avoid paying what is due by finding the loopholes in the law.
I think ultimately we come to wish that somehow people would simply seek the good, that somehow a
universal law would be written in peoples' hearts. Of course that is what biblical teaching tries to do. It
says, use the law as a guide, but not everything can be codified, so act right and use the law as a guide for
what it means to act right. If the law says, Do not kill, you just might be able to see that you should not
gouge your neighbor with high interest if this law is written in your heart.
I think Leopold would be with us here. I think Leopold was an evolving ethicist. We often ossify our
heroes after their death; Leopold was too great for that. He would not have stopped with the land ethic but
would have brought it to address this human predicament. He might not have done that with biblical
material; on the other hand, he might have.
The Noah story just might convey persistent truth. The Bible thumping of television one day may be
supplanted by Bible probing. The Bible is a code that has been in existence for these thousands of years, a
distillation of wisdom for past and coming generations.
I know an evolutionary biologist, a Ph.D. palynologist who is a native of Africa; I was at a meeting
with her in Malaysia about six years ago. One morning we all sat on the floor to get oriented toward the
activities of the day and she read from Genesis One. When she concluded, she said "There was never a
truer story written." She is the first person I knew to read Genesis as a whole story and not argue about
whether this day corresponded to this geological period or anything like that. I think Noah's story is like
that. Reductionists may say, You couldn't possibly get all the species on the ark, or, There were other
people that survived the flood, and so forth. That erodes the power of the story. I think the Genesis story
and the Noah story are stories you can read as a child and get a good sense of how everything works
without having to be a scientist. When you become a scientist you may see the world differently, but if you
can somehow take the African storyteller's mentality toward it, the story has the same force, the same truth.
ER: Leopold's approach to the land ethic was based on the love of nature not on the consequences if we
mess up.
CD: My students often ask, Why do you do all this work with such joy? I do it because the world is so
wonderful. I get distressed at the loss of species and environmental problems. However, if you work out of
wonder you don't get bogged down in debates. I don't want to sit around in a church basement and decide
how God made the world. Let's get on with enjoying this world. One of the ways we can enjoy it is to care
for it, tend it. But this active approach to caring for and restoring creation must not be arrogant or
oppressive. There is an old Hebrew teaching that goes like this, If a king destroys his subjects, he makes a
fool of himself. If you think you are in charge and you destroy the things you are expected to keep, you
have failed. And this is related to joy. You cannot take joy in something you have destroyed. Our principle
motivation for caring for the Earth should be love. And if we fail to love the world we eventually will find
ourselves motivated by fear. Noah's is a fine example for our time. Facing the problem of impending
extinctions, he responds in faith and love to save the creatures from destruction. The call we all are hearing
today is a call for new Noahs who will respond in faith and love. Once creation is made secure, we must
then continue the joyful work of keeping the Earth.
Copyright 1996 Environmental Review