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Page 1: ECOLOGY VS. THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM: Toward a Better Theology of Nature

ECOLOGY VS. THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM: Toward a Better Theology of NatureAuthor(s): Stephen H. WebbSource: Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 79, No. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1996), pp.239-252Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41178750 .

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Page 2: ECOLOGY VS. THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM: Toward a Better Theology of Nature

ECOLOGY VS. THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM: Toward a Better Theology of Nature

Stephen H. Webb

Tn their hurry to talk about nature these days, theologians often adopt principles from the environmental movement that

emphasize the holistic goodness of nature and warn us to leave alone as much of nature as possible. These two principles are actually interdependent: only if nature is a self-correcting system is it possible to argue that we should get out of the way and let nature be. Human power over nature is inevitably bad, such posi- tions argue, and interlocking ecological systems, no matter what the fate of individual organisms, are inherently good. Drawing from Aldo Leopold's classic, A Sand County Almanac, the basic ethical maxim of what is called "deep ecology" is that if a thing fits in its ecological niche, then it is good. "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the bi- otic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."1 The good of the whole system, not the good of individuals, is what counts.

The aesthetic appreciation of coherence - a part of the whole is good as long as it contributes something to that whole - re- flects an old theodicy that tries to see this world as the best it could possibly be. Should theologians really accept the idea that nature as it is now coincides with God's ultimate intentions? And should theologians really be so quick to celebrate the sacrifice of individuals (even if they are merely "animals") to the good of the whole? The moral principle I want to defend is that relationship, as the ecologists insist, is primary, but this means that we must take responsibility for our relationship with nature, which is not meant to stand alone. Moreover, we need to be most concerned

Stephen H. Webb is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Wabash College.

Soundings 79.1-2 (Spring/Summer 1996). ISSN 0038-1861.

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240 SOUNDINGS Stephen H. Webb

with those animals with whom we have initiated the most com- plex and intimate relationship, that is, domesticated animals.

When I suggested, at the end of my essay, "Pet Theories: A Theology for the Dogs,"2 that pets, defined as animals with whom we have a relationship of responsibility and reciprocity, could serve as a paradigm for our treatment of all animals and even nature in general, many of my friends asked me whatever could I possibly mean. By beginning with a set of assumptions different from the environmental movement, my position, influenced by and yet also a challenge to the animal rights movement, is bound to be controversial and provocative to most of those who cur- rently write about religion and the natural world. I want to de- fend the theological position that nature is fallen, and that nature's distortions transcend the many harms humans contrib- ute to it, so that we should deplore the human abuse of nature but we should not think that humans cause all of nature's problems. Moreover, from a trinitarian perspective, relationality is fundamental, so that we should not think that nature should stand alone, without us. Finally, I want to stress the Christian sense that suffering is wrong, everywhere and for everybody, in- cluding animals. This is where my perspective departs not only from much current environmental thinking but also from tradi- tional theology. Animals need liberation from suffering as much as we do, and they need us to play a crucial role in that process. We cannot turn our backs on the animal world and pretend that it is a good place, if only we were not there. Animals and humans are tied together in this world and in the world to come.

Animal rightists have long been at odds with environmental- ists, because the latter focus their concern on species as a whole, not individual animals. Rosemary Radford Ruether, in Gaia and God, represents the typical theological appropriation of environ- mentalism when she urges a retrieval of the Hebrew connection between the covenant of God and the gift of land. The Hebrews did have a sense that righteousness is connected to the treatment of the land, and Ruether further argues that a land ethic should mediate our relationship with animals. What the land teaches is that nature's own violence justifies our consumption of animals. "Not only do carnivorous animals depend for their existence on eating other animals, but all life forms exist through an interde- pendence of consuming and being consumed."3 She surely is

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right that from nature alone it is impossible to draw the moral principle that individual life should be valued and saved. At best, as Charles Birch and John Cobb argue, animals should be just left alone. "For the most part, there is little humans can do posi- tively to enrich the experiences of animals. The focus of concern is much more on avoiding those actions that prevent rich experi- ence."4 What is really important is that species as a whole be pro- tected, since each species contributes to other species. Individual animals are all alike and thus are expendable. As Birch and Cobb explain, "If the death of one chicken makes room for the raising of another, the values lost are largely replaced by the values gained. The quality and amount of chicken experience remain largely unchanged" (159). Nature counts by species, not individ- uals, and so should we.

The best way to protect species would be for humans to get out of (at least some parts of) nature altogether. Indeed, environ- mental theologians often talk about returning nature to itself, liberating it from anything that humans have to offer. This does not mean that humans should not ever use nature. Indeed, envi- ronmentalists are quick to distance themselves from the animal rights movement by insisting that nature itself shows us how it wants to be used. Our relationship to nature should imitate the

way nature relates to itself. As the poet Gary Snyder writes, "Other beings (the instructors from the old ways tell us) do not mind being killed and eaten as food, but they expect us to say please, and thank you, and they hate to see themselves wasted."5 The primordial traditions often depict slain animals as giving themselves to their slayers, and this image reflects the deeper re-

ality that all of nature is caught in a process of give and take, or better, a parasitical process of stealing and plundering. That is simply how it is, but nature also does not kill wantonly, so that a grateful acceptance of the limits of life, namely death, is what nature can teach us about our own taking of life. "To speak of wilderness," Snyder suggests, "is to speak of wholeness" (12). To be a part of that whole is to be prepared to let go of being altogether.

Many theological environmentalists are under the influence of process philosophy, with its panpsychic argument that sentience is continuous throughout nature, from humans to trees and even rocks, sand, and, I suppose, dust.6 They thus criticize animal

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rightists for limiting their concern to animals who suffer and are aware of their suffering, though the process extension of con- sciousness to all entities surely makes human ethical conduct problematic. An exemplary essay by Daniel G. Deffenbaugh illus- trates how environmentalism can begin with moral promise and end outside of morality altogether. Deffenbaugh argues that we need to see nature as intrinsically good, regardless of human needs or desires. Egoism is the problem, and holism is the an- swer. Indeed, the problem with animal rights is that it "remains mired in the paradigm of egoism," assigning value only to indi- viduals who can suffer and feel.7 This leads animal rightists to make moral judgments about nature. "Must we regard the wolf who preys on the moose as immoral, but not the rabbit who feeds lower on the food chain, below the sentience barrier?" (248-49). It is better to jettison the question of nature's morality alto- gether, or to define morality in such a way that it describes whatever nature does.

Ethics should be framed by ecology, which values the way things hang together in a given biotic community. "From an evo- lutionary perspective, the isolated organism is merely a token, a representative, which plays a small part in the propagation of a living historical form: the species. This is the real unit of evolu- tion and therefore the more significant reality which demands human respect" (255). Morality should follow the lead of nature by focusing not even on species but their habitats, the where that sustains the what of all that is. Nature, in its entirety, is not only an organism but the only one which should be treated as an end in itself. "Our ethics must transcend a primary concern for indi- vidual interests or sentience with the ecologically informed reali- zation that in nearly every instance in nature the ultimate good of the group will inevitably involve the 'transgression' of particu- lar 'rights' (as when wolves cull the weak and the sick from herds of caribou and thereby insure the continued vitality of the spe- cies)" (255). We are left with a kind of Nietzschean celebration of the will to power, the recognition that the weak must be sacri- ficed to the strong (which is precisely the opposite of the message of Christianity, as Nietzsche well knew) .

Nature does live off itself in mysterious and remarkable ways. One thing eats another and then it too is eaten sooner or later, linking everything together in a circular configuration. Death

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gives life, quite literally, and there is not much we can do about that. Perhaps our inability to intervene in nature's fecundity, which both proliferates and destroys life, leads us to find some- thing comforting and fitting in the absolute interdependence of species. It is certainly impossible to have empathy for all of the animals who must become meals for others. Such sacrifices are apparently necessary, and to mourn necessity is foolishness. It is easier to admire the wild, carnivorous animals who confront us as something inassimilable to human measure, caring not for our help or sentiment. These animals follow their nature in beauti- ful, effortless, and dignified ways, so that our inability to make moral judgments about them tempts us to romanticize them in- stead. The Christian idea that God sides with the victims some- how gets lost when we watch nature documentaries, wincing but marvelling at a fearsome display of power that seems innocent and natural.

Innocent and natural, but is it good? The moral question of ought is not completely erased by the aesthetic question of fit. Christians need to be reminded that nature does work quite well by itself, but Christians also need to remind others that it works by making suffering necessary and productive. Certainly animals do not experience pain and suffering as we do; they live more in the moment and do not conceptualize the limits or terrors of their situation. Yet few would deny that the more developed ani- mals do feel pain, a mechanism which is necessary for their sur- vival. Christian theologians have long dealt with the question of why there are so many animals and so much pain. Augustine con- nected the animal world to the principle of plenitude, arguing that Goďs creativity inevitably fills every level and grade of exist- ence, a theodicy with remarkable parallels to current ecological thinking. Certainly nature is fecund, overfull of life, but from a Christian point of view, the remarkable profusion of life does not solve the stubborn problem of animal suffering.

Too often when theologians surveyed the fullness of nature and pronounced it good, what they really meant is that it is good for us, when put into our service, not that it is good in itself. Animals really become a theological problem when we think about them on their own terms, not as instruments for human use. For Calvin, humans are the source for animal suffering. He thought that the fall of humanity distorted the whole order of

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nature, but he did not infer from this that humanity has any moral obligations to nature. The idea, which goes back to Origen and earlier, that there was a pre-human fall, a fall of angelic be- ings preceding and accounting for the fall of both humans and nature, has much to recommend it. It suggests that humans are not responsible for all of nature's woes, so that withdrawing from nature will not solve all of nature's problems. It also puts the animal and the human world in the same predicament, sug- gesting that their destinies will also be the same.

No matter how theologians connect the human fall to nature's troubles, they agree that Christianity teaches that nature is not what it was meant to be. The Christian message does not obses- sively focus, though, on a nostalgia for what was, but instead hopes for what can yet become. In continuity with Judaism, Christianity looks forward to an eternal Sabbath, as Jürgen Moltmann argues, the consummation of creation in which all creatures will find rest and completion.8 Evolution too, then, is in need of redemption, and humans are to work with God to anticipate that redemption. Indeed, the Bible outlines a theory of nature that recognizes nature as other but also insists on the possibilities of human caring and on the ultimate reality of God's total involvement in the life of every living being. Genesis, after all, begins with a vegetarian world where even the animals do not eat each other, and the prophetic images of the afterlife have the lamb lying down with the lion. The Hebrews treated their domes- tic animals as creatures to whom they have an obligation to show kindness and consideration due to the animal's service to them, thus showing that the covenant between God and Israel can also work as a covenant between humans and animals. The Sabbath regulations, for example, apply to animals as well as humans (see the Fourth Commandment, as well as Exodus 23:10-11). The sev- enth day, the seventh year and the Jubilee (the fiftieth year) al- lowed for a periodic righting of all relationships, and the New Testament uses this background to understand the climax of the Messianic future, in which creation will become a peaceable kingdom, ordered but nonviolent. Animals are explicitly in- cluded in the covenant God makes with Noah, and Noah, of course, saves the animals from the flood (note too how the ark is used as an image for the church in 1 Peter 3:20). In the book of Revelation animals are portrayed as worshipping at the throne of

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the lamb, implying that animals too will one day need to stand in relation to their maker. True, there is more to the Bible on ani- mals than these selective images I have outlined, but clearly the Bible includes animals in God's providential concern and there- fore offers a radical way of thinking about animals today.

The nature that God pronounced good was not the nature that forced humans to toil for their food and forced animals to fight each other. Animals were named by Adam, which suggests that the authority of humanity that God intended is not incompatible with intimacy and friendship.9 Animals are meant to stand in re- lation to God by being in relation with humanity. When C. S. Lewis describes the planet Perelandra in his science-fiction novel, a planet where the fall has not (yet) occurred, he portrays the animals as both mysterious and gentle, living according to their own laws but also welcoming human company.10 Traditionally, Christian theology portrays heaven as a garden, not a wild jungle, a place, like the original garden of Eden, where God allows life to grow without the countless sacrifices of violent death. It is thus possible to argue that pets are the paradigm for the destiny of all animal life. In other words, according to the Christian myth, ani- mals were originally domesticated, in the sense of being nonvio- lent and being in a positive relationship with us, and they will be again. This seems to go against the grain of everything the envi- ronmental movement represents. The question is, what does this mean in terms of how Jews and Christians should respond to the environmental movement? If God intends all animals to stand in a peaceful relation with each other, and if humans are to play a constructive role in that setting, then what should we do about nature as it is now, red in tooth and claw?

Imagining the new earth of God's kingdom as a garden means that domestication is the ultimate goal of all living creatures, in- cluding ourselves. Just as Christians believe that humans will be fully transformed in the afterlife, our proclivity for violence being washed away as we are made into the image of Christ, animals too will be liberated from their habits of aggression and violence. Violence is not necessary or original in life, so that it can be taken away and yet life can still abound. Of course, we cannot change the nature of the lion (think of God's response to Job: remember the Leviathan!), but God can, just as God can save the worst sinner by obliterating the sin but restoring the person to

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her fullest self. This does not mean that we should hold animals responsible for their carnivorous instincts. Yet saying that animals are morally innocent does not mean that whatever they do is morally right. The world to come is not God's way of judging right and wrong but of restoring what is lost and completing what is incomplete in this life. From that perspective, animals too need redemption, not from moral wrong but from suffering, lim- itation, and violent death. Seeing animals as victims of the fall who cannot be condemned but can be empathized with radically changes the theology of nature. We need to respect and be amazed by the sheer otherness of the world God has made, but we also need to accept our role as stewards of this world and take responsibility for our position on the planet, not by dominating it or by pretending that we can separate ourselves from some parts of it, but by managing ecosystems that encourage the best mixture of animals that minimize suffering and pain. What I am not suggesting is that we continue to use up all of the earth's resources without attending to ecological issues. Exploitation is not a form of gardening.

Karl Barth, who is often accused of having an anthropocentric view of nature, was surprisingly sensitive about the destiny of ani- mals. He defended humanity's role as a protector and compan- ion of animals. The person who knows and loves animals best, Barth argues, is the person who shares work with an animal and thus learns to respect the animal: "It is said of a good horseman that he is so completely one with his horse that he always knows exactly to take out of it no more and no less than what it can not only give but is willing and glad to do so. If this is correct, in this respect a really good horseman cannot possibly be an ungodly person."11 Barth argues that on a biblical basis the animals are the forerunners and companions of humans, share humanity's blessings and burdens, and will in their own way be freed from bondage in the end. "Man's salvation and perdition, his joy and sorrow, will be reflected in the weal and woe of this animal envi- ronment and company. Not as an independent partner of the covenant, but as an attendant, the animal will participate with man (the independent partner) in the covenant, sharing both the promise and the curse which shadows the promise. Full of foreboding, but also full of confidence, it will wait with man for its fulfillment, breathing freely again when this has taken place

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provisionally and will take place definitively."12 Animals have a future with the God of love, and it is a destiny that is tied to human hopes and longings, and that means, among other things, that we should learn to anticipate that ultimate commu- nion with animals by changing our present attitudes, practices, and policies.

Christianity has fostered much deep thinking about nature, but it has not encouraged moral action toward nature or toward animals. The Roman Catholic tradition too often treats nature as it is as a source of morality, while the Protestant tradition treats nature as so fallen that it lies outside the realm of the moral alto- gether. In either case nature is accepted for what it is, so that there is no thought of extending Christian practice to include it. Current environmental theologies continue this constriction of human effort by romanticizing and idealizing a nature totally separate from human involvement, so that there is no sense that the best of human moral endeavor should make a difference in nature itself. It is hard enough, most people think, to make human institutions moral and charitable, so that trying to trans- form nature is a Promethean project that is simply out of the question. We hurry by the injured or dead animal on the side of the road. Who has the time to worry about that? Yet we do inter- vene in nature all of the time, to the point where nature is be- coming more and more human every day. Animals too are increasingly a part of our world, for better and worse. If God has a plan for nature, and for animals, then that plan should mean something to the way we treat nature even now.

What would it mean to find in nature the traces of the fall, to see nature as incomplete and yet still worthy of our best efforts and attentions? What would it mean not to infer morality from nature but to apply the Christian practice of love to nature? Is that even possible? Can St. Francis, the lover of animals and the earth, be followed today not as a benignly absurd visionary but as a realistic guide to these complex questions? Let me conclude by offering some practical and concrete suggestions that are conse- quences of my attempt to rethink theology and nature.

We should not infer moral principles from nature. Saying that nature is good means that human destiny is not separate from the future of the world, that salvation includes the material world or it is nothing at all. We do not have to think that nature is good in the

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sense of being harmless in order to encourage better treatment of natural resources. Nature is brimming full of life that is inter- connected in complex and fascinating ways, but Christians are called to a special vocation of service and compassion that is not common in the natural world. It is fine to take a walk in the woods or go camping and feel freed from everyday worries and the artificiality of much of our lives, but it is also important to remember that we are called to live in community, not away from it. The community we live in includes animals, so that the Chris- tian impulse to spread the good news of the salvation offered by the suffering of God should encompass the broadest possible community, which would include all creatures capable of re- sponding to affection and attention. Christians are also called to work against suffering, so that the argument that animals eat each other is hardly justification for the practice of humans eat- ing other animals. Even the Roman Catholic tradition of natural law appeals, at its best, to nature not as a description of what is but as a concept of what God originally creates and still intends. For Aquinas, natural law is appointed by reason, and is in fact, our rational participation in God's eternal law, which is nothing other than God's own nature. God's nature, in the end, is the only thing that is really natural, that is, the only thing that is good in itself. Everything else is good to the extent that it is related to God, a relationship that is partial now but will be complete some day.

We should not try to protect nature from us, as if nature's ultimate valíte is to be self-contained and isolated. The earth is shrinking, and the spread of human influence across the globe cannot be re- strained. We have to take responsibility for that power, rather than pretending that we can abdicate from it altogether. As Si- mon Schama's Landscape and Memory demonstrates, nature is al- ways a product of the human imagination.13 Myth, tradition, recollection, and culture always shape our perception of even (and especially) the most wild aspects of nature, so that we never have access to a nature in itself, pure and unspoiled. Certainly setting aside wild areas for the preservation of species is a good idea, but most land will be (if it is not already) either exploited or managed, so that we need to think more about what the wild should look like that is cultivated by and includes us. Even setting aside land is, of course, an act of management, at its best an act

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of compassion and care, so that all land is subject to human in- tervention. Because they idealize wild animals and hate to see animals brought under human jurisdiction, too many environ- mentalists (and animal rights activists as well) are against zoos, but it is not wrong to try to recreate habitats for animals that otherwise cannot compete with the growing human population, and that can be done in ways that combine human authority with respect for the integrity of the animal. As one expert notes, "Cap- tive animals often live longer than wild ones; for many animals it must be true that only with man's protection have they any chance of (as we say) old age."14 Animals do not need to exercise their predatory skills in order to live a full life.

We should not encourage or enhance the violence in nature. Reintro-

ducing wolves into areas where they have been eliminated might seem like a way of redeeming past acts of human violence, but it is also a way of increasing violence in nature. I am not suggesting that we kill all of the wolves, but there is no reason to idealize the wolf just because the wolf is violent, and there is no reason to help the wolf to flourish at the expense of other animals.15 Wolves and other predatory animals are not needed to thin out the herds of their victims when there are other, more humane ways of controlling animal populations, and more research needs to be done on those alternatives. The very fact that we have to capture and transport the wolves from one place to another and keep track of them to insure their survival demonstrates that even the wildest creature is now under our providential care. Wolves too are our pets, whether we admit it or not.

We should worry about individual animals. Saving a beached whale is a real act of charity, an exemplification of the fact that God cares for individuals, not just species. To many people, sav- ing one animad when so many animals eat each other anyway seems a hopelessly ridiculous and sentimental stunt, but it can be a genuine expression of God's love for all lost creatures, regard- less of the consequences. After all, Jesus came to heal the sick and save the lost - a shepherd who, at great expense, seeks out the one lost lamb - so that saving an animal from a natural or a human-made disaster is a concrete anticipation of the divine plan to restore all of life to its original harmony.

We should focus our efforts on those animals that are already a part of our world, those animals that have most closely entered our world, joining

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their fate with ours. Some of these animals have been made into meat machines. That is wrong. It is right to bring animals into relationship with us, but it is wrong to use them as if they have only instrumental value. As a preliminary step toward vegetarian- ism, we should work harder on humane farming legislation, so that those animals that serve us so diligently can be treated with the respect they deserve. But we should also work for that day when no animal must suffer for trivial human pleasures. This would obviously mean far fewer farm animals than we now have, but they should never be bred out of existence. Rather, for all of their service to us, some day they should be raised on land as lessons in human-animal partnership, where they can be treated as the pets they are, animals that have chosen to cast their lots with our destiny,16 and who thus depend upon us for their very survival. With all of the ingenious substitutes for animal protein now being developed and marketed, and with a growing human population that needs the enormous amount of land and other resources that are necessary for the raising of farm animals, it is not a Utopian fantasy to begin imagining the end of factory farm- ing as we now know it. Until that point, we must work against the pressures to make farms more efficient, pressures which result in raising animals more quickly and in increasingly inhumane conditions.

The traditional humane-society approach to animal welfare had something very right. Pets are really the key to understand- ing what animals are - and what our responsibilities to them should be. God intends all animals to stand in relationship to God through us some day, so that pets are a kind of experiment in that general direction. With pets we have a mixture of our power over nature and our ability to give up that power in acts of intimacy and care. That is why the problems that plague the pet population - overbreeding, abandonment, mistreatment - re- main, for me, the most urgent problems facing a theology of na- ture today. The animals that have given themselves to us must be treated in a way that respects that giving, and yet we often give such animals up, to be put down, experimented on, abused. If we are at all to think that the vision of Adam and the animals at the beginning of the Bible, and the vision of animal peacefulness that the Bible situates at the end of time, is to have any relevance in the world we now live in, we must take better care of our com-

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panion animals. After all, all animals will one day be like them, so we should start learning from them now, in anticipation of what is yet to come, which will be a better and greater community of all beings than anything we can now imagine.

NOTES

1. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford UP, 1949) 224-5. Interestingly, Leopold defends hunting by arguing that there are "cultural values in the sports, customs, and experiences that renew contact with wild things" (177). The hunter is better "prepared to face the dark and bloody realities of the present" (177), because "there is value in any experience that reminds us of our dependency on the soil-plant-animal-man food chain, and of the fundamental organization of the biota" (178). That peo- ple should hunt and eat animals is a natural aspect of Leopold's emphasis on the respect that should be given to the land and its interdependent features.

2. Soundings 78.2 (Summer 1995): 213-37. 3. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God (San Francisco: Harper, 1992)

223. "Nor is it sufficient to claim that one does not eat beings with whom one can have an interpersonal relation. As a vegetable gardener, I expend great loving care over each plant for months of every year and feel great pain when I see one that is ill, but I still intend to eat them" (223-4).

4. Charles Birch and John Cobb, The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Com- munito (New York: Cambridge UP. 1981 ) 155.

5. Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (Berkeley: North Point Press, 1990) 20. 6. Process theologians also often argue that the world is God's body, that God

acts as the mind or soul of the world. This position risks deifying the world, prematurely uniting the world with God and thus denying the possibility that the world is not as it should be.

/. Daniel O. JJellenbaugn, loward lninkmg Like a Mountain: ine evolution of an Ecological Conscience," Soundings 78.2 (Summer 1995) 249.

8. See Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation, trans. Margaret Kohl (ban Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991) 276-296.

9. In a short piece of fantasy fiction entitled, "She Unnames Them, Ursula K. Le Guin imagines the radical reversal of Adam's process of naming and domestication. In her story, a new Eve begins to withdraw human language from the animal world, and few animals other than pets resist this reclama- tion of their wild nature. Le Guin implies that naming is always a way of controlling, and the Genesis story for her serves as the founding myth of human (actually, male) manipulation of nature. Animals need to be liber- ated from us by a process of unnaming. See Le Guin, Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (New York: Penguin, 1987) 233-36.

10. С S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Macmillan, 1965) 45-47. 11. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/4, éd. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance

(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961) 352. 12. Church Dogmatics, III/ 1 , 178. Barth argues that the animals were given to

man to name not for friendship but for contrast, in order to make Adam more eager for his true companion, Eve. "What if he had been content with the company of an animal for the lack of anything better?" (III/l, 293).

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Page 15: ECOLOGY VS. THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM: Toward a Better Theology of Nature

252 SOUNDINGS Stephen H. Webb

Although Barth is right that the completion of humanity lies in human- human relationships, he is wrong to suggest that people cannot be friends to both animals and each other at the same time.

13. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Knopf, 1995). In the frontpiece to his book, Schama quotes from the journal of Henry David Thoreau: "It is vain to dream of a wilderness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wilderness than in some recess of Concord, i.e., than I import into it."

14. Stephen bostock, Loos and Animal KxgMs (New York: Koutledge, 1УУЗ) 04. 1 am not suggesting that zoos should become a substitute for the wild, but that zoos can provide a place where wild animals are permitted to flourish under human care. The decline of the wild strikes me as an inevitable pro- cess, and thus zoos will become increasingly important in the future. As Bostock notes, "We are in some degree conferring on our captive animals the protection from violent death and from disease which civilization has (to some extent) conferred on ourselves" (66).

15. Tom Regan, in The Case for Animal Eights (Berkeley: U of California P, 1986), argues that all animals have the right to be protected from harm, but he then argues that since the wolf is not a moral agent, it cannot violate the sheep's right not to suffer a painful and violent death (285). Therefore, he concludes, we need not worry about the sheep. Even if the wolf is not a moral agent, however, it does not follow that we should not intervene to protect the sheep. The wolf is not responsible for violating the rights of sheep, but the rights of sheep are still violated, just as the rights of a person would be violated if attacked by a (morally innocent) wolf. We have a duty to protect the rights of animals, even if they are violated by other animals who have no similar responsibility.

16. Stephen Budiansky argues that the animals that were domesticated were active participants in that process. They were opportunists who took advan- tage of humans, trading their defense mechanisms for security and protec- tion. See The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication (New York: William Morrow, 1992). This does not mean that we can therefore take advantage of these animals. Instead, we should treat them with the respect that a relationship of mutual dependence deserves.

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