Once upon a time, it was common to talk of saving souls. Now, souls have disappeared from the public view, and to replace them, we are presented with the planet.
My physics is less competent than I would like it to be, but if the second law of thermodynamics holds good, then nothing can “save” the planet from entropy. Everything is going to run down inexorably. Neither the planet, nor even the universe can be saved. Consequently, my radar blinks red every time I hear the cry of ecological distress: save the planet. Of course, I know what is meant by these words, but I think it is more than just theologically and cosmologically imprecise, it’s misleading.
Souls need saving. And perhaps, if one follows the priorities of Jesus in the Gospels, this may turn out to be the most important thing about being human. I can see that it is perfectly proper to use the word “salvation” for a range of other things too.
The earth is an inanimate object that hosts animate life.
I have recently read Eric Metaxas’s latest book, Is Atheism Dead? It re-examines the arguments for cosmological fine-tuning. He reminds us of the critical role Saturn and Jupiter play as two of the most important contributors to the emergence of life on earth. Without their massive gravity, asteroids and comets would have bombarded Earth throughout its history, disrupting the stable evolutionary development of multicellular organisms. So can it be argued that Jupiter and Saturn have “saved” the earth? Perhaps. But even then not quite. They save it from asteroid bombardment and so what they save is the atmosphere, not the molten rock with a hard skin on which we perch.
Why does this matter? Because the earth is an inanimate object that hosts animate life. We use the word “pantheism” to describe the religious instinct that sees God in all biological life and the environment that sustains it. There are plenty of religions and cultures that claim that. But the Bible is distinctively different. The prophets go to great lengths to make the distinction between the earth and life on earth (which is creation), from the Creator who made them. This is the distinction that saves us from idolatry.
Many Christians have become increasingly aware that the ecological focus is taking the shape of a new religious instinct. s that it moves too far and too fast in drawing our attention away from “sky-father” (the Creator – out there) and instead towards earth-mother (the life-giving force down here.)
The emergence of Lovelock’s Gaia thesis (the self-regulating symbiotic relationship between organic and inorganic material) helped developed the idea that the earth was a self-supporting, self-regulating entity. It added impetus to the sense that as our culture lost sight of God the Father and Creator, it was being drawn back into the old pagan instinctive placation of mother earth. Anthropology, a narrative that made humankind central to the story, began to give way to karma, which didn’t.
“Save the planet” then becomes a kind of rallying cry for mother earth, and marks a slow but misguided immersion into an idolatry of placating the earth, as it were a modern fertility goddess. Trying to catch up with secular and contemporary concerns, a new emphasis in what has been labelled “eco-theology” tried to balance theological allegiance to both Creator and creation.
Of course the Church should be one of the loudest voices speaking out against the brutalisation of deforestation, the rape of the sea floors by industrial fishing, the strangulation of all life in death by plastic. But not to save the planet.
We are reminded that the Old Testament confers responsibility for creation on humanity, not rights. The Covenant curses in Leviticus 26.34: “But if in spite of all this you do not obey Me, but continue to walk in hostility toward Me, 28then I will walk in fury against you, and I, even I, will punish you sevenfold for your sins. … I will lay waste the land,…it shall lie desolate.” The message is a stark and simple one: “if you turn your back on God, there will serious ecological consequences”.
St Paul balances the insight that the entropy of a universe that is running out of energy and needs renewing, parallels our own wounded mortality with the claim that everything, spirit and matter is contingent on Christ. In Romans 8.22, he writes that matter echoes spiritual teleology, as he describes the world groaning in longing for the new order in which time and space are wound up and replaced. St John lifts the prophetic telescope a few degrees higher and glimpses the new heavens and, as importantly for us at this point, the new earth, that is going to be called into being. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth … for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” (Rev. 21.1)
That is how the earth is saved. Matter will be renewed. It will be rescued from sterile death and from becoming entropic ex-star dust. It will become whatever wondrous reconfiguration God the Creator intends when he wraps up the time-space continuum. Of course the Church should be one of the loudest voices speaking out against the brutalisation of deforestation, the rape of the sea floors by industrial fishing, the strangulation of all life in death by plastic. But not to save the planet. The Church’s purpose is to save our bodies and the increasingly poisoned environment they inhabit, which mirrors the poisoning souls, from the consequences of sin and greed.
But the priority , as the Church has always taught, is to save the soul itself.
The wounded earth deserves our care. But it remains a symptom of a more distressed ecosystem, the human soul. Save the soul, and the earth stands a much better chance of coping with our tenancy.
Gavin Ashenden is a former priest of the Church of England, and a former continuing Anglican bishop. He was an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen from 2008 until his resignation in 2017.
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