Essay

Climate

Creed

Sustainability

30 May 2024

9 min read

Why Climate Change is at heart, a spiritual problem

Climate change does not begin with technical solutions but with spiritual ones.

Mark Scarlata

Mark is a lecturer and priest. He’s the author of several books and his latest, Wine, Soil and Salvation, explores the use of wine throughout the Old and New Testament.

Planet Earth viewed in totality from space. Africa and Arabia are visible under some cloud in the south.

Captured by Apollo 17, the Blue Marble image is credited with influencing how humanity viewed our home.

NASA.

In 1972 the United Nations commissioned a report called Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet. Its authors chose a cover image which captured the earth from space. The bright blue marble-like planet sits majestically against the black background of the vast universe. The beauty and simplicity of the image was a reminder of the unique habitat we share on this planet and the need to care for it.

Over fifty years after the authors raised concerns about a future ecological crisis, we do not find ourselves in any less critical circumstances. Average temperatures around the globe continue to rise, deforestation and pollution of water carries on and the land still suffers from over-farming and the use of harmful chemicals. These are only a few of the ways the planet has suffered.

The tone of the book, and the tone of the dialogue since then, often depicts environmental issues as a problem to be fixed. Rather than changing our own habits, many seek to maintain our current quality of life by coming up with green solutions that satisfy our levels of consumption.

The trouble with this kind of thinking is that we can reduce the beautifully complex and dynamic ecology of our world to a problem that requires a technical solution. The environment becomes common matter or stuff that can be used as a commodity to be bought, sold or traded on the market. This promotes the idea that the world around us is nothing more than material to be mastered through technological innovations by the ingenuity and determination of the human will. But is it just a matter of time before advanced technologies will solve all our environmental problems? Or is it possible that reframing the environmental crisis through a theological lens could help us see that the problem might not only be technology or industrialization, but that it might be something deeper in our souls?

Looking at creation through a different lens

In 2014 Pope Francis wrote an encyclical (a letter to the Catholic Church) called Laudato Si (‘Praise to you’). The title comes from a song of St. Francis of Assisi to celebrate creation - ‘Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.’ The saint’s hymn of praise celebrates creation as a living being, a partner, a sister, a mother that sustains us and reveals the glory of God. And this is what Pope Francis sets out to remind his readers—that creation is not merely a commodity to be used or a problem to be solved. Instead, the natural world is sacred because it was created by God, is sustained by God, and is filled with his divine glory.

Francis writes,

‘We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will…This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.’

The ecological demise and poor health of our environment reflects our misunderstanding of humanity’s role within an integrated ecology. Francis warns that if we fail to see the deepest spiritual roots of our problem, we won’t be able to work out how we are to live within creation.

Rather than focusing on rising sea levels or changing weather patterns, Francis asks us to step back and see the larger picture through the lens of how God relates to his creation and to our role as human beings.

‘Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational programme, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm.’

The globalization and technologization of the world have led us to believe that our relationship to the environment is not a complementary one that is mutually sustaining. Yet Pope Francis reminds us that all of life is bound together in an ‘integral ecology’ and that we live in a vast meshwork of living organisms that sustain and support each other. In an integral ecology these interrelations are fully entwined so as we look to address environmental concerns we also examine our own spiritual health as well as addressing social, economic and political issues in order to build and sustain heathier communities especially for the vulnerable and the poor.

An age of gluttony

To look with new eyes at the environmental crisis, however, humanity must also look within. Over the centuries the Christian tradition has highlighted some of the most destructive habits for human beings. These can have a disastrous impact on us and on those around us. In the church these are sometimes called the ‘seven deadly sins’ which outline the most common ways that human beings end up destroying themselves and the world. One of the sins is gluttony.

Gluttony is often associated with overeating or excess. Though excessive consumption may reflect outward signs of gluttony, the real root of it is connected to our desire for more than we need and a fear that we don’t have enough. Consuming more than we need (out of anxiety or for whatever reason) always comes at the expense of the needs of those around us. When we are driven by gluttony, we forget about our interdependence in the world, in our communities or in our families. Instead, we become consumed with satisfying our own needs and making sure that we have enough.

Rowan Williams sums up the dangers of gluttony by saying that we fail to grasp something fundamental in how we relate to others and to creation. ‘Gluttony, as the spiritual tradition approaches it, is another way of losing touch with our createdness: so much comes back to this. We lose touch with what it is to be a created being, and so lose touch with the basic truth that we are because God is.’ When we forget that we are God’s creation, living within an integrated ecology, we forget how we relate to all living things around us. Losing our idea of being created within God’s creation begins to unveil some of the spiritual roots of the current ecological crisis.

Part of what Pope Francis is saying is that a Christian approach to the environment is one that recognizes the spiritual and ethical implications of our actions in the world. A lack of attention to our spiritual condition can result in the abuse of the poor and the exploitation of the earth. When we fail to recognise God’s presence in each person and in his creation we mask the true problems behind extreme global consumerism that seduce us into wanting more without considering the needs of others.

Francis goes on to write,

‘The current global situation engenders a feeling of instability and uncertainty, which in turn becomes “a seedbed for collective selfishness”. When people become self-centred and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume.’

The ecological issues we face today are not problems that can ultimately be solved through technology. They require a change of heart, a change of vision and the ability to see the presence of the divine once again in the world we inhabit.

The re-enchantment of creation

The word ‘re-enchantment’ has seen a recent surge in popular cultural language recently. Indeed, this website uses it to describe its flagship podcast! The word expresses the desire of many to move away from the purely scientific and material approach to the world in order to recapture something that the secular age seems to have lost.

Though the word ‘enchantment’ can often conjure up images of fairies and magical forests, its Christian use is a way to describe how we see God’s divine presence in creation. Both Christians and Jews historically have understood that God inhabits the whole of the cosmos.

This is not some type of pantheism where all things that exist are god. Instead, God’s life and his Spirit sustains all things and brings all life into existence. To see the divine presence in creation is to recognize that the world is not just a material commodity but, rather, as Francis of Assisi understood, it is our companion that sustains us, nurtures us and journeys with us through life.

The re-enchantment of the world has also found its voice through non-Christian environmental approaches that have leaned towards pagan ideas around Gaia. They argue that nature, or Gaia, is something that should be honoured, worshipped and preserved. Philosopher Mary Midgley wrote, ‘The idea of Gaia—of life on earth as a self-sustaining natural system—is not a gratuitous, semi-mystical fantasy. It is a really useful idea, a cure for distortions that spoil our current worldview.’

Though these ideas for creation care move in the right direction, the Christian faith claims that worship should be offered to God alone. To treat the creature as the Creator is a mistake. God is not Gaia. God is the only creator and the creation is filled with his glory.

To see the world through re-enchanted eyes is to see the divine presence radiating through all things—an ocean wave, the sand, soil, trees, streams, birds, insects and animals. All creation breathes with the breath of God. The ancient Israelites understood God’s presence in the wonder of the created world and yet they also saw themselves fully integrated into the life of that world both physically and spiritually. Rather than thinking of God as some eternal entity or ‘thing’ that exists apart from creation, Christian tradition understands that he inhabits his world and sustains all life.

Pope Francis is right—our environmental challenges are not a technological problem to be solved, they’re a spiritual problem that effects all of humanity. Technology can certainly help address some of the issues that we’ve created and move us towards a healthier future, but if we’re serious about an environmental response it needs to include a spiritual change. If we are called to cherish, keep and live in God’s creation, we will first need to change our hearts and our habits. To grow as participants in God’s integral ecology we begin with an understanding of who we are and our inclination towards things like gluttony. Then we can begin to recognise who we are as God’s creatures and how we can live beneficially and generously in our communities, in relation to our neighbour and to the natural world.

Christianity does not offer some ‘heavenly spirituality’ that detaches our lives from the natural world. Instead, it believes in a God who got his hands dirty in the soil of Eden to make human beings. This a God who fashioned his creation and inhabits his creation through his divine presence and his breath of life. This is also a God who inhabited flesh like us in the incarnation. He is a God who brought all things into beings, sustains all things, and invites us to participate and bring hope to a world fully integrated in the peace, justice and mercy of his love.

Column

Biology

Creed

17 May 2023

7 min read

Not just red in tooth and claw: biology's big debates

In the second of a series, biologist and priest, Andrew Davison, examines why it’s important to keep up with biology’s big debates.

Andrew Davison

Andrew works at the intersection of theology, science and philosophy. He is Canon and Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford.

An osprey, in flight, holds a fish in its claws.

‘Wherever there’s water or air to navigate, the laws of fluid dynamics are bound to throw up wings, and bodies shaped like fish.’

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash.

There’s hardly been a livelier time for evolutionary science than today; indeed, passions can run high. It’s not that Darwin’s vision of evolution is fundamentally in doubt: species adapt by natural selection, there’s variation between individuals, and those better adapted for their environment survive more often, passing on their genes to their children. In that, the theory of evolution stands, but many other parts of the evolutionary picture from the second half of the twentieth century are coming under criticism. That includes the following maxims:

‘the only significant form of inheritance involves genetic code’,

‘nothing that happens to an organism during its lifetime is passed on to its progeny’,

‘we agree what we mean by “species”’,

‘genes pass down the branches of the tree of life, not between them’,

and ‘evolution is fundamentally all about competition, not cooperation’.

Among the excellent crop of writers on these themes, Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb stand out for their elegant prose, and a gift for communicating complex ideas clearly. As they recognise, the standard mid-twentieth century model of evolution might be worth criticising, but it’s also landed all sorts of important basic points. (They list ten.) The shortfall of the earlier, dominant theory was in being too narrow, with each insight too quickly eclipsing others.

Here are two examples. First, the classic twentieth century picture saw inheritance in terms of DNA and genes, passed on by ‘germline’ cells, such sperm and pollen. That’s all true, but it shouldn’t restrict our wider view of inheritance to that. Today, writers such as Jablonka and Lamb stress that organisms inherit from their parents (or parent) in all sorts of ways.

A second plank of the twentieth century picture is that evolution involves descent from a common ancestor. Again, that says something vital, even central, accepted by evolutionist old and new. The twentieth century position, however, added a restriction: that’s all that’s important on this score. The newer perspective recognises that while genes are – of course – central, and passed on from parent to child, organisms also swap genes between themselves (between branches of the tree of life, not just along those branches), even between very different species.

If we’re not careful, what’s written and taught (not least by theologians), even with the best will in the world, will be thirty or even fifty years out of date.

There’s a lot of excitement around these sorts of claims (and, remember, Jablonka and Lamb make eight more), and that can get quite noisy. Defenders of the older, narrower picture typically say that the newer themes are simply fuss over minor points. Advocates of the newer perspective disagree, saying that the twentieth century picture risks missing some important features of biology, which are now coming into better focus.

Why such debates matters

Why might this ferment among biologists matter for a site like this one, and for theologians, and discussions of religious matters? Well, for one thing, as I pointed out in my previous article, nothing quite dissolves the supposed animosity between science and religion (which is, after all, a relatively recent invention) like theologians and religious people getting excited about biology. It’s also important that any humanities scholar, the theologian among them, who’s engaging with science should keep up to date. If we’re not careful, what’s written and taught (not least by theologians), even with the best will in the world, will be thirty or even fifty years out of date.

But there’s more at stake. As we have seen, the twentieth century picture, for all it brought an admirable clarity to evolutionary thought, was reductionistic. We see that in Jablonka and Lamb’s exhortation to scientists: ‘yes, stress x, but don’t think that means you have to deny y.’ A religious vision tends to be an expansive one. It wants to recognise the reality and value of all sorts of things. Yes, there’s matter, atoms, molecules, and genes, but there’s also organisms, agents, cultures, groups, economies, hopes, loves. They’re all real. We can’t reduce one to the other: not organisms to genes, or agents to economies. A turn from reduction is welcome.

More than that, almost everything in the emerging twenty-first century view of evolution is fascinating from a theological perspective.

Take convergence, for instance. It turns out that evolution isn’t just driven by randomness, or by the demands of the surroundings. Also important are various features of physics, or mathematics – the contours of reality – that throw up elegant solutions to evolutionary problems, which are adopted by evolution time and again. Wherever you need to sturdy and space-efficient packing of cells (as in a honey comb, or a a wasp’s nest), the hexagon is ready and waiting. Wherever there’s water or air to navigate, the laws of fluid dynamics are bound to throw up wings, and bodies shaped like fish, dolphins, and penguins (which are all quite similar in shape).

How do we know this? Because evolution has converged on wings and that body shape independently, many times, as also on eyes, and everything else that Simon Conway Morris lists in the nine closely printed columns of convergences in the index to his book Life’s Solution. Evolution certainly involves randomness and need, but alongside them is something more like Plato’s forms: timeless realities, there to be discovered and put to work. Among the more theological of these eternal verities, covered in Conway Morris’s book, are perception, intelligence, community, communication, cooperation, altruism, farming, or construction

Exceeding a zero-sum game

Then there’s cooperation. Ever since Darwin’s Origin was published, and, even more, ever since Tennyson wrote about nature ‘red in tooth and claw’, theologians have been embarrassed about the place of cooperation in their vision of the world. Now, however, it turns out, competition isn’t the only force at work in biology or evolution after all. One of the features of reality that evolution discovers and puts to work again and again is cooperation, and ways to exceed a ‘zero-sum’ game. We see that in cooperation within a species, but also in cooperation between species, which is ubiquitous in nature: called mutualism, it’s found everywhere. As a rule, once two species stick around in proximity for the long run, down many generations, their relationship will turn to mutual benefit.

Ethicists are often wary of the suggestion that we can look at the way things are, and read a moral code there (getting an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’), but it’s an unusual person whose vision of right and wrong isn’t shaped, to some degree, by a sense of what the world is like. Well, it turns out that nature bears witness to the enduring worth of cooperation, and not only to competition.

In the first of these articles on biology, I pointed out the significance of ethics in thinking about biology, and about evolution in particular. For better or worse, and often for worse, thinking about evolution has been an ethical, social, political story. The evolutionary has been put to work for immoral, ends. It turns out to be wrong twice over to suppose evolution commends only competition. It’s wrong, first of all, because we are rational creatures, who can aspire to an understanding of good and evil that transcends the realm of nature. But also, as we now see, it’s wrong even to suppose the nature is only red in tooth and claw. There’s competition, but there’s also a lot of cooperation.

Suggested further reading

Archibald, John. 2014. One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the Evolution of Complex Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. An accessible introduction to biological mutualism, with an emphasis on the role of hybrid organisms (one living inside another) in major evolutionary transitions.

Bronstein, Judith L., ed. 2015. Mutualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The new standard treatment of biological mutualism.

Morris, Simon Conway. 2008. Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A comprehensive discussion of convergence in evolution.

Day, Troy, and Russell Bonduriansky. 2018. Extended Heredity: A New Understanding of Inheritance and Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. An engaging introduction to a broadened picture of inheritance.

Davison, Andrew. 2020a. Biological Mutualism: A Scientific Survey. Theology and Science 18 (2): 190–210. An accessible survey of some of the science of biological mutualism.

———. 2020b. Christian Doctrine and Biological Mutualism: Some Explorations in Systematic and Philosophical Theology. Theology and Science 18 (2): 258–78. A foray into some of the significance of mutualism for Christian theology.

Jablonka, Eva, and Marion Lamb. 2020. Inheritance Systems and the Extended Synthesis. Cambridge University Press. A short discussion of many of the more expansive aspects proposed for contemporary evolutionary thought.

Jablonka, Eva, Marion J. Lamb, and Anna Zeligowski. 2014. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. One of the most substantial discussions of the new perspective.

Laland, Kevin, Tobias Uller, arc Feldman, Kim Sterelny, Gerd B. Müller, Armin Moczek, Eva Jablonka, et al. 2014. Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink? Nature 514 (7521): 161–64. MA short two-sided piece, asking whether a transformation in evolutionary thinking is under way.