Nature in the New Creation

Abstract

"In 1843, Ludwig Feuerbach claimed that, “Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation of his soul.” 1 Feuerbach was not the first to accuse Christianity of an excessive anthropocentrism, and he was certainly not the last. Such charges have indeed become especially common during the last forty years, as many environmentalists trace to Christianity one of the ideological roots of the current “ecological crisis.” Perhaps the best known of these accusations came in a paper read by Lynn White, Jr., in 1967, entitled “The Historic Roots of our Ecological Crisis.” 2 White argued that environmental degradation was the indirect product of Christianity, which he labeled (in its western form), “the most anthropocentric religion the world has ever seen.” 3 The biblical claim that humans have dominion over creation has shaped the typically western “instrumentalist” view of nature: that the natural world exists solely to meet human needs"