A Seminar Paper On:

Creation:Ecological Perspective and Contemporary Trends

Creation, Ecology and Human Responsibility
Submitted to: Rev. Sunny P.

Submitted by:M. John Peter

1. Introduction:
"Creation" in the narrower biblical sense means the creation of all that is by the one
God. The Hebrew verb 'bara' is used almost fifty times in Scripture, and it is always
used to mean God's activity and always somthing that only God could do. The
continuous exploitation of natural resources without much foresight causes a serious
environmental crisis and poses a threat to the survival of humanity and other living
creatures.
Creation:
Creation means to bring out something out of nothing. Here it means the whole
universe has been brought out in to existent out of nothing. Here time also is created.
In other words time begins with the act of creation.
Creation can be viewed in various different ways:
a. In a natural sense it would mean the dependent formation of the universe from an
absolute power.
b. A pantheistic view would be that Absolutes takes various forms. Here there could
be difference between the creator and the created (creature).
c. The third view is called emanation: all beings flow out of the absolute and exist
formally with Gods power. God exist as the power-house for the flow of life but
the emanated being never becomes God.(God of the Atoms:B)
2. Creation: Various Perspectives:
Biblical perspective: In the Old testament understanding, creation is considered a special
act of God; it is not a routine task or the consequence of any other divine act. In contrast,
Enuma Elish, the Babylon account of creation, describes how god Marduk was elevated
to headship of the pantheon; It may be surprising to note that God's act of creation is not
the main emphasis of the Old Testament because creation theology of the Old Testament
is usually considered as a later development in Israelite thinking. The early sources do
not give as much emphasis to creation as the later traditions. It is generally agreed that
the creation account of Genesis is from the priestly redactor (Gen.1:1-2,4a) dated as the
exile or the post-exile period.
Creation theology of the Old Testament is thus very much God-centered in its
content, nature and relationship to other aspects of Israel's faith. Moreover, the
monotheistic faith of the Old Testament has implications for its understanding of god as
creator.
Creation and Sovergnity of God: The possibilty for the involvemnet of other gods is

avoided by the affirmation that God created 'by His word'. In the creation account of
Genesis God's command is introduced by the formula, 'Let... bring forth...' and it was
brought forth. Except in the case of human beings all other memers of creation are the
result of the Word of God. The idea that God created 'by the Word' expressess the
absolute independence of God in the act of creation. This aspect of creation is unique an
destablishes two important aspects of the Old Testament theology of creation. First of
all, God is solely responsible for creation and does not share the credit with anyone.
Secondly, the whole of the created order belongs to God and He is the soveregin of the
whole nature.God is not only the creator, but He is the owner of everything He has
created.
Creation:
The first human being, Adam, lived in the garden of God in an envirnment of
peace and harmony with all God's creations and nature: eco-balence in a state of
sybiosis. He is to cultivate and keep the garden as a responsible steward. In reading the
account of creation, we see the Garden of God, a peradise, as a symbol of oikos, an eco
system in which the different speaces of organisms in God's creation, from the smalest
to Homo sapiens, co-exist in a state of symbiosis, fulfilling God's plane and the purpose
for which they are created. In the garden of Eden the first human beings, Adam and Eve,
lived in a close relationship to every living creatures, the birds of the air and the beasts
of the feald, in an environment of a natural beuty and splendour unspoiled by
ecologicaldegredation.
Hence in ecological degadation, whether in the form of imbalance in nature
created by humans, discrimination and inequality in human relationship, injustice,
wanton distruction pf the eco systum or depleting the ozon layer, is a distructionof
God's creation. All these effect human existence and subsistence in God's own
oikoumene and interfere with God's order of creation. God's creation and ecosystem
must be saved if humans are to survive.
Anthropocentrism:
In 1982 the United Nations in a charter for nature attempted to revalue life other
than human: Every form of life is unique, warranting respect regardless of its worth to
man. Four years later the Brundtland Report reverted to a man-centered rationale for
conservation:
the commissions of hope for the future is conditional on deceive political action now to
begin managing environmental resources to ensure both sustainable human progress and
human survival.
Brundtland report is excessively anthropocentric. In repudiating anthropocentrism we
observe that it is an extreme form of man-centeredness which we criticize, an
anthropocentrism which means virtually man alone, only man, to the exclusion of all the
other creatures with which man is interconnected. In this form of anthropocentrism the
natural world, the rest of the earth community, is merely the expendable, exploitable
background for men. We recognize that there another man-centeredness

Ecological Perspective:
a) Creation mean a theological perspective on reality among other religious and
scientific perspectives, the world is created by God. The World is not the product of a
strrugle among gods. God is not a God of order or disorder, but of peace and of
pluriformal life. The ecology task therefore is to pluirformity. Creation means that there
is universal coherence and that everything depends on the totality, influences the totality.
Therefore ecological task is a global one. Creation means that there is no owner of the
world except for the living God: human,political, economic owners, ideologies and
interests are therefore not only depotentialized and relativized but also demythologized
and demystified. When we say creation, we confess the living God and we have to mean
control of interests.
b) Revelation of God's life: Creation is the utterance of God's inner trinitarian life, (As
God, Word and Spirit) as a process. With creation, the view of cosmic reality is limited
and focused. We understand this creation as this special space where the conditions of
life are given (biosphere), divided and preserved from the natural chaos and from the
chaos, produced by the sin of humanity (flood)
c) Creation as God's glory: Doxological transcendence: As the utteance of God's inner
life in a limited way (finiteness), creation is destined to be God'sglory. Thanksgiving and
Praise are analogous actions to God's creation.
d) Faithfullness to the biosphere: The space of life understood as creation is not eternal,
but it is a "Good enough mother", who is not perfect and who must not be perfected by
the human effort, but who can be trusted and is reliable. We have to live with natural
catastrophes and we cannot hope togetvrid of passion, suffering, contingence, illness and
death. In other words, creation is not perfect and always threating chaos, which the
human has to conquer, to subdue and control.
e) Creation, History of Nature and natural human history: Creation is not nature as an
areana for human development and history. Creation is the whole process of nature,
because it changes natural conditions. The earth is regarded in the Genesis texts as a
garden and therefore as culutre, but Jesus regards thelife of non-human and non domesticated cultures as paradigms for the life out of the grace of God (Mat. 5). We
should distinguish between humanized and non- humanized creation. The world is not
created especially and exclusively for human kind. This is the illusion of
anthropomorphism. But a pure nature, on the other hand, is also a typical human
abstraction. It is typical for the modern western type f human, who destroys nature and
at the same time wants to be consoled by her.

f) Creation and its Sacrality: Creation is a culture and a garden, which has to be
developed and preserved. In this respect, religious reasons like the Sacred Universe
do not further, because redivinising nature blocs ecological research and technology,
which is needed for amendment and recycling.
God's concern towards ecology: Genesis is a Greek word specify origin or birth.
Origin of the cosmos was a creative process. Our universal home like imperial powers
wad not built in a day. It was created rather in a series of days. These days were divine
moments in which the dynamic energy of God created light out of darkness and form out
of void. In the beginning tells of choosing and affirming life of perceiving creation and
ourselves with in it, of recognizing God, and of viewing the earth as our home.
On Theology way to an ecological theology in nature:
in the history of the theological doctrine of creation, three stages can be
distinguished. These have been determined by the relationship between theology and
science at any given time.
a) In the first stage, the traditions and the ancient world's picture of the universe. We
fused in to a religious cosmology. In this fusion, pantheistic elements which disparaged
it were both excluded. The theological idea of transcendence of the creator in relation to
His creation evoked the cosmological notion of a temporally and spatially limited,
contingent and immanent world. At the same time, the indwelling of the spirit of the
transcendent creator in his creation allowed this world to appear as the divinity ordered
world,which is filled with God's glory and is guided by his wisdom.
b) In the second stage the sciences emancipated themselves from this cosmology, while
theology detached its doctrine of creation from cosmology all together, and reduced it to
personal belief in creation. The world view and medieval times was rejected as
unscientific, and the biblical creation narratives were written off by historical criticism
as myths. So all that remained was the redection of the doctrine of creation to the
personal faith which says that human beings have to put, their trust in God the creator,
not in his creatures.
c)today theology and science have entered a third stage in their relationship they have
become companions in tribulation under the pressure of, the ecological crisis and the
search for the new direction which both must work for, if human beings and nature are
to survive at all on this earth, it is only slowly that theologians are beginning to see that
their continual attempts to draw dividing lines between theology and the sciences.

Implication:Every thing that is has value, because while it is not God, it has been made Him. He made
it because he was pleased to do so, and it was good in His sight. Each part has its place, which is just
what God intended for it to have. God loves all of His creation, not just certain parts of it. Thus we
should have concern for all of it, to preserve and guard and develop what God has mad. we are part of

the creation, but only a part. While God intended us to use the creation for our own needs, we are also
to have dominion over it, to govern it for its good. We therefore have a large stake in the ecological
concern. In fact, Christian should be at the very fore front of the concern for the preservation and
welfare of the creation, because it is what God has made.
Origin of life: In the creation story as given in the book of Genesis we see that first inanimte elements
were created, followed by animate beings, and the culmination was human being as the crown of
creation. As we read in Genesis 1:1-27 first there came in to existence inanimate matter (heaven, earth,
light)followed by the medium essential for the origin and existence of life, namely, water. Then life
appeared starting from vegetation. A conductive atmosphere for the development is created in the form
of light/darkness. Then life so created developed in to 'every kind of living creature' and finally ending
up in human beings having intelligence and soul. Finally, God creates humans in His own image and
likeness human beings are already elevated from the earthly (material) being to trans-world (spiritual)
being the difference comes in God breathing in to human being life-giving breath.