Psalm 72:8, the only time, significantly enough, that radah is used in the Old Testament to describe God or God’s activity: “May God have dominion”—or, radah—“from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.” The psalmist then proceeds to describe the nature of God’s rule: “For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight” (72:12-14). When used in connection with God, the potentially violent connotations of radah suggest instead a more generous sort of kingship. God, the psalmist writes, does not exploit or dominate or consume recklessly. God does not use His power to hurt, but rather to heal. God values what cannot be replaced. God works to preserve life, not to destroy it. Created in God’s image and according to God’s likeness, then, humans are to exercise radah—or, dominion—over creation as God would exercise radah. The late Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad underscores this implicit connection between the image of God and the command to rule. “Just as powerful earthly kings, to indicate their claim to dominion, erect an image of themselves in the provinces of their empire where they do not personally appear,” von Rad writes, “so man is placed above the earth in God’s image as God’s sovereign emblem. He is really only God’s representative, summoned to maintain and enforce God’s claim to dominion over the earth.” That, ultimately, is the divine imperative of Genesis 1:27-28, and it contains within it the seeds of a coherent Christian theology of stewardship toward the environment. After all, stewardship is the act of caring for someone else’s property in a manner consistent with the way he or she would care for it.
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 07:57:03 +0000
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