A biblical view of environmentalism: As the authors of Earthkeeping in the Nineties put it, redeemed men and women are to be fellow heirs with Christ -- Christ, the sustaining logos of the world, in whom all things consist. The idea that humanity -- redeemed humanity -- is to share in that creatorly task is clearly the implication of Romans 8:19. . . . Because of what Christ has accomplished, The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subject to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8:19-21). . . . Such, then, is a Biblical vision of man, made in the image of God, fallen into sin and death, and now, in and by the last Adam, being restored to righteousness and life. This creature, a little lower than God, crowned with glory and honor, is what we have in mind when we talk about population growth and its effect on resources and the environment. While environmentalists fear that human population growth will strip the earth of it resources and strangle it with pollution, Biblical Christians . . . can have confidence that, by the grace of God through the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ and His present reign over all things, continued population growth will result not in the depletion but in the increased abundance of resources, and not in increased pollution of the earth but in its increased cleansing and transformation from wilderness to garden, from its bondage to decay . . . into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom 8:21) -- E. Calvin Beisner, Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate, 1997, p.107
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 06:03:30 +0000
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