Translated from the original by Chris
Tsilikas
The wildfires that
broke out last August in Greece
So, we have
decided to see whether the thought and the teachings of the Great
Ecclesiastical Fathers of Eastern Christianity, especially of Basil the Great
(known as Basil of Caesarea), of Gregory the Theologian (known as Gregory of
Nazianzus) and of John Chrysostom, could be of any help in approaching the
environment in a totally different way, so that we would be able – in the long
run – to solve the huge Environmental Problems we’re facing today...
HOW
HAVE WE COME TO SUCH AN IMPASSE AS FAR AS THE ENVIRONMENT IS CONCERNED
It would be
helpful for the reader to look into the reasons first why we have reached such
a crisis today and why the environment is in danger. And certainly,
Christianity has played its role to that crisis. Even in the first years of its
existence there were philosophical movements and heresies, which under the
influence of Plato and his student Plotinus degrade matter in contrast to the
spirit. Especially the heresy of Gnosticism, regards nature and the world as
the creation of a degrading evil God. A branch of Gnosticism, Manichaeism,
influences the thought of the Greatest Father of the West, of Holy St.
Augustine. And due to this influence the whole theology and philosophy to be formed
in the West has been affected, making it easy thus for all those thoughts and
practices which degraded the material creation and allowed for the ravaging and the depredation of it to develop.
So the theologian,
philosopher and mathematician Descartes, who is considered to be the precursor
of orthology, accepts the material world as a perfect machine in the service of
man. After Newton’s discoveries the
Western man is exhilarated by the technological achievements and starts to
realize the surrounding environment as ‘res’, meaning as a ‘thing’, which is to
become a ‘guinea pig’ in his needs for consumerism and bliss!
The relationship
between God and humans is stopped. Due to the Cartesian theory of Dualism, God
is ousted from human life and is now considered to be a supreme perfect being,
a great mechanic who created the world and after that he left the world working
on its own, just like a clockmaker who after he has made a clock he lives it
ticking on its own.
At the same time
in the advanced countries of West Europe and of the U.S.A. people induced by
Calvin’s protestantic ethics will set up one of the most hideous economic
systems of exploiting man and the world, Capitalism. It may sound absurd, but
the foundations of the capitalistic system were actually religious. It is based
on Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, of which Luther and Calvin became
fans. The doctrine of Predestination refers to aristocratic elite of faithful
who have been selected by God in advance and will be saved. The visible sign
they have in order to be selected for salvation by God is their wealth. Wealth
and Profit never again reached such divine dimensions in the History of Mankind
– although it is still worshipped in our Capitalistic system, regardless of the
means used to achieve it, slavery, rape of nature, or inhuman working
conditions, in the so-called Third World .
THE
THREE HIERARCHS’ PREACHING ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP OF MAN WITH NATURE
Contrary to what
is happening in the West, in the East, when the three Hierarchs were called to
comment on the book of the Holy Writ, Genesis, they made a distinction between
Man and Nature, which is in fact the solution to the big ecological problem.
They accept the creation of both the world and the man as a result of the free
loving power of The Trinity God. Therefore when man looks around him, he
should actually see the loving power of God everywhere, even in the tiniest
things even if they are inanimate. So he can’t abuse nature because then he
refuses God’s love. In order to make this explicit let us quote a letter that
Elder Joseph the Hesychast sent to one of his spiritual children: “Listen to
the wild rocks, the secret theologians, to deliver profound meanings and spirit
to Lord. The voiceless theologians speak theology, the beautiful rocks and
everything in nature. Everything speaks with its voice or with its non-voice.
If you touch a tiny grass with your hand, it speaks out right away with its
natural odor. Hey! You don’t see me, but you have hurt me! And everything has a
voice, when moving with the wind they become a harmonic musical prayer to God.
And, what is to say about reptiles and birds? When the Saint sent his disciple
to tell the frogs to hush, they answered: “Be patient, until we finish the
matins.”
The harmonious relationship
between man and the environment is also apparent in the instance when God
assigns Adam the job of worker and protector of Paradise .
And the culmination of this relationship is delivered to us when all living
creatures, from birds to reptiles and beasts, are led before him to give them a
name.
The verb ‘know’, which has caused so many
sufferings to nature since the western spirituality interpreted it as possession and depredation of the object under investigation until it yields its
secrets to us, in the Pateric Orthodox thought it is interpreted as a relationship and it is regarded as the
most significant indeed since it is the same as the sexual, loving affair and
intercourse. “And Adam knew Eve his wife” – genesis narrates – and she
conceived, and bare Cain.” In the
Eastern Orthodoxy we don’t
need the nomination of a special day as the International Day for the
Preservation of the Environment, in order to remind us that we ought to respect
the Environment, because in every Sunday Service and in every celebration when
the faithful takes part in the Service of John the Chrysostom or of Basil the
Great, he/she is encouraged to experience the relationship with God, with the
other humans and with the environment. This thanksgiving action the faithful
does signifies the recognition of the material world as a gift and as a
blessing of God’s Grace and Love and not as a neutral object to be possessed
and exploited, to be used and abused. That’s why the divine services of the two
Hierarchs mentioned above are full of sacramentals and special blessings to God
for the integrity and salvation of the material creation as a whole. “Visit us,
Lord, with your kindness”, Basil the Great says, “Give us favourable and
beneficial winds. Deliver to us peaceful raindrops for the fruition of the
ground. Bless the current year with your kindness.” Let me refer to one more
blessing from the Divine Service of Mark the apostle. “Pray for good winds and
for fruit to be yielded from the ground. Pray for the harmonious raise of the
river waters. Pray for blessing rainfalls and for the ground seeds. Send
blessing rainfalls to where they are needed. Raise the river waters in
moderation by your grace. Increase the ground seeds for seed- and
harvest-time.”
SOLVING
THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM IS NOT AN EASY TASK
Of course we are
not deluded to believe that the great environmental problems are easy to solve.
Great profits are at stake every day, which make the solution even harder. Civilization
and economy nowadays are based not on consumerism but on excessive consumerism
of the products. Thus, our planet is plundered and depleted in order to cover
this need for excessive consumerism. We are all responsible for this plight
either we believe in God or not. Unfortunately we all take measures that solve
the problem only partly. We sometimes trust our governments which however,
serve the interests of those who have sponsored their election campaigns, so
they enforce laws for deforestation and building construction businesses. So we
see houses and cottages in the place of the trees and forests we used to see,
and all these houses belong to the elite of the society, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs
and so on so forth. And some other times we trust people who declare to be
ecologists just in order to be elected and as a result people and organizations
that have pure ecological motives are slandered. Here in Greece we cannot
forget that painful incident a few years ago when an ecologist female Member of
Parliament obstinately refused to withdraw her position to someone else since
this decision had been taken in advance among the ecological parties. Or stop
to think how the Green party – one of the greatest ecologist movements in
Europe – started in Germany
Yet, it is true
that such sickly phenomena appear in the field of the Church as well. The Abbot
of the Monk of Penteli in Greece
If we wish to save
our beautiful planet we ought to follow the path that the three Hierarchs
showed. And this is no other than the
path of love, of seeing the world as
the creation of the free loving power of The Trinity God. If man believes
in that he will force himself first and the authorities after to act in such a
way that this gem called Earth will be saved.
THE
LETTER AN INDIAN CHIEF SENT TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.A.
We would wish to
end this article with an extract from the letter that the Indian Chief, named
Suhami, sent in 1855 to the President of the U.S.A.
Writer Christos Pal
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