Last time we saw how Paul’s understanding of salvation stretches beyond humanity to include the whole creation. While Paul’s message about all creation groaning in longing for restoration is powerful in its first-century context, it has taken on an added significance in the midst of our twenty-first-century climate crisis. While many have welcomed what these verses can add to our thinking about our relationship with the planet, others have tried to minimize this. So today I’d like to explore this question and try to emerge with an interpretation that allows Paul’s words to responsibly and legitimately inform our understanding of our relationship with creation.
First let’s remind ourselves of the relevant verses:
Text
[19] For the eager longing of creation awaits the revelation of the ‘sons of God’. [20] For creation was subject to purposelessness, not of its own doing, but on account of the one who subjected it, in the hope [21] that creation itself will be freed from its enslavement to decay into the freedom of the glory of God’s children. [22] For we know that all of creation has been groaning and labouring together until now — [23] and not only creation, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly awaiting our adoption, the redemption of our bodies
Explore
(For the Experience and Encounter sections, please see the previous post.)
Those critical of using Romans 8 to support an ecological theology believe such a conversation is out of place and doing so undermines a legitimate anthropocentrism in Christian theology (see Kruse 344 and Tonstad 240f for helpful summaries). Some have expressed concern that the passage risks becoming “a mantra for Christian environmentalism,” at “risk of over-use and over-interpretation,” and that “ecologically-minded interpreters find in the text what is not there” (quotes from Tonstad 240). But this concern is dependent on an assumption that Christian theology is legitimately anthropocentric and concerns about the environment are therefore inherently foreign to Paul’s thought and Christian theology more generally.
This sets up a few interconnected questions we need to tackle if we want to emerge with a responsible interpretation of the text. Essentially, is concern for other-than-human creation foreign to:
- the Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism?
- the New Testament?
- the Christian tradition outside the Bible?
Then we’ll take another look at what the verse says, placing it in the context of what we see find.
Creation Theology in Early Judaism
Old Testament
Yesterday, we saw that the verses in question here strongly link back to Genesis 3 and its story about the origin and consequences of sin. But even before this story of the fall, Genesis 1 presented the natural world as lovingly and intentionally created by God. At every stage, creation is called “good,” and while humanity is given a beautiful blessing and vocation in Genesis 1.28, this blessing echoes the one already given to other-than-human creatures in 1.22 (Tonstad 244). This creation not only reflects the Wisdom of God in how it is made (e.g. Psalm 104) but is also brought to life through the work of the Holy Spirit (Psalm 104.30; ), and is given a kind of agency as it worships God through its life (Isaiah 55.12).
But lest we overstate our creation theology, this is far from a ‘nature religion’. For, all creation is contingent on God. God could withdraw the breath of life at any time and everything would return to dust (Job 34.12-15; Ecclesiastes 12.6-7). Moreover, in the biblical creation framework, humanity is given a further vocation to “subdue” the earth and exercise “dominion” over the living creatures (Genesis 1.26). I’ve explored this theme twice before (once in terms of Genesis 1 and once in my series “Setting our Stories Straight”), but to summarize, it seems best to understand these in terms care and concern for the wellbeing of the creatures (e.g., Ezekiel 34.4). And just as how in Ancient Near Eastern royal ideology a king was seen to govern as God’s appointed representative, so too is humanity’s power over creation is understood to be as God’s representative, and so it must be exercised within God’s will. So, while the creation theology here may be anthropocentric, it is not anthroponormative. Every part of creation has a God-given purpose and destiny. This brings us back to what Paul is saying in Romans 8: as a consequence of humanity’s failure to live up to its covenant responsibilities and vocation, creation is prevented from fulfilling that purpose and therefore is left in longing and lamentation (Romans 8.20).
We see this idea of creation suffering the consequences of humanity’s sin in passages like Isaiah 24.4-5, where the earth becomes a waste because of human transgression. While the land is subject to the consequences of human sin, this is not because God doesn’t care about it. In fact, the Law of Moses contains a provision for God removing the people from the Land of Promise should they abuse it by not allowing it Sabbath rest (Leviticus 26.33-36). In 2 Chronicles 36.20f, this is given as part of the rationale for the fall of Jerusalem and Babylonian Exile. In other words, it is part of the biblical canon that if the people mistreat the land, God will see to it that the land receives justice.
Because creation’s fate is so entwined with humanity’s, however, passages of Scripture that prophesy about a return to God’s ways extend the blessings of this salvation to all creation. Isaiah 11, for example, has its vision of lions and lambs and venomous snakes and children living in harmony, and Isaiah 65.27 and 66.22 promise a new (or renewed) heavens and earth.
All this to say, the clear witness of the Old Testament is that other-than-human creation is not marginal to the story, but rather its fate is wrapped up with humanity’s story. And what Paul says in Romans 8 fits this story perfectly (Tonstad 244ff; Eberhart). As Tonstad puts it, all of creation (humanity included) is enmeshed in a single “moral ecology.” When we sin, all creation suffers because our sin breaks our relationship with the world around us as much as our relationship with God (Tonstad 249f; cf. Nahum Sarna).
Second Temple & Rabbinic Judaism
As we’ve seen time and time again here, Second Temple Judaism saw the flourishing of apocalyptic literature. This genre operated on the biggest, most cosmic of scales (Tonstad calls it a “widescreen representation”). It’s no surprise then that the suffering and restoration of creation is a common theme in this literature (Kruse 343f; Tonstead 241f). If there is a spiritual war between good and evil, as this tradition imagined, its battlefield is the whole earth. The planet is caught up in our sin (e.g., 4 Ezra 7), and it is absolutely caught up in our salvation (1 Enoch 45:4-5; Jubilees 4:26; 2 Apocalypse of Baruch 31:5–32:6; 4 Ezra 7:30-32, 75). If I don’t have much to say here, it’s not because there isn’t much to say but that it’s already been said. Early Christianity as we see it in the New Testament was clearly an apocalyptic movement, and Romans is in many ways an apocalyptic document. So the parallels we see here between Paul’s understanding of creation’s participation in God’s salvation plan and Second Temple apocalyptic ideas are far from a surprise.
One further detail from this period that doesn’t really belong here but I’ll address here anyway, is that there is one important (and strange) example of Roman literature taking up a kind of apocalyptic messianism wherein the coming of a chosen one restores creation. This is Virgil’s Eclogues 4, which reads a lot like Isaiah 11 and which played an important role in the development of Roman imperial propaganda. It’s strongly implied that the child of promise was none other than Augustus Caesar, and that therefore imperial Rome was living in a new golden age, which benefited nature as much as humanity (Eberhart). If Paul was aware of this literature, it would make his message overtly rather than just implicitly anti-Imperial.
A few words about creation theology in the other major stream of early Jewish literature, rabbinic literature, might be helpful here. A midrash, likely from late antiquity, opposes the idea that creation was made for human flourishing by pointing out that there are many creatures whose activities are neutral or even harmful to humanity, yet “the Holy Blessed One carries out the divine purpose through every [living] thing, even through a snake, a scorpion, a gnat, or a frog (Genesis Rabbah 10.7). This idea that creation exists for its own purposes and belongs to God, not for humanity’s purposes or possession appears to be representative to the tradition, and certainly finds parallels in what Paul is saying in Romans 8.
Creation in Christianity
Creation in the New Testament
One thing the critics of ecological theology are correct in pointing out is that creation theme is not a major theme in the New Testament. But, what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in comprehensiveness. In fact, pretty much every conclusion we drew from the Old Testament we can also draw from the New:
- Creation has its own value and story apart from humanity: Jesus uses God’s concern and care for creation in his teaching against worrying (Matthew 6.26-30)
- Creation reflects God’s Wisdom: Humanity can rightly know God through creation (Romans 1.18ff); cf. the theology of the logos (John 1.14-17) and image (Colossians 1.15ff; 2 Corinthians 4.4)
- Humanity’s vocation is to care for, not ‘dominate’ creation: This is not a major theme, but for example, Jesus assumes that concern for an animal’s safety is more important than following the letter of the Sabbath laws (Matthew 12.11)
- Creation suffers because of human sin: Here in Romans 8.19-22
- Creation will be saved and restored along with humanity: Here, plus visions of the new heaven and new earth in 2 Peter 3.13 and Revelation 21.1; cf. Ephesians 1.9f. The new and old creations seem to relate to each other in the same way as Jesus’ resurrected and old bodies. There is a complete transformation, yet just as Jesus still bore the scars of his crucifixion, so too is there also continuity. Belief in a new creation is not license to destroy the old.
So, while yes it’s true that creation theology is not a major theme in the New Testament, where the New Testament alludes to creation, it does so in full alignment with the more fulsome picture painted by the Old Testament.
Creation in Romans 1-8
Several scholars in my study, even those sympathetic with ecological theology, consider Paul’s turn to creation here in Romans 8.19-22 surprising and “without warning” (Eberhart; cf. Tonstad 238). But is this surprise warranted? Let’s take a look.
In the basic structure of Romans, 1.18-8.39 forms a unit, ‘Part 1’ of of his arguments in support of the thesis in 1.16-17 that the gospel reveals God’s justice in saving both Jews and Gentiles within the same plan and community. This big section began with a reference to a kind of creation theology, stating that it is possible to rightly know God through what God has made, but our refusal to do so has subjected us to futility or purposelessness (1.18-22). And now, the section ends with a reference to creation, and specifically its being likewise subjected to purposelessness. This callback makes sense, since the section is all about such futility and what God has done about.
The sub-section of Romans 5-8 has been all about the contrast between humanity in Adam and humanity in Christ. But again, creation is inherently and intimately tied to Adam’s story. His sin not only created the conditions of our enslavement to sin and death that Paul has been talking so much about, but also created creation’s condition of enslavement to decay and degradation that he brings up here. We might even think of chapters 6-7 as a digression in which Paul tries to ward off misrepresentations of his ideas, and this as his return to his original line of thought. Our participation in the new humanity in Christ is as much the solution to creation’s problems as it is to our own.
So, the turn to creation here is only surprising inasmuch as we aren’t paying attention to the bigger picture and to the full consequences of the theology Paul has developed in Romans thus far. As Eberhart rightly concludes, “The drama of reconciliation and liberation of the world is a cosmic one.” Or, though writing from a rather different set of theological convictions, Kruse concludes: “God’s redemptive work not only restores the lost glory of human beings (cf. 3:23) but also involves the renewal of the whole creation” (Kruse 342).
Creation in Christian Theology
What then about the claim that ecological theology is nothing more than a foreign, postmodern encroachment into Christian theology? A full answer to this would take several books, but in brief:
The Church Fathers such as Origen and Athanasius interpreted Romans 8.18ff as meaning that other-than-human creation has a share in our salvation (Jewett (2006) 517). More broadly, the Eastern fathers, led by St. Maximus the Confessor, applied John’s logos theology to the whole of creation, maintaining that every created thing expresses something of the eternal Logos that is the wisdom behind the universe. Later in the East, St. Seraphim of Sarov’s fame was grounded in his peaceful coexistence with nature. And, in recent decades, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, among others, has made Eastern Orthodoxy — hardly a tradition sympathetic to postmodern or progressive causes — a hotbed of eco-theology.
In the medieval west, St. Francis of Assisi and his interpreter St. Bonaventure developed a robust theology and spirituality of creation. This is perhaps best seen in Francis’s famous poem The Canticle of the Sun, in which he (among other things) addresses the Sun and Moon as ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. Creation theology also played an important role in mystical theology in the West, as seen in such figures as St. Hildegard of Bingen, who bore witness to God’s Life in the world asn all-powerful force of Green, and Julian of Norwich, whose image of creation as something small and precious like a hazelnut preceded and foreshadowed our ‘small blue dot’ perspective of our planet by centuries. In the seventh century, Brother Lawrence encountered the transcendent in the renewal of the leaves on a tree. And in the twentieth, Thomas Merton taught that “We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time.” Likewise, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey wrote: “Transcendence … is always through the world. It is through the natural that we encounter the supernatural, although the supernatural eludes the ability of the natural to exhaust its meaning” (God, Church, World, 26f).
All this is to say that even if people today are more inclined than perhaps we’re used to to focus on ecological themes in our tradition, they do so in agreement with a consistent Christian theological witness to the importance of creation. Ancient and medieval, Eastern and Western, academic and mystical — the voices of our tradition are unanimous in this. It is therefore the modernist and not the postmodern voices that are the outliers and out of step with Christian thought writ large.
Challenge
All this said, there is no doubt that modernist expressions of Christianity helped to bring about our present environmental crises, justifying treating the natural world as nothing other than tools and resources for humanity to use and abuse as we see fit. The rise of ecological theology in recent decades has been a response both to this fact, and to the increasing accusations by ecologists and Indigenous theologians that Christianity is inherently problematic when it comes to the environment.
As this post has demonstrated, what is needed to combat damaging ideas about humanity and the wider world is not to jettison Christianity, but to renew and proclaim its innate cosmic vision. This is not a hands-off approach to the natural world, but insists that humanity, as part of creation, has a role to play in its proper maintenance and functioning (Witherington 223; Eberhart). But far from being a cause for complacency, this vocation should motivate us all the more to get our act together: In creating conditions that make life as we know it impossible for much of creation, we are not only sowing the seeds of our own destruction, but also violating our created purpose as stewards of God’s creation. Just as the Spirit groans with us in our suffering, so must we groan alongside creation in its suffering (Eberhart).
(For similar reflections grounded in Indigenous cultural revitalization and critique of the West, see posts in my series Setting our Stories Straight and Pathways of Peace.)
Expand
This study has demonstrated that far from being an outlier or aberration, a theology that brings all of creation into God’s salvation plans has been the norm for Christian theology. Our faith is not about ‘me and Jesus’, or even humanity and God, but about the whole cosmos and all of the complex web of relationships therein.
Summary & Conclusions
Far from from being strange or unexpected, Paul’s discussion of creation’s suffering and hopeful expectation of salvation draws on a long biblical and theological pedigree. Creation’s destiny is inextricably tied up with our own. Our sin knocked it off course, and so it rightly awaits its restoration and fulfillment — which means humanity getting its act together; something Paul believes is made possible in and through participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
* For full references, please see the series bibliography.
Matthew Root 