The Season of Creation Part 3
By Rod Benson
Norman Habel’s Earth Bible project and Australian Season of Creation teach Christians to notice dimensions of Scripture that anthropocentric habits of interpretation often obscure. Yet Habel’s work leaves unfinished questions. How should ecological interpretation lead to discipleship? How should Christians committed to biblical authority and the centrality of Jesus Christ understand eco-justice? And how might these concerns find expression within the distinctive theology and culture of the Uniting Church in Australia?
The UCA provides fertile ground for such reflection. Its Reformed, Congregational and Wesleyan inheritance takes Scripture seriously while welcoming historical, literary and scientific scholarship. Above all, the Basis of Union places the church within God’s movement toward the “reconciliation and renewal” of the whole creation. Eco-justice need not therefore be imported into Christian faith as an external ideology. It can arise naturally from Scripture and the doctrines of creation, sin, Christ, Spirit, discipleship and Christian hope.
Reading the whole biblical story
Evangelical biblical interpretation rightly insists that individual texts should be read within the larger scriptural story. Genesis declares creation good before humanity appears. Humans are formed from the adamah, the ground, and commissioned to serve and keep the garden. Psalm 24 declares that the Earth belongs to God; Psalm 104 celebrates a community of creatures sustained by divine generosity; and Job 38–41 challenges the assumption that everything exists for human purposes.
The New Testament enlarges this vision. John presents Christ as the Word through whom all things came into existence. Romans 8 portrays creation groaning and awaiting liberation. Colossians 1:15–20 declares that all things were created through and for Christ and that God’s reconciling purpose embraces “all things.”
This resonates strongly with the Basis of Union. Scripture is the “unique prophetic and apostolic testimony” through which the church hears God’s Word, while scholarly interpretation is welcomed. Christ remains decisively central, yet the horizon of redemption is cosmic: the Holy Spirit is given as the pledge and foretaste of the reconciliation and renewal that is God’s purpose for the whole creation.
Habel can therefore be received critically as a scholar who asks the church to hear Scripture afresh. A high view of Scripture need not resist ecological interpretation. If the Bible repeatedly speaks of land, water, animals, creaturely praise and cosmic reconciliation, attention to those themes follows from taking Scripture seriously.
Creation, sin and restraint
Christian ecological theology also requires a doctrine of sin. Environmental degradation is not merely a technical problem requiring better technologies. It can reflect familiar forms of disordered human desire: greed, waste, acquisitiveness, indifference and the assumption that increasing consumption is always desirable.
Scripture offers a counter-tradition of limits. Sabbath interrupts production. Jubilee challenges permanent accumulation and dispossession. Gleaning restricts an owner’s exclusive claim upon the harvest. Manna teaches sufficiency rather than hoarding. Fasting disciplines appetite, while the prohibition of covetousness challenges desires that can never possess enough.
This suggests an ecological spirituality of contentment. Stewardship remains useful, but it should be supplemented by creatureliness, service, restraint and interdependence. Humanity’s creation in God’s image establishes a distinctive vocation, but distinctiveness does not entail domination. Greater privilege entails greater responsibility.
The cross deepens this ethic. The pattern of Christ described in Philippians 2 is self-giving rather than self-maximising. Christian discipleship formed by the crucified Christ should therefore be capable of questioning lifestyles organised around limitless acquisition. Ecological repentance concerns not only what technologies Christians use but what kind of people they are becoming.
The Wesleyan inheritance of the UCA reinforces this connection between faith and practical holiness. John Wesley’s sermon, titled “The General Deliverance,” reflecting on Romans 8, envisaged God’s redemptive purposes extending to the animal creation. Ecological concern is therefore not entirely foreign to the theological traditions from which the Uniting Church emerged.
Eco-justice as neighbour-love
The strongest Christian argument for eco-justice may nevertheless be one of the simplest: Jesus commands us to love our neighbours as ourselves. Humans depend upon ecological systems for food, water, health, shelter and livelihoods. Environmental damage consequently becomes a question of justice, particularly when its effects fall disproportionately upon people with fewer resources.
Climate change makes this connection especially urgent, but eco-justice is broader than climate. Habitat destruction, species extinction, degraded rivers, pollution and loss of biodiversity also matter. This is particularly significant in Australia, with its extraordinary endemic biodiversity and serious record of species loss.
Neighbour-love also extends through time. Future generations have no direct voice in present political and economic decisions, yet they will inherit their consequences. Ecological responsibility is therefore an issue of intergenerational justice as well as responsibility toward present neighbours.
Christians may legitimately disagree about carbon pricing, nuclear energy, renewable technologies, taxation, regulation and other policy instruments. The church should resist partisan capture by distinguishing theological principles and moral ends from prudential judgments about political means. But disagreement about means does not remove the obligation to reduce serious foreseeable harm.
Within the Uniting Church, ecological discipleship must also engage its covenant relationship with First Peoples. Australian Christians do not worship on abstract “land”; they worship on Country.
Country should not simply be appropriated as another Christian ecological metaphor. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christians must speak for themselves about relationships among land, waters, living beings, culture, responsibility and belonging. This also requires attention to colonial histories in which ideas of possession and dominion could accompany dispossession. Habel’s later engagement with First Nations scholars points toward a richer Australian theology in which Scripture, creation and Country enter serious conversation without being collapsed into one another.
Spirit, mission and hope
Neighbour-love provides a compelling reason for ecological responsibility, but it is not the only reason. Habel asks a deeper question: does non-human creation matter even when no immediate human interest is at stake?
Job portrays God attending to creatures beyond human control. Psalm 104 celebrates animals within God’s providential care. Jonah ends with God’s concern not only for Nineveh’s people but also its animals, while Jesus declares that not even a sparrow is forgotten before God. Taken together, such texts provide strong grounds for a constructive Christian judgment: a species need not demonstrate economic value or usefulness to humanity in order to possess significance before God. Non-human creation matters to its Creator. This prevents Christian eco-justice from becoming merely enlightened anthropocentrism.
The pneumatology of the Basis of Union is especially relevant here. The church is the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” and the Spirit is God’s pledge and foretaste of the reconciliation and renewal toward which the whole creation moves. The church’s vocation is to serve that end. Ecological discipleship may therefore be understood not merely as human ethical effort but as hopeful participation in the Spirit’s renewing work.
This also places creation care within the scope of the mission of God. Evangelism and eco-justice should not be competitors. Christian mission includes proclamation and embodied witness. The gospel announces the lordship of Christ; discipleship demonstrates what obedience to that Lord looks like. This corresponds closely to the UCA’s understanding of mission as participation in God’s reconciliation and renewal of the whole creation.
Christian hope nevertheless resists both complacency and catastrophism. Creation includes beauty and abundance but also predation, disease, drought, suffering and death. Romans 8 offers a realistic image: creation is good, yet creation groans. Christians should neither minimise genuine ecological dangers nor speak as though catastrophe were inevitable and meaningful action impossible.
The Basis of Union describes the church as a pilgrim people, living between Christ’s resurrection and the promised consummation. Pilgrims do not possess the world absolutely. They receive life as gift, practise dependence and restraint, and travel toward God’s promised future. Hope rests finally not in environmental progress but in God’s faithfulness. Yet precisely for that reason, Christian hope encourages rather than excuses responsible action.
Beyond Habel
Habel’s ecological hermeneutic need not become the controlling method of Uniting Church biblical interpretation. His critique of anthropocentrism requires qualification, and his ecojustice principles require explicitly Christian theological grounding. Yet he perceived something important: Christians have sometimes read a Bible overflowing with land, seas, animals, trees, creaturely praise and cosmic reconciliation while imagining that God’s purposes concern almost exclusively humanity.
The UCA possesses strong resources for correcting that mistake. Its evangelical and Reformation inheritance takes Scripture and Christ seriously; its Wesleyan inheritance connects faith with practical holiness; its covenant with First Peoples summons it toward reconciliation and attentiveness to Country; and its Basis of Union places the church within God’s reconciliation and renewal of the whole creation.
Eco-justice is not an optional interest at the margins of Christianity but a natural expression of discipleship and neighbour-love. Christians care for creation because God created it; practise restraint because Earth belongs to God; protect non-human creation because it possesses value before its Creator; seek justice because present and future neighbours depend upon ecological flourishing; and participate in the Spirit’s renewing work because the destiny of creation rests finally in God’s reconciling purpose in Jesus Christ.
Rev Dr Rod Benson is General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council and a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia serving at North Rocks Community Church in Sydney.
Image source: Water Mission
All Told 