Historical assessments of the impact of the Protestant Reformation on the orientation to and care of creation in Western culture give us little reason to observe Reformation Sunday with gratitude. The following comment from Michael Northcott’s The Environment and Christian Ethics is representative:
Protestant theologians emphasized more strongly than their medieval forebears both the fallenness of nature, and its consequent fearfulness, and they treated of nature as a resource created entirely for human purposes. Through its human use and transformation by Christian people nature might also be gradually redeemed from the effects of the Fall. Protestants sought to remove any vestige of spiritual power in the natural world, as represented in medieval Catholicism in pilgrimages to sacred places, or in festivals around sacred wells or site of divine activity. They sought to purge the landscape of the sacred, and locate the site of God’s activity entirely in the individual self. The work of salvation involved the movement of the heart and mind towards a state of grace by the inspiration of that gift of faith which, as Luther taught, alone of all God’s gifts in creation, could work for a person’s salvation. This inward and redemptionist shift in Protestant theology produces a doctrine of creation far more instrumentalist and secular than that of the medievals. As George Hendry argues, Luther’s doctrine of creation ‘reduced the whole world of nature to a repository of goods for the service of man.' (Northcott, p. 52).
We cannot begin to assess the validity of these far-ranging judgments here. As we will note below, there are themes in Luther’s theology that run counter to these generalizations. Nevertheless, what Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler said about the development of the Reformation tradition in his famous “Called to Unity” address in 1961 is still largely valid:
“In the midst of vast changes in man’s relation to nature the sovereignty and scope of grace was, indeed, attested and liberated by the Reformers. But post-Reformation consolidations of their teaching permitted their Christic recovery of all of nature as a realm of grace to slip back into a minor theme . . . For fifteen centuries the Church has declared the power of grace to conquer egocentricity, to expose idolatry, to inform the drama of history with holy meaning. But in our time we have beheld the vision and promises of the Enlightenment come to strange and awesome maturity. The cleavage between grace and nature is complete. Man’s identity has been shrunken to the dimensions of privatude within social determinism. The doctrine of the creation has been made a devout datum of past time (Sittler, ‘Called to Unity,” in Evocations of Grace, ed. by Steven Bouma-Prediger and Peter Bakken, pp. 43, 45).
For Sittler, it is the Paul of Romans 8, Ephesians 1, Philippians 2, and Colossians 1, not Romans 3, that would point the way for future theological reflection adequate to the ecological challenge of our time. Recent contributions to Pauline scholarship have begun to fill out this expectation (See David G. Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate, Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in a Time of Ecological Crisis, especially Chapter 6, “The Construction of a Pauline Hermeneutical Lens.”)
Thus echoes of Sittler’s challenge to the Reformation tradition sound yet, and themes other than “justification by grace through faith” are considered significant resources “for meeting creation’s travail,” in the phrase of Larry Rasmussen: Luther’s theology of the cross, the theological principle of finitum capax infiniti, and the image of creation as God’s masks lend power to a renewal of the tradition that undergirds an understanding of humans as imago dei, those who “love earth fiercely, as God does” (See Rasmussen’s Earth Community Earth Ethics, pp. 270-94, for a brief exposition of these themes.) Yet “grace through faith” nonetheless holds its central place:
Faith is the name of the strong power behind the renewal of moral- spiritual energy. It squarely faces the fact there will never be decisive proof beforehand that life will triumph. Yet it still acts with confidence that the stronger powers in the universe arch in the direction of sustaining life, as they also insist upon justice. World-weariness is combated by a surprising force found amidst earth and its distress. Creation carries its own hidden powers. It supports the confidence of the gospel that a steadfast order exists that bends in the direction of life and gives it meaning. (Ibid., p. 352).
Indeed, what strikes this reader of the texts appointed for this Sunday is that in the wake of the realization that the human community has entered a new geological era identified as the Anthropocene, when we humans have demonstrated the power to fundamentally change the direction of Earth's evolutionary development, the themes listed speak with ever greater force. Taking the readings one by one, we see how that might show that Luther's theology is at least part of what we need for our preaching in these times.
Psalm 46, the basis for Luther's hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God, says “we should not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea.” A piece of bold poetic thought on the part of the author, no doubt. But what if these things are really happening? This summer's fires, the melting of the mountains in Nepal, the swallowing up of the South Sea Islands, are some of the fearsome events that illustrate what the Anthropocene might mean for the world.. Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics has written of the Defiant Earth as “the fate of humans in the Anthropocene.” The psalmist counters with the assurance that though the nations are in an uproar, the “Lord of hosts is with us': there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.” Food for our faith!
Jeremiah 31: 31-34 speaks of that same God as the One (reading ahead to verse 35) “who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the Lord of hosts is his name.” But this God is also the author of a New Covenant, which, in Reformation experience, supports the new work of the Reformers bringing a reformed church into existence. Thus says this Lord, the prophet writes (verse 37), “if the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will reject all the offspring of Israel because of all they have done.” It isn't that great a stretch of the imagination for contemporary readers to see in the culture of the Enlightenment and the modern world something of that order of change, as the Living Presence of God (Larry Rasmussens's favorite name for God) extends to global reach. Likewise, the God who rebuilds the City of God is clearly a restoring God, who might well establish a new covenant with all those who work in love to restore the Earth.
Romans 3:19-28 offers us an opportunity to envision a community characterized by God's righteousness, that is, a world working the way God intends it to work. (This is a meaning reported to be a favorite of Joseph Sittler). Jesus’ way of love leads the new community to love what God loves, as God loves it in the act of sending Jesus, expanding the community of grace to encompass all nations and all creatures.
Finally, John 8:31-37 suggests that true freedom is found, not in freedom over against the powers of the Earth, but in the power of love to work with the Earth in an ecologically informed and spiritually sustained manner by the global community, inspired and strengthened by the creating Spirit of God. Yes, the whole Earth, working together with the whole human community, has the goal of a new creation. The Earth, which might have risen in defiance against the works of the human community, is in this vision brought back into a sustainable community of life. The God of creation is indeed present, as Martin Lurther taught, “in, with, and under” all created being, enjoying it, suffering with it, renewing it.
Know this then. The community of the new covenant will eventually embrace the whole earth in love. Not just the gardens of those who practice local ecology, but all the soils and skies of the world. If the United States of America is not with God's will (perhaps especially now), and even against it, it will not in the end be so! Earth and humankind will be loved in the freedom of the God who embodies Godself in the creation.
Here's how David Rhoads, a Lutheran New Testament scholar, boldly envisions the new creation:
Imagine a world in which all energy was renewable, energy provided freely by the universe. Imagine the soil and forests restored to sing God's praises, native plants cultivated everywhere to feed humanity equitably, fresh water rationed so that there was enough for all, the air pure, the water clean, and the land renewed. Imagine a world in which work is safe and meaningful and productive. We can imagine laws and policies and systems in place to foster and promote such a world. And people giving reverence to life and enjoying its beauty and its usefulness and God our companion. This is rapture in reverse. Instead of taking people out of the world, God pitches a tent here, dwelling among us. This could be the ethos of our life together.
Dr. Rhoads continues with a vision of your congregation as a healing center for creation. We need not quote him in entirety. The details represent the full agenda of every care of creation team. His point is that
with these visions we should take bold steps to make this a reality now! If there is to be a new reformation of our church, we need to be persistent in our determination, pervasive in our efforts, and comprehensive in our vision. We need to talk about this, preach about this, plan about this and demonstrate it to ourselves and to the world. It needs to be part of our life together, and our mission, pervading the ethos of our community and our world. And we need to do it unilaterally without waiting for the world to go along first. (Reflections on a Lutheran Theology of Creation: Foundations for a New Reformation, Seminary Ridge Review 15, no.1.2012; 1-49.).
Headlines in the Minnesota Star Tribune the week of this writing (9/14) announced an “EPA limiting emissions repealed” and “Warming has nations in a fight to survive.” The current administration obviously doesn't have the foggiest notion of what we humans are up against, much less from where our help (and our true freedom) cometh!
Rev. Dr. Dennis Ormseth
St Paul, MN
Dennis Ormseth has been engaged in care of creation for over thirty years. As a student of Dr Joseph Sittler at the University of. Chicago, he learned to see care of creation as an integral part of Christian faith and ministry. He brought this vision to life as Pastor of Lutheran Church of the Reformation in St. Louis Park, and in the organization of Care of Creation activities in the Twin Cities area. In retirement he has written care of creation commentary on the Sunday lectionary.