Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says about the Environment and Why It Matters

Abstract

In a book of 168 pages, Sandra Richter has articulated her earnest devotion to a fuller understanding of life than she once held, one that reaches beyond her Christian community’s standard definition. Richter is Chair of the Department of Biblical Studies at Westmont College and a member of the Committee for Biblical Translation of the New International Version of the Bible. Her manuscript comprises a series of nine essays, seven of which are called “chapters.” Following the nine are 23 pages of notes, 12 of bibliography, a list of a dozen websites that give help to those interested in earth stewardship, a one-page list of art credits, a 2-page subject index, and another 2-page index of Scripture references.The book’s careful organization seems calculated to communicate an important value; perhaps a theological declaration equivalent to the sensitive efficiency that should be reflected in the life of Richter’s ideal Christian. The seven essays specifically labeled “chapters,” in a book extolling and advocating for God’s good creation, must be intentional in number, particularly because they are enveloped by introductory and concluding articles identified as something other than “chapter,” leaving the seven called “chapter” as a numerical allusion to Gen 1:1–2:3. Besides the “week” allusion, Richter hints twice more at Hebraic messaging in the book’s overall structure. First comes the parallelistic feature of introduction and conclusion that embraces the whole. Then, within the chapters, she achieves a similar effect by the subject of chapters two and six. Despite the irregular position that ch. 1 occupies in terms of a regular chiasm, seeing parallelism in Richter’s titles and treatments requires no great effort of vision or imagination.Once ch. 1 has articulated “Creation as God’s Blueprint,” Richter discusses “The People of the Old Covenant and Their Landlord.” It is a practical first step, building on her theoretical foundation, in the fulfillment of the book’s purpose, “a biblical theology of humanity’s responsibility toward the garden” (p. 93). The final chapter, “The People of the New Covenant and Their Landlord,” is her practical last step and the completion of a secondary envelope structure within the chapters embraced by the larger introduction-conclusion envelope.The titles of her first and final essays, that is, her introduction and conclusion, highlight their parallelistic character by the pointed questions they pose: “Can a Christian Be an Environmentalist?” and—evoking Francis Schaeffer—“How Should We Then Live?” The latter question discloses Richter’s dream to turn the discoveries of her biblical and scientific research into something the everyday believer can use (p. vii). Her interest in day-to-day application is driven by her concern that environmentalism is an area of holiness and social justice that evangelical Christians hardly understand. For her, as a point of departure, holiness is a heavenly business, as distinct from American politics where the choice is often between being a pro-life patriot and being a good environmentalist.Second, Richter is aware of what I call strategic blindness, a summative phrase for what amounts to a failure of vision. Conscientious Christians see no connection between consumerism and care for widows and orphans because they do not see Madagascar’s 88% deforestation or mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia.Third, the evangelical understanding that this planet is destined for destruction helps to justify apathy toward pro-environmental policies as an appropriate theological posture.Stewards of Eden begins to address these concerns about her religious community by a personal narrative that gives historical perspective to the spiritual odyssey in which she has been able to play a leading role, particularly within evangelicalism’s academic community. Richter tells how she got into an activism that some may call “evangelism,” for environmental stewardship within her church and its scholarly forums. She tells of her discovery of the importance of teams to success in a venture as all-encompassing as caring for all God’s creation that is in our hands. Successful teams in such an undertaking will include a range of skills as varied as the human body’s many members, for example, Craig the numbers-cruncher who joined Richter’s campaign for better earth care at Asbury Theological Seminary, Kentucky, in 2005. Craig joined once he was “convinced of the moral imperative” (p. 6). Richter learned, too, of the crucial importance of leaders, such as Timothy Tennent, who took the presidential helm at Asbury in 2009 and brought his school along in the right moral direction.In summary, though, Richter argues that, whether at Asbury more than a decade ago or at another location introduced by this book, it must be the Bible, not politics or otherwise, that casts the deciding vote for Christian values and practice. And the Bible begins with God’s charge of environmental faithfulness to adam, all humanity, children, orphan, widow and poor included. Without a grounding in Genesis and a firm grasp of the principle of accountability in such prophetic themes as judgment and the day of the Lord, Christians are unprepared to understand the NT properly and relate effectively to God’s New Covenant with his people. Christians must also decide whether faithful earth stewardship will depend on ethics or on money and whether Christian courage or economic and financial viability will be their key motivation.Richter’s solid stewardship theology and commendable scientific purpose easily overshadow, but do not erase, reader concerns such as why she needs quotation marks around the word “week” (p. 7), or might she have extended her comment on tselem (p. 9). Are “woman” and “man” two tselems? Did God appoint two custodians? How did he appoint his representative, and, again, were there two of them? Similarly, was the man God’s vice-regent, or were there two? Might there have been a better way to describe the divine arrangement and the humans’ appointment?Connected to those questions is the matter of gender. Richter’s work hints provocatively, perhaps by omission, at an intriguing political dimension of gender equality. Richter celebrates multiple female colleagues and female supporters and dedicates the book to her daughters. Her hints may amount to multiple repetitions of this line: “woman and man are the embodiment of God’s sovereignty in the created order” (p. 9). There may or may not be implicit messaging here. Whether so or not, the intellectual and moral respect it grants to women is as much a note for the God of Genesis and of the New Covenant as is Richter’s explicit advocacy for the rest of his creation. Her campaign advances, and deservedly so, with every new reader of this book.