A Green Augustine: on Learning to Love Nature Well
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Theology and Science, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2005 A Green Augustine: On Learning to Love Nature Well ARTHUR O. LEDOUX Abstract Augustine of Hippo has expressed a vision of beauty in nature that could, if better known, encourage traditional Christians and secular ecologists to affirm the ground they have in common. For Augustine the ideal would be to see nature as God sees it, feeling deeply both its beauty and its impermanence, loving nature without clinging to it. With such clear seeing would come love and the motivation for sustained and skillful action. This paper discusses Augustine’s paradigm and what blocks us from seeing it, and then frames principles for an authentically Augustinian response. Key words: Augustine; Ecology; Creation; Nature; Genesis; Love; Providence; Miracle; Sin Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you too. [T] here was such a glory of God all about me; birds, trees, meadows, sky, only I lived in shame and dishonored it all and did not notice the beauty and glory. (Markel, Father Zossima’s brother in Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.) Introduction to a paradigm Our eco-crisis is in part a crisis of spirit. The fundamental attitudes toward nature our actions express deeply matter, for we never abuse what we truly love. Since the lives of so many beings and species depend on how we humans respond to this crisis, it behooves us to uncover and examine the fundamental attitudes we are enacting. Perhaps it is not too late to change the way we think; perhaps we can uncover paradigms that would encourage the transformations we need. At first, it may seem bizarre to seek such a paradigm in the works of Augustine of Hippo. When Gordon Kaufman, for example, recently criticized Christianity for focusing so intently on God’s relationship to humanity that concern for ‘‘nature’’ became peripheral at best, he mentions Augustine as a prime offender.1 In addition, there is indeed evidence for this view. Over and over again Augustine calls on us to turn within to seek God: ‘‘with my body’s senses I had already sought him from earth to heaven, . but what lay within me was better.’’2 The turn within was ‘‘better’’ because Augustine discovered that ‘‘You were more intimately present to me than my innermost being.’’3 ISSN 1474-6700 print/ISSN 1474-6719 online/05/030331-14 ª 2005 Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences DOI: 10.1080/14746700500317313 332 Theology and Science However, there is more here than meets the eye. The point of turning within was emphatically not to become mired in self-absorption but to transcend the painfully limited self, open fully to a loving God, and then become a transformed person, a new creation4 who is committed to seeing the world the way God sees it and to doing God’s will. Perhaps surprisingly Augustine turns out to be strongly critical of the biased way in which humans commonly view nature. He himself went through a revolution in his thinking about nature, which opened him to a perspective that is both nuanced and affirmative. Given the seminal importance of Augustine to the Christian tradition, this is a paradigm worth recovering and considering.5 Common seeing: the need for a new paradigm Augustine thinks that we most commonly view nature with either greed or aversion. Greed distorts our perception of nature. Instead of seeing nature as it is in itself, we use the lens of ‘‘utility’’ and see only opportunities for gain. We prefer things like bread and gold that serve our desires over things like mice and fleas that are real but inconvenient, ‘‘[a]nd so strong is this preference, that, had we the power, we would abolish the latter from nature altogether, whether in ignorance of the place they hold in nature, or, though we know it, sacrificing them to our own convenience.’’6 These words about the impact of human ignorance and self- centeredness on nature seem prophetic; this is a mind-set that can lead to the extinction of species. Aversion too warps our view of nature. We fear the many dangers nature harbors for us7 and are disgusted with such signs of decay as corpses and excrement ‘‘whose dissolution is loathsome to us in our fallen state by reason of our own mortality.’’8 We can easily identify with this revulsion, yet there is already a hint of a new perspective here: decay repels us because it reminds us of our own death, implying this is more a problem with us than with nature. Augustine understood the deeply human source of such negative views of nature. Morally, greed and aversion are typically9 expressions of the deep- rooted selfishness in all humans, sad manifestations of our fallen and sinful nature.10 Intellectually, aversion especially was reinforced by Augustine’s fervent involvement with Manicheism and then neo-Platonism. Augustine had spent nine years as a Manichee, viewing the physical world as a realm mired in darkness and evil, contaminated by matter which was independent of and antagonistic to light and God. Manichees thought it tragic for a soul to be trapped in a body; they empathized with the plight of all living beings that were likewise imprisoned11 and sought to liberate all souls through ascetic practices. The turmoil of light and dark, which is the world of nature, is a sign of God’s weakness, not an expression of God’s glory.12 Ideally, such a world would not exist. Neo-Platonism was far more sophisticated. Matter was no longer a hostile independent principle but rather the least real and most mutable emanation of the supremely real and eternal One. The world of nature was a realm of shadows that A Green Augustine 333 dimly reflected the beauty and goodness of this ultimate transcendent principle. There is deep ambivalence here. On the one hand, the world of nature does embody as much beauty and goodness as its material limitations allow; it is a noble image of higher realities, which elicits appreciation from the sensitive observer.13 Nonetheless, the great goal of human life is to raise ones mind above the ever-shifting shadows and seek ecstatic (re)union with the One as ultimate source. This ascent requires a turning away from the body and its desires, which are a major hindrance to higher intellectual and spiritual life.14 The world of nature is not a consciously positive creation of the One; it is a fading emanation.15 A revolution in seeing: the paradigm shifts As formidable as these negative views of nature were, however, Augustine’s thought here underwent a profound redirection. He came in the end to affirm that ‘‘[t] here is no wholesomeness for those who find fault with anything You have created’’16 and that ‘‘[h]e who denies that all things . are in the hand of the one Almighty is a madman.’’17 What has intervened, of course, was his conversion to Christianity whose doctrines of creation, incarnation, and resurrection so strongly affirm the positive value of the bodily. Now he insists that ‘‘[e]verything that exists is good . You have made all good things . [and] there are absolutely no substances that You have not made.’’18 Christianity has overwhelmed all other influences on Augustine’s thought and it is a major source of whatever eco-friendly themes we can find there. It initially directed his thinking onto a revolutionary new track and its influence over his positive valuation of the body only deepened over time.19 His most lyrical writing about nature came in the last book of the City of God,20 which he finished only four years before his death. Christianity presented him with a view of nature that ran against his grain; he struggled hard to understand and assimilate what his faith affirmed. We get a sense of his challenge when we note that Augustine grappled at length with the creation narratives at the beginning of Genesis no fewer than five times throughout his career: (1) On Genesis, against the Manichees (389); (2) On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, an Unfinished Book (394); (3) Confessions, Books 11 – 13 (397 – 401); (4) On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis (401 – 415); and (5) City of God, Book 11 (413 – 426). What God sees: wondrous implications of the paradigm What Augustine learned from these repeated encounters with Genesis was profound and invaluable, ‘‘God saw all that he had made and he found it very good.’’21 As Augustine puts it, ‘‘Solely by your abundant goodness has your creation come to be and stood firm . everyone one of them [is] exceedingly good because they are from you, the one supreme Good.’’22 He has harsh words for those who think God is too spiritual to be involved in this alien physical world, 334 Theology and Science a view he himself had once held,23 ‘‘People who allege this are mad, because they do not contemplate your works through your Spirit, nor recognize you in them.’’24 In Augustine’s view, what does God see in nature to the degree that we can comprehend it as guided by revelation? What would we see if we could contemplate God’s works through the Spirit? Taking our cue from Genesis, what God sees, and what we would see is wondrous goodness and beauty. We would first be led beyond greed. When we contemplate nature simply from the viewpoint of reason, we see what is true which is ‘‘what value a thing in itself has.’’ On the other hand, looking with ‘‘the necessity of the needy or the desire of the voluptuous,’’ our minds stray toward darkness.25 In short, we need to respect the integrity nature has quite independent of us, ‘‘it is not with respect to our convenience or discomfort but with respect to their own nature that the creatures are glorifying to their Artificer.’’26 Likewise, we would see how limiting aversion is to our understanding.