A few firsts this Monday evening: Our first collaborator since this blog has been revived, and certainly our first Lutheran blogger! Robin Lutjohann will help us explore this exciting passage of Laudato si that looks at our relation to creation, and our quest for a stronger ecological ethics, rooted in deep respect for human dignity, a respect grounded in the wisdom of sacred scripture, especially the Torah (though as Robin mentions, Francis will eventually look at our call to be more in communion with creation through the whole TaNaKh ( what Christians call the Old Testament. The Hebrew word is an Acronym built on the first 3 letters of the principle divisions of sacred scripture: Torah (teaching) Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings")).
Robin is the pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge, MA. He is a dual
German/American citizen, who received his education for ordained ministry at McGill University in
Montreal, Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, and Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, OH.
Baptized as an adult in Boston’s Charles River, he feels closely tied to the ecological and political life of this city. As a Lutheran, he understands himself as standing in a historical reform movement within the Western Catholic Church.
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In this section of Laudato Si, Pope Francis introduces the biblical foundations for ecological ethics. Later, he will move on to the Psalms, the Prophets, and the New Testament. But in this initial section he deals primarily with the Torah, the five books of Moses.
Appropriately enough, he begins at the beginning: He cites Genesis 1:26, the creation of human beings in the image of God, and argues that this story makes it impossible to deny the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. In doing so, he stands in the lineage of his predecessor Pope John Paul II’s passionate defense of human rights as a God-given and biblical founded non-negotiable. In fact, he quotes him: “Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”
This point resonates deeply with me, not only as a Christian but also as a German. My grandfather’s
generation is responsible for perhaps the worst crime in human history, the Holocaust. By their
participation or silence, millions were denied their God-given dignity, humiliated, dispossessed, and
systematically annihilated.It is important to remember, however, that the Nazis did not begin implementing the death camps right away. They started more slowly, chipping away gradually at the conviction of human dignity. First, they targeted society’s vulnerable, forcing the sterilization and then euthanasia of people with physical or mental disabilities. Hitler’s National Socialist government justified these successively escalating actions by making the argument that “non-productive” members of society were a drag on its resources and a blemish on the purity of the race. In other words, they were disposable. Quickly, the circle of “disposable” humans widened to include anyone who did not fit into the Nazi vision of society: Communists, members of the LGBT community, religious minorities like Jehovah’s Witnesses, and of course ethnic minorities, like Jews and Roma. But at the root of this slaughter was the denial of the conviction that human dignity was basic and given, no matter a person’s background, conduct, or life. Germany’s history stands as a warning to all of us. Curtailing human dignity in any way opens the floodgates of human evil. That is why the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany today begins with a brilliant, short, foundational statement: “The dignity of humanity is unimpeachable.” That is why the Bible begins with the affirmation of the divine image in human nature. And that is why Pope Francis begins his exposition on ecological ethics with the same sentiment.
But Francis builds on this ethical foundation of the Jewish Torah and the harrowing experiences of the twentieth century and takes the moral challenge to humanity one step further. Not only does the Bible insist on the inherent worth of every human being, nonhuman creatures are guaranteed rights as well! And like human rights, these are inherent and unconditional. This is not a novel concept, of course, not even in traditional Catholic doctrine. Francis quotes none other than the Catechism of the Catholic Church in arguing that non-human beings have inherent dignity “by their mere existence.” He goes on: “Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness.” ( LS 69)
The genius of the Pope’s argumentation here is not the novelty of its individual parts but rather the
juxtaposition of human and non-human dignity. He presents them as intertwined and inseparable. And so he moves swiftly from the story about humans made in the divine image (Gen 1:26) to the command to “till and keep” the Earth (Gen 2:15) to the Torah’s ethical injunctions against abusing animals (Deut22:4,6) and giving appropriate rest (Sabbath!) to the fields, just as to humans and animals (Ex 23:12).
It seems to me that the rhetorical strategy behind this section in Laudato Si’ is to convince those who
are already committed to human rights to expand their ideals in keeping with the earth-bound ethics ofthe Torah. Or, as Francis phrases it: “Clearly, the Bible has no place for tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures.”(LS 68)
With these words, Pope Francis moves decisively away from presentations of the Christian Gospel that focus exclusively on the well being and life of humans but regard non-human creatures are disposable resources to be exploited and ransacked for the sake of human convenience. Since the Age of Industrialization, Christians have misquoted the line in Genesis 1:28 about humans having “dominion”over the Earth as a justification for irresponsible stewardship. By speaking of human and nonhuman dignity and rights in the same breath, Francis makes an end to this historic distortion and positions the official teaching of the Catholic Church against it. That is to say: If you say you care about human beings, you must care about the planet as well. And if you are fighting for human rights, you have to fight for the rights of nonhuman creatures as well.
A great summary of this document, no matter
what your views on climate change are!!
Scientific evidence and economic research support this stance. We know that the world’s poorest
people will be disproportionately affected by climate change. They are the first to suffer, both because of geographical factors and because their inability to defend themselves against drought, adverse weather conditions, and other factors is much less developed than, say, coastal cities in the United States.Likewise, we know that the reduction of biodiversity and the poisoning of water resources make human life more difficult to sustain. We will either stand or fall together, human and nonhumans united in death and in salvation.
But even if such evidence were not overwhelmingly convincing, Pope Francis makes it crystal clear that the Bible’s own ancient witness already makes the same point. So, take it from the inherited historical experience of this German: We cannot afford to open the flood gates again. We are called by God and by common sense to learn from our forebears once more that the dignity of every creature is unimpeachable.
R.L
...moreover, the dignity of life is unimpeachable.
ReplyDeleteGreat work, Reverend. Hope the masses read it.