INTRODUCTION

The main focus on this paper is to study the significant of

the ecological face of Christ. I will begin by defining the

term ecology in order to understand the nature, to help us set

the direction for this study.

From being a little known technical word that had to be

defined every time it was used,’ ecology has now become a

household word. And, in fact that is what it should be as

οікоѕ is the related root word. Just as with the word

‘economy’ the root is the Greek word prefix eco which means

‘house’ or dwelling place.

Technically, ecology is the science that deals with

interrelationship in and between organisms, living and non

living, with in the environment. What is ecology? How is this

related to the face of Christ? It deals with also every area

of life and society. All of life is interconnected and hence

everyone in some way or another will have to get to grips with

ecological concerns.

DEFINITION

According to the Intermediate Dictionary, “Ecology simply

means the branch of biology that deals with the relation of

living things to their environment and to each other. It is

the study of the relationship between all things in every

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diversion. Everything is interconnected. Ecology involves

natural environment, plant life, water and air.1

Christological Concept

The Face of Christ

in it’s Creation

Karl Barth interprets the connected terms of expectation and

revelation, slavery and freedom, suffering and glory, this

reality and hope as the Christological definition of human

kind and the world”.2

Christ face is a loving face, patient, nurturing, self for the

life of others. The food and drink which sustain us. The

appearance and habits of living things reflect the freedom

from which they fountain forth. No two mango trees or oaks are

exactly alike. No leaf or flower copies another. Every tree

1 M. H. Scargill, The Intermediate Dictionary(Canada, 1957) 2792 David G. Hallman, ‘Eco Theology”, Orbis, MaryKnoll (New York, USA 1994) 47.

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has its own style of being free, its own identity and

personality.

Until then, we have to force the “rich farmers” to store in

order to share, to till the land in order to feed people, to

work the land and not to destroy it but to care for God’s

creation. Whoever works the land must take account of the

social responsibility of the land and pay attention to the

generations to come that will need it. There is no salvation

of the human being without salvation of nature. The human

being is within nature and nature is within the human being.

Heaven and earth is the meaning and aim of all life.

The

Suffering Face of Christ

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The creation is suffering. Creation in this is the subject of

groaning as a woman in labor. While Christ himself has risen,

those who follow him are still in the world which he left, a

world of suffering, pain and destruction. They have to live

hope in the midst of despair. There thousands and thousands of

examples, climate change, land degradation, water pollution,

deforestation and habitat destruction. The suffering is

described as labor pains.

Being in labor is an impressive experiences. The pain starts

and you can no longer stop the process. The women may scream-

or if her patriarchal tradition forbids it, she will use all

her energy to avoid screaming. There is sweat and blood, there

are tears. At the high point of pain, when it comes unbearable

and you have the feeling that you are about to die, the child

is born. There is new life just at the moment when you feel

that there is no sense in this suffering, no longer any use in

trying. It is like this with creation, suffering face of

Christ. It screams. There is blood, sweat and tears from what

God has created.

Why worry during the process of pain?

But there are dead children are born with drug addiction,

Children are born who have no chance to live. If there is

suffering, then there will be glory. This means to act in

hope. God will save life. A great deal of spiritual strength

is needed to face reality and still maintain hope. We have

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learned to accept that there is a history of nature, a

suffering of nature. Nature is not object but subject. We are

part of the suffering of Christ. In destroying what God has

created we destroy ourselves.

Humankind causes the most horrible suffering of Christ. This

starts with how we look at our we look at our own bodies and

it goes on to the way we look at nature and treat it.

The mother Earth –

Feminist Perspective

The earth is our mother, the abiding source of life for all

living things. Breathing, eating, drinking, we are ever

nurtured at her breasts in her womb.

The earth is interior to human existence. Multiple

relationships to the earth in the shape of work, food,

knowledge, contemplation and gift-giving is constitutive of

the human. The earth is our bodily-self, our common body

inseparably and forever. According to Francis of Assisi “All

praise is yours…. through Sister earth our Mother. Who feeds

us in her sovereignty and produces various fruits with colored

flowers and herbs.”3

3 Hallman, 137

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The relation between the earth and us is to be one of respect

and love. How does one relate to one’s mother, and how does

one repay a mother’s gifts. The earth and the things it holds

are not to be taken for granted, nor treated as dead, nor

merely used as if they no identity and truth of their own.

They have, therefore they deserve to be recognized,

acknowledged, and respected. Witness of modern scientist

believer “Now the earth can certainly clasp me in her great

arms. She can swell me with her life, or draw me back into her

dust. She has become for me, over and above herself, the body

of him who is, and of him is coming.”⁴

In him the earth does indeed become the face of Christ and the

place of saving encounter. In Christ resurrection, the earth,

which has seen and borne in its bosom so much death and dying.

In Christ the earth has become supremely honored, seated as it

is at the right hand of God. The earth is liturgical reality.

We celebrate the earth and in her we celebrate her God, our

God.

⁴ Hallman, 138

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A

Jewish Perspective

The Jewish Biblical Tradition contains ”the very seeds needed

to save all man kind- the true Adam and nurture the living

planet- the Adamah.”4⁵ In this respect, nature is recognized

in its concreteness and considered as one concludes that,”

while nature has value independent of human interests, and

expresses the creative power of God, human values must be seen

in the light of servant hood and stewardship co-partnering

with God in the work of God’s creation”⁶

The concept of humanity’s dominion over nature was not

intended to be exercised in the context of subduing the earth

of replenishing the earth. Human kind, as protector and

guardian of the earth, has certain limitations already set by

God. To subdue the earth is simultaneously an acknowledgement

that humankind has no rights of ownership or authority over

creation. To Anderson, when Biblical motif of human domination

over nature is understood in the full context of Israel’s

Creation Theology, then the present practices of exploitation

are called in to question, thus summoning people to new

responsibility.⁷ An emphasis on the concept of the stewardship

of creation in Judaism therefore advocates conservation and

4⁵ Ama’amalele Tofaeono, Aiga- The household of Life,”(Erlanger Verlag fur Missionvnd Okumene, Erlangen, 2000)15⁶ Tofaeno, 16⁷ Tofaeno, 16f

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sustainability, in contrast to domination of the natural

environment.

DAVUILEVU THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE

Title: The Ecological Face of Christ

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Submitted to: Department of Theology

Programme: Bachelor of Divinity- year one

Course code & Title: TH 121- Christology in Context

Presented by: Verenaisi Toga

Lecturer: Rev. Josefa Turagacati

Due date: 24/08/2012

FIJIAN PERSPECTIVE

The ecological face of Christ in land issues. Ownership of

land and land tenure in Fiji is of prime importance. Land

matters are tied up emotionally and sentimentally with the

owner. To the Fijians and his way of life at the advent of the

European settlement the giving of land as a gift to someone

coming to the area was customary. Fijians is very much

attached to his land and it seen as a security against others.

The Fijian gets very upset and disturbed emotionally over the

question of the sale or lease of the land.

The land is seen as a security but land is of little value if

it is not used and something gained from it. It is remanding

us that it is the land which possesses us, not we it. The

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sacred place of our tribe to get the strength of the earth… we

say the earth is our mother, we cannot own her she owns us.

Land is not possession, land is human beings. The land should

never be a market commodity put up for sale and haggled over,

any more than our own bodies and selves, or the self and body

of our mother. The earth is sacred. The’ Vanua ‘is sacred. The

land is God’s family, our sister and mother, our partner in

life and worship. The land is’ mother’ the source of

nourishment, survival and indeed life.

An Anlytical Reflection

God prepared an environment for the human community: the focus

is on the people. God formed human being(adam) from the soil

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of the ground (adamah) he breathed into the human’s nostril’s

the breath of life, and the human became a living being

(nephesh haya). It is by the breath of God that a human lives.

If that breath is taken away, the humans towards nature? Who

created the earth ad heaven? Where do we come from? Where do

we suffering death? Why does the women suffer at the time of

delivery? What is the relationship between humans and nature?

What about the animals, plants and birds of the air?

Christ himself, his closeness to the earth, asking us to learn

from the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, his

commitment to a kingdom that grows as a seed which germinates

ad sports, his response to the hungry, his breaking the bread

ad pouring out the wine. In the face of Jesus we see that

power values are transformed into bonding values. The

temptations of Jesus, his constant struggle with the

disciples, the last supper, the washing of the feet. The

bonding values are integral to the ecological view of reality.

For plato and other Greek philosophers, woman is a kin to

matter and its irrational passions, while man is a kin to

reason and the spirit. Reason must be dominate the body just

as man dominate women.

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Eco Feminism

In countries like Asia ad Africa where women are degraded to

menial role, in some contexts.

Eco- feminists agree that exploitation of nature and that of

women have his common root. In the Indian Culture has reduced

women to subordinate roles through their traditional mothering

and nurturing. This contributed substantially to the abuse of

both women and creation. It is assumed in the Indian mindset

that since women are able to give birth to and suckle new

life, since they have traditionally be on the ones most

affected by the depletion of natural resources, their

responsibility is to care for the children and to imposed

restrictions on woman, domesticating them and holding them in

hostage to the precarious survival of their families. It has

also been the basis for associating women and nature with the

base, the inferior, the degraded, used, abused and discarded.

The tree captures the life giving thrust and power of the eco-

feminist movement. Its roots go deep into the soil of Mother

Earth, strengthening it against erosion yet sucking its life-

giving moisture. Ecological destruction and the

marginalization of women, we know how, have been the

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inevitable results of most development programmes and projects

based on such paradigms, they violate the intergrity of one

and destroy the productivity of the other. Women as victims of

the violence of patriarchal forms of development, have risen

against it to protect nature and preserve their survival and

sustenance.5⁸

Christ Revealed himself through Nature

The earth and everything init are part of God’s creation and

therefore should be treated appropriately. If God is

everywhere, than everything is God. Therefore we need to

worship creation. Attitudes of care and concern even reverence

and respect will need to be demonstrated if we affirm that the

Earth is really the Lord’s.

The nature speaks, God speaks too, in the silence of loving

looks, of tears shed and unshed and of hands gently laid on

5⁸ Ken Gnanakan, God’s world( Cambridge University Press, Great Britain,1999)162

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shoulders bent beneath a load of sorrows. It sustained

relationship which shows in the confirming creative and

recreative process even today. The nature is

something/somebody that God loves and overwhelms with gifts.

That is why he chooses it as the place where he will reveal

himself. Therefore the nature was to be protected. It has the

power and abilities given by God to create, recreate and

produce, with the natural resources and environment to sustain

life. Through nature he intended relationship of respect, care

and love in stewardship. In the context ecology we are

reminded that nature and humans belong to one another in an

intergral relationship within God’s intricate designs. It is

only in the sense of a responsibility to respect this

intergrity and thereby to care even more

The Church as the Face of Christ14

The church and its community that Christ brings together after

his resurrection is the place where his reconciling work is

the first demonstrated, although in one part. The church is

not yet perfect but is the subject to the perfect Christ.

The church is the place where perfect relationships are

anticipated and people who constantly look to their Christ who

is directing them towards perfect relationships. The church

must become a model of Christs work, demonstrating such

relationships, even though imperfect. Between the Jew and the

Gentile, the church is serving the one who ha s all things

under his feet and hence the influence must extend to all

things. When the relationships are restored within, the body

of Christ is ready to extend to all things. When the

relationships are restored within, the Body of Christ is ready

to extend its influence outside to the rest of the world. The

effects of the redemptive work of Christ are not limited to

the Body of Christ, the church, but to the fullest extent of

all God’s creation.

Christ is the full, perfect representation of the image

originally intended for human beings. Through the cross and

resurrection, raised to restore the perfect face of Christ.

The church, following its head, must therefore exemplify

stewardship and begin to care for creation. The community of

the disciples of Christ should have been the first to act

responsibly, rather than allowing others, as is the case, to

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become engaged in commendable expressions of environmental

action. It can be seen as rationality, creativity and moral

responsibility. The church must become a change agent.

The church as the resurrection community ha s a responsibility

to get involved in God’s programme of renewal for his

creation. The immediate responsibility of the church should be

to educate its community and prepare them for responsible

action. In doing so, the community as a whole will soon

recognize the need for joint action in some pressing areas of

environmental concern. The threefold concern of the nature-

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, can not only be taught but

practiced. Young people’s groups, women’s and mans groups

could similarly have teaching that will give them the

opportunity to consider their environmental stewardship.

Mother Love is Dying

The Hebrew word for compassion is derived from the word for

womb. The womb love, mother love, creative loves are all part

of the power of nature. Jesus seized elements in his Jewish

tradition were most maternal, the wisdom sayings and the call

to compassion.6⁹ The deep meaning of the last supper where his

promise of Eucharist was essential, Eat me – the divine Son –

and drink me – the divine food – instead of allowing

yourselves to be eaten and devoured by avenging parents. There

is a promise of maternal eros in all this – the eros of food6⁹ Mathew Fox, The Coming of the cosmic Christ. (Ney York, Dell publishing group,1988),31

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and drink of common banqueting, and of returning to a lost

mother love, divinity of itself.

Jesus came to restore that the truth to the patriarchal of

nature of this day. He also came to awaken the creativity in

every person that is every mother, male as well as female. the

killing of mother principle – is being committed against

mother earth, mother brain and mother creativity, against

mother religion and mother and mother wisdom, against youth,

against youth, against mother church, mother compassion and

fatherhood as well.

It is time for a second birth from mother church. Just as

Jesus told Nicodemus that one must be born again, so too those

who are engulfed in mother church’s womb need to be born again

in the womb of mother cosmos.

The mark of the true church, the believing church, will always

be as Jesus. In future it will be compassion making,

celebrating, healing, justice making, the living out of shared

interdependence, that will divine the church and its

leadership. Not only we must celebrate this, but we must

struggle for those who are drowning in our midst because they

are so deeply wounded by poverty of soul, body, or both.

For it is there that royalty personhood of Christ is

celebrated and the kingdom/ queendom of God that Jesus

promised was already among us. The latter will be doing

something about the mother, who is dying, mother love, God as

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mother, the mother in each of us and the divine image or

goddess in each in each of us.

The fall of nature

The idea that the natural world is full of naked shame and

sinful blame is deeply embedded in the western mind.

Contemporary feminist theologians have also done a valuable

service in rediscovering another important Christian concept

that has been buried by centuries of concentration on the fall

and the sinfulness of nature – the fertility and goodness of

the earth.ᶦᵒ7The idea that the natural world, like human

nature, is not all that it might be is an essential part of

Christian doctrine, just as it is an inescapable fact of life.

It is first expressed in the Bible just after the two creation

accounts at the beginning of the Book of Genesis. There the

fall of nature is referred to twice – first at the end of the

story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden and

secondly at the beginning of the story of Noah and the flood.

On both occasions it is linked directly to the fall of man

because of his sin. The fall of nature is linked directly with

the fall of man. It is presented as a simple case of cause and

effect, it is the fall of man that has led to the fall of

nature.

Humans are directly responsible for shattering the primeval

harmony harmony of the of the world of nature. They have 7ᶦᵒ Ian Bradley, God is Green – Ecology for Christian. (New York: published by doubleday,1992)63

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abused the dominion given to them by God over the rest of

creation by failing to exercise it in his image as loving

stewards, and instead have tried to play the role of the

almighty themselves by ruthlessly exploiting and destroying

animals, plants and minerals resources.

It may well be that the story of the fall has something to

tell us about our responsibility as humans for despoiling

nature. But the idea that animals, plants and the very

elements of earth and water are all punished by God because of

something man has done is surely unacceptable.

This kind of approach to the fall of nature has certain clear

strengths. What if the original sin that human and non – human

creation share together is not so much a definite attribute or

action like pride or turning away from God but more a general

state of imperfection and immaturity?

Jesus Christ as Mother Earth crucified and Resurrected

According to the Maori people, the native people of New

Zealand that the “Land is a mother who never dies.” Jesus as

Mother Earth crucified yet rising daily. Mother Earth is being

crucified in deeply wounded. Like Jesus at Golgotha, she is

innocent like in us in every way save sin. She has blessed one

half billion years by providing water, the correct amounts of

oxygen, hydrogen, and atmosphere for us, birthing flowers,

plants, animals, fishes, bless us with their gifts and their

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gifts and their work of making healthy life welcoming us. In

though, earth loved us but we tend crucify him daily.

Mother earth is the temple; the sacred precinct in action

dwells and praises God. Mother is weeping. It is a return to a

blessing of awareness of the original blessing that mother

earth is human that alone can reestablish the holy

relationship and us.

The tradition of Jesus as Mother, symbolizes that he is our mother,

brother, which develops into great depth as God is the true Father

and Mother of nature. Jesus Christ also symbolizes earth because

like he is made of earth and is dependent on earth for his

sustenance. Jesus is an earth – creature and so than any of the

rest of us because he is the most pre – representative of

earth’s amazing fertility. Earth has accomplishing divine act

in birth Jesus Christ, a birth that tells us took place like

the original creation itself: with the covering over the fetal

waters of Mary’s womb birthing Christ.

His pain of the universe was unique and deep, suffering and

oppressed ones. Is Jesus, the Christ, not sent to bring Good

earth that is poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to set

the downtrodden free? Mother earth never failed Jesus.

Nothing will survive if mother earth does not survive. The

survival, and indeed the thriving, of mother earth.ᶦᶦ8

8ᶦᶦ Bradley,147

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Conclusion

What you hold in your hand now created by God. Do not destroy

it. Look at how complicated or how simple it is. God cares for

both and God cares for the detail. God is an artist. This item

that you hold in your hand is able to praise God.

Look at the creation in the pictures and in your hand. Feel

it. This is God’s creation. God is a lover of life and beauty.

Relax and see, use your senses, see, feel and smell.

Thus in many other ways, the earth is the Lord’s. It is God’s

creation and self expression. God’s word and image symbol of

his presence and power beauty, love and strength, imagination

and joy.

The earth is where God abides and comes to meet us. The earth

is sacred. The trees are sacred. Water is sacred. We are

sacred.

Jesus is acknowledged as the revealer of divine truths in

historical acts, a symbol of hope, a brother who served and

attended to the need of the community. His activity of grace

is founded on a compassionate love, not only for humanity, but

for all living beings that are denied of their rights to life.

Grace is for all, and is given not only to humans beings, but

also touches every other life – forms and ecological – life

systems.

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The life of Christ is identified as a life in service. It is a

life attended to human needs. Life giving and creating

activities of Jesus Christ are for the alleviation of

oppression, suffering, and impoverishment in every forms and

structures which they manifest.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bradley, Ian. God is Green – Ecology for Christians. New York, published

by double day, 1992.

Fox, Mathew. The coming of the cosmic Christ. New York, Dell

publishing group, 1988.

Guankan,Ken. God’s World. Cambridge University Press, Great

Britain,1999.

Hallman G. David. Eco Theology.Orbis, Maryknoll, New York, USA,

1994.

Scargill, M. H. The Intermediate Dictionary.Canada, 1957.

Tofaeno, Ama’amalele. Aiga The Household of life.Erlanger Verlag for

Misson and Okumene, Erlargen,2000.

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