The Eden Project and Gaia theology
The Eden Project (www.edenproject.com) near St
Austell in central Cornwall is aptly named. The Project attempts the reproduce the biodiversity of
planet earth through a series of climate- controlled domes and gardens. What
was once a disused quarry site that slashed the landscape with scars of human intervention
is now a place of beauty and quite fecund with life.
The Eden Project is more than an exercise in
regeneration after human use. In its own words:
Plants, gardens and horticulture
We are an educational charity and we have planted over a million plants
from around the world to teach our visitors about humans' relationship with
nature.
Our exhibits are designed to show that:
·
plants give us our food, fuel, materials and
medicines
·
plants are part of a wider ecosystem that
provides our water and air
·
the natural world can be beautiful, relaxing and
inspiring.
As an educational charity, we also use gardening as a way of empowering,
engaging and connecting people through special outreach projects. Eden's
horticulture programmes focus on everyone from prisoners to the disabled, from
local families to schoolchildren worldwide.
(www.edenproject.com/whats-it-all-about/plants-gardens)
Much of this is great and Christian people can
say a loud 'Amen'. The Scriptures tell us that we humans are at the peak of
creation and are to use its resources and can eat other living beings
(Gen..). However, this command and
permission is beautifully balanced by the command that we also 'care' for the
earth (Gen 2:15). As populations
have increased and industrialisation has advanced and spread, the earth has
suffered under our over-use and misuse. The present scientific consensus is
that human behaviours have adversely affected the earth's very structures. In short, it seems that the time has
come to redress a balance through greater efforts to care for the earth as
well as use it.
In this sense the Eden Project is a good
reminder of the breathtaking beauty of the earth's biodiversity, but also it's
fragility, human interdependence with the rest of the planet and the impacts of
human actions on the environment.
There is a big 'however' over the Project and
much of the present environmental movement that it represents. The 'however' is
represented in a circle of stones and accompanying plaque in the Mediterranean
dome with the Eden Project. The plaque reads: Our Medicine Wheel embodies Father earth, Mother Sky and Spirit Tree.
Here
is an expression of a modernised earth-centric trinity reflecting a pantheistic
worldview. This goes far beyond a
healthy respect for and care of the environment. It is a distinct worldview of
a religious nature. It is Gaia
theology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_philosophy).
Earth, sky and trees become divine and presumably are to be worshipped and
invocation made to them.
The Christian problems with this plaque are
several-fold.
1. It is a theology
not founded on the Scriptures.
2. It blurs key
distinctions within the created order.
3. It substitutes
idolatry for true religion.
Gaia theology does not come from the Bible and
indeed contradicts it with respect to creational distinctions and the object of
true worship. It is an interesting
question, but beyond my present scope, to examine from whence Gaia theology
derives.
With respect to 2, Gaia theology typically
undermines distinctions that the Bible asserts. These include distinctions between
creator and creation (directly undermined in the plaque) and also the
distinctions between different life forms.
Gaia theology tends to work from a monist
metaphysic where the interdependence of all things becomes an essential
sameness between them. On this
score the Bible differs. The Bibles presents neither the sameness of all things
(monism) not their radical separateness (atomism). God is indeed separate from his creation (it is 'creator
God' not Father Earth') and Lord over it, yet he is deeply entangled with it
through his works of sustaining its physical being, providentially ordering its
affairs and redeeming it through its Son.
Again, the Bible asserts distinctions within the
created order, for example as seen in the Gen 1 account. Rocks are different to trees and
trees are different from fish and so forth. In particular, humans are different
to other beings also made animate by the breath of God, for we alone bear his
image and have his mandate to rule, subdue, use and care. We are part of the
creation yet not the same as other living creatures, plants, rocks and oceans.
In short, God is not identified with his creation and people are part of the
creation yet distinct within it.
With respect to 3., Rom 1:18ff tracks a downward
spiral that includes suppression of the knowledge of God as creator and worship
of created objects. This is the
idolising of creation and giving it what belongs to its maker. The plaque
points us to worship the creation and not the creator, despite the evidence (even
within the Project) of his fingerprint in the beauty, orderliness and utility
of just the world of plants.
In short, the Project does a great job in
lifting human vision from ourselves to the physical environment around us. Its
just a pity that it stops there and encourages worship of the creation instead
of the Creator who made so beautiful and who tells humans to rule, use and care
for it as part of our worship and service to him.
