The Eden Project and Gaia theology

-->

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.