A friend recently sent me a link to Mark Wallace’s article, The Green Face of God: Christianity in an Age of Ecocide (Cross Currents, Fall 2000, Vol. 50 Issue
3, 310-331).
Wallace identifies numerous biblical images of the Spirit as an enfleshed
aspect of creation:
While some of the biblical
writings appear partial to these binary oppositions (for example, Paul's rhetoric
of spirit versus flesh), most of the biblical texts undermine this value system
by structurally interlocking the terms in the polarity within one another. In particular,
on the question of the Spirit, the system of polar oppositions is consistently undermined.
Not only do the scriptural texts not prioritize the spiritual over the earthly.
Moreover, they figure the Spirit as a creaturely lifeform always already interpenetrated
by the material world. Indeed, the body of symbolism that is arguably most central
to the scriptural portraiture of the Spirit is suffused with nature imagery. Consider
the following tropes for the Spirit within the Bible: the vivifying breath
that animates all living things (Gen. 1:2, Ps. 104:29-30), the healing wind
that brings power and salvation to those it indwells (Judges 6:34, John 3:6, Acts
2:1-4), the living water that quickens and refreshes all who drink from its
eternal springs (John 4:14, 7:37-38), the purgative fire that alternately
judges evildoers and ignites the prophetic mission of the early church (Acts 2:1-4,
Matt. 3:11-12), and the divine dove, with an olive branch in its mouth, that
brings peace and renewal to a broken and divided world (Gen. 8:11, Matt. 3:16, John
1:32). In these texts, the Spirit is pictured as a wild and insurgent natural force
who engenders life and healing throughout the biotic order.
Far from being ghostly
and bodiless, the Spirit reveals herself in the biblical literatures as an earthly
lifeform who labors to create, sustain, and renew humankind and otherkind
in solidarity with one another. As the divine wind in Genesis, the dove in the Gospels,
or the tongues of flame in Acts, an earth-based understanding of the Spirit will
not domesticate the Spirit by locating her activity simply alongside nature; rather,
nature itself in all its variety will be construed as the primary mode of being
for the Spirit's work in the world. Now the earth's waters and winds and birds and
fires will not be regarded only as symbols of the Spirit but rather as sharing
in her very being as the Spirit is enfleshed and embodied through natural
organisms and processes.
New models of God, especially
models of God rooted in biblical imagery are continually necessary because the
human context is dynamic, never static. Sallie McFague compellingly makes the
case for this proposition in her book, Models
of God (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987).
Conceptualizing the Holy Spirit
as the green face of God highlights God’s concern for all creation as well as dramatizing
the consequences of human actions that damage creation and human responsibility
for striving to end and to repair that damage, both key aspects of repentance’s
reparative element, explored in my next Ethical Musings post.
1 comment:
A reader sent me these comments:
Your words always hit the spot!
1. The hymn "This is My Father's World" comes to mind. Nice point in the verse about Jesus being satisfied by the Oneness, as opposed to the satisfaction theory of the atonement. There remains the issue of nature's cruel side, and I speak to that in #4.
2. The wrong does "oft seem strong", especially the forces of hate and disintegration at this time. They have a renewed visibility and appeal, but the forces of disintegration are always present.
3. We can be pretty sure we are seeing the face of evil in manifestations of hate. But what of chaos and disintegration?
4. The understanding that fires are necessary for a healthy forest changes a lot, for me. It seems that the forces of integration and disintegration are necessary compliments in the natural world. The life cycle of a business and a building evidence similar patterns where homeostasis is necessarily disturbed for sustainable systems.
What does this say about how we understand or model evil and good? The Buddhist view is interesting here, but I am not ready to give up the helpful distinction between love and hate/apathy.
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