The Principle
Modern environmental law - the regulatory framework protecting air, water, soil, and biodiversity from human exploitation - is a relatively recent legal development, but its moral foundations include ancient roots in the biblical theology of creation care. The conviction that the earth belongs to God, that humans are stewards rather than owners, and that exploitation of creation is a theological offense has been articulated by Christian thinkers and activists as a framework for environmental legislation.
Biblical Foundation
Genesis 2:15 places the human being in the garden 'to work it and take care of it' - the two verbs avad (work, serve) and shamar (keep, guard, preserve) defining a relationship of active engagement combined with protective responsibility. This is not passive preservation but engaged stewardship: the human being is both the garden's cultivator and its guardian.
Genesis 1:28's dominion mandate - 'Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground' - has been controversially read both as a license for exploitation and as a royal stewardship commission, since in the ancient Near East royal 'dominion' implied accountable governance rather than absolute ownership. Lynn White Jr.'s famous 1967 essay 'The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis' argued that Genesis 1:28 contributed to Western environmental exploitation; subsequent scholars, including Robin Attfield and Christopher Southgate, have argued that White misread the text and that biblical dominion properly understood requires environmentally responsible stewardship.
Numbers 35:33-34 prohibits defiling the land: 'Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed... Do not defile the land where you live and where I dwell.' The theological principle that ecological defilement is a spiritual wrong requiring repentance and remedy is articulated here with directness.
Historical Transmission
Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), whose Canticle of the Creatures celebrated 'Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Sister Water,' established a tradition of creation spirituality that treated the natural world as worthy of reverence and protection. The Franciscan theological tradition that developed from Francis emphasized the goodness of creation as an ongoing act of divine love, resisting the Platonic tendency to treat the material world as spiritually inferior.
The modern environmental movement gained its biblical theological foundation through Francis Schaeffer's Pollution and the Death of Man (1970), which argued that the biblical doctrine of creation - that God made the material world good and entrusted it to human stewardship - provided the strongest possible basis for environmental responsibility. Schaeffer's evangelical credentials gave his environmental argument credibility with Christian communities that secular environmentalism could not reach.
The Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation (1994), signed by hundreds of evangelical scholars and leaders, committed evangelical Christianity to creation care as a matter of biblical obedience, not merely prudential environmental concern. This declaration directly influenced evangelical engagement with environmental legislation.
Key Champions
The Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies (1979), the Evangelical Environmental Network (1993), and the Cornwall Alliance (2009 - a countervoice) represent the range of evangelical engagement with environmental policy. Pope Francis's Laudato Si' (2015) - 'Care for Our Common Home' - represents the most significant Catholic engagement, grounding environmental responsibility in the biblical theology of creation, the theology of the Sabbath as rest for the land, and the commitment to intergenerational justice.
Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm in Georgia (1942), practiced sustainable agriculture as an expression of biblical stewardship decades before the modern environmental movement, demonstrating that creation care had practical as well as theological dimensions.
Modern Application
The US Environmental Protection Agency (1970), the Clean Air Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972), and the Endangered Species Act (1973) represent the legislative flowering of the environmental movement. While these laws are secular in form, the moral energy driving their passage included significant Christian creation care advocacy. The Climate Stewardship Act and subsequent climate legislation have continued to receive substantial support from faith communities invoking Genesis 2:15.
International environmental law - the Paris Agreement (2016), the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), the Kyoto Protocol (1997) - reflects the global consensus that ecological responsibility is a collective obligation that transcends national interests. The 'intergenerational equity' principle in international environmental law - that present generations must not deprive future generations of a livable planet - reflects the Jubilee-like concern for long-term sustainability that runs through biblical land theology.
Scholarly Debate
The central scholarly debate is whether the biblical creation mandate supports environmental activism or economic development. The Cornwall Alliance's 'Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming' (2009) argued that climate change fears are exaggerated and that biblical stewardship includes responsible use of natural resources for human flourishing, not only their preservation. Mainstream evangelical environmental scholars, including Ed Brown and Jonathan Moo, argue that the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change constitutes an environmental crisis to which the creation care mandate demands a response. The debate reflects deeper theological differences about the priority of human welfare versus ecological integrity in biblical stewardship.
Comparative Perspective
Lynn White Jr.'s famous 1967 essay attributing the ecological crisis to the biblical dominion mandate provoked a generation of Christian environmental theology. The response has largely vindicated the biblical tradition: Genesis 2:15's call to keep (shamar) the garden, Leviticus 25:23's declaration that the land is God's, and Psalm 24:1's affirmation that the earth is the LORD's together constitute a framework for environmental responsibility whose motivational resources are arguably deeper than either economic self-interest or abstract philosophical principle. Laudato Si' (2015) represents the most systematic modern statement of this biblical-theological case for environmental law, and its reception across religious and secular communities illustrates the cross-cultural resonance of the stewardship framework when it is articulated as an obligation to the Creator rather than merely a prudential interest in sustainability. The creation care movement's recovery of the biblical stewardship mandate has generated concrete legal advocacy: environmental nonprofits rooted in Christian communities have filed amicus briefs in environmental litigation, lobbied for carbon pricing legislation, and worked to establish conservation easements on church-owned land. This direct connection between biblical theology and environmental legal practice illustrates that the imago Dei mandate of dominion-as-stewardship is not merely theoretical but generates active legal engagement on behalf of the creation entrusted to human care.