Comments on: Review: An Orthodox Christian Natural Law Witness

By: Rev. Gregory Jensen

Rev. Gregory Jensen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:28:02 +0000

Bruce Foltz,

Thank you for your comments and the link to your presentation,

Thinking about what you wrote, I realize that I was not precise in my review. As you point put, the Gospel cannot be placed at the service of politics–whether those of the left or the right. At the same time, and I think you suggest this in your comment, not all public policies are equal relative to the Gospel.

I appreciate the balance with which you approach the issue, I am stymied by your last comment that the environment is an issue to important to “yoke it to partisan agendas of either the right or the left.” As a practical matter what does this mean?

In politics, or so it seem to me, there are winners and losers in policy debates. Assuming what you mean by not wedding our policies to a partisan agenda is that we should work toward a broad consensus, how do we do that? I don’t expect you to have an answer (though I’d be great if you did!)–but it seems to me that even if we agree on the theology of Creation, we still need to give that theology form in our policy decisions.

While theology should be part of the public debate about the environment, I think it has negative, though salutary, role to play. It can tell us what not to do, but I am not sure that theology as such can tell us what we are to do

By: Bruce Foltz

Bruce Foltz — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:39:34 +0000

Due to some combination of vanity and prudence, I periodically conduct a Google search using my own name, and this time I discovered that I was mentioned with regard to what I think is overall a fine book–which does not mean that I do or do not endorse any practical conclusions it may suggest. If anyone is interested in seeing my own views, a fairly accessible talk is posted on the blog of Vatopedi Monastery on Mt Athos: http://vatopaidi.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/discerning-the-spirit-in-creation-orthodox-christianity-and-environmentalism1/
As a convert of some ten years, I can say that Orthodoxy has been a great haven for me from seeing the work of the Church appropriated for political ends, either of the left or of the right. (Which is just to say that it is traditional Christianity, concerned with the pursuit of holiness, rather than the Ersatz pursuit of salvation within the political sphere, one the most noxious heresies of modernity.) At the same time, I am increasingly distanced from environmentalism, with whose philosophical formulations I have been associated for some thirty years. It is being gradually appropriated by neo-pagan sensibilities on the one hand, and statist zeal on the other. Anti-environmentalists, however, should remember that some of the great environmentalist successes have been associated with conservatives (T. Roosevelt and R. Nixon, as well as numerous Sierra Club founders, come easily to mind. And Thoreau and Muir would surely have to be seen as libertarians.) And if such critics are theistically inclined, they should take another look at the keen appreciation for what St Isaac the Syrian called “the glory of God revealed in creation” that is everywhere on display in the Psalms. I have long held (not infrequently to hostile audiences) that our care for creation (if I may put it in theological terms) is too important to yoke it to partisan agendas of either the right or the left.

By: Rev. Gregory Jensen

Rev. Gregory Jensen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:12:59 +0000

Nathaniel,

Thanks for the kind words and for letting me know about Foltz’s new book. I will keep an eye out for it.

+FrG

By: Nathaniel

Nathaniel — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:13:34 +0000

Father Gregory,

A wonderful review; thank you! I am interested in “environmentalism” in Orthodoxy, and this book is on my list to read. I’m not sure if they’ve been published, but I know that Seraphim (Bruce) Foltz has written on Orthodox environmentalism specifically through the lens of Dostoyevsky’s writings. He has presented papers on this topic at a couple of SOPHIA conferences. I just thought you might be interested in case you want to look him up (he’s at Eckerd College, I believe).

in Christ,
Nathaniel

By: Rev. Gregory Jensen

Rev. Gregory Jensen — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:51:51 +0000

Isaac and Roger,

Thank you both for your comments.

There is always a temptation, not unique to environmentalists by the way, to seek to exempt one’s positions from criticism by laying claim the moral high ground. Whether this caring for the needs of the poor, protecting the environment or preaching the Gospel the idea is that because I am doing a good thing, my motives and actions ought not to be questioned.

Comforting as this is to my ego, it is a recipe for moral and spiritual disaster. It is also, not incidentally, to work for the failure of the very project I would exempt from critical analysis.

Anyway, thank you both for your thought provoking comments.

+FrG

By: Roger McKinney

Roger McKinney — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:15:56 +0000

Environmentalists would help the debate enormously if they would refrain from asserting that anyone who disagrees with their solutions is anti-environment and wants to see everything covered in concrete. Socialists (progressives) do the same thing with poverty: if you oppose a minimum wage, then you must hate the poor and want them to starve to death. I get that over and over from socialists. It’s really tiring and I suspect their goal is to silence any disagreement.

By: Isaac

Isaac — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:42:59 +0000

Father, I’ve just found the Acton Institute and I’m happy to have found another Orthodox Christian.

Thank you for reviewing the book in a charitable way that nevertheless expresses your misgivings. I for one don’t need tripe about population control ala Margaret Sanger in the guise of Orthodox theology or philosophy.

To me, environmentalists need to make their case in a way that exonerates their policies as a cover for needless expansion of state power.

I’m also really skeptical when the only Orthodox stuff on ecology comes from SVS and writers on the modernist fringe of the Church.