[Oe List ...] Creation Based Spirituality
Herman Greene
hfgreene at mindspring.com
Wed Apr 27 07:26:46 EDT 2005
This is in response to Karen Bueno's request that someone say more about
creation-based as contrasted with redemption-based spirituality. I was first
introduced to this idea in 1982 with the paper set forth, in part, below. It
was written before Thomas Berry made the change to inclusive gender
language, so please accept that when we says "man" he means human. The idea
of creation-based theology is well developed by Matthew Fox in Original
Blessing and The Coming of the Cosmic Christ among other books. Matthew Fox
and Thomas Berry are mutually appreciative of each other's work and I
believe Matthew Fox would generally agree with Thomas Berry's treatment of
this below.
Herman Greene
The Spirituality of the Earth
By Thomas Berry
The subject we are concerned with is the Spirituality of the Earth. By this
I do not mean a spirituality that is directed toward an appreciation of the
earth. I speak of the earth as subject, not as object. I am concerned with
the maternal principle out of which man is born and whence he derives all
that he is and all that he has. Man in his totality is born of the earth. We
are earthlings. The earth is our origin, our nourishment, our support, our
guide. Our spirituality itself is earth-derived. If there is no spirituality
in the earth then there is no spirituality in man. Man is a dimension of the
earth. These two are totally implicated each in the other.
Not to recognize the spirituality of the earth is to indicate a radical
lack. of spiritual perception on the part of man himself. We see this lack
of spiritual insight in the earlier attitude of Euro-Americans in their
inability to perceive the spiritual qualities of the native American peoples
and their mysticism of the land. The attack on these spiritual qualities by
Christians constitutes one of the most barbaric moments in Christian
history. This barbarism turned upon the tribal peoples was loosed also upon
the American earth with a destructive impact beyond human calculation.
The fragility of the earth has not yet impressed itself upon us. The
brutality of our relation to the earth cannot but indicate a radical absence
of spirituality in man, not the lack of a spiritual dimension of the earth.
The opaqueness is in man’s understanding of the earth not in the earth’s
structure which expresses an abiding numinous presence. The earth process
has been generally ignored by religious-spiritual currents of the West. Our
alienation goes so deep that it is beyond Western man’s conscious mode of
awareness. While there are tributes to the earth in the scriptures and in
Christian liturgy there is a tendency to see the earth as a seductive
reality that brought about alienation from God in the agricultural peoples
of the near East. Earth worship was the ultimate idolatry, the cause of the
Fall, and thereby the cause of sacrificial redemption by Divine personality.
Thus too the Christian sense of being crucified to the world and living only
for the Saviour. This personal Saviour orientation has led to an
inter-personal devotionalism that quite easily dispenses with earth except
as a convenient support for life.
This type of redemptive mysticism as it presently exists is possibly
related in its origins to the black Death of the mid-4th century; the most
terrifying period in Western history, the period when a third to a half of
the population died. At least partially in response to this experience
direct recourse was had to supernatural forces, to the ancient spiritual
powers, to esoteric traditions, to submerged pre-Christian rituals. But
above all there was a new emphasis on the redemptive forces within the
Christian context, a renewal of primordial Faith, of prayer to be sustained
in a frightening world. Thus came Pietism, Puritanism, Jansenism and a long
list of sectarian movements all with intensive spiritualities, generally
with a strong Saviour attachment.
This basic rejection of the earth in its existing form, and the longing for
a transformed earth manifested itself in a renewed Millennarism, which in a
variety of forms has dominated much Western thought in the past four
centuries. Millennarism involves a radical dissatisfaction with the earth
and with the whole created order.
But while the devotional tradition thought to achieve this by spiritual.
processes in a redemptive context, another tradition emerged that sought to
deal with the terror of life by inquiry into the functional dynamics of the
earth and the entire universe. This led to the secular scientific
technological society that now dominates human affairs to an overwhelming
degree and establishes the main disciplines in the educational process.
Especially when the secular scientific approach to life is supported by the
most powerful political form known to man, the modern nation state, the
future direction of human affairs as well as the industrial exploitation of
the earth is assured. The terror of life was to be answered by the
domestication of the earth and the domination of the creative function of
the earth by man. This attitude, however designated as secular in form,
involved a certain submerged religious dynamic which can be identified as a
concern for creation process rather than redemptive process.
Thus we witness particularly in America two parallel societies, the
redemption oriented society, with its spiritualities and the creation
oriented ‘secular’ society with its “spiritualities.” These two communities
have given extrinsic recognition to each other. Believing religious
personalities are often proud of their acceptance of the modern world of
science and technology. Scientists and technologists are often religious
believers. Yet both of these societies are trivialized. Redemptive-oriented
society and its spiritualities are trivialized because they are isolated
from the larger dynamics of the human community. The secular technological
society is trivialized because it has no depth of meaning, no numinous
quality. Resolution of this impasse is the greatest single challenge to a
functional contemporary spirituality.
We can produce spiritualities that function in certain isolated context
without regard for the larger society. We can produce spiritualities that
offer a redemptive solutions for the society. But this latter is not liable
to be effective in any extensive degree. It speaks a rhetoric that is not
available for secular man or, if it is available, it widens rather than
lessens the tragic inner division between the world of affairs and the world
of divine communion. It does not offer a way of interpreting the inner life
of the society itself in a rhetoric available to the society. It does not
establish an understanding of that authentic experience in con temporary
life which is oriented toward communion with creation processes. Indeed it
does not recognize that the context of any authentic spirituality lies in
the creation myth that governs the total life orientation.
This lack of appreciation of the earth process is manifested at the present
time by the training that takes place in most seminaries. It is doubtful if
there is any seminary in the country where adequate attention is given to
creation dynamics in the manner in which creation is experienced in our
society. A long list could be drawn up of the courses explaining
redemption: Soteriology, Christology, Ecclesiology, Revelation, Scripture,
Patristics, Pastoral Ministry and several others. Creation is generally
presented as part of the tract on “God in himself and in relation to His
creation.” But creation in this metaphysical, biblical, medieval,
theological context is not terribly helpful in understanding the creation
process as this is set forth in the scientific manuals or the textbooks of
Earth Sciences or Life Sciences such as they are studied by children in
Elementary, High School, or later in College.
These classroom studies initiate the child into a world that has more
continuity with his later adult life in its functional aspect than does the
catechetical story of creation taken from Biblical sources. This schoolroom
presentation of the world in which the child lives and finds his place in
the world is all important for the future spirituality of the child. The
school fulfills in our times the role of the ancient initiation rituals
which introduced the child to the society and to his human and sacred role
in this society. The tragedy is that the sacred or spiritual aspect of the
initiation process is now absent. The child is given a physical process, a
marvelous story of the emergence of the universe, of the earth and of’ man,
but without reference to the spiritual aspect of this process. It is
doubtful if separate catechetical instructions with their heavy emphasis on
redemptive processes can ever supply what is missing.
It may be that the later alienation of young adults from the redemptive
sacramental tradition is, it. some degree, due to this inability to
communicate to the child a spirituality grounded more deepy in creation
dynamics in accord with the modern way of experiencing the galactic
emergence of the universe, the shaping of the earth, the appearance of life,
of man, and the historical sequence in man’s development.
In this sequence, the child might learn that the earth has its intrinsic
spiritual quality from the beginning, for this aspect of the creation story
is what has been missing. This is what needs to be established if we are to
have a functional spirituality. Just how to give the child his integral
world—that is the issue. It is also the spiritual issue of the modem
religious personality. Among on most immediate tasks is to establish this
new sense of the earth and of man as a function of the earth.
We need to understand that the earth acts in all that acts upon the earth.
The earth is acting in man whenever man acts. In and through the earth
spiritual energy is present. This spiritual energy emerges in a total
complex of earth functions. Each form of life is integrated with every other
life form. Even beyond the earth by force of gravitation every particle of
the physical world attracts and is attracted to every other particle. This
attraction holds the differentiated universe together and enables it to be a
universe of individual realities. The universe is not a vast smudge of
matter, some jelly-like substance extended indefinitely in space. Nor is the
universe a collection of unrelated particles. The universe is rather a vast
multiplicity of individual realities with both qualitative and quantitative
differences all in spiritual-physical communion with each other. The
individuals of similar form are bound together in their unity of form. The
species are related to each other by derivation: the later more complex life
forms are derived from earlier more simple life forms.
The first shaping of the universe was into those great galactic systems of
fiery energy that constitute the starry heavens. In these celestial furnaces
the elements are shaped. Eventually, after some ten billion years, the solar
system and the earth are born out of the stardust resulting from exploded
stars. Earth particularly is our concern. So far as we know, earth is the
most unique of all heavenly bodies. Here life, both plant and animal life,
was born in the primordial seas some three billion years ago. Plants came
out upon the land some six hundred million years ago after the planet earth
had shaped itself through a great series of transformations in forming. the
continents, the mountains, the valleys, the rivers and streams. The
atmosphere was long in developing. The animals came ashore along with the
plants. As the life forms established themselves over some hundreds of
millions of years the luxuriant foliage formed layer after layer of matter
which was then buried in the crust of the earth to become fossil formations.
One hundred million years ago flowers appeared and the full beauty of earth
began to manifest itself. Some sixty million years ago the birds were in the
air. Mammals. walked through the forest. Some of the mammals, the whales and
porpoises and the dolphins, went back into the sea.
Finally some two million years ago the ascending forms of life culminated
in the awakening consciousness of man. A wandering food gatherer and hunter
during all of this time until some eight thousand years ago man began to
settle into village life. This led to the archaic classical civilization
which have flourished so brilliantly over the past five thousand years.
Then some four hundred years ago a new stage of scientific development took
place which, in the 18th and 19th centuries, brought about man’s
technological dominance of the earth out of which he had emerged. This can
be interpreted as the earth awakening to consciousness of itself in man. The
story of this awakening consciousness is the most dramatic episode of the
entire earth story.
The spiritual attitude that then caused or permitted man to attack the earth
with such savagery as we witness has never been adequately explained. That
it was done by a Christian-derived society, and even with the belief that
this was the human and Christian task of man, makes explanation especially
harsh for our society. Possibly it was the millennial drives toward a total
transformation of the human condition that led man, resentful that the
perfect world was not yet achieved by divine means, to set about the violent
subjugating of the earth by his own powers in the hope that in this way the
higher life of man would be attained, his afflictions healed.
While this is the positive goal sought it must be added that the negative,
even fearful, attitude toward the earth resulting from the general hardships
of life led to the radical disturbance of the entire earth process. The
increasing intensity shown it exploiting the earth was also the result of
the ever rising and unsatiated expectation of Western peoples. Even further
the natural antagonisms of earth were fostered by the Darwinian principle of
the Survival of the Fittest, indicating that the primary attitude of each
individual and each species is for its own survival at the expense of the
others. Out of this strife, supposedly, the glorious achievements of earth
would take place. Darwin’s blindness to the cooperative and mutual
dependence of each form of life on the other forms of life, is amazing
since he himself discovered the great web of life. Still he could not
appreciate the principle of inter-communion.
Much more needs to be said on the conditions that permitted such a mutually
destructive situation to arise between man and the earth, but we must pass
on to give some indication of the new attitude that needs to be adopted
toward the earth. This involves a new spiritual and even mystical communion
with the earth, a true aesthetic of the earth, a valid economy of the earth.
We need a way of designating the earth-human world in its continuity and
identity rather that; in its discontinuity and difference. In spirituality
especially we need to recognize the numinous qualities of the earth. We
might begin with some awareness of what it is to be human, what is the role
of consciousness on the earth, what is the place of man in the universe.
While the scholastic definition of man as a rational animal gives us some
idea of man among the biological species it gives us a rather inadequate
sense of the role that man plays in the total earth process. The Chinese
have a better definition of man as the hsin of heaven and earth. This word
hsin is written as a pictograph of the human heart. It should be translated
by a single word or a phrase with both a feeling and an understanding
aspect. It could thus be translated by saying that man is the “understanding
heart of heaven and earth.” Even more briefly the phrase has been translated
by Julia Ch’ing in the statement that man is the "heart of the universe.” It
could, finally, be translated by saying that man is “the consciousness of
the world,” or that man is “the psyche of the universe.” Here we have a
remarkable feeling for the absolute dimensions of the human, the total
integration of reality in man, the total integration of man in reality.
We need a spirituality that emerges out of a reality deeper than man, even
deeper than life, a spirituality that is as deep as the earth process
itself, a spirituality that is born out of the solar system and even out of
the heavens beyond the solar system. There in the stars is where the
primordial elements take shape in both their physical and psychic aspects.
Out of these elements the solar system and the earth took shape, and out of
the earth, man.
___________________________
Herman F. Greene
2516 Winningham Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-929-4116
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