The creation in its totality

HOSS, Geni Maria. Fritz Jahr's bioethical conception: What are the challenges for christians today? In: MUZUR, Amir; SASS, Hans-Martin (Eds.). Fritz Jahr and the Foundations of Global Bioethics. Berlin: LIT, 2012, p. 329.

 "'God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.' (Gen. 1:31). Created by the Word, the creatures – of the whole of nature – form a universal, cosmic harmony. The story of creation portrays a diversified, majestic world, chaos put in order, with time and space well defined, in sum, a consummated fact. (cf. Gen. 1:1-31) However, the experience affirms the creation also as something open, extremely dynamic. There is a constant creation, recreation, regeneration, therefore, a vital, intrinsic force which lends autonomy to the creation which, if left with the necessary conditions for such, that is, avoiding destructive impact, it renews itself constantly. An immeasurable life force, the continuity of which depends today on the positive intervention of the human being in the sense of leaving it untouched or facilitating its process of renewal through the knowledge acquired about Nature and its own dynamics. Therefore it is necessary to respect the continuous process of creation-recreation. “The protagonist of the creation, in the Bible, is, in fact, God. And creation possesses a life generating capacity. This capacity is, in itself, sacred and undeniable, because the Giver of life, par excellence, is always, in the end, the Spirit of God.” (2:66). It can be affirmed, correctly, that creation is not a finished act, but is in “a state of journey” – in ‘statu viae’ - (cf. 4:90), thus, the journey of the Alliance is not only of the People of God, but it is a journey which integrates all of creation, is destined to the glory of God and in it God is manifest. “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made”(Rom. 1:20). The charge that the Creator God places on the human beings with regard to the creation has given space for various interpretations, with some tendencies being incoherent within themselves. “God blessed them, saying ‘Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth”. (Gen. 1:28). How to understand God’s mandate with regard to creation? Is it truly the human being that holds the power over the other creatures? How can the human being give him/her self the right to destroy what God created and what is good?

Misunderstandings always happen when Biblical passages are taken out of their traditional-historical context and used to legitimate other interests. That is why we must also pay attention to the Jahvist version of creation: Gen. 2:15 talks of the “garden of Eden” which the humans should “cultivate and care for”. The dominion of the human person over the land should thus correspond to the activity of a gardener cultivating and preserving. In no way does it speak of an exhaustive and exploitative cultivation. (10:55) The human being shares the historical space and experience with the other creatures, that is, with all life forms. The dominion is a mission of caring, of respect in regard to the other creatures since what God created is good. Words such as power and dominion are historically related to situations o  exploitation and domination. The lordship desired by God, however, is about a respectful relation and an effective contribution so that the human being and the biosphere may live “a life in abundance” (cf. John 10:10), promised by Christ. Therefore, there is no place for indiscriminate use of the goods of the Earth and destructive interventions of life, since care means renouncing the will for power which reduces everything to objects, disconnected from human subjectivity. It means imposing limits on the obsession for efficaciousness at any price. It means tearing down the dictatorship of the cold and abstract rationality to make room for caring. It means organizing work in harmony with nature and its indications. It means respecting the communion that all things have between them and with us. (...) It means capturing the presence of the Spirit beyond our human limits, in the universe, in the plants, in live organisms (3:102)."

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