HUMAN AND CREATION

Human Authority in Creation (Genesis 1:26–8)

To understand our place within creation Christians have most often gone to a rather obvious place: the narrative of God’s creation of all creatures in the first chapter of the Bible. On the sixth day of the week of creation, God said,

‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’(Gen. 1:26–8)

This authority in creation, given by God to humans, has traditionally been known as the human dominion over creation. By virtue of their creation in God’s image, humans in some sense represent within creation God’s rule over his creatures. Very often this has been taken to mean that the rest of creation has been made by God solely for human use. Very often in the modern period it has been taken to mandate the scientific-technological project of achieving unlimited domination of nature.

In reaction against that, Christians sensitive to the ecological problems of recent decades have insisted that this is not a mandate for exploitation, but an appointment to stewardship. In other words, the human role in relation to other creatures is one of care and service, exercised on behalf of God and with accountability to God. Creation has value not just for our use, but also for itself and for God, and humans are to care for creation as something that has inherent value.

That understanding of the human dominion as stewardship has, been enormously helpful to Christians thinking out what God’s purpose for us is in the present crisis.

However, Christian should focus on this one text in Genesis 1, even when it is understood in terms of stewardship is problematic for two reasons:

1. The neglect of the rest of Scripture.

We need to read this text in its proper context in the rest of Scripture. That means both attendin to ways in which the rest of Scripture provides important indications of how we should understand the dominion, and also recognizing that there are other key themes in Scripture that illuminate our relationship to other creatures. We need to take account of these other themes alongside the idea of dominion. They cannot be simply reduced to the idea of dominion.

2. What has been deeply wrong with much modern Christian reading of Genesis 1:26–8 is that it has considered the human relationship to nature in a purely vertical manner: a hierarchy in which humans are simply placed over the rest of creation, with power and authority over it. But humans are also related horizontally to other creatures, in the sense that we, like them, are creatures of God. To lift us out of creation and so out of our God-given embeddedness in creation has been the great ecological error of modernity, and so we urgently need to recover the biblical view of our solidarity with the rest of creation.

The context of Genesis 1:26–8 in the scriptural canon, shall limit this to the context within the first five books of the Bible, the Torah.

Human solidarity with the rest of creation

While the Genesis narratives significantly distinguish humans from the rest of creation, they also portray them as one creature among others.

The fundamental relationship between humans and other creatures is their common creatureliness. In Genesis 2:7 God forms the first human from the earth, just as he does all other living creatures, flora

and fauna. Adam’s earthiness is emphasized by the wordplay between his name Adam and the Hebrew word for the ground, ‘adamah’. This earthiness of humans signifies a kinship with the earth itself and with other earthly creatures, plants and animals. Human life is embedded in the physical world with all that that implies of dependence on the natural systems of life.

While the seven-day creation account in Genesis 1 does not say that God made humans out of the ground, it makes a parallel point by dating the creation of humans to the sixth day of creation. The six days of creation are designed according to a scheme in which God first creates, on the first three days, the physical universe, and then, on the following three days, its inhabitants. On the first day God creates day and night, on the second the sea, on the third the dry land. The inhabitants of each sphere follow in the same order: on the fourth day, the heavenly bodies; on the fifth day, the sea creatures; and on the sixth day, the land creatures – all of the land creatures: animals, reptiles, insects, and humans. Humans do not get a day to themselves.

They are, from the perspective of this scheme of creation, land creatures, though the rest of this account of their creation distinguishes them as special among the land creatures.

So it is a misreading of Genesis 1 itself to isolate the vertical dimension from the horizontal. According to Genesis, our creation in the image of God and the unique dominion given to us do not abolish our fundamental community with other creatures. The vertical does not cancel the horizontal.

Living in a theocentric creation

The seven-day creation narrative is often said, especially by those who hold it responsible for modern ecological destruction, to be anthropocentric. Humanity is the last and climactic creation of God. 

Surely this must mean that the rest has meaning and purpose only in relation to humanity. But, for one thing, to say that humans are the crown of creation is not the same as saying that the rest of creation exists solely for them. After each of God’s acts of creation, the narrative tells us that God saw that it was good – good in itself, givin pleasure and satisfaction to God. God did not have to wait till he had created humans to see that the creation was good. God valued and values all the creatures he created. But also, secondly, the account is not anthropocentric, but theocentric. Its climax is not the creation of humans on the sixth day, but God’s Sabbath rest, God’s enjoyment of God’s completed work on the seventh day (Gen. 2:2). Creation exists for God’s glory.

Ruling fellow-creatures – hierarchy qualified by community

The importance of the horizontal relationship of humans with other creatures, our common creatureliness must be stressed thoroughly. This horizontal relationship with fellow-creatures is vital to the proper understanding of the vertical relationship of authority over others. Since Genesis 1 presents this authority as a kind of kingly rule, it is relevant to recall the only kind of human rule over other humans that the Old Testament approves. The book of Deuteronomy allows Israel to have a king of sorts, but it interprets this kingship in a way designed to subvert all ordinary notions of rule (17:14–20). If Israel must have a king, then the king must be a brother. He is a brother set over his brothers and sisters, but still a brother, and forbidden any of the ways in which rulers exalt themselves over and entrench their power over their subjects. His rule becomes tyranny the moment he forgets that the horizontal relationship of brother/sisterhood is primary, kingship secondary. Similarly, the human rule over other creatures will be tyrannous unless it is placed in the context of our more fundamental community with other creatures.

Ruling within the order of creation – sharing the earth

Returning to the Genesis 1 account of the week of creation, we should note that it presents a picture of a carefully ordered creation. The order is already established before the creation of humans. The

human dominion is not granted so that humans may violate that order and remake creation to their own design. It is taken for granted that the God-given order of the world should be respected by the human exercise of limited dominion within it. Moreover, the manner in which the account of the work of the sixth day ends is significant in a way rarely noticed. Having said to humanity that all kinds of vegetation are given them for food, God continues by telling humanity that he has given every kind of vegetation as food to all land animals: every animal, every bird, every creeping thing, every living thing (1:29–30). Why does God say this at this point, after the creation of humanity, and why does he say it to humans? Surely to stress that human use of the earth is not to compete with its use by other creatures.

This is a massive restriction of the human dominion and chimes well with contemporary concerns. A similar point is made in Genesis 9, where God’s covenant is made not only with Noah and his descendants but also with every living creature; it is for the sake of them all that God promises never again to destroy the earth in a universal deluge (Gen. 9:8–17). It is home for them all and they all have a stake in that covenant.

Preserving creation

One of the most obvious interpretations of the human dominion within the book of Genesis itself follows just a few chapters on from the creation account: the story of the flood (Gen. 6 – 8). In this story Noah is given by God the task of preserving other creatures – specifically preserving species – that would otherwise have perished. This is a form of caring responsibility for other creatures that has come spectacularly into its own again today.

Letting creation be

One further way in which the Torah provides interpretation of the Genesis dominion is the legislation for Israel’s use of the land in the legal parts of the Pentateuch. How Israel is to use the land God gives her to live from is a key concern of the law of Moses. It involves Israel’s use and enhancement of the land, but it also imposes strict limits, especially in the form of the Sabbatical institutions: the weekly Sabbath, the Sabbatical Year that recurs every seven years, and the Jubilee Year (the Sabbath of Sabbaths) that recurs every fifty years.

These are not just about good farming practice, but about keeping the economic drive in human life within its place and not letting it dominate the whole of life.

In Israel’s land legislation, the human dominion is exercised as much in restraint as in active use. Particularly striking is the concern for wild animals. In the Sabbatical Year fields, vineyards and orchards are to be left to rest and lie fallow, ‘so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat’ (Exod. 23:11; similarly Lev. 25:7). Even within the cultivated part of the land, wild animals are expected to be able to live. This is a kind of symbol of respect for wilderness, reminding both ancient Israel and later readers of Scripture that dominion includes letting nature be itself. There is value that should be respected and preserved in the wild as well as in the humanly cultivated.

Summary

To summarize, when we read Genesis 1:26–8 in its biblical context, we see that the dominion, the God-given authority of humans within creation is:

a. An authority to be exercised by caring responsibility, not domination;

b. An authority to be exercised within a theocentric creation, not an

anthropocentric one;

c. An authority to be exercised by humans as one creature among others;

d. A right to use other creatures for human life and flourishing, but

only while respecting the order of creation and the right of other living beings also to life and flourishing;

e. An authority to be exercised in letting wild nature be as well in

intervening in it, an authority to be exercised as much in restraint

as in intervention.