The Creation: Reinstating Its Awesome Meaning in Science, Society – Part 1
June 2, 2008
Cal DeWitt is a scientist, writer and conservationist. He is the President Emeritus of the Ausable Institute of Environmental Studies.
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
A couple of decades ago I was invited to speak at one of the sixty and more Christian colleges I have addressed over the years. It was an unusual invitation—unusual because I was asked to speak on “the Creation.” I knew they were expecting me to say something about “origins,” that they might even be thinking I would address the topic of evolution. But, agreeing to give this lecture, I decided to stick to the assigned topic. I would make the best of this wonderful opportunity! I would speak on “the Creation.”
Then, very recently in December 2005, a student member of my university’s lectures committee invited me to introduce Professor E. O. Wilson as our January Distinguished Lecturer. I was delighted! Not only was this an honor for me, but it would mean I would prepare something that, in the tradition of this lecture series, would be a 5 to 8 minute presentation that would not only introduce our distinguished speaker, but also would contribute substantively to thinking and learning on campus. And so, in introducing this highly influential biologist and thinker of our time—author of 20 significant books and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner—I would place his efforts toward preserving the diversity of life on earth in ethical context. I would conclude my introduction by saying, “Please welcome Professor Wilson, whose lecture this evening will be an encouragement to us in our efforts to preserve the whole Creation.”
It would be a deliberate use of “the Creation” in a setting where this term had been lost from use for nearly a hundred years. I reviewed with Prof. Wilson what I planned to present—a framework for simultaneously addressing science, ethics, and praxis—and asked for his affirmation of my use of the words, “the Creation.” Soon thereafter, within the first few sentences of his address to the 1300 professors, researchers, and students in his audience, he said, “I am one of those who would agree with Professor DeWitt, that we must re-instate the use of the words, ‘the Creation’ in our dealing with questions of biodiversity in science and society.”
In a long and friendly conversation prior to his lecture I had asked him about his use of the words “the Creation” in the widely-distributed video production, Keeping the Earth, in which both he and I had been interviewed. He replied, saying that he fully supported use of “the Creation” then and now, both in religion and in science. I was pleased of course, but then he told me something that further lifted my spirits: “In fact, I am writing a book whose title will be The Creation! It is scheduled to be released on September 6, 2006.”
As I concluded my introduction of E. O. Wilson that winter evening, with its potentially “charged” last sentence, I pictured many of my colleagues mentally squirming in response to my reference to “the Creation,” and found myself pleased with their likely amazement by Prof. Wilson’s affirmation of the need to reinstate this phrase into our vocabulary!
Today as I write at my home on this great wetland preserve just south of Wisconsin’s capitol city, after spending early morning tending the garden, I am celebrating with you what he and I, and no doubt many more, have discovered: The words, “The Creation” are vital to the new challenges we confront in our world today throughout earth’s biosphere, particularly for us who are the inheritors of Western culture. Re-instatement of “the Creation” in reference to our marvelous world—to the biosphere and its biodiversity—is vital in science, in theology, and throughout the West in our day.
So you might be thinking, what did I present at that Christian college? I stuck to the topic, and spoke only of the Creation! I reviewed its awesomeness, its inexpressible testimony to God’s love and care, the vitality it can bring toward understanding God’s creative and ongoing work in the world. I spoke of God’s revelation in the Bible—the book of God’s Word. I expressed enthusiasm for the rich perfusion of the concept of the Creation throughout the whole of Scripture and its vital importance to understanding the substance of the Bible and biblical theology. I spoke of God’s commitment to maintaining the lineages of living creatures in the days of Noah, and of the covenant God made with all life reported in Genesis 8 and 9. In the long-standing and biblically-based theological tradition, I spoke of the Creation as God’s revelation—the book of God’s works—and its great accessibility to us. I emphasized that taking the Bible seriously brought us to understand, through Romans 1:20 and elsewhere in Scripture, that God’s divinity and everlasting power are so marvelously and convincingly expressed in the Creation that it leaves all people across the earth and through all time without excuse. It is a marvelous Creation and reveals God’s power and divinity!
Many stayed after my talk to express their joy in beholding God’s Creation and its creatures. Among them were the people who invited me; I found that they were both surprised and pleased by what I had said. And yes, even though they had assigned me the topic, The Creation, they really had expected me to speak about evolution! But instilling and renewing a sense of awe and wonder for God’s Creation was far more engaging!
It should be clear, then, why I found E. O. Wilson’s news about his upcoming book, The Creation wonderful. Here was the person closest to being a “living Darwin” and, while retaining his identity as a “secular humanist,” he was affirming what I so deeply know and believe to be at the heart of a wholesome life as well as being central to Creation Care, the importance of using the words, “the Creation.”
Recognizing the whole world and universe as the Creation is of course at the very heart of responding with passion and compassion to the challenges we face across the continent and around the world and its biosphere. It is this biosphere (oikomene in the Greek Septuagint and tebel in the Hebrew renditions of Psalm 24:1) that has been entrusted to us. It is this biosphere—the Creation as we know and experience it in our everyday lives of work and praise—that we human beings are bending, stressing, and warping to meet short-sighted aims and narrow interests.
Where and how did we lose the concept of “the Creation?” Where in Western history was it unthinkingly supplanted with “the environment,” thereby getting a greatly diminished meaning? Perhaps it was with Chaucer, whom the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says was the person first to use the word “environing.” This, in turn, looks to be the word that led to invention of our word, “environment.” Prior to the addition of this new word, it seems that we had no way to express ourselves as separate from the rest of the Creation. Instead, our language compelled us to see ourselves as part and parcel of Creation— we were part of, and were woven into, its marvelous fabric. True enough, we had the special status of having been made to image God and to image God’s love for the world, but we were far from being “number one.” We were not gods or masters of our own destiny. Instead, we were (and still are) creatures of God. We were (and still are) stewards of the earth and all earth’s creatures.
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[...] post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine. Part 1 appeared [...]