Land Ethic is posted in a series of six sections. This essay was published previously in New Philosophy (Jan-June 2005). - Editor.
See previous sections: 1: Introduction; 2: Instrumental Arguments; 3: Utilitarian Arguments; 4: Intrinsic Value Arguments; 5: Theological Arguments
Is a land ethic compatible with New Church doctrine? The short answer is yes, but the reasons for acting, the motives one brings into play, must be different than those proposed by Leopold. Where Leopold saw humans as a product of evolution we should see God’s providence. Leopold would have us love nature because we are part of it, but as I read the Writings we should love nature for its uses and for the fact that God created it.
Swedenborg writes that nature does not exist in its own right. “All this shows how sensually people are thinking when they say that nature exists in its own right, how reliant they are on their physical sense and their darkness in matters of spirit” (Divine Love and Wisdom 46). The gentle determinism and view of man as ‘merely’ a citizen in a much bigger world is incompatible with the Writings of the New Church. Two numbers make this point quite clear.
Indeed, all things are for the sake of the human race, so an angelic heaven can come from it. Through the human race creation returns to the Creator it came from. This joins the created universe with its Creator, and through the conjunction there is eternal continuation. (Married Love 85)
The useful functions of everything tend upward, step by step, from the lowest, to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source...these “lowest things” are all the elements of the mineral kingdom...The intermediate things are all the elements of the plant kingdom...The primary things are all the members of the animal kingdom...The lowest are for the service of the intermediate and the intermediate for the service of the highest. So the useful functions of all created things tend upwards in a sequence from the lowest to the human, which is primary in the divine design. (Divine Love and Wisdom 65)
If mankind is at the top of the pyramid in the natural world it may then appear that a dominion interpretation is justified, but this is simply not the case. “Can anyone fail to see quite clearly that the goals of creation are useful functions? Simply bear in mind that nothing can arise from God the Creator – nothing can be created, therefore – that is not useful” (Divine Love and Wisdom 308). Everything has a use. Too often our definition of ‘useful’ includes only what is economically expedient or imparts some direct, observable benefit to a person. There are many organisms in the world that do not fit this description (Leopold’s ‘less than 5% of the 22,000 higher organisms’), but they are still useful. This is explicitly stated a few numbers later, after discussing the forms of life that are directly useful to humans for food, shelter, clothing, etc, Swedenborg goes on to write,
There are of course many things that we do not find useful, but these extras do not prevent usefulness. In fact they enable useful functions to continue. Then there are abuses of functions; but again, the abuse of a function does not eliminate the useful function, just as the falsification of something true does not destroy the truth except for people who are doing the falsifying. (Divine Love and Wisdom 331)
On the first reading this seems to contradict the study of ecology and the web of life it elucidates. Earlier in this paper I described how removing some life forms from the web would have little effect on the earth’s ability to support basic human life. Obviously if any human-induced extinction caused irreparable damage to the natural world we would already have perished since there are numerous species that today we know only in taxidermy. This redundancy and forgivingness can also disguise the fact that all forms of life are still useful. Just because the form is not essential to the continued existence of humans does not mean that that species fails to perform a use. Adaptive radiation demonstrates this point. Wolves were extirpated from the eastern United States hundreds of years ago, but over the last few decades coyotes have filled most of this range. The coyotes of eastern North America have taken over much of the niche once filled by wolves; they hunt in packs and the average body weight of an adult is nearly twice that of their ‘original’ ancestors in southwestern North America. In these rapid changes of a species' habits I see God raising up a new form to perform the use of ‘top predator’ [2].
The Writings also tell us loving the common good is appropriate and desirable. In describing people who do good Arcana Coelestia says, “They call the common good itself their neighbor to a higher degree, for within this neighbor the good of a greater number of persons is seen” (Arcana Coelestia 2425:3). This sounds quite similar to the reasons other Christians use to support the stewardship ethic.
Yet another point in the Heavenly Doctrines about how we should regard the natural world is found in the fourth commandment. Swedenborg writes that the Lord created the sun to be like a father and the earth like a mother, “from whose marriage spring all the products of germination which adorn the earth’s surface...All of these occurrences are evidence that the Lord by means of the sun and the earth in the natural world, provides all necessities for living creatures and for inanimate matter” (True Christian Religion 308). So in the most external sense we can regard the sun and earth as our father and mother and afford them due respect, although the Writings do not say this explicitly with respect to humans.
I think from these, and other numbers, it is apparent that the Writings most closely support a stewardship interpretation of a land ethic. Nowhere do the Writings give us permission to exercise dominion over nature or to claim that we can decide which forms should live and which should die, which forms of love are worthwhile and which are not. To make such sweeping judgments is to succumb to the love of dominion and place our judgment over God’s.
In conclusion, the ecological crisis we are currently experiencing is not solely an external problem. We must develop an ethic that includes our relationship to the land that supports us, and base it on religious principles. Only an ethic with a foundation in the Divine will be strong enough to overcome the selfishness and arrogance that drives us in our attempts to control nature. The last word goes to Christian author, essayist, farmer and poet Wendell Berry, who says of reading the Bible with the land in mind, “We will discover that for these reasons our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God’s gifts into His face, as if they were of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them” (Berry, 98).
The Earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those that dwell therein. (Psalm 24:1)
Berry, Wendell. Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community. New York: Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, 1993.
Black, John. The Dominion of Man. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970.
Callicott, J. Baird. Beyond the Land Ethic. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Callicott, J. Baird. In Defense of the Land Ethic. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Folsom, Rev. Paul. And Thou Shalt Die in a Polluted Land. Ligouri, Missouri: Ligourian Pamphlets and Books, 1971.
Freyfogle, Eric T. Bounded People, Boundless Lands. Washington DC: Island Press, 1998.
The Holy Bible, trans. Unknown. New King James Version. New York: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984.
Gorke, Martin. The Death of Our Planet’s Species: A Challenge to Ecology and Ethics. Washington DC: Island Press, 2003.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.
Leopold, Carl A. “Living with the Land Ethic,“ in Bioscience, vol 54, no 2 (February 2004), p. 149-154.
Nash, Roderick F. The Rights of Nature. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, Ltd., 1989.
Rolston III, Holmes. Environmental Ethics. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1988.
Rolston III, Holmes. Philosophy Gone Wild. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1986.
Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics, second edition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Swedenborg, Emanuel. Arcana Caelestia, Vol I: Trans. John Elliot. London: The Swedenborg Society, 1983.
Swedenborg, Emanuel. Arcana Caelestia, Vol III: Trans. John Elliot. London: The Swedenborg Society, 1985.
Swedenborg, Emanuel. Divine Love and Wisdom, Trans. George Dole. West Chester, Pennsylvania: The Swedenborg Foundation, 2003.
Swedenborg, Emanuel. Love in Marriage, Trans. David F. Gladish. New York: The Swedenborg Foundation, 1992.
Swedenborg, Emanuel. The True Christian Religion, Vol I: Trans. John Chadwick. London: The Swedenborg Society, 1988.
Wenz, Peter S. Environmental Ethics Today. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
White, Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” in Science, 155:1203-1207.
Wright, Richard T. Biology Through the Eyes of Faith, revised. San Francisco, California: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.
Thanks also to Rev. Grant Odhner for his paper, “Key Ideas on Nature from the Heavenly Doctrines”.
Edmund was raised in Bryn Athyn where he attended New Church schools. He lives near Cooperstown, New York where he works as a registered nurse. He is currently plotting his departure from nursing by engaging full-time in setting up a farmstead cheese making operation. He finds the greatest joys in life from his marriage to Normandy Alden, his dear family and friends, and spending time in the woods and fields of his farm.