Nature and Altering It - Softcover

Verhey, Allen D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802865488 ISBN 13: 9780802865489

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010

Synopsis

In this penetrating book Allen Verhey deftly unpacks the underlying human narratives or "myths" through which Western culture perceives "nature," and he presents the biblical narrative as an alternative story that can help shape a very different ethos for "nature and altering it." Although Christian Scripture has often been accused of nurturing arrogance toward nature, Verhey looks at the Bible in a way that moves beyond those accusations and demonstrates the value of the Christian narrative for contemporary ecological ethics.

About this title

About the Author

Allen Verhey (1945-2014) was Robert Earl Cushman Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Nature and Altering It

By Allen Verhey

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2010 Allen Verhey
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6548-9

Contents

PREFACE.......................................................................................................................................viiI. "Nature": What Is It? Sixteen Senses and Still Counting....................................................................................1II. "Every Ethos Implies a Mythos"............................................................................................................13III. The Problem of Arrogance: Reading Scripture Regarding Nature — A Response to the Accusation of Lynn White, Jr......................47IV. An Alternative Mythos and Ethos: Revisiting the Christian Story...........................................................................63V. From Narrative to Practices, Prophecy, Wisdom, Analysis, and Policy........................................................................119APPENDIX A: A Note on Typologies for the Relation of God and Nature...........................................................................134APPENDIX B: A Note on Typologies for the Relation of Nature and Humanity......................................................................136NAME INDEX....................................................................................................................................143SUBJECT INDEX.................................................................................................................................146SCRIPTURE INDEX...............................................................................................................................149

Chapter One

"Nature": What Is It? Sixteen Senses and Still Counting

If we are to think about "nature" and about "altering it," it would be good to know what we are thinking about, what "nature" is. But "nature" turns out to mean many different things. Following C. S. Lewis's wonderful philological exercise in Studies in Words, I undertook the task of listing some of the different senses of "nature." The list quickly grew to sixteen. The task grew tiresome as the senses multiplied, and I left the task unfinished, still counting. Even so, the list provides a convenient place to begin and may provide some clarity along the way.

"Nature" #1: Like us, the Greeks used "nature" (phusis) quite often and quite unselfconsciously to mean the kind of thing a thing is. In one of his famous definitions, Aristotle says, "whatever each thing is like when its process of coming-to-be is complete, that we call the nature [the phusis] of each thing" (Politics 1252b, cited in Lewis, p. 34). That's the sort of thing anything is, Aristotle thought, the kind of thing it grows into. The Latin natura and the English "nature," like the Greek phusis, frequently have this meaning: the sort or kind of thing a thing is, the character of a thing.

"Nature" #2: Even before Aristotle, however, phusis had come to mean something else, something more. It came to mean "everything." The pre-Socratics thought it would be useful to capture all the things they knew — minerals, plants, animals, human beings, gods — under a single name, and for some reason the name they gave to this heterogeneous collection of things into a single object of study was phusis, or "nature" (Lewis, p. 35). Parmenides' work, "On Nature" (Peri Phusis), for example, was a work about "everything," and may well mark the linguistic invention of this sense of "nature." This sense of "nature," however, could not accomplish much. Strictly speaking, "nature" in this sense has no opposite. Moreover, not much can be finally said about "everything." And to be told that something is a part of "nature" in this sense is not to learn anything more about it.

"Nature" #3, #4, #5, and #6: This invention of a new sense of "nature" did produce important reactions — and additional senses of "nature." Some said that these older thinkers had not given an account of everything, after all. There was something more. They might have said, I suppose, that phusis contains more than the older thinkers thought, but instead they said that there was something more than phusis (Lewis, p. 37). "Nature" was in a sense demoted, at least restricted. "Nature" was not "everything" but "everything but...." Plato, for example, who thought everything in the perceptible universe to be only an imitation and a product of the imperceptible and timeless "forms," used "nature" (nature #3) quite naturally for the whole perceptible universe, for "everything but ..." the forms (which were, in his view, more real and more valuable than everything else). For his part, Aristotle demoted or restricted "nature" to that which is subject to change (nature #4), and he studied those things in what he called "natural philosophy." But there is more — and more to study. There are those things that are unchangeable but cannot exist "on their own." These things were studied in mathematics. And there is one thing that is unchangeable but can exist "on its own," namely God, the unmoved mover. Christianity and Judaism and Islam, of course, also insisted that there was something more than phusis. There is God. Moreover, this God is related to "everything" as creator. "Nature" is the work of God, God's creation, "everything but ..." God (nature #5). Eventually "nature" was demoted or restricted even more, to refer to something less than the whole created world, to everything "under the moon" but not to the sky (nature #6).

"Nature" #7: Besides these restrictions and demotions, however, there was also an apotheosis of "nature" (Lewis, p. 40). This was hardly possible before "nature" had been named. But once named, "nature" could be personified and was. "Nature" was raised to divinity, to the sense of Great Mother Nature. To be sure, it is difficult sometimes to decide whether the personified "nature" names a deity or is understood as a rhetorical figure. At any rate, "nature" does come to have this sense sometimes, not just "everything" but a divine force or mind taken to be immanent in everything. When Stoics like Marcus Aurelius called Phusis "the eldest of deities" (Meditations IX, I), it sounds like religion. And this sense of Great Mother Nature has resisted dismissal. We still talk of "she" who "abhors a vacuum," is "red in tooth and claw," eliminates the unfit, moves toward higher forms of life, warns, comforts, teaches, and so on.

Meanwhile, we also go on using "nature" in other ways — to identify the kind of thing a thing is, or in one of the restricted senses we have observed, or in some other sense still. The list of the meanings of "nature" grows if we consider the implied opposites of "natural."

"Nature" #8: The "natural" can be contrasted, of course, with the "unnatural." This sense may be dependent upon nature #1, the sort of thing a thing is, the "unnatural" marking a departure from the sort of thing a thing is but also — and curiously — marking it as bad. "Natural" then comes to mean not only fitting to the sort of thing that a thing is but also "good" (nature #8). But as C. S. Lewis observed, "when the timid man forces himself to be brave, ... he is not called unnatural" (p. 43).

"Nature" #9: The "natural" can otherwise be contrasted with "the interfered with." It is a commonplace sense, invoked usually by the adverb "naturally," that is to say, "if not interfered with," "if left alone" (p. 44). The sense of "nature" here is "the given," or "the unaltered" (nature #9). It is easy enough to identify this sense, but not so easy to explain how we got to it. Perhaps we got to it because we assumed that the sort of thing a thing is (nature #1) will eventually emerge if the thing is not interfered with. But one might as easily observe that the nature of nature is constant and reciprocal interference. That is to say, the sort of thing (nature #1) "everything" is — whether in a restricted sense or not (whether nature #2, #3, #4, #5, or #6) — is that things are constantly interfered with by other things.

Nature #9 can easily accommodate the personification of a force immanent in everything (nature #7), as when we say, "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature," but it does not seem to require it. It does, however, seem to require a contrast between humanity and nature that we have not yet encountered in this philological exercise — and, indeed, a contrast that would be denied by nature #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6. The interference being thought about, after all, is usually interference by human beings. To beavers, one might suppose, the dam in the stream would be an interference, "unnatural," and the paved road by the side of the stream, what is given, or "nature." But to human beings the beavers' dam seems to be nature (nature #9), and the paved road, an intervention into what is given. Perhaps we could say that it is the nature (nature #1) of human beings to interfere with what is given (nature #9), but it is the nature of almost everything to interfere with what is given.

"Nature" #10: As we have just observed, nature #9 seemed to require a contrast between humanity and nature that we had not previously noted. We must pause to note, therefore, this still more restricted use of "nature," "nature" demoted to "everything but ... humanity" (nature #10). It can be found in this sense in Wordsworth and in most "nature poets" (Lewis, p. 73).

"Nature" #11: Sometimes, however, the line is drawn not between nature and humanity but between features or elements of our humanity. Sometimes, as in the phrase "nature calls," nature includes part of our humanity, the animal part. Some other part, the rational part or the spiritual part or the soul, for example, is marked off from nature. Nature, then, is "everything but ... some part of a human being" (nature #11). Then the nature of the human being, the sort of thing a human being is (nature #1), would be part nature (nature #11) and part not. Moreover, it might then be regarded as part of the nature of the human being (nature #1) to alter nature, to interfere with "the given" (nature #9), at least by restraining the animal or the "natural" part of a human being (nature #11). Such interference, furthermore, might be approved or deplored. If the interference is deplored, then "nature" or "the natural" would be presumed "good" (nature #8). If it is approved, then "nature" or "the natural" would be presumed to be the raw or the savage or the "beast" in us. Confusing enough, I suppose, but we are not quite done with the list.

"Nature" #12: The "natural" may also be contrasted with the civil. Consider Aristotle's claim that some are "natural slaves." Presumably he meant that it was the nature (nature #1) of some to be slaves, that that was the sort of thing some people simply were. Now one should object, of course, that it is not the nature (nature #1) of any human being to be a slave. But leaving that aside, one might also object that a particular slave was not a slave by "nature" but by law or convention. The Greek and Macedonian slave trade was not very good, I suspect, at ensuring that only natural slaves would be enslaved. But if Aristotle's society was to lay claim to being just, it would have to distinguish the one who was a slave by nature from the one who was a slave simply by law or convention, and it would have to free the latter. The contrast, of course, concerns not just slaves, but the legislation and administration of the society more generally. The contrast is between the law and what is "really right" (Lewis, p. 59). What is "really right" may be regarded, of course, as "the laws of the gods, unwritten and unvarying," but it can also be regarded as the "law of nature" (Lewis, p. 60). "Nature" in such contexts and in such contrasts means the "really right" (nature #12), independent of civil law, indeed, the final test for civil legislation and administration. Ancient, medieval, and early modern thinkers invoked "nature" in moral and political philosophy — but the ambiguities of "nature" permitted quite different uses of "nature" in political philosophies.

"Nature" #13 and #14: For the Stoics, for example, the laws of nature were the laws of Mother Nature (nature #7). For Christians, God had inscribed God's laws on human hearts, on human nature (nature #1), and on the whole creation (nature #5). There surely may be a place reserved for personified Nature in God's heavenly court, but she is there under the authority of God, and she learns her laws from God. For both Stoics and Christians, however, the laws of nature are "really right." For Hobbes, on the other hand, the laws of nature were simply the way human beings (and all other living beings) "naturally" behaved if there were no interference (nature #9), and in Hobbes's vision and philosophy "the law of nature" was simply to act in self-preservation and self-interest. It is not what is "really right" (nature #12); it is "the given" (nature #9).

For both Hobbes and the Stoics the contrast between the laws of nature and civil laws remains, but the contrast is assessed quite differently. In Hobbes, of course, in the "state of nature" human life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The "given," the "natural," is violence, a state of savagery that civil law enables us to escape but to which we are always at risk of descending again. On the other hand, among Stoics and Christians the "state of nature" was frequently regarded as a state of "peaceable difference," as a time of innocence, from which humanity has somehow fallen. Consider Seneca's claim that "the first of mortals and their children followed nature, uncorrupted, and enjoyed the nature of things [nature #2] in common." Or Pope's couplet, "Nor think in Nature's state they blindly trod, / The state of Nature was the reign of God." The Stoics and Hobbes have obviously quite different accounts of the "state of nature," quite different (and contradictory) senses of "nature" itself. For Hobbes, nature is the arena of violence (nature #13), and for the Stoics, nature is the arena of peaceable difference (nature #14).

Nature #15: The task grows tiresome; the senses multiply. But we should note also the contrast of the "natural" and the "supernatural." "Supernatural," of course, may be applied to a wide variety of phenomena, to ghosts as well as gods, to miracles as well as almost anything mysterious. What binds these phenomena together as "supernatural" seems to be their power to evoke some sense of awe. But what sort of contrast is this? Isn't the "natural" itself, the starry heavens, for example, capable of evoking some sense of awe? Does that make the "natural" itself "supernatural"? In Christian theology it makes good sense, of course, to speak of the "supernatural." The power of God sometimes lifts a human being (or some other being) to do that which is above or beyond its own powers, given the sort of thing it is (nature #1). We name such times miraculous or "supernatural." But, again, what sort of contrast is this? In Christian theology it is the power of God that also gives a human being (and all other things) the power to do what is within its own powers, given the sort of thing it is. The birth of a child is still miraculous. We are on a dangerous path if we allow this contrast of the "natural" and the "supernatural" to empty the world of wonder, if we use it to define a miracle simply as a contradiction of nature, or if we understand "nature" itself as without God and the power of God (nature #15). Science may indeed say many true and important things about nature without using God as a hypothesis, but all that it says should nurture a sense of awe, not just a hope for mastery.

Nature #16: Christian theology has complicated things still more, distinguishing human "nature" as created from our human "nature" as fallen and by insisting that we can hardly make sense of human nature, of the sort of creature human beings are (nature #1) without attending both to God's creation and to human sin. Both "natures" in our nature may have their laws, but these laws are at war with one another (Rom. 7:23). And to complicate matters still more in Christian theology, "nature," whether created or fallen, may be contrasted with "grace." But again, we may ask what sort of contrast this is, a question that has prompted no shortage of theological reflection. Does grace contradict nature? Or fulfill it? Is it added to nature? Or is it the foundation of nature? It makes a difference, of course, if we are considering our nature as created or as fallen, but every concrete human being is both created and fallen. It is grace that made us, grace that sustains us in spite of our sin, and grace that makes things, all things, new. We are on another dangerous path if we allow this contrast of the "nature" and "grace" to empty "nature" of grace, as if "nature" could be understood, even if we have not forgotten the power of God, as without the grace of God (nature #16).

The reader is surely as tired of this list-making as I am. We leave it aside, still counting. Three conclusions from this list, however, are surely warranted. First, although the context usually clarifies the particular sense of "nature" being used, there are possibilities of confusion here. "Nature" is a slippery word. It is possible, for example, to confuse "the given" (nature #9) and the "really right" (nature #12). The risks of confusion exist both in discourse among people and in one's own deliberation. If there is a remedy for confusion, it will be some greater clarity and consistency about the sense of "nature" that is invoked.

Second, there are choices to be made — and somehow defended. Should we regard nature as "everything" or as somehow restricted and demoted? If we should regard it as somehow restricted, what is left out of its borders? Does nature include humanity or not? And if it does, what is the place of humanity within it? What is the appropriate human attitude toward nature? And what is the appropriate human vocation with respect to it? Should nature be personified and apotheosized or disenchanted? Should it be regarded as raw and savage, as dangerous and oppressive, or as innocent and peaceable?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Nature and Altering Itby Allen Verhey Copyright © 2010 by Allen Verhey. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802865488
• ISBN 13: 9780802865489
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160