Can Christian ethics offer a distinctive justification for environmental ethics?
Daniel Kamaluddin
'Give no thought for the morrow' Jesus told his most ardent followers. For all the Christian justifications for the protection of the natural world – as 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' – the deep, inherent conflicts and fatalist short-termism of Christianity as well as the unoriginality of its ethical values about the environment mean that it ultimately fails to offer a distinctive justification for environmental ethics. In the first instance, we should ask ourselves what a distinctive environmental ethics looks like. Overwhelmingly, environmental ethics looks like a moral human concern for the welfare of the environment in a way that transcends the material benefits of the physical impact they might have on the individual and their society for better or worse. In asking whether there is a 'distinctive justification', we must look to see a cohesive series of reasons as to why humans should care for their environment. When discussing the religious edicts and advice of the Bible, we can deem these ethical in that they affect human actions on the basis of a factor which transcends their own material wellbeing, and irredeemably colour the values of Christians in their fundamental sense of right and wrong. Similarly, as in a secular society, ethical values are deemed to exist separately and as part of a societal whole rather than coming directly from the individual's personal instincts. The idea of God exists separately from human life and his supposed will appears to be wide-ranging and separate from the individual in the same way. Crucially, we should suspend the question as to whether or not God exists. The question is: do Christians have a significant ethical belief that stands out, intellectually separate from that of others as justification? Of course, many cultures will come up with different ethical justifications for their actions based on their experiences and narrative about the meaning and structure of their society. But the question remains: do Christians create this sense uniquely and cohesively? I want to argue that Christianity entirely fails to do this. In terms of framing the gravity of this question we should first recognize the huge impact that the belief in the divine has on everyday life, as belief is something people hold deeply and personally, their consolation against the grim and chance brutality of human life. Thus, for the very many people, a sense of duty and fear of judgement from God colours their every decision and attitude, not least because such values are ingrained into religious people from birth. But perhaps more crucially, Christian ethics continue to shape the parameters of legal debate and convention in secular society to this day. To take but one example, the Christian value of the sanctity of life has deeply altered the approach of western legal systems. In the modern secular west, suicide is always dishonourable, and deeply tinged in shame. This is a particular innovation of Christianity, as the previous legal framework in western Europe – that of the Romans – deemed that suicide was not inherently wrong but could often be honourable. Tacitus, for example, holds up the suicide of Seneca in defence of his fundamental philosophical beliefs and for the sake of his family's security as a fundamentally decent and honourable thing. In the Christian tradition, though, Locke argues that life is inherently valuable because it belongs to God. Therefore, we do not have the right to take it from him. Our immediate impulse and recoil against acts of suicide is one that shows how our very ingrained sense of right and wrong is born
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