Christian ethics and the environment
reason would seem to be similar to the justification of responsibility in that we are made in the image of God – by which we mean we have a particular power of agency (reason) to make decisions and exert our will not unlike God. On this most fundamental level then, there is very little difference between the best Christian instinct and a reasonable humanist view of the world, and thus it is very hard to prove that there is anything at all distinctive in the Christian view other than that the world comes from God. Nevertheless it is more than possible for non-Christians to feel that they have a covenant of co- existence with nature and an equal if not greater duty to it. In conclusion, although, there are definitely instances of a very forceful ethical duty to the environment throughout Christianity, in such a long text as the Bible it is very hard to prove that these are absolutely fundamental to Christian beliefs. To this extent, a cohesive and distinctive justification for environmental ethics cannot be weeded out from Jesus' condemnation of taking action against injustice as well as the Christian fatalism of 'divine providence'. Even when there are moments in Christian ethics that would seem to affirm an ethical view of the environment, we have seen that they do not seem to add anything additional to fairly intuitive arguments that a non-religious worldview might provide. Thus, it is clear to me that Christianity cannot and never will be environmentally ethical, in that it sees the environment as a means to an end for the trialling of humans for eternal life, not as deeply valuable, fleeting and precious in its own right.
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