The End of Creation
Canon Michael Hull, our Assistant Priest, writes:
The impetus to fix a day in the Christian liturgical year around creation care came from Demitrios (1914–1991), Patriarch of Constantinople, in the late twentieth century. On 1 September 1989, the Orthodox Feast of the Indiction—the first day of the Eastern liturgical year as opposed to Advent Sunday, the first day of the Western liturgical year—Demitrios decreed 1 September from then on to be a day of prayer for the protection of the environment. Many Christian denominations have followed suit with set days and seasons around creation care. The Scottish Episcopal Church, for example, introduced a Season of Creation with experimental liturgies in 2021.
Holy Scripture clearly affirms our unique role in creation and therefore our need to reflect prayerfully about our place in the created order. We, unlike all other creatures, are made in God’s image and likeness; and we, creatures ourselves, are given dominion of and subjugation over the earth (Gen. 1.26–31; cf. 5.1–3; 9.6). ‘Dominion’ is an apt translation into English of the Hebrew radah in Gen. 1.26 & 28 and ‘subdue’ of kavash in Gen. 1.28 (see the New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised). Mysteriously, the image and likeness of God, as well as the dominion and subjugation of the world, were not forfeited at our Fall (Genesis 3): a sinful humanity is still to look after a not-so-Edenic creation. In many respects, we’ve been abusers rather than carers of creation since the nineteenth century.
What is the purpose, the end of creation, and our role therein? Are we to care for the environment as common-sense self-preservation to perpetuate the earthly good of the carers, the cared for and the earth? Is our present state and earthly realm as good as it gets? No! We are destined for immortality, for a spiritual body as we depart this life in God’s faith and fear through the crucible of the resurrection and for a heavenly realm. St Paul explains it well in 1 Corinthians 15. He tells us that by grace we will be transformed from people of dust and sin like Adam to people who bear the image of heaven like the first fruits of the resurrection: Jesus.
Thus, the Psalmist says, ‘we are made a little less than God and crowned with glory and honour’ (8.5; cf. Heb. 2.5–9). The Book of Wisdom says, ‘God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity’ (2.23). And Jesus says, ‘heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away (Matt. 24.35; cf. Ps 102.25–28; Rom. 8.20) alluding to the imagery of Genesis 1 where the heavens and earth come into being at God’s word, and also to John 1 where Jesus is identified as the ‘word’ of God.
The end or purpose of creation is to facilitate God’s will for humanity, namely, that we all come to be saved and to know the truth (1 Tim. 2.4; cf. Jn 3.17). As St Irenaeus of Lyon writes so beautifully, ‘The glory of God is a living human, and the life of humans is the vision of God’ (Against Heresies 4.20). We are, by God’s grace, much more than carers. And, yet, we have been entrusted with the care of creation by God’s own command, and fixed times to reflect upon that trust are to be welcomed.
Set days and seasons of prayer for creation in Christian liturgical calendars, like 1 September as instituted by Demitrios and the SEC’s Season of Creation, render an invaluable opportunity for us to contemplate our charge to care for the earth within the context of our redemption as we look forward to ‘a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells’ (2 Pet. 3.13). We stand above and beyond the other earthly creatures and the earth itself because we, unlike them, are participants in the material and the spiritual world simultaneously.
Creation care, then, is akin to environmentalism in terms of conservation, protection and sustainability. It is, indeed, common sense to preserve the planet for our own good and for future generations. Self-preservation is a basic instinct instilled in all animals by God, but our humanity allows us to extend the instinctual beyond immediacy to the far-flung future. God’s revelation in Christ, on top of that, gives us insight to a future beyond the vicissitudes of time and matter that bind material creation. Let us use the invaluable opportunities before us not only to exercise our dominion judiciously but to progress the end of creation in glorifying God, to await the second coming of our Saviour and, as St John of Patmos would have it, to welcome ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ when the first heaven and the first earth pass away (Rev. 21.1).
The Reverend Canon Professor Michael Hull has been an Assistant Priest at St Vincent’s since 2015. He is also the Principal of the Scottish Episcopal Institute.
