The Catholic tradition of Natural Theology:

The environmental issue has brought many members of the Christian faith to reconsider the doctrinal and moral principles of their faith. Some pioneering theologians have integrated eastern mysticism along with the tradition to develop a more ecological form of Christian spirituality. Some skeptics have argued against such development based on the notion that scripture and tradition is primarily or strictly anthropocentric (human centered) and that creation’s importance is only relevant insofar as it serves humanity.

The mainstream Christian Churches have not sat idly in the midst of this development and debate. Many churches including the Catholic Church have gone on to offer positions and to integrate these positions within the official teachings of the Church. In Catholic Social Teaching the principle of being good stewards of creation or promoting the integrity of creation has been developed as a foundation to base the Church’s stance on the environmental issues of our day. The Catholic Catechism has this to say on the topic of the moral imperative to respect the integrity of creation:  

The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity. Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Catechism #2415

While many Christian churches have turned to scripture to examine their position with regards to the environment the Catholic Church has the added benefit of having a tradition of natural theology. Early Catholic theologians have positioned that the natural world also reveals the moral principles and the Divine purpose of our lives. This of course is attributed to the fact that creation comes from God and that it serves the ultimate good. In the Eastern tradition St. Basil the Great tells us:

 I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that wherever you go, the least plant may bring you the clear remembrance of the Creator. …One blade of grass or one speck of dust is enough to occupy your entire mind in beholding the art with which it has been made. … The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, even our brothers, the animals, to whom Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us. …We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song, has been a groan of pain. May we realize that they live, not for us alone, but for themselves and for Thee and that they love the sweetness of life.

St. John of Damascus clarifies the object of our worship within our respect for creation:

The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God. … I do not worship matter. I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation! I honor it, but not as God. Because of this I salute all remaining matter with reverence, because God has filled it with his grace and power. Through it my salvation has come to me.

The Western Medieval tradition continued to accept this natural tradition. In the works of mystical spirituality we have the teaching of St. Hildegard of Bingen who boldly said:

Do not mock anything God has created. All creation is simple, plain and good. And God is present throughout his creation. Why do you ever consider things beneath your notice? God’s justice is to be found in every detail of what he has made. The human race alone is capable of injustice. Human beings alone are capable of disobeying God’s laws, because they try to be wiser than God.

Another mystic St. Bernard of Clairvaux offered us this powerful statement:

Believe an expert: you will find something far greater in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you cannot learn from the masters.

St. Bernard’s belief was by no means an isolated position when you place it next to a statement made by one of the great doctors of the Church, St. Augustine of Hippo, who in an earlier time (410 AD) stated:

Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?

When you consider some of the pioneering works of eco-theologians like Fr. Thomas Berry, CP or Sr. Miriam MacGillis, OP who suggest that we may benefit from developing a theology that is based on the revelation of creation as well as the revelation of scripture it would seem that they are not so unique in their thinking from this early tradition of our faith. After all, it was St. Paul the Apostle who wrote in the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans:

 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.

Fr. Thomas Berry, CP died last year. He was a Passionist priest and ecological scholar. His work on developing an ecological spirituality that is based on the emerging cosmology has caused some controversy because it is thought to be unique and outside of the recent tradition of our faith. But as we can see his work is not so much new and unique as much as it is reviving an older tradition which has been lost to us since the late 1800’s. A tradition that St. Paul of the Cross, the founder of the Passionist, believed in when he poetically said:

 Listen to the sermons of the flowers, the trees, the bushes, the heavens, the sun, and all the world. You will find they preach of love and praise of God, and invite you to magnify the greatness of the Sovereign Artist, who gave them being.