The Silence of Jesus

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
--Isaiah 53:7

There is an account of Jesus' examination by Pontius Pilate in all four gospels, but only two of them, Matthew and Mark, make mention of the fact that Jesus stands silent before His accusers. He speaks with Pilate, and confirms that He is the King of the Jews, but "He did not answer him with regard to even a single charge, so the governor was quite amazed" (Mt 27:14). Why is this? Partially, I think, it is an identification with the oppressed and the voiceless. Jesus, our great High Priest, knows our sorrows. So He stands, just like some of us, without a voice to demand justice. The politically, racially, culturally, and ideologically downtrodden have in Jesus a Savior who can truly say, "I know what it is like to be you, and to have to bear the insults and false labels thrown onto you by those in power. And I have been righteous when you have not. Trust in Me." Jesus' silence is a silence of solidarity, a silence which bears the suffering of His sheep.

Christ and Caesar

19 The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people. 20 So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. 21 So they asked him, "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. 22 Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" 23 But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, 24 "Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?" They said, "Caesar’s." 25 He said to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s."

I was listening to Michael Ramsden today and he had some nice analysis of this passage. What struck me, however, is the use of the word "likeness." I'm no Greek scholar, but could Jesus be reminding us that we are created in the likeness of God? Or in other words, demanding that just as the likenesses of Caesar must be given back to Caeasar, so the likenesses of God (ourselves) must be given back to God. He sees beyond the false sincerity of the Pharisees and Herodians and seeks to penetrate their heart with an appeal to give their lives to God. A simple point, but one worth considering.

The Idolatry of Biblical Criticism

It has often been stated that we project our desires onto the text. As is evident in the “carnivalesque” interpretations of Theodore Jennings and others, what we find is in large part dictated by what we look for. But what about, rather than conforming the Bible to our desires, conforming our desires to the Bible? This is of course a somewhat silly question in modern academia. But it is worth asking ourselves why that is. I believe that the Bible has been discounted as authoritative or normative in large part because higher biblical criticism and postmodernism have rendered the text’s plain sense untrustworthy in our eyes. But we continue to read and value it. So we must now make it trustworthy, by creating interpretations that we place (or in some cases, force) onto the text. And this is, essentially, the same as making ourselves trustworthy. But this of course means that it is no longer the Bible, but we who are responsible for the construction and propagation of moral and spiritual norms and/or truths. It is our interpretations of the text that become valid, meaningful, or normative, and so ultimately ourselves. We become our own Gods.

So by accepting the text as intrinsically untrustworthy, we come to a dilemma: either we continue to hold to a religion which we will call Christianity, but which is in reality self-worship, or we discard the Bible as anything other than a historical-cultural document, interesting as such but not spiritually significant. The problem with modern biblical criticism is this: we are dancing around an equivocation. Let us either be bold and discard the trappings of the community of faith which we continually attempt to redefine or undermine, or let us be courageous and hold to the trustworthiness and authority of the Bible, but most of all let us be honest, and not claim to be doing one when we are clearly doing the other.

Theocentrism, Ecology, and the Earth Bible Project

Much has been said and written regarding the methodology of the Earth Bible project and its three part framework for reading Biblical texts. Critics have often accused the project of distorting the text to fit the Earth Bible mold, either stuffing it into a framework that does not address the issues of the passage, or stretching minute detail into meaning-altering significance. However, Psalm 104 provides an opportunity to utilize the framework as a sort of guide, checking our response as in a mirror and bringing forth new insight as with a magnifying glass. It is not that we should find or force an anthropocentric or ecological reading, but that we should look for (and at) it. I depart from a “radical” ecological hermeneutic in that I have not attempted to find in nature a significance independent from humankind or God, but rather centered the reading on God and as a result found nature as a subject. I believe this to be the proper method. C. S. Lewis sums it up in his essay “First and Second Things”:

To sacrifice the greater good for the less and then not to get the lesser good after all--that is the surprising folly…Every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. Apparently the world is made that way…You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.

If we are to take the Bible seriously as a subject of study, we must therefore take its worldview seriously, and this worldview centers on God as the Creator and King of the Universe. Only atop this foundation can a faithful biblical interpretation commence. We cannot simply shunt God off to the side and place something else in the spotlight—it will always ring false. And this is why Earth-as-subject can never become an end in itself. But if we respect the text, placing God at the center, we discover that God then immediately invests Earth with significance and dignity. Psalm 104 is an example.

Human beings are mentioned only in verses 1, 14-15, 23, 26, and 34-35, a mere seven verses in a total of thirty-five. The majority of the psalm is devoted to God and His provision for nature. We should point out, though, that God acts, if not in a human-like, then at least in a personal, way. He wears clothes (v. 1-2), builds a tent and a house (v. 2-3), rides a chariot (v. 3), and hides His face (v. 20). The rest of God’s actions are more magisterial, appointing, commanding, and making. In verses 14-15 plants are said to grow in order to nourish humans and make them glad, which Habel and his associates would clearly see as anthropocentric, refusing to recognize the right of the plant world to exist independently of humankind. Verse 23 mentions humans but makes no comment on their priority over the Earth. The writer mentions “ships” in verse 26, but only to say that they sail on the waters which God has made. The writer inserts himself into the psalm at the beginning and end, in verses 1 and 34-35. He calls God “my God” and seeks to please Him. Overall, while anthropocentrism may indeed lie behind the text, or within the author’s mind, it does not emerge in any significant way in Psalm 104.

The psalm does present a quite robust picture of empathy with the Earth and recognition of our “deep ecological connections” (Habel 4). The psalmist paints a natural world completely dependent upon God, from the grass to the animals to the mountains. The humans play a role, not as dominators or rulers, but as simply another kind of creature for which He provides. We find our nourishment in the produce of the field, just like the livestock (v. 14). The psalm gives us no pride of place, but mentions us in between cattle and cedars. We are encouraged to think outside of our own anthropocentrism and praise the God who has made the Earth and filled it with more than mere humanity. Here, perhaps contra the Earth Bible project, it is God and not Earth which provides the ultimate nourishment for the living things of the world. “They all look to you to give them their food in due season,” writes the psalmist in verse 27. Verses 27-30 establish the inseparable link between the fertility of the Earth and God’s superintendence. God gives food, and the animals eat. When God departs, they are dismayed. He gives and takes their breath and life.

Psalm 104 reminds us, much as the Earth Bible project attempts to, that we humans are not the center of the universe. But Psalm 104 finds its center not in praise of nature, but of nature’s God. We are constantly reminded that this is a theocentric universe, and nature is the method through which this message is conveyed. As we respect nature’s grandeur and richness, so we should look beyond it to the God who created it and give Him glory. Nature is therefore, in the eyes of the psalmist, not an end in itself but a means to worship. If we attempt to make nature into a “first thing,” we do violence to the text and become deliberately manipulative of its meaning. But if we put God first, we find that nature becomes an object of deep respect, appreciation, and wonder.

The psalmist continually deals with non-human characters as subject in their own right. God is shown as providing for the specific needs of each creature. He gives His gifts directly to the animals and plants, and the psalm states explicitly that the gifts are intended for them, and not for humans. The springs give drink “to every beast of the field” (v. 10); grass grows “for the livestock” (v. 14); the stork’s “home” is in the fir trees (v. 17); the mountains are “for the goats” and the rocks are “a refuge for the rock badgers” (v. 18); the lions seek their prey and lie down in their dens (v. 22) (emphasis added). The proper owners of these things are animals, not people. God does not only cater to human interests, but to all of His creatures. Any ecologically-minded reader would be overjoyed to find that God has clearly created a world in which animals have a right to live their lives, and in which human activity plays little role. In fact, as verses 19-23 state, animals and humans seem to live in separate realms.

We are driven to respect the natural world, not simply because it nourishes us, or rather because God nourishes us through it, but because it is given the role of God’s kingly domain. Verse 1 proclaims that God is “clothed with splendor and majesty,” clearly setting forth a kingship metaphor, which is then extended in the following verses. His kingly robe is light, and His tent is the sky. He rides on the clouds in His chariot, and uses wind and fire as servants. All of the elements in this kingship metaphor are drawn from the natural world. It is therefore reasonable that the rest of the psalm, in its description of God’s control of and power over nature should also be read in the context of God’s kingship, and the Earth as His kingdom. Since we too are under God’s authority, we should not attempt to rebel against His established rule over nature, establishing our own despotic authority against His just and good rulership. Doing so would be treason, and would fall under the curse of verse 35.

As a whole, ecological hermeneutics is not nearly so far removed from the text as some other interpretations have been, but not as closely linked with the meaning as it should be. The Earth Bible project is simply one of the attempts to read the Bible from an ecological framework, and so we must not pass judgment on the whole field based solely on this group of scholars. There are a multitude of differing efforts to draw from the Bible some sort of word about ecology and our relationship to the natural world. Norman Habel and his fellows are, self-admittedly, “radical” in their approach. The critiques leveled against Habel’s approach are, in my opinion, valid. The method replaces the text as the well from which we draw meaning, and as such brings into question the purpose of doing ecological Biblical hermeneutics in the first place. Commitment to textual analysis is obviously only of secondary concern to the goal of presenting an ecological philosophy. And if this is the case, why not simply present the philosophy and be done with it?

The issue can be compacted to a single question: is the Bible authoritative or not? If it is, the plain sense of the text dictates that we do in fact live in an anthropocentric universe, in which human beings occupy a higher position than the animals, and enjoy a special relationship to the Lord in which the rest of the natural world in does not fully participate. It is an inescapable theme running through the entire corpus. This does not exclude non-human characters from participating in the narrative or having intrinsic worth, but it does mean that human beings are more important. And if the text is not authoritative, why are we reading it? I can only surmise that the Earth Bible project is simply using the text as a medium through which to present an alien message, harnessing the power of the Bible in our cultural imaginings in order to foist off an agenda upon its readership. There are many texts which capture environmentalist sentiments much more clearly and broadly than the Bible. Why is it significant that we find such a message in this particular text? I believe we will indeed find the message, but perhaps not in the way the Earth Bible project intends.

Works Cited

Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics. Ed. Norman G. Habel and Peter Trudinger. SBL, 2008.