Environment and Justice

June 25, 1997

It is a well-established fact, that care for the environment of our human family regarding ecological matters constitutes a most urgent question for each and every human person. With every passing day, the danger threatening the survival of life on this beautiful planet of our universe proves to be yet clearer and ever present. Today, a host of international organizations, governments and leading non-governmental bodies are sending the same message, in no uncertain terms, that they are bearing down on the very visible danger that is posed by the real disturbance in the ecological balance. Each has set forth proposals for the prevention of the certain destruction of our planet of which we have been forewarned.

For this reason, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Mother Church, has taken this initiative and joined its own voice to those of many others and has taken diligent and incisive action for the protection of the environment, inasmuch as our material world is first and foremost a spiritual organism. The Church is compelled first by its love in Christ for our endangered fellow human beings, and also by its responsibility not only to teach the faith, but to practice it (Jm 2.14-17).

So it is that, as in many other matters of faith, the Church risks being condemned as indifferent unless it speaks out appropriately with the “word of truth.” Failure to do so would result in opening the field to other voices, and it could sometimes result in the consequence that we, the believers in Christ, might not even recognize what our own faith teaches about these issues.

Therefore, our actions are out of love and a sense of responsibility, in order that we may speak the truth and be of service to our fellow human beings. Our contribution to these efforts is the annual organizing of these environmental seminars here in the sacred monastery of the All Holy Trinity at Halki. The theme of this year’s seminar is “Environment and Justice.”

At first glance, these concepts might appear unrelated, but they are most certainly worth a closer look. In Holy Scripture, justice does not have only or principally the current meaning of the dispensation of justice, namely of justice being served. Justice carries a more extensive and comprehensive sense of virtue, such as expressed in the well-known aphorism of Aristotle: “Every virtue is contained in justice.” The just person does more than merely comply with the law; the just person bears within oneself a higher conception of justice, namely of the perfect relationship of all things to one another. Thus, the just person is virtuous in every respect. For example, Holy Scripture describes as just whosoever shows mercy all the daylong and freely gives of oneself, without any legal obligation. Likewise, Scripture portrays St. Joseph the Betrothed as being a just man, namely as being virtuous in all things, precisely because at the moment that he thought the all-holy Virgin was guilty of illicit union (the result of discovering her pregnancy), he did not wish to make an example of her or subject her to the punishment prescribed by the law, which was death by stoning.

If justice is identified with this correct understanding, then it becomes immediately apparent that the contemporary acute ecological problem has its root precisely in the lack of justice, in the lack of that comprehensive virtue of possessing all virtues.

Repentance and Restoration

Humanity freely departed from this virtue of justice when, at the prompting of the serpent, Adam declared his autonomy from God and thereby overturned the relationship of love and trust towards God. As a result, we came to sense our own vulnerability; we began to know remorse, to hear the approaching footsteps of death, and since that time we have been filled with fear and anxiety (Gen 2.9-11). Recall how when Adam was called by God to account for his disobedience. Instead of humbling himself and seeking forgiveness, he placed the blame on God Himself, claiming that Eve was the cause, that helper whom God had provided for him. Thus, Adam lost the opportunity for repentance and for the restoration of love that would have absolved him from the fear of living the remaining years of his life in the inherited fear, which has endured in every generation since.  

From that time, humankind has been engaged in the Titanic, if not Sisyphean, attempt to reclaim the power of kingship over creation through its own efforts, which were forfeited by this disobedience. Humankind arrogantly struggles through its own means to establish itself as God, to acquire for itself the very powers of divinity. Quite obviously, we have not succeeded in obtaining our desire. Surely there are many and varied passions of humankind which impel us to differing actions. Yet, beneath them all, one discovers our basic fear and fundamental uncertainty about the future. Consequently, we struggle to find substitutes for real hope and reassurance by which we can achieve security. Unfortunately, these efforts fail to establish us on the only true and firm foundation which is Christ, for only trust and love for Him can cast our fear.

Thus, we see humanity striving to sure itself up by accumulating wealth, and by manufacturing weapons to see revenge and often to destroy one’s fellow human beings as an enemy, real or imagined. We contradict ourselves by exterminating certain creatures as being bothersome while affirming that these same beings protect us from ones that are even more dangerous. Humanity has sought to take from the natural world not only that which is necessary for its own stability and survival, but often seeks to satisfy its perceived and ultimately false psychological needs, such as the need for self-display, luxuries and the like. Twenty percent of humanity consumes eighty percent of the world’s wealth and is accountable for an equal percentage of the world’s ecological catastrophes. One cannot characterize this situation as just; and what is more, this injustice has had a direct impact on the ecology of the environment.  However, it is plain that this numerical minority of financially powerful people is not the only cause for the ecological ruin of our planet. Every person ruled by instinctual fears attempts to exploit and loot nature. Consider the willful scorching of the earth, over-fishing, wasteful hunting, excessive and dangerous recycling of resources, and other similar “injustices” against the ways of nature, which share in the responsibility for this ecological spiraling down.

During the course of this seminar, you will have the opportunity to study these issues in detail. Our modesty desires to convey to all of you participating here our heartfelt welcome, together with our paternal prayer that you might worthily actualize the possibilities available to you during the course of this seminar. We encourage you to exhaust the present theme, which we have raised here in a few points, just to stimulate your minds, by engaging your work form every perspective and by gleaning ideas and hypotheses, which are useful for all of humanity. It is indeed just for each of us to shoulder the burden of his or her own responsibility and not to remain silent, thinking that others will take charge and be liable, and that we can remain an isolated, insignificant factor.  Only if there is “just” comprehension by each of us of our responsibility to work together – all of us – in a universal effort, will we be able to hope for a better world.