Principles of Biblical Trusteeship Applied to Nature
Rev. Dr. Douglas Olds
May 2020
Gen. 2:15 transcendentalizes (focused on love of God) the existential imperative (applied to love of human neighbor in the land) decreed in 1.28. Gen. 2.15 is God’s directive to God’s chosen people to עָבַד ʿāḇaḏ and שָׁמַר šāmar --to “serve” and “guard/preserve” the garden. In this verse, we may contrast the object of Gen. 1.28-- אֶרֶץ ʾerets “the land”--as a political, historical, and cultural construct against “the garden” as a construct for humanity’s foundation inside created nature for its subsistence householding. This distinction alone strongly suggests that seeking an environmental ethic in Gen. 1:28 must process with Gen. 2: 15. Gen. 1.28 supports an existential directive to humanity’s “trusteeship” of the land, it follows that the stronger environmental ethical imperative in Gen. 2:15 supports no less, and likely more so, this ethic. Linking “serve” (עָבַד āḇaḏ) to “guard” (שָׁמַר šāmar) as humanity’s role and inside its natural surroundings involves a transcendental fiduciary principle for the long-term, productive sustainability of nature’s deposits and yearly harvests.
We may recognize the principle of trusteeship in other Near Eastern monotheistic religions. Rabbi David Gordis (2001, 1369) derives the principle of human trusteeship for the natural world from Torah without (as I have done) an excursion into the New Testament. Additionally, the Koran (II:29-30) links Creation with human trusteeship of the earth:
29. He made for you all that lies within the earth, then turning to the firmament He proportioned several skies: He has knowledge of everything.
30. Remember, when your Lord said to the angels: "I have to place a trustee on the earth" (Ahmed, Al-Qur'an 2001).
As in Genesis 1 and 2, God’s creating activity is linked by the Koran with the need for designating and deriving a trustee in the Creation. In all three religions, humanity is designated the trustee by a decree founded in the Creation account itself.
The fiduciary principle of trusteeship directs an agent of the state to “preserve and enhance the assets of [a] trust”—in this case, the natural environment (for humanity specifically, its resource base) as God’s Creation—"keeping always in mind the good of the beneficiaries” (Brown 1994, 71). Beneficiaries include future generations of all species in perpetuity. “The general duties of trustees are to act out of loyalty in the best interests of the beneficiary, not those of the trustee…to make the trust property productive” (ibid.). The fiduciary principle recognizes the “direct duty” of the trustee to “serve and enhance the well-being of all” not limited to the current generation.
Additionally, the fiduciary principle for trustees requires the public governor or administrator of the natural estate to be impartial and deliberative, to respect human rights and be accountable to those rights, and to apply the Golden Rule for structuring its obligations (Brown 1994, 73-4). God entrusts humanity to act as God’s representative in administering our natural estate on behalf of all conceivable generations--the perpetuity condition—treating all beneficiaries as we ourselves would want to be treated.
Perpetuity, though, is conditioned by sufficiency, not infinity. Daly (forthcoming, 84) notes:
[U]nderstanding of the value of longevity (“sustainability”) is to maximize cumulative lives ever to be lived, subject to a per capita consumption level sufficient for a good life, [so] we must limit the load we place on the Earth at any one time to avoid degrading the regenerative and absorptive capacities of nature. Fewer people, and lower per capita resource consumption, facilitated by more equitable distribution today, mean more, and more abundant lives for a longer, but not infinite, future. There is no point in maximizing the cumulative number of lives lived in misery, so the qualification ‘sufficient for a good life’ is important, and requires deep rethinking of economics, a shift of focus from consumerist growthism to an ethic of sufficiency, which is explicitly called for by Francis [in his encyclical Laudato Si].
Nature changes climate, but public administrators plan infrastructure and deliver services to those for whom safety and adaptation is prioritized. Trustees must foresee and augment the ‘adaptive capacity’ of most vulnerable. Thus, a consideration for Trusteeship is the incorporation of God’s preference for the poor and vulnerable as an application of the Golden Rule (cf. Rawls 1971). In addition, trusteeship is actualized by solving problems as they occur, in order to link historical responsibility with resources and solutions instead of postponing problem remediation to future generations under the “gnostic” expectation of future technological solutions to clean up after us.
The fiduciary principle of trusteeship imposes two duties on each generation. One is the duty of “conserving options so that future generations can survive and pursue their own visions of the good life [the sustainability principle]…so that we leave our descendants as many choices with respect to resources [and opportunities, ecosystem richness, and beauty] as we have had…The second duty is the conservation of quality, an obligation we discharge by conserving natural resources and investing in substitutes so that vital [ecosystem services neither rise in price nor become depleted] (Brown 1994, 74-5).
An objection to this vision of political obligation by the trustee is that not everything in nature is useful to humanity, nor should it be. Linking God’s Creation with an expansion of the community that has been created beyond humanity (as in Psalms 104 and 148) “broadens the scope of the trust, enlisting obligations of trusteeship of other species and even ecosystems” (Brown 1994, 79). As we have seen, God’s directive to Adam in Gen. 2:15 includes the whole “garden,” so that the fiduciary principle of derived from the imperatives “Serve” (עָבַד āḇaḏ) and “Guard” ( שָׁמַר šāmar ) stipulates that Adam/humanity manage and harvest sustainably and without waste, enhancing the natural estate given by God at the Creation.
I discern that this fiduciary principle of managing the natural estate for the long-term benefit of the Creation has a transactional or fiduciary structure. The outlines of this structure include the directive of the sovereign aligned with an implicit reward for performance and penalty for non-performance. In the case of failing Trusteeship of natural systems, the penalty is formalized in Rev. 11.18b (cf. Jer. 51). Moreover, even the plague of locusts in Rev. 9.4 are directed not to despoil nature—its grass and trees.
The trustee has the incentive to act for the trust’s beneficiaries in view of receiving God’s Final Judgment, which from the perspective of faith will grant an eternal destiny that coheres with the values undertaken in freedom by the trustee in this life. If the trustee has acted faithfully in the fiduciary sense for the benefit of Creation and humanity’s future, then I suspect that the final destiny of such a trustee would include the values of a diverse human community and productive and uncorrupted natural estate. On the other hand, if humans as trustees of the natural estate live wastefully and focused less on values of biodiversity and more on taking care of its own personal hedonic desires, humanity’s final destiny may reflect those values. God’s final judgment will be absolutely just and will reflect an individual’s efforts and values in this current life, with Rev. 11.18 explicitly incorporating responsible earth care into that time of judgment, linked by Rev. 11.1 with an individual’s destiny inside the eternal, earthly temple.
Eccl. 1.4: “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth [ אֶרֶץ ʾerets] remains forever [עוֹלָםלְ leʿôlām].”
Psalm 37:29: “The righteous shall inherit the land [אֶרֶץ ʾerets], and live in it forever.”
Human trusteeship of God’s created natural estate implies a respect for the beneficiary: the people of God and the Lord Jesus Christ as well as other elements lifted up by Scripture. Jesus instructed, “Let the children come to me.” By our appreciation of this message, we understand that Jesus has an interest in future generations and their opportunities to thrive and live meaningful lives within the renewing covenant of creation. Moreover, Psalm 104 incorporates other species into God’s provident care and commonwealth:
Psalm 104: 1Bless the LORD, O my soul.
O LORD my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honor and majesty…
10You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
they flow between the hills,
11giving drink to every wild animal;
the wild asses quench their thirst.
12By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
they sing among the branches.
13From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
14 You cause the grass to grow for the cattle,
and plants for people to use,
to bring forth food from the earth,
15and wine to gladden the human heart,
oil to make the face shine,
and bread to strengthen the human heart.
16The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
17In them the birds build their nests;
the stork has its home in the fir trees.
18The high mountains are for the wild goats;
the rocks are a refuge for the coneys….
27These all look to you
to give them their food in due season;
28when you give to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
Psalm 104 envisions the intentional and interdependent ecosystem—with the non-human species participants in the gracious provision of nature. Psalm 148 incorporates non-human species into the worshiping community, recognizing their intrinsic—non-instrumental--value. Yet humanity has likely caused a massed extinction event of wildlife since 1970 as 60% of fauna, fish, reptile, and bird species have been entirely extinguished. Moreover, human idolatry—greed and failure of trusteeship—has disrupted authentic and covenanted worship of God by the full community of Creation detailed in Psalm 148:
Psalm 148:1 Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
2Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his host!
3Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars!
4Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!
5Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for he commanded and they were created.
6He established them forever and ever;
he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.
7Praise the LORD from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
8fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!
9Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
10Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!
11Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!
12Young men and women alike,
old and young together!
13Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for his name alone is exalted;
his glory is above earth and heaven.
14He has raised up a horn for his people,
praise for all his faithful,
for the people of Israel who are close to him.
Praise the LORD!
The totality of the created community is tasked by these two Psalms with praising God (cf. Isa. 43: 19–20b). Trusteeship not only involves managing the resource base, it involves preserving the opportunities for a good life for all created beings, including non-human species. The Biblical texts that we have used to determine a narrative of human “dominion” also tell us that animals were also drawn from the soil and filled with the breath of life in common with humanity. As flesh in relationship with air, they are companions to humanity in the atmospheric processes and similarly endowed with usufruct rights to the garden. Animals are existentially beloved of God and integral to God’s proper worship as citizens of God’s ecosystem and natural commonwealth.
Job 38: 41–39:6:
38:41 Who provides for the raven its prey,
when its young ones cry to God,
and wander about for lack of food?
39:1 “Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?
Do you observe the calving of the deer?
2Can you number the months that they fulfill,
and do you know the time when they give birth,
3when they crouch to give birth to their offspring,
and are delivered of their young?
4Their young ones become strong, they grow up in the open;
they go forth, and do not return to them.
5“Who has let the wild ass go free?
Who has loosed the bonds of the swift ass,
6to which I have given the steppe for its home,
the salt land for its dwelling place?
Even the animals repent (שׁוּב šûb) in Nineveh per Jonah 3:7-8. God expresses compassion and care for Nineveh’s animals (Jonah 4: 11).
To the extent humanity has failed its trusteeship of the natural, created estate, it disrupts the intrinsic value of worship for and by those species gone extinct or are under environmental stress. Humanity brings about a vitiated and debased worship of the Creator when it reduces the biodiversity and integrity of ecosystems for its own self-centered needs. Such self-centeredness is humanity’s first, idolatrous, contravention of the call to trusteeship.
“Trusteeship” as an environmental directive re-images the unreliable and tired doctrinal use of the word “stewardship.” “Trusteeship" can help harmonize the Creation ethic in Gen. 1 with that of Gen. 2’s placement of humanity in nature subject to the divine will. (As noted above, Gen. 1:28 refers to the land as a socio-historical human construct, while Gen. 2.15 refers to Adam's management of the garden.) Going beyond “Stewardship,” Trusteeship adds the following implications for framing the political theology of earth and atmosphere care:
1) It emphasizes the directive to humanity to manage nature for perpetuity while allowing for usufruct.
2) A Trustee is accountable to the beneficiary: future generations and probably other species.
3) Trusteeship involves the application of the Golden Rule in a way that Stewardship does not imply.
4) Stewardship as a term is vitiated by trite overuse while stewards in both OT and NT stories can be ambiguous moral figures, as in Luke 16 and Isa. 22.15-19.
5) Trusteeship has a legal or juridical structure that is not as readily recognized in or applied to stewards outside its employment contract with a temporal household. This legal structure is indicated in Paul’s use of ΠΊΣΤΙΣ in various letters—especially the Letter to the Galatians—that derives trust(-eeship) from the classical Roman juridical doctrine of fidei commissum (Taylor 1966, 58). “Pistis” is Paul’s conceptualization of how Abraham’s inheritance is conveyed to the beneficiary: the people of God (ibid.). Because Paul understands that the conveyance of benefits and consequent duties are accomplished by an analogy with the fidei commissum, it follows that there is a fiduciary principle involved in the election of the people of God whereby Trustees are endowed with both rights of appropriation of some income of the trust subject to preservation of the trust’s assets (ecological stocks and the capacity of the atmosphere to recycle GHGs) for beneficiaries.
6) The eschatological Trustee is as the ultimate executor (commissioner) of a legal, documented “testament.” Cf. Rev. 5 of the theology of revelation of testamentary beneficiaries. A steward is commissioned for private and nepotistic householding and not duties in the temple of God.
A question this section addresses by other scriptural witnesses is whether such a testament includes beneficiaries drawn from non-human elements and whether its establishment (ex nihilo materialis et causae) and beneficiaries involve non-human agents and images. Cf. the important text of Gen. 15.10 where God confirms the covenant with Abraham by the sacrifice of 5th and 6th Day Creatures (save of humans) to demonstrate and confirm the reliability of that covenant based on the valorized hierarchies of Creation that Abraham would likely recognize from natural revelation. By this, the Days of Material Creation have revealed the testamentum provisionis et provisionibus subject to God’s sovereign rights and energies.
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Daly, Herman E. Forthcoming. “Laudato Si’ and Population.” In Laudato Si and the Environment: Pope Francis’ Green Encyclical, Ed. by Robert McKim., 76–94. New York: Routledge
Gordis, David M. 2001. “Ecology.” In
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of ΠΊΣΤΙΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟϒ in Galatians.” Journal of Biblical Literature 85.1:
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