Attendance and Caretaking: A Biblical Theology of the Garden and the Gardener[s]
Introduction
“There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places. My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts.” — Wendell Berry
When God breathed life into all creation, he gave of his life-giving and life-preserving love. God so loved the world. He did not merely order all things to look at and revel in but to take care of. God’s primordial action in the breath he gave to creation was an act of caretaking.
God is a gardener. This notion of God as Gardener is not a foreign concept to Jewish and Christian Scriptures. In fact, the biblical writers carried with them agrarian mindsets that did not view the earth and its inhabitants as mere raw material but were attentive to the giving of agriculture and earth around their particularities. Much of Israel’s identity and calling pertained to the caretaking of land and peoples. Ellen F. Davis calls the biblical writers’ ethical dimension to place and lands a “theological ethic.”[1] With this human attention to the earth came participation in all creaturely life. In God’s ordering of creation, there exists a symbiotic relationship between the divine, humanity, and the earth with its plants and animals. It is what Norman Wirzba names “symbiogenesis,” evoking the entanglement and interdependence of all creaturely life, both human and non-human.[2]
A common construal of the creation narrative throughout the history of the Church and biblical exegesis has been the detachment of human life from the earth. In a detached hermeneutic, the earth is viewed as a commodity to be possessed, taken advantage of, and sold for man to monetarily multiply and dominate. Man is not first a gardener and fellow creature but a mercenary and demi-god who can do with the world how he wishes. This imagination of creation has not merely pervaded the spatial imaginaries of Christians but has existed from the first human sin of imperialism by eating the forbidden fruit (Gen 3).
While the reality of a broken and wounded world exists, the hope and anticipation of the new heavens and new earth does not negate the earth. An eschatology that does not view the present earth as part of God’s plan of salvation does no justice to the human imaging of God as gardeners and caretakers. God’s redemptive plan of salvation includes both humans and non-humans (i.e., the earth, plants, and animals) for the sake of communion.[3] Thus, this calls for a restoried vision of the ways in which Christians (as well as all humanity) view themselves in the world. Humanity’s primal calling in life is to participate in the attentive caretaking of the earth in imaging the divine Gardener. The hope of this essay will be to present a biblical theology of the Garden, with emphasis on the human responsibility of caretaking for the earth. What follows will be a hermeneutic that emphasizes a revisionist way of reading Scripture; that is reading with agrarian eyes, which in effect puts forward story and consummation as the locus of God’s plan of salvation for all creation.
The Genesis Narrative: A Calling to Tend (Gen 1–2)
“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Gen 1:28)
With his very word, God spoke creation’s song into existence. In the divine dance of creating, he ordered all things to live harmoniously in reciprocity. Even before God created humans, he ordered the waters and the earth to produce living creatures, exhorting them “to be fruitful and multiply.” From the beginning, God’s desire for his creation was to participate in the outpouring of love; not self-sufficiency, but a receiving of life’s gift and blessings bestowed by the Creator.[4] Often, when addressing the dominion of humans over the earth, modern readers tend to view relationships with non-humans through a vertical hierarchical manner that places man over all creation. This disposition carries with it many detriments as it does not count for the primal horizontal relationship between all creatures. Richard Bauckham notes that “the fundamental relationship between humans and other creatures, [or even the land], is their common creatureliness. One creature among other creatures.”[5] God does not merely give humanity dominion over the earth to remake it according to their design. They are given the sacred God-given responsibility of tending to the earth, which details the limited dominion of human exercise.[6] Created in the imago Dei, Jennifer Allen Craft rightly states that human “dominion is a practice not of power but of love and should reflect the redemptive purposes of God in the world.”[7] This means hospitality and caretaking.
God’s primordial action to his creatures is the provision and giving of life. This is made manifest in the psalmist’s declaration of a god who “sets the earth on its foundations,” “makes springs gush forth in the valleys,” and “causes the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth” (Ps. 104). The human role of dominion is not to be confused with domineering but encompasses the acts of care and servitude. The earth’s value does not pertain to its mere use by humans, but its inherent merit is the reason why attention and care are required.[8]
Gardening as Primordial Calling
“…the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” (Gen 2:7–8)
Out of the responsibility to tend and care for the earth, humans are called to garden. This primal calling given to humans should not be abstracted from one’s hermeneutic throughout the rest of Scripture. Rather, the narrative beckons the understanding that the paradisiacal life of the garden is primordial to creation, and even eschatological (more on this later). This passage reflects the intimate connectivity of human life to the earth. The eco-theologian Norman Wirzba notes that human life is not abstracted from the earth, but humans in themselves are a “variation of the soil’s life.”[9] This definition of soil is not mere dirt but encompasses the intertwining of microbial communities, which [inter]depend on each other for sustained life. The biblical writer of Genesis utilizes linguistic wordplay to show the nature of man’s earthiness. The first man’s name, adam, comes from the Hebrew word for the ground, ‘adamah. This signifies apparent human connectivity and kinship with the earth itself and other creaturely things.[10] Wirzba notes that “the moment people cease to participate in the microbial processes that originate in the ground, and then extend through all living bodies, they die.”[11] This is God’s order of all things: a symbiosis and entanglement of all created life. This is symbiogenesis, which Wirzba further explains as “[revealing] a world in which it is much more difficult to sustain the idea that human beings are clearly distinct, self-contained, and separable kinds of being.”[12] Later in verse 15, the story tells that “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). The common interpretation of le’obedāh ûlešomerāh (“to till it and tend it”) implies a horticultural responsibility of man. However, Davis notes that this is not the most holistic understanding. Rather, the ‘-b-d (“work”) infers a kind of servitude and sacrifice that necessitates the “working for the garden soil, serving its needs.”[13]
Disobedience and the Marred Relationship (Gen 3:1–8)
As God’s primordial calling to humanity pertains to a life-giving and tending relationship with the rest of creation, this implies a sacred vocation with special responsibility to image the gardening God. Claus Westermann notes that from this responsibility, humans could possess “a sense of power that can lead to overstepping the limits and to mistakes.”[14] Out of the imperialistic desires to become like God, humanity grew tired of the limitations and boundaries placed in the Garden, and so ate of the forbidden fruit. With this rebellion came the idea that self-sufficiency and possession of the earth meant the furthering of human flourishing. They forgot that “to work in a garden is to work within limits — of seasons, of growth cycles… it is to know that the absence of attention and care often leads to ruin.”[15] The holy communion of creaturely life with the Creator became marred because of disobedience. It is not the “image of God” that is lost, but humanity itself and the communal relationship to the earth.[16] The earth and animals are cursed because of human sin (Gen 3:17); therefore, God sends them out of Eden (Gen 3:23), away from the garden where tilling the land would still be a responsibility, but it would be difficult and bring about pain. John Goldingay writes that “sin does not separate humanity from God [and consequently the earth], though it does make it hard for humanity to fulfill its vocation.”[17] Humanity and the earth would have to look toward a day of resurrection where life and consummation would be restored through a future messiah, which is already prophesied at the beginning (Gen 3:15).
Agrarianism in the Older Testament
Ellen Davis makes apparent that the Hebrew Scriptures contain a land-centered theological perspective. “Rarely does one read through two or three successive chapters without seeing some reference to the land or to Zion.”[18] This is seen early on in God’s calling of Abraham and his family to a land and a blessing that would reach all the nations (Gen 12:1–3). In an agrarian reading of Scripture, this implies that a particular family (i.e., Israel) is set out with the task to be attentive to the earth and its inhabits (human and non-human) to share the life-giving love of Yhwh. Dale Patrick notes that
the story of creation, fall, and primordial history sets the stage for the national history by dramatizing the fundamental conflict between the Creator and his human creatures; the call of Abraham, which promises him that he will be a blessing to the nations, is the beginning of the resolution to the conflict.[19]
Israel is given a covenant relationship with Yhwh and will be the instrument in healing the fundamental conflict between God and all creation.[20] When God delivers Israel from the hands of Egypt, he instructs them to enter the promised land (Deut 1:8), but first requires them to go through the wilderness where their hearts are to long for the sustaining earth. Deuteronomy 11:10–12 writes:
For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
Even though outside of Eden, God allows his covenant people to participate in and vocation of life-giving caretaking. Despite their continual disobedience, Israel is granted the gifts of land contingent on following and obeying Yhwh’s commands (Deut 4:40). The keeping of the garden is deeply tied to Israel’s keeping of Torah, where throughout the Older Testament is the repercussive destruction of the land due to human disobedience.[21] In particular, many of the laws given to Israel emphasize and necessitate their special care and attention to the earth and animals. This means the giving of the first fruits from the land, the meat, and the grain that God has graciously provided for them.[22] Maye notes that it is difficult “separating instructions about care for the land from those concerning care for people!”[23] The land belongs to Yhwh and Israel’s stewardship is to be caretakers of it (Lev 25:23).
As Israel’s story progresses throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, their constant covenantal disobedience is apparent. In contrast to being set apart amongst the gentile nations (Ex 19:6), Israel often images them and follows their gods. Because of the symbiogenesis of all creaturely things, God’s creation is deeply entangled, even in the repercussions of sinful action. Destruction of the land is not only correlated to the disobedience of God’s chosen Israel, but as the story progresses throughout the Older Testament, all the sins of humanity result in the desecration of the earth. The indicative of human sin frequently pertaining to the oppression of the poor and destructive wastefulness causes the imperative of Yhwh to enact judgment on both peoples and the earth.[24]
The Prophets
This reality of divine imperative action on the sins of humanity is widely manifested throughout prophetic literature. The grandeur of divine judgments is shown through God’s reversal of his creative acts.[25] The prophet Zephaniah writes: “I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth… I will sweep away both men and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea” (Zeph 1:2, 3). There is a clear unmaking of the created order through human sinfulness. In the destruction of the land, it is important to acknowledge that Scripture consistently makes apparent the emotion of all creaturely life. The prophet Isaiah writes that “the land mourns and languishes” because of covenant unfaithfulness.[26]
A particular frightening and devastating image of creation is portrayed in Jeremiah’s prophecy, where he writes:
I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void, and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro, I looked and behold, there was no man, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a desert, and all the cities were laid in ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger (Jer 4:23–26).
The prophets give us a religious imagination that coincides with God’s perspective on his creation. “I looked” is repeated four times by Jeremiah implying a blind audience unable to see their undoing of God’s sustaining love. In this reversal of creation, there is first the void of primordial light, the collapse of mountains, and the disappearance of man and animals. With no man to work and keep the garden (i.e., the earth), its fruit-bearing ceases in the absence of loving hands. This is the language of exile.[27] For Jeremiah, he has seen his people leave their land and go into Babylon, a foreign place that is not their own; thus, God’s people have become exiles. This harkens to God’s banishment of Adam and Eve from the life-giving Eden because of their sin. God’s passion is for his creation, both human and non-human, to embody his life-giving and life-preserving love. Davis rightly notes that “the memory of being landless is central to the biblical story and therefore should be common to every Israelite.”[28] However, even in perpetual states of exile, Yhwh encourages his people Israel: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce… seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer 29:5, 7). Yhwh calls his people to faithful presence wherever they have been situated. Even living in a wounded and broken world outside of Eden and the promised land, God’s people can yet participate in his blessings made manifest through the particularities of foreign nations. They are called to a rootedness that takes care of the ground they inhabit, even if it is not their own. Even in times of immense destruction and moments of deep grief to God’s people and the earth, the prophets provide images of a future hope of restoration and salvation. Because of their sin, Israel cannot be the caretakers that usher in the eschatological hope of communion, only God can bring about their salvation. All their efforts have failed, thus evoking the necessity of the Gardener to incarnate himself in the earth to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and grants shalom.
The Incarnate Gardener: Newer Testament Continuation of The Primordial Calling
The Older Testament prophecy and hope of a restored vision of all creation is not discontinuous with the Newer Testament vision of redemption and consummation. Embodied in the person of Jesus is the attentiveness of a gardener, a caretaker of the earth who tends to the uniqueness of each living organism. Mentioned throughout the various gospel writers portrays Jesus’s understanding of diverse trees, plants, and the creatures which inhabit the earth. Richard Bauckham notes that “the wealth of references to flora, wild and cultivated, and fauna, wild and domesticated, as well as to common farming practices, in the synoptic teaching of Jesus has, of course, often been taken to indicate Jesus’s closeness to the natural and rural world of Galilee.”[29] In Mark’s account of the gospel, he begins his narration by telling of Jesus’s departure to the wilderness: “[Jesus] was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him” (Mark 1:13). As the God of Israel and the messianic king, Jesus’s entering the desert envisions and anticipates the coming shalom, the peace between and with all creation.[30] In his essay on New Testament Foundations for Understanding Creation, the metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios writes, “Christ the Incarnate One assumed flesh — organic, human flesh; he was nurtured by air and water, vegetables and meat, like the rest of us… His body is a material body — transformed, of course, but transformed matter.”[31] The Incarnation of God realizes Christ’s coming to the earth is purposed with the calling of being the obedient human, the one who will bring creation into a consummated state of restoration.
In his life, ministry, and person, Christ does what the whole of adam could not do (Rom 5:19). Those who have been redeemed in Christ are not bystanders or onlookers of his ministry but participate in the very life and body of Christ. Gregorios puts forward that the human redemption in Christ does not abstract the participation of the whole cosmos. He says, “The continuity between the order of creation and the order of redemption, rather than their distinction and difference, should be the focus of our interest. Humanity is redeemed with the created order, not from it.”[32] Jesus prays to his Father in heaven, teaching his disciples how to intercede, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mat 6:9–10). Bauckham notes that Jesus’s mention of ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ evokes the calling of all creation. This eschatological kingdom does not separate humanity from the rest of the creatures or the earth but sees them participate in holy communion and reciprocity.[33]
Within the Newer Testament, there are key Pauline texts which illustrate this cosmic “redeeming and reconciling work of God.”[34] Referring to the reign of Christ, Paul writes, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation… all things were created through him and for him… For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:15, 16b, 19–20). Sandra Richter notes Romans 8:18–25 as another “poignant presentation of the great arc of redemptive history.”[35] Here, Paul writes that
the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Rom 8:20–23)
Redemption does not start at the Newer Testament (i.e., Mat 1:1) or is solely found in Paul’s theology of grace (Rom 3:23) but begins “in the beginning.” Here, Paul understands that salvation does not pertain to a mere individual or community’s place before God, but it is cosmic in involving the entire earth. This passage connotes that the whole earth has suffered because of humanity’s rebellion. Richter writes, “God’s chosen steward failed in his appointed task [of caretaking], and so the creation over which he had authority was trapped within the self-defeating cycle of humanity’s rebellion as well.”[36] As a result, the whole of creation hopes for its freedom from its bondage to corruption and enslavement. It longs to be made whole.
Paul’s theology of the earth is not one of destruction or decimation in looking to a “different” world, but he understands God’s eschatological vision for all creation to be renewed. This is a bodily salvation that pertains to both humans and the earth. Cosmic redemption and consummation of the earth must never be abstracted from the person of Jesus, for it is in his incarnation, his coming to earth, that reconciliation takes place. The groanings of creation are for the Messiah of the world, not just to redeem but consummate himself with the cosmos.
Eschatological Gardening
This leads to understanding an eschatology that is bodily for both humanity and the earth, consumed in the person of Christ. John the evangelist makes note in Revelation that the Messiah’s coming coincides with the destruction of the destroyers of the earth (Rev 11:18). The prophet Isaiah has a picture of what the future kingdom will look like: “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food” (Is 65:25a). Harkening back to the Hebrew Scriptures which point to a future consummation, they portray the desirable relationship between creatures as peace, whether peace from or peace with. The former connotes the dangers of destructive humans and animals (i.e., “the serpent”). These dangers are especially apparent in the cries of the psalmist in Psalms 19 and 22. The latter (peace with) evokes the eschatological vision of shalom with humanity and the wild animals. The eschatological hope means unity (Is 11:6–9), which is brought in the incarnate gardener.[37]
As Revelation points to the New Jerusalem (Rev 21–22), a city, a frequent modern hermeneutic of the eschaton is one of detachment from the earth and the Garden. What is often left unspoken is the upkeep and reinstalment of Eden. Richard Bauckham, however, points to the ecological aspect of the city where “the New Jerusalem is in some sense a return to Eden — its rivers and its trees of life (21:2) recall the garden.”[38] It is the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s vision of the river of life which flows from the new temple: “everything will live where the river goes” (Ez 47:9). This New Jerusalem is a “garden city of a kind to which humans have often aspired, a place where human culture does not replace nature but lives in harmony and reciprocity with it.[39] Norman Wirzba masterfully puts it: “The vision of the heavenly city in Revelation does not leave gardens or gardening behind. It incorporates them so the feeding and healing of people will go on and on.”[40]
Contemporary Significance
“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.”
– Wendell Berry, The Art of Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
As shown throughout this biblical theology of the Garden and caretaking, an agrarian reading of Scripture is a faithful hermeneutic. Not only is this hermeneutic faithful to the biblical text but it finds poignancy in our modern era and the ways in which humans view their relationship with the earth. Richard Bauckham highlights that in an age of industry, Western society views the earth as commodity — raw material to be mined and monetized to bring about progress. This is a common understanding of why God created the earth — for man to make a profit. Within this hermeneutic of the land, there is a shift from viewing the earth as a blessed garden that can be cultivated in life-giving and life-preserving ways, and a turn toward an oppressive and domineering understanding of human responsibility.[41] Human relationship is not embodied and entangled life with all other creaturely things. Not only has this hermeneutic pervaded the hearts, minds, and bodies of a “secular” Western society. The history of Christian thought and hermeneutics, particularly within the Western imaginary, has put forward the understanding that humans have been elevated above animals and the land as demi-gods rather than as fellow-creatures.[42] This has not only led to the tearing up of the earth, but also a fragmented view of humanity. Life, in these terms, is viewed as self-sufficient and individualistic rather than community and dependence. The end of this is destruction, the building of houses on sinking sand (Matt 7:26).
In turn, what is required for our present-day, particularly the American evangelical church, is an envisioning of life itself as a gift — a gift that is to be received with delight and compassion. It is the reimagination of human calling in the earth — a calling which primordially places humans alongside earthly beings as fellow creaturely things. Utilizing the great 20th-century theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wirzba writes: “if people are to affirm the sanctity of life, they must give up the idea that they are in charge of life and control it.”[43] The sanctity of life means the joy of participating in creation’s song. It is attending and singing along with fellow creatures the harmonious tune of reciprocal and life-giving trinitarian love. We do not determine life but receive and tend to it. Created in God’s image, humans are truly given the sacred vocation of gardening and caretaking. It is primordially and fundamentally a sacrificial service, one that does not seek a profit or gain but delights in taking care of.
Moving forward, the Church — the people of God — must look to this kind of service, not merely to their fellow image-bearers around them but to the very earth itself. Participating in the life of God, in Jesus by the power of the Spirit, Christians must be the first to attend and be attentive to the crying out of the land. This is participating with the saints of the past, the prophets and priests who tended to their places, to their particularities which they called home. We carry the good news of salvation to a broken and weary world. Often, we resort to strong offensive or defensive reactions toward this wounded world, with dying people and lands. We think faithful witness to Christ looks like debunking the myths of secularism or competing with the culture. “Take over the culture!” is the mantra that often defines contemporary evangelicals. However, this is not carrying and taking care of the good news faithfully. This posture is not one of humility but dominance and the neglect of personhood and caretaking. It is disembodied.
Conclusion
As we anticipate our future resurrection, may we know that restoration is an embodied reality that involves both the human and the non-human (i.e., the earth). May we gain the humility to look back at the life of Israel and learn from their choice to remain faithfully present to Yhwh amid exile and anticipation of the coming messiah. May we “build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce… seek the welfare of the city where [Yhwh has sent us] into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare [we will find our welfare]” (Jer 29:5–7).
We garden as we wait.
Bibliography
Bauckham, Richard. Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation. Sarum Theological Lectures. Baylor University Press, 2010.
— — Living with Other Creatures: Green Exegesis and Theology. Baylor University Press, 2011.
Craft, Jennifer Allen. Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life. Studies in Theology and the Arts. IVP Academic, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2018.
Davis, Ellen F. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. New York: Cambridge University Pr, 2009.
Goldingay, John. Biblical Theology: The God of the Christian Scriptures. IVP academic, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2016.
Granberg-Michaelson, Wesley. Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987.
Horrell, David G., Cherryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate. Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in a Time of Ecological Crisis. Baylor University Press, 2010.
Murray, Robert The Cosmic Covenant: Biblical Themes of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006.
Patrick, Dale. The Rendering of God in the Old Testament. Fortress Press, 1981
Richter, Sandra L. Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says about the Environment and Why It Matters. IVP Academic, 2020.
Westermann, Claus. Creation. Fortress Press, 1974
Wirzba, Norman. This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World. Cambridge University Press, 2021
[1] Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible, 22
[2] Norman Wirzba, This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World, 73
[3] See Col 1:20
[4] William Dyrness, Tending the Garden: Essays On the Gospel and The Earth, 52
[5] Richard Bauckham, Living With Other Creatures, 4
[6] Ibid, 6
[7] Jennifer Allen Craft, Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating The Christian Life, 32
[8] Bauckham, Living With Other Creatures, 3
[9] Wirzba, This Sacred Life, 72
[10] Bauckham, Living With Other Creatures, 4
[11] Wirzba, This Sacred Life, 73
[12] Ibid, 74.
[13] Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 29
[14] Claus Westermann, Creation, pp. 25–26
[15] Wirzba, 213
[16] Robert P. Maye, Tending the Garden, 40
[17] John Goldingay, Biblical Theology: The God of the Christian Scriptures, 174
[18] Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 8
[19] Dale Patrick, The Rendering of God in the Old Testament, 106
[20] R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology, 115
[21] Ibid., 30–32
[22] Sandra Richter, Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says About the Environment and Why It Matters, 17
[23] Maye, Tending the Garden, 56
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid, 61
[26] Wirzba, This Sacred Life, 91
[27] Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 11–14
[28] Ibid, 40
[29] Bauckham, Living With Other Creatures, 67.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Paulos Mar Gregorios, Tending the Garden, 89
[32] Ibid, 87
[33] Bauckham, Living With Other Creatures, 73
[34] David G. Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate, Greening Paul: Rereading The Apostle in A Time of Ecological Crisis, 19
[35] Richter, Stewards of Eden, 101
[36] Ibid.
[37] Robert Murray, The Cosmic Covenant: Biblical Themes of Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation, pp. 34, 105
[38] Richard Bauckham, The Bible and Ecology, 176
[39] Ibid, 177–178
[40] Wirzba, This Sacred Life, 251
[41] Bauckham, Living With Other Creatures, 22
[42] Ibid, 223
[43] Wirzba, This Sacred Life, 190
