The Earth is the Lord's

"Dominion" means dominion

Journalist G.K. Chesterton once quipped (in Orthodoxy), that original sin was "the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved." Approaching theology, as Karl Barth famously suggested, with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, certainly finds the hypothesis of total depravity unfalsified.

Yet by the end of the twentieth century, another fundamental Christian doctrine could be regarded as empirically verified. The placement of the human race in "dominion" over the planet has shown up in study after study of global change--in articles on soil erosion, species extinction, biological invasions, nutrient pollution of water bodies, mercury pollution of global fish stocks, alterations of the global nitrogen cycle, and interference with the climate system.

Hello Houghton College!

For Houghton students, and others, here is a great summary of the basic scriptures and theology of caring for creation, from Creation Care magazine columnist and wildlife biologist Tim Keyes. He wrote in By Faith magazine (the bi-monthly magazine for the Presbyterian Church in America denomination) a great article called "The Earth is the Lord's". Here's the link:

http://sites.silaspartners.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID323422%7CCHID664014%7CCIID2099728,00.html

The Earth is the Lord's

The Lord is God, the mighty God,
the great king over all the gods.
He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
and the highest mountains as well.
He made the sea; it belongs to him,
the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hands.

from Psalm 95