By Angela Ryo

One of my favorite seminary professors is an Old Testament professor, Dr. Hiebert, who loves the earth. Until I took his class in the first year of seminary, the relationship I had with God’s creation was based on Genesis 1:28 (NRSV): “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 air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” We were created to have “dominion” over the earth and that meant we could do with it as we pleased. The original Hebrew verb that gets translated as “have dominion” in Gen. 1:28 is “radah,” which is often used in the context of ruling over enemies in the Old Testament.

This theology of dominion evolved over time for me, and by the time I was taking Dr. Hiebert’s Old Testament class, I believed that we humans were more of stewards of God’s creation rather than rulers. As stewards, we were charged to be responsible agents of God’s creation. I thought I was in a pretty good place with my stewardship theology until I took Dr. Hiebert’s class, where he taught Genesis 2 creation story. He pointed out how it differed from the creation story in Genesis 1.

Genesis 2:15 (NRSV) says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” The word “till” here is the translation of the Hebrew verb “avad,” which is a common word for slaves serving their masters and humans serving God. This was a completely different meaning from Genesis 1:28’s “radah”—to have dominion over creation! It also went beyond being good stewards of the earth; it was asking us to serve the earth because we recognized our dependence on it.

From dominion theology to stewardship theology to dependence theology of creation, I’ve come a long way. Dr. Hiebert helped me to see my relationship with creation in a different way. Here’s Dr. Hiebert’s explanation of why he thinks dependence theology is important:

“Special attention to the dependence theology of Genesis 2 is important…because our greatest temptation as individuals and as a race is to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. Indeed, it may not be an oversimplification to say that it is just such a proud and self-centered perspective that has allowed us to exploit nature for our ends and has brought upon us the ecological crisis we now face. Perhaps what is most needed in our day is not a new view of power, a sanctified dominion theology, but rather a new humility, a new sense of our dependence upon the larger realm of creation. Perhaps what is needed in our day is a new “decentering” by which we read our texts and our lives from the point of view of the whole creation rather than from our human perspective alone. Only then may we be able to take the serious steps necessary to conform our styles of life to the needs of the entire creation upon which our survival on this earth depends” (Hiebert, Rethinking Dominion Theology)

How would we care for creation differently if we saw ourselves as servants rather than rulers or even stewards?

Angela Ryo currently serves as the Associate Pastor for Christian Formation at Kirk in the Hills in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She enjoys taking long walks, reading, listening to NPR, and drinking good coffee with friends and strangers alike.