Calvin B. DeWitt

My University of Wisconsin Assignment:

To Address the Problem of the

Fragmentation of the

Disciplines

The Long-Standing Stewardship Tradition Emerged in Antiquity

Ancients recognized the ordered cosmos and responded by working to sustain habitability

Developed in Classical Thoughte. g. Roman period: Varro, Columella &Pliny

Expressed by Early Church Fathers

The Long-Standing Stewardship Tradition Flickered & extinguished in the industrial revolution… Re-emerging in recent decades

in faith, civic, & scientific communities

Re-kindled on June 18, 2015 Laudato Si’ from Pope Francis

Jill Baron, David Inouye, and Monical Turner

Posted by the Ecological Society of America from its Past-President, President, and President Elect --

ESA Past-President, President, and President Elect: Jill Baron, David Inouye, and Monica Turner• “The Ecological Society of America commends

Pope Francis for his insightful encyclical on the environment. Addressed to everyone on this planet, the letter issued on 18 June 2015 is an eloquent plea for responsible Earth stewardship.

• “We hope his leadership will lead to serious dialogue among – and action by –the world’s religious, political and scientific leaders on the environmental challenges facing this and future generations of humanity.” -- -June 29, 2015

---

Timmermans says the Christian Reformed Church affirms that the gospel must always be both proclaimed in word and demonstrated in deed, and that a central component of this task includes taking seriously God’s command in Genesis 2:15 to serve and to protect the rest of the created order and to exercise responsible stewardship

The Stewardship Commission Genesis 2:15 gives the Stewardship Commission to avad the Garden and to shamar it.

avad shamar Choose ye this day whom you shall avad… (Joshua 24:15)

(Numbers 6:24): The Lord bless you and shamar you…

0

The Stewardship Commission Genesis 2:15…to avad and shamar from garden to globe:

“This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings & nature.”

“Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence,

but it also has the duty to protect the earth & to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations.”

---Laudato Si’ – Pope Francis

Con-Service We must return creation’s service to us with service of our own.

‘avad Genesis 2:15

The Con-Service Principle (“mutual responsibility between human beings & nature”)

▪Earthkeeping. As the Lord keeps and

sustains us so we must keep and

sustain (safeguard)

the creation.

shamar Genesis 2:15

The Earthkeeping Principle

Stewardship shapes and reshapes human behavior in the direction of maintaining individual, community, and biospheric sustainability.

Stewardship is practiced in behalf of future generations, the biosphere and its component systems,the processes and persons that sustain the

biosphere[for “people of faith”] in behalf of their Creator

Context for Stewardship in Our DayOur civilization is emerging from some two centuries of neglect of the

stewardship tradition. This long lapse means that we cannot simply pick up the tradition

where we left it at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Instead we need to size up where we are in the stream of time and

identify the major happenings in our world to help inform and shape our understanding and substance of dynamic stewardship for our time.

Among the most significant developments during these past two hundred years have been those of

(A) understanding the biosphere and its climate system (B) understanding human impacts on the earth, and (C) understanding of worldwide transitions in human

communities.

Vocation as “Integral Ecology”

Requires that we now hear

“both the cry of the earth & & the cry of the poor.”

---Laudato Si’ - Pope Francis

For the 2.5 billion people around the world

whose livelihood is in farming---

stewardship of land held in trust over the generations largely remains

the cultural and ethical norm.

---DeWitt, Unsustainable Agriculture & Land Use, and ”Food is Gold” New York Times, 2008.

….I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannicMoving by compulsion each other, not as those in Eden, which,

Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony & peace.

William Blake - “Biospheric Economy”

Earth Stewardship: Science for Action

to Sustain the Human-Earth SystemF. Stuart Chapin, III, Mary E. Power, Steward T. A. Pickett, Amy Freitag, Julie A. Reynolds, Robert B. Jackson, David M. Lodge, Clifford Duke, Scott L. Collins, Alison G. Power, and Ann Bartuska –--Ecosphere 2011

As Earth Stewardship advances, it should broaden the scope of ecology

& integrate it with other sources of knowledge & understanding

to stimulate new interactions & collaborations that add to basic research

& better guide the actions needed to shape a sustainable future.

Oikoumene Oikoumene | |

Provisions<----ORDERED---->Services RESOURCE-FULL \ EARTH / EARTH \ | / | \ Reciprocal Relationship / Reciprocal Relationship \ | / |

\ | / Self Interest | Self Interest \ | / AIG | EFF \ | / \ | / Con-Service Con-Service

(Returning Service with Service of our Own) Self-Service | | | | | Stewardship

Stewardship Biospheric (Serving in Behalf of our Common Home) Disorder & Degradation

(Oikonomia) ======

“Stewardship is environmentally responsible behavior that involves an interactive relationship of humanbeings with their dynamic environment. Stewardship integrates science, ethics, and praxis; recognizes adynamic and changing Earth, maintains biospheric systems that are working well; works to restoredegraded systems to previous levels of performance; compensates for altered systems and systembehavior to restore sustainability; tests the responses of systems by experiment and praxis, applies theresults in the direction of system sustainability, and learns from others’ experiential behavior. Overall,stewardship shapes and reshapes human behavior in the direction of maintaining individual, community,and biospheric sustainability. It is practiced in behalf of future generations, in behalf of the biosphere andits component systems, in behalf of the processes and persons that sustain the biosphere, and [for “peopleof faith”] in behalf of their Creator.”