Elias Economou
An Orthodox View of the Ecological Crisis
3.3 The Divine Environment.
From the macro-ecological aspect, God's existence, presence and communication with mankind, and vice versa, is a sine qua nοn environmental condition for humanity. This fact is stated very clearly throughout the Bible. Acting without God or against Him is associated with man's decline and destruction (Gen. ch. 3).
The negative, destructive side of this relationship is stated in St. John's Revelation (ch. l3ff). There the destruction of nature and mankind results from the self-proclaimed deification of man i.e. as humanistic atheism or humanistic deism. This, again, is characterized by the absolute prevelance of the Political Economy, as synonymous with the atheism, leading, first, to the enslavement of mankind, and secondly to ecological destruction. Consequently, ecological destruction is produced by the acute crisis between Divine and Political Economy, in the sense that Political Economy predominates in the present-day situation.
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