By Vincent Rossi
“Whoever does not love trees, does not love God.” This was the teaching of the renowned Greek Orthodox monk, Elder Amphilochios of Patmos (1888-1970).
According to Orthodox scholar Bishop Kallistos Ware, Fr. Amphilochios was an ecologist long before environmental concern became fashionable. “Do you know,” the elder said, “that God gave us one more commandment, which is not recorded in Scripture? It is the commandment, “Love the trees.” When you plant a tree, you plant hope, you plant peace, you plant love, and you will receive God’s blessing.”
It is recounted that when the elder heard the confessions of local farmers, he would regularly give as a penance the task of planting a tree, while he himself would go about the island watering young trees during times of drought. His Christian love for trees transformed Patmos, the island where St. John the Evangelist lived for many years. Where photographs taken around the turn of the century reveal barren countryside, a thick and healthy forest now grows.
Many other examples could be found of people who, from religious conviction, combined a deep love of God and a love of trees. The story of John Chapman (1774-1845), better known as Johnny Appleseed, who wandered the American frontier, a Bible in one hand, a bag of seeds in the other, planting trees and herbs, who was considered a healer and something of a saint by Indian and settler alike, comes to mind. Are these just unusual examples of religious piety that one can admire but dismiss as irrelevant to one’s own spiritual life as a Christian? After all, so the reasoning goes, trees are not people, but plants, put here on earth by God for human use.
Or is there truth to the teaching of Elder Amphilochios that there is an implicit “eleventh commandment” in the Bible that enjoins human beings to love the trees? Is it possible that there is a spiritual link between the way we treat God’s creation and the state of our relationship to God? Should Christians recognize that, just as the First Epistle of John teaches that anyone who says he loves God but hates his brother is a liar, it is equally if implicitly true to say that anyone who says he loves God, but willingly participates or acquiesces in the wanton destruction of forests and trees is also deceiving himself? Is there Scriptural evidence that God actually cares how we treat trees and forests and the rest of His creation?
I believe the Elder from Patmos is right: there is a link between love of trees and love of God. In the first place, it is clear from Scripture that respecting, protecting and honoring nature as the creation of God is a fundamental spiritual duty of all Christians.
The principal text outlining human responsibility for stewardship of the earth, including the forests, is Genesis 2:15, with its two key verbs, “to cultivate” and “to keep,” describing how we are to exercise our stewardship in creation. Supporting this principal text are a number of other key texts, including Rom. 8:19-20 and 2 Cor.5:17-21 which indicate our God-given vocation to reconcile and restore creation to its God-ordained natural order. To be Christian is truly to be ecologist in a Biblical sense. More specifically, within human responsibility of creation-care and earth stewardship, the care of forests and trees possesses a special place in Biblical ecology. Let us now turn to the witness of Scripture.
Scripture is rich with references to trees and forests. The words “tree” and “trees,” “forest” and “forests,” occur hundreds of times throughout the Bible. These occurrences may be grouped into general categories and contexts. Among them are references to trees and forests as:
1) a species created by God and of intrinsic value: (Gen.1:11-12, 2:9).
2) a source of food; a natural resource, or a source of wealth: (Gen.1:29, 2 Kgs.19:23; Ezek.39:10)
3) a natural part of the local or planetary ecosystem: (1Sam.22:5; 1 Kgs.7:2; Isa.57:5; Mt.21:19-21; Mk.11:13; Rev. 7:3. 9:4)
4) a sign of and/or response to God’s blessing or punishment: (Isa.41:19-20, Rev. 7:1)
5) a simile or metaphor modeled on the tree’s natural properties: (Ps.1:3; Isa.56:3; Mt.7:17-19,12:33; Mk.13:28; Lk.13:6-7,17:6; Rev. 6:13). A great many tree references are of this category.
6) a sign of the natural world in harmony with itself: (Gen.2:9; Ps.104:16-17; Song 2:10-13)
7) paradigm of the cosmic world tree; primordial living symbol of human knowledge and life: (Gen.2:9, 17; 3: 1-24; Rev.2:7, 22:2)
8) symbol of the Cross of Christ: (Acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29; Gal.3:13; 1 Pt.2:24)
This represents only a small sample of the hundreds of references to forests and trees in the Bible. Human beings excepted, no other living organism appears as often as trees in Scripture. On the basis of textual prominence alone, the tree is the most important non-human living organism in Scripture.
But is there a larger and deeper significance to trees and forests in the Bible? The importance of the images of trees and forests in Scripture cannot be attributed merely to numerical frequency alone. There must be a deeper meaning, a meaning both literal and spiritual, that delineates the revelation of the Holy Spirit as it relates to forests and trees, and that reveals the attitude that God expects human beings to take to the trees and forests He has created. There is.
This deeper meaning emerges out of the differences and the relationships between the kinds of references to forests and trees. I refer especially to the ways that Scripture uses the image of the tree. The eight categories above, which are not exhaustive, give us a clue.
~Adapted from Vincent Rossi, Seeing the Forest for the Trees: The Meaning and Message of Forests and Trees in the Christian Tradition, RELIGION and the FORESTS magazine, June, 1999. Vincent Rossi is executive director of the Religious Education and Environment Project (REEP), London, England.
