Eschatological Views and the Environmental Ethics

When we are thinking about the influence which the major religious beliefs impose on the normative approach which human has taken towards the nature, usually we consider the mythology of geneses in each religion and we try to trace the historical human attitude to them. But in fact, at least in the Abrahamic religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the eschatological views have the same importance as geneses. In some religions like Islam, the former is even more important than the latter; so that a person not believing in the set of the genesis mythology may be considered a Muslim more easily than a person not believing in the eschatological mythology.

Additionally it means, if we should moderate the religious interpretations in order to correct our attitude to the environmental crises, we should be aware of the role of the eschatological beliefs and try to moderate them or at least to treat the misunderstandings traditionally having been raised by them.

In this paper, after a brief introduction, I will discuss on eschatological parts of four major western religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism (an Iranian belief which is followed by the Indian Parsis and has also some followers in Iran) and the relationship between them and the traditional attitude to the natural environment.

Initially I would like to mention that this analysis as well as the so-called relationship between mythology of geneses and the environmental ethics, is merely hypothetical. In fact the followers of the mentioned religions are influenced by direct religious commandments rather than philosophical understanding of mythology. It’s a very important difference between the religious approaches of Abrahamic traditions and Dharmic traditions.

Another difference between them which is important to be reminded is that although eschatology in the Dharmic religions has rather a philosophic role, in Abrahamic traditions, it maintains the same part in moral discipline as the notion of “Moksa” in Dharmic religions.

Additionally I should clarify one point: although the main scope of this paper is the Abrahamic religions, I shall pay equal attention to the Zoroastrianism which philologically has derived from a Dharmic family. I have two supporting reasons: first, morphologically Zoroastrianism display the same elements of Abrahamic traditions so that according to Wittgenstein’s theory of family resemblance, we should count that religion among the latter camp; second, geographically this religion, at the time of its flourishing, took location on the boundary between Abrahamic and Dharmic traditions. Therefore it’s natural to concern the mutual influences of them on each other. Even it’s widely believed by some secular scholars that the idea of eschatology is borrowed by Abrahamic nations from Zoroastrianism around the sixth century BC.


1. Introduction: How eschatological view is important with this respect

In the Encyclopedia of Wikipedia, the term eschatology is defined as follows: “Eschatology (from the Greek, Eschatos meaning "last" + -logy) is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with the final events in the history of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world.”

Since it is a part of theology, as the other parts of theology, it reveals the divine attributes. In this case these attributes will be revealed through God’s plan and role in a universal event which is the End of the World.

In order to analyze the relationship between these attributes and the religious approaches to the nature, two points should be remarked on:

a) God as the source of wisdom: unlike Greek, Egyptian and Hindu-Puranic gods, God in the Abrahamic religions is perfect. As an aspect of this perfection, He is omniscient. Again Abrahamic God, like Greek, Egyptian and Hindu-Puranic gods and unlike Vedantic Brahman and Neo-Platonic “One”, is a self- consciously active God: He is willfully omnipotent. It is an old argument in the Abrahamic religions which nowadays is known rather through a Cartesian demonstration that a perfect willing omnipotent omniscient entity should be good-willing. In this point the divine wisdom comes to the scene. Wisdom on one hand is associated with the beginning and on the other hand with the end. At this point this religious concept shows similarity to the Aristotelian teleology. In fact wisdom is a road which leads the divine good-will from the beginnings to the ends.

Since the Abrahamic traditions have been further influenced widely by the Neo-Platonic tendencies of thought (the best examples are given in the case of Philo Alexandrian the founder of the Jewish philosophy and Saint Augustine who is known as the philosophical founder of the Catholic Church), the Abrahamic theologies appearing after the second century CE, gradually tried to reconcile the active Biblical God with the passive Neo-Platonic “One”. In this process, the divine good-will shifted from a wildly variously accidental voluntariness to a rationally constantly essential wisdom. In this system, the divine good-will consists of granting to the divine principles (which representing the Platonic Ideas and the divine attributes at the same time, form the origin of all entities and maintain the passive aspect of divinity) whatever they deserve temporally (this temporal deserved grant, maintaining the active aspect of divinity, represents the Aristotelian End which is in principle prior to all other beginnings.) As if, the end is nothing but the unfolded beginning. Naturally the end of the world is the moment on which the divine good-will will manifest the ultimate state which is deserved essentially by the nature. Here we can see how the eschatological views can either support or challenge the concept of intrinsic value of the nature which is a crucial point in Deep Ecology. In other words, in Abrahamic traditions, whatever god finally plans for the nature is nothing but the manifestation of the intrinsic value of the nature. This point is of course of an ontological nature rather than an ethical point of view as Ecosophism insists on its own metaphysical nature rather than ethical. Thus, the eschatological view of each religion reveals its attitude towards the intrinsic value of the nature even possibly having been denied.

b) God as the source of morality: Basically we can divide the theistic traditions into two camps: 1) ethics-oriented traditions; 2) nature-oriented traditions. Although it’s not possible to make a sharp distinction between these two class and always we can find some elements of both sects in every tradition, the main criteria is the answer to this question: are the divine characters, at least as whole, representing or supporting or stating a consistent set of ethical principles or not? As a pair of classic examples, the ancient Greek Pantheon’s answer to this question is negative therefore they belong to the second camp while the ancient Egyptian Enneads’ answer is positive and it belongs to the first camp. In the history of Hinduism, the Puranic and further Epical attempts to distinguish the Devas from the Asuras is the final triumph of the ethical orientation over the other one.

It may be said that the Abrahamic traditions belong to the first camp, although in the first stages of the Hebrew theology which are reflected in the first five books of the Old Testament, God seems like a wild furious egoist tribal deity which gradually is going to become civilized as ultimately is shown in Christianity. Even in the former stage, God represents the elements of an individualistic moral system including honesty, loyalty and piety though lacking mercifulness and the other civil norms.

At least in the further stages of Judo-Christian tradition as well as Islam, God’s perfection leads believers to consider God as the source of morality, although a fundamental doubt always has a great role in their view: are the ethical principles reasonable or not? We can find in all Abrahamic traditions some supporters for both possible answers to this question: in Christianity, the positive answer is supported by Tomes while the negative answer is supported by Anselm. In Islam the former is supported by the “Mo`tazeli” sect, while the latter by the “Ash`ari” sect. in the Judaism the book of Job is famous for reflecting this challenge.

According to the former opinion, the ethical principles are accessible through reason considering the intrinsic value of objects and actions, but still, due to imperfection of human reason, we need the perfect wisdom of God to reveal to us surely the objects of moral observation which very God observes in the level of divinity.

According to the latter opinion the normative aspect of religion cannot be derived from any rational process and the objects and the actions are ethically neutral. Consequently, we have to do whatever God orders only for the sake of the obligation which has root in His will. If in the former camp there is any possibility for arriving at normative principles through pure human attempt, in the latter camp, in order to be moral, we completely depends on God, although due to the defects of linguistically instrumental aspects of the divine revelation which is a human defect imposed on this business, again there appear some room for reasoning. This rational process takes place in the field of interpretation.

In both camps; the beginning, manner and goal of morality, whether essentially or accidentally, consist of one notion: Godlikeness; in the former camp, obviously, in the terms of wisdom and good-will, but in the latter one the case is a bit complicated. All Abrahamic religions have a common axiom: God has created man similar to Himself (although I should exclude Zoroastrianism because this religion is not so serious about this belief) According to this axiom the same moral principles which are applicable to God are applicable, at least in principle if not in fact, to man. Therefore, even for the second camp the main moral objective is Godlikeness although according to them the nature of God can be revealed only through His own words. I am not sure how much this concept may be comparable with the meaning of Brahmacarya in Indian philosophy.

However that means, ethically, our behavior to the nature, at least in principle, should follow the same attitude which God has towards the nature and his attitude will got completely manifested at the “end of the world.” Thus, the eschatological view has capacity for being religiously considered as a pattern for the man’s ethical attitude to the nature.





2. Common elements of eschatology in the Abrahamic religions

a) Last judgment: The essential core and purpose of the Abrahamic eschatology is the concept of “Last Judgment” in which every human being will be judged by God (or Jesus in Christianity) and will receive reward or punishment according to his good or bad behavior.

This last judgment usually deserves three events as precondition: “destruction of the natural world”, “final victory of God” and “resurrection of dead.” Among these three, the second one some times is considered the same in nature as the very last judgment although it reveals the hidden dualistic elements of those Abrahamic sects which emphasize on that.

The first event, destruction of the natural world, is the most relevant one among them to our current concern. Here, there is one important question which can determine the direction of our investigation: who or what is the responsible or agent of this predicted destruction?

According to orthodox Christianity, that’s planned by God: “In my vision, when he (an angel of God’s) broke the sixth seal, there was a violent earthquake and the sun went as black as coarse sackcloth; the moon turned red as blood all over, and the stars of the sky fell onto the earth like figs dropping from a fig tree when a high wind shakes it; the sky disappeared like a scroll rolling up and all the mountains and islands were shaken from their places.” (The New Jerusalem Bible; New Testament; Book of Revelation: 6: 12-14) “Then I heard a loud voice from the sanctuary calling to the seven angels, 'Go, and empty the seven bowls of God's anger over the earth.'” (Ibid; 16:1)
The same view is taken in Islamic sources: “When the sun is folded up; When the stars fall, losing their luster; When the mountains vanish; When the she-camels, ten months with young, are left untended; When the wild beasts are herded together When the oceans boil over with a swell; When the souls are sorted out.” (Koran; 81: 1-7)
In opposition, the final destruction of the world, in Zoroastrian view is operated by the Evil Principle of the universe, namely “Angraminu.” In this religion, the natural world is considered as the field, the instrument ant the scope of a fundamental battle between God and the Evil Principle. Originally God has created the nature perfectly and all defect and destructions in the nature has been later caused by the Evil principle. It’s remarkable that this evil influence includes the defects which deserve to be temporally recovered by the regulation of the ecosystem. In their view, as we will see later, there is no circulation of ecosystem in the ideal natural world. Therefore, God and man are supposed to try to save the nature alike and the final destruction of the nature is the last and greatest attempt of the Evil principle in the final battle which will be led to the final victory of God.
The Gnostic Christianity which used to dominate the Christian thought from the first century till the fifth century, although is said to be influenced basically by Zoroastrianism, believes that the creation of the natural world, as a resultant of a mistake, has been done by an ignorant member of the Pantheon and this mistake, fortunately, will be corrected at the end of the world through the complete destruction of the nature. Therefore, the divine will and likewise enlightened people are to destroy the world: God in a macrocosmic level at the end of the world and man in the daily religiously prescribed penance and self mortification which destroy the body as man’s medium with the material nature.
b) Renewal of the creation: In all Abrahamic religions, the process of the Last Judgment which is sometimes considered identical with the Final Victory of God is accompanied with the process of renewal of the creation; as if divine justice may not take place completely in the present nature and there is no choice other than a new creation.
Usually there occur two questions which can be related to our concern: i) Is the new creation material? ii) What is the nature of this new creation and in which way this new creation is more ideal than the present world? Apparently, the Abrahamic religions don’t agree on answering these questions:
i) According to the majority of Muslims, Orthodox Christianity and Zoroastrianism, the new creation is again material. For example it’s written in the New Testament: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had disappeared now, and there was no longer any sea.” (The New Jerusalem Bible; New Testament; Book of Revelation: 21: 1)
In opposition, according to Gnostic Christianity and a minority of the Shiite Muslims, namely “Shaikhiye”, this new world is absolutely spiritual and not material. Indeed, they cannot maintain any point in the field of our interest, because according to them, the nature has no intrinsic value; the nature is in its essence defective and unjust so that no justice and morality can take form in the nature. According to Gnostics, matter is the same as the Devil and no moral issue may have sense in the material world unless from a Theo-centric or an anthropocentric point of view which can reflect the divine spark in the “darkness of the nature.”
ii) Investigating the nature and the function of this new creation, I would like not to mention the Abrahamic religions which negatively deny the value of nature as are explained above. According to the other sects, the nature and function of this new creation is the most perfect impossible form of matter which grounds the divine justice and peace. Two items are common with this respect:
1) In this new creation there is no provision for any harm to any non-human living being. Human being is excluded from this statement otherwise the divine justice could not occur. Therefore in the ideal world, dynamic circulation of ecosystem will be replaced with some static idealist forms, because all kinds of ecosystem deserve some levels of violence; for example, in Zoroastrianism, the ideal society gradually will go towards vegetarianism and further the living beings will be fed only with music so that this feature described in the Zoroastrian scripture can be realized: “… so that they may restore the world, which will (thenceforth) never grow old and never die, never decaying and never rotting, ever living and ever increasing, and master of its wish, when the dead will rise, when life and immortality will come, and the world will be restored at its wish.” (Zamyadyasht: 11) As another example, even the bloody sacrifice which includes a kind of violence will be nonsense in the Christian new world: “I could not see any temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple.” (The New Jerusalem Bible; New Testament; Book of Revelation: 21: 22)
2) In order to establish perfect divine justice, the nature should show the most perfect level of unity with human being. A common analysis of possibility of injustice in the present world usually arrives at a conclusion mentioning a kind of separation between man and the world as the responsible of injustice and sin, although this separation is only an appearance arisen by the veil of ignorance, otherwise, man should realize that he is from the same origin as the nature and one entity (God) is currently manifesting in both man and nature. This entity has two aspects: freedom and obligation. The former is manifested in human and the latter in the nature, but as they are to aspects of one entity and they are ultimately one, they mutually respond and reflect each other. This reflection is hidden in the present world while in the ideal world they respond to each other obviously. It means the ideal nature will function with the respect to every body according to his dispositional characteristics consisting of his virtues and vices. That will be the ultimate manifestation of unity of man and the nature and will provide an undefeatable kind of justice. So, the nature of the ideal world (which as I mentioned, currently is the hidden nature of the present world) is the same as the moral character of the man. I thing the best indication of this picture may be found in a phrase of the Koran: “When the earth is shaken to her (utmost) convulsion, and the earth throws up her burdens (from within), and man cries (distressed): 'What is the matter with her?' On that Day will she declare her tidings; for that thy Lord will have given her inspiration. On that Day will men proceed in companies sorted out, to be shown the deeds that they (had done). Then shall anyone who has done an atom's weight of good, see it! And anyone who has done an atom's weight of evil, shall see it.” (Koran: 99: 1-8)
I would like to express the function of this transcended world as “the manifestation of the moral nature of creation.” Now we are able to build the framework of “Environmental Ethics” on the basis of the “moral nature of the environment.”
This fact that the nature in its essence is the same as the moral character of the man has got some proof in the religious historicity of the Abrahamic traditions while we see how the sins having be committed by the man, have resulted in the natural disasters like Noah’s flood, a story which is believed by all Abrahamic traditions.
A most indicative example is a story which is well-believed in Islamic historicity and I think this story has roots in Judo-Christian tradition. The Muslim historians of literature, searching for the origin of the poetry, claim the first poetic piece was issued by Adam, the first man, when his son, Cain, had killed the other son of Adam, Abel (that was the first sin done on the earth.) It’s told that he used to mourn reciting this verse:
“The lands have changed along with whatever is on them;
“And the face of the earth is dusty and ugly.”
Then they insist that this piece was a realistic report rather than a poetic expression, because before that murder the whole water of the world was sweet and all the trees were fruitful. They lost their qualities due to that crime as if the earth was shaken by the first crime on its surface.
c) Redeemer: Usually the renewal of the creation is imagined, either prior or posterior to prevalence of a redeeming figure (“Messiah/Christ” in the Judo-Christian tradition, “Mahdi” in Islam and “Sushiant” in Zoroastrianism.) With respect to this concept, I would like to remark two points: 1) necessity of the redeemer; 2) function of the redeemer:
1) Necessity of the redeemer:
There are several traditional arguments for necessity of prevalence of the redeemer in order to build the ideal world but one of them seems too relevant to our concern: since the nature of the environment is ultimately moral, and the nature and the man mutually influence and reflect each other, a moral uncorrected defect of man, can start a helpless regressive circle in which the nature grounds man’s corruption and man causes the nature’s decay. According to the Christian faith, this starting sin was committed in the Garden of Aden by Adam and Eve. It’s the same sin which Saint Augustine has named the “natural sin.” This first sin has caused the Garden of Aden (which some times is interpreted as a manifested stage of the original nature of the creation), not to be able to stand with the presence of them so that finally they were exiled to a less manifested level of the creation: our present environment. Even it’s interesting to know their sin (eating the forbidden fruit) some times is interpreted as attaining dualistic subject-object-ship cognition of the environment which is a precondition for any moral judgment in opposition to virtuous intuitive action: “Then the snake said to the woman, ‘No! You will not die! God knows in fact that the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil.’” (The New Jerusalem Bible; Old Testament; Genesis: 3: 4, 5) “… when they tasted of the tree, their shame became manifest to them…” (Koran: 7: 22) In this way, “shame” may be understood as moral alienation.
In order to help that mentioned regressive circle, two ways look possible: to damage the whole circle destroying at least one party of this pair; or to add a third element to break the regress. The first way is the same which according to the Bible, God once applied to man through the Great Flood but afterwards, he regretted and swore not to apply it later on: “God smelt the pleasing smell and said to himself, ‘Never again will I curse the earth because of human beings, because their heart contrives evil from their infancy. Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done. As long as earth endures: seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.’” (The New Jerusalem Bible; Old Testament; Genesis: 8: 21, 22) “God spoke as follows to Noah and his sons: ‘I am now establishing my covenant with you and with your descendants to come, and with every living creature that was with you: birds, cattle and every wild animal with you; everything that came out of the ark, every living thing on earth. And I shall maintain my covenant with you: that never again shall all living things be destroyed by the waters of a flood, nor shall there ever again be a flood to devastate the earth. And this’, God said, ‘is the sign of the covenant which I now make between myself and you and every living creature with you for all ages to come: I now set my bow in the clouds and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I gather the clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I shall recall the covenant between myself and you and every living creature, in a word all living things, and never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all living things. When the bow is in the clouds I shall see it and call to mind the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth, that is, all living things. That’, God told Noah, ‘is the sign of the covenant I have established between myself and all living things on earth.’” (Ibid; 9: 8-17)
The second way is to add a third element which is known as “redeemer”: “For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (The New Jerusalem Bible; New Testament; John: 3: 16) That’s why in Rabbinic Judaism it’s said that the Messiah will come in an extremely good situation or an extremely bad situation: “Rabbi Johanan also said: The son of David will come only in a generation that is either altogether righteous or altogether wicked” (Talmud Sanhedrin 98a); although the first possibility traditionally is never hoped. In the Shiite Islamic view, the Mahdi will come to fill the world with justice since it has been filled with injustice and injury.
2) Function of the redeemer:
How will the redeemer break that regressive circle? In the early Judaism, the redeemer was supposed to come as a fully dominating ruler to reestablish David’s Kingdom, Solomon’s Temple and its sacrificial rituals. According to them the nature receives the divine bless trough the man, man through the Jews tribes, the Jews through their priests and the priests through the highest priest who is the only one being authorized to pass the main holy sacrifice in the most sacred part of Solomon’s Temple. In fact, this ritual and the rules which the Jews people are ordered to observe on behalf of the whole humanity and secondly of the whole creation, is to fulfill the conditions of a covenant between God and them according to which God has undertaken to give bless to the creation: “So now, if you are really prepared to obey me and keep my covenant, you, out of all peoples, shall be my personal possession, for the whole world is mine. For me you shall be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” (The New Jerusalem Bible; Old Testament; Exodus: 19: 5, 6) It means the Messiah’s function, some how though secondarily, is to save the nature. The same role in Shiite Islam is ascribed to the “Hojjat” which usually is identified with the coming redeemer, when they assert that the world cannot sustain even one moment without the spiritual function of the Hojjat.

Here I think it’s not irrelevant if we notice how it is easy to realize the charges like Lynn White’s are unfair. The human domination which is mentioned in the Bible and is the pretext to charge should be understood in two ways: first, a descriptive statement about the ultimate superiority of human abilities over the other species which as is descriptive, cannot have at least a direct indication to any moral norm; and second, a prescriptive statement due to the position of human in the hierarchy of distribution of divine bless. The latter is the moral duty which the Messiah of the early Judaism is to come to fulfill.
In the firs century, while the Jews were waiting for the Messiah to come as a king and defeat the Roman Empire, the Christian alleged that he had already come not to reestablish the kingdom of David in Jerusalem but to establish the Kingdom of God in the hearts of human being, not as a political kingdom but as the Kingdom of the Heaven, not to make the sacrificial smoke ascend but to transcend the man and the nature towards a unity in God, a process which had started by the first coming of the Christ and was supposed to be completed by his second coming at the end of the world.
After this proclaim, the Abrahamic traditions thought of this fact that the renewal of the nature might begin from the inner side of man rather than the outer world. It led them to the ideal unity between man and the nature which should manifest in the Messianic era through the Messianic function.
The common Christian interpretation of the Christ’s function refers to the same fact, while they say the Christ has come to establish “love” as a new covenant instead of the old covenant which was consisting of “Moses’ Low”: an intuitive desire for unity instead of an arguemental judgment based on separation.
d) Spiritual application of eschatology: I spoke of “God-likeness” as a meta-ethical principle of the Abrahamic traditions, and I promised that the plan which God has for the end of the world can reveal the essentially divine attitude to the nature. This consideration can shift that meta-ethical principle to an ethical realm so that a man, who wants to be moral and accordingly God-like, must take the same attitude to the nature as God has according to His own nature and the nature of the nature.
Before continuing this line I would like to mention a spiritual application of these premises which can help this shift to take place more easily in fact. This point would be felt to be important especially if one questions relevance of this argument with the present environment and its ethics: one may say you speak about the ideal world and its properties while we concern the present nature and its to-day crises.
Here, I would like to mention a very popular story which has been related by Rabbinic Judaism:
Rabbi Joshua bin Levi found the Messiah at the entrance of the city and asked him: “When wilt thou come Master?” The Messiah answered: “To-day.” Afterwards, Rabbi Joshua met Elijah (another spiritual figure) and as the Messiah hadn’t come that day the Rabbi complained to him: “He (the Messiah) spoke falsely to me stating that he would come today, but has not.” Elijah answered him: “This is what he said to thee: ‘To-day’, if you would hear his voice.” (See: Talmud Sanhedrin 98a)
This phrase and the like usually are interpreted through two possible contexts. One of them refers to the universal presence of the redeemer which will be manifested whenever his function can be understood by the man. This opinion is taken also by some Shiite Muslim sects and the Muslim Sufism especially when they speak of the “Qotb” (literary: pole.)
The second context refers to another concept which is expressed in Islam by a pair of terms: “universal eschatology” and “personal eschatology”. These two should be study under the light of the concepts of macro-cosmos and micro-cosmos. The former term indicates a chain of events which are supposed to happen at the end of the world as macro-cosmos but the latter means the same state happening in a man as a micro-cosmos. While one has to wait for a certain time to face the universal eschatological events, the personal eschaton may happen every time. It not only may happen but should be realized through spiritual development. In this state, man sees the present nature in union with him and in its manifested essence which corresponds to the moral nature of man. There are so many reports in Islamic spiritual culture about the saints who see the world as if they are in the eschatological era. Two thousand years ago they used to claim that the End is close; it was really close but only to them: the people who could realize the ultimately moral essence of the world through participating in God’s wisdom: “In due course John the Baptist appeared. He proclaimed this message in the desert of Judea: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.’ This was the man spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said: ‘a voice of one that cries in the desert: 'Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.'’” (The New Jerusalem Bible; New Testament; Mathew: 3: 1-3) Those people may be called the awaken men due to an Islamic opinion stating: “the present world is a dream of which the interpretation will be realized in the eschatological ideal world.” In this sense, the environmental dilemma will be simply expressed as follows: “how to avoid bad dreams?”


3. Conclusion

What should we do in order to avoid bad dreams? If you consulate a physician, he will suggest you to change your mental and physiological routines. A Jungian psychologist recommends you to face the dreams and try to realize your sub-consciousness through them and resolve your psychic complexes through this self-realization and then the bad dreams will be curbed automatically. An occultist but, advises you to correct your personality, mentality and action, not only to avoid the bad dreams but also to avoid the bad events which are going to happen to you as the interpretation of those dreams. Any way, your best friend or your spouse, will attempt to relieve you asking you not to mind of them and let them be forgotten. The religious approach to the environmental crises, of course is not like the first one and the last one.

Before continuing this discussion, I would like to have what ever we arrived at in this paper reviewed briefly once more:
1) God is the source of the wisdom through which He grants every thing whatever it deserves in its nature.
2) God is the source of morality, therefore God-likeness is the ultimate goal of morality and however God does or will deal to the nature should be a moral example for the man.
3) God will destroy and renew the nature, partially through a redeemer, at the end of the word in order to establish a complete justice and manifest the ultimate nature of his creation.
4) The following chart reveals the deferent views on some aspects of eschatology:




Cause of World Destruction
Value of World Destruction
The Nature of the Ideal World
Orthodox Sects
Divine Wisdom and Circular Regress
Partially Righteous
Material
Zoroastrianism
Evil Principle
Unrighteous
Material
Gnostic Christianity
Divine Wisdom
Absolutely Righteous
Immaterial

5) In the ideal world there is no harm for any non-human living being.
6) The ecosystem is an unjust but wise divine temporal treatment for some defects of the present world which will disappear in the ideal world.
7) The ultimate nature of the ideal world is moral. It indicates that the ultimate nature of the present world is also moral because the end is whatever is essentially deserved by the beginning. In fact the world is fed with the human morality.
8) Since the man and the nature mutually reflect each other, the moral decay of the man starts a helpless regressive circle in which the man and the nature mutually worsen each other. This circle finally will lead or will be responded by the Final Destruction of the World.
9) In order to break this circle, there needs a Redeemer who should come to the world to transcend the man and the nature. He will unite the man and the nature in God and will reveal their essential union. This process will start from the part of the man.
10) Every body, every time, should try to realize the eschatological era and its properties in himself, as if his relationship with the nature is the same ultimate moral unity. This realization is a result of participation in the divine wisdom and God-likeness.

As a conclusion, what we should do in order to save the nature is to save our own souls. The followers of the Abrahamic religions, according to the previous lines, transcend the problem of environmental ethics: they shift from the field of act-centered ethics to the realm of virtue-cenered ethics. That’s a secondary matter of concern that how many trees you cut or how many animals you slain and for which purpose you do these. It’s shallow to prescribe a list of acts as the moral treatments for the environment: just as shallow as the prescription of the physician for avoiding bad dreams. It’s a secondary concern how to deal directly to the nature while the main cause is our general moral virtues.

If we want to maintain a list of rules in the field of applied ethics concerning the environment, we should consider the natural role of human in the ecosystem otherwise if our rules our so exclusive that they prevent the man as an animal from his part in the ecosystem, it will be as immoral as preventing any other species from its own role. But in which measure the man can involve the ecosystem? Answering simply that “as much as he needs” seems seriously insufficient followed by a new question: “how much he needs?” that’s way the Abrahamic traditions originally think searching for this question in the field of applied ethics is non-sense. Instead we should concern the general virtue of man as a dispositional characteristic. This general virtue, as is expressed in God-likeness, seems to be a kind of intuitive morality rather than any other view which leads us to a moral argument establishing some rules for ethical application.

Additionally, Lynn white is wrong. He is confused between cause and effect and can be challenged by the method of Hume’s skepticism: if the egocentric interpretation of the Christian Genesis appeared at the same time as the egocentric attitude to the nature in the West, we cannot say they have a causal relationship. In fact the general encouraged renaissance egoism caused both the interpretation and the crisis.

Religious view believes that the nature is suffering secondary and accidentally from the violence against her but she is suffering directly, primarily and essentially from general human vicious character, as well as these characters indirectly cause the mentioned violence. We should improve our general moral character and then it will automatically locate us in the harmony with the nature and will control our violent behaviors to her; because the nature is of the same essence as our moral personality. In fact the Abrahamic suggestion for avoiding bad dreams is something between the Jungian’s and the occultist’s.

The original message of Zoroaster emphasizing “Good Mind” as the essential treatment consists of the same view (Gathas; Yasna 29: 1, 6 & 10):

Unto Thee, O Lord, the Soul of Creation cried: "For whom didst Thou create me, and who so fashioned me?Feuds and fury, violence and the insolence of might have oppressed me; None have I to protect me save Thee; Command for me then the blessings of a settled, peaceful life."
… Then, thus spake Ahura Mazda, the Lord of understanding and wisdom:"As there is no righteous spiritual lord or secular chief, So have I, as Creator, made thee (Zarathushtra) the protector and guide,For the welfare of the world and its diligent people:"
… O Ahura Mazda, and O Spirit of Truth and Right! Do Ye grant me and my followers such authority and power through Truth, That with the Good Mind, we may bring the world peace and happiness, Of which, Thou, O Lord, art indeed the first possessor.