Elias Economou
An Orthodox View of the Ecological Crisis
4. Man's Relationship to the Natural Environment.
The presence of man in the natural environment was conditional. The conditions were three:(a) the statement about the God-created environment, (b) the divine will fot the nuturing of mankind, (c) the divine mandate, regarding man's behaviour in his natural environment and, last but not least, the perpetual recognition of God's absolute dominion in the world.
The statement about the God-created environment as a precondition for the survival of mankind is underlined in the Bible; "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed", Gen. 2,8).
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