In the history of Reformed thought, covenant has endured as a compelling theological concept, providing a crucial lens for viewing with clarity the meaning of the bible. This has been particularly true when relating covenant theology to the issues of justice and peace. The same, however, cannot be said in regard the integrity of creation. For the most part, our churches have been inattentive to the growing threats facing the life of creation. And our theological and biblical understandings often have minimized and ignored the significance of God's creation when expressing the meaning of Christian faith.

Our challenge, then, is to relate the insights of the Reformed tradition to the crisis which today threatens the essential integrity of the creation. In so doing, we can discover neglected, yet empowering dimensions of God's covenant. Moreover, we then can call upon the members of our church communities to respond through covenanting for the very survival and renewal of the gift given in God's creation.

Part II

God's covenant embraces the creation. This is the biblical truth which forms the foundation for upholding the integrity of creation, and provides the basis for the church's response to the perils threatening the life of the world.

God's action as creator did not consist simply of God making the world. Rather, as creator, redeemer, and sustainer, God chose the creation. Through grace alone, God identified the world as the beloved creation. "For God so loved the world..."

In Reformed theology, covenant has been understood as God's promises to humanity. Biblical scholars have revealed the nature of covenant agreements in the world of the old Testament. This background has led to insights concerning the various ways in which covenant was understood by the people of Israel. In some cases covenant promises between God and a people were seen as conditional, and dependent upon appropriate responses. Another tradition came to stress the abiding and unconditional character of God's covenant. Yet, most all such reflection has assumed that the scope of covenant is only God and humanity.

That limited perspective has contributed to the churches' inattention to the crisis facing the world's environment. The assumption that God's promises extend simply to humanity has left little room for regarding the creation as central to the message of Christian Faith. This has allowed an anthropocentric bias to dominate our interpretation of the biblical message. Further, attitudes which sanction the ruthless domination of nature have been theologically tolerated and even strengthened from the view that God's promises and covenant have no practical relevance for the earth.

Our fresh and hopeful discovery, however, is that the biblical message resounds with declarations of the creation as God's loved possession and gift. The promises of God, and the work of redemption in Jesus Christ, encompass the whole created order. Moreover, the creation is a partner in covenant with God. In fact, the covenant tradition biblically is linked to the creation from the earliest "prehistory" to the future promises of a new creation.

Reformed faith today faces the critical task of renewing its theological tradition through recovering the central place of creation in the biblical message. The community of believers in our tradition today are confronted with the clear calling to participate in the heart of the struggle throughout the world to uphold the integrity of creation. The realities which jeopardize life on this planet make clear that our response is imperative if our hope in God's promises is genuine.

Part III

Never has the need for restoring the wholeness of creation been more urgent. The environment of air, water, earth, and fire (energy resources) sustains and nurtures life itself. As the environment deteriorates, life for us all is damaged. And when life-sustaining resources are degraded, eroded, or exhausted, life becomes threatened and lost.

Consider these realities:

The increased burning of fossil fuels, the loss of forests, and other factors are warming the earth's atmosphere at alarming rates; by the middle of the next century the atmosphere could be 4 to 15 degrees (F) warmer, with devastating effects on sea level, agriculture, and human health.
The rise in sea levels of 1.5 meters which would result in the next 6 decades from present global warming trends would have disastrous effects on coastal areas throughout the globe, where half of the world's population lives.
Since 1977, five of the last ten years have been the warmest years on earth in the past century; the earth was warmer in 1988 than at any time since global temperatures have been recorded.
Each year on planet earth, an area of tropical forests three-quarters the size of South Korea, or twice the size of Switzerland, is destroyed and lost; soils then erode, the climate begins changing, and its replenishing resources are gone.
Two-thirds of the forests standing in Nigeria in 1960 were eliminated by 1985. Liberia has lost 80 percent of its forests during the same period.
India has lost an estimated 85 percent of its original forests; and if current deforestation rates continue, barely any forests will survive there by the end of this century.
Thus far, this century has witnessed the elimination of approximately half of all the forests in developing countries.
Such tropical deforestation is the major cause of a modern mass extinction of plant and animal species as great as that which occurred after the disappearance of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Scientists are estimating that as many as 1 million species of plant and animal life will become extinct, due to the human destruction of forests and ecosystems, by the end of the twentieth century.
850 million people living in the earth's dry land areas are threatened with desertification - the degrading of land caused by overgrazing, deforestation, poor irrigation, and rural neglect.
The increased burning of fossil fuels, the loss of forests, and other factors are warming the earth's atmosphere; by the middle of the next century the atmosphere could be six degrees (F) warmer, with potentially drastic effects on sea level, agriculture, and human health.
The environmental quality in the developed world is seriously threatened by the chemical industry, as scores of human-made chemicals have entered into the food chain and are now found in the body fat of the population.
14,000 people die each year from pesticide poisoning, and hundreds of thousands more fall ill. Two-thirds of these deaths occur in the developing world, which uses only one-sixth of the world's pesticides in the world. The rapidly increasing use of such chemicals threatens water quality and poses risks of increased cancer and birth defects.

These are but a few examples of global trends depicting the deterioration of the world's environment. While dramatic tragedies such as Bhopal and Chernobyl make headlines for a week or so, each day, in silent and often unnoticed ways, the gifts of life in creation are being poisoned and depleted. As the environment deteriorates, human wholeness is also diminished.

At the heart of such problems lies a fundamental breakdown in the modern world view of western culture. Since the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution western culture came to assume that humanity had both the right and duty to dominate nature. Objective, scientific knowledge became an absolute value. And the purpose of such knowledge was to exercise power over the creation. The view of life became secularized; we came to understand the world apart from any reference to God. The creation became "nature" - raw materials which existed only to be given value through exploitation.

The pragmatic benefits of these developments for civilization are remarkable in many ways. Humanity has been afforded protection against many ancient threats to life. However, this mindset now is presenting humanity with more curses than blessings. Technology has become a social drug. We are addicted to technological solutions to any problem. Power seems the same as truth. Thus, we split the atom because we could do it. Instead of solving problems, that action gave humanity the godlike power of life and death over the created order.

Modern humanity has become far too confident in its own power, and has trusted far too deeply in its dominance over the creation. It has constructed a world view which places human power and glory at the centre of the universe. We have become like gods, masters over creation's destiny, and ready to demand any sacrifice for our enjoyment - even the destruction of the environment upon which all life depends.

This same mindset also results in the domination of women by men. A hierarchy of values justifies not only the exploitation of nature, but identifies the female with "nature"; both are regarded as weaker, and become subject to male mastery and oppression. The same mistaken biblical interpretation which justifies the rule of men over women also blesses man's unbridled exploitation of the creation. Moreover, this stance of "mastery" over nature has justified the oppression of people of colour who, like women, have been treated as "lower" and associated with nature as objects for exploitation.

Therefore, if the Reformed tradition is to play some part in upholding the integrity of the creation in our own time, we must recognize the depth of our challenge. Rather than simply acknowledging immediate environmental problems which need remedy, our task is confronting the basic modern mindset which spawns and rationalizes environmental ruin. This requires nothing short of the power of the gospel.

The message of new life in Jesus Christ overturns the values and cultural assumptions which lie at the foundation of modern ecological ruin. We are called to conversion; such conversion frees us from the ways of thought and life which are hastening the earth's destruction, and calls us through the Spirit to live in ways that protect and nourish the gift of God's creation. The power of the gospel beckons us to confront the economic, cultural, and technological assumptions which are destroying life on earth, and offer a vision for upholding the creation.

Part IV

Early Reformed theologians pointed to the universal scope of the covenant. Bullinger maintained that God's covenant did not originate with Abraham, but was renewed. Covenant began with Adam and Noah. Zwingli also argued that the covenant was one whole, reaching to the entire human race, and then to the people of Israel through Abraham. Karl Barth underscored the broad scope of the covenant as seen by such early Reformers, pointing ultimately to the intended destiny of all humanity.

In Calvin, the kingdom of God is portrayed as the special end and goal of the creation. Thus, creation and redemption become united. In this truth, we can understand how humanity's destiny is fully linked with the destiny of creation itself.

The promises of the covenant find their foundation in God's steadfast relationship to the creation. Indeed, the first explicit biblical references to God's covenant come in the story of Noah, and establish the creation, not only humanity, as a partner in the covenant with God. When the creation, with all of its life, is re-established as Noah and all the animals come forth from the ark, God's covenant is announced. And it is a covenant with "every living creature," a covenant which God describes as "between me and the earth" (Gen 9.13). To underscore the promise, the integrity of the earth's cycles - "seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night" is also assured (8.22), as the Lord promises, "I will never again curse the ground" (8.21). Five times in the ninth chapter the scope of this covenant is repeated, extending to "all living things on earth of every kind." And the rainbow is described by the words of God as the sign "of the covenant between myself and the earth."

In other Old Testament expressions of God's covenant promises, the place of creation remains prominent. The Abrahamic covenant (described in Gen 15 and 17), for example, involves the land, given as God's gift to his descendants. Indeed, in the later giving of the law, the Sabbatical and Jubilee laws rest upon the proper treatment of the land, to allow the just sharing of its fruits. The Mosaic covenant at Sinai, often regarded more as a covenant conditional on the actions of the people of Israel, also encompasses God's relationship to all the creation. In Exodus 19, before the ten commandments are given, the Lord reminds Moses that "all the earth is mine" (19.5). In the account of the same events in Deuteronomy 10, when Moses sets forth God's requirements to "fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments" (10.12-3), he then immediately declares, "Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it" (10.14).

Following the Noachic and Abrahamic covenants, the tradition of the unconditional covenant also found expression in the promises to the throne of David. Seen initially as God's guarantee to rule through the Jerusalem kings in the line of David, this covenant finds affirmation in God's reign over all creation. The justice and righteousness at the foundation of David's throne rest upon God's intention to bring shalom and right relationships in all the creation. The "Royal Psalms" refer continuously to God's power to rule and accomplish divine intentions in all the world. Rightly understood, kings were to serve as the servants for upholding and preserving such dominion in the creation, because it all belongs to God.

This underscores the links between covenant and shalom. Covenant implies a rightly ordered relationship, whether between people, with God, or with the creation. In the biblical view, these relationships become inseparable. Shalom is the vision of the harmony, fulfilment, and fellowship between God, humanity, and the creation; its result is justice, peace, and the integrity of creation. In the understanding of covenant, we discover God's pledge of faithfulness, intention, and grace to bring about shalom in all that is created.

Establishing such right relationships, and a legitimate order, is initiated through God's identification with the weak, poor, and oppressed. This theme resounds through the pattern of biblical covenants, revealing a movement of solidarity with what is broken, outcast, and rejected. And this pattern extends to the creation. For in the midst of its brokenness and suffering, resulting from "nature" being regarded as the weaker partner needing to be conquered and exploited, we discover that God's solidarity extends to the creation itself, longing for its liberation and wholeness.

Covenant, then, portrays God's predisposition toward humanity and all creation. Simply because of the grace of God, all that God has created becomes loved, chosen, and destined for glory.

God's intention for the creation, underscored by covenant, provides the basis of hope for creation's destiny. For the people of Israel, such hope became refined and purified through the experience of exile and desolation, which shattered their self-aggrandizing dreams. In this time, the vision of the prophets returned again to covenant and creation.

In the later part of Isaiah, the prophet sets forth the vision of God's work of renewal and salvation. And that vision finds roots in the faithfulness of God's covenant promises. God's work as creator and ruler over all the earth is sounded with fresh power to the people. And the redemptive work of God results in a cosmic renewal and transformation. God's righteousness upholds and brings new life to the whole of creation.

Thus, biblical faith comes to place its hope for the fulfilment, healing, and renewal of creation in the covenant promises which look to God's redemptive activity. We hear the power and expanse of this hope in Hosea's words:

And I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.

And in that day, says the Lord, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel, and I will sow him for myself in the land. And I will have pity on Not pitied, and I will say to Not my people, 'you are my people'; and he shall say, 'Thou art my God.' (Hosea 2.18-23)

Part V

God's covenant promises find their full expression in Jesus Christ. The depth of God's grace - the faithful, long-suffering, sacrificial love of God - is fully embodied in God's Son. And in the saving and redeeming work of Christ, all creation finds its promise of fulfilment and glory.

Christ announced and inaugurated the kingdom of God. This kingdom consists of the full reign of God in the world, a reign that restores right relationship between God, humanity, and the creation. Shalom finds its expression. A new order, divinely initiated, breaks into history. And in this all, the initial promises of covenant with creation and humanity become manifest in the life of the kingdom of God.

Thus, the New Testament builds on this foundation which integrates creation into the work of God's redemption. God's role as creator and sustainer is ascribed to Jesus Christ in understanding the incarnation. John says of Christ, "all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (1.3). Colossians repeats this description with this worshipful declaration: "...in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth...all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together" (1.15-17).

When the work of God's redemption in Jesus Christ is discussed by New Testament writers, the reconciliation achieved through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ extends to the creation. The Colossians passage, for example, continues by declaring, "For in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things" (1.19-20). This is the same "all things" which were created through Christ. Several other New Testament passages underscore how Christ's defeat of all the rebellious powers results in the restoration of God's purpose and intended order in all the creation.

God's saving activity in Jesus Christ becomes the "New Covenant," first referred to in Jeremiah 31.31-34. The consistent theme of covenant, revealing God's disposition of grace toward the world, is unchanging, but now finds its most radical demonstration. For this grace now breaks all the barriers of humanity's rebellion, of creation's brokenness, of the world's distortion.

Covenant, expressed legalistically through the commandments and laws from Sinai, now is embodied through the one commandment of love demonstrated in the life of Jesus. And the foundational scope of the covenant, embracing the whole of creation, is taken up in Christ, the source and reconciler of all things, who initiates the new creation. This is celebrated in the eucharist, the feast which acknowledges our belonging to this new covenant relationship as the body of Christ, and opens all life to the promise of new creation.

Part VI

The initiative of God's covenant actions always asks for response. Faced with the crisis confronting the life of creation itself, the church today is compelled to offer to the world a decisive commitment for preserving the integrity of creation, as a witness to the promise of God's love. In covenant, the solidarity of God with the created world, in all its suffering and brokenness, is declared as an everlasting promise. What is chosen as God's own must now be embraced in solidarity by God's people.

The church's response to creation is rooted, above all, in gratitude. Even in the midst of the calamitous destruction inflicted on the created order by human sin, we still can receive God's creation as the gift of grace. This grace sustains all life, momentarily, through air, water, land, and energy. It opens humanity to the possibility of fellowship with God, and to the potential of justice and peace in relationship to others. From God's covenant with creation, we discover and receive all life as gift. And our response is one of joyous gratitude, and praise to God's glory.

Such gratitude compels resistance. As the church, our response to God's covenant with creation must certainly place us in stalwart resistance to all which breaks the integrity of creation, all which treats the earth as an object for our possession rather than God's gift, and all that subjugates the creation to destruction and ruin rather than saving the creation through fellowship with it. Such resistance brings the power of the gospel to convert the most fundamental attitudes and values in modern culture, which have assumed that the creation can be severed from its belonging to the creator, and which have placed its highest goal as the industrial and technological exploitation of the earth rather than its preservation.

In Romans we read that all creation longs for liberation from the bondage imposed on it by human sin. And in this longing, the creation looks to "the full manifestation of the children of God" (8.19). For the creation and the children of God are to share together in the kingdom of glory. This is the divine intention of God's covenant action through history.

The church is called to participate in the liberation of creation through entering into fellowship with it in response to God's grace. And here, the struggles for the integrity of creation, and for justice and peace all become indivisible parts of one whole.

The creation hungers for its transformation and freedom promised by God. In its suffering, the creation is waiting for the church - waiting for the people of God to embrace, protect, and renew the world as God's well-loved gift. Creation exists to give God glory and honour. Its possession by God is the ground of its final destiny, and sustains the church's response in covenant for a renewed creation.

Part VII

A Christian commitment to care for the gifts of God's creation ultimately gets translated into values and concrete choices which are made regarding the place of technology. Rarely do we realize the extent to which modern technology, in and of itself, sets forth the terms, vision, and values for modern life.

Within the modern world, science and technology became linked together. These forces ushered in the industrial revolution and reshaped the fabric of modern life. In the process, society came to assume that the course of progress, human betterment, and social well-being would unfold naturally from the development of technology. This was the means of humanity's liberation. No room was left to question the influence and effects which technology was having upon cultural goals and values. Thus, humanity arrived at our present predicament as technology has become an idol, object of faith, and often an oppressive power rather than a servant of human fulfilment and the wholeness of creation.

Faced with these consequences of technological power, Christian faith must challenge such idolatry with the vision of wholeness for the creation and true fulfilment in human life. Society's faith in the utter resourcefulness of technology, its belief in the sufficiency of technological knowledge, its absorption of technology's rules, and its embrace of technological ends all should be countered with warnings and with deeds which regard technology as our servant rather than our master.

Technological progress now presents creation with the threat of destruction, and confronts the church with a radical theological and practical challenge. Yet, the biblical vision of shalom remains the hope for the world's salvation. By living out of this vision, the church can demonstrate how the relationship between technology and creation can be redeemed. Turning from the idolatry of technology, we can help fashion forms of technological innovation which put us back in touch with the wisdom of God as reflected in the wonder of creation's gifts, and their capacity for sustaining life.

Few issues pose greater challenges to the church's need to evaluate technology than the advances of genetic engineering. Just as splitting the atom granted to humanity unheralded power of destruction, splicing genes has conferred on humanity drastic powers to create new life forms and alter the basic features and structures of God's creation.

Biotechnology and genetic engineering have developed within the western, modern view of science, technology, and industrialism. They epitomize the stance toward nature inherent in this - an exclusively managerial, instrumental, exploitative, and dominionistic posture. Theological, spiritual, and sacramental understandings of creation are absent.

The conflict between the rapid extension of biotechnology into novel arenas through industrial applications, and the questioning and resistance of various groups, is part of a much larger tension between the governing paradigm of western science and technology, and the search for a new paradigm integrating spiritual and ecological insights into a worldview. Moreover, this present conflict mirrors the past destructive engagement of western industrialism with indigenous cultures throughout the globe.

Modern society - particularly in biotechnology - is carrying the dominionistic, instrumental view of nature to its logical extreme. The invention, patenting, and future industrialization of transgenetic animals is the most dramatic recent illustration.

In these cases, the genetic characteristics of different animal species, including human genetic components, are combined together, resulting in the "invention" of novel life forms. And recently, the United States has granted a patent to such an "invention", setting a precedent for the industralized world.

Observing recent innovations of biotechnology, such as combining genetic characteristics of cows with pigs, inserting bovine growth material into salmon creating superfish, and uniting the phosphorescence of fireflies with tobacco plants, one gets the clear feeling that creation's inherent structures and boundaries are of little intrinsic worth. The stance assumed by such actions is that God's creation is lacking in sufficient wisdom, and fully in need of being fundamentally restructured, for the sake of furthering profits. This picture is made even more alarming by the combining together of human and animal genetic components in these pursuits.

Additionally, certain industrial applications of biotechnology will increase economic oppression throughout the world. For example, many exports of plant-derived commodities, such as vanilla, cocoa, oil palm and countless fragrances, flavours, and nutrients can be dramatically affected by the production of such substances through these genetic engineering techniques by the corporations themselves. Other related interventions will further concentrate the hold over these commodities by large-scale corporations. Small farmers and developing countries dependent upon income from such commodities face certain economic losses, which could be devastating in various cases, through the application of genetic engineering to these areas.

Further, industrialized countries are researching the use of genetic engineering techniques for military purposes. The potential for making war on adversaries through employing this creation-distortion technology is a horrendous transgression.

Ultimately, the utilization of the various techniques of genetic engineering raises the question of human sovereignty over creation.

Certainly, there are some potential applications of this technology which can result in the improvement of human health and even in means to help foster more environmentally sound forms of agriculture. Yet, the reality is that this technology is setting its own rules, imposing values, and carrying out activities which assume there are no limits to humanity's power over the created order.

Faced with these new and powerful tools, societies and the church must determine what we will build with them, for whom, and why. The church must voice its alarm in the face of technological achievements in biotechnology which are proceeding with breath-taking speed, while moral and theological reflection has barely been heard. We must strongly counsel caution and restraint in all those areas of biotechnology which pose unanswered ethical questions and assume unprecedented changes in humanity's intervention in the created order.

Biotechnology presents humanity with the temptation of claims to ultimate sovereignty over the creation. This lies at the heart of the theological picture of brokenness between humanity, God, and the creation. This temptation denies any understanding of serving as God's trustee, and acting to uphold the intended order, purpose and integrity of God's creation.

While this sin is evidenced most dramatically in the development of the nuclear threat to life on earth, the same issue of sovereignty confronts theologically the technological optimism toward biotechnology's potential applications. As Reformed Theologian Douglas John Hall has written:

A civilization which starts out to master nature ought not to be surprised by the fact that, in the end, it will have to master also human nature. Genetic engineering and the whole technological quest for overcoming chance is an entirely logical consequence of the determination of modern western society...to impose allegedly "human" ends upon all the rest of the created order. The violation of the integrity of the non-human order is only a prelude to the violation of humanity on a grand scale. Auschwitz and Hiroshima...are born of the same mentality that manifests no fundamental respect for the life of species which modernity has been pleased to call "lower."

In the face of our vast technological power and mastery toward the life of the created order, the saving response which the church can offer to the world is a posture of reverence, awe, humility before the majesty and mystery of the creation - and the sovereignty of God.

Part VIII

By the end of this century, the greatest threats to the survival of life on earth may well arise from the destruction of the God-given environment. What can guide the church in its response to this momentous crisis? How can the church witness to God's covenant promises intended for the creation?

First, the church must identify those concrete issues threatening the integrity of creation which must be addressed, and cannot be ignored, for the sake of enabling the ongoing gift of life. The following are examples, and these are interrelated to one another:

The "greenhouse effect"

A dramatic rise in the temperature of the earth over the next few decades, which scientists now say could occur, would result in global catastrophe second only to nuclear war. The church must join with other groups to urge governments of industrialized countries to reduce the burning of fossil fuels by 50% in the next 25 years. Alternative, renewable energy resource throughout the world must be encouraged as essential to global stability. Sustainable agriculture less dependent on chemical fertilizers - another cause of the greenhouse effect - must be aggressively promoted. In short, the churches' mission to the world must now include the saving of the world's climate and atmosphere.

Deforestation

The devastation of tropical forests throughout the world poses critical threats to peoples within the third world, increasing erosion of irreplaceable soil, creating greater water shortages, and contributing to drought and desertification. Further, deforestation is the chief cause of species extinction, as well as adding to the "Greenhouse Effect." Curbing such deforestation and planting trees can be a vital form of the church's witness for preserving creation's integrity.

Acid rain

The contamination of atmosphere particularly from the burning of fossil fuels has already destroyed forests and lakes, as well as human lungs, in many regions of the northern hemisphere. Crossing political and ideological barriers as it is carried in the atmosphere, acid rain is spreading through many parts of the globe. The church can encourage the international cooperation, as well as the changes in energy policies, which are required for preserving air that gives life rather than death.

Population expansion

The issue of global population cannot be considered in isolation from questions of lifestyle and consumption of resources, cultural realities, and prospects from economic justice. But neither can the population issue be ignored by the church. Even with reductions in the maldistribution of global resources, the unprecedented expansion of population over the next few decades will stretch the carrying capacity of the earth to its breaking point. Population growth must become an ethical and theological issue addressed by our churches.

Unlimited economic growth

Industrialized societies continue to believe that they can grow economically without any limits. The so-called developing societies often aspire to these same goals. Yet, scientific analysis, as well as practical common sense, make clear that the limits to the earth's resources impose constraints to the level of economic development. The church must encourage the search in modern societies for new understandings of economic life which are rooted in ecological realities. Biblical wisdom underscores the inescapable harmony between human economic welfare and the integrity of the created order. Our world today stands in critical need of such a prophetic and saving message.

Yet, before our churches consider the nature of our witness within society concerning the integrity of creation, we must examine the shape of our own lives as believing communities. The initial steps we must take in response to God's covenant with the creation are those which would bring our own corporate lives more faithfully under the Lordship of Christ's reconciling presence, upholding all the creation.

Some concrete measures can be suggested. Our churches own large amounts of land, both for church buildings, camps, and schools as well as land held for investment purposes. Yet, how well do we demonstrate the gift of God's creation on lands which are in our control? What form of witness do we make through the ways in which we tend, nurture, and cherish those portions of land entrusted to us?

Similarly, our buildings, including their architectural design and their use of energy, are expressions of our witness. Certainly there are vast differences of geography and wealth between the member churches in the Reformed family. Yet, we all share the responsibility of relating our material structures to our spiritual beliefs. In a time when the actual survival of many people will depend on radical shifts in the world's patterns of energy consumption, churches can be salt and leaven within their societies through the ways we conserve and use energy resources.

Beyond any doubt, preserving the integrity of creation will require dramatic changes in the lifestyles particularly of those living in the north and the west. And the changes in personal patterns of consumption by Christians need the support of the gathered church community. Responding to God's covenant with creation will deepen our understanding of being called into the covenant community, living in love, interdependence, and sharing with our sisters and brothers in Christ's body.

For any of these responses to take root in the lives of our member churches, a strong emphasis must be given to the biblical and theological teaching we offer at all levels concerning God's creation, and humanity's relationship to the environment. Though these themes resound in the bible, we have ignored and neglected them. Heresies have often taken place. We deny the goodness of the material world, and suppose that spiritual realities can be separated from worldly existence. We assume that biological life suffers under God's curse rather than God's blessing, and fail to see how ongoing decay and death in the natural world brings forth new life. We do not believe that God's redemptive action in Jesus Christ reaches out to the whole creation, nor that new life in Christ can restore a healing relationship to the earth. In all these ways and more, our churches stand in the need of God's word and truth.

God's covenant with the creation offers the world the true hope for the preservation of its life, and invites the response of God's people. Preserving the integrity of creation must become for our churches in the years ahead a central part of our witness and life in our societies.