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:''Then [[God]] said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. [...] God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
In one interpretation, the two verses above are understood to say that man has been given power over the earth to modify it according to his will. Some support for this world view can be gathered from the writings of some [[Church Fathers]]. [[Origen]] in the East and St. [[Augustine of Hippo]] in the West each held the view that the material world would not be a part of the Kingdom of God. For St. Augustine, this meant that in the Kingdom only human souls would be present. In contrast to the eternal soul, a temporary material creation is diminished in importance, resulting in an anthropocentric relationship between man and nature. This approach has also, at times, been predominant in Orthodox countries. In Eastern Europe, for example, under communism the lack of oversight led to high levels of air and water-pollution (e.g., the Black Sea - cf. "How to Save the Black Sea", http://www.undp.org/gef/new/blacksea.htm, United Nations Development Programme), as well as overexploitation of land resources (e.g. in mining. Today, as we shall shortly see, Orthodox theologians [[theologian]]s are recovering the fullness of their theology, recognizing the presence of God in the whole of creation, and outlining the responsibilities we have towards that creation.
The understanding of material creation as illustrated above is, at the very least, incomplete. Several Fathers, including Methodios of Olympus and St. [[Maximus the Confessor]], affirmed the value of creation and the cosmological dimension of the Kingdom of God. Anestes Keselopoulos, in his study on St. [[Symeon the New Theologian]], makes a powerful statement about the participation of nature in the Kingdom: "Belief in the ultimate transfiguration and renewal of the world offers a real possibility for extending the theology of holy relics to the rest of creation. At the Second Coming, [...] the whole of material creation will be renewed as well. Material objects that surround the saints participate in sanctification. (Keselopoulos, "Man and the Environment: a study of St. Symeon the New Theologian")
St. [[Gregory of Nyssa]] also uses the image of man as microcosm, though his use of the expression is rather less uniform than for St. Maximus. In his conception, the parallelism seems to be limited to a common praise of God: "as the cosmos continuously lifts up a hymn of praise to God, so it is the duty of man to engage in continual psalmody and hymnody." Metr. Paulos Gregorios postulates that St. Gregory's reservation regarding a more in-depth parallelism stemmed from a concern that man's high standing within creation not be attributed to his similarity to the universe (Gregorios, "Cosmic Man"). However, St. Gregory also views man as a mediator between creation and God whose mediation is made possible by the incarnation: "in Christ, Man, and through Man the whole creation, directly and without intermediaries participates in the creative energies of God Himself" (Gregorios, "Cosmic Man, p.103).
Fr. [[Stanley S. Harakas |Stanley Harakas]] summarizes the Orthodox position thus far: "[t]he creation exists for the use of humanity; but humanity exists as a microcosm to sanctify creation and to draw it into the fullness of the life of the kingdom of God, to bring it into communion with its maker." (''The Integrity of Creation: Ethical Issues'', in "Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation," p.73)
While both St. Maximus and St. Gregory note that the mediation of man is directly related to Christ's incarnation, the details of that mediation are filled in by modern day theologians.
The Genesis passage which started this article is open to other interpretations. An interpretation which gives man a certain responsibility towards the environment, presents the commission which was given to man as a stewardship. K.M. George in his essay "Towards a Eucharistic Ecology" points out that good stewardship, in the sense of the Greek 'oikonomos:'—manager or administrator of a house,—requires trustworthiness, dependability, and wisdom. He goes on to add: "[w]e offer the creation as a thank-offering to God in liturgy" (George, ''Towards a Eucharistic Theology'', in "Justice, Peace and the Integrily of Creation", p.46) This statement contains within it the seed for the idea of that several contemporary theologians, among them [[Vigen Guroian]], Metr. Paulos Gregorios, and Metr. [[John_%28Zizioulas%29_of_Pergamon]], consider as the most important in defining man's relationship to creation: man as 'priest of creation.'
Metr. Paulos Gregorios of the Orthodox Syrian Church of the East, who was one of the most ardent advocates of Christian ecology wrote, "Nature, man, and God are not three disjunct realities on the stage with a space-interval between their respective boundaries. [...] Christ has become part of creation, and in his created body he lifted up the creation to God, and humankind must participate in this eternal priesthood of Christ" (Gregorios, "The Human Presence") Metr. John Zizioulas adds: "The [[priest ]] is the one who takes in his hands the world to refer it to God and who, in return brings God's blessing to what he refers to God. Through this act creation is brought into communion with God himself. [...] This role of the human being as the priest of creation, is absolutely necessary for creation itself, because without this reference of creation to God the whole created universe will die." He goes on to argue that ethics, as commonly understood, cannot provide a solution for the environmental problem; this is the place of the Church. Metr. John argues that the solution to the environmental problem cannot be based on a set of impersonal principles. What is needed, rather is a particular way of life based on relationships with one another, with the material world, and with God. Specifically, the Metropolitan mentions fasting, respect for the material world and acknowledgement (within the Liturgy) that creation belongs to God, as specific means by which the Church can effect change (Zizioulas, ''Man the Priest of Creation: A Response to the Ecological Problem,'' in "Living Orthodoxy in the Modern World").
The exercise of this priesthood encompasses both our lives within the church temple (the Liturgy) and outside of it (the liturgy before/after the liturgy).
==Man and Material Creation: Practical Aspects==
Within the liturgical context, the Church provides prayers for the blessing of material goods such as homes, crops, vehicles. There are prayers asking for rain and for deliverance from earthquakes and other calamities. We see the presence of God everywhere in creation and we ask for His help in every endeavor. Partially in acknowledgment of that fact and partially in response to the ecological crisis, [[Monk]] Gerasimos of the [[St. Anne's Skete (Athos)|Skete of Saint Anne ]] has composed a Vespers for the preservation of creation. ("Suppliant prayers offered the Author of all creation for the protection of the environment", Ecumenical Patriarchate 2001) Even earlier, in 1934, [[Metropolitan]] Tryphon Turkestanov had composed an [[Akathist]] in Praise of God's Creation.
Additionally, the prayers of the Lesser Blessing of the Waters include the following petitions:
