While I was reading the York plays about Noah’s Ark, I kept thinking about the Lynn White article we read last week. You can definitely see how Christian attitudes towards the environment are rooted in their trust in God. With the Noah’s Ark play, God causes the natural disaster. It is through the grace of God’s warning about the flood that Noah saves himself, his families, and the animals. Christian narratives downplay the importance of climate disaster because of the Bible’s reassurance that God will save humans.
We can also see a more negative, fearful view about the environment in Arnold’s article. As Arnold says, a lot of medieval writings featured a fearful view about the environment. This is not because the medieval people feared the environment itself, but because they feared god.