Natural theology reframed godly stewardship as managerial mastery compatible with growth capitalism

Evidence

God was a caretaker, steward, and wise manager of his entire created world. His design, management, and providential care as the great superintendent of the universe was a model for human management of the earth. … The argument from design and the organic philosophy of John Evelyn, the Cambridge Platonists, and the naturalist theologians represented an adaptation of organicism to the managerial ethos of mechanism and the ideal of progress in an expanding market society. Growth and trade must not be halted due to the depletion of resources, nor should nature be exploited for short-term gain, but if it could be used wisely and understood rationally, nature’s abundance would not be exhausted. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 925

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the polyad’s law/institutions and settler-colonial threads: stewardship theology later justified expropriating land from peoples framed as poor managers. — connects to: Henry More framed technological power over nature as evidence of God’s providence — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 908; Stewardship theology absorbed Bacon’s rapacious mining language wholesale — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 921; The doctrine of dominion was reinterpreted as managerial stewardship requiring accountability — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 920 (+5 more)
• SEED: Article angle: how the ‘wise manager’ God licensed endless growth — the genealogy of the sustainable-development doctrine, from Boyle lecturers to Club of Rome.

Broader Connections

• The political philosophy of mastery emerged from secularized divine-creation assumptions #expands (0.78)
• Managerial conservation subordinated nature’s own value system to human efficiency #corroborates (0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 884