Western thought has been bedeviled by the notion of perfection. What is it? Where do we find it? Indeed, perfection has been such a frustrating obsession in our thinking and aspirations ‹ and in our understanding of environmental issues ‹ that it has led philosophers, theologians and ecologists into bewildering arrays of intellectual gymnastics. The result has been huge misunderstandings and massive confusions that confound and contradict ordinary experience. Finally, we get some illuminating insights on this bewildering subject from a Canadian scholar and poet, Susan McCaslin in an essay titled Repositioning Perfection.

We know two general things about our notion of perfection. First, it was a key element in classical Greek philosophy – all Western philosophy, it has been observed, is a footnote to Plato – which explains why we believe and aspire to perfect states of justice, beauty, truth, love, democracy and the like. And second, the Bible, so powerful an influence in our Western culture, echoes and reinforces in our thinking this Greek notion of perfection. The Garden of Eden was implicitly perfect, a place where Adam and Eve lived in a state of idealized innocence until they ate the forbidden fruit and were evicted. Perfection also characterizes the Christian notion of God, and the person of Jesus is believed to be perfect. In both a religious and philosophical sense, thinkers in the West commonly aspire toward some destination of perfection, whatever that may mean.

It is to this biblical force in Western thought, and to the way it reverberates through our understandings and directs our aspirations, that McCaslin offers some special insights.

She argues that "perfection" is a mistranslation from Aramaic and Hebrew, two of the founding languages of the Bible. The Aramaic word used by Jesus and translated as "perfect" is "gmar", actually meaning "ripe" or "fully flavoured", as a fruit reaches that special richness when it is at its peak for eating. And in Hebrew, the language which forms much of the original biblical text, the word for "perfect" is "taman", actually meaning "mature", "whole" and "complete", as when something or someone reaches the fulfilment of itself and thereby possesses an attribute of conclusion, fullness or actualization.

McCaslin's insights – if theologians took them seriously – could reconfigure the character and practice of Christianity. But her insights, because of the way biblical theology has shaped our understanding of nature, could also reconfigure the way we understand environmental and ecological issues. So, consider the Garden of Eden, the primal and baffling model for unblemished nature as it was first supposed to be.

The Garden, in traditional terms of perfection, is an ideal place that is somehow inhabited by an unearthly serenity, a kind of static harmony that has been imposed by the heavenly power of Creation's impeccability. The Garden is a place where the lion lies down with the lamb, as if all time were suspended in a moment of balanced, idealistic bliss – exactly like the notion of Heaven, which is another construct of perfection.

Biology would tell us that the Garden must have been a very different place. Lions are not vegetarians. And what animal or plant wants to be eaten? Not until we appreciate the dynamic character of biological processes do we see that each affront to the individual safety and comfort of each species actually has a self-regulating dynamic that allows the entire system to function with a kind of intrinsic, chaotic harmony. Red and ripening blackberries are eaten so their seeds are distributed. Sick and old caribou become the food of wolves so the victim species is continually strengthened and revitalized by predator culling. Indeed, only when the system is operating in all its complexity – in a state of being "ripe" or "fully flavoured" – is the diversity fully active and completely healthy. Nature only works well when it is "mature", "whole" and "complete". Take away parts from it and it becomes fragmented and unstable, like a fruit that cannot mature to ripeness because it is denied nourishment, water or sunlight.

McCaslin's insights about perfection ask us to think of nature and all Creation ‹ including ourselves – as process, as an intricate dynamic of becoming that is always moving toward greater levels of interdependent complexity. We then experience this complexity as an overwhelming beauty, as a profound unfolding that carries all nature toward an incomprehensible fulfilment.

Of course, we don't know where this fulfilment is taking itself. We only know that if we reduce its complexity, constrain its growth, change the conditions which allow it to flourish, or if we divert it to our narrow interests, it suffers and we are diminished because our surroundings become less vital, less alive and less interesting. We also know that a simplified nature is a diminished nature, and that it jeopardizes our well being because it becomes less productive and more precarious. Nature's inherent inclination – as we are slowly learning – is to move in the direction of maturity, wholeness and completion.by becoming increasingly complex.

This new definition of "perfection" requires that we think of environments and ecologies in dynamic terms, less as having been created and more as constantly being created. Creation, it would seem, is a living event that is still alive, active and on going – if we allow and nourish its thriving. Perfection, in whatever its form, is an evolving process that should ultimately confound us with its complexity. And, as before, it should leave us in silent awe and endless wonder.