This Lent I’ve been writing about environmentalism and Christian theology, and now we’ve come to the climax: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“What,” you may ask, “could Easter and the environment possibly have to do with one another? Is this just bending Scripture to serve my own external purposes?” It is not, but neither is the answer simple. Christ’s Death and Resurrection are ultimately about transformation and transfiguration. They infuse and energize every bit of what follows.
Willis Jenkins notes that in many ways, our ecology has much to do with our soteriology. In other words, our understanding of salvation colors the way we see the natural world. Too often, we see Christ’s work of salvation solely in individualistic terms, and yet Romans 8:19-23 expresses salvation in cosmic terms that encompass all of Creation:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
The salvation of humanity has consequences for the entirety of the created order. When the Book of Revelation talks about a new Heaven and a new Earth, Creation is being transfigured: set free, not annihilated and replaced. There will be a new heaven and a new earth as we will be new people.
Consider the following passages:
Ephesians 1:8b-10:
With all wisdom and insight 9 he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Colossians 1:19-20:
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
And 1 Corinthians 15:28:
When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
The created universe itself is part of and subject to God’s redemptive plan. The heart of salvation is healing what has been broken and corrupted, putting right what is wrong, binding up every wound and wiping away every tear. In some sense beyond our understanding, the very cosmos groans for this salvation, for transformed relationships, and perhaps none of it more than we do ourselves.
John Chrysostom wrote of Christ’s work,
He became Son of man, who was God's own Son, in order that He might make the sons of men to be children of God. … He in nothing diminished His own Nature by this condescension, but raised us, who had always sat in disgrace and darkness, to glory unspeakable.
And 2 Peter 1:4 says,
Thus he has given us…his precious and very great promises, so that through them you…may become participants of the divine nature.
The root of the Greek word for “participants” here is koinonia: partaking through an act of fellowship. It is more than the simple reception of a gift but a sort of mystical union largely beyond our comprehension, participation in the relational, indwelling love of the members of the Trinity for one another – perichoresis, what Richard Rohr terms “the divine dance”. We see this in the Gospel of John when Jesus tells His disciples,
Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. (14:19b-20)
And when He prays to God the Father, he says,
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (17:20-23)
This participation as fellowship is also a participation of purpose – we become our true selves. In the beginning of the Gospel of John, Christ is referred to as God’s Word. The Greek term is logos. It means more than just “word” in English, it is also a logic, an organizing principle. Maximus the Confessor writes that in each one of us is a logos, a personalized expression of the divine Logos. We are our truest selves when we conform to our individual logoi, thus participating in holy harmony in the great Logos of God. The cross and the empty tomb are at the very center of this transformation. Through His Death and Resurrection, Jesus destroys the power of sin and death, allowing us to become who we were always meant to be.
And the Incarnation that makes this possible is not an accident or an expediency or a concession but God’s Plan A. Chrysostom writes of Christ’s bodily ascension into Heaven:
And observe I pray you, the awful and ineffable nature of the mystery. He inhabits this tabernacle forever, for He clothed Himself with our flesh, not as again to leave it, but always to have it with Him.
The very nature of humanity and its link to the natural world is meant for the indwelling divine dance, billions of logoi calling out for the Divine Logos. Gregory of Nyssa writes,
Now, by a provision of the supreme Mind there is an intermixture of the intellectual with the sensible world, in order that nothing in creation may be thrown aside as worthless, as says the Apostle, or be left without its portion of the Divine fellowship. On this account it is that the commixture of the intellectual and sensible in man is effected by the Divine Being...God, taking dust of the ground, formed the man, and by an inspiration from Himself He planted life in the work of His hand, that thus the earthy might be raised up to the Divine, and so one certain grace of equal value might pervade the whole creation, the lower nature being mingled with the supramundane.
Likewise, Maximus:
With us and through us, Christ embraces the whole creation, bringing together the extremes, uniting them by wrapping them around Himself… Thus He recapitulates all things in Himself, showing that the whole creation is one, as if a human.
In a previous post, we looked at the priestly role of Adam (and humanity in general) in the cosmos as God’s temple. The New Testament refers to Christ as the second Adam, fulfilling what the first Adam failed to do. It also says that we as the church share in this cosmic priesthood. Through humanity and acts of human worship, God draws the physical world into communion with Himself. All Creation is made to join in the dance, in some sense as we are.
This all seems very theoretical and “head-in-the-clouds”. What does it have to do with the way we actually live? What does it have to do with practical environmentalism?
Throughout the gospels, Jesus invites people to enter “The Kingdom of God”. It is the very core of gospel, but too often we reduce it to a matter of personal salvation. The Greek word used is basileia, indicating the all-encompassing rule of God, not only eschatologically but very much in the here and now. The Kingdom is a state in which all relationships are made right, including our place in the created order, a state of eternal and all-encompassing fellowship so that God may be all in all. Ultimately, this will not be complete until the day when God finally makes all things new, but part of the Kingdom is to work towards it as the first fruits of a new way of living in Christ. The Kingdom is here now in part but fully in time.
Among the transformed relationships of the Kingdom is ours with the natural world. The way we treat the rest of Creation matters in the Kingdom of God. Worship and glory unspeakable are meant to extend to everything we do and are. Trashing the land and the oceans are not our logoi, neither are the destructive practices that exterminate species God has made or rapidly transform the climate in dangerous and deadly ways. On the contrary, we are to work for the good of Creation. We are meant to draw the whole of it into fellowship ourselves and with God. We are made to live in holy harmony of Eden. Can we perfect that in the here and now? No, but it is our duty and calling to try our best.
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