[Oe List ...] The Significance of the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ for Ecological Theology

Sat Apr 11 09:20:39 EDT 2009

Herman,

Very informative.  Thanks for sending it along.  Glad to see so much work being done in this area.  It's about time.

Randy

--- On Fri, 4/10/09, Herman Greene <hfgreene at mindspring.com> wrote:

From: Herman Greene <hfgreene at mindspring.com>
Subject: [Oe List ...] The Significance of the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ for Ecological Theology
To: "'Order Ecumenical Community'" <oe at wedgeblade.net>, "'Colleague Dialogue'" <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Friday, April 10, 2009, 7:10 AM

Thanks Randy, that’s a good article.

Here is the way I worked through Christ and ecology when I wrote the dissertation for my D.Min in Spirituality and Sustainability in 2004 (let me know if you want a coy with the foonoties):

The Revelation of God in Jesus Christ
And Ecological Theology

Christian ecological theology would only be Christian if it were grounded in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. What meaning does this revelation and the doctrine of the trinity have for ecological theology? Let’s first look at the revelation itself.

The Historical Revelation

Jesus was a Jewish man who was probably born in Nazareth , not Bethlehem , and was the child of two human biological parents, one male and one female. We know Mary 
was his mother and presumably Joseph was his biological father.[1] Jesus lived an extraordinary life and was a transmitter. When people encountered him, they felt something come to them from him and their lives were changed. He saw people as individuals whatever their social class, position, or condition might be, and he loved them. He responded to people who had diseases, mental or physical, and to those who were social outcasts. In his presence, these people healed on the inside, and some also overcame physical conditions. He announced the reign of God, a kingdom where God’s will would be done. He championed the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Scholars differ on whether Jesus primarily foretold a kingdom in this world (as a social reformer) or a kingdom after the end of this world (as an apocalyptic prophet).[2] All agree that in part he spoke of a kingdom that was “at hand,” available then, and that in his presence people had an interior
 sense of this kingdom and of the possibility of living a life of care and justice. They experienced metanoia, a change of heart.
            In encountering Jesus, some people had such an overwhelming experience of freedom, wholeness, love and justice that Jesus, through the community that came into being around him, changed the world. He did this through speech, ideas, caring, personal presence and some kind of power that came through him. Jesus has had as much of an effect on people and history as any other person who has ever lived. He did this, not as a person of political or military power or of wealth, but as an itinerant teacher, healer and preacher.           
The early Jesus movement was Jewish and they came to understand Jesus as the Messiah (in Greek, the Christ) of whom the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures spoke, especially as their teachings were preserved in the Book of Isaiah. Early in the Jesus movement’s life, however, the meaning of Jesus was extended beyond the Jewish community to all people. Thus, for these early Christians, Jesus was the Messiah of all people, not just of the Hebrew people. 
            One cannot know when Jesus became known to the early Jesus movement as the Christ, the messiah who had been prophesied. The New Testament story indicates that those around Jesus had premonitions or awarenesses of this before Jesus died.[3] Scholars seem to agree, however, that this understanding was only generally held by the Jesus movement after Jesus’ death and resurrection.[4] 
            That Jesus died and a community arose around him that considered him the Christ, are facts on which Christians and non-Christians agree. That early members of the Jesus movement testified to Jesus’ resurrection and that this “resurrection” became central to their faith, experience and message is, also, something on which both Christians and non-Christians agree. The meaning of the resurrection, however, is something on which Christians and non-Christians will not agree. Even Christians have differences in their interpretation of the resurrection, but to Christians generally, the cross and the resurrection are both central to their faith.
For this author, the resurrection does not equal resuscitation, nor does Christianity rise or fall on whether Jesus was physically resuscitated.[5] What is important about the resurrection is that after Jesus died, he became the living savior of the Jesus movement. His presence was palpable, of what kind we cannot know.[6] Yet Christians throughout the ages have said they too have known the risen Lord. They have said and sang “He lives.” 
He lives! He Lives! 
Christ Jesus lives today. 
He walks with me and talks with me,
Along life’s narrow way. 
He lives! He lives!
Salvation to impart. 
You ask me how I know he lives. 
He lives within my heart.

This is the meaning of the resurrection. Jesus followers encountered the living Christ. This has happened to Christians across the ages. In their hearts, they have come to know, “He lives!”[7]

The Significance of the Revelation of God in
Jesus Christ for Ecological Theology

The Biblical Witness  

In the author’s view, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ does have significance for ecological theology, so much so that one can speak of “Christian” ecological theology with integrity. This is not to say that ecological theology must be Christian, but to say that Christianity in its origins and in the foundational doctrine of the Trinity provides a starting point for an ecological theology.
For clarity, it is important to note at the beginning that Jesus was not a modern day ecologist, nor did he, by the reports in the New Testament, have the sense of fellow-feeling for non-human animals that St. Francis did. Nor did he speak with the sensitivity of the medieval mystics quoted earlier in this paper about God as mother of all or about God being in all things.  We do not even find in his teaching admonitions to follow Jewish laws regarding care for the land. 
If one looks for an ecological message from Jesus along the foregoing lines, one will not find it. In the witness to Jesus in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), where one will find the ecological significance of Jesus’ teaching is in his parables, in his call to care for the oppressed, and in the hope of his resurrection. One will also find a New Testament basis for ecological theology in the interpretation given to Christ as logos in John, to Christ as cosmic healer in Paul, and in the hope for a New Jerusalem in Revelation.
With respect to the synoptic gospels, Larry Welborn of United Theological Seminary has advocated an understanding of the parabolic teaching of Jesus that is hugely significant for ecological theology. He says that we shouldn’t understand Jesus’ use of nature in the parables as metaphor, but rather as something “thrown alongside” God’s activity to show God’s way with us as humans. The Greek words from which parable are derived are ballein, which means “to throw” and para, which means “beside” or “alongside.” For example, Jesus teaches that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. This tiny seed is put in the grown and grows into a strong bush. So, in Dr. Wellborn’s view, this is exactly the way God will nurture our tiny faith.[8] Welborn says Jesus teaches that it is the same God who works in nature, the one who moves the stars and makes mustard seeds grow, as the God who works in us and brings about God’s reign.[9]
The witness in the synoptic gospels to Jesus care for the oppressed is also important. The oppressed differ in every age. Today, nonhuman animals are oppressed, and, further, human disturbance of natural systems is oppressive to human poor and non-human animals and plants alike. It may also be considered oppressive to inanimate beings if one holds to the view that all of nature seeks beauty and complex order and harmony. When one responds in faith to this oppression of other-than-human nature, it is reasonable to believe that one is supported by Jesus’ teaching on care for the poor.
The witness to the resurrection of Jesus in the synoptic Gospels carries over into those parts of the New Testament other than the synoptic gospels that are important to ecological theology. Christ’s death and resurrection is fundamental to the dynamics of the existence of all of nature. We die, we live, . . .we die, we are reborn, . . . death is not the final word.. This is our hope and it is our hope for a dying nature and for a viable human presence in nature.
Paul announces that hope in his teachings on the cosmic Christ. Christ’s salvation is for the whole creation.
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 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. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.[10]

Dr. Welborn’s teaching about the meaning of Jesus parables, that the God who moves us is the God of nature is consistent with the teaching of St. John that Christ, as logos brought all things into being.[11] Paul’s teaching about how all of creation has its hope in the cosmic Christ is consistent with the Revelation to John that in Christ there will be a new heaven and a new Earth.[12] This millennial expectation of perfection can be problematic to ecological theology when it gives license to unwarranted efforts by humans to control nature and the conditions of existence.[13]

Church Doctrine: The Trinity

Now we come to the Trinity, that most frustrating, enduring and, possibly, important doctrine of orthodox Christianity. From the standpoint of ecological theology, it is the doctrine of the Trinity, in the author’s view, that gives the revelation in Jesus Christ its greatest potential significance.
The questions in the early church[14] that gave rise to the doctrine of the trinity, must have been something like this: God is eternal, Jesus the man was temporal, how can this be? God is in heaven, Jesus was on Earth, how can this be? Jesus is now in heaven, we still experience God and Jesus on Earth, how can this be? If Jesus was, or is, God on Earth, how does that relate to the physical/human existence of Jesus? The solution the church came to was quite elegant. The church said that God was one, but there were three persons in the one—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. God the Father created the world and reigns in heaven and Earth. God the Son lived in the beginning with God, the Son came to Earth and was fully human and fully God (there was no attempt to explain what this meant), and now the Son reigns in glory with God forever and ever. God’s/Christ’s Holy Spirit is with us now.
The truth of this doctrine of the Trinity cannot be explained rationally.  How does one person (Christ) live “with” another person (the Father), when there is no other, because in reality there is only one? Or one might ask, when Jesus prayed, to whom was he praying? In the end, the doctrine of the Trinity is about the mystery of faith and what gives faith its power is not rationality or factual truth, but a greater truth that is beyond explanation. 
The treatment of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, as being of the same substance as God by the Council at Nicaea in 325, and also as being “true God and true man” by the Council at Chalcedon in 451, has great meaning. This is not, however, found in the traditional metaphysical claims that the church has made about this.[15] This author agrees with Schubert Ogden “that the metaphysical conceptuality and symbolism in terms of which the doctrine of the incarnation has traditionally been formulated are now outmoded and in important respects inadequate.”[16] This author, also, agrees with Ogden that given this formulation our task now is to understand its meaning apart from its mythological formulation. This means “to interpret it . . . to recognize it for the kind of thinking and speaking it really is [and that the truth it expresses] is very different from a strictly empirical kind of truth.”[17] 
The church in the first four centuries through the Council of Chalcedon is the extraordinary efforts that were made to maintain (i) the unity of God, (ii) the union of God and man in Christ, and (iii) the distinctions and equality of the persons in the Trinity. For example, the Council of Nicaea was a rejection of Arianism. Arius saw “the coming forth of the divine Word as a service to the inferior created order. He reasoned that the Lord who was born of Mary, grew in wisdom, [and] suffered dereliction and death, must be less than the unbegotten, impassible, deathless Father.”[18] The church also rejected Sabellianism, which said that there is no heavenly Trinity existing for all time, but Jesus was only an appearance of God that existed from the time of Jesus’ birth to his ascension, and since that time, “the countenance of the Spirit appears as the life-giver.”[19] Thus, according to Sabellius, the trinity was a sequentially historical
 reality, not an eternal reality. The church also rejected Gnosticism with its dualism of matter and spirit and mind and body. To the Gnostics, the created world was evil, and God existed in the good world of spirit. The Savior, Jesus, descended to Earth and took on human flesh and finally ascended to heaven. “In the teaching of the Gnostics, it was self-evident that the divine power [could] not suffer. So he [took] on either a strange body, or a body which only [seemed] to be a body, but he [did] not become flesh.”[20] 
To trace the history of the debates and politics that led to the formulation of the Trinity is mind-bending. To make matters worse, no final consensus was ever achieved and the debates ultimately led to a separation of the Eastern Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church as well to other divisions. In addition, every “heresy” rejected by the church has reappeared officially or in practice in some corner (or even a large banquet hall) of Christian faith.[21] Yet, after re-tracing this history this author finds himself again an admirer of orthodoxy through the Council of Chalcedon and even to what seems to me to be the equally valid positions taken by East and West when they divided on the issue of “filolioque,” whether the Spirit proceeded from just the Father (East) or from both the Father and the Son (West).[22]       
The orthodox formulation is important, not because it is sufficient in itself, but because it provides a non-contradictory foundation for what we might understand the Trinity to be for us today. This is [23]an understanding that is important for us as Christians and as ecological Christians. 
The Trinitarian understanding makes clear that in Christ, God was present in the flesh in a way in which neither the divine nor the human was diminished. This was not God’s round-trip journey from the divine world, to the lower, earthly world and back to the divine world, but of the presence on Earth of a Logos that had been with God from the beginning. The Logos was involved in the coming to be of all that is in this world.[24] God loved this world and came into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save it.[25] According to doctrine, God in mystery and Spirit is of the same substance as God in the flesh, in this world. God incarnate was not a temporary state of God during the life of Jesus, but is one of the everlasting aspects of God, the second person of the Trinity. Through God and Christ, the Holy Spirit abides with us now.
The Trinity presents an incarnational and social view of God, a view that is radical and important in its implications. In the Trinity, God is not separate from this world, but is intimately and non-dichotomously involved in it. God’s transcendent and immanent aspects are united. If we take the creation tradition of the Bible seriously, including John. 1:1-4[26] and Paul’s cosmic Christ passages, such as in Ephesians 1:8b-10,[27] then we can come to an understanding that Christ is in all things, and also following Acts 17:28[28] that all things are in Christ. Christ can never properly be understood as simply spirit. Christ is the one who is fully present in the flesh and is not defiled by it, rather his body, just as his divinity, makes him Christ, the one in whom Heaven and Earth in the fullness of time will be united. 
Because the Trinity makes clear that the Logos was not a temporary earthly existence of Jesus, but an everlasting part of the triune God, the Trinity supports an incarnational view of the cosmos. This view is that there is a psychic-spiritual dimension of all of the universe and that this is inseparably intertwined with the material existence of the universe, neither displacing the other and at the same time being non-dichotomously one. Potential meanings of such a view are given in Teilhard de Chardin’s, The Human Phenomenon, where he states that there is an inner (spiritual) and an outer (material) aspect of everything and all things are drawn to ultimate fulfillment in Christ,[29] and in Alfred North Whitehead’s work and the process theologians and philosophers who follow him who speak of a physical and mental dimensions of all actuality, each involved in a process of becoming in response to divine guidance. 
This extension of the incarnational understanding of the second person of the Trinity to all of existence would not be supported by many traditional theologians and it would not be supported by reductionistic natural scientists. The extension this author believes can, however, be supported by the Christian Trinitarian doctrine and the teachings of the Bible if we free them from their original metaphysical meanings and ask what is the truth expressed in these doctrines for us. The extension also can be the basis of nonreductionistic (holistic) scientific thought as it is in Whitehead’s work.[30] This extension is the basis for process philosophy which is offered here as an adequate philosophical basis for under girding and renewing Christian theology for our time. This extension is also the basis of the realist position, advocated above, the refutation of the two-worlds approach of post-Kantian philosophy. 
Finally, this extension is important if ecology is to be understood as a basis for Christian theology, rather than as only an ethical demand. It would allow us to understand theology as Meister Eckhart did when he said,
Apprehend God in all things,
            for God is in all things. 

            Every single creature is full of God
                        and is a book about God.

Every creature is a word of God.

If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature—
even a caterpillar—
            I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God
                        is every creature.[31]  

It is this kind of love, awareness and intimacy that comes to us through Jesus. The Trinity was not meant to describe only a relationship of God to humans. Nor was it meant to assign the second person to the 33-year life of Jesus. It was meant to describe the dynamics of how everything came to be, is sustained in being and may be continuously and creatively transformed. It is time that we open our minds and hearts to Christ who fills the universe and is its hope, Christ in all things.

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of R Williams
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 3:53 PM
To: Colleague Dialogue; Order Ecumenical Community
Subject: [Oe List ...] An Earthy Christology

Friends and colleagues,

Here's the link to an excellent theological statement relating the resurrection of Christ to care for the whole earth, reminiscent of Teilhard de Chardin, and very appropriate for the Christian Holy week.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11566

Blessings to all at Eastertide,

Randy

[1]See John Dominic Crossan, Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), chapter on “A Tale of Two Gods.” As Crossan points out this does not mean Jesus was not, in the truth that myth conveys, “born of a virgin.” The virgin birth was an account intended to convey the meaning of Jesus using the metaphors of the time of the Biblical writers. In addition, the story of Jesus was told as a fulfillment of the prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures of the coming messiah. The writers of Matthew and Luke relied on the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which translated the original Hebrew word almah in Isa. 7:14 (concerning the mother of the messiah), which meant “a young woman of marriageable age”, with the Greek word parthenos, which meant a virgin. Crossan, 16-18; and Good News Study Bible, notes to Isa. 7:14 . See generally The Myth of God Incarnate, ed. John Hick (London, England: SCM
 Press, 1977).

[2]Crossan, Jesus, 55-58, Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 254-55. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York: MacMillan, 1968), chapter on “The Eschatological Question,” 223-241.

[3]See the Gospel stories of the transfiguration of Jesus in which it reportedly was revealed to Peter, James and John that Jesus was the God’s son, the chosen one. Mk. 9:2-10; Mt. 17:1-9; Lk. 9:28-36.

[4]See Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 15-16; Ogden, The Point of Christology, 120. 

[5]The Apostle Paul, the central figure in the spread of the early Christian church put it this way in I Cor. 15:3-20 (NRSV): “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures . . . . Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are
 still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead . . . .” Many Christians take this as meaning that if Jesus was not resuscitated, then the Christian faith is in vain. We cannot know what Paul meant. The senses of how to write history and how to tell a story were different for Paul than under modern conventions that require facts to be clearly identified.  
Rudolph Bultmann among others believes that Paul did not mean resuscitation in the quoted passage from I Cor. Bultmann argues that for Paul, “Christ’ death and resurrection [are] cosmic occurrences, not incidents that took place once upon a time in the past.” Rudolph Bultmann, section on “Christ’s Death and Resurrection as Salvation Occurrence,” in Theology of the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), vol. 1, 299. He also says that there is “[n]othing preceding [faith in] the risen Christ [that] can give insight into the reality of Christ’s resurrection. The person who hears the Word of Christ as a demand upon his or her life as a call to die to one’s old life and rise in Christ’s new life believes in the risen Christ.” Ibid., 306.

[6]Reports in the New Testament state that the followers of Jesus had very real experiences of Jesus’ presence after his death, but it was not a physical presence in the ordinary sense.  Jesus walked with his disciples on the Road to Emmaus, but they didn’t recognize him. Lk. 24:16. When they did recognize him, he vanished. Lk. 24:31. He appeared to his close friend Mary Magdalene, but she did not recognize him. Jn. 20:14. The resurrected Jesus could pass through locked doors. Jn. 20:19. The hands and side of the resurrected Jesus were pierced. Jn. 20:20. To this author, these reports are of encounters with the living Christ. In this encounter Jesus followers knew that what Jesus was about had not died, it had survived his death in triumph over those who would have killed the good news proclaimed and embodied in Jesus. 

[7]The best treatment this author has read on how Jesus became the Christ and of Jesus’ resurrection is found in Hans Küng, On Being a Christian (New York: An Image Book published by Doubleday, 1984), chapter on “The New Life,” 343-410. With regard to whether the Biblical story involves corporeal resurrection, Küng says, “Yes and no, if I may recall a personal conversation with Rudolf Bultmann. No, if ‘body’ simply means the physiologically identical body. Yes, if ‘body’ means in the sense of the New Testament soma the identical personal reality, the same self with its whole history. [Jesus does not live] because he is proclaimed, he is proclaimed because he lives.” Ibid., 351-52. 

[8]“He said therefore, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’” Lk. 13:18-19.

[9]Dr. Lawrence Welborn, “Jesus Parabolic Teaching,” lecture given at United Theological Seminary, Dayton, OH, August 13, 2003.

[10] Rom. 8:18-25 

[11]“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. 4 What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” Jn. 1:1-4

[12]Rev. 21:1 

[13]“Although this new vision [of ultimate fulfillment within the historical order] was first set forth in the prophetic writings and the apocalyptic visions of Daniel, it found its most effective presentation in the Revelation of John the Divine, especially in its reference to the “millennium,” the thousand years at the end of the historical process when the great dragon would be chained up, when peace and justice would appear, and when the human condition would be decisively surmounted. This millennial vision is the source of what may be the most powerful psychic energies ever released on the earth, psychic energies that have eventually taken extensive control over the physical functioning of the planet and are now entering into control of its biological systems.” Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth, 28.  

[14]“Early church” as used here means the church of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries, the church after the members of the original Jesus movement had passed away. 

[15]These metaphysical assertions are to the following effect: God in heaven came to Earth and impregnated Mary, lived in his existence as the Son (yet the Son had been also God’s existence for all time) as embodied in Jesus Christ, and eventually took Jesus, body and all, back to heaven to live with him though they were really one after all.

[16]Ogden, Christology, 9.

[17]Ibid., 11.

[18]Henry Chadwick, “The Early Christian Community,” The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, ed. John McManners (New York: Oxford Press, 1990), 56.

[19]Tillich, Christian Thought, 67.

[20]This differs from the statement, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us,” in John 1:14 . The belief that Christ was not truly human but a kind of spiritual being is also referred to as “Docetism,” “an opinion especially associated with the Gnostics that Jesus had no human body and only appeared to have died on the cross.” American Heritage Dictionary.

[21]In fact there were significant groups of Christians that never accepted the Chalcedon formula and have continued with their own tradition through the present time. One such group, the monophysites, followed the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria that Christ was of “from two natures” but after the union in Christ became “one nature, wholly divine, that assumes and dominates the flesh of Jesus Christ.” HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion, s.v. “Monophysitism.” This differed from the Chalcedon formula that Christ was “in two natures” and the properties of each “concur in one person.” Henry Mayr-Harting, “The West: The Age of Conversion (700-1050),” History of Christianity, ed. McManners, 140. The monophysites gave rise to five churches, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Syrian Orthodox church (often termed “Jacobite”), the Syrian Orthodox Church of the Malabar, in South India (known as the
 “St Thomas Christians”), and the Church of Armenia. Ibid., 142. Another prominent group was the Nestorians who believed that Christ was of two natures, one human and one divine, but these were not united in the one person of Jesus Christ, as in the Chalcedonian tradition. For Nestorians Jesus’ suffering affected his human nature but not his divine nature. The Nestorians formed what was known as the “Church of the East,” which was predominantly Syriac in language and culture. This church was “once of vast extent, with missionary work extending in the thirteenth century across Asia as far China , [but was later] virtually annihilated by persecution.” Ibid., 140.

[22]See the discussion of this issue in Thomas and Wondra, Introduction to Theology, 78-79. Also see Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 169-70.

[23]There is a question whether “the Spirit” has theological significance. One way of viewing the issue is that we have God of all time and Jesus of history and the question is only of “binity,” the question being, “Was the God of all time revealed in Jesus and present in Jesus so that we may call Jesus, the Christ, and does this involve an incarnational reality such that we may say Christ reigns with God (God is eternally both transcendent and immanent)?” When one says God’s Spirit is present, does one say anything other than God is present? If not, there is no need for the third person.  
This author favors the doctrine of the Trinity as a way of speaking of the social aspect of divinity. The divine reality does not exist in solitary isolation, but in exists and acts in dynamic relationship as transcendent wisdom, as enfleshed, incarnate reality, and as abiding immanent presence. Speaking of Spirit is a way of speaking God’s immanence that is independent of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, and this admits of awareness of divine reality outside of Christianity and also in nature. 

                [24]Jn. 1:3

                [25]Jn. 3:16-17 

[26]“In the beginning was the [Logos], and the [Logos] was with God and the [Logos] was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” Jn. 1:1-3.

[27]“With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of all time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Eph. 1-8b-10.

[28]“For ‘in him we live and move and have our being,’ as some of your own poets have said.” Acts 17:28 (Paul speaking to Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens ). 

[29]Teilhard de Chardin, The Human Phenomenon (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 1999), a new edition and translation of Le Phénomène Humain by Sarah Appleton-Weber. 

[30]See for example, Menas Kafatos and Robert Nadeau, The Conscious Universe ( New York : Springer-Verlag, 1990, Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos ( New York : Bantam Books, 1984), and David Ray Griffin, ed., The Reenchantment of Science ( Albany , NY : SUNY Press, 1988).

[31]Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart,14.
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