Autumn Reflections On Christology With Ellen Leonard Csj
Ellen began our conversation by recalling a story by the noted U.S. naturalist John Muir. When Muir came upon a dead bear in Yosemite, he penned a fierce criticism of religious people who make no room in heaven for noble creatures such as this magnificent bear:
Not content with taking all of earth, they also claim the celestial country as the only ones who possess the kinds of souls for which that imponderable empire was planned. To the contrary, he believed, God’s charity is broad enough for bears.[1]
For Ellen the contemporary and emerging Christology is all about enlarging one’s perspective. Christology in the Western church has been almost exclusively anthropocentric or human-centered. Elizabeth Johnson, Ellen notes, points out the need for a wider scope in theology, one which puts Christology back in tune with the basic themes of biblical, patristic, and medieval theologies.[2] In our day, with the widening circles of universe and evolution being mapped out, the human race itself is being repositioned as an intrinsic part of the unfolding story of life’s network -on our planet, in our solar system . In this place we know ourselves within the ever-expanding and entire cosmic story and history.
Repositioning our anthropology within the ongoing wonder of this cosmic scale has far reaching implications as we seek to understand our place in such a millennial history. It fundamentally rearranges the landscape of the imagination of our hearts and minds. As we begin to plumb the depths of such relationship, we begin to realize how the human is embedded in the natural world. We evolved as part of the universe from its very deepest, wakening inception.
Such repositioning of our anthropology calls us to a new landscape on which to understand the significance of the incarnation. It is to begin to realize that it is seeing the incarnation as not being relevant just for humankind but for all creation. In Johnson’s article in America, she writes, “for God so loved the cosmos” that all creation was birthed. It can be called a “deep incarnation,” that radical and divine inclusivity that has touched deep down, calling all beings into a continuous, unfolding relationship with divinity.
Humans are not alone in their suffering and seeking of salvation for “all creation has been groaning in travail together until now” (Romans 8:22). In this widening view of divinity, the circle of redemption reaches out to include all the natural world, giving cause for an ecological ethic. Now divinity can be seen in the light of a cosmocentric and biocentric horizon, not just anthropocentric. We can know this as a vision of “deep resurrection,” extending and expanding in the boundless love of a cosmic God.
In the light of this perspective and returning to Muir’s reflection on the noble bear, we can envision an inclusive heaven, beginning here on earth. As the early church Father St. Ambrose wrote “In Christ’s resurrection the earth itself rose.”
[1]Johnson, Elizabeth, “An Earthy Christology.” America April 13 (2009). http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11566&o=34698[accessed April 15, 2009].
[2] Ibid.
