Author: Bergmann, Sigurd

Source: Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology, Volume 14, Numbers 2-3, 2010 , pp. 185-205(21)

Publisher: BRILL

Abstract:

Reflections about liberation are embedded in contexts of suffering, both among human and other creatures. Opposite to the cynical postmodern who regards and dismantles every postulate about liberation as an ideological attempt to rule over others, salvation matters because there are those who are in the need of it. The essay presents, to begin with, two conceptual tools—the three-step-scheme of soteriology, and Gustaf Aulén's view of salvation as a drama. These flow into an exploration of the classical Eastern Trinitarian view of creation's liberation and a discussion about what this means for a contemporary ecumenical approach to an ecological theology of liberation in late modernity. Trinitarian soteriology understands the space of creation within time from the perspective of a movement from the old to the new creation. The drama of salvation takes place as a transfigurating drama of space and place and also of and within time. An ecologic re-reading of Gregory of Nazianz helps us to understand the liberation of creation such that nature, instead of moving from itself toward God, moves together with God in the Spirit toward its consummation in time. In Trinitarian terms: the triune God— Spirit, Son, and Father—moves in qualitatively different but integrated and complementary ways in, through, and with creation. An ecological pneumatology of liberation thus focuses on God's movement within creation as expressed in the formula In the Spirit through the Son to the Father at the place where creatures are set free. Through the lens of soteriology the synergy of God and his/her creation appears as a plastic process in space and time, which involves space and time in itself as a subject of the Spirit's versatile synergy in order to set Creation free.

Keywords: Trinity; soteriology; ecology; Gregory of Nazianz; Gustaf Aulén

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853510X507301

Affiliations: 1: Department of Archaeology and Religious Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology 7491 Trondheim Norway, Email: sigurd.bergmann@hf.ntnu.no

Publication date: 2010-08-01

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