Redemption

The pursuit of redemption is at the heart of all great dramas, and although fallen through sin, the world remains God’s good creation and capable of being redeemed. Here, Christ is the unifying person and controlling principle at the centre of this redemptive activity. God, entering into the creation in the person of Christ, takes on creatureliness to live as the full immanent revelation of God. The vertical dimension of relationality to the creator is restored as God acts in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The horizontal dimension of fellowship with other people and non-human creation is worked out as the true man, Jesus, acts as the archetype of the Christian experience of life in the Spirit.

An inspection of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life reveals more of the fellowship of the Spirit within humanity and creation. Beginning with revelation, Moltmann[1] examines the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church that comes down to us. In the power of the Spirit, the believer is born again (John 3:5) and made a new creature in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). Importantly in the present context, in the community of the Spirit, believers are made one (Gal 3:28), holding everything in common (Acts 4:31-35). The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is the gift of the common participation[2] in the life of God (2 Cor 13:14). In addition, while the gifts of the same Spirit given to individuals for the common good are many and diverse (1 Cor 12:4-11) all come from the same source. All believers have been baptised by the one Spirit into the one body of Christ and given the one Spirit to drink (1 Cor 12:13). Redemption promises the hope of eternal life, a renewed relationship with God, and personal and communal transformation[3].

This new community, the Church, is the world’s witness to the unifying activity of the Spirit. Mutuality and a life of reconciliation and forgiveness, motivated by love is to mark all human relationships (1 Cor 13). This relationship of love “is the new way to be human with and for others supremely embodied in Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit” [4]. Love, as self-identification with the other in the fellowship of the Spirit, is the sign of the true humanity in the new community. This is the way in which we were created to live. The Christian community is thus constituted by the Spirit as “the communion of saints”. This mystical communion – koinonia – is the participation, and sharing in the divine life of the triune God that holds the church together[5].

The church is also an eikon of the Trinity, where relationships within God are the model of how we relate to each other, mirroring the divine life itself. The mutual relationships among three co-equal persons within the Godhead provide a model for human relationships within communities[6]. To speak of the triune God is to speak of a human life that “is fulfilled only in relationship with God and others”[7]. As Torrence remarks, the fellowship of the Spirit brings us up into communion with God:

The triune God of grace who has his own true being-in-communion has created us in his image in order that we might find our true being-in-communion with him and one another. The ministry of Christ and the Spirit is to lift us up into this life of communion as members of the body of Christ, participating together in the very triune life of God.[8]

Given the restoration of humanity’s proper place through the focal point of Christ in relation to God and within creation, is the redemption of all things also promised, not just the human race? The understanding of “Christ as cosmic, Lord of nature as well as of history, agent of creation as well as of redemption”[9] offers a way of seeing the person and work of Christ as including not merely human history but the entire natural world. Romans 8:19-23 is often cited in this context. However, “it must be remembered that it is not creation that was made in the image of God, but man and woman”[10]. While the whole creation may grown with restlessness, and wait in eager expectation for its freedom from being subjected to frustration, the fact that it is Israel and Jesus who are at the centre of God’s action in and towards the world means that the personal is central, the non-personal peripheral[11]. This is not to deny a fellowship with creation and creatures in the Spirit, but to affirm that the focus of redemption is on humanity.

Further, one of the hallmarks of the experience of the fellowship of the Spirit in this present age is its partiality and provisionality. Although we have been saved (e.g. Rom 8:24), we are being saved (1 Cor 1:18), and we will be saved (e.g. Rom 13:11). New life in Christ by the power of the Spirit is only a foretaste of eternal life. We hope for the life of the world to come. As Moltmann writes:

Human beings already experience the indwelling of God in the Spirit here in history, even if yet only partially and provisionally. That is why they hope that in the kingdom of glory God will dwell entirely and wholly and for ever in his creation, and will allow all the beings he has created to participate in the fullness of his eternal life[12].
In solidarity with the whole groaning creation, we await the consummation of God’s redemptive activity.[13] As Pinnock comments, “We are trustees of the earth and fellow creatures with its inhabitants…. It is … the Spirit’s project, to be redeemed along with us. Nature is our home, blessed by God who took flesh, and it is destined for renewal”[14].

[1] Moltmann, God in Creation, 100.
[2] Geoffrey Wainwright ‘The Holy Spirit’ in Colin Gunton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 275.
[3] Alister McGrath, The Re-enchantment of Nature: Science, Religion and the Human Sense of Wonder (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002), 51.
[4] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 161
[5] McGrath, Christian Theology, 493.
[6] McGrath, Christian Theology, 326.
[7] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 149.
[8] James B. Torrence, ‘Contemplating the Trinitarian Mystery of Christ’ in Kenneth J. Collins (ed.), Exploring Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Reader (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 297.
[9] Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology, 296.
[10] Gunton, Christ and Creation, 32.
[11] Gunton, Christ and Creation, 34.
[12] Moltmann, God in Creation, 5.
[13] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 159
[14] Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996) cited in McGrath, The Re-enchantment of Nature, 31.