"What God has not assumed, God has not saved"
That's what Gregory of Nyssa wrote centuries ago in explaining why the church needed a strong doctrine of the incarnation. God redeems humanity by taking on humanity.
Delwin Brown comments on Gregory's assertions in an article in the most recent issue of The Progressive Christian, which is entitled "Overturning the Categories." It's an excerpt from a larger project being posted at http://progressivetheology.wordpress.com/. There he writes:
The incarnational christology of the councils is extraordinary. It becomes even more extraordinary, however, if we take seriously another basic affirmation in the New Testament. This is the claim, strange to our ears, that salvation is about more than humanity; it is about the world. John says that the purpose of the incarnation is the salvation of the world. "God so loved the world" -- that is John's good news . . . If, in the Christian view, God created the world and saw it to be good, should we then be surprised by the claim that God will save the creation too?
In our anthropocentric way we forget that God may have a bigger vision than simply our individual salvation. Indeed God is concerned about each one of us, but not just that. I appreciate this statement that affirms a robust Christology, that affirms the cosmic scale of God's incarnation. It should lead therefore to a concern for the entirety of creation -- something demanded of us when worries about Global warming and even nuclear warfare are on our minds.
Comments
The scriptures tell us that original sin brought death with it. So, our sin was big enough to effect the whole of creation. God says nothing in the Bible about plants or animals needing a savior. Salvation is for the sinful man. Does this mean that we should do whatever we want to the planet in the meantime for greedy purposes? No. As Christians we are new creatures and that old greedy desire is no longer with us (we aren't perfect, but we are to have the "mind of God")
Does God want to "maximize our experience as conscious beings, and reduce our suffering as feeling beings"? I see nothing in the scripture to support that idea. God wants us to repent of our sins and trust in Jesus the savior so we can be born again and sanctified. Now maybe our experience gets maximized because of that, meaning that we get to see reality or something but that doesn't seem to be the purpose of Jesus. Jesus said "I came to seek and save that which is lost" not "I came to maximize your experience as a conscious being and reduce your suffering as a feeling being". It's interesting what can be made out of the scriptures. Mystical seeker, I think you just made a swan...