From the "Dominion Paradigm" to the "Community of Creation":
the Concept of Deep Incarnation as a Key to Articulate the Relationship of Christians with Nature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24197/jstr.1.2024.94-116Keywords:
Deep Incarnation; ecology; ecological theology; animals, animalism; creation.Abstract
The theological concept of Deep Incarnation (not very widespread in our environment, and enunciated in 2001 by the Danish Lutheran theologian Niels Henrik Gregersen) can help Christians (and human beings in general) to articulate their relationship with the natural world. All this within the framework of a pressing ecological crisis that has raised great alarms and awakened the sensitivity of many Christians in relation to nature, with the publication of Laudato Sí' by Francis, in 2015 as a fundamental milestone.
Gregersen sais that when the Son incarnates in Jesus of Nazareth as a human being, there is a deeper plane in which we have to see that incarnation: in the biological and material framework of the natural world, in which the human being is a non-isolated species from the rest, but fully related to all of Creation both within the framework of evolution and in that of the interactions between species that make life possible. And this Deep Incarnation has implications for the fullness and transfiguration of all Creation in Christ (not only of humanity), and of the relationship of the human being with the rest of its members.
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