8 - Life in the Spirit: un/natural fellowship

Summary

A dynamic common realm

The theology of the common realm of God, nature and humanity considers God's action towards non-human nature and un/natural humanity, and specifies the difference in God which such action presupposes. To this end, in the previous chapter a Christological reading of human–nature relations was offered. That is, if any account of nature's economy is to be persuasive for theology, it must be interpreted in relation to the Logos as agent of creation. In such fashion is both the dependence on the creator and the contingency of the created order to be understood. In engagement with a number of disciplines in political ecology, I have stressed the otherness of nature to humanity together with an emphasis on encounter in human–nature relations best understood in the dynamic interaction – demand and response – of natural–human societies in processes of becoming in time and space. In exploring this theme of a worldly Christology, I stressed the dynamic, interactive shifts in boundaries which such a relational view of the ecology of humanity and nature requires. Through this chapter, I explore the logic of fellowship – that is, the pneumatology – which is indicated by the Christology of the previous chapter to answer the question: how shall we learn to act in the common realm? In other words, what are the tendencies of the practices which are both the gift of the Spirit and to which the Spirit provides the mode of participation?