Sept 7
Scripture: 2 Kings 5: 1, 9-10, 14
From her article Eco-Christology: Living Creation as the Body of Christ by Sr. Ilia Delio O.S.F.
The Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus formulated several important ideas that illuminate Francis’s experience of God in nature. The first idea is that God and creation are not two different orders of being (divine and created); rather God and creation belong to the same order of being without confusion of natures, since God is divine, uncreated being and nature is finite, contingent being. God, however, does not exist outside the relational ordering of being, as if only the effects were ordered and the cause lay outside the relationship. Rather, the essential order of being is a unified whole, including God. Every aspect of creation is part of this unified whole revealing the rationality, freedom and creativity of God (Ingham 2002, 39-42). Each created thing in its own way tells us something about God, and God’s being shines from within created being.
The second idea is related to the first. God is love and the reason for all divine activity is grounded in the infinite love of God. The Trinity is a communion of love out of which the gift of creation flows freely. In light of modern science, we can say the divine love that spilled over into evolving life was the Word incarnate long before Jesus of Nazareth appeared in history. Creation exudes the love of God.
While Scotus did not deny the reality of sin, he did not believe that sin is the reason for the Incarnation. Christ did not come because of sin but because God is love. From all eternity God wanted to express Godself outwardly in a creature who would be a masterpiece and love God perfectly in return. Christ is first in God’s intention to love and hence to create. Whether or not sin ever existed Christ would have come, ordained out of the fullness of God’s love; the whole creation is made for Christ. The intrinsic connection between the mystery of creation and the mystery of Incarnation, revealed in Jesus Christ, imparts meaning not only to humanity but to the entire universe. This doctrine of the primacy of Christ relates to Scotus’s third insight on individuation.
Since love is the reason for Christ, everything is created out of divine love and expresses divine love by its own unique being. The doctrine of creation and the doctrine of incarnation are not two separate events but one and the same act of God’s self-giving love. Scotus’s doctrine of individuation (haecceitas) refers to that positive dimension of every concrete and contingent being which identifies it and makes it worthy of attention. Individuation sets things off from other things like it to which it might be compared.
Scotus’s theology of creation is one in which grace and nature intertwine. Nothing in creation is accidental or excessive; nothing is worthless or trivial. Each and every thing, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is of infinite value because it images God in its own unique being. We humans are called to observe closely, attentively and carefully the details of biological diversity and the many forms of life on our planet. Things are God-like in their specificity which is why regular, daily attention to the wider world of creatures/nature is fundamental. The world is charged with the grandeur of God and we are called to see deeply into the reality of things. Without such attention we lose contact with Christ in his most widely extended body of creation.