Celebrating God's Cosmic Perichoresis: The Eschatological Panentheism of Jürgen Moltmann as a Resource for an Ecological Christian Worship

In the face of todays unprecedented ecological crisis Christianity is often seen not only as sharing in the guilt of causing this crisis but also as unwilling and incapable of providing any help in re-envisioning the required new way of life on earth. This view is justified when we consider how modern Christian theology has tended to denigrate the natural world and how the prevalent world-deserting Christian eschatology forms a spirituality that is fundamentally insensitive and indifferent to nature. In light of this a meaningful Christian contribution to todays world of enormous ecological suffering must lie in envisioning a fundamentally new ecological vision of humanitys relationship to nature as well as providing an ethical energy to transform our current path of self-destruction. In this book Bryan J. Lee finds in Jurgen Moltmanns eschatological panentheism a viable pathway toward a Christian ecological re-envisioning of the relationship between God and humanity and between humanity and nature. Furthermore Lee demonstrates in a persuasive way how Christian worship can and should be the epicenter of ecological transformation of the society emphatically interpreting Christian worship as an ecological-eschatological anticipation of Gods cosmic perichoresis. At present we are killing Gods earth. Yet the great covenant of creation calls us to care tend name and look after creation. We are to be gardeners and garden dwellers. There is no more important task given to humankind. Given the broken state of this earth that reverberates through creation we are called to turn back to the task of world repair. We are called to turn to Gods great redemptive plan for creation. We learn in Colossians 1 when the author quotes an early Christian hymn that those early Christians did not sing only of their own reconciliation or that of the souls of the lost but that they sang of the reconciliation of all things in heaven and earth with God. This book calls us to sing this song anew as a repentant people who have strayed far from Gods purpose. This book is right. Please read it with great care and then write a hymn of creation in action and word. -from the Foreword by Charles Fensham Bryan Jeongguk Lee is a sessional Professor at Knox College Toronto School of Theology.