Redemption is the central theme of the evangelical Christian's faith. As such redemption is often portrayed as a process that lifts people out of the real physical world to a higher spiritual realm, but that is a great simplification of the biblical position. For evangelical Christians to have a distinctive impute to the ecological debate it is essential that redemption, as the central thrust of the world-view, applies in a real way to life in the physical world and is not spiritual escapism. This paper is an attempt at a biblical exegesis of what such physical, holistic redemption might mean and how it takes place, and I am indebted to Tom Cullinan for stimulating my thinking in the direction that this paper leads.
Environmental threats to the planet
Today when there are many ecological threats to the planet it is important to start by affirming that human beings are in integral part of planet earth. It is our home and it is fantasy to believe we could belong to any other planet. The biblical source of human bonding to the earth comes from Genesis 2:7 "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." In Hebrew the word for earth/soil is Adama and some commentators have pointed out the similarity between this word and Adam, the word for human beings. It is justifiable from this biblical position to extract the principle that to be human is to be part of the whole, part of the earth from which we were formed and to which we will return. (Psalm 90:3 "Thou turnest man back to the dust, and sayest, "Turn back O children of men!") In this way it is not New Age philosophy but biblical teaching that emphasizes that to be human is to be part of the earth.
Restoring that which was lost
If the human race is in this way closely linked to the earth, how then is redemption to be understood? Why is redemption needed at all? Perhaps it will help to think of a burglary. Robbers will take many things from a house. Some will be of great monetary value such as televisions or videos. But they will also take away many smaller items which have no particular monetary value but which are much more precious to their owners for sentimental reasons. The videos and televisions can easily be replaced but items such as your grandmothers wedding photograph are totally irreplaceable. Those items have no monetary value, cannot be insured, and probably will be thrown away by the robbers when they realize that they can't be sold. To the victim that loss will be very great because what they have valued for so long is now no longer valued. It is in the wrong hands where it will just be treated as a piece of junk. This illustration, it seems to me, gives us a clear picture of a God who wants all to come to where they are fully valued. Thus Jesus redeems humanity because people are so precious that God wants all to be fully valued. In the right place no one or nothing is junk. God grieves because created things are not given their full value or they are under the wrong control. Throughout biblical history redemption is portrayed as the the power and presence of God in the created order, that is to say God at work in the world. Redemption in this way acts within the story of creation and not over against it.
Image of God
Genesis states that humans are created in the image of God. St Paul's insight was that the great tragedy of the human race is that people both refuse to put on the likeness of God in which they were made and also in their own efforts find it impossible to attain such a likeness. (Romans 7.21) Romans 8 is in a special way the climax of Paul's theological work, to which all that he wrote before had been leading. In the first verses of Romans 8 Paul identifies that it is through Christ that he and all others might put on the likeness of God. This is to be done by letting our spirits be controlled by God's spirit through the spirit of Christ. So we become children of God. Paul follows this by describing the elemental struggle of creation. Such a struggle involves life and death, light and darkness and occupies all creatures that live in God's creation. The struggle is for survival and for transformation into the potential that God has for all elements of creation. In this chapter human redemption is clearly linked to the redemption of the non-human world. It is through the children of God opting into being Godlike through Christ that creation is healed. And this human redemption is something physical. In v.23 Paul says "we wait for the redemption of our bodies". The Greek word used is somatos meaning a physical, earthly body. The Good News bible here offers a poor translation with "our whole selves".
