THE RELATION BETWEEN THE DESTINY OF HUMANKIND AND THAT OF CREATION ACCORDING TO ROMANS 8,18-23
THE RELATION BETWEEN THE DESTINY OF HUMANKIND AND THAT OF CREATION ACCORDING TO ROMANS 8,18-23

Summary/Abstract: The first part of this article focuses on the rationality of creation which is given in the supreme Reason that is the Logos, the Son of God. This truth seems to be clearly pointed out in the Epistle to the Colossians: “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him” (1,16). In this common basis of all creation the Apostle Paul views the reason of the interdependency between the destiny of human beings and that of the environing nature. The Epistle to the Romans is the only one where Paul admirably develops this thought (8,18-23). In the analysis of this paragraph I have especially insisted on the idea that all creation is awaiting the redemption of our bodies. “Redemption” shares with “adoption” and many others terms in Paul the “already-not yet” tension that pervades his theology, for the redemption can be pictured both as past (Eph 1,7; Col 1,14; Rom 3,24; and 1Cor 1,30) and as future (Eph.1,14; 4,30). As Paul has hinted in Rom 8,10, it is not until the body has been transformed that redemption can be said to be completed; in this life, our bodies share in that “frustration” which characterizes this world as a whole. That means that our redemption is the redemption of all creation as well. We have to recognise here the universal, cosmological aspect of our salvation as an explicit Pauline feature of his Soteriology.

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