Events

About Creation and the Cross:

“Those who closely follow Johnson’s work will recognize that every paragraph is steeped not only in her extensive scholarship, but in the living faith that her writing always reflects and opens up to readers. Though the distressing, pressing issue of the text is our planet’s peril, Johnson gifts readers with a theology that both comforts and empowers for change.” Reading Religion

In this fresh creative approach to theology, Elizabeth Johnson asks how we can understand cosmic redemption in a time of advancing ecological devastation. In effect, how can we extend the core Christian belief in salvation to include all created beings? Immediately this question runs into a formidable obstacle: the idea that Jesus’s death on the cross was required as atonement for human sin―a theology laid out by the eleventh-century theologian St. Anselm.

Constructing her argument (like Anselm) in the form of a dialogue, Johnson lays out the foundations in scripture, the teachings of Jesus, and the early Church for an understanding that emphasizes the love and mercy of God, showing how this approach can help us respond to a planet in peril.