Theosis: The Nexus of Ecology & Eschatology

When I became a Catholic many years ago, somehow I got the idea that earthly concerns are not very important in light of eternity. My instruction in the faith did not teach that, but the idea of the transcendent reality of God and the possibility of the beatific vision led me to that conclusion. I came down to earth when Mark Zwick, who later became my husband, asked me to begin visiting families in an inner-city neighborhood in Youngstown, Ohio. I began to learn more about the everyday realities of the desperately poor and to see that my new faith related to the challenging situations so many people face. My understanding of the importance of Jesus’ eschatological discourse, culminating in the parable of the Last Judgment (Mt. 25:31-46) — particularly the need to perform works of mercy for the Lord disguised in the poor and the stranger — took root and has grown with me over the years. I realized that the Lord does indeed care about what happens here and now in this world, and that followers of the Nazarene are expected to do the Father’s will “on earth as it is in heaven,” as He taught us in the Lord’s Prayer (Mt. 6:10). It cannot be the Father’s will that we treat others as if they had no dignity or that our commercial, industrial, and technological policies contribute to the destruction (however slowly) of the earth’s air, water, and climate.

According to Gunnar Gjermundsen in “Living on This Earth as in Heaven: Time and the Ecological Conversion of Eschatology” (Modern Theology, Oct. 2024), the lack of concern among Christians about the degradation of our environment and the dignity of persons and their work may be linked to an overemphasis on individual salvation in the Kingdom of God “someday” in the future, after our death or even at the end of this world, also known as the eschaton. Gjermundsen, a professor of theology at the University of Oslo in Norway, suggests that placing all hope in a future Heaven is rooted in a misinterpretation of the Gospel. He argues with Maximus the Confessor (ca. A.D. 580-662), a Father of the Church, that “the Christian is not to wait for a cataclysmic in-breaking in the historical future.” St. Maximus presents an alternative eschatology and an understanding of time and eternity in which the fulfillment of time and the coming of the Kingdom “are understood to be inseparable from the transformation, conversion of heart, of the individual soul — begun, if not completed, in this very life.”

Gjermundsen quotes Norman Wirzba, a professor of theology at Duke University, who contends that many Christians see their faith as a “massive escape project from location Earth, with the potential effect of coming to regard the planet as a mere backdrop for the soul’s redemptive drama.” Why worry about terrible emissions and harmful chemicals when this world is only temporary, and the end may be coming soon? Why bother with better conditions for the poorest of the earth when the earth is “passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31)?

In his encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015) Pope Francis presents a challenge to Catholics and others of good will. He writes:

Economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment. Here we see how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked. Many people will deny doing anything wrong because distractions constantly dull our consciousness of just how limited and finite our world really is. As a result, “whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.” (no. 56)

Francis isn’t introducing a new teaching here. He cites the calls of his immediate predecessors to change our lifestyles in order to save our world and the people in it: