A Trinitarian Basis for a “Theological Ecology” in Light of Laudato Si’

Abstract

This article responds to Pope Francis’s call in Laudato Si’ for an ecological expansion of mission and seeks to provide it with theological support. This support comes by way of a trinitarian rendition of the missiological concept missio Dei. Drawing from Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan’s accounts of the trinitarian missions, it articulates a theological ecology (as opposed to an ecological theology), in which the traditional doctrine of God is the controlling motif. Through the missions of the Son and Holy Spirit, God transforms the moral-intellectual-volitional comportment of humanity and recruits them into a shared mission of environmental concern.

Praise Rather Than Solving Problems: Understanding the Doxological Turn of Laudato Si’ through Lonergan

“…Worship is, as Herbert McCabe recalls, "not merely non-productive, non-moneymaking, but is even non-creative" as it invites us "into the waste of time which is the interior life of the Godhead," whose triune, perichoretic "life is not like the life of the worker or artist but of lovers wasting time with each other uselessly." 108 The alternative offered by this "absolute waste of time," this "sacrifice of praise" (Heb 13:15; Ps 50:14), can reveal excessive practicality for the idol that it is, shatter its biased dictates, and thus set the conditions for an alternative cycle of redemption to emerge. After all, from this encounter, all else follows; as Lonergan writes, those who undergo religious conversion are "ready to deliberate and judge and decide and act with the easy freedom of those that do all good because they are in love."…”