Panel: 1700 YEARS OF NICEA CREED AND ECUMENISM: IMPACTS AND PERSPECTIVES ON RELIGION, WORLD MISSION AND ECO-JUSTICE TRANSFORMATION.



164.10 - ECOTHEOLOGY, NICEAN CREED AND THE PROLOGUE OF JOHN

AUTHORS:
Cardoso Duarte J. (Solar São Tiago ~ Coimbra ~ Portugal)
Text:
Ecotheology is a recent discipline, a branch of Theology. It combines two sciences with different methodologies: Theology the science of God and Ecology the science of life interactions on our planet Earth. The first uses the methodologies of philosophy, this is the combination of reason nad asintelectual evidences; the second is mainly based on evidences from the natural experimental sciences. They have however a common interest from the standpoint of Theology that is for this God is the Creator of everything while therefore Ecology it is the manifestation of this power of God. This Creative power of God it is well established on Christianity at least since the declaration of the Nicean Creed, 1700 years ago. With effect the Nicean Creed states at the first paragraph: "I believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things visible and invisible". This is actually a synthetic statement about what is fully accounted by the Genesis description of Creation by God on the Old Testament. This is probably the most discredited statement on sight of the scientific discoveries of the last centuries and therefore it raises a large difficulty when trying to establish a connection between Theology and Ecology. It is therefore of the most pressing urgency to restore the confidence on the Creativity power of God and illuminate the meaning of this power at the light of most recent scientific discoveries. But it is also urgent to illuminate this power under the Theological studies. As Joseph Ratzinger wrote in 1996, theologians have abandoned its faith on Creation and it is urgent to give new impetus on its development and theological research. In this respect I will analyse the importance of science developments and phenomenology of life to stress the importance of the Prologue of John to shed light on the Christian faith of Creation.