God's Redeeming Act: Deifying Transformation

A theology of redemption for today will be one that communicates the meaning of the Christ-event in a way that is faithful to the central Christian tradition and that is coherent and life-giving for believers in the twenty-first century. It will be a theology that includes the biological world as well as the world of matter. This article works towards such a theology in three steps. It first discusses the Christ-event in biblical terms focussing on Romans 8. It then turns to two figures in the Greek patristic tradition, Athanasius and Maximus the Confessor. Finally it sketches a theology of redemption for today in terms of the notion of deifying transformation. Three levels of this transformation are explored, namely that of human beings, the biological world, and the material universe, along with its participatory nature.