Graced encounters in the community of Creation : An Ignatian motif of “Finding God in All Things” for Twenty-First-Century theology

The planet is facing an ecological crisis that poses an empirical and existential threat to the survival of many species, especially humans. The crisis demands an urgent transformation of humanity’s will to counteract these changes if the Earth community is to flourish. The ecological crisis has a complex array of causes and consequences named by some as cries from Earth and those rendered poor in Earth’s community. For Christians, these cries require a theological response. My argument in this thesis is that a significant element of such a response will be a theology of the natural world as the place of encounter with God.

The thesis makes two primary claims. First, by examining the life and work of Ignatius of Loyola, a motif of “finding God in all things” with four key theological insights can be identified and, then be traced as a trajectory informing the works of Karl Rahner, Denis Edwards, and Pope Francis. Second, the combined wisdom of these four theologians can be seen as contributing to an emerging hermeneutics of grace for the community of creation and a praxis of hope for those acting to recognise and mitigate the effects of the ecological crisis.

Chapter One provides an outline of fundamental dimensions of the ecological crisis, sets out David Tracy’s theological methodology of mutually critical correlation, and introduces the thesis’s main lines of argument. Chapter Two establishes the meaning of the Ignatian motif and analyses the motif’s significance within the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. Chapter Three investigates Karl Rahner’s reception of the motif and his development of it through his theologies of grace, Trinity, incarnation, and creation. Chapter Four explores Denis Edwards’s further reception of the motif through his appropriation of Karl Rahner’s theology and his experience of Ignatian spirituality, both of which enriched and informed his love of the natural world, particularly the Australian landscape and its flora and fauna. The motif of finding God in all things is sharpened by Edwards’s development of a theology of the experience of God and a fully Trinitarian theology of creation and incarnation.

In Chapter Five, I examine the motif through Jorgé Bergoglio’s life as a Jesuit and his growing awareness, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, of the effects of the ecological crisis on the most impoverished communities in his country. Interpreting Bergoglio’s life and his actions as Pope Francis through the lens of the motif and using the motif to analyse Laudato Si’ provides a new understanding of the encyclical, contributing to a hermeneutics of grace and a praxis of hope as a response to the cries of Earth and Earth’s poor.

Chapter Six draws together my primary argument about the influence of the Ignatian motif in the works of Rahner, Edwards, and Francis. Through Tracy’s method of mutually critical correlation, I show that the motif is a hermeneutics of grace that gives rise to a praxis of hope. Experienced as graced encounters in the Earth community, the motif has the capacity to lead Christians to ways of living that reflect the implications of deep incarnation and trinitarian relationality and, in so doing, function to foster communion in the community of creation. Living this communion constitutes a response to the ecological crisis, which can inspire and support ongoing practical action to alleviate the crisis by people with and without faith.

This work © 2024 by Ann-Maree O’Beirne is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/