Fully Alive

Discourse about God proceeds from the basic theological assumption that right speech about God is inseparable from solicitude for all creatures, and in particular for human beings in the rightness of their personal, interpersonal, social and ecological relations.

This insight is crystallized in Irenaeus's axiom Gloria Dei vives homo: the glory of God is homo, the human being, the whole human race, every individual person, fully alive. Because God is the creator, redeemer, lover of the world, God's own honour is at stake in human happiness.Wherever human beings are violated, diminished, or have their lfe drained away, God's glory is dimmed and dishonoured. Wherever human beings are quickened to fuller and richer life, God's glory is enhanced. A community of justice and peace (thriving among human beings) and God's glory increase in direct and not inverse proportion.

(Theology quote: Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is, 14).