The natural figure at risk. Implications of the ecological crisis for the theological aesthetics

Abstract

The environmental crisis is generating a vertiginous change in the biosphere (sixth mass extinction of species, climate change, water and air pollution, excessive urbanization, etc.). This change produces, in turn, a break in the perception of nature as it has existed until the nineteenth century, where there were still relatively untouched territories. From the theology of biblical tradition, creation has been considered not only as a path to the Creator but also as the first of the soteriologic events of salvation, which inaugurated the history of salvation. Patristic tradition and Christian mysticism have developed the idea that nature is a way of encounter between the believer and its source. However, the situation in which the biosphere has entered in recent decades threatens the perception of the natural figure as a «you», mediator in the encounter with the divine figure.