Gottes Schöpfung und die Wirklichkeit des Menschen in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus

Abstract The essay works out how Paul’s “theology of creation” is determined by the question of the connection between God’s reality and the reality in which man perceives himself. As a Pharisaically educated Jew, Paul is of course familiar with the creation theology of the Jewish tradition, but he re-reads it through the eyes of faith in Christ. At the centre is the idea of the new creation of man, but from here the extra-human creation also emerges as an inescapable horizon, namely as the place where God completes his creation. Paul is not talking about a “fall” of man from an “original state”, but rather about a factual “disharmony” of creation, the healing of which encompasses both man and nature.