Doctrine as Dwelling: Irenaeus, Pasifika, and the Household of God

Abstract

For the low-lying atolls across Pasifika, climate change is neither hoax nor hypothesis but an imminent and lived reality. If theology is always contextual, then this is our context: ecological collapse unfolding in real time, exposing the fragility of some of our most cherished doctrinal frameworks. This paper responds to the growing call to reconsider the nature and function of doctrine under such pressure. Anglican theologian Mike Higton speaks of the “unfinished conversations” and “many voices” addressing the environmental crisis. This study extends that talanoa by bringing the emerging ‘Pasifika Household of God’ tradition into conversation with the Church’s first sustained post-apostolic household theology: Irenaeus of Lyons’ vision of the oikonomia theou. Bringing the Pasifika tradition as developed in the Pasifika Conference of Churches (PCC) declarations into conversation with Irenaeus’ cosmic ktisiology, this paper challenges the dominance of Western doctrinal formulations and calls for repentance through a return to humanity’s true vocation of theosis—divine participation within and as part of what creation itself is becoming in Christ. This vision stands in stark contrast to empire’s apotheosis: the pursuit of false divinity through conquest, neoliberal success, and escapist eschatologies. In the Patristic–Pasifika partnership here proposed, doctrine is not a static catalogue of propositional beliefs but a sacramental indwelling. Doctrine becomes dwelling as depth of tradition meets depth of place.

1. Doctrine as Dwelling: Irenaeus, Pasifika, and the Household of God

A student from Kiribati led devotions a few months back in the Islander Missionaries Memorial Chapel at Pacific Theological College in Suva, Fiji. As her words overflowed with equal measures of heartbreak and hope, I thought of the Psalmist’s cry in Psalm 42:7: “Deep calls to deep.” Tears flowed from both speaker and hearers as she described the tragic familiarity of loss in communities back home in Kiribati. This paper is written in honour of her and her communities.

Ecosystem collapse in various contexts has, in recent decades, revealed other ‘system failures’, global political and economic ones certainly, but systematic theological ones as well. Among these are longstanding misreadings of what the Scriptures actually teach about creation, our human role within it, and even, as this paper will argue, the very structure of the salvation narrative itself. As early as 2004, Pasifika church leaders gathered in Tarawa, Kiribati, to respond to waves and erosion, both literal and figurative, of an ecological crisis already being felt in the islands. Out of that came the Otin Taai Declaration, a prophetic call from the communities of vanua (the land and its people) and moana (ocean).

Anglican theologian Mike Higton references Otin Taai in his 2024 update of Christian Doctrine in “Unfinished Conversation 8: Many Voices on the Environmental Crisis,” the reference that inspired the writing of this paper (Higton 2024). In the spirit of Pasifika talanoa, my aim here is not to finish but continue this conversation with a new yet ancient dialogue partner—Bishop Irenaeus of Smyrna (c. 130–202 CE). But what does a second-century bishop from Asia Minor have to do with the warming and rising seas in Pasifika today? Theologically, I believe, a great deal.

Irenaeus, too, was writing amidst his own time of fragmentation and dislocation. He too was facing waves and erosion—waves of deadly imperial persecution and erosion of communal and apostolic memory to the fashionable philosophies of his day. His response was to write a sprawling five-volume work called Adversus Haeresis, equally a polemic and apologetic and, among other things, what Leese calls “the earliest articulation of a formal Christian theology of creation” (Leese 2018, p. 132). By bringing Irenaeus and Otin Taai together, my goal here is to try and combine ‘depth of tradition’ with ‘depth of place’, a deep calling to deep. My more pastoral aim is to see what a second-century elder and father might say to a heartbroken yet hopeful BD student from Kiribati in 2026.

Context: The 21st and Second Centuries

For the peoples of Pasifika, climate change is neither hoax nor theoretical. It is as urgent as life and livelihood—especially for countries such as Kiribati comprising mainly low-lying coral atolls. Called the Gilbert Islands under colonial rule, Kiribati occupies a unique and complex intersection of time, place, and colonial history straddling both the Equator and the 180° meridian, the edge of empire, quite literally on the opposite side of the world from Greenwich. As the international date line bends to keep its island chains on the same time zone, Kiribati is the first nation to greet the sunrise, the Otin Taai in i-Kiribati, at once both keeping time and running out of it.

Irenaeus (c. 130–202 CE) too lived on the edges of empire. Born on the eastern edge of it in Asia Minor (which is why I call him Irenaeus of Smyrna, not Lyons), he moved in diaspora to Lugdunum (Lyons), the Roman capital of the western frontier province of Gaul, during the most recent waves of imperial persecutions under the supposedly enlightened Stoic emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Christians in Lyons were facing the worst of it, including Irenaeus’ nonagenarian predecessor, Bishop Pothinus, martyred for their refusal to offer incense or libation in the temple staking the emperor’s claim over the oikos, the imperial household. It was in this context that Irenaeus declared his allegiance to a very different sort of household, one governed by a radically different sort of Pantocrator—one Jesus of Nazareth.

The cardinal rule in journalism is: ‘Follow the money and you’ll find the story.’ It all comes down to economics, oikonomia, from οἶκος (oikos, meaning ‘house’ or ‘household’), and νέμειν (nemein, meaning ‘to manage’ or ‘distribute’), literally, ‘household management.’ For the pastoral heart of Bishop Irenaeus, his oikonomia theou provided a stark alternative to the claims of empire: with a theological vision he seems to be getting straight out of Paul in Ephesians 1:9–10; 3:9; and Colossians 1:25. In the end, as in Matthew 22:15–22, it all comes down to what ought to be rendered to whom. Is the imago being rendered back to God in Christ-likeness or to Caesar as a coin struck for empire currency?

Wherever else God may dwell, the Hebrew Scriptures are clear that creation is also YHWH’s dwelling, as so many of the Psalms beautifully illustrate. The Lord of Psalm 104, who is anything but the deist’s absentee landlord, is very much present in the inner workings of ecosystems, giving life and breath to all creatures, commanding water cycles and riding on the winds in his ‘upper chambers.’ Psalms like 24, 29, 65, 96, and 148 can similarly be read like 104 in a creative midrash-like interweaving of a warp and weft of Genesis 1–2 and Exodus 25–31. The cosmic temple, creation as dwelling, is recursively shaped throughout the text. John’s Prologue then reframes this in New Covenant context: the same shekinah glory that dwelt in both creation and tabernacle (σκηνή, skēnē) now becomes flesh and “dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν)” among us (John 1:14).

One chapter later, the incarnate Word frames the whole Christ event in the language of dwelling. He promises that “the Father’s house” will be recreated and embodied in himself, the risen Christ (John 2:19–20). A few chapters after that, in John 14, which, despite how it is often applied, is not a funeral text about heaven, he returns to this theme. The “Father’s house,” identified with the temple of his body, is described as having “many rooms” (μονή; John 14:2). These “rooms” are expansive enough to express the mutual indwelling of Father, Son, and Spirit and to include all who believe (John 14:17–20). Here μονή develops into μένω, restated organically in chapter 15 through the image of the vine and the branches. There is too much to unpack here, but here at least is the raw material for a biblical doctrine of dwelling, creation and Body of Christ as divine oikos (Dunn 2016, cf. chap. 6, pp. 228–80).

By contrast to the Pauline oikonomia, empire’s oikoumene, from which we get our word ‘ecumenism,’ has always carried about it the whiff of empire. Even in the biblical text (Luke 2:1; Acts 11:28; Acts 17:6), as Barbara Rossing argues, the “whole inhabited earth” tends to refer to whatever was under Roman rule (Rossing 2003, pp. 76–78; the distinction should not be pressed too far, as the LXX sometimes uses it in reference to creation). It should come as no surprise, then, that this is precisely what the devil offers Jesus in the wilderness in Luke 4:5: all the thrones of the oikoumene. Those within the emperor’s house were ‘civilized’; those outside were ‘barbarians,’ still in need of the ‘civilizing mission.’ Later colonial Christianity inherited this legacy: a hierarchical, territorial worldview of centres and peripheries embedded not only in the colonial enterprise but in notions of ecumenism itself, from the earliest of the seven not-so-ecumenical councils, right up to the triumphalist language of Edinburgh 1910.

2. Irenaeus’ Oikonomia Theou

Most of the first three books of Adversus Haereses are, admittedly, a tough slog for non-heresiologists, which is most of us. But that is at least part of the Bishop’s rhetorical strategy: a tedious and meticulous taxonomy of the confusing and conflicting views of his opponents. Much of his treatment of them also functions as argumentum ad absurdum. In one humorous passage, he mocks the complexity of their terminology by substituting pleroma, aeons, and demiurges with the genus and species of gourds, the “delirious melons of Valentinus,” as he calls them (Schaff 2002, AH 1.11.4), as much nonsense then as it is now. That’s peak patristic humour right there!

He is absolutely serious, however, about their singular fatal flaw: a radical duality between a remote, ineffable divine source and a corrupt material cosmos produced through the error or fall of some lesser emanation. Whether the bungling of an evil demiurge (Marcion’s anti-Semitic slur against the God of the Hebrew Bible), the abortion of a wayward female aeon named Sophia, or a lesser emanation from the pleroma, it all sounded far more at home in the Timaeus than in Genesis 1–2.

It is not my intention here to engage the Gnostics, proto-Gnostics, or their modern-day apologists in the Bauerite tradition; this is simply for context. Notwithstanding legitimate and ongoing post-Nag Hammadi debates about the accuracy of Irenaeus’ portrayals, the Bishop is still correct in opposing their complex of bad ideas. And his foundational apologetic, I believe, also still stands: a good God created a good creation—the work of a single and sovereign Creator who brings the world into existence out of love and divine agency, not by mistake. Irenaeus is equally clear that this one God is triune, the same God of both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, who first declared creation “good” and “very good” (Gen. 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31) and who, in the end, makes “all things new.”

As the central narrative of his apologetic, the oikonomia and related terms appear over 100 times in his works as a unified, purposeful, and Trinitarian unfolding of God’s action in history, the mysterious plan to recapitulate all in the fullness of ages (Schwarzkopf 2020, p. 275). His connecting story arc from creation to renewed creation finds that, as Steenburg adds, “Christ is the link that binds together the beginnings and the ends and unites the whole of the economy” (Steenburg 2008, p. 187).

What Irenaeus is doing here is what is called a ktisiology, a comprehensive vision of the whole scope of his creation themes and motifs (Leese 2018, see chap. 1 in Leese; I have used Leese’s three themes for my own survey below). As narrative, it encompasses all aspects of the creatio originalis (protology, cosmology), creatio continua (incarnation, pneumatology), and creatio nova (new creation soteriology, eschatology) into a single unified theological vision.

2.1. Creatio Originalis

The divine economy begins with the creation of the world, the loving co-creation of the triune God—Father, Son (the Word), and Holy Spirit (Wisdom). Importantly, to him, creation is also ex nihilo (AH 1.22.1), not made from necessity or pre-existent matter, read Sophia’s ‘plan B’, but from the intentional and relational goodness of a loving God. Son and Spirit, the Father’s “two hands” (AH 4.20.1; AH 5.1.3; Dem. 11) shape creation in relational harmony. As Behr describes: “The Father is the origin of all creation, expressed by the prepositions ek and apo, but he created everything through (dia) the Son and in (en) the Spirit, making the creation of man into a Trinitarian activity of the one God” (Steenburg 2008, p. 103; cf. Dem. 5). “The Father’s immediacy to the creation through his Son and Spirit,” Steenburg adds, “is testified to in ‘the intimacy of the Son to the cosmos in the incarnation, and of the Spirit to humanity in the Pentecostal indwelling’” (Steenburg 2008, p. 81). Creation is thus not a mere ‘setting the stage’ or ‘preparing the way’ but “the human economy in its initiatory movements” (Steenburg 2008, p. 7). In other words, creation is an ongoing process, still being shaped by the “two hands” (Behr 2013, p. 121).

Humanity, created from dust and inspired by divine breath, is made “in the image and after the likeness” of God, like a child full of potential, designed to mature (all references to Epideixis are from Steenburg 2008, Epid. 11; Gen. 1:26–27; AH 5.1.3). Exegetical problems aside, ignoring Hebraic parallelism, Irenaeus sees the “image” as something like humanity 1.0, given to all in creation, and the “likeness” as humanity 2.0, the gift of redemption through Christ and recreation by the Spirit. This has been the plan from the beginning. Disobedience and rebellion are real, no doubt, but also plain and simple immaturity (AH 4.38.1), the stumbling of a child: “very little, for he was an infant” (Epid. 12).

The divine economy is an active, historical process, a paideia theou, God’s classroom and crucible for human formation. It progresses through Adam and Noah; the same triune Creator who called all things into being also calls Abraham, the “axis of election,” not only for the sake of his descendants but for the nations: “The God of all was pleased to be called the God of Abraham” (Epid. 21). The covenants with Noah, Abraham, and Moses thus become stages in the divine curriculum, Torah as paidagōgos, a tutor (Gal. 3:24), preparing Israel both morally and spiritually for the Incarnation of the Word. Anticipating the canon and responding to Marcion’s anti-Semitism, Irenaeus is the first Church Father to read Scripture as one story arc from Genesis to Revelation, an unfolding narrative of salvation—what might also be called the Church’s first ‘biblical theology.’

2.2. Creatio Continua

At the centre of the oikonomia is the Incarnation: God the Son, the Creator himself, stepping into his creation. Note as well his explanation, like Justin’s Logos Spermatikos: “The creator of the world is truly the Word of God, and this is our Lord, who in the last times was made man, existing in this world, who invisibly contains all created things, who is inherent in the entire creation, since the Word of God governs and arranges all things” (unless otherwise noted quotations from Adversus Haereses are from Roberts et al. 1885, AH 5.18.3). This Logos, already present within creation, now becomes what we are, ‘sanctifying every age’: “an infant for infants, a child for children… a man for men” (AH 2.22.4).

The divine household also reaches its fulfilment in Christ, the Incarnation, the central act of recapitulation, anakephalaiosis (ἀνακεφαλαίωσις), where Christ sums up all things, reuniting creation with Creator. Christ, creation, and redemption come together, and the whole ktisiology as well, the restoration of all things in Him (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:15–17). Christ then retraces and reverses Adam’s path, sanctifying every stage of life (AH 5.15.4), recapitulating Israel’s journey as well, fulfilling rather than abolishing the Law (Matt. 5:17). Against the docetic views of some of his opponents, the Bishop insists that Christ’s flesh is absolutely real and just like ours: “the Word was truly made to consist in that which was originally moulded from the dust” (AH 5.14.2). And this must be the case, for, as Steenburg writes, “That which awaits humankind at the telos of history is that which Christ reveals—the protological witness of all Scripture to proclaim; namely, the eventual perfection of full participation in the divine life” (Steenburg 2008, p. 9).

Of course, it had to be true human flesh that the Son lived, died, and was raised in, for, anticipating Gregory of Nyssa’s famous statement two centuries later, “If the Lord became incarnate for any other economy… he has not summed up human nature in himself” (AH 5.14.2). Also, anticipating Athanasius, “He became what we are, that he might bring us to be what he is” (AH 5, Preface; cf. 2 Cor. 5:21). Even death is not left untouched: “By recapitulating in himself the whole human race… he has also recapitulated its death” (AH 5), the transformative recapitulating centre of the renewed creation.

For Irenaeus, the cross is not divine abandonment but cosmic victory, Christus Victor, where Christ “crushes the head” of the deceiver (AH 5.21.1; Gen. 3:15). Atonement here is conquest, but not of people: “In recapitulating all things, he has recapitulated also the war against our enemy, crushing him who at the beginning led us away as captives in Adam” (AH 5.21.1). On behalf of humanity, Christ exchanges sin for righteousness, not in penal terms, but in a sacrificial exchange and recovery of federal headship becoming the New Adam (Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:45–49), his obedience rerouting human history in him. And back to the garden, it is also a re-rooting within creation: the cross the new Tree of Life, yielding the fruit of reconciliation (AH 5.18.1-3).

This incarnational logic then flows directly into sacrament: “Our opinion (sententia) is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion” (AH 4.18.5). Would “opinion” be δόξα (doxa) or διδασκαλία (didaskalia) in Greek? If so, then ‘doctrine’ done right must be eaten! The bread becomes the Body of Christ; the wine, crushed from the vine, becomes the cup of salvation; and just so, we become like Christ. “Our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection” (AH 5.2.3). The sacrament both looks back to the cross and forward to eschatological renewal: “He will renew the inheritance of the earth and restore the mystery of the glory of the sons of God… for the flesh that rises anew is the one that receives this new cup” (AH 5.33.1). The material elements of the Eucharist, the bread and wine, are transformed and transform the recipients, demonstrating the ultimate destiny of all material creation: participation in the divine life.

In this way, hope, for Irenaeus, is never disembodied. Humanity is imago first then ‘likeness’ through grace, the telos (AH 5.6.1). The renewal of humanity and creation are thus a package deal: “When the human being shall be renewed… then there shall be the new heaven and the new earth” (AH 5.36.1). The divine household finds its fulfilment in glorification, participation in divine life (2 Pet. 1:4), theosis, when the Spirit, “mixed with the soul,” completes what the Word has formed (AH 5.6.1). Flesh is not discarded but raised, both continuity and transformation: “Surely it is more difficult… to bring it about from non-existence than to re-integrate again that which had been created” (AH 5.3.2).

“The glory of God,” Irenaeus famously says, “is the living human being, and the life of the human is the vision of God” (AH 4.20.7). Most only quote that verse, however. What follows is equally glorious, as the homo vivens fits within a broader eco-relationality: “For if the manifestation of God which is made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God” (Roberts et al. 1885, AH 4.20.7). Redemption transfigures but in no way cancels creation: “Neither is the substance nor the material of the creation annihilated… but [only] ‘the fashion (figura) of the world shall pass away’” (Schaff, Philip, ed. 2002. AH 5.36.1; cf. 1 Cor. 7:31).

2.3. Creatio Nova

The ultimate goal of creation is the perfect union of humanity with God, the perfection of both the human being and the cosmos as a whole. At every stage of the divine pedagogy, however, human freedom is respected. Even after Genesis 3, and in agreement with all the Church Fathers up to Augustine, the Bishop wants to emphasize human freedom as an essential element of his theological anthropology (and theodicy). “Man, being endowed with reason and therefore like unto God… is indeed the cause to himself, that sometimes he becomes wheat and sometimes chaff,” free to turn toward or away from God. Unlike Lutheran and Reformed ‘bondage of the will’ in the Augustinian tradition, human freedom, although conditional as above, is never violated but invited into cooperation with divine purpose (AH 4.4.3). This is why Irenaeus is evidently no universalist, for, tragically, some will still reject the offer: “‘Depart from me… into everlasting fire…’ This fire they also shall justly feel who, like him, persevere in works of wickedness” (AH 3.23.3).

So finally, the glory extends to fill the cosmos. Creation, although now groaning, will not be destroyed but renewed: “when they rise at the Lord’s appearance… [they shall] first receive the inheritance… in this creation which is being renewed” (Schaff, Philip, ed. 2002. AH 5.32.1; Rom. 8:21). We shall “behold God in this creation which is renovated.” Even the divine household gets an extreme home makeover! At the centre of Irenaeus’ beautiful vision in AH 5.32 lies his clear interpretation of Romans 8. According to the Apostle Paul, there are three that “groan” in anticipation of the glory to come: the Spirit (v. 26), “we ourselves” (v. 23), and creation herself (v. 22), described as a mother groaning in labour pains “until now,” who will also be “set free.” This is one of Irenaeus’ favourite passages.

To Irenaeus, Isaiah’s vision that “the lion shall eat straw” is not allegory, as later readings would have it, but quite literally the peaceable kingdom of Eden extended throughout all creation: “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). Creaturely unity, like the firstfruits of unity of Jew and Gentile together, is a present and pleasant foretaste of the glories to come.

Shalom and Shabbat are coming: “The Sabbath of God… the kingdom… in which the man who shall have persevered shall… partake of God’s table” (AH 4.16.1). And at the end, it was all about a House, a dwelling, a meal at the family table, the perichoretic mutual indwelling of the Father’s House in John 14 and Rev. 21–22. Irenaeus imagines a future where God will be “all in all” (AH 5.36.3), with creation restored and humanity outranking angels, fully perfected in union with the Creator. “This is God’s tabernacle, in which God dwells together with men” (AH 5.35.2).

3. The Pasifika Household of God (PHG)

Eighteen hundred years later, on the other side of the planet, another oikonomia theology emerges as the ecumenical vision called the Pasifika Household of God. The earliest substantial treatment of Pasifika household theology is 2001’s Island of Hope (IoH hereafter), the Pacific Conference of Churches’ (PCC) Dossier No. 7. The document’s purpose was to chart a new course in response to globalization and neoliberalism’s insatiable hunger for resources, particularly in the Pacific region. Like Irenaeus, it is also part polemic, part apologetic, with a clear delineation of God’s household of justice, compassion, and sustainability versus Mammon’s household of profit, domination, and environmental degradation (World Council of Churches 2001, pp. 5, 12, 25). But its sharp theological diagnosis is accompanied by a life-giving Pasifika prescription of “spirituality, family life, traditional economy, cultural values, mutual care, and respect” (p. 5), a radical alternative to extractive economic models prioritizing endless “growth” over ecological and human flourishing (p. 7). Its prescription also calls for the recovery of Jubilee theology advocating debt forgiveness, land redistribution, and liberation from oppressive and extractive economic practices (p. 23).

Christ and his Kingdom, as the “true Island of Hope,” calls us to justice, compassion, hospitality, and a deeper commitment to Kingdom values: “life-centred, affirming the very soul of the Pacific Islanders” (p. 7). IoH is not merely a critique but a prophetic invitation to reimagine economic life as a sacred, communal, and life-giving practice—a reimagination in Pasifika terms (Appendix A), a Jesus-centred Household of God (p. 25). All of this would become blueprint language for PCC declarations to come.

Three years later, the Otin Taai Declaration (2004), the one Higton references, marked the next development in Pasifika household theology. The ecumenical consultation in Tarawa, Kiribati (p. 4), directly links creation-centred responsibility with the climate crisis, calling on industrialized nations to take responsibility for a situation largely caused by Western lifestyles and consumption now disproportionately impacting Pasifika communities.

Otin Taai picks up where IoH left off: “Here on the small island atoll of Kiribati, the impacts of human-induced climate change are already visible… shores eroding… coral reefs bleaching… water supplies threatened by salt water” (p. 2). It rebukes those still in denial while citing the Noahic covenant: “This is not an act of God. It is the result of human economic and consumer activities” (p. 6). As doctrinal retrieval, it calls for repentance and action in love toward God’s creation (pp. 2–3) an unlearning and relearning rebuking definitions of ‘dominion’ as ‘domination.’ But there is good news, for “[b]eing good stewards or custodians leads to a reciprocal relationship between people and the earth” (p. 5).

A few years later, in 2010, the PCC issued a concept paper more explicitly calling for a complete “re-thinking [of] the Household of God in the Pacific.” It continued in Otin Taai’s urging of the ecumenical community to move away from the “endless growth” model of neo-liberal economics toward a new regionalism grounded in Pasifika sufficiency, solidarity, identity, inclusiveness, and participation (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2010, pp. 1–4). Here was also an important shift from a hierarchical, top-down model to one more devolved and locally rooted in the relational and regional dynamics of Pasifika communities, “family life; relationships; environment; spirituality and traditional economy” (p. 5), where all members, human and non-human, are integral to the household.

By the mid-2010s, Pasifika household language had become the de facto foundation and shorthand for what used to be called ‘ecumenism.’ At the 2013 PCC General Assembly in Honiara, Solomon Islands, the assembly affirmed that ecumenism was no longer to be understood merely as the “unity of the Body of Christ” but explicitly as the “Household of God in the Pacific.” Its holistic vision was not only to encompass human relationships but also extended to include an eco-relationality, communities of diverse life forms and an acknowledgement that other religions and faiths share in the Pasifika home. This calls for a koinonia beyond the bounds of the traditional Christian lotu.

2017 seems to have been the watershed year. In August, the Pacific Church Leaders Meeting (PCLM) in Auckland made the decisive paradigm shift, Pasifika household theology formally redefining ‘ecumenism’ now more as a lived, embodied, and ecological reality rooted in Pasifika worldviews than as structural or perfunctory cooperation among churches. This process culminated in October 2017 at the PCLM Strategic Planning Meeting in Nadi, Fiji where church leaders formally adopted the Household as the central image for the ecumenical movement. Newly articulated here by Upolu Lumā Vaai in Samoan terms are three interrelated dimensions—house (tino ole fale), housekeeping (totoga ole fale), and household (tagata ole fale)—which together expressed a vision of deep mutuality between people, institutions, and the wider ecological world (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2017, p. 4). By holding oikoumene, economy, and ecology together within the logic of the household, the PHG would seek to overcome dualities and compartmentalizations of ‘secular’ versus ‘sacred’ and reorient (note the navigational language) towards a more ‘whole of life’ approach.

The titular metaphor of this document, “re-reading the stars”, calls the voyaging household to look at the same guiding principles (the “stars”) but interpret them “from the ground-up” through what, in Samoan, is called itulagi, a lens for ‘worldview’ that combines the distinctiveness of each culture (itu, or ‘side’) with the shared connection (lagi, or ‘heaven’) (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2017, p. 4). Doing so means “decolonising the mindset” and developing a relational, contextualized, interconnected model of ecumenism that meets head on the specific challenges being faced in Pasifika, such as climate change, political colonization, and linguistic and cultural loss (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2017, pp. 6–7). All of this is reimagined as being embedded and embodied in another metaphor widely known throughout the region: “sitting on the mat, weaving together, sharing good and painful things. We need to share and celebrate together, and to find practical ways to contextualise ecumenical thinking” (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2017, p. 6).

In 2020, the PHG became the basis and guiding framework for the Pacific Theological College (PTC) and the PCC’s publication Reweaving the Ecological Mat (REM), an ambitious reframing of the development narrative in the Pacific placing eco-relational theology at the centre (Bird et al. 2020, pp. 23–34). REM’s purpose was to challenge conventional development models and narratives that focus on economic growth and GDP, advocating instead for a new kind of accounting emphasizing sustainable growth, ecological balance, restraint, and community well-being. All this resonates with but also challenges John Elkington’s proposal for a ‘triple-bottom line’ (planet, people, and profit) that shaped much of the UN’s SDGs.

REM’s accounting model sought to address interconnected global crises (often referred to as the polycrisis): the effects of climate change, poverty, the drug crisis, political instability, and neo-colonial extractivism. Since none of these are isolated issues but deeply interlinked, REM argues, a unified and interconnected response is required, a ‘reweaving.’ Whether acknowledged or not, the “oikos triplets” (Upolu Vaai’s term)—economy, ecology, and ecumene—have always been intertwined, interwoven (Bird et al. 2020, p. xi). Solutions moving forward will have to engage all three.

The Tuākoi Lei Declaration commemorated, last year, the twenty-year-old Otin Taai, with its opening lines acknowledging both continuity and urgency. The facts on the ground and in the sea are graver (literally) than ever: “Bikeman Island is now completely submerged while other islands are becoming uninhabitable… breadfruit trees, a dietary staple, died off… freshwater supplies have become saline” (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2025, pp. 1–2). Kiribati, once the voice and location of the Otin Taai, now in many places embodies systemic collapse: “Severe sea level rise and coastal erosion have deeply impacted the livelihoods and culture of its people” (p. 1). And this, precisely, is her context, the salt in both the sea and the tears of my student from Kiribati in the pulpit in the Islander Missionaries Memorial Chapel.

As part of the consultation, participants visited the coastal settlement of Togoru in Fiji, where “[t]he ocean encroaches into the land at a rate of approximately 1 metre a year, with roads and buildings submerged or frequently flooded. Despite the long-standing cries of people, their calls for help have gone virtually ignored” (pp. 2–3). Barney Dunn, one of the participants, can now only visit his ancestors’ graves when the tide is low (pp. 2–3).

Tuākoi Lei, meaning ‘Good Neighbour’ in Tuvaluan, frames the situation in biblical ethics while levelling a much sharper prophetic charge against “exploitative and extractive systems of neocolonialism and enduring colonialism” (p. 3), denouncing the complete and utter folly of “unlimited growth” (p. 4). “Fossil fuelled greed, selfishness and apathy manifested as extractive industries and economic globalization are driving us back to chaos as we experience the ocean rising to reclaim the earth, our common home” (p. 4). It ‘ups the ante’ even further, calling for the establishment of an international ecocide law to hold corporations and governments accountable for ecological destruction (p. 8).

Tuākoi Lei also matches this with a bolder theological vision—a move from lament to the covenantal hope of a sacred and shared household life that includes “the entire Pacific region (human and non-human) biodiversity” (p. 12). Here is the definitive statement with that noticeable Irenaean theme from Romans 8:

Our Pasifika Household of God is a sacred and eco-communal space, where theology, indigenous knowledge, science, the cry of our people and the groaning of creation are woven together to create a mat on which all can sit and no one is left behind, as we seek, not only survival but hope for flourishing.

(p. 4)

Churches and theological institutions are called to become part of the solution by introducing “climate change and indigenous, local and traditional climate knowledge into the curriculums [sic] of all local theological schools” (p. 5), beyond books and pulpits, incorporating traditional knowledge systems and collective discernment and wisdom. The communal mat, as with REM, becomes a physical, sacramental site of a new kind of eco-relational catechesis and communion.

The Household also becomes a pastoral space of solidarity with those suffering, urging Pasifika churches to “Develop a network for trauma counselling that addresses the fear, worry, distress and damage caused by climate change and climate induced migration” (p. 7) and to collaborate with civil society and education sectors to build knowledge and action from the local to the regional and global (p. 6). Its economic and political vision builds on all the previous documents but, once again, on the mat: “The reweaving of the ecological mat through… consideration of the impacts of development on ecological systems rather than just the economy” (p. 7). In prophetic terms, it is a gauntlet thrown down to the wealthier and predominantly ‘Western’ nations (including those directly South, like Australia and New Zealand):

We as churches in the Pacific must not fear speaking truth to power, we must not be held hostage on issues we did not cause. We should seek to keep industrialized countries, our global neighbours—for neighbours are now nearby and far away in this interconnected planet—we should seek to keep them accountable for their actions.

(p. 3)

To bring our survey of the PHG tradition totally up to date, earlier last year, at the 2025 PCLM in Pago Pago, American Samoa, the PCC Outcome Statement called for the creation of a “Peace-Full Pasifika,” built on solidarity and self-determination in Pasifika as a household. It affirms that true peace cannot exist while Pasifika peoples continue to suffer under colonization or neo-colonial practices in regions like Hawaii, Ma’ohi Nui, Kanaky, and West Papua (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2025, pp. 3–4). When one member of the body suffers, all suffer. It also continues to address the ‘polycrisis,’ including resource shortages for disability inclusivity, rising Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), and the increasing drug crisis (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2025, pp. 6–8).

What is newly centred in these discussions is the concept of Do Kamo from the Kanaky tradition, New Caledonia. The dwelling has a dweller. This vision of ‘authentic humanity’ is framed within a ‘sacred talanoa shaped by the Spirit of Do Kamo,’ calling for both prophets and pastors to transform themselves, in and for their communities of the vanua and moana. Its ethic of ‘ongoing transformation into authentic humanity’ describes peace not as a single event but as a lifelong communal journey. “Do Kamo: Transformation” and “Do Kamo: Liberation,” a vision of ‘authentic humanity’ (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2025, p. 2).

4. Talanoa on the Mat

Irenaeus is unapologetically Christocentric in his oikonomia from beginning to end: creation’s meaning is in the Incarnation, salvation history culminating in its glorification through Christ (Behr 2013, p. 122). And this must be the case if it is still to be a Christian theology. His hermeneutic is primarily textual and traditional, appealing to the apostolic regula fidei throughout. The Pasifika documents, by contrast, are context-first. Their authority is rooted not in apostolic succession but in ancestral land, oral memory. Where Christ and the Kingdom of God are much more central in 2001’s Island of Hope, the trajectory of the PHG documents sees Christ increasingly in the margins. But Christ is very much there in the margins in the cries of “the least of these,” whom we meet and pass by daily. Theological insight arises not only from Scripture but from the authority of vanua and moana, the relational wisdom of communities, and the ecological witness of elders and knowledge holders.

But how do we bridge these? Here is where Mike Higton can provide some direction. Reframing Lindbeck’s ‘cultural-linguistic’ approach in his Anglican context, Higton suggests that doctrinal formulations should always serve as a second-order activity. The first order is what he calls “the ordinary life of the church,” i.e., the embodied life of worship, witness, and discipleship, the lived faith of households, communities, and places. As such, doctrinal and perhaps more specifically academic theology remains secondary in that it interprets and accompanies living practice; it does not generate it (Higton 2020; for his full argument, see pp. 111–17). This framing allows Irenaeus’ oikonomia theou, as second-order apologetic, to be in service of the first-order immediacy of the cries of the Pasifika household, not as competing doctrinal systems but as different expressions of the same divine oikonomia.

And Higton’s warning is timely. Theologians who operate at a far remove (in libraries and armchairs) from the sites of struggle and from the communities and “the lives most directly battered by the powers that corrupt the world” risk producing doctrinal accounts that may be elegant yet completely lifeless, sheltered from the material consequences of theological decisions (Higton 2020, p. 110). Concepts such as ‘dominion,’ when framed in abstraction, can too easily become ideological rationales and shorthand for ‘domination.’ Without what he calls the “schooling” of doctrinal theology by those “at the level of ordinary Christian practice” (Higton 2020, p. 137), theology becomes dangerously susceptible to empire logic. This applies equally to both ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ ends of the spectrum. Both have equally proven to be the new ‘civilizing mission’ of empire being hegemonically imposed on the churches of the global south.

Irenaeus’ vision is cosmic and universal; the Pasifika witness is local yet no less eschatological. Although rooted in Pasifika culture, it too is always pointing beyond from vanua and moana to the stars. Irenaeus traces a divine pedagogy from creation through the Incarnation to the eschaton; the Pasifika declarations are equally pedagogical but much more urgently present-tense, a ‘pedagogy of place.’ Higton’s emphasis on doctrine as reflective, accountable, and communally disciplined helps hold all this together in real time in the ‘polycrisis.’

Another striking convergence in our talanoa is their shared sacramental ontology. For Irenaeus, the Eucharist is both the fulfilment and interpretation of creation: “the bread which is from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but the Eucharist… and our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection” (AH 4.18.5). For the Pasifika declarations, especially the Tuākoi Lei and REM, the mat functions similarly as the sacramental site of revelation, catechism, and communion. It becomes the woven ground of the PHG, metaphorically and literally the seat where theology is both embodied and newly imagined and where “no one is left behind” (Tuākoi ‘Lei Declaration 2024, p. 4).

Both also relentlessly denounce the many iterations of dualism, affirming that matter absolutely matters and that it is the stuff of earth—land, body, bread, pandanus leaves—that are the very media of the mystery and location of God’s Presence. Yet this in no way collapses transcendence into pantheistic immanence. Because God is triune, Christian doctrine can be seated, to borrow from Ephesians 2:6, in the “heavenly places in Christ” and, at the same time, in the fale and maneaba of Pasifika communities while also filling the relational space between, what Samoan traditions call the va. The Eucharist confirms the material nature of the Incarnation, the Transcendent One becoming flesh, while the mat on which it is consumed confirms the ongoing creational work of the ‘two hands,’ the Word and the Spirit’s immanence within communality and context in Pasifika. Doctrine that does not arise from communities gathered around Word and Table in the Household, not merely discussing but tasting, blessing, and sharing bread, risks drifting into abstraction. It is tested in the tasting.

Theosis or Apotheosis

In modern parlance a ‘false economy’ is a short-sighted solution that ends up causing greater cost or harm in the long run. Theologically, this is exactly what happens when the Church chooses the oikoumene of empire over the Household of God. As we mark 1700 years since Nicaea, we rightly celebrate its doctrinal legacy, but we can also be circumspect about the costly bargain the bishops struck back in summer of 325: the Church’s exile identity traded to become chaplain to empire, from periphery to centre. This sparked the centuries-long project of straining out doctrinal ‘gnats’ while swallowing the camel of empire’s power structures whole, a false economy if ever there was one!

For Irenaeus, theosis is humanity’s true and ultimate vocation, the divine participation of ‘man fully alive’ within creation, not apart from it. Satan’s lie, he argues, was not that humanity could become like gods, but that it could do so apart from God (AH 5.24.4). The curriculum of the divine pedagogy was always to lead us to become like Christ within this creation, but only through the perichoretic recapitulation in him. Instead, the same satanic lie in both the garden and the wilderness still drives imperial and neoliberal economies today: divinity by proximity to power, through conquest, wealth, or individualistic autonomy.

One might even say that the difference between the oikonomia theou and empire’s oikoumene is as stark as the difference between theosis and apotheosis. The Bishop’s rebuke still stands:

How, then, shall he be a god, who has not as yet been made a man? Or how can he be perfect who was but lately created? How, again, can he be immortal, who in his mortal nature did not obey his Maker? For it must be that you, at the outset, should hold the rank of a man, and then afterwards partake of the glory of God.

(Roberts et al. 1885, AH 4.39.2–3)

There are no shortcuts in the sacramental pedagogy from ‘image’ to ‘likeness,’ only the kenotic path of the Carmen Christi of Philippians 2. Through the Eucharist and the Spirit, we partake in the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4), but always in the triple groaning and triple humbling of Christ, in our creatureliness, accountable to communities, never detached from the vanua and moana we all share. And just so, the PHG has also developed its own vocabulary for theosis in the beautiful Kanaky concept of “Do Kamo: Transformation” and “Do Kamo: Liberation,” a vision of ‘authentic humanity’ (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2025, p. 2). PHG theosis is all about communal belonging: people, land, ocean, and Spirit woven together in Christ. It is also about being sent to serve. “When we dare to live Do Kamo, liberation ceases to be a concept and becomes daily practice—protecting creation, uplifting the marginalized, and reimagining identity with hope” (Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) 2025, p. 2).

The apex of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian hero cults, by stark contrast, is a parody of theosis—counterfeit glory, ‘vainglory,’ of apotheosis. Salvation in modern neoliberal soteriologies can just as easily be recast through the matrix of ‘success’ and ‘development,’ usually somewhere else, at the expense of organic communities, whether in gated ‘communities’ or in diaspora. It is also clearly seen in the ‘airlift’ theologies of dispensationalism where the true costs of our lifestyles become the ultimate ‘externality,’ and where both our goodness and our restoration get outsourced to a parallel universe called ‘heaven’. Either way, the deal is always to escape, exchanging participation for possession, grace for wages, and community for competition. Regardless of its many forms, ultimately, its purpose is to sever us from the bonds of vanua and moana, in ascension to the Elysian fields of either ‘heaven’ or Australia, whichever comes first.

5. Doctrine at the Edge of the New Day

The climate crisis is, in my view, the most urgent test of the Church’s doctrinal imagination today. Alongside the intersectional pressures of race and gender it exposes the fragility and flaws of our theological frameworks. Doctrine can no longer afford to remain abstract; it must become narrative again, through stories of even better news than we have yet imagined. Doctrines must, once again, be answerable to the cries of creation and communities, from the shame and tragedy of Banaba’s collapse due to phosphate mining and its almost immediately repeated cycle in the poisoned waters of Nauru, to the submerged homes of Kiribati and exhausted reefs of Tuvalu. We might even say that doctrine that cannot or will not serve as second-order to the first-order cries of vanua and moana has become unfaithful, or, as Irenaeus might call it, ‘heresy.’

In Household theology, doctrine is not what the Church says it believes but what the Church becomes, sacramentally. “Our doctrine agrees with the Eucharist,” writes Irenaeus, “and the Eucharist in turn confirms our doctrine.” Doctrine is tasted, consumed, and re-enfleshed in land, place, and people. Irenaeus’ “love feast” is Pasifika’s lovo. While there is place for theology from monographs, we need much more of it from the maneabas (i-Kiribati meeting houses), born out of grief, resistance, and the resilience of ancestral memory. In the end, the mutual convergences of this patristic and Pasifika heuristic are about abiding: salvation not as escape but as mutual indwelling—creaturely, sacramental, and communal. What else would we do in a divine Household?

And so, doctrine becomes dwelling. It teaches resistance to false economies, remembrance of our creatureliness, and the embodiment of hope and home for those who need it most. What is being proposed here is not naïve optimism, but the patient, Eucharistic, pedagogical hope that both grows and grieves along with my student from Kiribati, the three that groan in Romans 8 with groanings “too deep for words” (Rom 8:26). Deep calls to deep; and doctrine, if it is to mean anything now, must also groan from our depths… at the sunrise, the Otin Taai, on the edge of the new day.