Christotopia: Spaces of Christ

Abstract

In this article, driven by the hermeneutics of the phenomenon and specialties, I propose the structuring of a theoretical-theological framework capable of identifying the categories and elements inherent to the antagonism between good and evil present in the order of created things, substantially in the human ontology. In this epistemological path, by the methodological option, I will go through the syntagmatic itinerary of evil, in its nuances and territorial thanatopic demarcations to antagonistically demonstrate the elements and traits that constitute the good that orbits the entire divine cosmogenesis. These elements that involve the positive response of humanity seen from the ethical and moral evaluative praxis to the paradigm of human faith shown in the lives of individuals and societies, the framing of the spatial specter of opposition to chaos in the midst of it. These spaces of axiological opposition and cosmic redemption are generated from the (in)carnational ontological-territorial phenomenon of the manifestation of the (trans)forming presence of Christ and his Basileia, through which the Christophanic theophany in its immanent transcendence reveals to us the heterotopic molds what I call Christotopia, the spaces of Christ.They are theotopic spaces from outside, but substantially, biotopic spaces from inside. They are spaces of life and meaning in which christophany is established in a diametrically opposed way to spaces of death and non-meaning which are installed throughout time and society in all its spheres. In the light of Foucault’s heterotopic metaphor, the Christotopias focus on human existence and can be seen as boats launched into the infinite sea of the thanatopic cosmos. The Christotopias are places without a place; places of re-signification and survival; spaces of faith and decision, life and salvation, palpable spaces of overlapping deviation from death, closed, but at the same time open, spaces of art, poetry and melody amidst the noises of this world, real places where utopias become realizable, palpable, and dreams in Jesus Christ become possible.