‘God became human’, said Luther, ‘that from proud and inhuman gods he might make real human beings.’ Since this refashioning is of flesh and blood the physical environment in which people live, and which also shapes them, is part of the story, part of the economy of redemption. In speaking of the ‘economy of redemption’ I am alluding to the suggestion of Irenaeus of Lyons, in the late second century, that rather than think in a sin–fall–redemption pattern we might rather think of redemption as a process. Human beings were made in God's image, he argued, but had to grow into God's likeness, a process in which they were nurtured by God the Spirit.

Note that Irenaeus' account of redemption is Trinitarian. He describes Christ and the Spirit as the ‘two hands of God’ through whom the process of redemption is effected.