Creation


    In a rather excellent book designed to explain Eastern Orthodox beliefs to a contemporary audience, called The Orthodox Faith, Worship, and Life, Hieromonk Gregorios explains Orthodox views on the creation of world and humanity's role within it. Gregorios says that "an overflowing of Trinitarian love brought the world and mankind into being ... divine goodness had perforce to pour forth and flow out, and so to multiply the recipients of God's beneficence; for this was proof of the highest Goodess', in other words of infinite divine love" (Greogrios 2016, 27). According to my understanding, this means that Love is the foundation of reality; the beginning and end of all creation, and the song all creatures are invited to join in singing. Later, Gregorios says that "All creation, from its wondrous microcosmic elements to the distant galaxies proclaims the existence of God" (Gregorios 2016, 30). From the top to the bottom, from the center to the outermost point, creation is painted in colors of unending love, and adorned with the beauty of its Maker. What of mankind? Gregorios says that, in the garden, "Man 'enjoyed communion with God and rejoiced in the boldness ... he felt before the Creator. He converses with Him as a friend with a friend ... Having as his dwelling place God who dwelt in him ... and robed in his grace, he delighted in ... the contemplation of His face'" (Gregorios 2016, 35). 

    So far in our class, we have thought and talked quite a bit about Eden. What did Adam lose when he was cast out? Was it a finely ordered world? No, for the world does not lose its order on account of mankind going from one place to another. Was it a life free of suffering? Perhaps, but the absence of suffering is not what makes a life worth living. But what did Adam lose? A life spent speaking to the loving creator face-to-face. The fabric of Adam's reality which was torn away was not control over the world so much as beholding the loving countenance of God. 

    What does this have to do with ecology? The more I demand of the world, the less it has to give. As I begin to transform the world's energy into technology, fast-food, and entertainment, I necessarily choose these above something else. Every action has a consequence. With how much sorrow did you learn this lesson, Adam, and yet you have not learned it! We know this all too well, that to drill for oil is to risk destroying an ecosystem, that to pull precious metals from the Earth, companies often enslave even young children. Why do we do this? Why must we take and take, never slowing down? Perhaps it is that we are filling a void; lacking the fulfillment of communion with Love, we seek to find joy in things which can not satisfy, things which pass away. The more I am fulfilled by that which does not pass away, the fewer demands I need to make on the world around me. How can I expect inert matter to make my heart glad like a conversation with the Uncreated Light does? 

    Turning back to the notion of Love as the foundation of reality. The basic 'myth' which gives coherency to a Christian cosmos, is one of unimaginable love. Fighting tooth and nail against the fallen angels, God in flesh, Jesus Christ, condescends from the heavens and rests in the Virgin's womb. Born as one of us, He lives as one of us, eats with us, shares our suffering, and dies to set us back on the path to communion with Him, that is, the path toward Paradise. The beauty of paradise is love. The fall from Eden was a fall from love. There is no grand design imagined in a humanity's mind which will restore Eden to us, for Eden is not built by human hands. The path to Paradise is tread by human hearts. No technology, no law, no clever idea can save humanity or the world, for if we place such tools in the hands of the wicked, they will always be twisted. Ecological tranquility, like all good things, is an outpouring of love. 

 

References

    Hieromonk Gregorios. 2016. "1.3 The Creation of the Intelligible and Sensible World" The Orthodox 

Faith, Worship, and Life. Translated by Chara Dimakopoulou. New Rome Press.  

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