A Kind of Second Fall

The forms of life within which man lived in society [during the early centuries of Christianity] were not in themselves evil – in fact they were often imbued with divine beauty and wisdom, in such a way that merely living within them related him directly to God. The evil that people manifested within these forms was largely the consequence of their own individual choices, independently of the forms, and it did not contaminate the forms themselves.

Our situation today is totally different from this. We still have to contend with the forms of evil endemic to the fallen human state. But… we are now forced to live in society… according to forms that  not only do not correspond in any way to the reality of the divine, human or natural order, but are themselves actively and positively evil to a degree that goes beyond the evil… that is a consequence of the Fall. For these forms in themselves represent and demand a denial of God’s will. It is as if there has been a kind of second fall, one latent of course in the possibility of the original fall….

As a result, whether we like it or not, we now cannot live in society in such a way that we do not connive in and contribute to this evil…. Nor is there any ascesis through which we can allay or transcend this evil, for not only is it now beyond all human control and comprehension, but such ascesis cannot exempt us from involvement or prevent us from contributing to activities and practices that ensure its proliferation.

~ “The Desert Fathers and Ourselves,” Divine Ascent, Vol. 1:1, 1997, pg. 26-27.

The Deepening Perversion of Man and Nature

As a result of this perversion of human thought represented by modern science and its technological ramifications the nature and purpose of human and other created things themselves have been perverted and abused. This perversion and abuse have now permeated into the forms that dominate our society to such a degree that we can no longer prevent them from having the consequences that they in fact are already having. One might say that not even God can prevent the development of this evil and its consequences.

God is just, and when He makes a covenant with man, He does not break it. His covenant with man is that what man does must not be imposed on him by God, but must result from the exercise of his own free will. A rider to this, though, is that man himself must accept the consequences of what he chooses to do and does. This is part of God’s justice. He will not violate man’s freedom by intervening to prevent the consequences of man’s free choice, even if these consequences are disastrous for man.

~ “The Desert Fathers and Ourselves,”  Divine Ascent, Vol. 1:1, 1997, pg. 26-27.

A “Second Fall”

Each individual is now enmeshed not only in the consequences of Adam’s fall, but also in those of the second fall, and cannot get out of this enmeshment unless he totally divorces himself from every form of life in society that is permeated with this evil.

~ “The Desert Fathers and Ourselves,” Divine Ascent, Vol. 1:1, 1997, pg. 28.

Can We be in Grace and Live in Modern Society?

Before we can be in a state of grace must not our inner being accord with the outer activities in which we engage? Can we be in a state of grace while sitting in an aeroplane or a car vomiting poison into the air? And by simply living in today’s societies can we avoid engaging in practices equivalent to, in fact, far worse than, sitting in an aeroplane or a car vomiting poison into the air and equally a violation of God’s will? Do we not have to do God’s will on earth as in heaven before we can be in a state of grace or actualize the divine image within us? Can we assimilate and incarnate God’s mercy while we continue wittingly and willfully to crucify the cosmic Christ, the divine embodied in every God-created form?

~ “The Desert Fathers and Ourselves,” Divine Ascent, Vol. 1:1, 1997, pg. 28

The Conception of Creation Ex Nihilo

The conception of creation ex nihilo lies at the root of our contemporary ecological crisis. It can be equally affirmed that as this conception was formulated and promoted by theologians whose claim to be Christian theologians has not been disputed by the Church, the Christian Church, at least as represented by those responsible for its major dogmatic, canonical and conciliar orientations and decisions, bears a direct and incontrovertible responsibility for the desecration of the cosmos. It is absolutely no accident that a purely materialistic view of nature first arose not within the Hindu, Buddhist, or Islamic world, but within the Christian world. It is absolutely no accident either that the official responses of the Church, whether of the Christian East or Christian West, to what we call the ecological crisis have been lamentable: the “official” theology of the Church being so hamstrung by precisely those conceptions that have directly promoted this crisis, it is hardly surprising that the pronouncements are as vapid as they are ineffectual.

~ Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition, Holy Cross Press, 1998, p. 235.

God Creates within Himself

In this idea of God creating the universe within Himself there is no separation between God and creation that is capable of growing into an unbridgeable gulf…. Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God’s hidden Being

~ Human Image, World Image: Golgonooza Press, Ipswich, 1992 pg. 152.

Man’s Priestly Role in Creation

The fact that God is present in all things simply by virtue of their being created, and hence that no special sacramental activity is needed in order to imbue them with divine grace, does not mean that man has no priestly role as mediator between God and creation. That God is present within all created things, and that all created things are therefore intrinsically holy, and should be treated as such, does not mean that this divine presence is always actualized in all things, or “in actu”; it can equally be latent in all things or in potentia. Thus there is a need of sacramental activity in order to bring His divine presence, whether in man or in other created things, from a latent to an actualized state.

It is precisely in relationship to this sacramental activity that man possesses a mediating role.  Yet… we must not forget that if man possesses a mediating role between God and creation, creation equally possesses a mediating role between God and man; for it is by means of the created elements of wine and bread that man communes with God in the Eucharist. From this point of view, we can say that if the actualization of the image of God depends upon man, the actualization of the image of God in man depends upon creation; and that if man is the bond between God and creation, creation is equally the bond between God and man.

~ Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition, Holy Cross Press, 1998, p. 243.

 Interdependence between God, Man and Creation

There is a relationship of interdependence, interpenetration and reciprocity between God, man and creation; and it is the loss by the Christian consciousness of awareness of the full significance of this relationship that is a basic cause of today’s ecological crisis. If the Christian Church is to offer a positive response to the challenge of this crisis, it can only be through reaffirmation of the full significance of this relationship, … which is no more, if no less, than a reaffirmation of the full significance of its central sacrament, the Eucharist, with all that that means with regard to the miracle of creation and to man’s responsibility for fulfilling it.

~ Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition, Holy Cross Press, 1998, p. 243.

The Most Crucial Issue that We Confront Today

A consciousness blind to the presence of the Divine in every created form is a consciousness that is radically distorted, and the type of theology it represents and promotes will be equally distorted, whatever authority it appears to represent. This question of the meaning of the nihil [in creation] constitutes the most crucial theological — and existential — issue that we confront today; for the answer we give to it will shape our anthropology and our cosmology — in fact our whole attitude to life. If we continue to adhere to the first, the negative interpretation, we will continue to nourish the cankers of nihilism, meaningless violence and despair which our bondage to it has already nourished in our souls. If we can espouse the second we will at least make it possible for ourselves to set out once more on the path that brings us to experience in our own being the revelation that “everything that lives is Holy.”

~ Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition, Holy Cross Press, 1998, p. 244.

 

How the Natural World Represents the Spiritual World

All that is in the natural world, then, from its minutest particle to the constellations, the whole and each particular of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, is nothing but a kind of representational theatre of the spiritual world, where each thing exists in is true beauty and reality. Each natural form is the center of an influx coming from its divine archetype or theophanic Divine Name. Thus each natural form is the image – the icon or the epiphany – of its archetype, and by virtue of being such an icon each possesses an affinity with its archetype, it corresponds to it, symbolizes with it.

Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition, Holy Cross Press, 1998, p. 243.

Bio

Philip Sherrard taught at the University of London and at Oxford, and was widely regarded as one of the preeminent patristic scholars of the twentieth century. He translated numerous volumes of early and medieval Christian writings by masters of the spiritual life and authored numerous texts on Early Christian thought and their meaning for the present. He maintained that the revolutionary changes in mental outlook that took place in western Christianity three and four centuries ago, which led to the scientific revolution, are the major cause of the ecological crisis. The loss of a wholistic Christianity, he says, inhibits the western church from fully engaging the ecological problem because it is crippled at the very foundation of its assumptions about God and creation. From this failure derives a further failure of the modern Christian world view to maintain a sense of the sacred in creation. The desanctification which results fuels the desecration of both the environment and human society. The solution to which he points is a restitution of the ancient Christian sacred cosmology in which creation is perceived, and experienced, as the manifestation of the Logos in which everything has a sacred quality because it is not only in God, but also a manifestation of God. “Once we repossess a sense of our own holiness,” he writes, “we will recover the sense of the holiness of the world about us as well. Then we will act towards the world with the awe and humility that we should possess when we enter a sacred shrine…. Only in this way,” he says, “will we once again become aware that our destiny and the destiny of nature are one and the same. Only in this way can we restore the cosmic harmony.”

The Ecological Crisis

One thing we no longer need to be told is that we are in the throes of a crisis of the most appalling dimensions. We tend to call this crisis the ecological crisis, and this is a fair description in so far as its effects are manifest above all in the ecological sphere. For here the message is quite clear: our entire way of life is humanly and environmentally suicidal, and unless we change it radically, there is no way in which we can avoid cosmic catastrophe. Without such change the whole adventure of civilization will come to an end during the lifetime of many now living.

~ Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology, “Introduction,” Sophia Perennis Publishers, 1992, p. 1.

A Crisis of Vision

The crisis itself is not first of all an ecological crisis…. It is first of all a crisis concerning the way we think. We are treating our planet in an inhumane, god-forsaken manner because we see things in an inhuman, god-forsaken way. And we see things in this way because that basically is how we see ourselves….

This means that before we can effectively deal with the ecological problem we have to change our world image, and this in turn means that we have to change our self-image. Unless our own evaluation of ourselves, and of what constitutes the true nature of our being, changes, the way we treat the world about us will not change either. And unless that happens, conservation theory and practice, however well-intentioned and necessary, will not touch the heart of the problem. They will at best represent an effort to deal with what in the end are symptoms, not causes.

~ Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology, “Introduction,” Sophia Perennis Publishers, 1992, p. 2.

The Desanctification of Nature

Having in our own minds desanctified ourselves, we have desanctified nature, too, in our own minds; we have removed it from the suzerainty of the divine and have assumed that we are its overlords, and that it is our thrall, subject to our will.

~ Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology, “Introduction,” Sophia Perennis Publishers, 1992, p. 3.

Our own Depravity Writ Large

Every extension of the empire and influence of our contemporary secular scientific mentality has gone hand in hand with a corresponding and increased erosion in us of the sense of the sacred. In fact, we do not have any respect, let alone reverence, for the world of nature because we do not fundamentally have any respect, let alone reverence, for ourselves. It is because we have lost the sense of our own reality that we have lost the sense of every other reality as well. It is because we cripple and mutilate ourselves that we cripple and mutilate everything else as well. Our contemporary crisis is really our own depravity writ large.

~ Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology, “Introduction,” Sophia Perennis Publishers, 1992, p. 9.

Recovering a Sense of Holiness

A false self-view breeds a false world-view, and together they breed our nemesis and the nemesis of the world. Once we repossess a sense of our own holiness, we will recover the sense of the holiness of the world about us as well, and we will then act towards the world about us with the awe and humility that we should possess when we enter a sacred shrine, a temple of love and beauty in which we worship and adore. Only in this way will we once again become aware that our destiny and the destiny of nature are one and the same. Only in this way can we restore a cosmic harmony.

~ Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology, “Introduction,” Sophia Perennis Press, 1992, p. 9.

The Path to the Desanctification of Nature

Our failure to perceive the divine in man has gone hand in hand with a failure to perceive the divine in nature. As we have dehumanized man, so we have desanctified nature.

~ The Eclipse of Man and Nature, Lindisfarne Press, 1987, p. 33.

 Recovering Christian Purpose

The purpose of the Christian way is the divinization of man. “Not from the beginning were we made gods,” said St. Irenaeus, “but first indeed men, and then finally gods.” “He became man in order to divinize us,” said St. Athanasios, speaking of Christ’s work. God united himself to human nature, said St. Gregory of Nazianzos, “so that I, too, might be made God.” … This is the significance of the summons to be born again, the significance of the triumph over death: that man must recreate himself into the image of God in which he is created and which, however obscured, lies still in the depths of his being. He must recover his spiritual identity.

~ Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology,Golgonooza Press and Friends of the Centere, 1992,  p. 26.

How Creatures Take their Being from God

Perhaps never before have we been faced so urgently with the question of the significance of creation and man’s role in creation; with the need to justify the world in God, to see how the creaturely world is united with the divine world, religion with aesthetics. We have to attempt the reconquest of the idea that God is not only the Creator of the world, but that He is also in some sense what He creates. A true doctrine of creation must start with the affirmation that any conception of the creature as a second being existing apart from God is a false doctrine.

Creatures not only take their being from God, but are kept in being by remaining in God. They are in God’s Being: “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). To create does not mean giving independent existence to another – does not mean that the creature can be or subsist on its own…. Creation takes place within God, not outside of God….

~ Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology, Cosmology,Golgonooza Press and Friends of the Centere, 1992, p. 151.

The Concept of Creation Ex Nihilo: A Root of our Ecological Crisis

It can be categorically affirmed that the conception of creation ex nihilo lies at the root of our contemporary ecological crisis. Correspondingly, it can equally be affirmed that as this conception was formulated and promoted by theologians whose claim to be Christian theologians has not been disputed by the Church, the Christian Church, at least as represented by those responsible for its major dogmatic, canonical and conciliar orientations and decisions, bears a direct and incontrovertible responsibility for the desecration of the cosmos. It is absolutely no accident that a purely materialistic view of nature first arose not within the Hindu, Buddhist, or Islamic world, but within the Christian world. It is absolutely no accident either that the official responses of the Church, whether in the Christian East or Christian West, to what we call the ecological crisis have been, as I have already said, lamentable: the “official” theology of the Church being so hamstrung by precisely those conceptions that have directly promoted this crisis, it is hardly surprising that the pronouncements are as vapid as they are ineffectual.”

~ Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition, Holy Cross Press, 1998, p. 235.