The Contribution of Eastern Christendom
to the Development of a Theology of the
Environment
Paul Haffner
ST MARY’S TEXAS, 30 MARCH 2022
DEFINITIONS
Visible creation is itself a divine
gift
The term ‘ecology’ combines the two Greek words, οίκος (house) and λόγος (word)
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4
Pope Francis
Communion
The Father is the ultimate source of everything, the loving and self- communicating foundation of all that exists. The Son, his reflection, through whom all things were created, united himself to this earth when he was formed in the womb of Mary. The Spirit, infinite bond of love, is intimately present at the very heart of the universe, inspiring and bringing new pathways.
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Patriarch Bartholemew
Communion
As Christians, we are also called “to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, as a way of sharing with God and our neighbours on a global scale. It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God’s creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet.”
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1 THE PATRISTIC ERA
7
•
Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter succeed one another
peaceably; the winds fulfil their punctual duties, each from its
own quarter, and give no offence; the ever-flowing streams... and
even the minutest of living creatures mingle together in peaceful
accord. Upon all of these the Great Architect and Lord of the
universe has enjoined peace and harmony, for the good of all
alike, and pre-eminently for the good of ourselves who have
sought refuge in His mercies through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Pope St. Clement I (37–101)
Epistle to the Corinthians
•
For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in
beholding God. 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 seek God… And as we are His members, we are also nourished by
means of the creation (and He Himself grants the creation to us, for He
causes His sun to rise, and sends rain when He wills). He has
acknowledged the cup (which is part of the creation) as His own Blood,
from which He bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of the
creation) He has established as His own Body, from which He gives
increase to our bodies.
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St. Irenaeus of Lyons (129–203)
Against the Heresies
•
The world in all its diversity and varying conditions is composed not only of
rational and diviner natures, but of dumb animals, wild and tame beasts,
of birds and of all the things which live in the waters... Seeing there is so
great a variety in the world, and so great a diversity among rational beings
themselves, what cause ought to be assigned for the existence of the
world? But God, by ineffable skill of His wisdom, transforming and
restoring all things, recalls those very creatures which differed so much
from each other in mental conformation to one agreement of labour and
purpose, so that although they are under the influence of different
motives, they nevertheless complete the fullness and perfection of one
world, and the very variety of minds tends to one end of perfection.
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Origen (184 – 253)
De Principiis
•
By the greatness and the beauty of the creatures proportionately the
Maker of them is seen. For just as by looking up to the heaven and seeing
its order and the light of the stars, it is possible to infer the Word Who
ordered these things, so by beholding the Word of God, one needs must
behold also God His Father, proceeding from Whom He is rightly called His
Father’s Interpreter and Messenger. And this one may see from our own
experience; for if when a word proceeds from men we infer that the mind
is its source, and by thinking about the word, we see with our reason the
mind which it reveals, by far greater evidence and incomparably more,
seeing the power of the Word, we receive knowledge also of His good
Father
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St. Athanasius (297–373)
Against the Heathen
The keys of doctrine which unlock all of Scripture’s books,
have opened up before my eyes the book of creation.
The treasure house of the Ark, the crown of the Law,
this is a book which above its companions has in its narrative
made the Creator perceptible and transmitted his actions;
It has envisioned all His craftsmanship,
made manifest His works of art.
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St. Ephraim the Syrian (306–373)
Hymns of Paradise
By the greatness of His works and the beauty of the things that He
has made the Creator of worlds is rightly discerned. The Creator of
great things is supreme in greatness, of beautiful things in beauty.
Since the work transcends our thoughts, all thought must be
transcended by the Maker. Thus heaven and air and earth and seas
are fair: fair also the whole universe, as the Greeks agree, who from
its beautiful ordering call it κόσμος, that is, order.
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St. Hilary of Poitiers (315–367)
On the Holy Trinity
For what fault have they (the heretics and pagans) to find with the
vast harmony of God? They who ought to have been struck with
amazement on beholding the vaultings of the heavens: they, who
ought to have worshipped Him Who reared the sky as a dome, Who
formed the stable substance of heaven... Is there not cause to
wonder when one looks at the constitution of the sun? ... See also
how the days alternately respond each to the other in due order in
summer increasing and in winter decreasing.
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St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315–386)
Catechetical Lectures
Listen, Christians, you to whom it is forbidden to “recompense evil
for evil” and who are commanded “to overcome evil with good.” Take
the bee for your model, which constructs its cells without injuring
anyone and without interfering with the goods of others. It gathers
openly pollen from the flowers, drawing in the basis for the honey
scattered over them like dew, and injects it into the hollow of its
cells. At first this honey is liquid; time thickens it and gives it its
sweetness.
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St. Basil the Great (329–379)
Hexaemeron VIII
This man God set upon the earth as a kind of second world, a
microcosm; ... He was king of all upon the earth, but a subject of
heaven; earthly and heavenly, transient yet immortal; belonging
both to the visible and to the intelligible order...; combining in the
same being spirit and flesh... Thus he is a living creature under God’s
Providence here, while in transition to another state and ... in
process of deification (θέωσις) by reason of his natural tendency
toward God.
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St. Gregory Nazianzen (329–389)
Orations
St. Peter writes in his second letter we have become “partakers of divine nature.” (2 Pt 1:4) St. Athanasius of
Alexandria elaborates on this beautifully by saying: “The Son of God became man, that we might become
god”, indicates the concept beautifully. What would otherwise seem absurd, that fallen, sinful man may
become holy as God is holy, has been made possible through Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. Naturally,
the crucial Christian assertion, that God is One, sets an absolute limit on the meaning of θέωσις — it is not
possible for any created being to become God ontologically. Through θεωρῐ́ᾱ, the knowledge of God in Jesus
Christ, human beings come to know and experience what it means to be fully human (the created image of
God); Jesus Christ God shares Himself through κοινωνία with the human race, in order to conform them to all
that God is in knowledge, righteousness and holiness. Theosis also asserts the complete restoration of all
people, and of the entire creation. This is built upon the understanding of the atonement put forward by
Irenaeus of Lyons, called “recapitulation.” For many Fathers, θέωσις goes beyond simply restoring people to
their state before the Fall of Adam and Eve, teaching that because Christ united the human and divine
natures in His person, it is now possible for someone to experience closer fellowship with God than Adam
and Eve initially experienced.
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Theosis θέωσις
Now all things were already arrived at their own end: the heaven and the
earth were finished, and all things that lie between them, and the particular
things were adorned with their appropriate beauty; the heaven with the rays
of the stars, the sea and air with the living creatures that swim and fly, and the
earth with all varieties of plants and animals, to all which, empowered by the
Divine will, it gave birth together; the earth was full, too, of her produce,
bringing forth fruits at the same time with flowers; the meadows were full of
all that grows therein, and all the mountain ridges, and summits, and every
hillside, and slope, and hollow, were crowned with young grass, and with the
varied produce of the trees, just risen from the ground, yet shot up at once
into their perfect beauty.
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St. Gregory of Nyssa (330–395)
On the Making of Man
For as in our own life artificers fashion a tool in the way suitable to its use, so
the best Artificer made our nature as it were a formation fit for the exercise of
royalty, preparing it at once by superior advantages of soul, and by the very
form of the body, to be such as to be adapted for royalty: for the soul
immediately shows its royal and exalted character… And further, besides
these facts, the fact that it is the image of that Nature which rules over all
means nothing else than this, that our nature was created to be royal from the
first. For as those who make images of princes both mould the figure of their
form, and represent along with this the royal rank by the vesture of purple,…
so the human nature also, as it was made to rule the rest, was, by its likeness
to the King of all, made as it were a living image, partaking with the archetype
both in rank and in name.
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St. Gregory of Nyssa (330–395)
On the Making of Man
We should remain within the limits imposed by our basic needs and strive
with all our power not to exceed them. For once we are carried a little beyond
these limits in our desire for the pleasures of life, there is then no criterion by
which to check our onward movement, since no bounds can be set to that
which exceeds the necessary... Once a man has passed beyond the limits of
his natural needs, as he grows more materialistic, he wants to put jam on his
bread; and to water he adds a modicum of wine required for his health, and
then the most expensive vintages. He does not rest content with essential
clothing.
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St. Nilus of Ankyra (365?–430)
Ascetic Discourses
The Incarnation of our Saviour represents the greatest fulfillment of divine
solicitude toward man. In fact, neither heaven nor earth nor sea nor sky nor
sun nor moon nor stars nor the entire visible and invisible universe, created
by His word alone or rather brought to light by His word in accordance with
His will, indicate His incommensurable goodness so much as the fact that the
Only Begotten Son, He Who subsists in God’s nature, reflection of His glory,
imprint of His substance, Who was in the beginning, was with God and was
God, through Whom all things were made, after having taken on Himself the
nature of a servant, appeared in human form, by his human form was
considered man, was seen on earth, interacted with men, bore the burden of
our weaknesses and took upon Himself our illnesses.
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Theodoret of Cyrrhus (393-c.466)
Discourses on Divine Providence
Christ has appeared to the world, and having adorned the unadorned world,
he filled it with radiant joy. He took upon him the sin of the world and
overthrew the enemy of the world. He sanctified the fountains of the waters,
and enlightened people’s souls. Miracles were joined to greater miracles. For
today the earth and the sea share in the grace of the Saviour, and the whole
world has been filled with joy. And the feast of today points to the increase in
the miracles, greater than the preceding feast. For in the preceding feast of
the Nativity of the Saviour the earth rejoiced, because it was bearing in the
manger the Lord of all; but in today’s feast of the Epiphany of God the sea is
extremely glad, and it rejoices because it partakes, through the river Jordan, of
the blessings of sanctification.
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St. Proclus of Constantinople (370?–446)
Homilies on the Life of Christ
The Church is one and the same in and throughout each section. The wise
thus glimpse the universe of things brought into existence by God’s creation,
divided between the spiritual world, containing incorporeal intelligent
substances, and the corporeal world, the object of sense (so marvellously
woven together from many natures and kinds of things) as if they were all
another church, not built by hands, but suggested by the ones we build; its
sanctuary in the world above, allotted to the powers above, its nave the world
below, assigned to those whose lot it is to live in the senses… The holy Church
of God is an image of the sensible world by itself; the sanctuary reminds one
of the sky, the dignity of the nave reflects the earth. Likewise the world can be
thought of as a church: the sky seems like a sanctuary, and the cultivation of
the land can make it resemble a temple.
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St. Maximus the Confessor (580–662)
The Mystagogia
The human person has community with things inanimate and
participates in the life of the unreasoning creatures, and shares in
the mental processes of those endowed with reason. Human reason
unites us to incorporeal and intelligent natures, for we applies our
reason and mind and judgement to everything and pursues after
virtues and eagerly follows after piety, which is the crown of the
virtues. And so the human person is a microcosm.
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St. John Damascene (675–749)
Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
2 THE MIDDLE AGES
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Only for me, created in your image and likeness, did You bring forth all creatures
from nothing. You made me ruler of all things on earth for the glory of Your
magnificence and Your goodness. What then does God do, the Maker of the
universe, who also fashioned Adam? As God knew before the beginning of the
world that His commands would be disobeyed, and as He had predetermined that
Adam’s birth into a new life and his restoration would be subordinated to the
fleshly birth of His only Son — what does God do? Creation has been given over to
the human person, and it was for the human personthat creation was made.
Creation having become corruptible for corruptible humans, when the human
person would be restored and be spiritual, incorruptible and immortal, God
wishes that then creation itself would be freed from servitude and would be
incorruptible and spiritual.
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St. Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022)
The First and Second Thanksgiving
God’s providence embraces the whole universe... By contemplating the beauty
and use of each thing, (one who has acquired the habit of detachment) is filled
with love for the Creator. He surveys all visible things: the sky, the sun, moon,
stars and clouds, rain, snow and hail... thunder, lightening, the winds and breezes
and the way they change, the seasons, the years...; the four-legged animals, the
wild beasts and animals and reptiles, all the birds, the springs and rivers, the
many varieties of plants and herbs, both wild and cultivated. He sees in all things
the order, the equilibrium, the proportion, the beauty, the rhythm, the union, the
harmony, the usefulness, the variety, the motion, the colours, the shapes, the
reversion of things to their source, permanence in the midst of corruption.
Contemplating thus all created realities, he is filled with wonder.
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St. Peter of Damascus (1027 –1107)
The Treasury of Divine Knowledge
Do not denigrate anything God has created. All creation is simple, plain and good.
And God is present throughout his creation. Why do you ever consider things
beneath your notice? God’s justice is to be found in every detail of what he has
made. The human race alone is capable of injustice. Human beings alone are
capable of disobeying God’s laws, because they try to be wiser than God … The
rest of Creation cries out against the evil and perversity of the human species.
Other creatures fulfil the commandments of God; they honour his laws. And other
creatures do not grumble and complain about those laws. But human beings
rebel against those laws, defying them in word and action. And in doing so they
inflict terrible cruelty on the rest of God’s creation.
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St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)
Scivias
Saint Francis embodies more than any other figure, praise and contemplation of God
in His creation, exemplified by his Canticle of the Creatures: “All praise be yours, my
Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth, who sustains us and governs us, and
produces various fruits with coloured flowers and herbs”. He respected and loved
the creatures of God, seeing them as witnesses and a mirror of God’s love. Saint
Francis’ radical poverty helped him to attain the power to live and to perceive the
natural gifts of all the beings which form a wondrous mystery of creation, in a
brotherhood and sisterhood with every creature and every environmental event (for
example: wolves, fire, water and even death). This type of perception comes from the
heart and not just from the head, and is rooted in praxis. Saint Francis, in fact,
recommends not cutting down entire trees, but rather some of the branches in order
to allow the tree to live and man to use its wood. In 1979 Saint Francis was declared
the patron saint of the environment by Pope St. John Paul II.
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St. Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)
For by renewing man and sanctifying him, even though in this
transient life, he bears a corruptible body, God also renewed
creation, although creation is not yet freed from the process of
corruption. This deliverance from corruption is said by some to be a
translation to a better state; by others to require a complete
transmutation of everything sensory. Scripture generally makes
simple and straightforward statements about matters that are still
obscure.
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St. Gregory of Sinai (1282–1360)
On Commandments and Doctrines
God creates everything, but He remains uncreated. The fact that the world has
a beginning is confirmed by nature and taught us by history ... Creation is not
from God’s essence; it is not the uncreated energies of God, but the result of
the uncreated energies... To “beget” is the property of God’s nature, but to
“create” is the property of His energy and will. If there were no distinction
between essence and energies, between nature and will, then the creatures
would belong by nature to God... Man is animal in his body, but his soul
originated in the transcendental world (υπερκοσμίον) and is a superior
creation. Man was made paradoxically a small world (μικροκόσμος) in which is
summarized all the rest of creation. For this reason He created man to stand
between, to include and to beautify both worlds, the visible and the invisible.
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St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359)
Sermon 26
3 THE MODERN PERIOD
32
•
Saint Paul’s letters Ephesians and Colossians.
•
Eph 1:22f: God ‘put all things beneath his
[Jesus Christ’s] feet and gave Him as head
over all things to the church, which is His
body, the fullness of the one who fills all
things in every way.’
•
Col 1:18ff): He [Christ] is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead, that in all things he
himself might be preeminent … For in Him all
the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through
Him to reconcile all things for him, making
peace by the blood of his cross [through Him],
whether those on earth or those in heaven.
THE CHURCH AND THE COSMOS
•
Cosmic dimension of the Church was then
established by Origen. He identified the
Church as ‘the world come to give order’
(Κόσμος σε του κόσμου ὴ εκκλησία), and
precisely because Christ, the first ‘light of the
world’, became the order of the Church.
33
•
Christ applies the fruits of redemption to the
cosmos through the Church. The Church is the
only sacrament of salvation.
•
The Church is the efficacious center of
sacredness in the universe. While the act of
redemption is complete in itself, its
application to the cosmos must be brought to
completion.
•
In the East, the cosmos is considered the
temple in which humanity carries out its
priestly role in a theocentric perspective.
THE CHURCH AND THE COSMOS
•
In the West, on the other hand, the cosmos is
understood as the home in which man is the
administrator and caretaker in an
anthropocentric perspective.
•
This Western perspective is limited, because
the cosmos is not renewed merely through
human activity.
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•
Modern Orthodox theology also discusses the
ugliness, disorder, disfiguration, and
desecration of creation by mankind. It does
not ignore the ugliness of evil and the evil of
ugliness, but faces squarely the shattered
image of the creation now being deformed in
the image of human sinfulness. There is a
note of optimism, the optimism of the
Orthodox Christian tradition, which points us
“beyond the shattered image” to the
redeemed and reconciled creation that even
now to the purified sensibilities of the saint
reveals the true image behind, beyond, and
within creation: the face of God.
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
•
For example, John Chryssavgis writes,
“the sacramental character of creation defies all
sacrilege on our part, reminding us at all times
that the world embodies the divine... it is as
though the face of the earth were like the Image
of God—seen and yet also unseen. And it is as
though the face of the world were like a human
face—sketched but not completed. Ugliness and
destruction only and ultimately confirm the
promise of beauty and integration.”
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•
Occupying a central place in Orthodox
theology is the theological notion of
communion and the human person as “the
priest of creation”. In this respect, communion
not only involves communion with the Trinity,
other persons and churches, but it also
involves being in communion with the rest of
creation.
•
According to Ioannis Zizioulas, the ancient
liturgies of the church point very specifically to
the human priestly action as representative of
creation.
PRIESTLY ROLE AND EUCHARIST
•
This can be seen in the fact that the
Eucharistic liturgies began their canon with a
thanksgiving for creation in the first place, and
only afterwards for redemption through
Christ.
•
Furthermore, Zizioulas sees that the place
where the mystery of Christ “in space and
time” occurs now is precisely in the Eucharist.
As he says, in the Eucharist: “the Son presents
us to the Father together with all creation as
his own body.”
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•
It is precisely in the Eucharist, which we also
call communion, where this renewal of
created reality can actually occur. It is in this
mystery that the “here and now” of creation
can encounter eternity, which is none other
than the future accomplishment of God’s plan
in Christ.
•
This, ultimately, is what Zizioulas means by
man being “priest of creation” and what
determines the salvation of creation as a
whole. For the union of the created with the
uncreated occurs in the person of man who
has been re-created in Christ.
PRIESTLY ROLE AND EUCHARIST
•
Through the hypostatic union Christ, the
second divine Person, assumes human nature
and bridges the gap between the uncreated
and created without confusion of the two
natures. As Zizioulas neatly puts it, “The
human creature will freely participate in the
life of the persons of God and so all creation
will be saved in and through man, in Christ.”
•
Only one who is united with the Eucharist
perceives creation as a gift from God made in
Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit; only
one united in with Eucharist understands how
all of creation, a community of co-creatures, is
in relation with Christ, the firstborn of all
creatures.
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•
The eschatological tension evoked by the
Eucharist expresses and reinforces the
communion with the heavenly Church. A
significant consequence of this eschatological
tension inherent in the Eucharist is also the
fact that it gives motion to our human journey
through history, instilling a seed of living hope
in the daily dedication of each individual to his
or her given tasks. If, in fact, the Christian
vision leads to looking toward ‘a new heaven’
and ‘a new earth’ (cf. Rev 21:1), this does not
weaken, but rather encourages our sense of
responsibility toward the present earth.
ESCHATOLOGY
•
Eastern theology also applies the
eschatological dimension of the Eucharist to
the theology of the environment. The
Eucharist, in its most intimate nature, contains
an eschatological dimension which, for as
much as it penetrates history, never fully
transforms into history and thereby
transcends history.
•
The Eucharist will open the road not to the
dream of the moral perfection of the world
(according to an evolutionary framework), but
to the need for the radical exercise and
experience of the ‘κένωσις’ and the Cross, the
only way to live the victory of the resurrection
in the world until the end of time.
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1.
The world has a beginning in
a radical sense; it was
created out of nothing, and is
constantly threatened by the
return to nothingness. It is
not eternal, rather it is
fragile, like a precious vase of
crystal. It must be handled
carefully.
3.
The salvation of human
beings which is offered by
and in Christ, is for us a
cosmic event. Through
human beings all creation
will be saved. Christ not only
saves us from ourselves, he
offers the redemption of the
whole of creation.
2.
This careful handling was
entrusted by God to human
beings, as distinct from all
other beings and from
angels. According to Patristic
theology man and woman
were created, material and
spirit, to be a microcosm of
creation.
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CONCLUSION
BASIC THEOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF EASTERN CHRISTENDOM
4.
The Eucharist characterizes
Orthodox theology not so
much as a mental discipline
but as an experience. The
Eucharist is not simply a
memorial of Christ’s death
and resurrection, but is a
cosmic event involving the
whole of creation.
6.
The ascetic abstains from the
material world not because
he regards matter as inferior
but because he respects
matter very much and does
not want to exploit it for
individual pleasure. Also, the
true ascetic participates in
the suffering of the whole of
creation.
5.
The ascetic experience, has
unfortunately often been
mistaken as a negative
attitude to material creation.
The ascetic is seen as one
who depreciates or rejects
the material world. This is a
Neoplatonic way of thinking
and is not typical of the true
asceticism of the Church.
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CONCLUSION
BASIC THEOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF EASTERN CHRISTENDOM
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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