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Nature1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Extract

The biblical narrative describes the progressive course of creation ending with man. Man appears as its culmination, as a centre on which all the planes of the world converge, a ‘microcosm’. But, ‘created in the image of God’ he is also, according to the Fathers, a ‘microtheos’. This central position of man explains the normative subjection of nature to man as to its cosmic logos, as to one of its multiple hypostases. Man ‘cultivates’ nature, gives a name to creatures and things, ‘humanises’ them. His direct relation with the Creator is constitutive of his being.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1965

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References

page 4 note 1 According to St. John of Damascus, the devil belonged to those choirs of angels who directed the terrestrial order. This presupposes that the cosmic order is already disrupted by the fall of the angels and that in this case man fails to put the situation right.

page 7 note 1 The prayer of St. Symeon Metaphrastes after the Holy Communion underlines this: ‘Thou who hast given me thy flesh for food … penetrate all my limbs, all my joints, my loins and my heart.… strengthen my hamstrings and my bones, and establish me altogether in thy love.’

page 9 note 1 ‘The whole of the world of the intellect uses the whole of the world of the senses as its phenomenon, and the work of the two is one,’ says St. Maximus.

page 9 note 2 The christological definition of the Fourth Council, Chalcedon.

page 9 note 3 The light of the transfigured Christ on Mount Tabor.

page 15 note 1 ‘What shall we offer thee, O Christ … every creature brings its token of gratitude: … the earth, the cave; the desert, the crib …’ (Troparion of the Vespers of Christmas).

page 16 note 1 ‘Today the waters of the Jordan are changed into medicine by the presence of the Lord, and all creation is watered by its mystic waves’ (Prayer of Sophonius at the ‘Blessing of the Waters’). ‘Let all the trees of the forest rejoice, for their nature is sanctified, for Christ has been stretched on the Cross’ (Troparion, 9th Ode, matins, Feast of the Cross).

page 18 note 1 According to St. Athanasius, the cosmic scope of Christ's death which ‘purified the ether’ frees the universe from the domination of the demons.

page 19 note 1 G. Kittel: Die Religionsgeschichte und das Urchrisltntum.

page 19 note 2 This is the deepest meaning of the inscription in the Chapel of Adam in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: ‘The Place of the Skull has become Paradise.’