Cosmic Liturgy

Cosmic Liturgy: The Theological Dignity of Creation as a Basis of an Orthodox Ecotheology

Daniel Munteanu

Abstract

One of the most important contributions of Orthodox theology to ecotheology consists in its understanding of matter as an expression of the divine rationality. The logoi of the world are connected with the divine Logos and have an inner aspiration towards communion with God. Maximus Confessor’s view of the material world as potential church leads to a cosmic ecclesiology with direct significance for the overcoming of our contemporary ecological crisis. His theology of creatio originalis and of the new creation as transfigurated universe allows us to speak about the theological dignity of matter as the ‘home of God’, as well as a field of dialogue between creator and human beings. The Orthodox spirituality, as spirituality of theosis, of the transfiguration of matter through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is deeply ecological and, at the same time a source for a culture of healing communication, dialogue, love and respect of the ecosystems as expression of God’s rationality.

God is the beginning, the centre and the end of creation. He is beginning as creator, centre as providence and end as one who is bigger than the creation.¹

My intention is to analyze some main ideas of the Orthodox spirituality that contributes to a Christian ecotheology. Ecotheology has to do with an understanding of environment as God’s creation; that is, as a grace of God and as a material presence of the creator. For this purpose I will focus on the cosmic theology of Maximus Confessor (580–662), one of the most famous teachers of Christian spirituality² and the real father of the Byzantine theology.³ He hides in his cosmic theology a way of addressing contemporary problems associated with the ecological crisis. His understanding of the cosmic holiness of the world leads to a genuine orthodox ecological theology.

Maximus Confessor is the theologian of the transfigured cosmos. His theology of matter is part of the theology of creation. One cannot separate the Orthodox theology of matter from the theology of mercy. The life in creation emerges from the Holy Spirit as a Spirit of life (NRSV, Ps. 104:29–30):

‘When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground’.

In Maximus Confessor’s thinking the theology of matter is connected with cosmic ecclesiology. The whole creation has an internal vocation to become an icon of divine beauty; a house or temple of the trinitarian God. The material world can achieve the same level of transfiguration as the resurrected body of Jesus Christ; thereby it can become a church, a space for God’s indwelling and a transparent medium of divine love.

¹ Maximi Confessoris, ‘Questiones ad Thalassium’, in Jacques Paul Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca, vol. 90 (Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1865), p. 1088.

² Christoph Schonborn, Erzbischof von Wien, ‘Vorwort’, in Maximus der Bekenner, Drei geistliche Schriften (Freiburg in Breisgau: Johannes-Verl., 1996), p. 7; also see Walther Volker, Maximus Confessor als Meister des geistlichen Lebens (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1965).

³ See Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700) (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974), pp. 8–12.

Movement, Rationality and the Theological Dignity of the World

Creatio originalis is a major aspect of the Christian faith. It encloses a particular view of the world and of matter. This matter is not pre-existent but exists on account of God’s free invention, God’s free creation. The matter and the whole universe are the product of a creative act of God and are maintained in existence by God through an act of conservation. God conserves and thereby leads the world toward its own trinitarian communion.⁴

The tendency in a trinitarian theology attributes the creation of the world to the Father, redemption to the Son and the perfection of the world to the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that any one or two of the other triune persons are not present in creation, redemption or completion. The formula—God the Father creates in the Son through the Holy Spirit—underlines that the trinitarian work of creation, redemption and perfection is one indivisible work.

Maximus Confessor, ‘a great figure in the Orthodox theology of creation’,⁵ is the ‘cosmic theologian’⁶ of divine rationality. For him the entire creation is based on God’s thinking and wisdom. Without God’s thoughts there would be neither creation nor diversity in the world. Creation represents an ontological becoming of God’s ideas. God thinks and wishes a creation which has as its model the person of the divine Logos, who is the hypostatic, absolute reason. God is present in his creation through his Logos; that is, through the divine logoi of creation who are coming into existence through the Logos and exist toward the Logos. The divine logoi are a radiance of the divine reason, ‘mirrors’ of the divine Logos.⁷ That is why ‘[t]he heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork’. (RSV, Ps. 19:1). This spiritual vision of the universe as existing on account of the divine architectural logoi is centred on the triune God as source and transcendental destiny (telos) of creation. ‘Creation is brought forth into existence so that it might reveal God and participate in the richness of his being’.⁸

The movement of the world as the beginning of creation means a diversification of the rationality of the Logos in different rationalities. ‘If the cosmos was created through the Logos and Logos means rationality, than the entire cosmos is based upon an immanent rationality.’⁹ The inner structure of the universe is the rationality of the trinitarian God. ‘The immanent structure of the cosmos is a reflection of the inner-trinitarian structure’¹⁰ and in intimate communion with the Trinity. The one rationality of God is the interior matrix of the entire creation in its diversity because, also in the Trinity, there is a unity in diversity. The entire creation is in its divine logoi a reflection of the Holy Trinity. This theology of the divine logoi overcomes deism and pantheism at the same time.

God’s grace indwells all material things and beings, so that everything participates in God. The divine logoi have a natural movement which cannot be separated from the providential energies of God. The movement of the world is an expression of an inner aspiration to fulfilment. The divine logoi expresses also the efficient power of God who is working in the world from inside.

From the outside God is acting as the ultimate scope and the attractive aim of creation.¹¹ The creation is a product of the triune God and is called to an eternal life in communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This communion has to be free in the sense of being a perfect communion of love. This is the reason why Maximus Confessor’s theology is anthropocentric. For him there is no love without freedom. The freedom of the entire universe is connected with the freedom of the human being. As a free being and ‘microcosmos’,¹² the human being has the vocation to ascend with the entire world to the creator and towards an interpersonal communion. The main aim of matter is to become a vehicle of love, to be a transparent presence of God’s grace. God loves the world, his creation, and takes into his eternal communion a matter transformed by the mystery of love.

In the Orthodox tradition the inner rationality of the creation is also a sign of God’s immanence. The divine rationality of the world means at the same time the presence of the uncreated energies of God.¹³ The creation can become more rational, more vivid and more transparent, if it is transformed through God’s uncreated energies. Divine rationality does not mean something exclusively intellectual; instead, it is an expression of God’s absolute love. The presence of the uncreated energies of God in creation is the source of life, of the eternal life. That means that, if someone or something becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit, then she, he or it reflects the beauty of and experiences the light of the eternal divine life. Maximus Confessor speaks about different incarnations or embodiments of the Logos: in the logoi of the world, in the spiritual meanings (logoi) of Scripture, in Jesus Christ and in the faithful.¹⁴

Dumitru Stăniloae, one of the most important translators and interpreters of Maximus Confessor’s theology, describes the creation in its very beginning as a transparent matter, which irradiates the divine life and divine beauty. Human sin was the reason why the creation lost its transparency and became more and more opaque. Opacity means the rejection of communion, rejection of love and thus rejection of life. If a biological system becomes more and more isolated from the others it dies. Life is, and remains, ‘communication in communion’. Eternal life is participation in the ‘supreme structure of love’; that is, within the inner-trinitarian communion. Authentic communion can be experienced as an energy field of the uncreated energies of the Holy Spirit and is an anticipation of the eschatological life.¹⁵

The material creation has a spiritual dimension, because it is the work of God who wants to indwell it. ‘God is restless in his Spirit until he finds rest in us and in his world’.¹⁶ The Orthodox Church cultivates a feeling of sacred, holy matter especially in the sacraments. The sacramental life is a restoration of creation, the medium for the experience of God. To see the creation in its relation with the creator means to rediscover the depth of the world and its real sense. The church in its cosmic dimension has to be understood as the anticipation of the new creation. The church involves the dynamic of restoration of creation, because creation has the inner vocation to become the church or the space of the indwelling of the trinitarian God.

The created world does not have its aim and fulfilment in itself: ‘Nothing that comes into being is its own end, since it is not self-caused . . . Nothing that came into being is perfect in itself and complete’.¹⁷ The triune God is the origin and the goal of creation. In his divine wisdom he creates all things visible and invisible, ex nihilo (out of nothing).¹⁸ The creatures are ‘parts of God’, because they have the hypostatic rationality of God as principle and cause. The existence, the movement is for Maximus Confessor a proof of participation in God.¹⁹ Each creature has life, movement, time and space of its existence. Everything is a gift of God. On the one hand, the life of the creatures depends on God’s grace; on the other hand, the fact of their existence is the enrichment of human existence. Life and movement are to be understood as participation in God, because the gift of life has its origin in God. There is no life without the Spirit of life.

To be created by God means to participate in God, in his rationality, in his will (Acts 17:28). God made all things ‘by his Word and by his Wisdom’.²⁰ At the beginning was the Logos, so that ‘a Logos preceded the creation of human beings, a Logos preceded everything that receives its becoming from God’.²¹

The logoi of the world are thoughts of God which become existent with the creation: ‘Everything participates in God, if they are created by God’.²² God’s logoi of beings manifest the creating will of God as well as the meaning and the purpose of existence: ‘Nothing that came into being is perfect in itself nor has it purpose in itself ’.²³

The entire creation is penetrated by the energies of God, so that ‘the Holy Spirit is not absent in any creature especially those which have Logos’.²⁴ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (NRSV, Acts 17:28). Thanks to this Christological and pneumatological understanding of the presence of God in creation, Maximus Confessor underlines the divine dignity, the positive value of the physical and material world. The creation as the mysterious presence of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit can be understood as a revelation of God. God is to the soul what the soul is to the body. The material world is God’s intention, God’s will and God’s gift made by the creative Logos and the wisdom that transcends all wisdom. God ‘permeates all things and gives at the same time independent existence to all things in himself ’.²⁵

⁴ D. Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: The Experience of God, vol. 1: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God (Cambridge, Mass: T. & T. Clark, 1998), p. 150.

⁵ E. Theotrikoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009), p. 31.

⁶ P. M. Blowers and R. L. Wilken, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: St. Maximus the Confessor (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), p. 17.

⁷ D. Stăniloae, Viata si scrierile Sfintului Maxim Marturisitorul, Filocalia, II: Sfintul Maxim Marturisitorul (Bucuresti: Humanitas 2004), p. 21.

⁸ D. Stăniloae, The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2: The World, Creation and Deification (Massachusetts: T. & T. Clark Ltd 2000), p. 113.

⁹ D. Popescu, Esenta sintezei dogmatice a Pr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, Studii Teologice, 35:7–8 (1983), 581–6 at 584.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ D. Stăniloae, Viata si scrierile Sfantului Maxim Marturisitorul, p. 22.

¹² Maximi Confessoris, Ambiguorum Liber, in Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca, vol. 91, p. 1305B.

¹³ D. Stăniloae, Introducerea traducatorului, in Sf. Maxim Marturisitorul, Ambigua (Bucuresti: Editura Institutului Biblic si de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Romane, 1983), p. 29.

¹⁴ Blowers and Wilken, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, p. 21.

¹⁵ D. Staniloae, ‘Le Saint-Esprit dans la Theologie et la vie de l´Eglise Orthodox., Contacts, 26 (1974), 227–56 at 248 and 246.

¹⁶ J. Moltmann, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life (London: SCM Press, 1997), p. 41.

¹⁷ Blowers and Wilken, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, pp. 48–50.

¹⁸ Maximus Confessor, Questiones ad Thalassium, pp. 1048A; Ambiguorum Liber, p. 1080A.

¹⁹ Maxim Marturisitorul, Ambigua, p. 81.

²⁰ Maximus Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber, p. 1080A.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ibid., pp. 1079B–1080B.

²³ Ibid., p. 1072C.

²⁴ Maxim Marturisitorul, Raspunsuri catre Talasie (Bucuresti: Humanitas 2004), p. 65.

²⁵ Blowers and Wilken, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, p. 66.

Basic Aspects of Holiness: Christological and Pneumatological Dimensions

Maximus Confessor links holiness with the presence of Jesus Christ. Hans Urs von Balthasar points to the fact that for him ‘ontology and cosmology is extensive Christology’, so that the hypostatic synthesis is to be understood as God’s first thought about the world.²⁶ Jesus Christ who lives in the cosmos irradiates everywhere his light, because he integrates all logoi of the universe.

This Christological dimension of holiness is complemented, by Maximus Confessor, with the pneumatological dimension. Christ carries the Holy Spirit through the unity of the essence, so that he can give him to the world. The sanctification of the human being and of the whole creation occurs by the architectural work of the Holy Spirit.²⁷

Through baptism the mysterious body of Christ grows and spreads out the mystery of the incarnation of the divine Logos: ‘Then the Word of God wishes always to realize in all things the mystery of his incarnation’.²⁸ Christ united the nature of the world to himself in a single hypostasis without division and without confusion (mixing). His incarnation, death and resurrection are the beginning of the new creation. We can speak about a protological, a soteriological and an eschatological dignity of matter. The entire cosmos has a trinitarian dignity by virtue of its creation, redemption and completion. Matter exists only by the original and vital inbreathing of God (Gen. 2:7) and as the potential house of the trinitarian God. Life itself is an infusion of God’s grace. Matter has not only a Christological dignity due to the enfleshment of the Logos but also a primordial dignity because of God’s vital inbreathing and an eschatological dignity as the house of God. Maximus Confessor understood the eschatological destiny of creation as the ineffable communion with God, a life-giving infusion with God’s divine presence.

Not only the soul but matter also is suffused with the vital breath of the Holy Spirit. Matter has ‘the divine and ineffable honour of dwelling with God’.²⁹ In the eschatological life it is promised that God is ‘above all and through all and in all’ (RSV, Eph. 4:6), ‘just as the soul naturally indwells both the whole of the body and each individual part without diminishing itself ’.³⁰

Baptism in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is, in this sense, access to the divine life.³¹ Baptism is described as divine restoration and a bath of illumination through the Holy Spirit.³² According to Maximus the human being was created from the beginning in God’s image in order to attain the likeness of god.³³ This positive and existential dynamism of humankind was perverted by sin as an unreasonable movement³⁴ and was restored in Christ. God foreknew the fall and this is the reason why we cannot speak about a felix culpa. ‘He who, by the sheer inclination of his will, established the beginning of all creation, seen and unseen, before all the ages and before that beginning of created beings, had an ineffably good plan for those creatures.’³⁵

²⁶ Hans Urs von Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie. Das Weltbild Maximus’ des Bekenners, zweite, vollig veranderte Auflage (Einsiedeln: Johannes-Verl., 1961), p. 204.

²⁷ Maximi Confessoris, Ambiguorum Liber, p. 1281A.

²⁸ Ibid., 1084D.

²⁹ Blowers and Wilken, On the Cosmic Mystery, p. 94.

³⁰ Ibid., p. 101.

³¹ Maximi Confessoris, Questiones ad Thalassium, p. 636.

³² Maximi Confessoris, Epistole, in Jacques Paul Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca, vol. 91 (Paris: Garnier Fratres Editions 1912), p. 493.

³³ Maximi Confessoris, Ambiguorum Liber, p. 1345.

³⁴ See Assaad Elias Kattan, Verleiblichung und Synergie: Grundzuge der Bibelhermeneutik bei Maximus Confessor (Leiden, Boston and Koln: Brill 2003), pp. 90–98.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 115.

Incarnation as Restoration of the Cosmic Dynamic of Creation

‘The incarnation of God is the centre, the sense and the aim of the world’.³⁶ Not the sin of Adam, but the state of the world as it has originated from the thinking and creative act of God, leads to Christ. The incarnation of Christ would have taken place also without the sin of Adam. Maximus Confessor describes the mystery of God’s incarnation as foolishness and as weakness of God. It is the foolishness and the weakness of an absolute love.

Maximus Confessor connects baptism with the restoration of the divine dynamism of the world which was, from the beginning, God’s purposes for his creation. It concerns the dynamism of being to well-being and to eternal well-being. Baptism leads the person toward a movement in the rationality of the everlasting existence. It is a movement towards participation in the life of the resurrection.³⁷ This is the reason why Maximus Confessor describes baptism as an essential achievement of the soteriological work of Christ. It is a restoration of God’s image. By his incarnation Christ has not only transformed his human nature, but has also given a new way of being to the whole of humanity; a new origin of existence, namely the second birth from the Holy Spirit.³⁸ Through baptism the person receives the grace of God, the adoption by the Holy Spirit, the pure ‘dress of the immortality’.³⁹ This holiness which becomes accessible to the person with baptism is not exterior, but internal. This is evident when Maximus Confessor calls the baptized person a ‘house of God’.40 Maximus distinguishes three births of man: biological or bodily birth, birth through baptism, birth through resurrection. He puts the holiness of the church in connection with its role in the restoration of the dynamism of the creation by Christ in the Holy Spirit as an integration of the creation in God’s community.⁴¹ It concerns the new life of the community with God which begins with the rebirth from the Holy Spirit. This life is a God-formed life because, as members of the church, human beings become one with the body of Christ.⁴² Due to this unity with the body of Christ, Maximus Confessor affirms a realized eschatology. ‘The kingdom of God is among them’,⁴³ because the Holy Spirit embodies the reign of God. The Holy Spirit is actually the Kingdom of God.⁴⁴

There is no resurrection without Pentecost; for Maximus the secret of Pentecost lies in the ‘immediate union’ between God and his creation.⁴⁵ Maximus Confessor understands God as the beginning and the end or aim of every movement.

³⁶ Von Balthasar, The ‘Gnostic’ Centurion of Maximus Confessor, p. 135.

³⁷ Ibid., 1349; See L. Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, p. 392.

³⁸ Maximi Confessoris, Questiones ad Thalassium, p. 632.

³⁹ Ibid., pp. 639–40.

⁴⁰ Ibid., p. 637.

⁴¹ See D. Stăniloae, ‘Dinamica creatiei in Biserica’, Ortodoxia, 3–4 (1977), 281–91 and Irenee-Henri Dalmais, ‘Mystere Liturgique et Divinisation dans la Mystagogie de Saint Maxime le Confessuer’, in Jacque Fontaine and Charles Kannengiesser, eds, Epektasis. Melanges Patristique offerts au Cardinal Jean Danielou (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), p. 56.

⁴² Maximi Confessoris, Liber Asceticus, pp. 911–12; Maximi Confessoris, Capitum Theol. et Oecon. Centuria II, in Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca, vol. 90, p. 1163.

⁴³ Ibid., pp. 1167–70.

⁴⁴ Maximi Confessoris, Orationis Dominicae brevis expositio, in Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca, vol. 90, p. 884.

⁴⁵ Maximi Confessoris, Questiones ad Thalassium, p. 760.

Eucharistic Holiness and Eucharistic Ethos

For Maximus participating in the divine occurs mainly within the Eucharist. Here everything is fulfilled through a divine strength which leads the whole of nature ‘to the resurrection of life’.⁴⁶ The Eucharist is the ‘bread of life and strength’,⁴⁷ ‘divine food’ to the immortality of nature,⁴⁸ ‘abundance of divine goods’.⁴⁹ The life of the church is holy and divine, because in Christ indwells the plenty of the divine life and glory.⁵⁰ Through Christ we can participate now in this divine life.

We have to ask how this indwelling of the divine fullness takes place in the human person. Maximus explains this through his use of the idea of perichoresis, a concept that signifies a reciprocal indwelling. This is an idea which becomes core to Maximus’ theology. According to the degree of faith they possess, a person is a carrier of Christ. Through this indwelling the individual person’s longing is fulfilled; that person finds his rest in God in the anticipation of the completion of existence.⁵¹ Perichoresis is the way to theosis.

⁴⁶ Maximus der Bekenner, Drei geistliche Schriften, p. 25.

⁴⁷ Maximi Confessoris, Orationis Dominicae brevis expositio, p. 878.

⁴⁸ Maximus der Bekenner, Drei geistliche Schriften, 43.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 44.

⁵⁰ Maximi Confessoris, Capitum Theol. et Oecon. Centuria II, p. 1134.

⁵¹ Maximi Confessoris, Questiones ad Thalassium, p. 608.

The Holiness of the Church as a Completion of the Creation

According to Maximus Confessor the church has an eschatological dimension.⁵² This leads to the resurrection and to everlasting life and contributes to the restoration of the universe. Maximus understands the redemptive work of Christ not as a bare return to the paradise, but as a perfection of the state in paradise. The resurrection exceeds the heavenly joy because it encloses the inexpressible theosis of nature by grace.⁵³ The grace of the Holy Spirit raises nature to its participation in the divine life.⁵⁴

The focus of Maximus’ ecclesiology lies not on his analysis of the hierarchical structure of the church but, rather, in the cosmic dimension of holiness. Such holiness depends on the presence of the Holy Spirit. The intensity of this presence determines the degree of the holiness of the church. Typically, for Maximus Confessor, is the link between holiness and rationality. Where deliberate use of rationality takes place, there is also the Holy Spirit. All creatures who make use of rationality participate in the Holy Spirit as Spirit of Christ.⁵⁵ The Holy Spirit gives us the light of knowledge which is rooted in divine love.⁵⁶ The true knowledge of God, which is possible in the space of the church, means an ecstatic union with God.⁵⁷ Love purifies reason, so that this irradiates the divine light. If reason unites with God by love and prayer, it becomes philanthropic and gentle.⁵⁸ Consequently, the church is holy because it irradiates the light of God’s love and God’s peace.⁵⁹

If Maximus Confessor shows the church as an icon of the universe, he also underlines the fact that the holiness of the church cannot be separated from creation.⁶⁰ The relational ontology of the church discloses that the church fulfils no end in itself, but exists for the welfare of the person and the world and has a cosmic dimension. ⁶¹ Maximus Confessor sees this cosmic ontology in connection with cosmic ecclesiology. In his view there is a cosmic movement in the world, that concerns also the longing of existence towards well-existence and finally to eternal well-existence. For Maximus well-existence means participation in the new creation and is as such an ecclesial existence. This world-view presumes that each form of existence should achieve community with God and has an ecclesial potentiality. This new existence anticipates the everlasting life of the resurrection in the fullness of the divine, trinitarian life.

On account of his Logos cosmology Maximus Confessor understands the world in correspondence to the structure of the church with the sky as a Hieratikon and the earth as a Naos.⁶² This approach includes, in my opinion, an ecological meaning, because the cosmic ecclesiology has an evident ecologicaldimension.⁶³ If one considers the world as the church of God, the universeenjoys a transcendental, untouchable dignity. One who destroys the world is guilty of sin against the inherent divine rationality of creation. The theological dignity of the world and all creatures is based on the presence of the Logos in the logoi of the created beings.⁶⁴ The incarnation of the Logos begins, so to speak, already with this inexpressible presence in logoi of things. ‘Contemplation of the logoi in creation belongs to the work of the Spirit in man’s [humanities] sanctification and deification’.⁶⁵ Christians are only those who can see the world with the eyes of God and who respect all other creatures, because they have the same longing for eternal well-being.⁶⁶ Human beings reach the truth of their existence if they irradiate God’s love. The theology of the logoi ofbcreation encloses a positive perception of the world, as long as the aim of the creation consists in unity without confusion with God.⁶⁷ Every reasonable creature has an immanence of the divine logoi and can be described as a part of God.⁶⁸ The logoi of creation are ‘bearers of divine intentionality’ to the union between God and creation. This dynamism provided in the act of creation has been realized in the incarnation of the Logos.⁶⁹

⁵² Maximi Confessoris, Mystagogia, in Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca, vol. 91, pp. 665–8.

⁵³ Maximi Confessoris, Questiones ad Thalassium, p. 532.

⁵⁴ See Walther Volker, Maximus Confessor als Meister des geistlichen Lebens, pp. 335–40.

⁵⁵ Maximi Confessoris, Questiones ad Thalassium, pp. 297–8.

⁵⁶ Maximi Confessoris, Capitum de Charitate Centuria I, in Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca, vol. 90, p. 963.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Maximi Confessoris, Capitum de Charitate Centuria II, in Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca, vol. 90, p. 1002.

⁵⁹ Maximi Confessoris, Capitum de Charitate Centuria I, 970: ‘pax Dei charitatem adducens’.

⁶⁰ See Maximi Confessoris, Mystagogia, pp. 668–9.

⁶¹ Von Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie, p. 122.

⁶² See Maximi Confessoris, Mystagogia, p. 672.

⁶³ See Radu Bordeianu, ‘Maximus and Ecology: The Relevance of Maximus the Confessor’s Theology of Creation for the Present Ecological Crisis’, The Downside Review, 127 (2009), 103–26.

⁶⁴ Maximi Confessoris, Ambiguorum Liber, pp. 1285C–88.

⁶⁵ Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, p. 82.

⁶⁶ See Maximi Confessoris, Mystagogia, pp. 673–6.

⁶⁷ Von Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie, p. 122.

⁶⁸ Maximi Confessoris, Ambiguorum Liber, p. 1068D and p. 1080ABC.

⁶⁹ Assaad Elias Kattan, Verleiblichung und Synergie, pp. 66–70.

The Sacramental Structure of the Universe

‘The world has a sense if it is understood as a gift of God for the people. The universe is the vineyard, that God gives to the people . . . everything is a God’s gift, the sign of his love’.⁷⁰ Through the created world God invites us to the dialogue of love. To keep love vibrant means to answer to God’s love in a eucharistic manner. The world is not an object of possession for human beings but an invitation toward a dialogue of love and an interpersonal communion with God and with each other. The material world is a field of dialogue between creator and creature as well as between creatures. Matter is not looked upon as a barrier, but rather as a bridge to love and communication. The eucharistic world-view contributes to the overcoming of the ecological crisis and promotes a culture of love, reconciliation and healing communication.⁷¹

This cosmic ecclesiology, based on a eucharistic spirituality, emphasizes the meaning of an ecological world-view and contributes to a culture of reconciliation. The real aim of the world is the koinonia of love, koinonia with the Holy Trinity.⁷² The eucharistic world-view means a culture of divine communion. In the centre of this theology of the cosmic holiness of creation stands a liturgical world-view that promotes a culture of dialogue, of acceptance of the other as an expression of God’s rationality.

⁷⁰ D. Stăniloae, ‘Cateva trasaturi caracteristice ale Ortodoxiei’, Mitropolia Olteniei, 7–8 (1970), 730–42 at 740.

⁷¹ See Daniel Munteanu, ‘Christian Humanism as Paradigm of Healing Communication. Ecumenical Dimension of the Theological Witness’, in I. Tulcan and C. Ioja, eds, The International Symposium of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Arad (6–8 June 2007), Accentes and Perspectives of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology as Part of Church Mission in Today’s World, Arad (2008), 191–206.

⁷² See Archbishop Anastasios (Yannoulatos), Facing the World: Orthodox Christian Essays on Global Concerns (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), pp. 39 and 59. 344 D. Munteanu / International Journal of Public Theology 4 (2010) 332–344