For most of the eastern religions the Cosmos is mind. So too for many quantum physicists and some idealist leaning Christians - all is consciousness.
If so, it offers an explanation of The Fall - that God’s energies were creating the Cosmos as pure gift. Everything filled with Logos - logic, ie every thing acting in accord to God’s will. Then something disrupted this flow of gifting. An intention arose in some being.
To narrate this spiritual truth in images the Bible tells us that Man made a counter-intention to God’s will. Instead of accepting the fruit at the proper time when mature as a gift, Man took. This disrupted the flow of grace, and the Cosmos fell.
St Maximus tells us that Man is a Microcosm of the Cosmos, and within him is contained 5 fractures of being.
We now live with the dualities of created and uncreated, intelligible and sensible, heaven and earth, paradise and universe, male and female.
Man, being microcosm and mediator of the spiritual and material, is called to heal these divisions within himself.
To unite heaven and earth by virtue, to unify the tangible and intelligible worlds by acquiring angelic gnosis, and to reunite by love the created and the uncreated.
As Andrew Louth puts it,
“…through accomplishing all the stages of the spiritual life, the human person achieves, not simply union with God, but also fulfils what is the essentially human role of being the natural bond of all being, drawing the whole created order into harmony with itself, and into union with God.”
The healing is also reflected in the Eucharistic liturgy, St Maximus tells us in his Mystagogia.
Basically these divisions are echoed by correspondences in the Church. Sanctuary/nave is reflected in invisible/visible, heaven/earth, soul/body, mind/reason, New Testament/Old Testament, meaning/text.
So the movement between sanctuary and nave in the liturgy interprets and is interpreted by movement between the other divisions.
So the liturgical movement celebrates the healing of the five divisions.
Another way to think about it is that the cosmos is Mind, which is “funneled” (incarnated) into brains.
The disharmonious FALSE patterns of chaos in the cosmos (incarnated as passions and conflict) are attuned within us to the TRUE patterns in harmony with God’s loving will.
Think of it as being in accord with the Tao, the Way. What is “true movement?”
As David Bentley Hart says HERE,
"...virtue is, he [Augustine] argues....is the establishment of the soul's proper rhythm; and the soul that is virtuous is one that turns its rhythms not to the domination of others, but to their benefit. "
Christ then draws all contradictions into Himself, purifies and harmonies them.
In Jordan Daniel Wood’s superb new book, The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor, he puts it like this :
“Every creature’s motion, sinful or not, generates time.
False motion renders existence more crudely finite, slavishly borne along with the flow of phenomena.
True motion—the motion of virtue, knowledge, love of God in Christ—brings creaturely motion nearer its term and thus cessation, and hence takes leave of the provisional necessities of spatiotemporal existence…
But those logoi carry potentialities that are themselves actualized for the first time in one hypostasis, Jesus of Nazareth.”
St Maximus tells us that Man is a Microcosm of the Cosmos, and within him is contained 5 fractures of being.
We now live with the dualities of created and uncreated, intelligible and sensible, heaven and earth, paradise and universe, male and female.
Man, being microcosm and mediator of the spiritual and material, is called to heal these divisions within himself.
To unite heaven and earth by virtue, to unify the tangible and intelligible worlds by acquiring angelic gnosis, and to reunite by love the created and the uncreated.
As Andrew Louth puts it,
“…through accomplishing all the stages of the spiritual life, the human person achieves, not simply union with God, but also fulfils what is the essentially human role of being the natural bond of all being, drawing the whole created order into harmony with itself, and into union with God.”
The healing is also reflected in the Eucharistic liturgy, St Maximus tells us in his Mystagogia.
Basically these divisions are echoed by correspondences in the Church. Sanctuary/nave is reflected in invisible/visible, heaven/earth, soul/body, mind/reason, New Testament/Old Testament, meaning/text.
So the movement between sanctuary and nave in the liturgy interprets and is interpreted by movement between the other divisions.
So the liturgical movement celebrates the healing of the five divisions.
Another way to think about it is that the cosmos is Mind, which is “funneled” (incarnated) into brains.
The disharmonious FALSE patterns of chaos in the cosmos (incarnated as passions and conflict) are attuned within us to the TRUE patterns in harmony with God’s loving will.
Think of it as being in accord with the Tao, the Way. What is “true movement?”
Well, right now we exist as biological beings, and get our energy from dead biological beings - animals and plants.
This is life as bios.
However there is another type of life energy : zoe, or spiritual life.
It’s often missed in translation, but Christ came to give us zoe, true life, which is eternal, and animates not our biological body but our soul.
Our biological body moves in three dimensions, up and down etc, and also in the fourth dimension, time.
Our soul does not move this way. Our soul moves by desire. Think of when you move toward someone in your intention, in love. This is an invisible movement of your soul.
This movement is exercised by virtue.
This is life as bios.
However there is another type of life energy : zoe, or spiritual life.
It’s often missed in translation, but Christ came to give us zoe, true life, which is eternal, and animates not our biological body but our soul.
Our biological body moves in three dimensions, up and down etc, and also in the fourth dimension, time.
Our soul does not move this way. Our soul moves by desire. Think of when you move toward someone in your intention, in love. This is an invisible movement of your soul.
This movement is exercised by virtue.
Order *IS* love.
The incarnation basically injected this harmonious pattern in perfect accord with God’s will (because Christ IS God) into the disharmonious patterns of our world and universe.
Kind of like a harmony injected into a cacophony that gradually harmonies all those discordant notes with God's perfect song.
The incarnation basically injected this harmonious pattern in perfect accord with God’s will (because Christ IS God) into the disharmonious patterns of our world and universe.
Kind of like a harmony injected into a cacophony that gradually harmonies all those discordant notes with God's perfect song.
As David Bentley Hart says HERE,
"...virtue is, he [Augustine] argues....is the establishment of the soul's proper rhythm; and the soul that is virtuous is one that turns its rhythms not to the domination of others, but to their benefit. "
Christ then draws all contradictions into Himself, purifies and harmonies them.
In Jordan Daniel Wood’s superb new book, The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor, he puts it like this :
“Every creature’s motion, sinful or not, generates time.
False motion renders existence more crudely finite, slavishly borne along with the flow of phenomena.
True motion—the motion of virtue, knowledge, love of God in Christ—brings creaturely motion nearer its term and thus cessation, and hence takes leave of the provisional necessities of spatiotemporal existence…
But those logoi carry potentialities that are themselves actualized for the first time in one hypostasis, Jesus of Nazareth.”
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