The Orthodox Way

by Kallistos Ware

Our way of entry into the mystery of God is through personal love. As The Cloud of Unknowing says, “He may well be loved, but not thought. By love can he be caught and held, but by thinking never.”

In the words of John Scotus Eriugena, “Every visible or invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God.” The Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, sees God everywhere and rejoices in him. Not without reason did the early Christians attribute to Christ this saying: “Lift the stone and you will find me; cut the wood in two and there am I.”

Understand that you have within yourself, upon a small scale, a second universe: within you there is a sun, there is a moon, and there are also stars.2 Origen

This quest for the inward kingdom is one of the master themes found throughout the writings of the Fathers. “The greatest of all lessons”, says St Clement of Alexandria, “is to know oneself; for if someone knows himself, he will know God; and if he knows God, he will become like God.”25

It is of course true that there are many who with their conscious brain reject Christ and his Church, or who have never heard of him; and yet, unknown to themselves, these people are true servants of the one Lord in their deep heart and in the implicit direction of their whole life. God is able to save those who in this life never belonged to his Church.

To contemplate nature is to become aware of the dimensions of sacred space and sacred time. This material object, this person to whom I am talking, this moment of time—each is holy, each is in its own way unrepeatable and so of infinite value, each can serve as a window into eternity.

First, then, Scripture and Holy Tradition speak to us repeatedly about the Second Coming. They give us no grounds for supposing that, through a steady advance in “civilization”, the world will grow gradually better and better until mankind succeeds in establishing God's kingdom upon earth. The Christian view of world history is entirely opposed to this kind of evolutionary optimism.

But i do have that optimism.

“A new heaven and a new earth”: man is not saved from his body but in it; not saved from the material world but with it. Because man is microcosm and mediator of the creation, his own salvation involves also the reconciliation and transfiguration of the whole animate and inanimate creation around him—its deliverance “from the bondage of corruption” and entry “into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). In the “new earth” of the Age to come there is surely a place not only for man but for the animals: in and through man, they too will share in immortality, and so will rocks, trees and plants, fire and water.

I do hope for something like this.