Knowledge

 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Matthew 5:8

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Mimesis is a kind of communication from one to another; it is the external sharing of ones internal world. There are always two persons involved- the speaker and the hearer; the artist and the observer; one trying to communicate their own thought, the other trying to have knowledge of that thought by considering the words spoken or the object created. If creation as a whole is a series of mimeses from God (His thoughts made external) why is it that so few are able to recognize it as communication at all? Sin is the cause, for it darkens not only the heart but the entirety of man- body and mind.

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St Justin Popović in regards to divine knowledge writes, “Evil is a sickness of soul, whence all the organs of understanding are made sick." He continues saying, the passions of man cause a "diseased intellect...[which] can only engender, fashion and produce sick thoughts, sick feelings, sick desires, and sick knowledge." The mind diseased with sin creates a chasm between God and man, hiding from it the knowledge of God. St Justin also provides the remedy: "In the person of the God-man, God and man are indissolubly united. Man’s understanding is not overthrown, but is renewed, purified and sanctified. It is deepened and divinized and made capable of grasping the truths of life in the light of God-made-man." Drawing near to Christ restores not only the soul of a man to God, but all of him: his mind, eyes, ears, lips; all that he perceives is attune with the Spirit of Truth.

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The saints are those who, by the work of the Spirit, have repented of their passions and come so near to God that they have regained the divine sight that Adam lost. With the resumption of spiritual sight comes too the bearing up of that first task given to man: to name the creation, fulfill it and offer it back to God. Through the ages the saints have prophesied over the creation in truth, unveiling the mysteries of the world not only by word spoken, but also in word written, giving rise to the proliferation of Christian literature.

(Part 4 of 14 of Mimetic Reality series)