Pt. 7: Chiastic Cosmos
The concept of mankind's dominion over the created order can often revert to a subtle evolutionary assumption: human beings are the superior creatures and therefore have command over the cosmos. While this aspect is present in the Eastern Christian tradition to a degree, the relationship between mankind and the world is more generally expressed as an ontological reality than as merely a hierarchical one. The result of Adam's transgression is a curse that begins with him and moves beyond himself, flowing outward into the surrounding creation, plunging it into mutual corruption.
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In his book On The Mystical Life, St Symeon the New Theologian explores the cause of the intimate bond between the nature of man and the nature of the cosmos. He first posits that if the creation was not made subject to mankind it would have remained united to God, detached from mankind at the fall, refusing to serve the transgressor Adam as he rejected the Life Giver. But knowing that mankind would be redeemed in Christ, God subjected the world to man that it too would taste of death as mankind had, providing corrupted food for the corrupted man. Creation obeys God in this subjection that it may be raised to completion when mankind is once again united to Christ:
When God makes man new again and renders him immortal, incorruptible and spiritual, He will change all of creation itself together with man, and will bring it to completion as immaterial and everlasting.
This new cosmos can only be forged by the regenerating power of the Church. Thus St Simeon writes "The fully ripened world is the Church of Christ", growing up into fullness, becoming incorruptible food for man's body and soul.
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The history and ultimate culmination of the entire cosmos is chiastic: its gradual dying in the repercussions of man's sin and its final restoration to God through its immaterial cultivation and unity in the Church. The corruptible cosmos will give way entirely to its spiritual underpinning, the immaterial reality will fold into physicality and the marriage of cosmic incorruptibility and tangible wisdom will be made manifest in Christ's new creation.
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