Beautiful, thank you for this. This struck something in me, as a convert to Orthodoxy from the occult. Mostly, I had a deeply animist understanding of the world, and I’m still slowly integrating it into how I understand the world now under the provenance of God. How I relate to the land as a European American was something I used to think about a lot. It’s thrilling and refreshing to see this talked about through an Orthodox lens.
Yes! I think we believe things because we see glimmers of truth in them, and while the occult is many things (many of them not so great), esoteric movements at least appeal to people’s hunger for integrated connections between the spiritual world and the environment!
I am leaving a comment here for myself so I can come back and leave a longer dialogue but... I have been pondering and thinking on very similar themes the past few years!
Can Americans become indigenous? Not in a cultural appropration, but could we authentically belong to the land? What would it take?
This question has taken a central space in my homeschooling approach. We spend days in the forest, on the beach; learning the ancient names of the rivers and the people who once lived here, what they mean. The names of plants, flowers, trees, bird calls, and yes, local mythos too! Captain Kidd's treasure, fairy woods...
Well, it is Nicene Christianity. But there are certainly flattened ways of understanding creation ex nihilo that reveal their own absurdity. I think Solovyov and Bulgakov, when read in their entirety and not just proof-texted, articulate this well.
The question is whether it IS Nicene Christianity.
Orthodox theologian (and co-translator of the Philokalia with Met Kallistos Ware) Philip Sherrard argues that creation ex nihilo actually constitutes the most fundamental philosophical and theological error of our modern Christian consciousness.
Unless the Nihil is explicitly identified with God Himself — which, in its commonly understood formulation, it absolutely is not — creation ex nihilo is actually an absurdity and leads directly to the pernicious dualism (not the essential duality, paradox and coincidence of opposites of deepest Reality, to be clear) that distorts true Christian faith and every part of our lives.
.
I have not read Solovyov or Bulgakov, much to my chagrin. I would love a recommendation for something on this subject!
Yeah, I actually think we’re circling the same drain here in an effort to avoid dualism. I’ve found, in my own theological reading and thinking, that every orthodoxy can be misunderstood in such a way as to make it the opposite of what it’s trying to communicate.
Hence why apophatic theology ends up being more useful to us in the long run than cataphatic theology. In it’s best form, creation ex nihilo says, “Not dualism. Not a flat monism, either.” I kinda got into triads and sacred geometry a bit in my essay over at The Wood Between the Worlds on The Realm of the Elderlings— I, at least, found it helpful to think in these categories.
By all means, though, try out Bride of the Lamb by Bulgakov. He is very, very careful about how he thinks through these things— far more careful than his detractors give him credit for.
I think Sherrad is right that ex nihilo has no right form, unless it is the one in which the Nihil is understood in positive terms as the unknowable ground of God.
Creation is ab intra, and all of the Cosmos, which overflows from within God, is both indwelt by God and shares in Him, even as, in a Mystery, He offers it true Otherness from Himself.
The essential energies and essences distinction.
The problem is that even the Orthodox, even some/many very good theologians, fail to grasp the fact that a doctrine of creation ex nihilo which identifies the Nihil in negative terms as some kind of absurd vacuum or absence of being, introduces an inescapable dualism into our Christian consciousness which has done and is doing incalculable damage to every part of our lives.
I believe this language needs to be excised or, at the very least, explicitly reformulated, if we are to have any hope of renewing our understanding of the oneness of Being, our intimate relationship to all of creation, our role as participants — most deeply as Christians — with the Spirit of God in the healing of the Cosmos.
Beautiful, thank you for this. This struck something in me, as a convert to Orthodoxy from the occult. Mostly, I had a deeply animist understanding of the world, and I’m still slowly integrating it into how I understand the world now under the provenance of God. How I relate to the land as a European American was something I used to think about a lot. It’s thrilling and refreshing to see this talked about through an Orthodox lens.
Yes! I think we believe things because we see glimmers of truth in them, and while the occult is many things (many of them not so great), esoteric movements at least appeal to people’s hunger for integrated connections between the spiritual world and the environment!
I’m glad you liked it!!
I am leaving a comment here for myself so I can come back and leave a longer dialogue but... I have been pondering and thinking on very similar themes the past few years!
Can Americans become indigenous? Not in a cultural appropration, but could we authentically belong to the land? What would it take?
This question has taken a central space in my homeschooling approach. We spend days in the forest, on the beach; learning the ancient names of the rivers and the people who once lived here, what they mean. The names of plants, flowers, trees, bird calls, and yes, local mythos too! Captain Kidd's treasure, fairy woods...
There has to be a way. I really believe it. But I also believe it’s going to necessarily be a path of humility and sacrifice. And love, of course.
If you haven’t, I highly recommend looking up powwows close to you! They are really special.
God Himself does not create ex nihilo…
Well, it is Nicene Christianity. But there are certainly flattened ways of understanding creation ex nihilo that reveal their own absurdity. I think Solovyov and Bulgakov, when read in their entirety and not just proof-texted, articulate this well.
The question is whether it IS Nicene Christianity.
Orthodox theologian (and co-translator of the Philokalia with Met Kallistos Ware) Philip Sherrard argues that creation ex nihilo actually constitutes the most fundamental philosophical and theological error of our modern Christian consciousness.
Unless the Nihil is explicitly identified with God Himself — which, in its commonly understood formulation, it absolutely is not — creation ex nihilo is actually an absurdity and leads directly to the pernicious dualism (not the essential duality, paradox and coincidence of opposites of deepest Reality, to be clear) that distorts true Christian faith and every part of our lives.
.
I have not read Solovyov or Bulgakov, much to my chagrin. I would love a recommendation for something on this subject!
Yeah, I actually think we’re circling the same drain here in an effort to avoid dualism. I’ve found, in my own theological reading and thinking, that every orthodoxy can be misunderstood in such a way as to make it the opposite of what it’s trying to communicate.
Hence why apophatic theology ends up being more useful to us in the long run than cataphatic theology. In it’s best form, creation ex nihilo says, “Not dualism. Not a flat monism, either.” I kinda got into triads and sacred geometry a bit in my essay over at The Wood Between the Worlds on The Realm of the Elderlings— I, at least, found it helpful to think in these categories.
By all means, though, try out Bride of the Lamb by Bulgakov. He is very, very careful about how he thinks through these things— far more careful than his detractors give him credit for.
I think Sherrad is right that ex nihilo has no right form, unless it is the one in which the Nihil is understood in positive terms as the unknowable ground of God.
Creation is ab intra, and all of the Cosmos, which overflows from within God, is both indwelt by God and shares in Him, even as, in a Mystery, He offers it true Otherness from Himself.
The essential energies and essences distinction.
The problem is that even the Orthodox, even some/many very good theologians, fail to grasp the fact that a doctrine of creation ex nihilo which identifies the Nihil in negative terms as some kind of absurd vacuum or absence of being, introduces an inescapable dualism into our Christian consciousness which has done and is doing incalculable damage to every part of our lives.
I believe this language needs to be excised or, at the very least, explicitly reformulated, if we are to have any hope of renewing our understanding of the oneness of Being, our intimate relationship to all of creation, our role as participants — most deeply as Christians — with the Spirit of God in the healing of the Cosmos.
Laura? I just came across this from St Porphyrios:
(I can’t figure out how to link or paste and image! If you’d do me the favor of looking, I’m going to put it on my stack.)