Seek ye first

by Andrea Elizabeth

In the quotes I’ve previously provided, as well as ones I haven’t, The Universe as Signs and Symbols by St. Nicholai Velimirovich instructs us on reading our natural environment in a spiritual way. This takes work when one is not constantly possessing a sense of God’s presence nor feeling thankful for everything as a gift. There is also the question of whether a thing should be appreciated in its own right. For me it is easier to remember God when outside in nature. In the city, surrounded by concrete, I feel oppressed, but can be reminded by looking up at the sky which people haven’t yet managed to obliterate entirely. There are certain artistic fabrications that I manage to enjoy in the city, but should one be as thankful for them as direct gifts from God as one is a tree? First let me say that there is a question about whether we have to look for symbolism in a tree. Trees can possess a majesty of form that makes one say, “What a tree!” Is it sinful to stop there? One can look at a tree and appreciate it’s creator as one appreciates an artist, which is also a second step in art appreciation. But to look at a tree in a spiritual context, such as seeing the method of Christ’s crucifixion and thus our redemption, is a third step. A cross attains a certain beauty when seen in that light. But what about an unhewn tree? Ah, the tree of life. Yes a means of God’s provision for food, and beyond that communion. Also it is a picture of strength and shelter. To appreciate it’s beauty for itself, and not what one gets from it, not even the enjoyment of beauty, seems nice, but again, should we stop there? Shouldn’t we see that God (should probably say the Trinity or at least Christ as the Trinity revealed) must be beautiful beyond compare?

Back to fabricated, man-made things, especially things not made by hand but machine: I don’t think anything can be totally depraved, but things can be corrupted. One could seek the beauty of the original ingredients, or the similitude to traditional things like a door, which has symbolism, and get back on the above track. There’s probably a chapter on these man-made things that I’ve either forgotten or not gotten to yet.

this sounds good

by Andrea Elizabeth

The Universe as Symbols and Signs – St. Nikolai Velimirovich

PRE-ORDER, TITLE WILL BE AVAILABLE MID-OCTOBER “Many people in the West think of the mysticism of Eastern Christianity as something unreal and imaginary; yea as dreamy and vague thinking in the clouds. I am trying in the following pages to prove the contrary to that opinion.” “Our Christian mysticism is wholly different from Buddhistic mysticism, just as much as from modern materialism. It is a vision of realities beyond and through transparent symbols and signs of the material universe. This is one of the fundamental teachings of our ancient Church of Christ, based upon the Bible and the Fathers.” “It is true that there are some persons in the Western World, among Germans, Dutch, Spaniards, French English and others who were great mystics. But our mysticism is not the individual kind, but collective. For our Church as a whole, from the beginning on, has been mystical in its interpretation of the visible universe, things and events as well as of man’s and mankind’s life and destiny.” “If some of my readers would learn from this essay that the mysticism of the Eastern Christian Church is nothing else but the science of the highest realities, then I shall be amply rewarded.” Nikolai Velimirovich STSpress 2010

The Fathers’ Emphasis on Unity

by Andrea Elizabeth

[T]he Trinity constitutes the inexhaustible fruitfulness of Unity. From the Trinity comes all unification and all differentiation. That is so, despite the fact that – as Dionysius insists elsewhere (Divine Names, II, 11) – unity, in God, is always stronger than distinctions, so that ‘distinctions remain indivisible and unified’.

God, the divine Origin, is praised in holiness:

whether as Unity, on account of the character of simplicity and unity proper to this Individible whose unifying power unifies us ourselves and assembles our different natures in order to lead us together … to that unification which is modelled on God himself;

or as Trinity, because of the thrice personal manifestation of this superessential fruitfulness whence all fatherhood in heaven and on earth receives its being and its name;

or as Love for man, because… the godhead has been fully imparted to our nature by one of its Persons calling humanity and raising it to himself, for Jesus mysteriously took flesh, and the eternal was thus introduced into time and by his birth penetrated the utmost depth of our nature.

Dionysius the Areopagite Divine Names, I,4

- Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism p. 62,63)

When reading Sts. Dionysius and Maximus on God’s sourcehood, sustaining power, in and through all-ness, and Cosmic Recapitulation, one can get a sense of universalism – God is all in all. Despite others’ insistence on a separate place for the damned, I tend toward’s C.S. Lewis’ view illustrated in The Great Divorce. That the ones in “hell” are ones who separate themselves further and further away from God, and who as a result become smaller and smaller. One of his guys even disappeared – I’m not sure I go that far. Many teach that this type of hell is existential, because there is no “place” where God is not. Their separation is like a figment of their imagination (tormenting though that be) because they separate themselves from reality – God.

Despite the ovewhelming universal passages so far in Clement’s book, there is this one section that admits there is something (or at least some sense of otherness) other than God (not in the Divine Simplicity sense).

By the Ascension the Body of Christ, woven of our flesh and of all earthly flesh, entered the realms of the Trinity. Henceforward the creation is in God, it is the true ‘burning bush’ according to Maximus the Confessor. At the same time it remains buried in the darkness of death and separation because of humanity’s hatred and cruelty and irresponsibility. To become holy is to clear away this weight of ashes and to uncover the glowing fire beneath, to allow life, in Christ, to swallow up death. It is to anticipate the manifest coming of the Kingdom by disclosing its secret presence. To anticipate, and therefore to prepare and to hasten.

Christ, having completed for us his saving work and ascended to heaven with the body which he had taken to himself, accomplishes in his own self the union of heaven and earth, of material and spiritual beings, and thus demonstrates the unity of creation in the polarity of its parts.

Maximus the Confessor Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer

Christ in his love unites created reality with uncreated reality – How wonderful is God’s loving-kindness towards us! – and he shows that through grace the two are become one. The whole world enters wholly into the whole of God and by becoming all that God is, except in identity of nature, it receives in place of itself the whole God.

Maximus the Confessor Ambigua

(RoCM, p. 54,55)

Recapitulation, Deification, and the Virtues

by Andrea Elizabeth

“In the unfallen mode (tropos) of being the lives of humans were destined for deification (theosis, divinization). This is the most intimate possible communion between the human and God, in which the human participates in the Love of the Trinity, through the Son, in the Glory of the Holy Spirit. Here all aspects of human lives are immediate revelations of God. Deification however, is not static, but an ongoing growth into this most intimate communion between God and humans. This is a deifying communion which leads to a transfigured cosmos constituted by ecstatic love.

[...]With the fall of humanity, and thus cosmic tragedy, humanity moves from philadelphia, the love of humankind, to philatuia or self love. This self-love is not simply loving oneself. It is essentially construing the cosmos as revolving around the self rather than the Trinity. As such self-love disrupts the hierarchy of being which is constituted by love (particularly participation in Triune Love). It disrupts the entire cosmos, which was characterized most accurately by love. This disruption results in the fragmentation of human relationships and this fragmentation from philautia gives rise to what Maximus calls “tyranny” (turranos). Maximus characterizes self-love in this way for philautia seeks to order all creation toward our possession. The true doctrine of creation, however, in which creatures are ordered and harmonized around the love in and of the Trinity is replaced by the tyrannical gaze of self-love in which creation and others become viewed through the possessing desire of the individual, and ultimately this grows into systemic evils such as racism. Once the true doctrine of creation is lost humans tend to see themselves as masters of creation, and thus masters over one another, rather than stewards of creation in which relationships are understood as God’s gift to be cherished and stewarded in harmony with the Trinity rather than controlled for selfish ends.6
Maximus claims that being formed in the virtues is the way in which the Spirit unites the human to Christ and thus deifies humans. So I argue in the next section that the virtue of hospitality, while not covered often explicitly by Maximus, is one of the avenues of virtue that, through our practice of it, allows us as humans to be deified by the Spirit through Christ. It is in welcoming the other that we welcome Christ and thus return to the life of love (phila-delphia) rather than tyranny, which arises from self-love’s “fortress mentality” with its desire to possess and bring everything thing within its orbit rather than living out a true doctrine of Creation which places the self and all things within the orbit of the Love of God. However, I will first briefly highlight Maximus’ understanding of virtue, the participation of the human in Christ, and thus the divinizing life.”

Read more from

St. Maximus Confessor and Christian Hospitality II

at The Land of Unlikeness

Father Seraphim Rose’s Response to “Orthodox” Evolution Theory

by Andrea Elizabeth

I really appreciated the spiritual elements in Dr. Kalormiros’ article, linked in my last post. The way he explained how God exists outside of time so that the resurrected Christ is the starting point of everything seems revelatory to me. I think he is pretty unique in saying that Christ’s “preIncarnate” OT appearances were his resurrected self, but I like the idea, not that that matters, I hope I am not speculating. This brings up the idea of OT “shadows” prefiguring Christ. As if He was some sort of ghost. Kalormiros states that He existed in His full, eternal self all along. To me this explains the relationships the OT people could have with Him such as Abraham, Moses, and David and all the others listed in Hebrews 11.

Also I liked the way he explained the unity of creation. Everything is made from relatively few atoms, and along similar patterns. A chimpanzee’s DNA is mid 90 something % similar to humans, and one can learn a lot about human internal systems from dissecting a frog or a pig. We even use pig insulin in diabetics. I also liked the way he explained the Holy Spirit’s hovering over the surface of the waters, and how life-giving water is. What I couldn’t get past though, was that one species came from another. He starts this off by saying that a single seed began the process of development in the universe at the beginning. That everything progressed from that one seed to the development of many diverse species in a hierarchical way. I do not want to dismiss hierarchy altogether or fail to acknowledge that humans are higher than apes, but I cannot get passed the notion that a human came out of an ape’s womb. I do not believe God tweaked the DNA of one species in vitro. Genesis explains that each reproduced after its own kind, as Father Seraphim points out in his response to Dr. Kalomiros’ view of evolution (btw the latter’s material is dated 1997 and Fr. Seraphim died in the early 80′s, but the point is well addressed with Patristic sources).

So as for the seed theory, Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all things, yet we need St. Maximus’ explanation of the many distinct logoi, created and sustained by the energies of God, yet distinct from His essence to properly understand these things. In the Derrida movie, I remember the part where he is sitting on his back doorstep talking about the diversity of animals and how he opposes classifications into groups and hierarchies. He “celebrates” (if I may use such a liberal word) the unique identity of each creature. One is not a “step” to another. One does not suffer in comparison to another. Yes there is development in the womb with interesting similarities to other creatures, but this can tell us something about the unity of God’s intention amongst all of his creation. At the same time we are not alien from trees. The universe is connected, but for some reason I hesitate to say “as one”. The universe is not a single organism. Perhaps Kalomiros’ refutation of “the universal soul” is helpful here.

Our union with plants and animals causes us to be able to lift up the bread and wine and consume it during the Liturgy as God’s body and blood. The passover lamb was a temporarily sufficient sacrifice. Christ is not ashamed to unite Himself with “lesser” materials, He indeed created them to be deified. Again I think Kalomiros explained that pretty well.

Because of the population issue surrounding Cain, and the idea that a day can mean a thousand years, I am open to the idea that it took a while to fill the earth with land, plants and animals, that a certain natural development occurred so that the earth was prepared to host “more complicated” species. I am also open to the possibility that Adam was one of many men (though maybe he was the first one and others were created a little after, but that’s too speculative. I plead ignorance.), and that the account of his and Eve’s creation is a poetic telling of how God fashioned man and woman. However, I want to stick to the geneologies and ages that are accounted for in the Bible and say that Adam was a particular individual with a particular relationship with God that got messed up. I think Dr. Kalomiros pretty well describes the unity of mankind, and how we share a single nature which simultaneously fell with Adam and was raised again with Christ.

Thanks to “The Ochlophobist” who shared these links (except the Derrida one) to Father Stephen’s “Glory to God for All Things” and “Mind in the Heart” on his thread, “Pantheistic Confusion or the Purely Metaphorical” on “Energetic Procession”, all listed on the left.

He is mindful that we are but dust.

by Andrea Elizabeth

Homeschooling moms might want to read this Orthodox article posted by Father Stephen on the creation of man and evolution! It’s quite different from anything I’ve read from a Christian or secular source before.

The End of the Bulgakov Conference and Beyond

by Andrea Elizabeth

Speaking of finishing things, I’ve finally gotten around to reading the last two installments of the Bulgakov Conference on The Land of Unlikeness. I am not qualified to offer a detailed scholarly analysis, but I would like to jot down some impressions. When I initially read Joshua Delpech-Ramey’s report (see my previous posts under the Sergius Bulgakov Category to the right), I was thinking he was going in the right direction, and without reviewing why I thought that, I’ll go on to say that I think he veered off course in his latest post. I would have agreed more with him a year or two ago. He seems to speak of transcending our personhood into Absolute Divine Simplicity while simultaneously recovering the magic dormant in the created universe. And while my previous impression of Janet Leslie Blumberg was of Augustinian defensiveness, I found her to tweak Joshua’s point a bit to a more personalized, humbly Derridian (whom I am inclined to interpret gently), respect for the amazing cosmos, while maintaining her own personhood in a desire for union with God, but perhaps along a too deterministic path.

So my ignorant, less informed view which is probably based on misinterpretation, is that they are right to open themselves to union with God which will lead to transcending fallen humanity, but their method seems to be alchemistic – seeking to combine physical properties in the right combination to do this. Maybe Janet redeems the goal by saying it should be done by embracing tradition rather than leaving it behind, and I am not sure if she is talking about Credal Christian tradition only, or Sacramental Tradition, which is how we find God in the elements. And maybe her determinism is about uncovering the logos in everything, which is predetermined in Christ, rather than the over-riding of free will.

And as I brought out at the end of my last post on the Conference, I am becoming more sensitive to the off-balanced method of putting the ideas “transcendence”, “Cosmic union”, “latent power” before Person. We are not to throw ourselves into the abyss of ideas expecting an explosion of power and awareness (gnosticism), though perhaps I am neglecting a proper understanding of apophaticism. Instead we are to focus on the Person of Christ, and how He reveals Himself and ourselves to us. I have enjoyed the positive attitude conveyed in works like the above, and think there is merit to it. We are to be joined to love and awareness, but I am beginning to think it will be more concrete than how it came across. I’m thinking a hierarchy of God in Trinitarian relation (which Bulgakov has some valuable things to say about), repentant man, the powers, and material creation will keep us from going off the deep end.

Which brings me to the latest post, Revolution, Paradox, and the Christian Tradition: A Chestertonian debate between John Milbank and Slavoj Zizek, which may make the corrections, or maybe just clarifications, I have begun to intuit. I also value the scholarship in the above posts as I am coming to appreciate reading a wide range of bright people, even if we don’t have the same order of idealogical priorities. I also find their dispassionate and calm relating of atheists’ points very refreshing.

Another View of Allegory

by Andrea Elizabeth

This post by Sister Macrina on Andrew Louth’s chapter called The Return to Allegory provides another perspective on Allegory. Most of it is a criticism of historical criticism, but this passage points to how to read the Scriptures,

Christianity is not, properly speaking, a ‘religion of the Book’: it is a religion of the word (Parole) – but not uniquely nor principally of the word in written form. It is a religion of the Word (Verbe) – ‘not of a word, written and mute, but of a Word living and incarnate’ (to quote St. Bernard). The Word of God is here and now, amongst us, ‘which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled’: the Word ‘living and active’, unique and personal, uniting and crystallizing all the words which bear it witness. Christianity is not ‘the biblical religion’: it is the religion of Jesus Christ. [Exégèse Médiévale, II/1 (Paris, 1961), pp. 196-9.]

And in those words de Lubac echoes the cry of St. Ignatius of Antioch: ‘For me the archives are Jesus Christ, and the inviolable archives his cross and death and his resurrection and faith in Him.’ [Ep. Philad. VIII. 2.] The heart of Christianity is the mystery of Christ, and the Scriptures are important as they unfold to us that mystery, and not in and for themselves.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983). 101-102.

Christ unites the words in us. That is a mystery indeed. Not that our minds are passive, we constantly pray for His will to be done as we attend to the Scriptures and other words and messages, even pictorial. I don’t see this as allegory in that characters in Scripture personify a particular passion or thing, they are more complicated than that. But meaning must be revealed to us as we read. Meaning is subjective in that it is personal and imparted with relationship. Yet it will not contradict what has been revealed to others, namely what the Church says is true. So if the Scriptures teach that “Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” Numbers 12:3, they point to a person who demonstrates meekness. But do we learn meekness by rationally studying Moses in the Bible? Perhaps, in that we believe our rational minds are commonly grace endowed. We can come to a certain understanding, but will this impart to us salvific meekness? No, we have to have a similar relationship with God as Moses had, which lead to his glowing face. So our faces wont glow if we rationally understand meekness, but if we develop the same relationship with God through desire, prayer and obedience. So I don’t see the Scriptures as Allegory in the same way as “My love is like a red, red rose.” Yes meekness is like Moses, and both point to something invisible, but there is more of a literal Incarnation of Presence – the love of God is actually in a rose. It is not just a utilitarian means of speaking about something else where it’s hypostasis of being a rose is irrelevant. The rose is love enough in itself. Light, color, beautiful scents and softness are gifts from God. But I can say, thank you God for roses and Moses (Singing in the Rain, anyone?) and meekness and beauty, please make me meek and beautiful unto your glory. Then there’s the lillies of the field. God gives them their beauty while they remain still – yes that ties in with the above quote. Christ arranges the words that we hear while we look with open faces at Him. So we come into communion with flowers when we acquire similar attributes to them, who are alive and prospering by His grace. Perhaps my distinctions are right and the above mentioned poem should be corrected by saying,

[By not resisting Me (Christ), she] is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
[And] like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonny [Church],
So deep in love am I;
And I will love thee still my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only love!
And fare thee weel awhile!
For I [am with thee always even unto the end of the age]

Borrowed from Robert Burns

I do not know how roses that fade and sparrows that fall and seas and sand and rocks will fare in the new world and the final resurrection. I believe somehow they will be made new and that their decomposition does not mean annihilation.

Out of the Silent Planet

by Andrea Elizabeth

While reading, I cannot switch off my analysis, especially nowadays. I told Jared yesterday that I have 35 pages to go, and he said, “You keep track of the page numbers?” I said, yes, I can’t get lost in a book as I used to. But it was not all work finishing this one.

I feel confident that Lewis had glimpses of heaven in his life and I love how he discounts it as fiction in a way that is not dismissive of what he is telling. The prologue to The Great Divorce was similarly disclaimerish. He seems to know how heavenly beings view earth beings and competently describes how their ways are higher than ours. But he does not set up a dialectical relationship with earthlings. We are still hnau and in the image of Maleldil.

I was first a little offput by the topography and the flaura and fauna of Malacondra, as probably was Ransom, but as he began to identify with the creatures, also hnau, they of course became relatable. Which brings me to one of my overriding thoughts regarding one of the main themes. Encounters with peoples who are not like us. The best thing Lewis did was to discredit our fears of the unknown. He cast out the bogeyman and showed him as a substanceless, baseless fear. The real bogeyman exists in our hearts, but he is not our heart. This is shown in how Oyarsa and then Ransom dealt with Weston and Devine. Even though their cruelty and misconceptions and shallowness was revealed for what it was, we are not incited against them to wish their deaths. Some of their accomplishments are even acknowledged, but are not aggrandized as they themselves viewed them. But there is a certain amount of respect for them.

I think Lewis very admirably sought to appreciate distinctions, but to see the basic organic unity underneath, and that this understanding would stop a lot of destructive behaviors and unhappiness. But though I loved his understanding of the fullness, instead of emptiness of space, and his descriptions of light, and also how, when Ransom’s fear was gone, he described nature, especially Meldilorn (though his descriptions of the three species always felt a little grotesque, even though they were portrayed as superior), I felt this contradicted his descriptions of death. He goes into so much detail about how beautiful it all is and then death, and thus higher existence, is to become “unbodied”. The Malacandrians’ bodies disappear and do not even undergo decay. The afterlife seems like it is to be swallowed up into a higher consciousness only. Which is a bit gnostic and similar to Absolute Divine Simplicity by my current lights. It seems Lewis feels we retain individuality in this higher consciousness, or at least self-awareness, but still. Why go into the glories of creation if it is all going to be annihilated in the end? This shows Lewis’ Protestantism, imo. But I also believe the very educated and intelligent Lewis listens more to his innate, natural, like-God intuition and heart and thus he gets closer to the true nature of things than about any other westerner I’ve ever heard of. And like Ransom, I am more homesick to be among my fellow westerners, despite their errors, than to totally shed my identity as one and to assume another, which is why I don’t want to move to Russia, but I’ll take all the enlightenment I can get from them and try to put it into my own western words and context.

Another observation. Lewis showed his nationality and generation quite clearly to me. I felt on one hand that I was reading a field journal of an Imperial expedition to scope out the natives. He nobly demonstrated the wrongs that have occurred in past expeditions and how the natives have been demeaned by the Europeans delusions of grandeur. Yet, I felt that he came just a tad short in that as I already mentioned, they were still sort of grotesque. I haven’t come to terms exactly with that yet. We will probably always be homesick for our own kind, and view others as less than in that they don’t meet that basic urge of familiarity with our first impressions in this world that we make as infants which form us in a very deep, permanent way. But Ransom did loose sight of the differences as he lived with them. If he separated himself from their essence and paid attention to just their looks he would have felt more distance. It was their common hnau-ness that he ended up paying more attention to.

But the other thing is something I talked about in one of my education posts about how I think people can be too compartmentalized. “I’m a math person”, etc. The three different species lived in different areas from each other, though they got along when they happened to be together at a common place, like the marketplace or gathering close to Oyarsa. But they were a little too much like this species is good at that, this one at this, etc. btw, the females were hardly discussed at all. Everyone lived with their own kind and never the twain shall meet. *more obvious spoiler warning* Ransom was invited to stay, but I get the feeling if he had he would have lived at Meldilorn, talking with Oyarsa, but would have continued expeditions to the three other species’ dwellings as a visitor. This is characteristic of thought in the 30′s and 40′s. Even the previous abolitionists believed in segregation. They thought like belonged with like, and that the distinctions were what defined “like”, not the commonness of creature-hood. btw, His description of why we have pets and the Malacandrians don’t was very interesting. He also had a more defined sense of the hierarchy of functions, though he seemed to try to even it out somewhat. All to say I haven’t exactly decided what to make of distinctions or how much to work at maintaining them when some want to assimilate. I tend to want people to choose for themselves and to tolerate when others choose differently, but then what if the other choice makes my choice less viable, etc.

Besides the above, one of the things that touched me the most was when the hross was describing why they don’t have to keep repeating things, even those things as good as childbearing. That the memory of it is not different than or separate from the experience.

The Holy Spirit’s role in deification

by Andrea Elizabeth

The second half of The Comforter and Divine-Humanity is about God’s union with creation. Here’s a sample,

The Holy SpiritТs Kenosis for us: Sanctification in Creation and Inspiration for Divine-Humanity

The kenosis of the Holy Spirit in the immanent Trinity, her becoming copula of the Father and the Son, their hypostatic Love, is paralleled in the created realm: the SpiritТs sophianic sanctification of the world, and her personal descent in creation for the inspiration of humanityЧto become copula that binds in love all human relationships in the self-offering love of friendship. Thus from the beginning of creation the Holy Spirit is the Artist, the Giver of life, bathing creation in beauty; but in the fullness of time, in the Christ event, the Holy Spirit accompanies the descent of the Son and is poured on all flesh (Acts 2:17). In turn, the apex of time of the earthly ministry of Jesus becomes a special moment for the labor of the Spirit in creation: a personal labor, but shrouded in a special hiddenness. Each of these three kenotic moments of the Spirit in creationЧsince the beginning of time, in the life of the man Jesus, and in PentecostЧwill be pondered in turn.

And this goes with my byline quite nicely,

a. The Sophianic action of the Holy Spirit

That matter is energy and energy is matter is one of the greatest scientific discoveries of our times. It also retells the story in contemporary language of how GodТs Ruah swept over Уnothing,Ф over tohu-bohu, birthing Уlife.Ф The inherent УpotentialityФ or energy created by the Father is breathed upon, preparing УnothingФ to receive its form, to be molded into matter, to become the rich diversity that mirrors the beauty of God. In the Spirit, matter becomes, evolves, is crafted, according to its design given by the Logos. Breath is the energy inherent in matter, Уexist[ing] in the very flesh of the world, in the matter of the world,Ф[73] enabling it with the dynamism to gradually become Уsomething,Ф beauty, the rich diversity of creatures. The Spirit who fulfills, who completes, empties herself in an ongoing sophianic action towards creationТs fulfilment, towards creationТs completion, but that requires the very participation of creation according to its particular freedom or УmeasureФ: УThis multistage or gradual character of being is proper to the life of the world, for the creative Сlet there beТ always resounds in the world in its different forms; creation is always the future too, not only nata, but also natura.Ф[74] Not only the apparent, but also the imaginedЧsince the transcendence of this divine imagination is the telos of creation; its becoming not only natura, but supranatura, the resplendence of God.

The sanctification of matter is then explained, and I want to quote the whole thing, but will commend the link instead. This is what I’ve been looking for. I’m reminded of the “what happens” in St. Maximus, but this seems to be the “how”.

There occurs a mysterious, i.e. invisible, transfiguration of creation, in which the latter, while ontologically remaining itself, becomes transparent for the Spirit, receives the faculty of communion with God, is deified.

If I’m understanding Bulgakov rightly, the personified Sophia is sort of like the Derridian ‘membrane’ where Spirit meets creation. But this membrane is transparent, or at least becomes so upon deification/union with God, whereas Derrida’s remains opaque, or when breached still remains other, whose brightness is beheld from a distance. And Derrida is talking about creature to creature, with Truth as a silent, though bright witness. But Bulgakov is talking about the inherent Spirit in creation, who is indeed everywhere present and fills all things. Creation becomes transparent through being sanctified in the Church, so until that happens, I think perhaps Derrida may be disappointed, and if not, is he in prelest? Non-Christians can appreciate the glory of nature, but they probably are in danger of becoming Pantheists. Still, I’d take a Pantheist over a Gnostic. I think. I don’t know, praise God that I don’t have to choose, but I hope the Pantheists help clean up the smog in the Grand Canyon.