Man as the ‘Priest of Creation’

In the foreword to his latest encyclical letter Laudato Si, the Holy Father singles out the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for special mention for having enriched the Church’s thinking on ecological questions. It is interesting therefore to look at the work of another well-known Orthodox theologian with regard to the ecological question as it can help us deepen in the theology which forms the backdrop to the encyclical. John Zizioulas, metropolitan of Pergamon, is one of the better known contemporary Greek theologians, whose theology and writings have become well-known outside of Orthodox theological circles.

The current ecological crisis began to receive popular world-wide focus in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At a series of lectures given at that time in London, Zizioulas described this crisis as perhaps the number one problem facing the world-wide human community. These lectures are to be found in his work: Preserving God’s Creation. Three lectures on Theology and Ecology, in King’s Theological Review 12 (1989), pp. 1-5; 41-45; 13 (1990), pp. 1-5. (Quotations from Zizioulas here are taken from these lectures).

He sees this crisis not simply in terms of the well-being of each individual person, but more importantly to do with the “very being of humanity and creation”. Zizioulas believes that the ecological crisis is, at root, a spiritual issue and needs to be addressed by Christian theologians in order to respond in a meaningful way to the challenges presented by our contemporary culture. It is clear from the whole tenor of Laudato Si that the Holy Father sees the issue in that light also and wants Christians and all people of good will to address it in a serious manner.

Occupying a central place in Zizioulas’ response to the ecological crisis is the theological notion of communion and the human person as “the priest of creation”. In this respect, communion not only involves communion with the Trinity, other persons and churches, but it also involves being in communion with the rest of creation. In the Encyclical, Pope Francis describes this same fundamental concept under the heading of ‘A Universal Communion’ (nos. 89-92).

According to Zizioulas, a philosophical trend that contributed to the ecological crisis was the elevation of man to a position of superiority over the material world with the emphasis on the human person’s capacity to reason. A core idea that he wants to highlight in developing his theology of creation is that:

Our culture stands in need of a revival of the consciousness that the superiority of the human being as compared with the rest of creation consists not in the reason it possesses but in its ability to relate in such a way as to create events of communion whereby individual beings are liberated from their self-centredness and thus from their limitations, and are referred to something greater than themselves, to a ‘beyond’ – to God, if one wishes to use this traditional terminology. This man can do, not as a thinking agent but precisely because the human being is a person.

The contribution of faith to a rational understanding of the origin of the world 

With regard to the specific contribution of Christianty, Zizioulas highlights the doctrine of creation from nothing: ex nihilo. The early Church Fathers had postulated this doctrine primarily to uphold God’s freedom and transcendence in creation. It also allows us to see more clearly that space and time are categories that came into existence with the creation of the world. Zizioulas writes that, “Created being … is subject to these conditions of time and space, which not only mark the difference between God and the world, created and uncreated being, but also determine the world existentially.” By ‘existentially’, Zizioulas here means that being limited or finite implies an end, that is, death.

In other words once we accept the doctrine of creation ‘ex nihilo’, we also realise that creation has nothing that is intrinsic to itself in order to survive eternally and that death implies natural extinction. Since Christian faith is grounded in the notions of love and hope, however, Zizioulas rhetorically asks if God created the world out of love, then must there not be hope for the survival of the world? A simple response, in the form of a ‘Deus ex machina’ intervention of God at the end of times is rejected by Christianity because the answer is more sophisticated than such an easy and unilateral solution implies. Christians believe in a Trinitarian God who has left the world the means whereby creation and mankind may be saved. For Zizioulas, therefore, the key to the answer lies in the creation of the human person.

The Creation of Man

In the first chapter of Genesis, we have the familiar description of God’s decision to create man: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man wearing our own image and likeness; let us put him in command of the fishes in the sea, and all that flies through the air, and the cattle, and the whole earth, and all the creeping things that move on the earth.’” For Zizioulas it is clear that the fact that man has been created in the image of God, should point us to how he can be the link between God and the world.

Zizioulas holds that the imago Dei or image of God in man is not rationality, as might have been generally assumed, but rather freedom. To illustrate this he points to the fact that the human being alone can create a world of its own with culture, history and art. “The difference between man and all other animals is freedom. An animal may have the ability to adapt to its environment, but it does not set out to re-create its own environment”. Thus, only man can be an artist. “To reject the existing world and create a world of its own which will bear its personal stamp, is a characteristic only of man, and it can be observed from man’s very first steps”. For Zizioulas therefore, the freedom of man is a central concern of the doctrine of creation.

Zizioulas contends that man’s tendency to create a new world, which is an essential expression of the image of God in him, implies that he wishes to make everything that exists his own in some way. This means that he can ‘use’ creation for his own benefit in a utilitarian manner and in that way have dominion over the earth. In other words, man can make himself the ultimate point of reference for the rest of creation, rather than God. As Zizioulas says: “the ecological problem has its philosophy rooted deeply in this kind of anthropology.” The Holy Father is very clear throughout the encyclical that this kind of utilitarian approach towards other human beings and the rest of creation, apart from being unacceptable from a Christian point of view, is inherently unsustainable.

What happened with the Fall

Man can sin; animals cannot, for it is the exercise of freedom rather than the act itself that makes something sinful”. Zizioulas sees the Fall of man and, with him, the rest of creation in terms of man applying his desire for absolute freedom in the wrong way. For him it is clear that “man was given the drive to absolute freedom, the imago Dei, not for himself but for creation.” Man forms an organic part of the material world, but precisely because of the image of God which he possesses he is able to transcend the world and thus ensure its survival.

But after the fall, man too became trapped in the cycle of life and death from which it was impossible to free himself. For Zizioulas the fall of man actualised the limitations that were inherent in the fact of being creatures, if creation were left to itself. It is only the creator who can set things right again and so the uncreated God took the initiative in the incarnation of the second person of the Blessed Trinity. God did not take away man’s freedom however, and therefore the incarnation also had to safeguard that freedom in some way. As Zizioulas puts it: “The complete and proper expression of human freedom came at last in the unforced ‘yes’ given by the Virgin Mary to God’s call to carry through this mystery of Christ.”

The Son of God, who is a divine person, now assumes and represents human nature too, he unites himself to all of humanity and therefore to the rest of creation also. In this way, human nature and the rest of creation can be liberated from the limitations to which they were subject after the fall.

For Zizioulas the Fall did not damage the natures of things, but broke their communion with God; it made difference into division and persons into individuals. Conversely, ‘theosis’ is not about divinising the natures of things, but about changing the way they exist, by imparting to them divine communion. From this point of view, man becomes truly man, only if he is united with God and the mystery of personhood is what makes this possible. In his understanding, a person cannot be understood in isolation but only in relation to something or someone else. The particular identity of the human person arises from his relation with what is not human; with God and with the rest of creation.

It is the task of man to introduce what Zizioulas calls the personal dimension into his relationship with the rest of creation. This is crucial, because, as we have seen, creation does not contain within itself the means to overcome its own mortality. Man, who can form a personal relationship both with God and with the rest of creation, can somehow be the link that can overcome this threat of death hanging over all that is created. This role as the link between God and the world is what forms the basis of man’s priesthood with respect to the rest of creation. It is also clear, in following Zizioulas’ explanations that this theosis in personhood occurs in Baptism where the individual human being becomes or puts on Christ as St. Paul puts it.

Man’s role as ‘Priest of Creation’

According to Zizioulas, the ancient liturgies of the church point very specifically to man’s priestly action as representative of creation. This can be seen in the fact that the Eucharistic liturgies began their canon with a thanksgiving for creation in the first place, and only afterwards for redemption through Christ. Furthermore, he sees that the place where the mystery of Christ ‘in space and time’ occurs now is precisely in the Eucharist. As he says, in the Eucharist: “the Son presents us to the Father together with all creation as his own body.” It is precisely in the Eucharist, which we also call communion, where this renewal of created reality can actually occur. It is in this mystery that the ‘here and now’ of creation can encounter eternity, which is none other than the future accomplishment of God’s plan in Christ.

This, ultimately, is what he means by man being ‘priest of creation’ and what determines the salvation of creation as a whole. We could sum up by saying that, for Zizioulas, the union of the created with the uncreated occurs in the person of man who has been re-created in Christ. Through the hypostatic union Christ, the second divine person, assumes human nature and bridges the gap between the uncreated and created without confusion of the two natures. As Zizioulas neatly puts it, “The human creature will freely participate in the life of the persons of God and so all creation will be saved in and through man, in Christ.”

To conclude this brief reflection on a theological response to the ecological crisis it would seem fitting to echo the words of Pope Francis with which he draws to a close the rich insights of the encyclical: “God, who calls us to generous commiment and to give him our all, offers us the light and the strength needed to continue on our way. In the heart of this world, the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is alwas present. He does not abandon us, he does not leave us alone, for he has united himself definitively to our earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new ways foward. Praise be to him!” (no.245).

—