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Priests of
Creation
Priests of
Creation
John Zizioulas on Discerning an
Ecological Ethos
Edited by John Chryssavgis

and Nikolaos Asproulis
T&T CLARK
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Names: Chryssavgis, John, editor. | Asproulis, Nikolaos, 1975- editor.
Title: Priests of creation: John Zizioulas on discerning an ecological ethos /
edited by John Chryssavgis and Nikolaos Asproulis.
Description: London; New York : T&T Clark, 2021. |
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Subjects: LCSH: Orthodox Eastern Church–Doctrines. | Zizioulas, Jean, 1931- |
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CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Introduction: Toward an Ecological Ethos 1
I Historical Roots 19
1 St. Paul and the Ecological Problem 21
2 The Book of Revelation and the Natural

Environment 31
3 Creation Theology: An Orthodox Perspective 38
II Theological Approaches 53
4 Orthodoxy and the Ecological Crisis 55
5 A Theological Approach to the Ecological

Problem 61
6 An Orthodox Response to the Environmental
Challenge 73
III Liturgical Perspectives 91
7 Preserving God’s Creation: Three Lectures on

Theology and Ecology 93
vi CONTENTS
8 The Eucharistic Vision of the World 133
9 Proprietors or Priests of Creation? 144
IV Ecological Ethics or Ecological Ethos? 155
10 Ethics or Ethos? A Brief Sketch 157
11 Toward an Environmental Ethic 160
V Scientific and Spiritual Dimensions 173
12 Religion and Science: A Theological Approach 175
13 Humanity and Nature: Learning from the

Indigenous 186
14 Man and Animals 197
VI Ecumenical and Cultural Implications 203
15 Ecological Asceticism: A Cultural Revolution 205
16 Communion and Communication 210
17 Pope Francis and Laudato Si’ 214
Conclusion: From Here to Where? 221
Original Publications 228

Select Bibliography 231
Index of Names 233
Index of Terms 235
FOREWORD
It becomes more and more clear that the ecological crisis which
faces the human family cannot be adequately understood, let alone
responded to, as a purely “managerial” set of problems. The
roots of the crisis lie in a dysfunctional spirituality, and no merely
technical solution will do: the survival of our ecosystem requires
a spiritual revolution. The survival of the material world made
by God—including our own material humanity—depends on our
spiritual renewal, and the spiritual revolution is inseparable from a
rediscovery of our material reality.
For this to be possible, we need a coherent theology of our human
position in the world. For centuries, at least since the beginnings of
the dramatic expansion of the natural sciences in the seventeenth
century, the working assumption of European modernity has been
a grimly distorted version of theological convictions about our
human vocation and our human uniqueness. We have absorbed the
myth that humans are essentially agents defined by instrumental
reason—and thus defined by problem-solving for the sake of their
own survival: the material stuff of our environment has been seen as
entirely subordinate to this model of the priority of the human agent
as technical manager. The traditional and biblical understanding of
the human person as made in the divine image, and thus made in
order freely and lovingly to serve the well-being and balance of the
whole created order, has been overlaid by a false spiritualism allied
with a Promethean ambition for total control over the material
world. Unsurprisingly, Judeo-Christian faith itself has been blamed
by some for the devastation of our environment.
Yet it is precisely this tradition that gives us some of the most
deeply rooted resources for combating the lethal myths that
imprison us. In recent decades, His All-Holiness Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew has been an eminent Christian pioneer in
the recovery of a richer and more faithful theology of human calling
viii FOREWORD
and human dignity—a recovery now also endorsed eloquently in

the Encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato Si’. And the Patriarch’s
theological vision has been developed in concert with one of the
most creative theological minds of our age, Metropolitan John
Zizioulas of Pergamon. Metropolitan John’s writings on Trinitarian
theology, on Church and Eucharist, and above all on the relational
character of all finite being as the free creation of an infinite agency
that is itself irreducibly relational, have been formative for Christian
thinkers of all confessions and backgrounds.
It is a great gift to have his reflections specifically on the
question of our theological response to ecological crisis gathered
together. Here we have just the coherent and comprehensive
theological resource that we need for “spiritual revolution”—an
impressively wide-ranging vision of what human freedom means
in a fragile material universe. The very fact of creation means
that our world is vulnerable to disintegration (to what the New
Testament and the Fathers knew as phthora, “corruption”). The
finite universe always stands “over” nothingness, held in life solely
by God’s free gift and not resting on any intrinsic quality of its
own, and this means that created freedom exists—in the image of
uncreated freedom—in order to serve and conserve the mutuality
and reciprocal life-sharing of finite beings, the fruitful balance of
all things as they reflect the harmony and abundance of eternal
wisdom. The tragedy of our created freedom is in our turning
away from this vocation to conserve the flow of gift within the
created order to the distorted obsession with preserving our own
privilege and security at the expense of all others, human and
nonhuman. Christ’s work restores to us that lost place of service—
the priestly place we were created to occupy. And the Eucharist in
which Christ’s body draws into itself the material life of the world
around so that it is, by the spirit’s power, transformed into a gift
both to God and from God is the supreme embodiment of the
renewal of our humanity and our whole world that Christ’s life,
death, and resurrection accomplish.
This is the vision which Metropolitan John outlines, with both
passion and subtlety. In these pages, as in everything he has written,
we find a profound challenge to reimagine our humanity in the
living presence of the Triune God and to open ourselves afresh to the
transformation offered and promised by the grace of Christ and the
FOREWORD ix
act of the spirit. For anyone looking for a fully and unapologetically
Christian manifesto for the spiritual revolution we so urgently need,
these pages will be more than welcome.
Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury (2002–2012)
Master of Magdalene College (2013–2020)

Introduction
Toward an Ecological Ethos
Part A: An Ecological Legacy

John Chryssavgis
John Zizioulas is arguably one of the most influential,1 if sometimes
contentious, theologians of our time, having served as professor
of systematic theology at the universities of Edinburgh and
Glasgow, London’s Kings College and Rome’s Gregorian, as well
as Thessalonika. As Metropolitan John of Pergamon, he has proven
one of the most formative, even decisive, bishops of the Orthodox
Church, having chaired historical and challenging delegations of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate. His writing and ministry have extended
across a broad range of academic and ecumenical concerns,
leaving a lasting legacy on philosophical and religious thought.
Born in 1931, Zizioulas studied at the Universities of Athens and
Thessalonika, while also attending Bossey Ecumenical Institute
and Harvard university, where he encountered the late Fr. Georges
Florovsky (1893–1979).
Scholars may argue that the root of this influence lies in his
Greek doctoral dissertation on the Eucharist and the bishop in the
early Church (Athens, 1965)2 or the seminal publication in English
1
Yves Congar, “Bulletin d’ ecclésiologie,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et
théologiques 1982, no. 66 (1982): 88.
2
English translation by Elizabeth Theokritoff, Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The
Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop during the First Three
Centuries (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001).
2 PRIESTS OF CREATION
of his essays on personhood and communion (New York, 1985);

critics may contend that the challenge of his argument lies in his
reading of Greek philosophy and even his interpretation of the
Greek patristics or his sensitivity and conversation with diverse
currents of contemporary thought and culture. Yet, there is no
doubt that the core of his philosophical and theological thesis—
deeply rooted in the classical thought of the Cappadocian Fathers
and their understanding of God as Trinity as the foundation of
life in the Church and the world—is the conviction of the human
person as relational and communal,3 called and destined to serve
within creation as a microcosm and mediator.4 This worldview
will subsequently lead Metropolitan John to a conception of
humankind as “the priest of creation.”5 In this way, humanity
bears the distinctive responsibility—not only beyond conservation
or preservation but also beyond management or stewardship—of
relating to creation in an existential and essential manner, rather
than a purely functional or moral way.
The worldview of John Zizioulas is also markedly shaped by
the dynamics of ecumenical discussions within the World Council
of Churches, particularly the Faith and Order Commission of
the 1960s and 1970s, with which he was deeply involved, as
well as through bilateral dialogues in the 1980s and 1990s, until
very recently, when he cochaired the international theological
commissions for Anglican-Orthodox dialogue and Orthodox-
Roman Catholic dialogue, where he sealed his reputation as a
remarkable spokesman and eminent apologist of the Orthodox
Church. Metropolitan John goes to great lengths to apply his
ecclesiology to the reality of the Church. While “some Eastern churches
are wary of Western ‘influence’ and critical of those involved in such
ecumenism . . . [H]e believes all ecumenical efforts are mutually
3
See John Zizioulas, “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological
Exploration of Personhood,” Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (1975): 407–8.
4
The terminology belongs to Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century. See Lars
Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus
the Confessor, ed. A. M. Allchin (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1995), 137–40.
5
John Zizioulas, “Preserving God’s Creation: Three Lectures on Theology and
Ecology,” King’s Theological Review 12 (1989); also in John Zizioulas, Lectures in
Christian Dogmatics, ed. Douglas H. Knight and trans. Katerina Nikolopulu (New
York and London: T&T Clark, 2009). See Chapter 6.
INTRODUCTION 3
enriching.”6 Nevertheless, his writing manifests “a striking absence

of denominational arrogance and contemptuous simplifications.”7
Zizioulas is not content to remain in the ivory tower of academia
or the moribund institution of the Church. He demonstrates a
discerning vulnerability before the burning issues that confront
the modern world and personal commitment to the ecological
crisis, which provides an element of timeliness and urgency to
his theological worldview. Metropolitan John has been a pioneer
thinker and primary spokesman for the ecological initiatives of
the Ecumenical Patriarchate from the late 1980s, chairing the
innovative Religious and Scientific Committee established by
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in 1994 to promote and enable
interdisciplinary and interreligious conversation and convergence
on the global issue of environmental degradation, while exploring
the broader implication and application of a compassionate and
reconciliatory vision for all of God’s creation.
He avoids conventional temptations inherent to the Orthodox
Church, including the seductive dream of anachronism,
isolationism, and nationalism. His universal vision of the Church’s
mission, realized in the sacrament of the Eucharist, is based in an
eschatological perspective of creation.8 No matter how tradition
understands theology and theologizing, it is never as abstract
theory or metaphysical speculation but always as an event of the
Church and encounter with the world. This is why he feels secure
before any creative tensions within the tradition. To quote Colin
Gunton: “The greatness of John Zizioulas . . . is shown by the very
tensions in his work, by the fact that he allows the weaknesses of the
tradition to come into view while operating in faithfulness to it.”9
Indeed, his determination is to hold together—even harmonize—
tensions between heaven and earth which involves a commensurate
6
Douglas Knight, “Introduction,” to John Zizioulas: Lectures in Christian Dogmatics
(London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2009), xxii–xxiii.
7
Lars Erik Rikheim, “Johannes Zizioulas,” in Key Theological Thinkers: From
Modern to Postmodern, eds. Staale Johannes Kristiansen and Svein Rise (London
and New York: Routledge, 2013), 435–47 [Here at 435].
8
See John D. Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World, ed. Luke Ben
Tallon (Edinburgh and London: T&T Clark, 2011).
9
Colin Gunton, “Persons and Particularity,” in Douglas Knight (ed.), The Theology
of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007), 107.
willingness to welcome and transform the entire community, the

whole Church, and all of creation.
True to a disciplined and critical intellect, Zizioulas is always
wary of dichotomy and always welcoming of dialogue, ever
prepared to give credit where it is merited and criticism where it
is warranted. In an interview for The Tablet, he remarked: “We
must be honest: the Church is not always faithful to herself, and
as a result official churches are governed by a totalitarian point
of view, a doctrinaire and moralistic spirit” (August 25, 2007).
Not only does he struggle to reconcile inconsistencies, but he also
challenges prevailing assumptions about the relationship between
God and world. In so doing, he initiates and invites a rediscovery
of Christianity in its richest traditional form, converting even the
most conservative exegesis of the relationship between Creator
and creation into a creative and constructive relationship. Whether
dealing with a theological synthesis (where the relationship of the
Trinity assumes central stage), ecclesiological (where the concept
of communion becomes the basis of existence), or the ecological
crisis (where the mystery of the Eucharist reflects the offering of
creation to its Creator), Metropolitan John constantly searches for
points of conversation and convergence, rather than conformation
or condemnation.
The intimate and inseparable connection between communion
and creation, or Eucharist and ecology, issues in an incontrovertible
affirmation of the material or created cosmos, where nothing
whatsoever is neutral or unsacred and where everything is a
sacred gift of divine love. The present world is neither denied nor
denigrated in favor of the heavenly kingdom. The human person is
called to return the dust of the ground in an act of priestly offering
and not a proprietary possession, neither denouncing nor destroying
creation but rather transforming it in an act of thanksgiving and
glorification to its Creator. The Eucharist, then, makes sense of
God as Trinity; the Eucharist constitutes the very essence of the
Church as communion; and the Eucharist expresses the vocation of
humanity in the created order.
This means that, to put it plainly and bluntly, Metropolitan
John is undaunted before the complexities of the world, unafraid
to “get his hands dirty” in the quandaries of life. He seeks—indeed,
agonizes—to relate theology to ecology: to the suffering of the
world, the pollution of nature, and the destruction of biodiversity.
INTRODUCTION 5
He discerns the imperative nature of a positive exchange and

productive debate between religion and science in the face of
consternation and censure by political conservatives, especially
in the United States, where paranoia dismisses environmentalism,
classifying it alongside other “modern evils” such as liberalism and
communism!10 However, there can be no doubt that not only have
the poor been excluded from the benefits of human development
and progress, but today they are obliged to face the devastating and
destructive consequences created by climate change.
In 2002, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope John
Paul II signed the Venice Declaration, a joint statement in which the
two leaders declared their concern for the protection of the planet
from the threat posed by the ecological crisis. A similar paragraph
was included in the Common Declaration signed by Pope Francis
and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Jerusalem in 2014.
The most striking example of such ecumenical leadership and
collaboration came in 2017, when Pope Francis and Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew together issued a bilateral document on the
occasion of September 1, the day of prayer for the protection of the
environment.
Although these gestures may be perceived as a simple formality,
their symbolic meaning is of immense importance. For, while the
Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches have engaged for the
last fifty years in an official theological dialogue since 1980—with
the express purpose of resolving entrenched doctrinal problems
that have divided and isolated them for the last thousand years—
theological rapprochement cannot take place in a historical
vacuum. The two “sister Churches” are called to seek unity not only
with past experiences but also with present conditions, taking into
account the actual needs of humanity and the world today. This is
what, in an interview for Cività Cattolica entitled “Cosmic Liturgy
and Ecology” (July 25, 2015), Metropolitan John likes to call “an
existential ecumenism,” which addresses the challenge of social
justice and climate change. Zizioulas himself is informed about as
well as in tune with current theological and sociopolitical issues—
See M. Butler and A. Morriss, Creation and the Heart of Man: An Orthodox
10
Christian Perspective on Environmentalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute,

2013), 5.
perhaps a civic dimension of his understanding about “otherness”

as openness and communion.
It therefore came as no surprise that, when the Ecumenical
Patriarchate established September 1 as the annual day of prayer for
the protection and preservation of the natural environment, issuing its
initial Encyclical in 1989, Metropolitan John played a prominent role.
In the previous year, he had represented then Ecumenical Patriarch
Demetrios as keynote speaker at an environmental conference held on
the island of Patmos on the occasion of the 900th anniversary since
the foundation of the Monastery of St. John the Evangelist. Thus,
long before most political authorities and environmental activists
had awakened to the urgency of creation care, and more than twenty-
five years prior to the publication of Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis,
Metropolitan John proposed the leadership role of the Orthodox
Church in responding to climate change as the most vital existential
challenge of modern man. Nor was it again entirely surprising that he
was invited to present the Pope’s Ecological encyclical at the Vatican
on June 18, 2015, alongside Peter Cardinal Turkson, then president
of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace—the first time a papal
document had been jointly launched with an Orthodox prelate.
What is, in fact, genuinely surprising is the ostensible absence
of any place for ecology in the manuals and seminaries of theology
for many centuries. What is unfortunately surprising was the stark
disengagement and disconnection between the biblical doctrine
of creation and the contemporary challenge of climate change.
What became clear to Metropolitan John was that the relationship
between humankind and the earth was largely ignored by Christian
teaching and preaching to the point that American historian Lynn
White Jr. would accuse Christianity of being responsible for the
modern ecological crisis.11 Metropolitan John recognized that
human beings have long been exalted above the rest of creation in a
disproportionate and unbalanced way, thereby granting themselves
the license to abuse and exploit the resources of nature, sometimes
even on the pretext of scripture itself (Gen. 1:28).
Metropolitan John is convinced that the relationship between
theology and ecology—as between religion and science—in fact
See Lynn Townsend White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,”
11
Science 155, no. 3767 (March 10, 1967): 1203–7.

INTRODUCTION 7
runs very deep. For, while it may be true that the ecological crisis
has its historical roots historically, to a greater or lesser degree,
in theological ideas particularly prevalent in the West, it is at the
same time the mandate of theology to advance a balanced biblical
worldview that stresses the sanctity and value of all creation,
including trees and animals, which humans must respect and treat
as a divine gift of the creator and ruler of all creation.
Metropolitan John is undeterred by the possibility that a potential
anthropomonism or anthropocentrism is a misinterpretation
and misuse of the biblical doctrine of creation, but especially a
compromise and contradiction of the Christian doctrine of the
Incarnation. The former pronounced that God created all things “very
good” (Gen. 1:31), while the latter proclaimed that Christ came to
save the whole creation (Rom. 8:23). Moreover, Metropolitan John
is convinced that this understanding of the function and vocation
of humanity in creation is common to the Christian tradition of
the East and West alike, while providing the basis for a Christian
ecological ethos. In this respect, a sound appreciation and profound
attitude with regard to creation result less from a conceptual sense
of human morality as from a compelling sensitivity toward human
mortality.
The “existential” or “personal” dimension of creation and
Incarnation by a loving God is integrally and inseparably linked
with creation “out of nothing” (ex nihilo), a doctrine that for
Metropolitan John safeguards the transcendence of God and
supports the existential trajectory of the world. In brief, as he
writes, “it is imperative to be able to refer to God without implicitly
or explicitly referring at the same time to the world.”12 Indeed,
for Zizioulas, God is defined by divine transcendence and divine
immanence, by divine independence as well as by a relationship of
communion with creation. This is what simultaneously preserves
the freedom of the Creator and protects the sacredness of creation
even while the former is eternal and the latter mortal: “If [creation]
was eternal it would not need to be created. If it were not created
John Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today: Suggestions for an
12
Ecumenical Study,” in The Forgotten Trinity, ed. Alasdair Heron (London: British
Council of Churches, 1989), 23–4.
from nothing, this would mean that it was created from something
that had some other existence.”13
For Metropolitan John, the significance and implication of all this
is the conviction that the ecological crisis is essentially a spiritual
problem. The fissure in humanity’s covenant with God resulted
in a rupture in the relationship between Creator and creation.
Therefore, in its teaching about sin, the Church must introduce a
new environmental dimension, namely ecological sin. Furthermore,
repentance must be expanded and extended to include the damage
wrought by human beings—both as individuals and as communities—
on the natural environment. Ecological sin is wrongdoing against
other human beings and future generations. At the same time, the
ecological crisis goes hand in hand with social injustice.
This calls for what Metropolitan John describes as “an ecological
asceticism,” echoing the great mystics and contemplatives that
experienced a sensitivity and subtlety with all creation. Humble
asceticism is an antidote to human arrogance with respect to the
rest of creation, a conceited disposition that Metropolitan John
attributes largely to the age of Enlightenment and technological
revolution. In this regard, asceticism is conceived as leading a life
of coexistence with all creatures, great and small, as well as sharing
in the suffering of all creatures, human and nonhuman. There is an
organic unity and radical affinity—a common origin and universal
destiny—that characterizes all of God’s creation. An ethos of
asceticism—a culture and conduct of frugality and simplicity—is
an effective reduction and correction to our contemporary lifestyle
of consumption, shattering any marginalization of theology from
life and the world.
Part B: A Green Theology

Nikolaos Asproulis
Long before the Paris Agreement and the Encyclical of Pope Francis,
Laudato Si’ in 2015, and in the context of the established designation
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics (New York, NY: T&T Clark,
13
2008), 88.
INTRODUCTION 9
of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as the “Green Patriarch”

due to his global ecological initiatives, Christian churches and
religious thinkers began to reflect seriously on the environmental
crisis and the attending urgent problems for people throughout
the world. John D. Zizioulas14 (Metropolitan of Pergamon) a well-
known spokesman of contemporary Orthodoxy in general and the
Ecumenical Patriarchate in particular, whose work is inspired by the
Greek Fathers and by the existential language of modern philosophy,
has sparked an animated debate in ecumenical systematic theology
and its focus on the importance of environmental care as early
as 1967, by promoting a “Eucharistic vision of the world.”15 His
thought, often expressed in ontological and Eucharistic terms,
sought to increase the awareness of the Orthodox churches on the
present ecological problem, insisting on the need to promote a new
ecological ethics that would effectively respond to this crisis.
Historical Roots of the Ecological Crisis

As a competent anatomist of the history of ideas, Zizioulas deliberately
turns his attention to the roots of the ecological crisis. Inasmuch as
the apostolic and patristic era were not preoccupied with the issue,
one is obliged to search for its “ideological roots . . . in the medieval
theology and philosophy of the West,” which was further shaped
predominantly by the European Enlightenment.16 In this regard, he
repeatedly refers to major thinkers of the Enlightenment such as
Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, and particularly René Descartes17
as those who gradually formed a worldview presenting the human
being as dominating nature, an attitude further facilitated by the
increasing prevalence of technology and science. Based mainly on
the well-known article by Lynn White Jr.,18 Zizioulas credits certain
14
For a comprehensive overall discussion of his theology see D. Knight, ed., The
Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007);
and P. Kalaitzidis and N. Asproulis, eds., Personhood, Eucharist and the Kingdom of
God in Orthodox and Ecumenical Perspective. Festschrift in Honour of Metropolitan
John Zizioulas of Pergamon (Volos: Volos Academy Publications, 2016) (in Greek).
15
See Chapter 8.
16
See Chapters 1 and 6.
17
18
“The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” 1203–7. Cf. Chapters 5–7.
currents in the history of the Church as leading to the modern

indifference or abuse of creation.
Thus he points out the bold rationalistic perception of the imago
Dei in Christian theology, which gave almost ontological priority
to reason/intellect over the body/matter,19 a mentality which
undervalued the materiality of creation and gradually contributed
to a clear anti-ecological orientation. This understanding was
evident in both Western and Eastern theology. For instance, Origen
understood the human mind as the very link between God and
creation, an attitude that undervalued the dignity of creation.20
In this vein, Descartes’s “cogito ergo sum”21 was the natural
consequence, whereby nature and creation were perceived as a
means toward an individualist goal, the unquenchable pleasure
(eudemonism) of human beings. At the same time, due to certain
Platonist and Neoplatonist influences, a whole spiritual tradition
starting again with Origen and moving through Evagrius, the
monastic tradition and the Philokalia spirituality led to a certain
dichotomy between body and soul, to a devaluation of the material
aspect of humankind and by extension of creation in favor of
the “immortality of the soul” and the spiritual world.22 A similar
tendency also appeared in the West, where Augustine perceived “the
Kingdom of God [as] a place where only human souls would exist.”23
As a result, a certain escapist tendency from history, materiality,
and its problems dominated in the history of Christianity and even
Eastern Orthodoxy, a stance evident in the reluctance of the latter
to deal with issues related to the so-called political theology.24
19
20
See Chapter 3.
21
Cf. Chapters 4–6.
22
See Chapter 3. Zizioulas states that, for Origen, “the material creation was the
outcome of the fall, and that it is the spiritual world which will finally survive.” See
also Chapter 6.
23
See Chapters 3, 5, and 7.
24
In Chapter 8, for instance, Zizioulas expresses his disagreement with any view
that considers the Gospel as a sort of “opium.” For him, “waiting for the terrestrial
paradise of a morally perfect society is a creation of Western rationalism that
cannot be deduced from the witness of the Eucharist.” This does not mean that his
theological vision does not lead to a certain political action, though this is not his
primarily concern. His eco-theology is a clear example of the political orientation
of his theology.
INTRODUCTION 11
The Doctrine of Creatio Ex Nihilo

What then are the basic principles of Zizioulas’s eco-theology?
Following the late Georges Florovsky, Zizioulas boldly examines
the origins of creation (κτίσις) from the standpoint of the absolute
dialectic between uncreated and created, along with a radical
understanding of “nothing” (nihil), emphasizing the freedom of
God as the ultimate cause of creation which ensures an ontological
dualism. Moreover, he stresses the role that human beings can play in
relation to the salvation of creation, taking into serious consideration
man’s position as “microcosm” (Maximus the Confessor) as well as
his accountability and liturgical vocation as “priest of creation.”
Zizioulas dedicates a considerable time to this thorny issue.25 Like
Florovsky previously, he identifies the question of self-referentiality
of being as the core challenge of Greek thought addressed by the
Church Fathers. Hence, in Aristotle, priority is given to the unity of
beings, to the “One” over the “many,” insofar as “nothing comes
from nothing.”26 As Zizioulas puts it: “If the beginning [of creation]
was nothing, it would return by necessity to nothing, whereas if
its beginning was ‘something’ [cf. Timaeus], it would return by
necessity to that ‘something’ from which it came forth. Being would
then have to be cyclical if it were to survive, as was in fact conceived
by the ancient Greeks.”27 That said, Zizioulas adamantly highlights
the major problem underlying any creation theology with a direct
impact on the present debates about the sustainability of creation
itself. In this regard he points out the novelty of the Christian vision
against the various prevailing theories in the early patristic era.
On the one side Gnosticism28 held that the world is “penetrated
by evil.”29 In this case, an escapist attitude from this “evil” world
25
In his seminal articles “Created and Uncreated. The Existential Significance of
Chalcedonian Christology,” in Communion and Otherness, ed. Paul McPartlan.
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2006), 250–85; “Preserving God’s Creation,” 1–5, 41–45,
13 (1990): 1–5 (reprinted here in Chapter 7), but also his celebrated books Being as
Communion (Chapter 1) and Communion & Otherness (Chapters 1 and 6). Cf. also
his The Eucharistic Communion and the World and Chapter 3 here.
26
Aristotle, Phys. 191Α, 23 (cited in “On Being Other,” Communion & Otherness,
15, n.3).
27
“On Being Other,” 19.
28
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 83. See Chapter 4.
29
“Preserving God’s Creation,” 155. See Chapter 7.
was boldly considered a necessary condition for salvation. On

the other side the Platonist view (along with mainstream classical
tradition),30 according to which the created world is penetrated
by divine presence, sustained the inherent concept in various eco-
activist trends of creation as self-sufficient. In the words of an
ancient saying: “Everything is filled with gods,”31 which implied
a clear “ontological affinity”32 between God and creation. While
the concept of a created world is highlighted perhaps for the first
time in Plato’s Demiurge, his account of God refers to a decorator
and not a creator ex nihilo in an absolute sense. For Zizioulas, this
“Demiurge had to create out of pre-existing matter and to do so
with absolute respect for the ideas of Beauty and Goodness.”33
The most basic question ultimately revolves around the proper
understanding of the concept of creation itself, which must
be examined dialectically along with its beginning/origin. For
Zizioulas, the fact that the world had a beginning in an absolute
sense seemed to “be utter nonsense and absurdity to all ancient
Greek thinkers.”34 Again following Florovsky, he credits Athanasius
for highlighting that “between God and the world there is total
ontological otherness.”35 Nevertheless, a Christian view of creation
requires a literal understanding of the beginning of created existence,
as well as of the un-originate (ἀγέννητος) existence of the Creator.
Christian theology was thus forced to innovate. “Creation
as ktisis is a notion encountered for the first time . . . with the
Apostle Paul, and it clearly presupposes an absolutely ontological
beginning.”36 Zizioulas further stresses the relevance of this term
by speaking of the need to introduce the concept “ktisiology”
into Christian vocabulary. By using the term “ktisis” rather than
demiourgia, Zizioulas emphasizes the ontologically absolute
character of the beginning of creation, which the Church Fathers
ontologically interpreted as creation “from (absolute) nothing.”37
30
Ibid., 156.
31
Ibid.
32
Cf. Chapters 3 and 7.
33
34
“Preserving God’s Creation,” 157. Cf. Chapter 7.
35
“On Being Other,” 17, quoting Athanasius, Contra Arian. 1.20–2 1 (PG 26: 53).
36
“Created and Uncreated,” 253. See also Chapters 1 and 7.
37
Cf. Chapter 7.
INTRODUCTION 13
As he explains: “The idea that the world has an absolute beginning

could only be expressed through the formula that the world was
created ‘out of nothing,’ ex nihilo.”38
Since the time of the early Church (Athanasius and Nicaea I), an
awareness gradually developed that between God and world “there
exists an absolute, ‘abysmal’ otherness.”39 Zizioulas contends that
if it were possible for something to arise from nothing,40 then it was
also possible that a totally other being could exist vis-á-vis God’s
being. Thus, he notes, “the doctrine of creation out of nothing was
about otherness and freedom in ontology.”41 In so doing, Zizioulas
deepens his creation theology, since this view of creatio ex nihilo
also defines the parameters for the dialectic between created and
uncreated, which required an understanding of the God-world
relationship as one of reciprocal poles in a relationship of absolute
otherness, and the existence of a third pole of absolute nothingness
to which the other two should point. In this context, absolute
nothingness signifies the lack of any metaphysical kinship (syggenia)
between God and creation at the level of existence. As he puts it:
If god and the world were to confront one another for a moment
and their relationship was to be turned into what we call
a dialectic, it follows, in the spirit of ancient Greece, that the
universe would collapse. Antitheses can certainly be used . . . but
on condition that the antitheses are not ontologically absolute
and that they do not give “space” or “time” to absolute non-
being. Hence, ascent and descent are the terms of an opposition . . .
emphasizing their unity . . . There is no dialectical relationship, in
an absolutely ontological sense. There is a mutual dependence.42
By emphasizing creatio ex nihilo as the very foundation of any

eco-theology, Zizioulas concludes that the world is not eternal. If
the world was eternal it would not need to be created, and if it
was not created from nothing, then the world was created from
38
“Preserving God’s Creation,” 158. See Chapter 7. For a detailed account of the
importance of nihil see also “Created and Uncreated,” 273–5.
39
40
“Preserving God’s Creation,” 158–9. Cf. Chapter 7.
41
42
“Created and Uncreated,” 252–3.
something that has some other existence. This is clearly a reversal

of the ancient view and leads to the conclusion that “existence is the
fruit of freedom,”43 since the self-referentiality of being, as perceived
in ancient thought, is now abolished. For Zizioulas the doctrine
of creation out of nothing has clear ecological implications: “The
world does not belong to us and we are not ‘inhabitants and masters’
of nature . . . but rather ‘stewards and managers.’”44 As soon as the
world is considered a gift offered by God, then any sort of dualism
that undermines the dignity of the world’s materiality is excluded.
The fact that the world was created out nothing and is not
eternal means that there is also the possibility that it would return
to nothing and cannot live eternally on its own right.45 Zizioulas
emphasizes that one negative prospect of the Fall is the ultimate
activation of “the limitations and potential dangers inherent in
creaturehood, if creation is left to itself,”46 inasmuch as nothingness,
ultimately death, continuously permeates and penetrates the world.
Zizioulas’s emphasis on “nothing” indicates the abysmal chasm
between God and creation, signifying that creation’s very being
constitutes a gift from God. If creation is a gift, originated from the
absolute and creative will of God, then it by no means possesses
any natural or other means to guarantee eternal survival. This is
an uncontested reality nowadays, when the environmental crisis
threatens the very sustainability and the future of the planet. It is
sufficient here to refer to the expanding global warming and the
radical consequences of the climate change for biodiversity and the
survival of all creatures, including human beings, in order to realize
that our world is, today as never before, under the yoke of death.
Survival of the Planet

So what should be done? “How did God want the world to survive?”47
For a Christian, this question is not just theoretical but relates to the
43
Ibid., 255–6.
44
See Chapter 1.
45
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 89.
46
J. Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2002), 102.
47
“Preserving God’s Creation,” 162. See also Chapter 7.
INTRODUCTION 15
core of the Gospel message and the Christian identity. Zizioulas is

adamant in describing the various solutions proposed over time. By
doing this, he emphasizes the danger of adopting a view of “natural
affinity”48 between God and world, a sort of a “metaphysical
continuum” (Florovsky), a view that would account to a return to
the self-referentiality of being, if we accept that the world has been
originally endowed with a natural capacity for survival.
This leads, for one thing, to the notion of the “immortality of the
soul,”49 which Zizioulas regards as problematic. If anything offers
creation the possibility of existing in a natural way, it inevitably also
leads to an obligatory immortality. Equally unacceptable is a related
proposition based on “moral” or “juridical” foundations,50 supposing
that created being can improve itself by practicing or obeying natural
or divine law. For Zizioulas, a proposal of this kind cannot overcome
death inasmuch as the latter is an ontological problem, and not just
a moral one. Given his firm preoccupation with ontology, Zizioulas
boldly states: “No, death is not conquered like that. The only thing
conquered is preoccupation with the problem of death.”51
How then can creation be saved? To answer this, Zizioulas
develops a creative interpretation of Chalcedonian Christology.52
In this vein, one must also take into account the patristic idea
of “hypostatic union” which, according to him, gives priority to
the person rather than to the two natures of Christ. Interpreting
Maximus the Confessor, Zizioulas notes that, in order to overcome
death, a relationship is necessary between the created and the
uncreated,53 and it is the human being who must undertake this role.
However, the Fall foiled this divinely ordained task, necessitating
change (not cancelation) of the divine plan. What was required now
was for the Logos to become human, “so that all that has been
created can be united to the uncreated. For death to be overcome,
the created has to come into relationship with the uncreated.”54
48
Ibid., 163. Cf. also “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity,” Communion &
Otherness, 227.
49
Ibid., 161, “Created and Uncreated,” 258.
50
“Created and Uncreated,” 258.
51
Ibid.
52
See his “Created and Uncreated.”
53
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 102.
54
Ibid.
The Fall changed the natural condition of “difference” (διαφορά)

between created and uncreated into one of “division” (διαίρεση)
(according to Maximus),55 leading again to the nonexistence that
preceded creation. In this context, Zizioulas proposes an existential
interpretation of the Chalcedonian Definition, and particularly
of the clause56 “without confusion” (ἀσυγχύτως) and “without
division” (ἀδιαιρέτως), describing the relationship between God and
humanity in the person of Christ. “Without division” highlights the
necessity of no separation between created and uncreated; on the
contrary, there must be also real communion at the ontological level
in order to avoid both the self-referentiality of the creation and
death. “Without confusion” guarantees the freedom and otherness
of the two realities; otherwise, the relationship would not be free.
The two concepts are mediated in the person of Christ, in whom
communion and otherness coincide. Christ’s resurrection offers the
whole of creation a victory over death and salvation.
Once again following Maximus, Zizioulas notes that without the
Incarnation of the Logos,57 the ontological distance between God
and world cannot be overcome.58 Christ can thus be understood
as the human being par excellence, who brings God and world
into relationship. Is the person of Christ then the vantage point
from which every aspect of creation is to be considered (the act
of creation and the salvation of the ktisis)? A study of Zizioulas’s
early work reveals an attempt to directly connect the divine Logos
with the beginning of creation in an ontological perspective. Christ
“is the ‘beginning [ἀρχή]’ of the world (ontological, cosmological
Christology) because He is also the beginning [ἀρχή] of the world to
come (eschatological Christology).”59
The Priest of Creation

Patristic tradition therefore envisions man as the link between God
and creation. It was Irenaeus of Lyons who described the human
55
56
Cf. “Created and Uncreated.”
57
“On Being Other,” 21ff.
58
“On Being Other,” 23–5.
59
J. Zizioulas, Ellinismos kai Christianismos: I synantisi dyo kosmon (Athens:
Apostoliki Diakonia, 2003), 115.
INTRODUCTION 17
being as “the glory of God.”60 Against the prevailing understanding

of the imago Dei as chiefly referring to the human mind, the Greek
Fathers of both East and West represent a different perception in
light of freedom,61 according to which the latter should not be
considered as a psychological or moral decision but as “the ability
to affirm or deny the very existence of something involving one’s
own existence. In other words, the human being is endowed with
the freedom to either destroy creation or affirm its existence.”62 The
current ecological crisis clearly highlights the relevance of such an
understanding of human freedom, found in the Greek Fathers. To be
clear, Zizioulas credits Darwinism63 and modern quantum physics64
for highlighting the inherent interconnection between humanity
and the rest of creation. The human being is just an animal, albeit
an “autexousion animal” “with a difference of degree, but not of
kind.” It is due to the freedom bestowed to humanity that man
possesses the capacity to “transcend the limitations of nature to the
point of denying nature itself or anything given.”65 It is exactly here
that man’s role as the priest of creation emerges. Creation in itself,
devoid of any natural means of salvation, needs man as a priest to
“freely unify it and refer it back to its Creator.” It is in the Eucharist
that humanity undertakes this priestly role66 acting in the place of
God Himself (“εἰς τόπον Θεοῦ, according to Ignatius of Antioch),67
by offering the creation in its entirety to God the Father, so as to
gain eternal life. In this vein, man becomes the “priest of creation,”68
the one called to treat the world not only with respect but also
“with creativity so that its parts may form a whole and this whole
may transcend its boundaries by being brought into relation with
God.”69 This renders the human being indispensable for creation in
60
See Chapters 3, 7.
61
Cf. Chapter 10.
62
See Chapter 3.
63
See, for instance, Chapters 6 and 9.
64
He repeatedly refers to the well-known “Anthropic Cosmological Principle” to
describe the close ties between humanity and the world (see, for instance, Chapter 5).
65
See Chapters 3, 9.
66
Cf. Chapter 7 (lecture III).
67
Magn., PG 5, 668A.
68
See Chapter 9.
69
See Chapter 3.
contrast with certain modern ecological views that devaluate man’s

role in saving nature.
Closing Remarks
Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) affirms his “firm conviction that
the solution of the ecological problem is not simply a matter of
management and technicalities, important as these may be. It is a
matter of changing our spiritual attitudes, indeed of changing our
very worldview.”70
Today, it is not enough for humanity simply to preserve, as a
steward or oikonomos of the environment.71 Man is called to act
as priest of creation, as homo eucharisticus, in order to contribute
to the eschatological incorruptibility of the God’s creation. At the
end of time, we must offer in return the precious gift offered to us
by God not as a destroyed planet but as the Eucharistic Gifts of
the body of Christ in order to live forever. While “ecology is . . . a
matter of our esse,” the offering of creation through humankind to
God also makes it a matter of “our bene esse.”72 Even if it sometimes
appears too late on this side of history, we confess that the last word
always belongs to God.
70
Op. cit.
71
See Chapter 9.
72
Op. cit.
I
Historical Roots

1
St. Paul and the
Ecological Problem
The Origins of the Ecological Crisis

Neither the apostolic period generally nor St. Paul personally
directly address the environmental crisis; ecological issues were
not a concern of that time. Nor again do we encounter these
questions in the patristic age. It would, therefore, be futile to search
for references to the ecological crisis in the writings of the New
Testament or the teachings of the Church Fathers. It is in our era that
ecological concerns emerge for the first time, although their roots
must be sought several centuries ago, notably during the period of
the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Of course, their ideological roots are also implicit in the medieval
theology and philosophy of the West, while they are predominantly
shaped by the European Enlightenment, when the advancement
of science and technology enables humankind to subdue nature
and exploit it for utilitarian purposes. It was precisely then that
the first renowned representatives of the Enlightenment, such as
Bacon, Descartes, and Kant, openly refer to a domination of nature
by man, encouraging the enslavement or subjugation of nature to
human will and inviting humankind to become, in the expression
of Descartes, “the master et possessor of nature” through the use
of science.
Particular impact along the course toward the present ecological
crisis was engendered by the rise of technology, which does not
simply subdue nature to humanity; after all, human beings always
employed nature for purposes of survival without nevertheless

interfering in the mechanisms of the natural process. However,
technology—which in this sense differs from science or even
technical engineering—developed its own mechanisms, whereby it
penetrates and interferes with the relationship between matter and
energy by isolating and stockpiling resources for purposes other
than those intended by nature. In this way, human beings not only
constrained nature to provide more than what it was capable of
offering, but also compelled it to provide things entirely different
from those permitted by the natural laws. The culmination of this
mentality arguably lies in the process of genetic mutation. This
brutal interference of man into the laws and consequent balances
of nature, in combination with the pressure exerted upon nature
to produce increasingly more for the satisfaction of human greed,
created such an immense disruption for the natural environment
that human beings could no longer live in harmony with nature.
This is how we arrived at the current ecological crisis, which
is unquestionably fatal for both nature and human beings. We no
longer need to define this predicament. Instead, we witness and
experience it, albeit with a certain delay which, unfortunately, leaves
little hope or possibility for any resolution. When the Ecumenical
Patriarchate Demetrios launched its ecological initiatives in 1989,
no one could as much as suspect the gravity of the situation that
would emerge. Today, everyone is talking about the environment;
but it is probably too late.
It should not surprise us that the ecological crisis is directly
related to theology. This relationship is not only of a moral and
spiritual nature, related to the voracious greed, selfish love, and
self-gratification of our age. There is no doubt that this moral and
spiritual dimension is immediately connected to the ecological
problem. However, far beyond and more profoundly than this
connection, the ecological crisis has to do with people’s faith; it is
not a moral, but rather a doctrinal matter. Indeed, this means that it
touches upon the way that human beings regard the world and their
relationship with nature; in other words, it concerns what human
beings believe. This is the precisely point where the teaching of
the Apostle Paul assumes particular importance for the ecological
problem.
There are two fundamental questions that arise in this context.
The first is: What do we believe about the world? This question
ST. PAUL AND THE ECOLOGICAL PROBLEM 23
addresses the subject of cosmology. The second question is: What

do we believe about ourselves? This is a matter that addresses
anthropology. These two fundamental issues of faith decisively
influence the way that we respond to the ecological problem. And
on these two issues, the teaching of the Apostle Paul acquires
vital significance. In the pages that follow, we shall briefly refer to
this teaching and seek to draw certain conclusions regarding the
challenge of the natural environment.
Cosmos as Creation
For St. Paul the world is not something self-existent or self-evident.
Nor can it be explained with reference to itself. The existence of
the world is described as creation; that is, it relates to the creation
of a person. As emphasized in the Letter to the Hebrews, “Every
house, of course, is built by someone; and God is the one who
has built all things” (3:4). Although this letter is not considered
as Pauline, it nonetheless reflects and faithfully expresses the spirit
of St. Paul. Similarly, in other letters of Paul, the notion that the
world is a creation or creature of God is never absent. Thus, in
Rom. 1:25, the world is described as “ktisis [creation]” and God as
“ktistis [creator].” Referring to the pagans, Paul writes that “they
worship and serve what God has created instead of creator,” thereby
differentiating the Christian faith about the world from that of
idolatry precisely by introducing the distinction later adopted by
the Church Fathers between “created” and “uncreated.” Paul will
also repeat this idea in other epistles, such as Eph. 3:9, where he
describes God as “creator of all things,” as well as Col. 1:15–16,
where, in referring to Christ, Paul observes that “Christ is the visible
likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son, superior to all
created things. For through him God created everything in heaven
and in earth, the seen and the unseen things . . . God created all
things through him and for him.”
Let us leave aside for a moment the Christological aspect of this
cosmology, to which we shall return later. At this point, we should
note Paul’s insistence on the belief that the world is created. This
conviction is of great ecological significance because, if we accept
that the world has been granted to us by someone else, this implies
that:
(a) The world does not belong to us and we are not

“inhabitants and masters” of nature, as Descartes tells us
with regard to the progress of science, but rather “stewards
and managers” of a precious property that does not
belong to us. We must, therefore, recognize God as the sole
proprietor of the natural world and “refer” or “offer” “all
things” to Him. At this point, the ecological significance
behind the words of the Divine Liturgy—“Your own of
your own we offer to you in all and for all”—emerges
very clearly. It is no coincidence that the Divine Liturgy is
already from the earliest centuries called an “offering.” As
we say in liturgy: “Let us present the holy offering in peace.”
This word is of enormous ecological importance. For by
offering creation to God, humanity becomes conscious of
the sacredness of creation, since it recognizes that creation
belongs to God. Moreover, just as everything that belongs
to God is sacred, so too the natural world that surrounds us
is also sacred. Eucharistic theology thus proves to be crucial
for ecology. After all, the Eucharist is not just a prayer of
gratitude to God, but incorporates the participation of
the natural world in the form of the natural elements of
bread and wine. By raising bread and wine and exclaiming
“Your own of your own,” the priest and the ecclesiastical
community over which he presides proclaim in the most
festive manner that the material creation belongs to God
and, therefore, must be approached with awe and respect
for the integrity and way in which it both exists and
functions.
(b) In this context, the words of St. Paul in his First Letter to
1 Tim. 4:4 also acquires great significance: “Everything
that God has created is good . . . to be received with
thanks.” This phrase simultaneously declares first of all an
emphasis on the natural environment (since “everything
is good”), thus excluding any Manichaean perception of
the material world and any asceticism that might conceal
aversion or rejection of material goods, and secondly it
acknowledges that material creation is a gift, which is why
it must be received “with thanks.” St. Paul therefore urges
the Colossians to be “filled with thanksgiving” (2:7), and the
Ephesians, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, always to

give thanks for everything to God the Father” (5:20). In this
way, everything that occurs in the Divine Eucharist extends
to and permeates human life. The Eucharistic ethos resulting
from this worldview is the most powerful antidote to the
ecological crisis. By promoting this ethos as a consequence
to the belief that the world is God’s creation and is therefore
neither self-existent nor self-evident, the Apostle Paul
becomes especially relevant to the ecological crisis that we
face.
Responsibility for Creation

According to St. Paul, the human person is divided into flesh,
soul, and spirit. These three elements should not to be understood
as natural constituents of the human being; instead, they are
manifested in the way in which we exist; that is to say, they indicate
a relationship and attitude, not the essence of the human person.
The term “flesh” implies enslaving nature to the demands of the
flesh or the biological hypostasis of humankind. By the same token,
the term “soul” indicates someone living according to the laws of
mortal or transient life, which is interrupted by death. By contrast,
the term “spirit” signifies being filled with the Holy Spirit, which
is “life-giving” inasmuch as it brings us into a relationship with
God, which transcends death. Thus, for St. Paul, the soul is not
identified with the spirit, but instead belongs to the biological
hypostasis of humankind. The spirit, however, does not substitute
man’s biological hypostasis, but rather releases it from the laws
of corruption in order to overcome death and live eternally. The
“spiritual” person and the “spiritual body” of our being, which
Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15, is not opposed to matter, but is
matter infused by the Holy Spirit, free of decay and death.
For Paul, then, the human being is neither only soul nor merely
spirit, but a psychosomatic being. The “spiritual body,” which
according to St. Paul we shall have at the common resurrection,
will not be immaterial, as Origen claimed, but filled with the Holy
Spirit, as St. Methodius of Olympus wrote by way of responding to
Origen in his treatise on the resurrection.
The ecological consequence of this teaching is immense. Among

other things, it denotes the following:
(a) As a psychosomatic being, man is the link between the

material creation and God; this link constitutes the presence
of the Holy Spirit in human beings. The Holy Spirit is
of course “everywhere present and fills all things” but it
acts as a link between creation and God only through
humankind. Without humanity, material creation is doomed
to corruption.
(b) Without the Holy Spirit, the human being is “flesh” and
“soul,” that is to say, condemned to corruption and death.
This also affects all material creation, since it is only
through humankind that it can overcome corruption and
death.
(c) It follows, then, that St. Paul’s cosmology is anthropocentric.
Man’s responsibility for the survival of material creation is
therefore enormous. Humankind holds in its hands the key
to the survival or else destruction of the material world. It
is therefore no exaggeration to assert that material creation
may be led to destruction as a result of our actions. This is
already becoming clear in the current ecological crisis.
(d) Precisely because the salvation of material creation depends
on humankind, in order to save the world from corruption
and death, the Son and Word of God becomes human. He
does not become an angel, because that would in no way
benefit material creation. The aim of the Incarnation of the
Word is not limited to man but extends to all of creation.
It was a mistake on the part of Origen—and, alas, it is a
mistake of many Orthodox theologians—to believe that the
material world is destined to disappear and exists only to
serve the spiritual needs of man. This position was refuted
by Methodius of Olympus and rejected by the patristic
tradition. Furthermore, St. Athanasius of Alexandria clearly
speaks of the deification not only of human beings, but also
of all creation, in his Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit.
God created the material world to survive and be glorified,
and any destruction of the material world comprises a
transgression against God’s will and, therefore, sin. There
exists, then, what we might call ecological sin, something

that must definitely be inserted into the vocabulary of our
spiritual elders.
(e) In this sense, as human being, Christ unites and redeems
creation from corruption and destruction. Without Christ
there is no solution to ecological devastation—not because
Christ as divine can miraculously save material creation,
but because as true human being, He is able to incorporate
and transform humanity and all of us into a link between
created and uncreated, thereby redeeming creation from
corruption.
(f) It is at this point that the Church’s vital importance for
ecology becomes evident. According to St. Paul, Christ is
“the first-born of all creation” precisely because he is the
head of the Church. The Church exists not only to save
souls. It exists also to sanctify all creation. What many
Orthodox overlook today is echoed in the liturgical life of
the Church, which is replete with prayers “for favorable
seasons” and “for an abundance of the fruits of the earth”
(which our faithful would not taste before they were
blessed by the Church), for animals and waters, against
drought, and so on. The Orthodox Church is the most
ecological expression of Christianity, a fact which tends to
be overshadowed by the introduction of a foreign pietism
that focuses on the Church’s concern for people’s soul and
supposedly spiritual affairs. In any case, as we have already
underlined, the Divine Eucharist is the most ecological
manifestation of the Church, where material creation is
not simply sanctified, but becomes the Body and Blood of
Christ—in other words, where material creation is deified.
All this is wonderfully summarized in five verses of the Letter to

the Romans (8:19–23), which is also the most ecological passage
in Paul’s writings. Allow me to cite and comment on this passage:
Creation awaits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons
of God; for creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will
but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because creation
itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain
the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the
whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now,

and not only creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits
of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the
redemption of our bodies.
Verse 19 literally states that “all of creation awaits with eager

longing for God to reveal his children.” The word “ἀποκαραδοκεῖ”
(“awaits with eager longing”) is not coincidental. Paul does not
simply say “with expectation,” but uses the words “with eager
longing,” which implies fervent expectation. Translating this into
theological language signifies that material creation has an inherent
tendency, a momentum or end. In Aristotle’s terminology, this
might be expressed in the term “entelechy.” However, for Aristotle,
this propensity refers and leads to natural purposes, while for Paul
it relates to persons (“to reveal his children”). Nature, then, looks
to the realization of the adoption of humankind, an adoption that
will be realized in the person of the only begotten Son of God.
In other words, the fervent expectation of creation is found in
the deification of man in Christ. Creation looks to humankind;
it is human-oriented (what modern physics calls the “Anthropic
Cosmological Principle,” according to which the universe is
constructed in such a way as to highlight human existence and
activity).
Verse 20 explains why creation looks to man: “Creation was
subject to futility,” that is, to corruption and death “not of its
own will, but by the will of him who subjected it in hope”—
namely, because of man’s Fall. Humanity, then, is responsible for
the problems of creation because prior to the Fall there was no
corruption or death. As science claims, before the appearance
of man, the struggle and competition among the various species
(and, therefore, the corruption and death of all creatures) were
already present in the natural world. Subjection to corruption
and death did not come as a result of the Fall; however, the Fall
brought about the loss of the ability to overcome them in order
for creation to attain true and eternal life. The tragedy of man’s
Fall for the rest of creation is that God’s original plan for the
deification of creation through humankind was abolished and
abandoned by human freedom. Thus, along with the rest of
creation, man was subordinated to the futility of false life that is
subject to death.
Verse 21 describes how, thanks to Christ, the hope of liberation

from corruption nevertheless did not disappear. This is the hope
that “that creation itself would one day be set free from its bondage
to corruption”—not by itself but through “sharing the glorious
liberty of the children of God.” We should note that, for St. Paul,
the destiny of creation is connected to the destiny of humanity, and
vice versa, the salvation of humanity is tied to the salvation of the
material world. Humankind and the environment die together and
live together. By destroying the natural environment, humanity
is destroying itself. And by respecting the natural environment,
humanity ensures its own existence.
Verse 22 is arguably the most striking ecological declaration:
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail
together until now.” Creation is groaning, and we see this very
clearly when animal species disappear daily as a result of ecological
turmoil, when the Arctic ice that for centuries provided sanctuary
to so many species melts and leads these creatures to extinction,
when the overheating of the earth and resulting rapid climatic
change profoundly disrupt nature’s balance so that numerous and
diverse species of the planet cannot seek refuge for survival on our
planet. Who among us listens to this groaning of creation, when we
are deeply preoccupied in saving our economy (namely, our own
prosperity and self-gratification); we simply have no time to pay
attention to the groaning of creation. St. Paul’s sensitivity, however,
is able to discern this groaning, even if the ecological crisis was not
yet apparent in his time. For him, just as for the Desert Fathers after
him, the death of a bird is sufficient to bring tears to his eyes. Have
we, who wreak such destruction through our greed, become so
hardened and insensitive that we no longer feel creation groaning
with pain in our age?
In v. 23, St. Paul retains his hope alive because he believes that,
despite the prevalence of evil, there still remains the remnant of
those who by the power of the Holy Spirit accept adoption in
the person of Christ. Paul thus allows the hope of redemption
from corruption to appear, since death has been defeated through
the Resurrection of Christ and the spirit of adoption has already
transformed the lives of the saints. The saints, then, become the
models and standards for the development of a consciousness
required of everyone at this moment of solemn groaning by all
creation.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have endeavored to derive lessons from the theology
of St. Paul on the ecological crisis that we face. As mentioned from
the outset, Paul lived at an age when humanity’s relationships with
the natural environment were more harmonious. However, since his
eschatological expectation was so intense that he could not accept
the corruption and death to which all creation was subjected due
to man’s Fall, Paul eagerly awaits these to be overcome. This is why
we are able to draw useful lessons for our contemporary situation.
In this way, the Apostle Paul teaches us that the world in which
we live is not our property to use as we wish; instead, we are merely
stewards and administrators of material creation. Therefore, we are
called to respect the laws established by the creator for a balanced
coexistence and development of the species and elements of the
universe. We are called to explore these laws, but not to interfere
with them by altering them; we must allow nature the right to
exist as it wants and not as we want. Science is called to subject
knowledge to wisdom, thereby setting limits on its quests when
these endanger the natural balance. On the other hand, the human
person is called to become “Eucharistic,” recognizing whatever he
has and whatever he is as gifts so that he can overcome the crisis
that plagues us.
All of this may be difficult or even seem impossible in a culture
like ours, where individualism and the values of atheistic humanism
prevail. In this atmosphere, St. Paul’s teaching will sound as strange
as his preaching on the Areopagus. However, the Church has no
other solution to offer this ecological crisis than precisely this
teaching. Its Eucharistic and ascetic ethos is the only witness and
contribution that the Church can offer to the ecological disaster
that threatens us. And it should not neglect to propose them because
the responsibility for protecting God’s creation belongs to all of us
and primarily to the Church.
2
The Book of Revelation and
the Natural Environment
Nineteen hundred years have passed since, according to tradition as

well as scientific research, the book of the Apocalypse was written
on the island of Patmos by St. John the Divine. During this long
period the book has never ceased to exercise fascination over its
readers, both inside and outside the Church. This is due to the style
as well as the content of the book: the style is marked by heavy and
complex symbolism, which lends itself to countless interpretations
allowing the imagination often to “roam wild,” while the content
refers to such upheavals in the existing historical as well as natural
order that “apocalypse” has become identical with the worst
catastrophe that we can refer to.
All this explains a great deal of what Church history tells us
about this book. The hesitation of the official Church to include
it in the scriptural canon for many centuries is one of the most
notable facts. Another is the remarkable silence imposed on this
book as is evident from the lack of patristic commentaries on it
for about eight centuries. Finally, the sudden and widespread
exploitation of the book in the Middle Ages, particularly in the
West, to support all sorts of religious ideas, usually marked by
fanaticism and extraordinary psychological manifestations, has
given the book a mysterious character. Even among the Orthodox
of our time, in spite of the true spirit of the Orthodox tradition to
be found in the Greek Fathers, a fanatical rhetoric is often spread
among the faithful, particularly in connection with the number 666,
that renders the Apocalypse a terrifying and in some cases irrational
text.
As an alternative to this frenetic approach, biblical scholarship

in the last few decades has enabled us to look at this book with
more sober eyes. Thus, with regard to its symbolic images, we know
that they all come from Jewish prophetic and apocalyptic language
and are meant to conceal references to contemporary historical
realities—especially ones related to Rome and its persecutions
of the early Christians—so that the book might not provoke the
wrath of the civil authorities. These symbolisms were therefore not
meant to be “mystical” in some Pythagorean sense but vehicles of
communication among the faithful of the early communities versed
in the Jewish tradition and its later apocalyptic imagery.
The other important point that has emerged from biblical
research is that the main symbolic imagery of the book comes from
the liturgical experience of its readers, particularly in the form of
the Eucharist. One can say without exaggeration that the book of
the Apocalypse is a Eucharistic liturgy or a commentary on such a
liturgy. Without the liturgy this book remains incomprehensible or
is seriously misunderstood.
Finally, it must be underlined that it is the theology of the
book that matters in the end, not its symbolism. The book must
be approached hermeneutically—that is, with reference to its
diachronic existential significance. The book intends to put forward
messages of ultimate significance for the life of the world, and it is
to these that we must turn our attention.
What does the book of Revelation tell us about the ecological
crisis of our time? We can only answer this question if we dig deeply
into the theology of the book. Some of its fundamental theological
principles bearing directly on ecology are, in my view, the following.
History Viewed Eschatologically

One aspect of this principle is that all historical reality must have
some ultimate significance. Nothing is wasted. Even evil contributes
to the final purpose of history. It is a fundamental biblical belief,
shared also by the author of the Apocalypse, that Satan is a servant
of God’s purposes; he is used by God to bring about the fulfillment
of His will (cf. Job). Later on, in the patristic period and under
the influence of Platonism, evil came to be regarded as “μή ὂν [me
on]”—that is, a mere negation or absence of the good. But even
THE BOOK OF REVELATION 33
then the belief survived that what happens in history, whether good
or evil, comprises part of a purpose which is to be revealed in the
end. The prophet—and St. John certainly claims to be a prophet—is
given by God the charisma to reveal to us this ultimate significance.
If prophecy makes no sense without history, since it is nothing but
an interpretation of it, then equally history ceases to be history
unless it has a meaning, that is, unless it is somehow linked with
prophecy.
This eschatological approach to history, therefore, involves
revelation or an apocalypsis. This Greek word for “apocalypse”
means an “uncovering” or “unveiling”—no doubt of the ultimate
significance of historical events. Why did the term “apocalypsis”
acquire the meaning of “catastrophe”? Simply because the
uncovering of many historical events, notably those of a negative
character, will be marked by the revelation of their failure to prevail.
Apocalypsis is therefore the final attempt of evil to impose itself on
history as a reality, and it is this that renders evil so threatening
at the apocalyptic time. The “unveiling” of evil, historically often
mistaken for good, is a necessary aspect of eschatology due to the
factor of freedom. Freedom underlies all evil. This in turn makes
apocalypsis take the form of a real clash between good and evil.
Now the purpose of prophecy is not simply to satisfy
foreknowledge, but to call us to repentance. Prophecy in the Bible is
not to provide us with knowledge, but to make us act, by changing
our attitudes and behavior; in this respect, it is like other charisms
for the edification of the Church and the world at large. Certainly
this is the intention of the author of the book of the Apocalypse.
History Viewed Cosmologically

One of the novelties of the book of Revelation is that it introduces
cosmology into eschatology. It is commonly accepted that the Hebrew
mind was conditioned historically, while the Greeks had a more
cosmological interest. With all the qualifications that one should
add to this general thesis, its principal claim remains true. Judaism
in its eschatology was interested basically in the final outcome
of the history of Israel. The author of the Apocalypse, although
brought up in this spirit of Judeo-Christian apocalypticism, is also
interested in the natural world, not only as a source from which
to draw his symbolism but as a reality in itself. He thus describes

the effect of the last days on the natural elements and speaks of
a “new heaven” and a “new earth” as part of the eschatological
vision. This is extremely important inasmuch as it introduces—for
the first time—what we may call cosmological prophecy into the
Judeo-Christian tradition. A Christian is now called on to think of
the Kingdom of God not only in terms of the salvation of human
beings, but also in terms of the survival and well-being of the entire
creation.
This did not prove to be an easy matter in the course of Church
history. Already in the third century AD, Origen had cast this
eschatology into doubt by teaching that the material creation was
the outcome of the Fall, and that it is the spiritual world which will
finally survive. In the beginning of the fourth century, Methodius
of Olympus wrote a treatise to refute this view, stressing the belief
that God created the material world not in order to let it perish but
to live forever. Nevertheless, about a century later in the West, the
great theologian Augustine of Hippo saw the Kingdom of God as a
place where only human souls would exist. Indeed, the patronage
that he has enjoyed in this position has been persistent, at least
in Western Christianity. By contrast, the cosmological dimension
was stressed in the anthropology of theologians such as Maximus
the Confessor (in the seventh century AD) in the East, although
the tendency to think anthropocentrically has also been observed
there, even up to our own time. This anthropocentrism—which
we could call anthropomonism—must have contributed greatly
to the appearance of the ecological problem. It is of paramount
importance for ecology that our Christian tradition replace this
anthropomonism with a cosmologically conditioned view of the
human being, in line with the cosmological propheticism of the
Apocalypse.
History and Cosmology

One of the basic characteristics of the text of the Apocalypse is its
universalistic eschatology. By the term “universalistic” we do not
wish to conjure up theories of universal salvation or recapitulation
(apokotastasis), but the simple fact that the author of the
Apocalypse sees the ultimate significance of history as involving all
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and attraction by suction, statical hygroscopes, laudanum, and air-
bladders, and “quicksilver turning hot with gold,”—he was also deep
in meditations of the “Excellence of Theology compared with Natural
Philosophy.” Both had always seemed to him to be the “Objects of
Men’s Study.” He held tenaciously to the “Reconcilableness of
Reason and Religion”; and his theological treatises were to run
parallel with his philosophical transactions.
The later chapters of biography are of necessity a chronicle of
losses. The death of the great admiral, the Earl of Sandwich, at the
battle of Solebay, on May 28, 1672, removed the other splendid
father-in-law of the Burlington family. His funeral, “by water to
Westminster, in solemn pomp,” must have affected the inmates of
the house in Pall Mall as well as the families in the two Piccadilly
palaces. “They will not have me live,” Lord Sandwich had said sadly
to Evelyn, before he sailed. It is very certain that the whole trend of
politics at this time—the crypto-catholic movement, burrowing its way
into Protestant England; the capuchins flitting about between
Whitehall and St. James’s; the alliance with the French against the
Dutch, and the prolonged war with Holland; the plottings and
placings of the Cabal, and the quarrels and changes in the royal
harem, which had pushed up to the very door of the house in Pall
Mall—must have been utterly distasteful to Robert Boyle and his
passionately Puritan sister.
Poor Charles Rich, my Lord of Warwick, who had been ill for a
long time, died at Leeze in 1673, leaving Mary, a childless great lady,
still surrounded by chaplains, to administer her husband’s property
and to see all the three “sweet young ladies,” her nieces, married to
satisfactory husbands of her own choosing.
A more personal loss to Robert Boyle was the sudden death of
Henry Oldenburg in September 1677. He and another old friend, Dr.
Worsley of the “mountain-bellied conceptions” for the good of
mankind, died almost at the same time. Oldenburg had worked hard
for the Royal Society since he came out of the Tower in the autumn
of 1667. He had carried the Society through the troublesome time
that followed the Fire of London, after the loss of its Transactions
and during its sojourn in Arundel House. He had seen it reinstated in
Gresham College, and a great collation given in its honour by the
Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London. He had been overworked
and underpaid, and had added to the small gains he made out of the
Society’s Transactions[328] by doing a good deal of work for Boyle
personally, in proof-correcting and in translating Boyle’s books into
Latin. And Boyle had tried to obtain for him the Latin Secretaryship—
the very post that Milton had held—but in this he had failed. One of
the last glimpses of Oldenburg and Boyle together is at a little
scientific supper-party in February 1676, given by Sir Joseph
Williamson, who later became President of the Royal Society when
Lord Brouncker resigned. Boyle was well enough to be at this
supper-party; and Evelyn and Wren and Petty and one or two others
were there, and “our Secretary, Mr. Oldenburg.”[329] Lady Ranelagh
was away from home on a visit when the news of Oldenburg’s death
reached her; and, knowing how much her brother would feel his
death, she wrote Boyle one of her most comfortable letters, and
made arrangements to return home at once.[330] And as Oldenburg
had died without making a will, and his wife (his second wife,
daughter of John Durie) died just before or just after him, Robert
Boyle himself took care of their children, left poorly provided for and
without relations in this country. The boy had been named “Rupert,”
after the scientific Prince.
Mary, Countess of Warwick, survived her husband just five years.
Her death at Leeze, in 1678, must have closed a chapter in the life of
the sister and brother in Pall Mall. Lady Ranelagh had been with
Mary in all her hours of trial—and they had been so many—the little,
“unrewly” sister! Lady Ranelagh had been at Stalbridge when the
Earl of Cork was so angry because Mary dismissed Mr. James
Hamilton; it was Lady Ranelagh who had accompanied Charles and
Mary to Leeze after their runaway marriage, and stayed with them
there till Mary had found her place in that patriarchal family. It was
Lady Ranelagh who had tended Mary in all her illnesses, and had
taken Mary and Charles under her own roof after their son’s death.
And Robert Boyle, too;—how tenderly romantic Mary had been when
the “deare Squire” took refuge at delicious Leeze in the summer of
1648, and she sat beside him while he wrote his Seraphick Love!
How she had wept over the pages as they were handed to her, the
ink scarcely dry!
But an even greater loss was to come in Broghill’s, my Lord of
Orrery’s, death in 1679. He had been ill for a year or two, and back
and forward between Ireland and England, in the hands of the
physicians; but otherwise he had been living the life of a great
landowner on his Irish estates at Charleville and at Castle Martyr. His
Art of War, dedicated to Charles II, had been published in 1677, and
had met with a certain success. He was to have written a
continuation of it, if the first volume had proved sufficiently popular.
But warfare, like other things, has its fashions; and even warriors
grow old: it was nearly forty years since the “Mortall Sowe” had done
such good service on the walls of Lismore.
Lady Pegg was with her husband, his strong friend and helpmate,
to the last. The beautiful bride of Suckling’s wedding-ballad, with the
slender ring-finger and the bee-stung lip, was now surrounded by
children, grown up and married, some of them, and with great homes
of their own. But Lady Pegg was beautiful and comfortable still. “A
rose in autumn,” as old Lord Goring used to say, “is as sweet as a
rose in June.” There is no doubt that Broghill, the soldier-statesman
and dramatist—“my dearest Governor,” as Robert Boyle called him—
was the favourite brother, and that Lady Pegg was the chief of
sisters-in-law, “the great support, ornament and comfort” of her
family.
On St. Andrew’s Day 1680 Boyle was elected President of the
Royal Society. The anniversary meeting and the dinner that followed
it had brought a large gathering of the philosophers together. Evelyn
was there, and his diary records the election of “that excellent person
and greate Philosopher Mr. Robert Boyle, who indeede ought to
have been the very first; but neither his infirmities nor his modestie
could now any longer excuse him.” But Evelyn omits to mention that
Boyle declined the presidency. He had an insuperable objection to
tests and oaths. He took Counsel’s opinion in the matter, and he
wrote to his old assistant Hooke,[331] explaining his “great (and
perhaps peculiar) tenderness in point of oaths”; asking Hooke to
convey his thanks to the Society, but begging them to “proceed to a
new election.”
Less and less able now to attend the meetings of the Society,
Boyle was gradually to withdraw also from the meetings of the East
India Company, of which he was a Director, and of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel, of which he was Governor. More and
more did he retire into his quiet home-life in the house in Pall Mall,
which had been enlarged to suit his purposes. There is no mention
of him at the famous supper-party of the Royal Society, at which
everything was cooked in Monsieur Papin’s Digestors—that
“philosophical supper” which caused so much mirth and “exceedingly
pleas’d all the company.” He is more likely to have been present a
week or two later to see the Morocco Ambassador subscribe his
name and titles in Arabic, on the occasion of his being admitted
honorary member of the Royal Society.
Boyle lived, indeed, much among his books and manuscripts, and
in his laboratory. With the help of an amanuensis, he carried on a
large correspondence among the new philosophers of the Old World,
and the Christian missionaries in the New. The New Englanders
wrote to him as their fount of charity: “Right Honourable, charitable,
indefatiguable, nursing father.” He had tried to spread the knowledge
of the Bible in the East, in Turkish and Arabic, and in the Malayan
tongue; and the publication of the Irish Bible was one of the great
interests of his later years. While Narcissus Marsh[332] and others
did the actual work of translation and dissemination in Ireland,
Robert Boyle in Pall Mall promoted it “with his influence and purse”;
and Boyle’s Irish Bible was to find its way into Gaelic Scotland also,
before Scotland had a Gaelic Bible of her own.[333]
But Boyle spent his money also in helping individual cases—
people whose lots were less happy than he thought they deserved;
poor hard-worked clergy; the “distress’d refugees of France and
Ireland”; and “learned men who were put to wrestle with necessities.”
He did this, very quietly, for many years—usually by the hands of
one or two personal friends in whose discretion he could trust.
Gilbert Burnet, in those latter years, was one of these friends; and
Burnet’s own History of the Reformation would never have been
published without Boyle’s assistance. So quietly did Boyle dispense
his charities that sometimes the very men so helped did not know
from whence the help came; but Burnet says that for years Boyle
spent on this form of charity more than £1000 a year, which would
mean more than three times that sum to-day. And he gave
impartially, without thought of race or creed, holding himself to be “a
part of the human nature, a debtor to the whole race of men.”
Perhaps his especial protégés were those who had suffered for their
religious and political convictions. A story of any kind of persecution
would bring a flush of anger and distress to his gentle face, and
words of the deepest indignation to lips which rarely opened to
“speak against men.”
Each year saw the publication of new tracts and treatises, and
revised editions. They follow each other almost too quickly for
enumeration. His Discourse of Things above Reason: inquiring
whether a philosopher should admit there are any such, appeared in
1681; his Memoirs of the Natural History of the Human Blood, in
1684. That was the winter of the Great Frost, 1683-4, when all
London bivouacked and made merry on the frozen Thames, and the
smallpox was “very mortall.” It must have been a trying winter for the
invalid philosopher; for London “by reason of the excessive
coldnesse of the aire hindering the ascent of the smoke, was so fill’d
with the fuliginous steame of the sea-coale that hardly could one see
crosse the streetes, and thro’ filling the lungs with its grosse particles
exceedingly obstructed the breast, so as one could scarcely
breathe.”[334] And there was no water to be had from pipes or
engines; the birds and beasts died in the parks, the breweries were
at a standstill, and fuel was exorbitantly dear.
The treatise Of the High Veneration Man’s Intellect Owes to God
appeared in 1685, and A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received
Notion of Nature in 1686. The Martyrdom of Theodora and of
Didymus, written in his youth, was revised and printed in 1687; and
about this time Boyle was advertising among the virtuosi for his lost
and plagiarised manuscripts, evidently with some intention of
bringing out a collected edition of his works. The only collection
hitherto had been a very incomplete Latin edition, published without
his knowledge in Geneva, in 1677. In 1690 he published his
Medicina Hydrostatica, and the first part of The Christian Virtuoso;
[335] and in 1691—the last year of his life—his Experimenta
Observationes Physicæ. Some of his writings, left with his executors,
were to appear posthumously; and he had deposited with the
secretaries of the Royal Society a sealed packet containing his
account of the making of phosphorus—not to be opened till after his
death.[336]
A busy life, to the last; but what a quiet life it was for the sister and
brother during those last momentous years, in the house in Pall Mall!
History swept past them: Kings came and went, Cabinets changed,
beautiful faces faded, Parliaments were dissolved, creeds and
parties wrangled and plotted, brave men—and women too—died on
scaffolds and the gallows-tree and at the stake for political crimes.
All the world knows about Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney; but it is
sometimes forgotten that Mrs. Lisle, the wife of a regicide, laid her
head on the block for “harbouring a rebel”, and that Elizabeth Gaunt,
for the same political crime, was burned at Tyburn.[337] A new
London grew up over the old ruins—new steeples on old foundations
—and fashionable new squares were built where green fields had
been. And all the time a great and cumbrous Constitution was raising
itself over centuries of abuse and sacrifice—a nation’s blood and
tears.
Events crowded the canvas: Charles II’s melodramatic ending; the
accession of the bigot James II; Monmouth’s rising and execution;
the “Bloody Assizes” of Judge Jeffreys, in Dorset and Somerset;
James’s league with the French; the revoking of the Edict of Nantes
and the horrible atrocities that followed. Catholicism spread its fibres
throughout England, permeating Army, Law Courts, Parliament and
University. Priests—Carmelites, Benedictines and Franciscans—
walked about the streets of London, and a huge Jesuit school was
set up in the Savoy. In Scotland, a Catholic was in command at
Edinburgh Castle: in Ireland, a Catholic was at the head of the Army,
and thousands of Catholic Irish were drafted into its ranks.[338]
A boy was born to James II and Mary of Modena, and there were
whispered stories of imposture and the historic warming-pan. Then
Protestantism closed up its ranks, the State Church and the
Nonconformists combined in face of a common danger, and the
hopes of Protestant England were fixed upon William and Mary.
Another message carried from England to The Hague brought
another Prince to English shores, but this time “to intervene in arms
for the restoration of English liberty and the protection of the
Protestant religion”. Another proclamation in London, but this time of
an Anglo-Dutch Prince, and a Princess who was not only the
daughter of James II but the granddaughter of Hyde, Earl of
Clarendon. Another bloody rebellion in Ireland, another chapter of
massacre and terrorism; but this time it was Ulster, and the Ulster
Scots, who were fighting for Protestantism. Robert Boyle and Lady
Ranelagh, growing old in the house in the Mall—two children of the
great Elizabethan Puritan Earl of Cork—had watched Munster pass
again into the hands of the Catholic Irish; but they lived just long
enough to see William and Mary Sovereigns of England, and to have
the tidings of the Siege of Londonderry and the Battle of the Boyne.
One of the last reports of the Rebellion that can have reached Lady
Ranelagh was the taking of Athlone by the English: it must have
brought back to her the early days of her married life, when Arthur
Jones had carried her off to Athlone Castle, a beautiful, high-spirited
girl of sixteen.
And now she was seventy-six. To her, if to nobody else in the
world, her philosopher brother, twelve years her junior, was still
“Robyn”—the “Deare Squire.” There were some empty rooms and
many memories in the house in Pall Mall; but the sister and brother
were together, and it was a hospitable and pleasant house, and open
to many friends. Distinguished strangers from many parts of the
world came to pay their respects to Mr. Boyle, the celebrated
Sceptical Chymist and Christian Virtuoso, and his incomparable
sister, the Lady Ranelagh, who for fifty years had lived “on the most
public scene,” and “made the greatest figure in all the revolutions of
these kingdoms of any woman of that age.”[339] The London virtuosi
—and there were bishops as well as mathematicians among them—
brought their latest literary and scientific gossip to the house in the
Mall. The elder brother, old Lord Burlington, was sometimes to be
found there, with a conversational statesman or two in tow, who
could successfully dodge the politics of the moment by indulging in
such a pleasant and safe topic as the amours of Mary, Queen of
Scots, with “the Italian favourite.”[340] Gilbert Burnet—that eloquent
and happy Scotsman south of the Tweed—sat at Mr. Boyle’s feet
and took notes: his bishopric was to come with the accession of
William and Mary. Even Pyrophilus must have looked in upon his
mother and uncle now and then. Dick’s fortunes were up; he was an
important man, had grown fat and very witty, and was building
himself a fine house in Chelsea.[341] His mother’s portrait was to
hang on the wall of his private closet, looking at him long after she
was dead; outliving other loves.[342]
Men and women of the younger generation of this great family
were living round about Piccadilly, St. James’s, and Pall Mall. One
niece especially, my Lady Thanet, a married daughter of Lord and
Lady Burlington, was a “greate virtuosa,” known in London Society
as one who “used to speak much of her uncle.”[343] And Evelyn, the
friend of nearly forty years, though he was a good deal older than
Boyle, still found his way from Deptford to Pall Mall to visit the
philosopher and his sister.
In the afternoons, Boyle was seldom without company; “neither did
his severer studys,” says Evelyn, “soure his conversation in the
least.” He had “the most facetious and agreeable conversation in the
world among the ladys, whenever he happen’d to be engag’d; and
yet so very serious, compos’d and contemplative at all other times;
tho’ far from moroseness, for indeede he was affable and civil rather
to excesse, yet without formality.”[344]
So popular were Mr. Boyle’s cosmopolitan receptions that about
the year 1689 he was obliged to put a “board” on the door in Pall
Mall, mentioning the days on which he was “at home.” And he
actually printed an announcement, beginning “Mr. Boyle finds himself
obliged to intimate to those of his friends and acquaintances who are
wont to do him the honour of visiting him,” and going on to explain
that his “skilful and friendly physician, seconded by his best friends”,
had strongly advised him not to see quite so many people.[345]
The forenoons of Tuesdays and Fridays, therefore, “both foreign
post-days,” and the afternoons of Wednesdays and Saturdays, he
proposed in future to reserve for himself, “that he might have some
time, both to recruit his spirits, to range his papers and fill up the
lacunæ of them, and to take some care of his affairs in Ireland, which
are very much disordered, and have their face often changed by the
public calamities there.”[346]
The announcement seems to have had the desired effect. “The
mornings,” says Evelyn in his description of the daily routine of
Boyle’s last years, “after his private devotions, he usually spent in
philosophic studys and in his laboratory, sometimes extending them
to night.” But he told Evelyn he had quite given up reading by
candle-light, on account of his eyes. His amanuensis used to read to
him, and write from notes, or at his dictation; and “that so often in
loose papers, pack’d up without method, as made him sometimes to
seeke upon occasion, as himself confesses in divers of his works.”
And apparently Boyle was not more tidy than other learned men.
“Glasses, potts, chymical and mathematical instruments, books and
bundles of papers, did so fill and crowd his bedchamber, that there
was but just room for a few chaires, so as his whole equipage was
very philosophical, without formality.” Among the other rooms in the
house there was a small library. Boyle did not want more: “as
learning more from men, real experiments, and in his laboratory
(which was ample and well furnished) than from books.”[347]
And the man himself, in these last years? He was “rather tall, and
slender of stature, pale, and much emaciated.” Owing to his delicacy
of constitution, “he had divers sorts of cloaks to put on when he went
abroad, and in this he governed himself by his thermometer.” His
little difficulty of speech had never quite forsaken him. “In his first
addresses, being to speake or answer,” says Evelyn, “he did
sometimes a little hesitate, rather than stam’er or repeate the same
word; imputable to an infirmity which, since my remembrance, he
had exceedingly overcome. This, as it made him somewhat slow and
deliberate, so after the first effort, he proceeded without the least
interruption in his discourse.”[348]
In diet and in habit, Robert Boyle was “extreamely temperate and
plaine”; nor could Evelyn, in all their friendship, ever discover in him
“the least passion, transport, or censoriousnesse, whatever
discourse, or the times, suggested:
“All was tranquil, easy, serious, discreete and profitable, so as
besides Mr. Hobbes, whose hand was against everybody and
admired nothing but his owne, Francis Linus excepted (who yet with
much civility wrote against him), I do not remember he had the least
antagonist.”[349]
The brother and sister had both been ill in the late autumn of 1691,
when Boyle wrote to Dr. Turberville at Salisbury, begging for a further
prescription for his eyes. “Sight is a thing dear to all men,” he wrote,
almost apologetically, “and especially to studious persons.” His eyes
had been troubling him very much of late, especially by candle-light.
“When the candles are newly snuffed,” wrote this great experimental
philosopher, “I see far better for a little while:” but they very soon
wanted snuffing again.[350]
Evelyn was out of town on December 23, when Lady Ranelagh
died; and he did not hear of her death, or of her brother’s serious
illness immediately after it, till it was too late. “For it was then,” says
Evelyn, “he began evidently to droope apace.” When Evelyn
returned to town, it was to stand by his old friend’s grave. Robert
Boyle had survived his sister only seven days: he died on December
30, 1691.
He was buried near to Lady Ranelagh, in the Chancel of St.
Martin’s-in-the-Fields.[351] Burnet, now Bishop of Salisbury,
preached the funeral sermon “with that eloquence natural to him on
such and all other occasions,” taking for his text the words, “For God
giveth to a man that is good in His sight, wisdom, and knowledge,
and joy.”[352] “Something too,” says Evelyn, “was touched of his
sister, the Lady Ranelagh.” But indeed it was not necessary. Her
intellect and character were known to all those who stood about the
grave. Her high standards and strong judgment would have been a
gain to the statecraft of her day. But she was a woman; and if for
more than twenty years her life had been a rich and beautiful thing
as the sister of Robert Boyle, for nearly forty years before that she
had been the brave but unhappy wife of Arthur Jones—“the foulest
churl in the Worlde.”
By Boyle’s own direction, his funeral was “without the least pomp”;
but round his grave there stood, besides his own many relatives, “a
greate appearance of persons of the best and noblest quality.”
Most of his Irish lands were entailed, and went to the eldest
brother, the Earl of Burlington and Cork. “It does not afflict me,” so
runs the will, “that I have not children of my own to inherit my
entailed lands, since they are, by that defect, to return to him, the
truly honoured head of our house and family.” The Manor of
Stalbridge went to Frank, the Lord Viscount Shannon, together with
Robyn’s best watch and an affectionate message. Frank would
notice that the Manor House had been kept up “for his sake,” though
Robyn had had no mind to live in it. Mrs. Melster, the niece who had
married the valet de pé, is included among Boyle’s “honoured and
dear nieces,” and is remembered more sumptuously than the others,
not because there is any difference of affection, but because of her
“peculiar circumstances.” There were other lands in Ireland, and
many bequests and legacies to relatives, friends, and servants
besides the charitable bequests left in the hands of trustees.[353]
“Our Society” and the happy days at Gresham College were not
forgotten. Dr. King was to have a silver standish, and to Robert
Hooke, the “perfecter” of the beloved air-pump, was left “my best
microscope, and my best loadstone.”
When Robert Boyle made his will in the summer of 1691 he
evidently had not thought it possible that Lady Ranelagh would die
before him. He had made her one of his executors, and he had left
her all his manuscripts and his “collections of receipts.” But he had
left her something else. At the very beginning of his will, first and
foremost of all his worldly possessions, Robert Boyle puts a small
ring:
“And as touching my temporal estate, wherewith God of His
goodness hath been pleased to endow me, I dispose thereof in
manner and form following; that is to say—
“I give and bequeathe unto my dear sister, the Lady Katharine,
Viscountess Ranelagh, a small ring, usually worn by me on my left
hand, having in it two small diamonds with an emerald in the middle,
which ring being held by me, ever since my youth, in great esteem,
and worn for many years for a particular reason, not unknown to my
said sister, the Lady Ranelagh, I do earnestly beseech her, my said
sister, to wear it in remembrance of a brother that truly honoured and
most dearly loved her.”
But Lady Ranelagh was dead—seven days before Robert Boyle.
What became of the small ring? And what was its story? Why had
Boyle worn it on his left hand ever since his youth, holding it in great
esteem? Lady Ranelagh knew—and Lady Ranelagh was dead.
What was the “particular reason”? The story of the little ring, if not
the ring itself, is buried in the Chancel of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Lismore Papers, first series, vol. i.
[2] Philaretus. Robert Boyle left a fragment of Autobiography,
An Account of Philaretus (i.e. Mr. R. Boyle) during his Minority.
See Works, ed. Birch, 6 vols., 1774.
[3] For a delightful modern biography, see the Life and Letters
of the Great Earl of Cork, by Dorothea Townshend (Duckworth).
[4] See the Lismore Papers (referred to throughout as L. P.),
edited by the late Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, D.D., LL.D., from the
original MSS. belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, and
preserved in Lismore Castle (10 vols.).
[5] Corpus Christi.
[6] Froude’s History, vol. vii. (1562).
[7] Ibid.
[8] Edmund Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland.
[9] Then worth about five times as much.
[10] Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland.
[11] True Remembrances.
[13] Life of the Earl of Cork in the L. P., second series, vol. v.
[14] Equal to about £5000 now.
[16] Philaretus.
[17] L. P., first series, vol. i.
[18] Philaretus.
[19] Aubrey’s Account.
[20] Oliver St. John, High Treasurer for Ireland.
[21] This celebrated tavern, “haunted by roysterers and famous
for its wine” in Ben Jonson’s day, and dating back into the 15th
century, was in New Fish Street (Cunningham’s London). Croone
must have moved into “new and enlarged premises,” for he will be
found in 1641 at the Nag’s Head Tavern, in Cheapside.
[22] See Evelyn’s Diary and Pepys’s Diary.
[23] Abbott.
[24] Loftus, Earl of Ely. He and Sir Adam Loftus of Rathfarnham
were cousins.
[25] Falkland.
[26] The Earl’s house is mentioned as “my Lord Caulfield’s.”
[27] In succession to Lord Grandison, whose house in Channell
Row the Earl had rented.
[28] She was buried with her mother in the tomb in St. Patrick’s.
[29] Life of Milton, by David Masson.
[30] Mall.
[31] Ireland under the Stuarts, vol i.
[32] Bulkeley and Usher.
[33] Charles I to Lord Deputy, 1634. L. P., second series, vol. iii.
[34] Though, in his Philaretus, he dates it a little earlier. It is,
however, evidently the same that is recorded in the Earl’s Diary
under the date Dec. 17, 1634.
[35] Philaretus.
[36] Philaretus.
[37] See L. P., second series, Carew’s letters from Eton to Earl
of Cork.
[38] They were “commensals” at the second table. See Lyte’s
History of Eton.
[39] See the masterly biography of Wotton in the Dictionary of
National Biography. Also Izaak Walton’s Life of Wotton, and
Masson’s Milton, vol. i.
[40] See his lines on “His Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia,”
Percy Society Publications, vol. vi.
[41] See Masson’s Milton, vol. i. p. 531.
[42] Evelyn’s Diary.
[43] Was “Irish” part of the Eton curriculum in 1635?
[44] L. P., second series, Carew’s letters to the Earl.
[45] Philaretus.
[46] Ibid.
[47] Philaretus.
[48] L. P., second series, Carew’s letters to Earl.
[49] See A Poem written by Sir Henry Wotton in his Youth,
Percy Society Publications, vol. vi.
[50] Masson’s Life of Milton, vol. i. p. 665.
[51] Ibid.
[52] It was payable in three instalments, the third to be paid on
Midsummer Day 1638.
[53] Compare Prospero in The Tempest: “To my poor cell”.
[54] L. P., first series, vol. v.
[56] Lady Warwick’s Autobiography (Percy Society).
[57] Variously explained as being the arbutus, and espalier
apples.
[58] George Goring was now Governor of Portsmouth. He had
been wounded in the leg at the siege of Breda, had been going
about London on crutches, and was still lame.
[59] He died, after a long illness, in December 1639. See his
Hymn, written “in a night of my late sickness” (Percy Society, vol.
vi.).
[60] See Masson’s Milton, vol. i.
[61] Philaretus.
[62] See Masson’s Milton, vol. ii.: First and second Bishops’
Wars.
[63] L. P., second series, vol. iv.: Letter from Lord Barrymore to
the Earl of Cork, 1639.
[64] Pepys’s Diary, Sept. 28, 1668.
[65] Verney Memoirs, vol. i.
[66] L. P., second series, vol. v.
[67] Verney Memoirs, vol. i.
[68] Afterwards Earl of Clanbrassil.
[69] Son of Sir George Carew, Earl of Totness.
[70] Philaretus.
[71] L. P., second series, vol. iv.
[72] Philaretus.
[73] Philaretus.
[74] Countess of Warwick’s Autobiography (Percy Society).
[75] Broghill and Kynalmeaky had boarded with the celebrated
Dr. Diodati, at the Villa Diodati, outside Geneva.
[77] Philaretus.
[78] Philaretus.
[81] Philaretus.
[83] Lady Dungarvan’s mother was a Cecil.
[84] Earl’s letter quoted in Collins’ Peerage.
[85] Autobiography of the Countess of Warwick (Percy Society).
[86] Philaretus.
[87] Philaretus.
[88] St. Bernard.
[90] It was the Earl of Leicester.
[91] Birch’s “Life of Boyle,” in Boyle’s Works, vol. i.
[92] Ibid.
[93] Philaretus.
[95] See Masson’s Milton, vol. ii.
[97] L. P., first series, vol. v. Daubigne’s = Dunbar’s. Lady
Suffolk was daughter and heiress of the Earl of Dunbar.
[98] Suckling died in 1641.
[99] Morrice’s account of her in his “Life of the Earl of Orrery,”
prefixed to the Orrery State Papers.
[100] Boyle to Lady Orrery: Birch, vol. i.
[101] Countess of Warwick’s Autobiography.
[102] Countess of Warwick’s Autobiography (Percy Society).
[104] St. Leger.
[105] L. P., first and second series, vol. v. For a masterly
account of the Rebellion of 1641, read Bagwell’s Ireland under the
Stuarts.
[108] Lord Barrymore died on Sept. 29. It was thought he had
been wounded at Liscarrol.
[110] She died in England in July 1643.
[111] See Mrs. Townshend’s Life of the Great Earl of Cork.
[112] Usual.
[113] Letter to Kynalmeaky, L. P., second series, vol. v. The
original letter in the Lismore Papers is much mutilated
(“apparently mice-eaten”). (Grosart.)
[114] Evelyn’s Diary for 1646.
[115] Evelyn’s Diary for 1646. Masson’s Milton, vol. iii.
[116] Evelyn’s Diary in 1646.
[117] February 1644.
[118] Milton’s Latin letter to Dick Jones. See Masson’s Milton.
[119] Cunningham’s London; Pall Mall. Account of Lord
Broghill’s visit to Lady Ranelagh (Morrice & Budgell).
[120] Catherine, m. (1) Sir William Parsons, (2) Hugh, Lord
Mount-Alexander; Elizabeth, m. Mr. Melster; Frances, d. unm.;
Richard, 2nd Visc. Ranelagh.
[121] Identity not known.
[122] Countess of Warwick’s Autobiography.
[123] Ibid.
[124] Robert Boyle: Philaretus.
[125] Robert Boyle’s Letter to Mr. Tallents: Birch’s Life.
[126] Lord Broghill, who was Governor of Youghal, returned to
England in 1645 (bringing with him his wife and Lady Barrymore
and young Lord Barrymore) to obtain further assistance of English
troops. See Bagwell’s History of Ireland under the Stuarts, vol. ii.
[127] Masson’s Milton, vol. iii. p. 338.
[128] Sir William Wray, member of House of Commons in Long
Parliament.
[129] Tutor in Geneva to the little Lord Carnarvon.
[130] See Autobiography of Anne, Lady Halkett (Camden
Society).
[131] Birch’s Life, vol. vi. p. 534.
[132] Letter to Lady Ranelagh, March 1646: Birch’s Life.
[133] Broghill seems to have been more anxious to avoid them
than Robert Boyle himself. “Strange that so well-armed an head
should be fearful!” says Robert Boyle in his letter to Lady
Ranelagh.
[134] There is a little touch of sarcasm in this letter, which may
well be a sly thrust at Lord Howard of Escrick, in his place among
the Divines, as a lay elder of the Westminster Assembly. At
Winchester the little party were “as nicely catechised concerning
our ways as if we were to be elected in the number of the new lay
elders.” Lord Edward Howard’s subsequent career—his expulsion
from the House for receiving bribes, and his betrayal of Lord
Russell and Algernon Sidney, are matters of history.
[135] The Committee of the Two Kingdoms, very active after
the organisation of the New Model. It sat in, and issued its orders
from, Derby House, Cannon Row, Westminster.
[136] Letter to Lady Ranelagh, March 1646: Birch’s Life.
[137] Early letter, undated, Birch, vol. vi.
[138] It was Essex who had spoken the words that sealed
Strafford’s doom: “Stone dead hath no fellow.”
[139] Inchiquin and Broghill had both declared for the
Parliament.
[140] Bringing, it will be remembered, Lady Pegg, Lady
Barrymore, and young Lord Barrymore home with him. Young
Barrymore must have gone straight to Milton in the Barbican.
[141] Usher.
[142] Augustine.
[143] In due time Lord Broghill was to send his own sons to
Marcombes in Geneva. The old governour was much gratified at
having a batch of the second generation of the Boyle family put
under his charge.
[144] David Masson’s Milton, iii. 662.
[145] Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and former
tutor to Lady Pegg’s brothers.
[146] Letter to John Durie about a Union of the Churches,
Birch’s Ed. Works.
[147] To Lady Ranelagh: Birch’s Ed. Works, vol. vi.
[148] Robert Boyle to Hartlib, May 1647: Birch’s Ed. Works, vol.
vi.
[149] “Marginal Note” in Occasional Reflections, Section II, ed.
1665, p. 187.
[150] Not published till after his death.
[151] After lying many years in manuscript they were published
at her entreaty—dedicated to her—after the Restoration.
[152] Occasional Reflections, ed. 1665, pp. 245, 161.
[153] Ibid. p. 256: Upon my Spaniel’s fetching me my glove.
[154] Written after 1648.
[155] See p. 194. Lindamor, the scholarly youth, well born and
well bred, seems often in his writings to represent Boyle himself.
The direct reference to “Mr. Boyle” is a favourite device of the
author. Swift has satirised the Reflections in his “Occasional
Meditations on a Broomstick,” but he has not acknowledged “The
Eating of Oysters” as the inspiration of his Gulliver’s Travels.
[156] For historical accounts see Masson’s Milton, vol. iii, and
Bagwell’s Ireland under the Stuarts, vol. ii.
[157] It was Anne Murray, the girl-friend of “My Robyn’s yonge
Mrs.,” who was entrusted with the dressing-up of the young
Prince. See Diary of Anne, Lady Halkett (Camden Society) for
pretty description of the dressing-up, and the “Wood Street cake”
given to the boy at parting.
[158] Robert Boyle’s letter to Mrs. Hussey: Birch’s Life.
[159] Letter to Mrs. Hussey.
[160] Sentiment.
[161] Vide Robert Boyle’s Reflections written in that month:
“Upon the prodigiously wet weather which happened the summer
that Colchester was besieged (1648).”
[162] Ibid.
[163] The family seem to have had their town house in Soho,
and were “distinguished parishioners” of St. Giles in the Fields
(see Cunningham’s London). The Earl, when he died in 1661, left
property in Long Acre and St. Martin’s Lane, etc.
[164] He died of smallpox, 1649, and was buried in the Savoy.
[165] Afterwards Earl of Clanbrassil.
[166] Evelyn’s letter to Dr. Wotton about Robert Boyle.
[167] Masson’s Milton, vol. iii.
[168] Letter to Lady Ranelagh, August 1649: Birch’s Ed. of
Works, vol. vi.
[169] Compare Budgell’s and Morrice’s accounts.
[170] Bagwell’s Ireland under the Stuarts.
[171] Robert Boyle’s letter: Birch’s Ed. Works, vol. vi.
[172] Birch’s Ed. Works, vol. vi.
[173] This wife died young. The second wife was a daughter of
Henry Lawrence, presumably a sister of young Barrymore’s friend
and fellow-pupil at Milton’s house in the Barbican.
[174] Broghill’s letter to Lenthall, quoted by Bagwell. For the
whole account of Broghill’s part in the war, see Bagwell’s Ireland
under the Stuarts.

Priests of Creation John Zizioulas On Discerning An Ecological Ethos John Chryssavgis Editor Full Chapter PDF

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Priests of Creation: John Zizioulas on

Discerning an Ecological Ethos John

The Letters of Barsanuphius and John: Desert Wisdom for

The Letters of Barsanuphius and John: Desert Wisdom for

The Father's Eternal Freedom: The Personalist

JOHN ZIMAN E O ETHOS CIENTÍFICO 1st Edition Ricardo

On John Stuart Mill Philip Kitcher

Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An

Frege’s detour: an essay on meaning, reference, and

Treatise on Awakening Mah■y■na Faith John Jorgensen

Edited by John Chryssavgis

Introduction: Toward an Ecological Ethos 1

1 St. Paul and the Ecological Problem 21

2 The Book of Revelation and the Natural

4 Orthodoxy and the Ecological Crisis 55

5 A Theological Approach to the Ecological

III Liturgical Perspectives 91

7 Preserving God’s Creation: Three Lectures on

8 The Eucharistic Vision of the World 133

9 Proprietors or Priests of Creation? 144

IV Ecological Ethics or Ecological Ethos? 155

10 Ethics or Ethos? A Brief Sketch 157

11 Toward an Environmental Ethic 160

V Scientific and Spiritual Dimensions 173

12 Religion and Science: A Theological Approach 175

13 Humanity and Nature: Learning from the

VI Ecumenical and Cultural Implications 203

15 Ecological Asceticism: A Cultural Revolution 205

16 Communion and Communication 210

17 Pope Francis and Laudato Si’ 214

Conclusion: From Here to Where? 221

Original Publications 228

and human dignity—a recovery now also endorsed eloquently in

Toward an Ecological Ethos

Part A: An Ecological Legacy

of his essays on personhood and communion (New York, 1985);

enriching.”6 Nevertheless, his writing manifests “a striking absence

willingness to welcome and transform the entire community, the

He discerns the imperative nature of a positive exchange and

Christian Perspective on Environmentalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute,

perhaps a civic dimension of his understanding about “otherness”

Science 155, no. 3767 (March 10, 1967): 1203–7.

Part B: A Green Theology

of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as the “Green Patriarch”

Historical Roots of the Ecological Crisis

currents in the history of the Church as leading to the modern

The Doctrine of Creatio Ex Nihilo

was boldly considered a necessary condition for salvation. On

As he explains: “The idea that the world has an absolute beginning

By emphasizing creatio ex nihilo as the very foundation of any

something that has some other existence. This is clearly a reversal

Survival of the Planet

core of the Gospel message and the Christian identity. Zizioulas is

The Fall changed the natural condition of “difference” (διαφορά)

The Priest of Creation

being as “the glory of God.”60 Against the prevailing understanding

contrast with certain modern ecological views that devaluate man’s

The Origins of the Ecological Crisis

employed nature for purposes of survival without nevertheless

addresses the subject of cosmology. The second question is: What

(a) The world does not belong to us and we are not

Ephesians, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, always to

Responsibility for Creation