Justin Appel

Dear Friends in Christ,

The collect assigned to today contains the following expression:

“Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and to do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will…”

This prayer makes reference to a basic Christian belief that God, through the Logos, created everything that is out of nothing. I am reading today from the work of an Eastern Orthodox theologian, Andrew Louth, who discusses this doctrine’s importance to the faith and its consequences. Fr Louth is a sweet, mild English academic (with a long white beard), and I can hear him explaining the following ideas in his book, which I will try to distill into a few brief expressions:

Following John of Damascene, Christians articular the idea that God creates all that is “through an excess of goodness.” Not being content to simply contemplate, God brings all that is (both visible and invisible) from non-being into being, in an expression of abundant love.

God creates through the Logos, the Word of God, which suggests that the created world participates in the meaning of the Logos—and that its essential meaning is found, in him, that is, in Jesus Christ.

Far from being a pile of material elements and energy, causes and effects, antecedents and determinants, the created world, whether humans, animals, green plants, or whirling galaxies glimpsed through our best telescopes—all of it possesses a certain enchantment. “The heavens are telling the glory of God.”

That God creates everything out of nothing suggests that all that exists is good. There is no “irreducible evil” and human beings are marvelously fashioned in the image and likeness of God.

The “fundamental division” is thus not between body and spirit (as was suggested by a Platonist vision or the world), but rather between non-existence and existence.

This means that human beings are precariously perched (using the image of St Philaret of Moscow) above the abyss of human nothingness, and under the expanse of divine infinitude above, on the adamantine bridge of the creative Word. Wow, there’s a picture for you!

The above image suggests that the only way a human could be lost is by turning away from God back to the nothingness from which one was drawn. To live is to aspire upward into God’s heaven.

I find these thoughts to be quite comforting and enlivening, and I hope something here stimulates your thoughts or imagination. Have a blessed Wednesday, everyone.

Yours in Christ,

—Justin