Man as Mediator: The Transfiguration of Human Community and the Earth

Abstract

Based on the imago Dei theory, this essay attempts to establish a correspondence between the union of natures in Christ and the relationship between man and creation, focusing attention on the communication of idioms and reciprocal indwelling. It compares the dominion that man is called to exercise over nature by divine vocation as an image of the hypostatic union, with the despotic dominion, so widespread in modern times, that reflects the fall and is characterized by conflict and not by harmony. Finally, it is maintained that the form of dominion inspired by the application of the Christological doctrine inserts man in necessity and the cosmic rhythms, favoring the development of a human community aligned with the liturgical cycle and founded on peace.

1. Introduction

This essay challenges the conception of theology as a discipline positioned by secular reason in a supernatural niche that fails to produce real effects in the realm of the natural and social praxis. The rediscovery of the patristic tradition allowed contemporary theology to become acquainted with a type of thought that did not start from a radical separation between the supernatural and the natural, between the theological and the philosophical, the political and the social, but integrated everything in an organic way in a living reflection. Thus, the theological anthropology of the Fathers, which conceived man as mediator between God and creatures, presented an argumentative axis based on the practical function of man, whose mastery was to be placed at the service of the mission of uniting and elevating all things. This dominion had obvious ethical implications.

At a time like the present, when the ecological crisis leads us to rethink modernity and to put into question the theoretical foundations on which it is based, social ethics, which regulates the behavior of men in relation to community, should not be conceived as a reflection detached from the relationship of man with the local natural environment which, insofar as it is inhabited by that community, is also part of it. This essay aims precisely to establish a relationship between ecological ethics and social ethics starting, through analogy, from Byzantine Christology and the anthropology of the imago Dei.

The article is divided into three sections. The first part underlines the importance of the rediscovery of the patristic tradition for the development of 20th century systematic theology, both in the Latin and Eastern Orthodox traditions, as it provides it with the philosophical tools of a solid Christian metaphysics to bring secular modernity under informed criticism. The second part deals with the Christological basis of the sophiological conception of Sophia as Divine-humanity, showing how the Chalcedonian principles that settle the relationship between the divine and the human in Christ are not only applicable to the supposedly restricted realm of Christology, but extend, through the analogy that takes the incarnate Logos as the paradigm of this relationship, to all realms of the real and, therefore, also that of social and political praxis and that of man’s relationship with the natural environment. The third part, more extensive, seeks to deepen the way in which these Christological principles that define the hypostatic union—the communicatio idiomatum and the terms inconfuse, immutabiliter, inseparabiliter and indivise—inform the dominion that man, in line with the divine purpose, is called to exercise over creation, as well as the importance that this relationship possesses for the configuration of a human community founded on necessity.

2. Systematic Theology and Tradition

In the 20th century revival of systematic theology, that is, the “conceptual articulation of Christian affirmations about God and everything else in relation to God, characterized by completeness and coherence” (Webster 2007, p. 2), the prolific Swiss theologian Urs von Balthasar in the Catholic sphere, of great influence, and the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov, whom D. B. Hart claims to be the greatest systematic theologian of the 20th century, stand out especially. The rediscovery of tradition—one of the main sources of systematic theology (Williams 2007, pp. 362–77)—was decisive in this resurgence, since it brings us back to a pre-modern era in which an organic and non-fragmentary—not necessarily asystematic—thought can be found, free from the modern eagerness to separate and compartmentalize all knowledge, thus constituting a real alternative to the dominant secular thought.

In the West, the rediscovery of tradition, which had been buried after the developments of late scholasticism, was favored by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris 1879, whose aim was to promote a rational and solid Catholic philosophy capable of dialectically confronting the secular developments of modern philosophy. On the premises that the errors of the nineteenth century are largely errors of reasoning and that dialectical confrontation with modernity cannot be carried out on the basis of post-sixteenth century philosophies (MacIntyre 2009, p. 152), Leo XIII exhorts Catholic intellectuals to study, adopt and promote the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, which possesses “solidity and excellence over others”, since it constitutes the reason that, “borne on the wings of Thomas to its human height, can scarcely rise higher” (Leo XIII 1879, pp. 18, 31). The text of this exhortation is not free of excesses and distortions; excesses, because the thesis—received from Cajetan—that “he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church, in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all” (Leo XIII 1879, p. 17), besides being debatable, runs the obvious risk of overshadowing the tradition of the Fathers, whose works would not be read in their own terms but always from the Thomistic point of view; and distortions, because the premise that the plurality of discourses in modernity contrasts with medieval unity fails to account for the real philosophical context of scholasticism, for, in MacIntyre’s words, the Aeterni Patris “woefully misrepresents medieval philosophy by falling to take account of the wide range of rival philosophical positions that were in recurrent contention” (MacIntyre 2009, p. 153). However, Leo XIII’s invitation to deepen the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas led some authors to choose to read the author not from his later reception, already mediated by late scholasticism and kantism, but from his patristic and medieval sources. Therefore, to the direct consequence of the centrality of Thomas Aquinas for Catholic philosophy must be added the indirect consequence of the rediscovery of the patristic and early medieval tradition. In this context, it stands out the enormous work of compilation and erudition of Étienne Gilson, whose research on medieval philosophy, despite its limitations, continues to be an inescapable reference in the study of the history of philosophy, and the insight of Henri de Lubac, who proposed a rereading of Thomas Aquinas with an emphasis on the desiderium naturale, putting into question the radical separation between grace and nature and thus provoking the reaction of authors such as Garrigou-Lagrange, who inspired the Humani Generis of Pius XI.

In any case, the recovery—real, not nominal—of tradition as the source of theology allowed these authors—many of them framed in the so-called Nouvelle Théologie—to overcome the modern tendency to conceive tradition as Francis Bacon’s idols of the theatre, as an irrational bias that makes impossible the highly desired asepsis of the modern subject, for, in Gadamer’s words, “the fundamental prejudice of the Enlightenment is the prejudice against prejudice itself, which denies tradition its power” (Gadamer 2004, p. 273). Such an overcoming of modern prejudices could only be possible thanks to the recovery of the radicality of the early medieval Fathers, whose way of doing philosophy was not only alien to the way of modern philosophy, but to the same scholastic tendency to the formal compartmentalization of knowledge. This organic character, which is not afraid to “mix” philosophy, theology and cosmology, naturally threatens the exclusivity of the Thomistic perspective; although Thomas is an excellent and inescapable author, the Fathers who preceded him are no less so: there is philosophical and theological richness beyond the Sumas.1 This radicality favors the rediscovery of an alternative paradigm to the dominant secular paradigm in which theology is not “positioned” by liberal reason (cf. Milbank 1993, p. 1), returning it to its genuine place as the mother of all sciences and reinstituting mysticism as the heart of theology.2 The recovery of mysticism as an experience of the divine—understood not as a mere individual experience but in the framework of the liturgical and ecclesial—mitigates the tendency towards the professionalization of theology that was increasingly established from the cathedral schools, which “gradually drove a wedge between scriptural understanding and the transformational encounter of the soul with God” (Hughes 2020, p. 110).

In Russia, for its part, the renunciation of the dream of the sacred kingdom that the Raskol brought with it and the proximity to Latin scholasticism brought about by the integration of Ukraine and the institution of the Confraternity of Kiev at the beginning of the 17th century had, as Zenkovsky notes, secularizing effects on Orthodox culture (Zenkovsky 1953, pp. 45–47). However, Eastern theology did not have to make the effort of Latin theology to recover the sense that the created is essentially oriented to receive grace, for, on the one hand, the Eastern tradition never came to postulate a gulf between creation and theosis and, on the other, never quite separated itself from the tradition of the Greek Fathers (Milbank 2009, p. 45). The latter is influenced by the extraordinary work of the starets Paisij Velichkovsky, who, without completing his studies at the Kiev academy, immersed himself in the study of the Greek Fathers during his stay on Mount Athos, trying to extend his wisdom to the Slavic culture, and of the Slavophile reaction that united to the undeniable imprint of German romantic idealism a vast knowledge of Greek patristics (Zenkovsky 1953, pp. 52, 184).3 At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the need to take root in the patristic tradition—mainly the Greek tradition in the case of Orthodox theology—as a means to avoid being devoured by the methods and doctrines of Western modernity and, at the same time, to know how to combat them with a certain foundation, became increasingly clear. The patristic tradition becomes, therefore, the basis of contemporary Orthodox systematic theology, in which two opposing schools stand out: neo-patristic, inspired, among others, by Vladimir Lossky and Georges Florovsky, and sophiology, promoted by Vladimir Solovyev at the end of the 19th century, followed by Paul Florensky and consolidated by Sergius Bulgakov, who gives it the most finished and systematic form. Sophiology, much contested in the 20th century, deserves a greater appreciation in the 21st century, not only from the Orthodox position of D. B. Hart, but also from Latin theology, as evidenced by the words of the theologian John Milbank: “At the down of the 21st century, it increasingly appears that the most significant theology of the two preceding centuries has been that of the Russian sophiological tradition” (Milbank 2009, p. 45). In this sense, the definition of Sophia as Divine-humanity goes beyond the mere Gnostic and idealistic influence and is rooted in the dogmatic definition of orthodox Christology that develops from the Christological debates that go from the 4th to the 7th century.

3. Christology and Sophia as Divine-Humanity

The reaction of Russian religious philosophy in the 19th century is characterized by a deep longing for unity in the face of the modern split between phenomenon and noumenon, between natural and supernatural, between God and creation. Thus, Russian sophiology presents the figure of Sophia as both divine and creaturely mediation, as a sort of bridge that unites both realms. Several authors insist on the mediating character of Sophia in the ontological structure of sophiology, giving an account of a reality that is the object of a deliberate oblivion for a mentality sponsored by secular reason. Thus, the Irish philosopher William Desmond, whose philosophy—which he calls “metaxology”—focuses its attention on the intermediate space between the two poles in which modern thought situates an impassable abyss, emphasizes that sophiology articulates a metaphysical system—the ‘meta’ alluding not only to that which transcends, but also to that which is in between—that points to the “middle between utter transcendence and otherwise godless immanence” (Desmond 2005, p. 181). John Milbank, for his part, clarifies that Sophia, as a metaxological figure, should not be understood as a mere insubstantial nexus residing in the intermediate abyss between the two poles, as if, in Christological terms, she were a reality analogous to a demigod or a sort of third person added to the divine and human persons as in Nestorius.4 Sophia is, instead, a reality that resides not in the middle—which is, in fact, uninhabitable—but in the two poles at the same time, like rain falling into a beautiful pond in the countryside: Sophia “rests in the Godhead and in the pond: there lies nothing between the two, but—as ‘the true intermediary—metaxu’—she brings them most intimately together” (Milbank 2009, p. 84). American philosopher and farmer Michael Martin, author of a Sophianic trilogy, points to Sophia as the metaxological locus—an ontologically poetic realm forgotten by dominant modernity—in which harmony between religion, philosophy, and science takes place, whose domains are not, therefore, hypostatized into autonomous meanings in their own terms (Martin 2015, pp. 41, 168).

On the other hand, beyond the relevance of Scripture (Prov. 8:22–31) and Gnostic influences as sources of Russian sophiology (Eymar 2014, pp. 224–31), the consideration of Sophia as the union between the divine and the human—or, in other words, between the uncreated and the created—rests on the dogmatic developments of Byzantine Christology that crystallized in the definitions of Chalcedon and Constantinople and reached its greatest expression in the works of Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus, which deepen the character of the interaction between the divine and human natures in Christ. Indeed, it is not strange that the mediation between the natural and the supernatural has its paradigm in the hypostatic union of the Chalcedonian symbol, in which the created and the uncreated are united without confusion. That is why both Solovyev and Bulgakov define Sophia as Divine-humanity, as a theandric figure. Solovyev, despite the manifest Gnostic character of his work—mainly of his poetry5—exhibits, on the one hand, a profound knowledge of the Byzantine Christological tradition in La Russie et l’Église universelle and, on the other, an awareness of the centrality of the Divine-humanity for a genuinely Christian approach to reality. Bulgakov, for his part, maintains that the term “Divine-humanity” refers to the union between the divine and the human, to the presence of God in the world and of the world in God: “the world is not only a world in itself, it is else the world in God, and God abides not only in heaven but also on earth with human beings” (Bulgakov 1993, p. 17). This is “the fundamental dogma of Christianity” (Bulgakov 1993, p. 17) and the main theme, the dogmatic principle that inspires sophiology. In this sense, following Bulgakov’s argument (Bulgakov 1993, p. 18), the Christological dogma of Chalcedon is, on the one hand, not primary, but derived from the heart of Christianity—that is, Divine-humanity—but it is, moreover, the principle that inspires sophiological speculation insofar as it provides the model for the economic realization of the original Divine-humanity of the Logos (Bulgakov 1993, p. 86).

Sophiology discovers, therefore, the highly desired unity in the hypostatic union described in the Christological dogma of Chalcedon, since it sets forth the character of the relationship between God and creation. The Christological speculation of the Greek Fathers starts from the soteriological principle according to which, as Gregory Nazianzen enunciated in a letter to Cledonius, what was assumed by Christ in the incarnation is the object of salvation, while what has not been assumed remains outside salvation (quod assumptum est, et quod salutem accipit) (Gregorius Theologus 1857, p. 183A), which would come to be enunciated with the following formula: Quod non est assumptum, non est sanatum; quod semel assumpsit nunquam dimissit (Grillmeier 1979, p. 155). The aim of the Fathers was, therefore, to show that nothing is originally left out of salvation insofar as Christ assumes the fullness of human nature, without impairment. The Chalcedonian definition abounds in this by enumerating the four characteristics of the hypostatic union: inconfuse—it is not a mixture that threatens the integrity of human nature, as in the doctrine of Severus of Alexandria—immutabiliter—the natures are not modified in their essence by the union—indivise—the union is such that it cannot be divided into two natures—and inseparabiliter—they cannot be understood separately as the doctrine of Nestorius proposes—so that it is clear that the hypostatic union does not suppress the difference nor does it open a gulf between the two natures in order to preserve them (salva proprietate utriusque, naturae… in unam personam atque substantiam concurrent) (Cf. Bulgakov 1993, p. 84).

The four elements of the formula that negatively describe the hypostatic union seek to confront the double threat coming from the schools of Alexandria and Antioch. First, inconfuse and immutabiliter seek to counter the Monophysite tendency to conceive of union as a mixture that compromises, if not abolishes, difference. On the one hand, the confusion of natures that results from mixture impairs the integrity of human nature, which, like the drop of wine that falls into the immense ocean, is annihilated in its absorption by the divinity. On the other hand, the result of the mixture may well be posited as a new hybrid substance in which the original difference in the created is annihilated. The condemnation of monoenergism and monothelitism, which are “arrangements” with the monophysites who seek unity in operation and will, seeks to safeguard the present effectiveness, not only of origin, and the fullness of the human natures, whose attributes are not abolished after the unfolding of the union. Secondly, with indivise and inseparabiliter, it confronts the threat of a Nestorian Christology which, in order to save the difference, compromises the facticity of the union, which becomes more apparent than real, concealing an unfathomable abyss between the two natures. With the effective union, in which not only the differences are maintained, but it is guaranteed that the divine Logos really assumes a human nature which, in contact with the divine nature, is deified, the real salvation of the human race and, through it, of all creation is assured6, following the logic of the soteriological principle that underlies Christological orthodoxy. Salvation requires, therefore, a delicate balance between union and difference, for only union can bring about deification, but this in turn only makes sense if the full difference remains in the eschaton.

From the definition of hypostatic union without confusion or separation, thus preserving both difference and unity, the interaction between the natures is defined theologically through the communicatio idiomatum, which means that the divine nature—the uncreated being—operates through the human nature—which contains in itself the created being—and, likewise, the human nature through the divine nature, for, in the words of Gregory of Nyssa, “by virtue of the union and conjunction, both [the opprobrium of the servant and the honors of the Lord] become common to both: To the Lord the cardinals of the servant which he assumed in himself, and to the servant the glorification through the glory of the Lord” (Auer 1989, pp. 397–98). In this way, each nature remains full, without impairment—the human nature, moreover, plenified insofar as it has been divinized by the union—preserving not only of origin, but in the effective unfolding of the union, the properties that belong to them, both the operation (enérgeia) and the will (thélema), as well as all the idioms or particularities of each nature, as is evident from the Maximian formula of the natures, of which, in which and which is Christ (Cf. Piret 1983, pp. 203–39). In other words, the union does not involve the absorption of the attributes or idioms of the human nature into the divine—which ontologically surpasses it—as the Monenergists and Monothelites held, who assumed a diophysism of origin, but ultimately postulated an effective Monophysitism. Thus, the interaction of the divine with the human is not based on the absorption of difference, but on a gift of the proper that brings to fullness—does not suppress—what belongs to human nature, for “of Himself [Christ], we say, are the miracles and passions certainly as of one, Christ operating the divine and the human: carnally the divine things, for he produced through the natural operation of the flesh (…) the power of miracles; divinely the human, for, without exception of natural force, he accepted, willing according to his mastery, the proof of human passions.” (Maximus the Confessor 1865, p. 573B). The communicatio idiomatum further means that the interaction that marks the union does not superimpose a sort of medium in a spatial sense, but occurs insofar as the divine is in the human and the human in the divine, for

the Word appropiates to Himself the attributes of humanity: for all that pertains to His holy flesh is His: and He imparts to the flesh His own attributes by the way of communication in virtue of the interpenetration of the parts (τῶν μερῶν περιχώρησιν) one with another, and the oneness according to subsistence, and inasmuch as He Who lived and acted both as God and as man, taking to Himself either form and holding intercourse with the other form, was one and the same.

(John of Damascus 1963, p. 120)

The divine becomes, therefore, common to the human, and the human common to the divine, and in this indwelling the reciprocity of the gift defines the interaction of union through a bidirectionality that does not condemn created nature to mere passive and non-creative receptivity. It is in this sense that the union is said to be inseparabiliter, for Christ does not act sometimes divinely and sometimes humanly, but his action is “theandric”—although not in the Monophysite sense of mixture—for in Christ’s action we can see the divine and the human, but we cannot separate them, as in a single movement of the burning iron sword we can see that it cuts according to the nature of the iron and burns according to the nature of the fire. On the other hand, the reciprocal indwelling that in the words of John of Damascus defines the hypostatic union reflects the very heart of sophiology, for Sophia, as Divine-humanity, is conceived as a true metaxu precisely through this reciprocal indwelling that founds the intimacy of the union.

The fact that the Eastern tradition, on the one hand, has not experienced the split of grace and nature with the same intensity as the Latin tradition, and, on the other hand, is closer to Greek patristics—also the late one—which was the main source of dogmatic Christology, makes it possible to argue, as John Milbank does, that contemporary Russian theology has an advantage over Latin theology, since the point of arrival of the Nouvelle Théologie coincides with the point of departure of sophiology (Milbank 2009, p. 47). Although we already find in Hamann a lucid call to assume the communicatio idiomatum as “master-key of all our knowledge and of the whole visible economy” (Hamann 2007, p. 99), it is finally Solovyev who, in his deep knowledge of the Byzantine Christological tradition and following the very spirit of the Greek Fathers, wisely applies—by analogy—the principles of Christology. Indeed, Solovyev, who remains alien to a conception of theology confined to a supernature and reduced to mere biblical exegesis, writes that, “if the faith communicated by the Church to Christian humanity is a living faith, and if the grace of the sacraments is an effectual grace, the resultant union of the divine and the human cannot be limited to the special domain of religion, but must extend to all Man’s common relationships and must regenerate and transform his social and political life” (Solovyev 1948, p. 10). Thus, the hypostatic union constitutes the paradigm of the interaction between the divine and the human, between the created and the uncreated, and this metaphysical principle not only shines in a supernatural, separate and therefore ineffective sphere, but extends to all orders of reality, both to the natural and to the realm of Caesar.

4. Christology, Imago Dei and Man as Mediator

The doctrine of the imago Dei enables the application of Christological principles in areas such as social and environmental ethics. Recent theories on the anthropology of the imago Dei distinguish between an intellectual, volitional or relational view (McGinn 1986) and between a structural, functional or relational interpretation (Cortez 2010), although they should not be conceived in isolation or as mutually exclusive. The theory that interests us here is the functional one, which understands the imago Dei in terms of activity or mission, since man, who occupies the apex of creation—or its center, as a crucible in which all cosmic forces converge—is called to exercise dominion over all creatures (Gen. 1:26–28). On the other hand, the functional theory of the image is not restricted to the mere function in isolation, but this same function entails an ontological character relative to the position that man occupies in the cosmic hierarchy, a structural character insofar as there is a close relationship between man’s mission in the world and his rational and volitional capacity, and a relational character, insofar as dominion over a being implies in itself a relationship with that being (Arblaster 2020, p. 271). In this sense, although “current views of the functional image do not usually articulate a Christological dimension” (Arblaster 2020, p. 272), it is not impossible to establish an analogy between the hypostatic union of Christ, in which the divine nature exercises, by its sublime character, a dominion over the human nature which it deifies, and the dominium of man over the rest of creatures. However, it is necessary to point out the obvious difficulty presented by this analogy, since the union of natures in the hypostasis of Christ is marked by a radical metaphysical heterogeneity, while the relationship between man and creation is a relationship between two metaphysically homogeneous realities: in the first case, a univocal being cannot be predicated to God and creatures, while in the second case man, as a created being, possesses the same ontological character as the reality to which he is related, for he has been made “in a wondrous way with great glory from the dust of the earth” (Hildegard of Bingen 1990, p. 98). Nevertheless, the dominant position of the divine nature over the human nature in Christ must be conceived as a perfect paradigm of every possible dominion, including, by the analogy of the image, the domination over the environment to which man is called by his privileged position in the cosmic order.

If man’s dominion over the rest of the creatures is, in an ideal state, an image of the dominion of the divine over the human in Christ, then the relationship must also be conceived as informed by its inconfuse, immutabiliter, inseparabiliter and indivise character. In other words, a will aligned with the divine purpose must reject two forms of relationship with the natural environment: one in which unity excludes difference and another in which difference is exalted in such a way that unity is compromised in a kind of appearance of unity that encloses an unbridgeable split. In this sense, man’s dominion over other creatures—in consonance with the divine will—must save the integral difference in both man and creatures, which negatively defines this relationship as inconfuse and immutabiliter, in addition to guaranteeing the effective and not merely apparent union of both realities through a communication of idioms that endorses the inseparabiliter and indivise character of the relationship. Therefore, the relationship between man and the rest of creation, in which man, as imago Dei, assumes the role of dominus entrusted to him, must be immutabiliter insofar as the desirable humanization of the landscape does not involve a denaturalization that entails the annihilation of the very essence that constitutes the specific difference, but consists precisely in bringing that essence to its fullness, to the fulfillment of the logos of its nature. Agreement with the divine will does not lead, therefore, to a process of industrialization of the landscape in which the real loses its form in favor of that projected by what J. R. R. Tolkien called a “mind of metal” that “breaks a thing to find out what it is” (Tolkien 1994, pp. 259, 473) and that conceives the world as an abstract grid that reduces the real to mere extension that possesses no greater meaning than that of mere availability. Man’s undeviating dominion over creatures, that is, a dominion according to God’s will in which, although in a fallen state, iniquity is not systematized, does not entail the disappearance of the earth under an insulating layer of concrete. On the other hand, dominion according to the image cannot consist of a sort of confused mixture between dominus and dominata that subverts order through a leveling of all that is created in a horizontal ontological structure in which man is no longer conceived as the vertex of creation—as many current ecological theories generally propose—and can even assume a pessimistic—if not openly fatalistic—anthropology that proposes a liberal flight from the world in the form of a dissolution of the personality. On the other hand, neither should it become a sentimental identification of the environment with the state of mind of man that is exhibited on certain occasions in the romantic spirit. Both this liberal trance and the anthropological pessimism that dissolves the hierarchy of creation neglect man’s responsibility to be the mediator called to lead the whole of creation to its fullness, and both, in practice, are by definition condemned to be minority and ineffective, the first because it becomes an asceticism only applicable to a sort of religious elite, and the second because it only acquires meaning within the framework of art and literature. The obvious consequence of these two modes of liberal flight that propose either the dissolution of the subject in the medium, or the dissolution of the medium in the subject, is the abandonment of the world to despotism and the arbitrariness of a fallen form of dominium that ends up systematizing iniquity and whose activity does not humanize but denaturalizes creation.

The relation of man to the environment must also bring about unity, its inseparable and indivisible character. Thus, creation does not constitute an agglomeration of formally distinct and unconnected monads predicable only of themselves, but is substantially interconnected through divine action in the world. There are in the world, according to John Scotus Eriugena, two agents of unity: from the origin, the love of God, the divine Caritas, which “is diffused in all things, and (…) gathers all things into one, and it turns back to him in an undeniable return” (Gavin 2014, p. 16), as happens with the Caritas/Sapientia in Hildegard, whose true and active presence (adsum ei veraci ostensione) unites and vivifies everything by maintaining in an organic unity all creation, as it is expressed through the visions of the cosmic egg and the wheel of the universe (Cf. Hildegard of Bingen 1990, pp. 260–61); and in the effective unfolding of the world towards its fullness, it is man who receives the vocation to be “created wisdom”, to be a mediator, a sort of “third world” that “connects the higher world of spirits and the lower world of bodies, and makes the two one” (Gavin 2014, p. 23). This is possible because man is a microcosm insofar as he is situated at the center of creation as a crucible that contains in himself all creatures (creaturarum omnium oficina) and is not foreign to any of them: “Indeed, man understands like an angel, reasons like a man, feels like an irrational animal, lives like a plant, and subsists in both body and soul” (Gavin 2014, p. 22).

For his part, Sergius Bulgakov offers an early sample of sophianic cosmology in Philosophy of economy, a work he wrote when his re-discovery of Orthodoxy was still incipient and the influence of German idealism—above all of Schelling—is palpable both in terminology and in the conception of the transcendental subject, whose activity—the sophianization of the world—is reminiscent of the romanticization of the world. In this work he thematizes the organic unity of the real, coining the expression “physical communism of being” to refer to a cosmological model characterized by reciprocal inhabitation—insofar as each thing is in all things—holistic entanglement—insofar as everything is connected with the universe as a whole and, therefore, every event has an effect on everything else—and the unity between organic bodies and inanimate matter, there being an identity—or a kind of communication of idioms—between life and death, for “life is death, and death is life” (Bulgakov 2000, p. 97). Man is thus inserted in this ecosystem and cannot be separated from it (inseparabiliter). In Hildegard’s words, man dwells in the midst of the forces of divine creation and is

so entangled with the strengths of the rest of creation that he can never be separated from them; for the elements of the world, created for Man’s service, wait on him, and Man, enthroned as it were in their midst, by divine disposition presides over them”.

(Hildegard of Bingen 1990, p. 98)

Man is not isolable in a kind of formal space of the real-possible, he cannot be separated without ceasing to be what he is, since

God, for the glory of his name, gathered together the world out of the elements, strengthened it with the winds, stitched it together and gave it light with the stars, and filled it up with all the other creatures. With all these things in the world he surrounded and fortified humankind and everywhere imbued them with the greatest strength, so that creation might assist them in all things and partake in all human works, so that they might do their work with creation—for humankind can neither live nor even exist without creation (quia homo absque ilis nec vivere, nec etiam subsistere potest)”.

(Hildegard of Bingen 2018, p. 54)

This sophianic anthropology can give birth to a new conception of property in which dominium cannot contain the possibility of the destruction of the dominated without this implying in itself the destruction of the dominus, for the dominus is in the dominated and the dominated, in the dominus, in a relationship of reciprocal inhabitation. The relationship of dominion of man over creation cannot, if it is aligned with the divine purpose, consist in an arbitrary and despotic abuse, but in a care and a guarantee of the equilibrium of the humanized ecosystem.

The organic interconnectedness of the world, a reflection of the communicatio idiomatum, can be contemplated on a physical level, Bulgakov argues, through the rhythm of cosmic respiration in which the opposition between life and death—two states of the same universe—is waged and in which inhalation corresponds to consumption and exhalation to production. The dynamics of the basic economic functions—consumption and production—articulates the mutual penetration and reciprocity that operate in the sophianic milieu actualizing the cosmic unity. Consumption refers to the process by which the object enters the subject, by which the living or inanimate enters and transforms the non-living. This exchange between life—or the capacity to consume the world—and death—or the exodus out of the world—should be understood as nutrition in a broad sense that involves food, respiration, the effects of the atmosphere, light, electricity, chemistry and other forces of the organism (Bulgakov 2000, p. 101). This process takes place through the body, which is the portal of life through which the universe enters us, and through sensitivity, which is the capacity to be affected by the external world. Consumption or nutrition, in short, is the natural communion linked to necessity, the nourishment that “uncovers our essential metaphysical unity with the world” (Bulgakov 2000, p. 103), from which, as Hildegard warned, we can in no way separate ourselves. Nevertheless, production is the economic function that, in my opinion, acquires a greater ethical significance, insofar as it is the projection of the subject on the object and reflects the practice of the dominion that man, because of his privileged position in the ontological order, is called to exercise over the world. In the thematization of production Bulgakov exhibits a strong idealistic imprint: man, as an active subject who confronts the absolute meonic mechanism, is called upon to “sophianize” the world through labor. Starting from the subject-object division of modern epistemology, Bulgakov conceives the external world as a mechanical and objectual force that opposes man’s creative action, as mere matter offering infinite possibilities for its transformation by labor, as natura naturata available to be made transparent to the rationality of the transcendental subject of economy. Despite the fact that the condition of possibility of the effective work of man on nature is the metaphysical homogeneity between the I and the Not-I (Bulgakov 2000, p. 113), this relationship, in which the creative force confronts a mechanical and blind force that opposes it, seems to imply a reciprocity understood more as conflict than as synergy or cooperation. Violence seems, therefore, to be the necessary motto of the relationship between natura naturans and natura naturata in the fallen state of the saeculum. There is a mutual penetration (Bulgakov 2000, p. 118), but this does not reflect harmony and mutual disposition, but effort and struggle. In this sense, the function of the object seems to be reduced to mere obedience and agreement with a project previously designed by man and alien to its being, understanding as a victorious end the unidirectional submission of the earth to man in which reciprocity is certainly compromised. The problem of this development is the modern conception of nature and necessity as pure resistance.

Bulgakov’s conception of labor has a liberal character similar to Arendt’s concept of work, since it is in labor—performed by homo faber—that he finds a sort of “harmony” between subject and object, insofar as the subject is not “free” from matter, but has preponderance over it as much as it is he who gives it the desired form, and not the other way around. In contrast, in Arendtian labor, which is tied to necessity and therefore not free, the focus is not so much on the subject as on the object; it is not, therefore, an activity that defines man in his essence —as action and work do— but a practice that reduces man to animal laborans. Nevertheless, the application of Christological communicatio idiomatum to man’s relationship with the earth does not give rise to a reciprocity based on conflict but on mutual cooperation, in which neither the subject nor the object—to continue using Bulgakov’s terms—are diminished in their properties, and this consideration can only dignify labor as a cooperation in which man is not a despotic tyrant, but the one who guides and guarantees the harmony of the humanized ecosystem. In other words, the peace that follows labor understood in this way is not achieved by the defeat of one of the parties, but by the activity of each of them. This mode of cooperation between man and landscape is very well expressed in the reflections of American writer and farmer Wendell Berry on the difference between the road and the path. Habit and familiarity with the landscape are the foundation of the path, man’s direct and local relationship with the topography, so that its authorship cannot be reduced exclusively to human genius that captures an idea on a grid, but rather to the relationship between man, who wants to travel through the landscape, and the land, which shows him a route—probably not linear—that follows the natural contours and respects the local disposition of creatures. Once this happens, the habit of daily life does the rest. The road, on the other hand, is an abstraction that does not arise from proximity and familiarity, but from the remoteness of the axes of a plan, with man as its sole author, imposing his project with a view to efficiency, even if the means of achieving such linearity is the devastation of the topography. The perfect road is one that does not go around obstacles in the landscape, but rather removes them, “it bears no relation whatever to the country it passes through. It is a pure abstraction” (Berry 2002, p. 12). The path reflects a way of relating to the land that does not undermine its essence or suppress its natural attributes but is characterized by a cooperative reciprocity in which the landscape also plays a role, rather than being denied through the ignominy of pure availability. The path, which stands as a model of dignified labor, arises from the communication of idioms and the reciprocal inhabitation between man and the land, with man as the guarantor of the ecosystemic order.

In this sense, homo laborans—no longer conceived as an animal—embodies the ideal of man as mediator of the cosmos. The figure of the farmer, as the foundation and guardian of a humanized ecosystem, is presented as a perfect paradigm of the orderly and integral dominion over creatures that man is called to exercise by divine design. If his activity is aligned with the divine will—that is, if it reflects the characteristics of the hypostatic union in which the divine nature is domina—then it will be based on a profound knowledge of creatures, not isolated in a kind of formal kingdom that standardizes them, but in their relationship with the local environment, since man knows them from this environment from which, as Hildegard argued, he cannot be separated. Therefore, this action must be preceded by a “domestication of our desire on the scale of the earth” (Wirzba 2002, p. 21), since the natural has the divine as its—gratuitous—end that brings it to its fullness, and not as an alien and superimposed instance that must be opposed to.

An industrial approach to the environment distorts things, as it ignores the fact that every creature has its role in a diverse and interconnected environment. The farmer, as a paradigm of the mediator, does not isolate creatures in order to exercise greater control and obtain greater yield from them, but rather emulates the natural functioning of things, ordering it toward a higher purpose. Thus, he favors the diversity that balance inherently implies (inconfuse) and orders the interconnection—substantial, not accidental—that gives meaning to the function that is natural to each creature: he does not suppress this function (immutabiliter), but rather affirms and orders it, making it possible and effective. Man’s lordship over the earth consists of guaranteeing unity in difference through a humanized ecosystem that integrates—does not suppress—the natural function of each creature, saving its operation (energeia) and its natural tendency toward the purpose (will). In this perichoretic balance, man acts through the environment and the environment acts through man; man wills through the environment—adapting his desire to the measure of the earth—and the environment wills through man—following the order guaranteed by man; man is in the environment—from which he cannot be separated—and the environment is in man—in whom it finds its salvation.

There is also a reciprocal instruction, for it is not only man who instructs and rules, but he is also instructed and ordered by creation. The environment, with all its creatures, is not merely a blind and mechanical reflection of the fall but is the bearer of divine wisdom: its rhythms correspond to the liturgical rhythms and order the life of human communities. Labor not only does not reduce man to animality, but allows man to receive this instruction and reconnect with the doxological rhythms of creation, bringing man back to the Church, for “the liturgical cycle of the Church keeps step with the changing of the seasons in their yearly round, as they form a crown of blessings, in the words of Psalm 64, from the bounteous hand of God” (Benedictine Monk 1999, p. 25). In this sense, natural cycles—the seasons, planting, and harvesting—provide the festivities that, with their rituals, legends, and songs, express ecclesial life locally. Similarly, at a basic social level, it is the natural necessity of labor that gives rise to dependence, and dependence generates a community that does not reject differences or personal enmity, or at least tolerates them insofar as mutual dependence precedes them. And this dependence, although rooted in local unity, is multiple, for “community is a locally understood interdependence of local people, local culture, local economy, and local nature” (Berry 1993, p. 120). It is therefore familiarity, closeness, and common interests anchored in necessity—or the fundamental vulnerability of human beings—that form a genuine community, for this community precedes the affinity of ideas and relationships of friendship or enmity, whose flourishing it favors. Community implies a kind of “communication of differences” put at the service of achieving common goals linked to necessity. The local community, even in the midst of the iniquity that pervades the saeculum, is nourished by “trust, goodwill, forbearance, self-restraint, compassion, and forgiveness” (Berry 1993, p. 120). In this sense, man naturally needs community, but it is the cultivation of the virtues of social life that, seeking unity and saving differences, nourishes genuine community.

5. Conclusions

Throughout this essay, I have sought to show how it is possible to articulate an ecological ethic inspired by the hypostatic union and the anthropology of the image, which inform a kind of relationship between man and creation that does not originate in violence, but rather emanates from it a balance that fosters a union that saves and elevates differences. This harmonious—perichoretic—difference bases its unity on reciprocal indwelling and on the communication of idioms that guarantees both non-separation (inseparabiliter, indivise) and the integrity of the dominated (inconfuse, immutabiliter). The conception of nature as the sophianic depositary of the sacred, as life participating in the Living One and whose vital breath is revealed as doxological, inspires a relationship with man that does not consist in the conflict of will that faces mechanical and blind resistance, but in a cooperation in which domination does not annihilate the essence of creation, but orders and integrates it into a higher order that elevates it to a greater essential determination. This relationship gives voice to nature, which—within the framework of bidirectional reciprocity—instructs man and inserts him into its essentially liturgical rhythms, which sing the praises of the Creator and reveal themselves as the locus of genuine ecclesial community. This community, like man, cannot separate itself from the necessity of the earth without losing itself, for it finds in the earth the foundation of the interconnection through which it saves, transfigures, and brings to fulfillment the being of all creatures.