The Orthodox Church makes no separation between natural and supernatural revelation. Natural revelation is known and understood fully in the light of supernatural revelation, or we might say that natural revelation is given and maintained by God continuously through His own divine act which is above nature. That is why Saint Maximus the Confessor does not posit an essential distinction between natural revelation and the supernatural or biblical one. According to him, this latter is only the embodying of the former in historical persons and actions.
This affirmation of Maximus must probably be taken more in the sense that the two revelations are not divorced from one another. Supernatural revelation unfolds and brings forth its fruit within the framework of natural revelation, like a kind of casting of the work of God into bolder relief, a guiding of the physical and historical world toward that goal for which it was created in accordance with a plan laid down from all ages. Supernatural revelation merely restores direction to and provides a more determined support for that inner movement maintained within the world by God through natural revelation. At the beginning, moreover, in that state of the world which was fully normal, natural revelation was not separated from a revelation that was supernatural. Consequently, supernatural revelation places natural revelation itself in a clearer light.
It is possible, however, to speak both of a natural revelation and of a supernatural one, since, within the framework of natural revelation, the work of God is not emphasized in the same way nor is it as evident as it is in supernatural revelation.
Speaking more concretely and in accordance with our faith, the content of natural revelation is the cosmos and man who is endowed with reason, with conscience, and with freedom. But man is not only an object that can be known within this revelation; he is also one who is a subject of the knowledge of revelation. Both man and the cosmos are equally the product of a creative act of God which is above nature, and both are maintained in existence by God through an act of conservation which has, likewise, a supernatural character. To the acts of conserving and leading the world towards its own proper end, there corresponds within the cosmos and within man both a power and a tendency of self-conservation and of right development. From this point of view, man and the cosmos can themselves be taken as a kind of natural revelation.
But man and the cosmos constitute a natural revelation also from the point of view of knowledge. The cosmos is organized in a way that corresponds to our capacity for knowing. The cosmos—and human nature as intimately connected with the cosmos—are stamped with rationality, while man (God’s creature) is further endowed with a reason capable of knowing consciously the rationality of the cosmos and of his own nature. Nevertheless, according to Christian doctrine, this rationality of the cosmos and this human reason of ours which enables us to know are, on the other hand, the product of the creative act of God. Thus, natural revelation is not something purely natural from this point of view either.
We consider that the rationality of the cosmos attests to the fact that the cosmos is the product of a rational being, since rationality, as an aspect of a reality which is destined to be known, has no explanation apart from a conscious Reason which knows it from the time it creates it or even before that time, and knows it continually so long as that same Reason preserves its being. On the other hand, the cosmos itself would be meaningless along with its rationality if there were no human reason that might come to know the cosmos because of its rational character. In our faith, the rationality of the cosmos has a meaning only if it is known in the thought of an intelligent creative being before its creation and in the whole time of its continuing in being, having been first brought into existence precisely that it might be known by a being for whom it was created, and that a dialogue between itself and the created rational being might thus be brought about through its mediation. This fact constitutes the content of natural revelation.
Christian supernatural revelation asserts the same thing when it teaches that, to God’s original creative and conserving position vis-à-vis the world, there corresponds, on a lower plane which is by nature dependent, our own position as a being made in the image of God and able to know and to transform nature. In this position of man, it can be seen that the world must have its origin in a Being which intended through the creation of the world—and through its preservation continues to intend—that man should come to a knowledge of the world through itself and to a knowledge of that Being.
We appear as the only being which, while belonging to the visible world and stamped with rationality, is conscious both of the rationality it possesses and, simultaneously, of itself. As the only being in the world conscious of itself, we are, at the same time, the consciousness of the world; we are also that factor able to assert the rationality of the world, and to transform the world consciously to our own advantage, and able, through this very act, to transform ourselves consciously by our own act. We cannot be aware of ourselves without being conscious of the world and of the things in it. The better we know the world, or the more aware we are of it, the more conscious we are of ourselves. But the world, by contributing in this passive manner to our formation and to the deepening of our self-consciousness, does not itself become—through this contribution—conscious of itself. this means that we are not for the sake of the world, but the world is for us, although man does also need the world. The point of the world is to be found in man, not vice versa. Even the fact that we are aware that we need the world shows man’s superior position vis-à-vis the world. for the world is not able to feel our need for it. The world, existing as an unconscious object, exists for man. It is subordinated to man, even though he did not create it.
The “reasons” or inner principles [logoi] of things reveal their light in human reason and through the conscious rational action of man. Likewise, our reason reveals its own power and depth even more richly by uncovering the reasons within created things. Yet, in this reciprocal influence, it is human reason and not the reasons within things which has the role of a subject working consciously. The reasons within things disclose themselves to human consciousness and must be assimilated by it and concentrated in it. They disclose themselves insofar as they have human reason as their virtual conscious center and by helping reason to become their own actual center. They are the potential rays of human reason on the way towards being revealed as its actual rays, and it is through these that human reason extends its vision farther and farther.
The fact that the world is understood within man and for man and through man shows that the world exists for man, not man for the world. But the fact that man himself, by explaining the world, understands himself for his own sake through the world demonstrates that man is in need of the world too. It is the world that has been created to be humanized, not man to be assimilated into the world or into nature. It is the whole world that has been created to become a Man writ large or at least to become the content of Man, a content which comprehends all things in each person; it was not man who was made to be part of nature, having no more meaning than any other part of nature, even to being swallowed up into nature. For if man were thus eventually to disappear into nature, the most important factor in reality would be lost, without nature gaining anything new, whereas, through the assimilation of the world into man, nature itself gains, for it is raised up to a plane which is entirely new, even though nature itself, properly speaking, does not disappear. Our disappearance into nature would represent no progress of any kind even for nature, whereas the continual and ultimately eternal humanization of nature does represent an eternal progress, quite apart from the fact that, through such a humanization, nothing, certainly not what is most valuable in reality, is lost. Our disappearance into nature would imply a static situation within a process that remains always essentially identical with itself and is, therefore, in its monotony, absurd.
Some of the Fathers of the Church have said that man is a microcosm, a world which sums up itself the larger world. Saint Maximos the Confessor remarked that the more correct way would be to consider man as a macrocosm, because he is called to comprehend the whole world within himself as one capable of comprehending it without losing himself, for he is distinct from the world. Therefore, man effects a unity greater than the world exterior to himself, whereas, on the contrary, the world, as cosmos, as nature, cannot contain man fully within itself without losing him, that is, without losing in this way the most important part of reality, that part which, more than all others, gives reality its meaning.
The idea that man is called to become a world writ large has a more precise expression, however, in the term “macro-anthropos.” The term conveys the fact that, in the strictest sense, the world is called to be humanized entirely, that is, to bear the entire stamp of the human, to become pan-human, making real through that stamp a need which is implicit in the world’s own meaning: to become, in its entirety, a humanized cosmos, in a way that the human being is not called to become, nor can ever fully become, even at the farthest limit of his attachment to the world where he is completely identified with it, a “cosmicized” man. The destiny of the cosmos is found in man, not man’s destiny in the cosmos. This is shown not only by the fact that the cosmos is the object of human consciousness and knowledge (not the reverse), but also by the fact that the entire cosmos serves human existence in a practical way.
The inferior chemical, mineral, and organic levels of existence, although they have a rationality, have no purpose within themselves. Their purpose consists in constituting the material conditions of man’s existence, and they have no consciousness of this goal of theirs. Within man, however, the order of certain conscious goals is disclosed. And it is only within the framework of these goals intended by man that the understanding of the goals of those levels inferior to him is also disclosed, for they have a place in reference to the purposes intended by him so that he can project, like a great arch over them all, an ultimate and supreme meaning to existence.
In contrast with the levels below him, man does not fulfill the goal of his own existence by serving another level above himself, for in the world no such level as this exists. Man follows his own goals. In this area, however, a great variety exists from man to man. Every man, depending on his own conscience and freedom, makes use of the different levels inferior to himself. And in order to make us of them, man organizes and transforms by his labor the data of the world, imprinting on them his own stamp. This adaptation of the world to man’s needs—needs which are always growing and becoming more refined—demands, in the first place, that man have knowledge of the things of the world. But it likewise belongs to our nature—as the only being conscious of itself and of the world—to search for a meaning to our existence and that of the world as well. And only the perspective of the eternity of our existence can give us this meaning. In our consciousness of self, there is implied, simultaneously with this search for the meaning of our existence, the will to continue in being forever so that we might deepen the infinite meaning of our own existence and that of the whole of reality.
According to this conception, we have been created for eternity inasmuch as we gasp, like suffocating beings, after eternity, after the absolute. We wish to love and to be loved more and more, striving after a love which is absolute and endless. But this we can only find in relation with a Person who is infinite and absolute, a conscious Person, if we may speak pleonastically. We strive to discover and achieve an ever greater beauty, to know an ever more profound reality, to progress within a continuous newness. In all these ways, we aim at the infinite because we are person. Yet all these aspects of an infinite reality we can only find in an infinite Person, or better, in a communion of Persons who are infinite in being, in love, in beauty. From an ever growing communion with this Personal reality, newer and newer rays of reality, of beauty, and of innovation shine forth in us—and through us—upon all aspects of the world, while more and more dimensions and horizons of reality are being disclosed.
Communion with Personal reality or with the infinite Persons becomes for men the means of an infinite progress in love and knowledge and it is this which keeps continuously alive the interest of our own consciousness of self. Even though human self-consciousness might continue in endless self-replacing succession and transmit with this succession the meaning of existence as humanity comes to know it, if the meaning of his own existence for each member of this succession were not carried on into eternity in order to be eternally deepened, the meaning of our existence would appear to us as devoid of any real sense. In fact, subjects do not exist for the sake of some interrupted consciousness or even for the sake of an uninterrupted eternal consciousness; rather, consciousness exists for the sake of the subject and gives meaning to it. It is only through such a consciousness which is eternal and which becomes eternally more profound that we prove ourselves to be the purpose of all the inferior levels of existence, illuminating forever all the meanings and realities of the world and making them eternal. Only thus can it be seen that all things are for our sake and that we constitute for ourselves an eternal purpose, indeed the eternal purpose of all the things in the world.
Only thus is the purpose of all the inferior components of the world fulfilled in us. It is in the everlasting nature of our being that the meaning of all things—understood as the contents of a continuous enrichment and deepening of our eternal consciousness—is eternally being illuminated.
In fact, in everything we do we follow a purpose and for this purpose we make use of the things in the world. but we ourselves have need of a final eternal purpose, or better, we must ourselves be a final eternal purpose if we are to show ourselves as meaningful beings in everything we do. Through all the things we do, we manifest directly or indirectly, an eternal purpose of this kind or we pursue the maintenance of our existence as an eternal purpose. Only in this do we find the meaning of our existence and of our deeds. We must, therefore, see the purpose of our existence projected beyond passing, earthly life, for if death were to bring a definitive end to our existence, we would no longer be a goal in our own right, but only a means within an unconscious process of nature. In that case, the entire meaning of our life and all the goals we pursue—and indeed all things whatsoever—would become meaningless.
According to our faith, however, the order of meanings cannot be left out of account. Meanings are real and man cannot live without them. He cannot endure to live without a consciousness of meanings and without pursuing them, for they culminate in a final meaning which man is convinced he will attain beyond death. If man were to dispute the reality of these meanings, his would be the unhappiest of existences. The animal has no knowledge of meanings, nor can it deny their reality. Through his consciousness, man is not content to lead an existence the meaning of which is to serve—without realizing it—a higher level of created reality, a level within which man would end his own existence. In a conscious fashion, man pursues his own meaning and, in the last analysis, he pursues an ultimate meaning which is the maintaining and perfecting of himself forever. He is a goal in himself for eternity. He is created for eternity and has in himself a kind of absolute character, that is, a permanent value which never ceases to grow richer. Man is open to meanings higher than the world, and through him, the world, too, is open to these meanings. Through understanding, through freedom, through action, and aspiration, man is open to an order superior to that of nature, although he makes use of nature in order to be able to achieve his own meaning as a being which is called to eternal perfection. Life on earth is only a preparation for that eternal order. Our being is an existence accommodated to that order and to the possibility of a continual spiritual perfection not subjected to nature and to repetition. That order is not produced by nature, for nature merely repeats itself, but rather it organizes the entire cosmos so as to render service to man as he works in view of his own purpose which transcends the earth.
We believe that, in the case of our being, the meanings of existence cannot reach their fulfillment within an immanent spiritual life, for the relative variety of this immanent life moves within a monotonous framework and ceases as a phenomenon of natural repetition with the death of the body. The meaning of existence can only reach its fulfillment within the ultimate and eternal life, of a life that is transcendent and free from all monotony of repetition and from all relativity. Only on that plane can our life develop to infinity within an endless newness which is, at the same time, a continuous fullness.
We aspire after an order beyond us but one which lies on a path similar to that of our own personal existence; we do not aspire to being swallowed up within some impersonal plan which lies, for a while, at our limited disposal but only so that afterwards we may disappear into it. Man strains towards an infinite personal reality higher than himself, a reality from which he can nourish himself infinitely, although, given his own limited possibilities, he cannot have it at his own disposal, nor, on the other hand, does he disappear into it himself afterwards.
The order of meanings is not the product of the human psyche nor does it end with the products of the psyche. For this order imposes itself on us without our willing it and, through the aspirations it instills within us, surpasses our own psychic possibilities. Man cannot live without it. But the order of meanings imposes itself as a personal horizon, infinite and superior to man, and it requires man’s freedom if he is to have a share in that order. Even during man’s earthly existence, the order of meanings does call upon him to participate itself in freedom.
Saint Maximos the Confessor observed the fact that everything reaches its fulfillment in man while he realizes his own meaning in union with the Personal reality whose spiritual life is infinite.
The final meaning or goal after which man aspires must be understood in accordance with the freedom of human being and with its capacity for infinite development. If the rationality of the impersonal, lower order finds its fulfillment and sense in service of the being of man who transcends nature, man, in turn, as a conscious and free person, aspires to find the fulfillment of his own rationality and meaning not in some loss of his own being within an essence higher than any material and spiritual order, though still subject to monotony and immanent limitation, but a communion with a transcendent and free person. For that being which is superior to man can likewise only be personal in character. And if the higher relationship between persons comes about in communion, then our fully and eternally satisfying relationship must be communion with a being who is also personal in character and endowed with infinity and freedom. Only a being transcendent in this sense can be always new and life-giving in this communion with man. In the same way that man, as the highest being in the world, is a person and conscious of the meaning of the entire lower order, an order which he himself fulfills, so man must also find the fulfillment of his meaning, together with all the meanings of the levels lower than himself, in a person aware of his meaning and of all the meanings in the world inferior to him. Only a still greater person and, in the final analysis, only supreme Person can be conscious of the meaning of existence as a whole, as man is conscious of the meaning of the world inferior to himself. But the supreme Personal reality does not project this total meaning upon man, without man himself assimilating this meaning in a conscious way. The supreme Personal reality communicates it to man as to a person who assimilates it consciously and thus enriches his consciousness and his whole being, finding in this very act the fulfillment of his own meaning.
In this way, the supreme Personal reality fosters that character of our being according to which we are free and conscious persons.
Only a Person of a higher order can foster and satisfy the aspiration within our human nature towards the fulfillment of its own meaning, inasmuch as only such a Person can bring it about that our human nature is no longer an object swallowed up by a level which is said to be “superior” but which remains at bottom inferior because it is unconscious. If the levels inferior to man were personal, even he could not reduce them to the state of being objects. Neither could a person of an order higher than man reduce man to the condition of being an object by dissolving or swallowing him within himself.
Our being can find its fulfillment as person only in communion with a higher personal being. Such a being cannot, however, reveal its own greatness or bring our being to fulfillment either through a relationship with the various levels below the human reality or by reducing our being to the unconscious state proper to a passive object. This requires instead a relation in which man himself, in continuously new ways, freely and consciously assimilates the infinite spiritual richness of the supreme Personal reality.
This means that our personal reality remains free in relation to this higher being. Such a relationship is analogous to the relationship of one human person to another, a relationship in which the liberty of both is preserved. In this relationship, man exists for the sake of others in a way that he does not exist for the sake of material things. However, he does not thereby fall to the level of becoming object, for in serving other persons, he commits himself freely and, through the effort of bringing joy to others, he himself grows in freedom and in the spiritual content of his being, to say nothing of that warmth of life that comes to him from the communion and love of those other persons. It is only with other persons that man can achieve the kind of communion in which neither he nor they descend to the status of being objects of exterior knowledge used always in an identical way. Instead, they grow as sources for an inexhaustible warmth of love and of thoughts that are ever new, brought forth and sustained by the reciprocal love of these persons, a love that remains always creative, always in search of new ways of manifesting itself.
But if through death human persons cease to exist, then not a single one among them will be able to communicate and to receive infinitely this warmth of love and thus grow infinitely, which is what, in fact, man desires. Human life ended definitively by death destroys any meaning, and, therefore, any value of the rationality existing in the world and, indeed, of the world itself. The meanings pursued within the perspective of this earthly life are likewise stripped of all sense and value if any human life, in which everything seems to have found meaning, comes to a definitive end in death. For our cruellest grief is the lack of meaning, that is, the lack of an eternal meaning to our life and deeds. The necessity of this meaning is intimately connected to our being. The dogmas of faith respond to this necessity that our being have some sense. Thus they affirm the complete rationality of existence.
Only the eternity of a personal communion with a personal source of absolute life offers to all human persons the fulfillment of their meaning and affords them, at the same time, the possibility of an everlasting and perfect communion among themselves.
The rationality of the subject who—with a view to his own continued existence and proper development—makes use of the rationality of nature is infinitely superior to the rationality of the latter, inasmuch as nature develops rigidly in itself with no consciousness of its own purpose. According to our faith, the rationality existing in the universe needs to be completed by, and seeks an account of itself within, the rationality of a person. By itself, it does not exhaust all rationality. When the rationality of the world is seen in itself as the only one in existence, it has led many writers and thinkers to go so far as to think of the universe, which draws every person towards death, as one huge graveyard, a universe of the absurd, a place from which meaning is gone and where rationality is irrational. But the rationality of the universe cannot be irrational. It acquires its full meaning, however, when it is considered to have its source in a rational person who makes it serve an eternal dialogue of love with other persons. Thus the rationality of the world, if it is to be fulfilled, implies the existence of a higher subject, following the analogy of the rational superiority of the human person. It thus implies the existence of a free subject who has created and imprinted on the world a rationality at the level of human understanding which makes possible a dialogue with man, a dialogue through which man may be led to an eternal and, in the highest sense, rational communion with the infinite creative subject. Everything which is an object of reason can only be the means for an interpersonal dialogue.
Hence, the world as object is only the means for a dialogue of loving thoughts and works between supreme rational Person and rational human persons themselves. The universe bears the mark given to it by its origin in rational creative Person and by its destiny to be the means of for an interpersonal dialogue between that Personal reality and human persons so that these might remain for all eternity in the happiness of that same communion between them. The entire universe bears the stamp of a personal rationality intended for the eternal existence of human persons.
It is only through an eternal participation in the infinity of this supreme Personal reality that our being reckons it will see its own meaning fulfilled. This is how the Orthodox Christian doctrine of the deification of our being through participation in God or through grace is to be understood.
In other words, our being reckons that its own meaning and, simultaneously, the meaning of the whole of reality will be fulfilled only by virtue of the fact that between our persons and supreme or divine Person, there is no place for an intermediate existence: after God, man is also, in a way, immediate, able to participate immediately in everything God possesses as a degree of the supreme existence, all the while remaining man.
This is, in general, the content of the faith asserted by the meaning of existence, a faith which compels recognition on the basis of the evidence in nature. And far from hampering the development of creation, such faith assumes that this development is carried on infinitely and eternally, to the measure of man’s own aspirations.
This faith expresses the incontestable fact that the world has been made for a purpose and, therefore, that it is the product of a Creator who gives meaning and is guided by that Creator towards the fulfillment of its purpose in Himself. Moreover, with this goal in view, the Creator Himself leads our being towards the closest union with Himself. These elements of faith are a kind of natural dogma and have their source in what is called natural revelation through which God makes Himself known by the very fact that He created the world and man, and stamped on them certain meanings. These elements of faith constitute an acknowledgement of the fact that the world has its highest point in the human person who moves toward union with supreme Person as towards his final goal. These dogmas of natural faith affirm the maintenance of life on the superior level of meaning, just as they affirm the ascending dynamism of human persons as bearers of these same meanings towards that complete meaning which is eternity of existence in union with the supreme Personal reality.
Far from reducing existence to a closed horizon, they open for it the horizon of the infinite and look for ways of preserving existence from the narrow and monotonous horizon which ends in death.
Saint Maximos the Confessor describes the ascending dynamism of the world in these terms: “The final goal of the movement of the things that move is to reach the eternal and good existence, just as their beginning lies in the existence which is God. For He is both the giver of existence and the One who gives the gift of that good existence as its beginning and its goal” [Ambigua]. The human being cannot rest until he achieves eternity of existence in the infinite and, thus, in the happiness of full existence. The blessed Augustine said: “Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te” (“Our heart is restless until it rests in You”) [Confessions 1.1.1].
But the meanings of existence, including its final sense, however evident they seem, do not compel the recognition of science in the way that natural phenomena do, for the latter occur in the same fashion repeatedly and can be subjected to experimentation. That is why the firm acceptance of these meanings has the character of faith. In other words, in their recognition, we see a paradoxical combination of their self-evidence and the necessity of accepting them by a deliberate act of will intended to preserve human existence on a level superior to that of a natural existence characterized by repetition ending in death. Thus, in the recognition of these meanings, the fact of freedom is also involved. The person of my neighbor discloses to me some of its meanings, but, on the other hand, their recognition depends on my freedom. And free acceptance of them presupposes faith.
This acceptance through faith belongs more properly to the domain of relations between the human person and divine Person and to the perfection of these relations in eternity, however self-evident the necessity of this relationship and of its perfection in eternity may appear to be as the meaning of existence.
This domain is a synthesis between self-evidence and faith because it is a domain of freedom and spirit. Thus, Saint Isaak the Syrian says: “For faith is more subtle than knowledge” or “faith is higher than knowledge” (Homily 52).
On the other hand, considering that faith is joined with the evidence of a higher domain, he also says: “Knowledge is perfected by faith and acquires the power to ascend on high, to perceive that which is higher than every perception, and to see the radiance [of Him] that is incomprehensible to the intellect and to the knowledge of created things…. Faith, therefore, now shows us, as it were before our eyes, the reality of [that future] perfection. It is by our faith that we learn those things that cannot be comprehended, not by the investigation and power of knowledge” (Homily 52).
Nevertheless, both as content and as the power of acceptance, natural faith or faith based on natural revelation must be completed by the faith granted us through supernatural revelation.
*From
Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Vol. 1. Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God, translated by Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994)pp. 1-13. Available for purchase at Eighth Day Books.
