Material Religion: The Christian Veneration of Matter
by Erin Doom
Twelfth Day of Christmas and the Eve of the Theophany of Our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ
Anno Domini 2016, January 5
CHRISTIANITY is a material religion. Everywhere you turn in the Christian tradition, the material world is adamantly affirmed. And every part of it plays a part in the cosmic worship of our Creator.
We see this throughout scripture. From the very beginning, in the creation account, God says His creation is “very good.” And at the very end, in the book of Revelation, John the Theologian hears every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea praising the Lamb upon the throne and then sees a new earth with the holy city of Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God.
We also find this high esteem of creation throughout the writings of the Fathers. As early as the first century we find St. Clement of Rome expressing his awe at the magnificence and harmony of creation. In the early second century we find St. Ignatius of Antioch affirming the elements of bread and wine as the medicine of immortality and defending the physical body of Christ against anti-materialist gnostics. The list could go on and on.
In their repeated defenses of the incarnation, the Councils of the Church also affirm the material world. This is most strikingly seen in the Seventh Ecumenical Council’s (787 A.D.) defense of icons, relying heavily on St. John of Damascus. The Damascene monk affirms his reverence and respect for matter as “that through which my salvation came, because it is filled with divine energy and grace.” He goes on to note the materiality of the instruments of our salvation and deification:
the thrice-precious and thrice-blessed wood of the cross . . . the holy and august mountain, the place of the skull . . . the life-giving and life-bearing rock, the holy tomb, the source of the resurrection . . . the ink and the all-holy book of the Gospels . . . the life-bearing table, which offers to us the bread of life . . . the gold and silver matter, out of which crosses and tablets and bowls are fashioned . . . the body and blood of my Lord.
St. John concludes by admonishing us not to abuse matter, but to reverence it, because the only thing dishonorable “is something that does not have its origin from God."
The ancient Church’s hymnography also demonstrates a strong estimation of the material world. The hymns for every major feast—from the Nativity of the Theotokos and the Nativity of Christ to Christ’s Baptism at Theophany, His Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor, His three-day Resurrection, and His Ascension to the right hand of the Father, as well as the Dormition of the Theotokos—are all saturated with poetic affirmations of the material world.
Since we’re concluding the 12 days of Christmas and preparing for Theophany tomorrow, I’ll offer you a taste of the wealth of hymnographical affirmations of the material universe from these two feasts.
In the hymnography for the Feast of the Nativity, we see the radical impact of the incarnation on the physical world. Christ’s birth makes “the whole creation shine with joy.” The angels are of good cheer and all of “creation leaps with joy.” And according to a hymn by St John of Damascus, “Heaven and earth are united today, for Christ is born. Today has God come upon earth, and man gone up to heaven.”
But it’s not just that terrestrial creation rejoices in and is impacted by the incarnation. Everything in the created cosmos worships its creator. “Every creature made by Thee offers Thee thanks. The angels offer Thee a hymn; the heavens a star; the Magi, gifts; the shepherds, their wonder; the earth, its cave; the wilderness, the manger; and we offer Thee a Virgin Mother.”
The Nativity hymns further elaborate on God’s use of stars and Magi. Heaven speaks through a star and proclaims Christ as Savior to all. The star showed humanity the One “whom nothing can contain, contained within a cave.” The Magi, “who adored the stars through a star,” were led to Christ and “were taught to worship” Him. And what did they offer Him? More material: “refined gold, as to the King of the ages, and frankincense, as to the God of all; and myrrh they offered to the Immortal, as to one three days dead.” And now we are summoned by these hymns to join them in magnifying Him: “O Giver of life, glory to Thee.”
But there is more. It is through Christ’s “swaddling clothes” that He “looses the bands of sin, and through becoming a child He heals Eve’s pangs in travail.” Therefore, St John of Damascus hymns, “let all creation sing and dance for joy, for Christ has come to restore it and to save our souls.”
The hymns for tomorrow’s celebration of Theophany, the baptism of Christ in the waters of the Jordan, resound with similar affirmations of creation. I’ll restrain myself to the famous seventh-century prayer for the blessing of water by St Sophronius of Jerusalem.
Sophronius begins his prayer by explaining both feasts in terms of their incarnational emphasis: “In the preceding feast we saw Thee as a child, while in the present we behold Thee full-grown, our God made manifest, perfect God from perfect God.” And then he goes on to explain the role of creation—dove, sun, moon, stars, clouds, and the hands of a prophet—in Christ’s baptism:
Today the grace of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descended upon the waters. Today the Sun that never sets has risen and the world is filled with splendor by the light of the Lord. Today the moon shines upon the world with the brightness of its rays. Today the glittering stars make the inhabited earth fair with the radiance of their shining. Today the clouds drop down upon mankind the dew of righteousness from on high. Today the Uncreated of His own will accepts the laying on of hands from His own creature.
Sophronius then describes the impact of Christ’s Baptism. Like Christ’s Nativity, it too transforms everything, all for our salvation:
Today the waters of the Jordan are transformed into healing by the coming of the Lord. Today the whole creation is watered by mystical streams. Today the transgressions of men are washed away by the waters of the Jordan. Today Paradise has been opened to men and the Sun of Righteousness shines down upon us. Today the bitter water, as once with Moses and the people of Israel, is changed to sweetness by the coming of the Lord. Today we have been released from our ancient lamentation, and as the new Israel we have found salvation. Today we have been released from our ancient lamentation, and as the new Israel we have found salvation. Today we have been delivered from darkness and illuminated with the light of the knowledge of God. Today the blinding mist of the world is dispersed by the Epiphany of our God. Today the whole creation shines with light from on high. Today error is laid low and the coming of the Master has made for us a way of salvation. Today things above keep feast with things below, and things below commune with things above.
So the entire Christian tradition—in scriptures, councils, icons and hymns—affirms what Moses the God-seer told us long ago in Genesis: God’s creation is indeed very good. And it’s even worthy of our veneration.
In his first defense of icons, St John of Damascus sums up and defends the veneration of the material world. And he helps explain why we’re organizing a symposium on “Soil and Sacrament: The World as Gift.” I’ll let him conclude:
I do not venerate the creation instead of the creator, but I venerate the Creator, created for my sake, who came down to his creation without being lowered or weakened, that he might glorify my nature and bring about communion with the divine nature. . . . I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked my salvation, and I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked.
Erin Doom is the founder and director of Eighth Day Institute. He lives in Wichita, KS with his wife Christiane and their four children, Caleb Michael, Hannah Elizabeth, Elijah Blaise, and Esther Ruth.
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"What is it that has ordered the things of heaven and those of earth, the things which move through the air and those which move in the water; nay, rather the things which proceeded them: heaven and earth and the natures of fire and water? What is it that combined and arranged them...set them into motion and put them on their unceasing and unhindered course?..But who is the architect of these things? Or did not he who made them also bring them into being? We shall certainly not attribute such power to spontaneity." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3 This comes after St. John of Damascus sets out to delineate between the created and the uncreated, a fact which, while at the core of existence, seems for him to be, for this very reason, the simplest to believe. Everything but God is created and, thus, susceptible to change. This means people, but this also means demons, angels, the rest of the created order across the entire cosmos. Everything is vulnerable to unrest. Except for God. If you have ever tried to explain the Holy Trinity to a child for the first time, maybe you have felt as I have the weightier, inexpressible side of God's unchangeability: how do I possibly communicate this essential fact to the person in front of me? (This is usually when my faint stutter starts to pop up again.) I like that here, like St. Patrick reaching for a three-leaf clover, St. John brings us back to earth to better understand the cosmos. Fire and water are no less mysteries than heaven and earth. And yet here we are, cooking and washing, eating and drinking, filled and sustained on what we can neither fully explain nor claim to have created. Only God is unchanging. Vice versa, God is the only constant we need. Maybe the rest is better left unsaid. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
"Now, one who would speak or hear about God should know beyond any doubt that in what concerns theology and the Incarnation not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things unknowable nor are they all knowable. That which can be known is one thing, whereas that which can be said is another, just as it is one thing to speak and another to know. Furthermore, many of those things about God which are not clearly perceived cannot be fittingly described, so that we are obliged to express in human terms things which transcend the human order. Thus, for example, in speaking about God we attribute to Him sleep, anger, indifference, hands and feet, and the like." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 2 When I was studying Fiction in graduate school, one of the first methods I learned to really situate the reader in the story you were about to tell them was disorientation; if you wanted to ground them in one story, first you had pull the rug out from under their feet. So it's fitting that in the beginning of St. John Damascene's On the Orthodox Faith, before rebuilding our foundation, he first puts us squarely in limbo, seesawing back and forth between certainty and uncertainty. To paraphrase, there is no doubt (certainty) that about God some things can be expressed...but not all things (uncertainty). Some things about God are truly knowable (certainty), but some are unknowable (uncertainty). Oh, and while we're speaking about God (certainty), let's admit there's a gap, too, between what we say and what we know (uncertainty). My favorite line in this spiraling excerpt, "...it is one thing to speak, and another to know," takes me back to the final lines in Wendell Berry's poem, "How to Be a Poet," which he wrote primarily as a reminder to himself: Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. Wherever your preferences fall on the cataphatic or apophatic spectrum of theology (whether you lean more toward what we can say about God or what we cannot), Berry's poem, I think, would nod along with St. John: before we say too much, let our words be preserved by the silence from which they came. I'm thinking of the silence, that filling, restorative quiet I feel when I step into a cathedral or in some of my favorite moments with my kids in the early hours. Even before praying, can we hear the One already praying in us? Let's start there. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
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