Beyond the Anthropic Principle: St Maximus’ Theanthropocosmic

Narrative

Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache http://www.sagotc.edu.au/permanent/doru-costache

Greek Orthodox Youth Fellowship of Kogarah 10 November 2014

Thinking Anthropically

Recapitulation: The anthropic cosmological principle is a complex philosophical and scientific narrative, which proposes the integration of all aspects of reality - as perceived by modern culture - namely, human, biological and cosmic. And because human conscience can no longer be ignored as significant in the making of reality, meaning and purposefulness can no longer be ignored.

Final Anthropic Principle

Recapitulation: FAP entails a ‘melioristic’ universe. What’s that? Two answers:

A space where the human existence and progress are possible, and which ensures the permanence of the human phenomenon

A space that is, or rather will be, transformed by the human existence, ethical progress and technological advancements

Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle 23.

The Limitations of FAP

“To say that intelligent life has some global cosmological significance is to say that intelligent life will some day begin to transform and continue to transform the Universe on a cosmological scale.” (Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle 615)

No sense of the human (non-technological) impact in the here and now

Traditional PerspectivesPoints made last time (27 Oct 2014)

The universe is made for humankind (St Gregory of Nyssa, On the Structure of Humankind 2)

God makes and remakes the universe in relation to humankind (St Maximus, The Mystagogy 7; St Symeon the New Theologian, The First Ethical Discourse 2)

The universe takes the form of our inner state (St Symeon the New Theologian, The First Ethical Discourse 2; John Moschos, The Spiritual Orchard 18)

Furthering the discussion: The universe is ‘built’ around humankind and will one day be wholly humaniform (St Maximus the Confessor, Difficulty 41)

From the Divisions of Reality to the Humaniform Universe

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St Maximus the Confessor, The Book of Difficulties 41.

1 Reality: Uncreated & Created

2 Creation: Noetic & Sensorial

3 The Visible: Sky & Earth

4 Earth: Paradise & Civilisation

5 Humankind: Male & Female

Humankind’s Ascent

Cross-sections within reality

Difficulty 41

The unifying process: “Being provided with a unifying potential due to the characteristic of its own parts of being related to all the extremities, [the human being] naturally mediates between all the extremities. In this fashion the mode of creation of the divided things is completed in accordance with the [divine] cause, [humanity] being destined to manifest within itself the great mystery of the divine intention in an obvious way, namely, the reciprocal union of the extremities pertaining to beings into a harmonious manner. [This union] keeps advancing upwards from things closer to those far off and from those inferior to those superior, ending in God. For this purpose humankind had to be finally introduced among the [created] beings like a grace and like a natural bond of sorts that mediates between the extremities of the universe by way of its own parts. [Indeed, the human being] brings to unity within itself the things that are naturally separated from one another by a great distance, so that all are gathered together into a union with God, their cause. Thus, firmly beginning with the first or its own division [the human being] advances in stages and in order — through the intermediate ones — towards God, in whom it finds the limit of the supreme and unifying ascension through all things, and in whom there is no division.” (my translation)

Difficulty 41The human being and the five syntheses. In referring to virtue, grace and God (Who designed the universe in order to be united within itself and with Him), the Maximian contemplation of reality proposes a theanthropocosmic perspective.

SynthesisFirst

ElementSecond Element

Tool Outcome

1 Male Female Divine virtueUnified

Humankind

2 Paradise Civilisation Leading a holy lifeComplex

life

3 Sky EarthIdentity with the angels

in relation to virtueUnified Universe

4 Noetic SensorialIdentity with the angels in relation to knowledge

Unified Creation

5 Uncreated Created Love and graceComplex Reality

Difficulty 41Christ and the humaniform end of the universe: “First of all, he united us to ourselves within himself by removing the difference between male and female. Instead of men and women, in which the manner of the division is primarily observed, he showed us chiefly and truly as human beings only, fully shaped like him and bearing his image properly and entirely unsullied, within which by no means is bound any of the known features of decay. Thus, together with us and for us, he is the one that embraced the extremities of the whole of creation as his own parts, through those in the middle. [More precisely,] he indissolubly bound to one another around himself the paradise and the inhabited land, the sky and the earth, the sensible beings and the intelligible beings, given that he possessed a body, a sensory capacity, a soul and a mind, just as we do. In line with the given manner, through appropriating each extremity [of reality] by its corresponding part, he recapitulated all things within himself in a divine manner. This way, he pointed out that the whole of creation exists as one, like another human being . . .” (my translation)

More SpecificallyFor St Maximus, there are three unifying agents of all reality: Christ, the saints and the Church (cf. my doctoral thesis, in Romanian, Logos and Creation: From the Anthropic Cosmological Principle to the Theanthropocosmic Perspective, University of Bucharest, 2000)

In all three cases, it seems that the process of unification ends as a mystical transformation of the universe into a makranthropos (large human being)

A New AllianceRestating my original proposition: Insofar as it discloses the meaningfulness of a universe conditioned by/toward our existence, with or without it being endowed with theological connotations the anthropic cosmological principle opens up new avenues for the dissemination of the Christian worldview and values today.

The major Christian additions to the modern anthropic thinking are

the involvement of God in the human and cosmic algorithms (hence the term theanthropocosmic)

the conviction that human life, together with its existential parameters, already impact the universe

the future state of the universe consists in a theanthropic transformation (an aspect suggested by St Maximus in To Thalassius 60)

Looking Back

The slides of the previous three lectures on the anthropic principle can be retrieved at

https://www.academia.edu/8727758/Towards_A_New_Apologetic