Transcription
Why make this merger of the mortal and the immortal? And in the microcosm doctrine of the Eastern fathers, the idea is what makes man a microcosm is that it's all the things, right? He's made all of these sort of heavenly things, all of these immortal things, all of these earthly things, and all of those things end up being merged into this one microcosm.
Now, why is that relevant, right? Like it's relevant. What's the purpose of it? Well, in the Eastern fathers, and this is because they have a cosmic view of man's salvation. It's not just about you and your relationship with Jesus and getting saved, right? It's for the sake of the cosmos itself.
>> Mhm. >> Which is the idea that images of God, right? Things like angels, things like the rational soul, can participate in and bear the likeness of God. We can start to imitate in things like justice and mercy and love. We can participate in things like immortality and incorruption, things like that. Lower animals, they reflect something of the wisdom of God, right? But not being images, they don't have the capacity to participate in some of those, you know, those higher things.
So, what happens is in the is man as a microcosm, by merging those things together, you create a means by which the lowest things of creation can begin to participate in God in a way they couldn't otherwise do. And and that's why the deification of man is not supposed to be just ending with man. It's supposed to spread, just like with the story of the saints. Animals become more human, right? In the way they interact with the saints. Plants grow in weird ways, right? In the ways that that it spreads from the saint to the rest of the cosmos.
Like a a a metaphor that I like is to say like, "Look, you know, if we think of God like Bach, right? He's a brilliant musician, right? And um and and, you know, there's all that creative genius within him, and then we're like, okay, but it needs to be articulated. Okay, so Bach particular you know, articulate for us your creativity and we give him a cello, right? Like all of sudden we we get something really fantastic. But if we're like, here's a triangle. Show us your musical genius with a triangle. I mean, I'm sure he could do something more fascinating than I could.
>> Yeah. >> But it's highly limited because >> Limited by the identity of the thing itself. >> Right. But you give him an orchestra. And that triangle plays a part now in the larger thing. It begins to participate in Bach's genius in a greater way than it could otherwise. And that's the whole point of the >> is trying to perform an experiment, he can't escape the basic structures of symbolism.
So, So, what is this person doing? He's trying to unite a theory that he has, an abstract theory, a metaphysical idea, he's trying to join that with the facts that he observed. So, the the scientist is he's a human between heaven and earth trying to mediate between heaven and earth. He's trying to mediate his abstract theory with a concrete fact. So, the scientist, whether he likes it or not, is participating in the symbolic worldview. He's he's a mediator between heaven and earth, whether he likes it or not.
And when I say I talked about this with when I Dr. Jordan Peterson, when I say heaven I mean meaning. So, theoretical meaning. Um, and when I say earth I mean the factual reality, concrete reality. And that's what it means in in the Bible and that's what it means in in pretty much all tra >> And then the the the shape of of man, let's say at the beginning of of Genesis when God creates heaven and earth, it says uh God God created heaven and earth. The The earth was chaos and void, and the spirit of God uh was above the waters. And so, you have this idea of spirit, and spirit is wind or breath.
>> The word spirit, breath, soul, all those words, they they they refer to the breath. It means breath. And it Right away, if you understand that, you can see the relationship with heaven. And in the story, it says God formed Adam from the dust of the the earth >> Yeah. >> and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. So, right there, you can see that it's all about joining heaven and earth.
>> Yeah. >> So, the breath comes from heaven, and the He raises some earth, and then that's man. >> Yeah, and then that's what you said. >> made from that union. >> And and it's exactly when you talk about the mediator, then it shows exactly that that man is the mediator because in the beginning, these two things are completely separate. You have You have heaven and spirit and breath and wind above, and then you have this chaotic uh formless earth at the bottom, and those two things don't Let's say they don't touch each other. They're They're They're separate. And then then there's the creation of the different the different strat strats of of of uh of creation, the heavens and then the grass, and then it comes closer and closer and closer until you reach the human being, and then the human being has the heaven enter into the earth and joins with the earth so that quite, you know, explicitly in the story, man is that >> is a microcosm [clears throat] of heaven and earth.
>> of heaven and earth, but also the mediator because he joins them together. He's not just a representation of that separation, but actually a representation of that you >> male and female. That is in man is the duality of heaven and earth itself. Right? So, there's a microcosm of this basic duality of heaven and earth, which is being reproduced inside the human person as within them they also contain this actuality and potentiality and how they also participate in the manner in which actuality and potentiality come together in the world. So, it's not just in them, but it's actually in in as being intelligent >> [clears throat] >> intelligent subjects, they are able to now encounter the world as this union of of these two.
>> So, [clears throat] for example, there's a lot of examples in the Bible. Like you said, working the ground. In the garden, Adam naturally gets food. But this is See, now we if we want to talk about these things it we have to I can't define a lot of terms, but that's another example of being a mediator later between heaven and earth. Humans eat food. Okay? Food comes from the earth.
>> Yeah. >> We eat it, it becomes our body. So, it's kind of a a reproduction of what I said before um when God created Adam, he >> Yeah. >> formed him from the earth. Well, each time we eat, we're doing that in a way. We're >> We're gathering the earth into ourselves. >> into ourselves in a way that works because we can't just eat soil, obviously. We have to arrange the matter in a way that will it will be able to host our intellect, our patterns, our our ideas. So, you eat certain foods that your that can host your mind. That's the idea, your spirit.
>> Mhm. >> So, not all matter can do that. And the idea is that in the garden, there was a natural way in which this happened with with the fruits of a tree. And then once we lost that, then we had to fix things so that they could host meaning. So, uh the the greatest example of that is um the idea of building the temple.
>> Mhm. >> So, why do they have to build a temple? >> Mhm. >> Because they have to artificially um join heaven and earth. It doesn't happen in a natural way anymore because of the fall. So, now we have to arrange the facts in a way artificially so that they're able to host the identity, the breath, the spirit of God.
>> Mhm. >> It becomes like a body. >> So, we have this relationship of macrocosm to microcosm, right? So, you have these these little wheels that are microcosm that are joined to the macrocosm, which is this hierarchy that joins it together. You can understand it in any single way that you want. Uh and then all things that exist will have that structure. They'll be little incarnations of heaven and earth that are connected more and more and more and more to the heaven, right?
So, let's go crazy before cuz we're almost done. I'm not I'm going to finish very soon here. So, let's go crazy. Let's realize that that that the way that I've shown it until now is actually not sufficient. You can have a even better way of showing it, which is this one, right? Because every spoke of the wheel is a connection between heaven and earth that has on it all these wheels that are also little versions of the same pattern that go up into heaven.
So, now remember just remember this just remember the image of Ezekiel, right? Just remember the image of Ezekiel. That is what Ezekiel is seeing, not necessarily represented exactly the way that I'm showing you here. But, the idea of him seeing the [snorts] throne of God that is manifested on these wheels within wheels within wheels, right? And that can move in every which direction. That is just that that is what I'm trying to >> It brings in the Greco-Roman world, it brings in medieval cosmology and theology and science and the old uh Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic traditions and all of the apocrypha, it brings all of that stuff in. There are giants, there are I mean, it's all there in the comedy. And what's more is that it doesn't invent, but is probably the best example for modern readers of the idea that man is a microcosm.
>> Mhm. >> That every every human being is actually a cosmos. Dante's descent through the earth and his descent through the spheres is a deeply personal journey. Um and it's one that bridges perfectly, I think, the medieval modern worlds because it it shows us how this vision of a cosmos, this medieval model, is not merely just an external vision of things that will fall apart as soon as you put it under a microscope or into a telescope or whatever, but that it's actually something which it doesn't just adequately describe our experience >> of reality on a day-to-day basis, but it is also a map to ourselves and to our movement through reality, right? Um uh our struggle to become