Human Image World Image: The Death And Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology

Philip Sherrard writes like a man possessed. And so he is, possessed, that is, by a vision of ecological catastrophe and resurrection as compelling as that of the great Old Testament prophets. This book marshals in a powerful and convincing manner the Christian vision of a sacred cosmology, a lost vision which contemporary humanity desperately needs to recover for its own sake and for the sake of all the earth. According to Sherrard, the missing dimension in Christian ecology is a genuine cosmology â€" an image of the universe â€" founded on its native metaphysical and theological "first principles." Only an integral and sacred cosmology, rooted in Revelation and illumined by a sacramental and iconic vison grounded in the experience of Divine Immanence, may intuit a true and adequate image of the universe. Sherrard develops this thesis with exceptional clarity and rigor. Just listing the titles of the seven chapters in the book will give the reader the barest hint of the intellectual feast that lies therein: 1) "Forms of Sacred Cosmology in the Pre-Renaissance World"; 2) "The Fetish of Mathematics and the Iconoclasm of Modern Science"; 3) "The Apotheosis of Time and the Bogey of Evolution"; 4) "Knowledge and the Predicament of Modern Science"; 5) "Christian Vision and Modern Science: I. Teilhard de Chardin"; 6) "Christian Vision and Modern Science: II. Oskar Milosz"; 7) "Notes toward the Restitution of Sacred Cosmology." The book’s basic argument is that the ecological crisis is first of all a crisis, not of the environment, but of our own consciousness. It is a crisis rooted in the way we think. The way we see ourselves determines the way we see the world and the image we have of the world affects how we see ourselves. Hence the title: Human Image: World Image. Because the modern image of human nature is no longer seen as the "image of God," but as little more than two-legged animals whose horizons are limited to the pursuit of social, political and economic self-interest, we have developed a corresponding image of the cosmos as impersonal, soulless, exploitable. The sense of the sacred has been banished from the cosmos because we have banished the Creator and Lord of the cosmos from our minds, souls and hearts. The essence of Sherrard's message lies in the vision of the resurrection of sacred cosmology in the Christian tradition. A genuine Christian ecology must be based on the recovery of the cosmological-sacramental vision at the heart of the Church, a vision exemplified by but not exhausted in the writings of the greatest Christian cosmological thinkers, saints such as Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor. The crucial issue, and Sherrard returns again and again to this point, is not simply a matter of demonstrating the falsity and perversity of any modern naturalistic worldview; it is above all a matter of affirming a concept of the physical universe and the place of human beings in

Philip Sherrard writes like a man possessed. And so he is, possessed, that is, by a vision of ecological catastrophe and resurrection as compelling as that of the great Old Testament prophets. This book marshals in a powerful and convincing manner the Christian vision of a sacred cosmology, a lost vision which contemporary humanity desperately needs to recover for its own sake and for the sake of all the earth. According to Sherrard, the missing dimension in Christian ecology is a genuine cosmology â€" an image of the universe â€" founded on its native metaphysical and theological "first principles." Only an integral and sacred cosmology, rooted in Revelation, illumined through Intellection (infused knowledge of the Sacred), grounded in the experience of Divine Immanence, may intuit a true and adequate image of the universe. Sherrard develops this thesis with exceptional clarity and rigor. Just listing the titles of the seven chapters in the book will give the reader the barest hint of the intellectual feast that lies therein: 1) "Forms of Sacred Cosmology in the Pre-Renaissance World"; 2) "The Fetish of Mathematics and the Iconoclasm of Modern Science"; 3) "The Apotheosis of Time and the Bogey of Evolution"; 4) "Knowledge and the Predicament of Modern Science"; 5) "Christian Vision and Modern Science: I. Teilhard de Chardin"; 6) "Christian Vision and Modern Science: II. Oskar Milosz"; 7) "Notes toward the Restitution of Sacred Cosmology." The book’s basic argument is that the ecological crisis is first of all a crisis, not of the environment, but of our own consciousness. It is a crisis rooted in the way we think. The way we see ourselves determines the way we see the world and the image we have of the world affects how we see ourselves. Hence the title: Human Image: World Image. Because the modern image of human nature is no longer seen as the "image of God," but as little more than two-legged animals whose horizons are limited to the pursuit of social, political and economic self-interest, we have developed a corresponding image of the cosmos as impersonal, soulless, exploitable. The sense of the sacred has been banished from the cosmos because we have banished the Creator and Lord of the cosmos from our minds, souls and hearts. The essence of Sherrard's message lies in the vision of the resurrection of sacred cosmology in the Christian tradition. A genuine Christian ecology, at once deep and wide and effective, must be based on the recovery of the cosmological-sacramental vision at the heart of the Church, a vision exemplified by but not exhausted in the writings of the greatest Christian cosmological thinkers, saints such as Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory of Sinai. The crucial issue, and Sherrard returns again and again to this point, is not simply a matter of demonstrating the falsity and perversity of any modern naturalistic worldview; it