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Human beings are not on the same plane of creation as nature and the
world. In the thought of the Church Fathers, the fact that God created man a
human soul sets him completely apart in the order of creation: man is created
to have direct communication with God; he is created to most fully re?ect the
creator in creation. Human beings are created following nature and the world
because ‘man has need of all the things that have come before him, while all
that has gone before man only ?nds its meaning in him’.8 This does not mean
that nature is of a lower order in creation, indeed, this cannot be so, for it is
the human being’s work to spiritualise all nature and matter, giving it the trans-
parency that can make the divine spirituality visible in many forms’.9 Thus, like
human beings, all of creation is made for the purpose of being drawn into un-
ion with God. God created all things, nature, the world, and time, for human
beings to make use of in their growth into communion with God.10 But, it
should be clear that human beings only move towards communion with God in
their relationship to nature and all creation, that is, they bring all creation with
them. Hence, the notion of man’s responsibility is set from the beginning. The
world was created so that man might raise the world up to a supreme spirituali-
sation, ‘and to this end that human beings might encounter God within a world
that had become fully spiritualised through their own union with God.11 Hu-
man beings are given all that is necessary to carry out this work, which is no
less than the ascent to God himself, and once there to o?er to God all creation
made transparent to his presence, so that human beings might ?nally enter into
rest and contemplation through complete union with God. Maximus puts it
this way, ‘when in the future we are rendered passive (in dei?cation), and have
fully transcended the principles of beings created out of nothing, we will un-
wittingly enter into the true Cause of existent beings and terminate our proper
faculties along with everything in our nature that has reached completion’.12
Thus, we can certainly see Maximus’ eschatology here, the end of humankind’s
movement reaches its ultimate goal of rest in a loving union with God, which
of course, is also the thought of the earlier Fathers.

‘Even after the fall, man was left with soul, with at least some sort of
divine grace. Thus, he continues to aspire in some way after God and so re-

8 Staniloae, The Experience of God, Vol 2, The World: Creation and Dei?cation, p. 13.
9 Staniloae, The Experience of God, Vol 2, The World: Creation and Dei?cation, p. 131.
10 Staniloae, The Experience of God, Vol 2, The World: Creation and Dei?cation, pp. 14-15.
11 Staniloae, The Experience of God, Vol 2, The World: Creation and Dei?cation, p. 62.
12 Saint Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thalassium 22, from On the Cosmic Mystery of Christ, pp. 117-118.

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