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guided towards (in history), and that it is a goal, a movement, through which
we and all creation are being made new. And yet, at the same time, it is also
said that we, and all creation, are awaiting salvation, healing and trans?guration
in a new earth and a new heaven.21 In this whole picture, creation and escha-
tology are very much a part of each other, that is, the ‘end’ or goal was set in
the very foundation stones of creation itself, and the ‘end’ looks to a form of
restoration of the original creation. However, it is also the case that the end is
not the same as the beginning. In the thought of the Fathers, particularly
Maximus, primordial man is considered pure and free from any evil propensity
and empowered with the tendency towards the good of communion with God
and his fellow human beings. However, at the same time, he was not ‘con-
?rmed’ in this purity. He had not ‘achieved’ an advanced consciousness of the
good and true.22 Accordingly, an important role is assigned to experience, in the
form of man’s ‘work, his activity in a?rming himself in the good. Importantly,
though, and certainly for Maximus, this is also about making an e?ort and
making a decision to use one’s ‘freedom’ to create the good, and so make visible
the creator in his creation. Evident in the background is also Maximus’ division
of the ages. This means that here, in some measure, is a realised eschatology, in
that God’s purpose and movement was completed in the incarnation, whereas
the present ‘ages’ are given for humanity’s ascent to God, for human dei?cation
(theosis, ????????), but that it is also true that this process of dei?cation, these
‘ages’ set for this purpose, will also reach an end, which is full union with God.

This general world-view, we can also see informing the whole of the Or-
thodox ecclesial experience and tradition of the sacraments. Indeed, it is at the
heart of its understanding of the relation between the sacraments and creation.
Alexander Schmemann in his book, The Eucharist, outlines this very well: ‘in the
Orthodox experience a sacrament is primarily a revelation of the sacramentality
of creation itself, the world was created and given to man for conversion of
creaturely life into participation in divine life’.23 Accordingly, a sacrament is a
revelation of the genuine nature of creation and the world, which however
‘fallen’, remains God’s creation in which his grace is still active. Certainly, this
thinking is also visible in more recent Catholic sacramental theology. This un-
derstanding considers that nothing in the world is outside God’s grace and that
all things are involved in re?ecting God’s grace in some way. We see this in the

21 Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist (New York: SVSP, 2014), p. 33.
22 Staniloae, The Experience of God, Vol 2, The World: Creation and Dei?cation, p. 109.
23 Schmemann, The Eucharist, p. 34.

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