Does our presence within creation affect our surroundings? Some of the old Celtic saints used to believe so. A couple of weeks ago I referred to the PhD thesis I’ve been reading recently on being revealed to creation – here’s another snippet of what I’ve learned from it.

Some of the Celtic saints had an optimistic view of nature in that while they accepted there was some degree of alienation between humanity and creation because of the fall, they did not believe that creation itself was fully corrupted. Rather they believed that humanity’s mastery of creation had been corrupted.

However, this relationship between humanity and nature could be re-established and that the redeemed could return to a ‘contemplative mastery’ of nature once again. But – and this is the radical departure from what we would see as orthodox faith – they believed that this could happen within history and that we would not have to wait until some eschatological point beyond time. On earth as it is heaven … sooner rather than later.


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