Abstract

Blessed Theodoret of Cyrrhus, one of the last great Antiochian theologians of the patristic era, wrote extensively of nature understood as “creation,” and thus as open to divine Wisdom and infused with divine energies. He may be taken as representative of a Great Tradition of Orthodox theology that, among many other facets, show how creation is not a closed system, as modern naturalism claims, but is everywhere turned toward its Creator. But why is this view of creation now neglected, leaving the understanding of nature to modern natural science understood positivistically as a metaphysic that is hostile to any concept of divine activity? It is argued that this neglect is due largely to the rejection by neopatristic theology (and notably Florovsky and Lossky) of the “sophiology” of Fr Sergei Bulgakov. But this rejection has left a lacuna in our understanding of creation that needs to be filled by a retrieval of creation as approached in the Great Tradition.