From Amnesia about the Cosmic Christ to Holding Earth Sacred
02/17/2023
What is lost when Christianity undergoes amnesia about its rich tradition of the Cosmic Christ? An amnesia brought about by putting all its Christological eggs into a basket dictated by the imperial theology launched in the Nicene Creed of the fourth century?
One thing that is lost is the interest and understanding of mysticism. This is a major reason that the West and the church itself is mystically illiterate today. A distortion of what mysticism means was in vogue during the modern era. After all, the Cosmic Christ is the richest archetype for mysticism that the Christian tradition holds.
If Thomas Berry is correct–that the only way to save the earth is to recover a sense of the sacred—and this happens by recovering the sense of the “numinosity” of the cosmos and therefore the earth–then clearly the return of the archetype of the Cosmic Christ is paramount in our time. (And the return of the Buddha Nature and of the Tselem or image of God in Judaism and Buddhism respectively.)
All is imbued with Divinity. Photo by Cynthia Greb
The Cosmic Christ is about recognizing the sacred everywhere. Chenu names this as the “continuous creation.” Wisdom and the Cosmic Christ and the “Word” or Logos are all there at the beginning
of the world—and are still present in the continued unfolding or evolution of our sacred universe. That is continuous creation.
Chenu also names the “continuous incarnation.” That means Divinity is imbuing the Earth and all flesh with the divine—a continuous incarnation. Light and Spirit becoming flesh dwell among us—once initiated it never ceases.
Following are some testimonies to this awareness that antedate the anti-mystical and grossly narcissistic mindset of the modern era, an era that killed the Cosmic Christ and the sense of nature’s sacredness and is therefore currently killing the planet.
In him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible. (Col 1:16)
The Logos of God has become human so that you might learn from a human being how a human being may become divine. (Clement of Alexandria, 150-c. 215)
Christ exists in all things that are. (Gregory of Nazianzus, 329-390)
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Adapted from MatthewFox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, p. 75.