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Chapter Two: Eschatology and Creation
I. The Mortality of Creation
Has the being of creation been fixed at the beginning, or will it be fixed in the end? If everything was ontologically perfect and firm at the beginning, the final destination of creation would have to be, ontologically speaking, a return to the beginning. Time and history would, in this case, form a circle, which would lead creation finally back to its original state.
Such a cyclical view of creation’s history is to be found in ancient Greek thought and in certain non-Christian religions but, with the exception of Origen, is absent in biblical and patristic thought. The telos of all movement in creation is not potentially present from the beginning in the substance of things. The biblical and patristic view of creation conceived the world as created by God with a telos, a pur- pose, and a destiny, much higher ontologically than the beginning.
What does it mean to say that the final destiny of creation is higher than its beginning ontologically? It means that if this destiny is not fulfilled or realized, the being that was given to creation at the beginning will at some point cease and will become a “past,” i.e., it will “die.” Thus, there are only two ways of avoiding in our ontology of creation the possibility of its death: either by conceiving creation as having been endowed with ever-being or of creation as belonging to the end and not being present in the substance or nature of cre- ation. In this latter case, what feeds creation with being is not the “fact” that it has been created but the purpose, the telos, for which it has been created and which is its ever-being. Creation is thus sus- tained in its being not by its past but by its future, since the ever- being (i.e., being not subject to the possibility of extinction and death) will be granted to creation only in the end and will not be part of creation’s nature but a supernatural grace.
The Church father that has given us the most explicit expression of this eschatological ontology of creation is St Maximus the Con- fessor. Following the Irenaean view of humanity as having been cre- ated with a destiny, a purpose, higher than the beginning of its cre- ation, Maximus extends the same view to creation as a whole.
Maximus’ dealing with creation is deeply ontological. He re- peatedly uses the triad “being—well-being—ever-being” to refer to
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