Chapter 2 ‘Handling the Universe as a Lyre’: Numinosity and Metaphor in the Patristic Contemplation of Creation

In: Numinous Fields: Perceiving the Sacred in Nature, Landscape, and Art
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Veronica della Dora
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Abstract

In attempting to expound God’s relation to the cosmos, the Greek Church Fathers recurred to a rich repertoire of metaphors. Most striking and recurring among them are textile and musical images. Among other things, creation is repeatedly compared to a garment and a fabric, to a lyre and a melody. The Fathers thus described creation as the product of a poetic act; they showed the harmonious interconnectedness of its parts; and they developed an appreciation of the earth and the cosmos that redirected the human mind to the Creator. Melodic and textile patterns are both woven through the strings of the lyre and loom of creation by an invisible hand. Each type of image nonetheless highlights a specific facet of the relation between visibility and invisibility, between the tangible world and the ineffable God. Garment metaphors reveal the presence of the Creator without violating His mystery. Musical metaphors, on the other hand, emphasize the active and continuous presence of the musician. While textiles speak of the transiency of creation, music, the most numinous and transient of arts, paradoxically stresses the eternal presence of God encompassing and at the same time inhabiting creation.

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