Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Writing in the 7th century, the great Father and Doctor of the Church, St. Maximus the Confessor, prophetically warned against treating God’s timing and supernatural method of creation as truths that can discovered by reasoning from our observations of the natural world:
How can the intellect not marvel when it contemplates that immense and more than astonishing sea of goodness [which is creation]? Or how is it not astounded when it reflects on how and from what source there have come into being both nature endowed with intelligence and intellect, and the four elements which compose physical bodies…? What kind of potentiality was it which, once actualized, brought these things into being? …God is the Creator from all eternity…. When the Creator willed, He gave being to and manifested that knowledge of created things which already existed in Him from all eternity….Try to learn why God created; for that is true knowledge. But do not try to learn how He created or why He did so comparatively recently; for that does not come within the compass of your intellect. Of divine realities some may be apprehended by men and others may not. Unbridled speculation, as one of the saints has said, can drive one headlong over the precipice (emphasis added) (Philokalia, Vol. II, Fourth Century on Love, Nrs. 2-5, Faber & Faber, London, pg. 100-101).
Indeed, the false Enlightenment belief that man can explain the origins of man and the universe by extrapolating from his observations of the natural world has led directly to the diabolical disorientation of our times—to the abandonment of God’s Divine Revelation regarding our origins in favor of a naturalistic account that stands in contradiction to the Truth. We are delighted to announce the publication of an antidote to the diabolical disorientation of our time entitled “Keep Me as the Apple of Thine Eye: A Theological Reflection on the Absolute Primacy of Christ” by Levi Pingleton. As Levi explains in his introduction:
St. Basil the Great invites the Christian not merely to observe the created world, but to contemplate it as a revelation of divine wisdom. Creation, for St. Basil, is not a neutral backdrop to human life. It is a pedagogy of God, a school in which the soul learns who it is, who God is, and how all things are ordered toward their proper end. Reflecting on the heavens, St. Basil writes:
If we are penetrated by these truths, we shall know ourselves, we shall know God, we shall adore our Creator, we shall serve our Master, we shall glorify our Father, we shall love our Sustainer, we shall bless our Benefactor, we shall not cease to honour the Prince of present and future life, who, by the riches that He showers upon us in this world, makes us believe in His promises and uses present good things to strengthen our expectation of the future.… If the grandeur of heaven exceeds the measure of human intelligence, what mind shall be able to trace the nature of the everlasting?… If the sun, subject to corruption, is so beautiful, what will be the beauty of the Sun of Righteousness?
St. Basil’s exhortation presupposes something often forgotten in the modern imagination. The way we understand the structure of the world shapes the way we understand our place within it. Cosmology is never only a scientific matter. It is also theological, philosophical, and spiritual. The heavens do not merely move. They speak. They instruct. They form the human heart, either rightly or wrongly, depending on how they are read.
This book argues that the loss of a Christ-centered cosmological imagination has contributed to a loss of spiritual orientation in modern life. When creation is understood as accidental, indifferent, or fundamentally unordered toward humanity, the human person easily comes to experience himself as displaced, insignificant, or alone. By contrast, when creation is understood as intentionally ordered, sustained, and oriented toward communion with God through Christ, the world itself becomes luminous with meaning.
To live in the light of Christ requires only that we acknowledge Him. The King of Creation is not remote from His people. Through divine providence, all that exists is sustained by the eternal Word, Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. Yet many of us move through our days burdened by anxiety, distraction, and exhaustion, scarcely aware of the nearness of God who dwells within and around us. Even the baptized can pass long stretches of time without consciously attending to the presence of the Father.
Life itself, with all its difficulty, becomes radiant when viewed through the grace of Christ. Life is hard, sometimes painfully so. Without recognizing the Lord in the ordinary rhythms of existence, we risk overlooking the beauty of the gift we have been given. The purpose of human life is participation in divine life through Christ, not only interiorly, but through our relationships and within the created order itself. To know and love the Creator, and to extend that love outward to family, neighbor, and stranger, is the axis around which human existence turns.
God is love. Every creature, every moment, every experience rests within His knowledge and care. Christ reveals our purpose by the way He loves, fully and without reserve. This divine love is always accessible. Yet many live without knowing it and remain broken, burdened, addicted, or despairing. Many readers will know that darkness in some form. Even so, God remains near. Joy can coexist with suffering, and praise can rise within confusion when life is viewed through the light of Christ.
St. Basil returns again to the question of where true delight is found:
You have often served the flesh for pleasure; today persevere in the ministry of the soul.… Do you love riches? Here are spiritual riches.… Do you love enjoyment and pleasures? Behold the oracles of the Lord.… Leisure without the fear of the Lord is, for those who do not know the value of time, a school of vice.… Thus the longer I keep you, the longer you are out of the way of evil.
For St. Basil, contemplation of creation is not escapism. It is moral formation. To see rightly is to live rightly. The Catholic faith has always affirmed that sanctity is found not in flight from the world, but in faithful attention to it. Since the Fall of Adam and Eve, humanity has hidden from God. Yet the Incarnation restores communion. The earth itself was created as a place of encounter, intentionally formed for divine fellowship. Even in sin and suffering, God seeks closeness. He desires our cry and our trust.
This book proposes that geocentrism, properly understood, belongs within this theological vision. By geocentrism, I do not mean a naive or simplistic rejection of modern astronomy, nor a refusal to engage scientific evidence. Rather, I mean a Christocentric exemplarism in which creation is understood as ordered toward the Incarnation, and humanity’s place within creation is neither arbitrary nor accidental.
By Christocentric exemplarism, I mean this: the created order is best understood as a meaningful pattern of divine wisdom whose final measure and interpretive key is the Incarnate Word. It is not an attempt to treat cosmology as a substitute for revelation, nor to reduce theology to physical description. It is an approach that reads the structure and symbolism of creation in light of Christ, within the Church’s doctrinal and spiritual tradition.
Too often, Christians fall into one of two errors. We either reduce faith to rule-keeping and severity, or we presume upon grace while neglecting conversion. True discipleship lies between these extremes. Grace is not cheap, yet mercy is never withheld. Creation and the Incarnation are inseparable in traditional Catholic theology. God formed humanity to share in His divine life upon an earth ordered for that purpose. Though the Fall disrupted this communion, the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ restored and elevated it. Through grace, sacrament, and holiness, we are drawn toward participation in God’s own life and toward the beatific vision.
In the chapters that follow, I will explore the theological, philosophical, and spiritual dimensions of this vision. I will engage Sacred Scripture, the Church Fathers, scholastic theology, and selected modern thinkers. Questions of modern science will be addressed, but they will not be treated as the final arbiters of meaning. Scientific discussion will be situated within a broader metaphysical and theological framework, with technical matters treated in appendices for those who wish to pursue them in greater depth.
Christ the King meets us where we are. He lived our human experience and continues to dwell with us. When we learn to recognize Him in all things, life itself becomes an icon of the Creator. Every life, no matter how hidden or humble, can reflect the glory of God. Even the least of these can become a living image of divine love.
We are initially publishing “Keep Me as the Apple of Thine Eye” as an e-book. If you would like to be able to purchase it in a printed format, please email me at [email protected] and let me know. That will enable us to make a prudent estimate of the number of copies we should print.
Through the prayers of the Holy Theotokos and of all the Holy Angels and Saints, may the Holy Ghost guide us into all the Truth!
In Domino,
Hugh Owen
