I’m always fascinated by what physical creation — or, as St. Gregory of Nyssa categorizes it, the sensible created realm — is trying to communicate to us and why it has the form, dimensions, spatiality, dynamics, and materials it has as opposed to other possible alternatives. Why are we limited by time and space, and why did God decide that these constraints should exist?
Many of the Church fathers and later Christian theologians took for granted the four elements that Empedocles identified as the fundamental components of the cosmos: earth, water, air, and fire. In St. John of Damascus’ ‘Philosophical Chapters,’ he writes, “In general, an element is that first thing from which something is made and to which it is ultimately reducible. In particular, however, an element is that of which a body is made and to which it is reducible — and such are fire, water, air, and earth.”[i] And St. Gregory Palamas tells us in the 14th century that “the four elements out of which the world is fashioned balance one another equally, and that each of the elements has its own sphere, the size of which is proportionate to its density, as Aristotle also thinks.”[ii]
Although this relatively simplistic model has been supplanted by much more complex taxonomies in modern science, they still retain an observable foundational structure that — in the writings of many of the fathers — reveals an eternal truth that answers different questions than those that factual truths might satisfy. They help us contemplate the mysterious when science has dulled us to the mystery of the “natural” world through its materialistic explanations that, although helpful in many important ways, demystify the disturbing peculiarity of existence. The fathers help draw us back to this wonder.
The four elements communicate something important about salvation and spirituality that’s reflected in patristic eschatologies and liturgical rites, where each element individually and all four of them collectively tell us something theological through their unique properties. And although outdated and antiquated on some level, we should not be too quick to dismiss what the constraints of the created order in time and space and the unique properties of their composition might be suggesting to us as humans beholden to and dependent on this created order.
For example, St. Gregory of Nyssa writes in his ‘Great Catechism’ on the meaning of earth and water as the substance of the tomb (Christ’s death) and baptism (our participation in Christ’s death) respectively, while their function is to anticipate resurrection. Earth and water, he tells us, “have a lot in common. Alone of the elements they have weight and gravitate downward; they live in each other; they confine each other.” And this is why our thrice immersion in baptism is not only Trinitarian but also reflects the three-day burial of Christ, after which we emerge in the air (another element) — the life-giving element — in our resurrection, in Jesus’ ascension, and in heaven (life) as popularly thought in the ancient world to be high above us in the sky. “Thus we enact,” Gregory continues, “that saving burial and resurrection that took place on the third day.”
Both earth and water, in their density, weight, and restrictiveness, if they were to envelop us, have the capacity to bring death — to suffocate by impeding air (the life-giving element) from entering our lungs. The Nyssen picks up on this as well, noting that a newborn infant “draws in the air, beginning the process of living with a cry of pain . . . with no advantage over the embryo in the womb except that he has seen the air.”[iii] Air, then, does the opposite as earth and water because of its rarity and thinness, thus representing our resurrection after we emerge from the tomb in the earth as we do the water of our baptism — both anticipated by our emergence from the womb of our mothers.
And water is appropriate for the mystery of baptism because it is also positioned somewhere between earth and air: its density and gravity reflects that of earth, as Gregory noted, and its ability to turn into vapour reflects the properties of air. Water is therefore a medium for life even as it begins in death. “In death,” Gregory remarks, “the Author of life was subject to burial in the earth. So, in keeping with our common nature, we imitate that death in the next-closest element” — namely, water. This is why Jesus “was buried in the earth, and He returned back to life on the third day. So everyone who is joined to Him by virtue of His body may look forward to the same happy ending — I mean, he may arrive at life by having water, instead of earth, poured over him. Submerged in that element three times represents for him three-days-delayed grace of the resurrection.”[iv]
But in addition to its suffocating quality through its weight and density, water also cleanses in a way similar to how fire purifies. And the purifying quality of this fire is reflected in its rarity that reflects that of air, and thus the life we receive at our birth and baptismal re-birth as Christ also received at birth. This is why Gregory can also recognize the properties of fire in the gestation of Christ in the womb of the Theotokos who was not consumed due to her holiness: “From this we learn also the mystery of the Virgin: the light of divinity which through birth shone from her into human life did not consume the burning bush, even as the flower of her virginity was not withered by giving birth.”[v]
But what if we are not as holy as the Virgin Mary? Gregory says that a departed soul in the afterlife “is not able to partake of divinity until he has been purged of the filthy contagion in his soul by the purifying fire.”[vi] And this lack of holiness is why we are reduced to only “rehearse beforehand in the water” an experience of death that we cannot yet handle in reality or ontologically. “Nature,” Gregory reminds us, “does not allow us an exact and entire imitation, but it receives now as much as it can receive, while it keeps the rest for a later time.”[vii] Stated more bluntly, “We have the power to be in the water and to rise out of it,” whereas Christ has the ability that we do not yet have to
immerse Himself in death — as we immersed ourselves in the water — to return to his own blessedness. Each in proportion to the measure of his natural power achieved the results that were within reach. A human being may touch the water and yet be safe. The divine power, with infinitely greater ease, can handle death, and even be immersed in it, and yet not be changed or injured by it.[viii]
But even though death is marked by the darkness of the tomb made of earth, fire also has the property of illumination — especially the illumination of death itself as a target for purgation by this same fire. For example, St. John Climacus remarks that the fire burns those who “still lack purification, . . . [but] enlightens them in proportion to the perfection they have achieved.”[ix] And St. Basil of Caesarea observes that “those worthy of the fire will feel its caustic quality and those worthy of the lighting will feel the illuminating property of the fire.”[x]
The classical four elements therefore reveal a theological and eschatological depth that is not necessarily reflected in the accuracy of the details as mere facts, but in the broader foundational categorization of the constraints of the corporeal created world in time and space that we humans also must adapt to as corporeal beings. This is the ascetic arena, and the whole of salvation and our spiritual ascent is encapsulated in these four elements, including the role of Jesus as revealed in a narrative wherein he subjects himself to these elements through his kenotic incarnation, our re-enactment of this narrative through a sacramental approximation, and the eschatological implications in which this narrative culminates.
[i] St. John of Damascus, ‘The Fount of Knowledge,’ The Fathers of the Church: St. John of Damascus: Writings, translated by Frederic H. Chase, Jr., vol. 37 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999), p. 108.
[ii] St. Gregory Palamas, “Topics of Natural and Theological Science and on the Moral and Ascetic Life: One Hundred and Fifty Texts,” The Philokalia, edited and translated by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, vol. 4 (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), p. 350.
[iii] St. Gregory of Nyssa, ‘On Infant’s Early Death,” in Michael Aquilina, The Fathers of the Church: An Introduction to the First Christian Teachers: Expanded Edition (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2006), p. 156.
[iv] Ibid., pp. 156–157.
[v] St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, 2.21, translated by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 59.
[vi] St. Gregory of Nyssa, ‘Sermon on the Dead,’ in The Faith of the Early Fathers, edited and translated by William A. Jurgens, vol. 2 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1970), p. 58.
[vii] St. Gregory of Nyssa, ‘On Infant’s Early Death,” p. 158.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, “Step 28,” translated by Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), p. 280.
[x] St. Basil of Caesarea, “Homily 13: On Psalm 28,” quoted in Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos, Life After Death, translated Esther Williams (Levadia, Gr.: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery Press, 1996), p. 257.
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