Walking in the Garden: Nature Contemplation

and the writing of Maximus the Confessor

BIAPT Annual Conference, 12th – 16th July 2021
Rev’d Richard Clarkson

Abstract
The contemplation of nature as a spiritual practice has roots which wind
throughout the Christian tradition, but in the modern western church it has
largely been lost or at best pushed out to the fringes of what is considered
acceptable practice. The COVID-19 pandemic, and particularly the first UK
lockdown in the spring and early summer of 2020, gave many people the time
and the desire to rediscover this ancient practice, but not necessarily the
theological confidence to undertake it.
This paper, which is based on research undertaken as part of a Masters
Dissertation in Theology and Transformative Practice at the Queen’s
Foundation in Birmingham, offers three simple questions as a starting point
for nature contemplation. The questions, which were developed and refined
over several years at a monthly church gathering on a nature reserve and
have been used fruitfully in outdoor services during the pandemic, are “What
is this?”, “What might this tell us about God?” and “What might God be
saying to us through this?”.
These three questions are considered in conversation with the writings of
Maximus the Confessor, a seventh century Byzantine theologian, and his
development of the patristic ideas of Theoria Physike – nature contemplation
– and the logos found in all living things. The discussion shows how the
discipline of nature contemplation, informed by the riches of the Christian
tradition, can lead to a deeper relationship with both creator and creation,
which in turn can lead to restorative action and care for the natural world.

1
 Introduction
There is nothing new or ground-breaking about the suggestion that a psychological
disconnect exists within Western society in the relationship between humans and the
natural world. The impact of several hundred years of increasing technological
advancement and ever more efficient methods of extraction of so-called “natural resources”
means that our understanding of our place and role in the world has become skewed.
This psychological and practical disconnect mirrors a theological disconnect which has also
developed over time. As far back as the 1960s Christianity was being blamed as the root
cause of ecological crises.1
But around the same time, those critical voices from outside the church were resonating
within the church as well. In his lectures to the young monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani in
Kentucky in the mid 60’s, Thomas Merton identified that “the lack of theoria physike (nature
contemplation) is one of the things that accounts for the stunting of spiritual growth among
our monks today”.2
In this paper I would like to suggest that that ‘stunting of spiritual growth’ identified by
Merton still exists in the western church today, and that the rediscovery of the ancient
spiritual practice of nature contemplation has the potential to play an important role in both
the theological and ecological revival of the church.
The contemplation of nature as a spiritual practice has roots which wind throughout the
Christian tradition, but in the modern western church it has largely been lost or at best
pushed out to the fringes of what is considered acceptable practice. Bruce Foltz criticises
the purely functional, non-imaginative approach to nature taken by much of Western
modernism, arguing that its legacy is “a cosmos that is no longer ontologically capable of
bearing the weight of divine epiphany”3.
The COVID-19 pandemic, and particularly the first UK lockdown in the spring and early
summer of 2020, gave many people the time and the desire to reconnect with nature and
rediscover this ancient practice, but not necessarily the theological confidence to undertake
it. In my role as Diocesan Environmental Officer I’ve seen a marked increase in queries
about resources for outdoor worship, but in conversations have also noted a wariness,
particularly among clergy, about engaging spiritually with the natural world.
John Swinton suggests that one of the major tasks of practical theology is to “Prophetically
deconstruct the world, in order that we can faithfully participate in its rebuilding.”4 This
resonates with what Douglas Christie says is the purpose of Nature Contemplation, as he
calls it, Contemplative Ecology, which is “to learn to live in the world as a healing presence,

1
White 1996.
2
Merton 2017, 71.
3
Foltz 2014, 15.
4
Swinton 2020, 167.

2
attentive and responsive to the lives of other beings and capable of helping to reknit the
torn fabric of existence”5
As part of my response to this challenge I would like to offer three simple questions which
can be used as a starting point for nature contemplation. To give these questions a
theological grounding I will reflect on each of them in conversation with the writings of the
7th century monk, Maximus the Confessor.
As Pete Ward makes clear, practical theology always comes from the life of the Christian
community6, and these three questions grew out of the life of a group called Mossy Church
who, for several years, met monthly on a nature reserve to walk, pray and reflect together.
They have also been used fruitfully in outdoor services in my own churches during the
pandemic. The three questions are these: First “What is this?”, second “What might this tell
us about God?” and third “What might God be saying to us through this?”
We will look at each of these questions in turn, but before we do we must learn a little more
about Maximus the Confessor’s life and theology.

Maximus The Confessor

Maximus the Confessor lived in seventh century Byzantium, at a time of great social, political,
and religious turmoil. He grew up in the great city of Constantinople and worked for a time in
the imperial court, but he left that world behind to take up the monastic life, first in Asia Minor
and later in North Africa where he was caught up in the doctrinal disputes of the day. 7 Finding
himself on the wrong side of the religious authorities he was arrested in 649 and died, still
disgraced, in 662. However his position was eventually vindicated in 681 and Maximus is now
recognised as one of the most significant patristic theologians. His writings draw together
both eastern and western philosophy and theology and, although he lived and wrote many
centuries ago, he still seems, as Von Balthasar put it, “extraordinarily contemporary” 8.
Doctrinal disputes aside, the main focus of Maximus' theological writing is cosmic in its scope.
Maximus is concerned with how God's plans for creation play out across the wide canvasses
of nature and scripture.9 He affirms the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, that is that God created
the universe out of nothing, writing in Ambiguum 7 that “in His goodwill, He formed out of
nothing the substance of the visible and invisible worlds” 10. Because God did not have any
starting material but created entirely of his own will – and Maximus quotes Colossians 1:16
to back up this point, “in him all things in Heaven and on earth were created” 11 – then the

5
Christie 2013,
6
Ward, 2017, 10.
7 Blowers & Wilken 2003, 13ff.
8
Von Balthasar 2003, 27.
9 Blowers & Wilken 2003, 16-18.
10
Maximos 2014a, 95.
11
Maximos 2014a, 95.

3
logoi, the essence, rationale, or purpose, of each created thing must have come from within
the divine will.
If all things were created from nothing by God, it follows then that somehow the divine will is
imprinted throughout creation, because each creature’s logos comes from God’s own divine
Logos.12 For Maximus, building on the work of Evagrius Ponticus, the primary focus of nature
contemplation, or theoria physike, is to discern the logos, the essence or intention, of each
particular thing given to it by its creator. As Maximus says: Christ “ineffably concealed Himself
in the logoi of beings and is obliquely signified in proportion to each visible thing” 13. These
logoi then reveal both the individuality of each thing, and the purposes of God in creating
them, and ultimately point us to Christ.14
However, Maximus is also keen to stress the distinction between a creature’s logos, or
essence, and its tropos, or manner of being. Because we live in a fallen, sinful world, a
creature’s logos can be obscured by sin and therefore its tropos can be in conflict with its
logos. For example, the true logos of a battery hen is suppressed by its tropos, the conditions
in which it lives, and so to look at the hen it could be hard to discern the fullness of its God-
given potential. It is only when logos and tropos are aligned that a creature can be said to be
truly fulfilling its natural vocation.15
This leads us on to one final point about Maximus’ theology of nature contemplation, which
is that theoria, contemplation, and praxis, action, are deeply entwined. Paul Blowers draws
on both Maximus and the other great Cappadocian Father, Gregory of Nyssa, to argue a
relationship between theoria and praxis. His idea is that theoria involves paying close
attention to creatures in order to discern their logos, and this leads to a fuller understanding
of that creature’s place and role in creation, which then, as Blowers says, “informs one’s
virtuous use of those things”16. In other words, nature contemplation leads to wise
stewardship, contemplative theology is very much practical theology.
This very brief overview of Maximus the Confessor’s approach to nature contemplation has
given us some context for the forthcoming discussion. It is to that discussion we now turn.

Question One: What Is This?

The first of our three nature contemplation questions is, “What is this?”. This simple
question begins the process of prayerful attention which opens our eyes to the uniqueness
of what is before us and helps us begin to recognise its value and purpose before God.

12
Foltz 2014, 169.
13
Maximos 2014b, 63.
14
Foltz 2014, 167-69; Wirzba 2016, 220-22.
15
Blowers 2012, 163; Louth 2013, 63; Maximus 2014a, 105.
16
Blowers 2012, 362.

4
This question is also designed to focus one’s attention away from the general and towards
the particular, so the initial answer to this question might be something like “it’s a bracket
fungus”, or “it’s a butterfly”, or even “I don’t know”. The question is intended to get the
participant thinking more specifically about the particular thing that is being contemplated,
its setting, behaviour and the reaction it invokes. One regular participant at Mossy Church
had a particular tree stump which she would visit each month to see what was growing on it
or living around it as the seasons changed. This became the focal point for her
contemplation at Mossy Church.
In our discussion of Maximus the Confessor we explored the difference between logos, or
essence, and tropos, or way of being. One of the challenges in nature contemplation is
moving from looking at the tropos – which tells you about the creature and its environment
– to searching for the logos – which tells you about the creator. As we have already seen,
the consequences of human sin means that the tropos of a creature can obscure or reveal
its divine logos and so part of the contemplative task is an imaginative task, trying to
understand its essence as God intends it.
This understanding is always, as Thunberg reminds us, a divine gift17 and so the task of
nature contemplation must be approached with humility. There is a danger in over-
intellectualising this, relying on what we know about the creature from books without
engaging on a deeper level with its logos. Equally, however, any spiritual insights we may
glean from the creature must respect its integrity as created by God. The creature being
contemplated is not simply an object designed to help us, it is, to use the language of St
Francis of Assisi, our brother or sister, with just as much right to dwell in that place as us –
perhaps even more.
This is where the idea of particularity is helpful as books may tell us a lot about buzzards, for
example, but not about the logos of this particular buzzard, its history, idiosyncracies,
relationship with this particular place, the particular challenges it faces here from farming
patterns or local housing developments.
Contemplating this individual creature, be it briefly in the case of a buzzard circling
overhead, or over an extended period of time, as in the case of the aforementioned tree
stump, leads to a deeper understanding of, and relationship with, the particular thing being
contemplated. The question, “What is this?” can lead, as Francis would put it, to seeing it as
a brother or sister, cared for by the same creator God. For both Maximus and Francis this is
the first step on a journey that leads to a deeper relationship with the Creator.

Question Two: What Might This Tell Us About God?

The second of our Nature Contemplation Questions “What might this tell us about God?” is
designed to take us further on that journey. To use the analogy of learning to read, the first

17
Thunberg 1995, 78.

5
step in nature contemplation is learning to read the words, the logoi, found throughout
creation, but the goal is not simply to understand the words but to get to know the author,
revealed in John 1 as the Logos, the Word through whom all things came into being.18
To make this next step the contemplative must look beyond the surface, to read between
the lines of what is seen in order to discern the deeper reality which God in his grace
reveals. This question, perhaps unsurprisingly, often provokes a range of imaginative or
creative responses from participants of all ages. Indeed the question itself contains an
inherent uncertainty in asking what might this tell us about God. It is important then that
any suggestions made in response to this question are not accepted uncritically but are, like
any claim of divine revelation, weighed up by the Christian community – especially in
relation to scripture.
Thunberg makes the important point that for Maximus, although nature contemplation
does (or at least can) lead to deeper understanding of God, the extent of God’s self-
revelation in nature is limited.19 That is to say that God’s self-revelation in nature is
apparent but not complete and so the ‘reading’ of nature must go hand in hand with the
reading of scripture.
Just as scripture can be approached through the lens of the readers’ own biases, so nature
contemplation is also susceptible to the influences of individual experience and idealism.
This is why it is important for the two books of nature and scripture to be read together as
they are able to offer some manner of normative correction to each other. Maximus takes
this mutuality further even than Origen and Augustine, both of whom spoke of the ‘two
books’ of nature and scripture 20, going so far as to say that they are “of equal value and
equal dignity, that both of them reciprocally teach the same things and that neither is
superior or inferior to the other” 21.
For Maximus this stems back to the idea that God is unknowable unless he makes himself
known. In Ambiguum 33 Maximus uses both scripture and nature to expound on Gregory’s
phrase regarding the incarnation that “the Logos became thick” 22. Maximus says of God’s
revelation in both nature and scripture that both have the purpose of “bringing us for His
own sake into union with Himself”. That is to say that in both scripture and nature the
ineffable God has made himself knowable and understandable so that those who follow him
may be united with him by the Spirit.23
To quote the 12th century Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, “Everything that God made is life in
him, for that which is from God is alive in its nature”24. As has often been said, this is not

18
John 1:3; Blowers 2012, 369.
19
Thunberg 1995, 69.
20
von Balthasar 2003, 291.
21
Maximus 2014a, 195; see also Lollar 2015, 246-47.
22
Maximus 2014b, 63.
23
Lollar 2015, 248-49; Maximus 2014b, 62-65.
24
Hildegard of Bingen 2018, 250.

6
pantheism whereby the world is confused with God, but rather panentheism in which the
world is the place where God is encountered.25 For Maximus this encounter took place
through nature contemplation and the attention which that practice demands.

Question Three: What Might God Be Saying To Us Through This?

It could be said that there are three players at work during the practice of nature
contemplation – the contemplative, the creature being contemplated, and the creator. The
first question focusses on the creature, the second question on the creator, but the third
question, “What might God be saying to us through this?”, returns our attention to the
contemplative themself.
Much of Maximus’ writing flowed out of the monastic life of which he was a part. His
decision in the early years of the seventh century to leave his life as a courtier in
Constantinople and commit to the discipline of monastic community undoubtedly
influenced his theological understanding.26
The purpose of the ascetic life, Maximus wrote in his Four Centuries On Love, is to “battle
the passions”27 and so to “render the mind clean…and from this there comes undistracted
prayer”28. Monastic ascetic practices such as fasting, prayer vigils etc. were therefore
undertaken in service of dispassion, or apatheia, in order to focus one’s attention more fully
on God, and in focussing more fully on God one is better able to develop a life of virtue.29
Norman Wirzba suggests that nature contemplation is “inextricably connected to an ethos
or way of being in the world” 30. That is to say that any way of looking at the world is
necessarily influenced and shaped by our perspective and place within the world and that
ascetic practices are a way of intentionally situating oneself in the world in order to see it
more clearly.31 Christians are those who are being “formed by Christ”32, Wirzba says, and
this process of formation involves both action and contemplation.
O’Keefe points out that many of the practices recommended by the sustainability
movement to help foster a deeper connection with nature – such as becoming less reliant
on motor vehicles, eating less meat, or repairing rather than replacing old tools – are
themselves a form of ascetic practice which could very well be re-appropriated as Christian
spiritual disciplines.33

25
McFague 1993, 134.
26
Allen 2015, 14; Blowers & Wilken 2003, 13-14.
27
Maximos the Confessor 2014a, 73.
28
Maximus the Confessor 1955, 152.
29
Bingaman 2014, 55.
30
Wirzba 2016, 213.
31
Wirzba 2016, 213-14.
32
Wirzba 2016, 222.
33
O’Keefe 2011, 64-65.

7
The twentieth century Trappist monk Thomas Merton takes this relationship between
action and contemplation a step further, suggesting that nature contemplation is a form of
active contemplation. Weis quotes an unpublished Merton text where he defines theoria
physike as, “a vision of the world [that] encounters God walking in the garden” 34 The
practice of contemplation, and the spiritual and ascetic practices which surround and
sustain it, are for Merton therefore a way of actively rediscovering this paradise.35
The recovery of paradise is far more than just an inner transformation, however. Adam and
Eve did not simply walk with God in the garden, but they were also given a role in
overseeing and caring for this paradise.36 Douglas Christie draws on Merton’s writing and
his ecological activism to make the argument that as one contemplates nature one become
aware of how creation both embodies, and falls short of, that paradise ideal. The response
then is to “live in the world as if it were paradise” 37, and so contemplation leads to action as
the contemplative is restored to their role as steward of creation. 38 If we are serious about
listening to God when we ask “What might God be saying to us through this” then we must
also be prepared for what we hear to challenge and to change us.

Conclusion
These three questions offer a way into the ancient practice of theoria physike, nature
contemplation. They are designed to help us to reflect on the individuality, the particularity,
the logos, as Maximus put it, of whatever it is that we are contemplating. They then,
enriched by the scriptures, help us to allow that creature’s logos to point us towards the
divine Logos, to deepen our relationship both with creation and also with creator. Finally,
they reflect that deepening relationship back to us, allowing God to challenge us in how we
live and relate to the world of which we are a part.
The practice of nature contemplation, rooted in and informed by the great riches of the
Christian tradition, can lead the church towards both spiritual growth and ecological
renewal as we seek to reknit the torn fabric of existence.

34
Weis 2016, 111.
35
Merton 2003, 35-37.
36
Deignan 2008, 546.
37
Christie 2013, 321.
38
Christie 2013, 313-21.

8
 Bibliography
Allen, P. (2015) 'Life and Times of Maximus the Confessor' in The Oxford Handbook of
Maximus the Confessor, Edited by Allen, P. & Neil, B. (Oxford: OUP) 3-18.

Bingaman, B. (2014) All Things New: The Trinitarian Nature of the Human Calling in Maximus
the Confessor and Jurgen Moltmann Princeton Theological Monograph Series 213 (Eugene:
Wipf and Stock).

Blowers, P.M. & Wilken, R.L. (2003) On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ (Crestwood NY: St
Vladimir's Seminary Press).

Blowers, P M. (2012) Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian
Theology and Piety, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Christie, D. E. (2013) The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Deignan, K. (2008) ‘“Love for the Paradise Mystery” Thomas Merton Contemplative
Ecologist’, in Cross Currents 58.4, 545-69.

Foltz, B. V. (2014) The Noetics of Nature: Environmental Philosophy and the Holy Beauty of
the Visible (New York: Fordham University Press).

Hildegard of Bingen (2018) The Book of Divine Works, Translated from the Latin by Campbell,
N. M. (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press).

Lollar, J. (2013) To See into the Life of Things: The Contemplation of Nature in Maximus the
Confessor and His Predecessors (Turnhout: Brepols).

Lollar, J. (2015) 'Reception of Maximian Thought in the Modern Era', in The Oxford Handbook
of Maximus the Confessor, Edited by Allen, P. & Neil, B. (Oxford: OUP) 84-105.

Maximos the Confessor (2014a) On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua Volume I,
Edited and Translated from the Greek by Constas, N. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press).

Maximos the Confessor (2014b) On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua Volume
II, Edited and Translated from the Greek by Constas, N. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press).

Maximus the Confessor (1955) The Ascetic Life, The Four Centuries on Charity translated and
annotated by Sherwood, P. (London: Longmans, Green and Co).

McFague, S. (1993) The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (London: SCM Press).

Merton, T. (2003) The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation, edited by Shannon, W. H.

(London: SPCK).

9
Merton, T. (2017) A Course in Christian Mysticism, edited by Sweeney, J. M. (Collegeville
MN: Liturgical Press).
O’Keefe, J. (2011) ‘Spiritual Practice and Sustainability: Resources from Early Christian
Monasticism’ in Hessel-Robinson, T. & McNamara, R M. (eds.) Spirit and Nature: The Study
of Christian Spirituality in a Time of Ecological Urgency, Princeton Theological Monograph
Series 163 (Eugene: Wipf and Stock) 49-69.

Swinton, J. (2020) ‘What Comes Next? Practical Theology, Faithful Presence, and Prophetic
Witness’ in Practical Theology 13:1-2, 162-173.
Thunberg (1995) Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the
Confessor (Chicago: Open Court).

von Balthasar, H. U. (2003) Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the
Confessor Translated from the German by Daley, B E. (3rd ed. Originally published 1988; San
Francisco: Ignatius Press).

Ward, P. (2017) Introducing Practical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic).

Weis, M. (2016) Thomas Merton and the Celts (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications).

White, L. (1996) ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis’, in This Sacred Earth: Religion,
Nature, Environment, Edited by Gottlieb, R.S. (London: Routledge) 184-93.

Wirzba, N. (2016) ‘Christian Theoria Physike: On Learning to See Creation’, Modern Theology
32.2, 211-230.

10