LIFE, ORIGIN, AND AUTHORITY

The Dialectic Classical Mind of St. Paul, Pointing to the Risen and Glorified Christ

A THEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FROM FIRST PRINCIPLES

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

INTRODUCTION

Humanity’s oldest questions are also its most enduring: What is the experience of sentiency? What does life say about the origin of everything? These questions arise naturally from our conscious awareness and our observation of the world. They demand not only scientific description but also philosophical, theological, and moral interpretation. In pursuing an answer, we discover that the phenomena of life point to deeper necessities: truths about intelligence, law, pattern, system, and the nature of existence itself.

THE EXPERIENCE OF SENTIENCY AND THE QUESTION OF ORIGIN

Sentiency, the ability to perceive, to be aware, and to experience, cannot be reduced to mere material complexity. While biology describes how neurons fire, it cannot account for why subjective consciousness exists. This “hard problem” of consciousness, as contemporary philosophers term it, points beyond mechanistic explanations toward the metaphysical.

Aristotle observed in De Anima that the soul is “the first actuality of a natural body having life potentially,” recognizing the soul as the organizing principle of living beings. St. Augustine of Hippo deepens this in Confessions X.8, declaring: “You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” The biblical witness affirms that consciousness is not an accidental byproduct but a reflection of the divine image: “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them” (Genesis 1:27). Sentiency, in this light, is both a biological reality and a metaphysical signpost.

LIFE AS THE PARADIGM FOR THE COSMOS

Observation reveals that life operates according to consistent necessities of origin:

1. Intelligence - The ordering and adaptability of living systems imply rational structure.

2. Law - From genetic code to planetary motion, life operates within consistent, discoverable boundaries.

3. Pattern - Recurring forms and symmetries pervade nature, from fractal geometry to the Fibonacci sequence.

4. System - Interdependent relationships sustain both micro- and macro-level order.

5. Life itself - Self-replication, adaptation, and growth indicate purpose beyond inert matter.

From these universal observations emerges a philosophical inference: there is a cosmic beauty of completion—a coherent whole in which life is not an anomaly but the organizing paradigm for the cosmos.

St. Maximus the Confessor describes creation as existing in the logoi, the rational principles implanted by the divine Logos: “The one Logos is many logoi, and the many logoi are the one Logos, containing the logoi in Himself” (Ambigua 7). Thus, all patterns of existence find their coherence in the Word who made them.

THE INCARNATION AS THE FULL CIRCLE OF ORIGIN

If life points to an intelligent origin, the Christian claim is that this Origin has entered creation in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. The eternal Logos, by whom all things were made (πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, John 1:3), became flesh (ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, John 1:14), completing the circle from Creator to creation.

St. Athanasius writes in On the Incarnation 54: “He became what we are that He might make us what He is.” In the Incarnation, metaphysics meets history: the transcendent Origin identifies with the temporal creature, not in theory but in person. The One through whom the cosmos exists enters it to redeem and perfect it.

Ancient Codex Icon of the Creation

Jesus Christ Making the Animals

A Renaissance Breviary’s Illustration of the Pre-Incarnate Christ Creating the Universe 

A High Medieval French Breviary Illumination of Christ Creating the World

GOD AS REWARDER OF SEEKERS

The Incarnation presupposes not only divine initiative but also human response. Scripture testifies: “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

St. Gregory of Nazianzus reflects on this mutuality in Oration 14: “It is not the seeking that is sufficient, but the finding; yet without the seeking there is no finding.” The structure of reality is such that seeking the Source leads to participation in that Source, which is a truth the Fathers describe as theosis, or union with God through grace (2 Peter 1:4).

INCARNATION REVEALS MORAL LAW AND PERSONAL CHARACTER

The Incarnation does not merely display divine power; it reveals the symmetry between God’s moral nature and the structure of reality. Christ embodies moral law not as an abstract code but as a lived, personal character.

The Lord Jesus declares: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). This is echoed by Cyril of Alexandria, who writes in Commentary on John XI: “In Him, as in a mirror, we behold the very nature of the Father.” The moral law is not arbitrary. No, it is the self-expression of God’s own being. As St. Basil the Great affirms (On the Holy Spirit 9.22): “The origin of all that is good is God; the imitation of God is the fulfillment of the soul’s longing.”

REVELATION AS COMPLETION OF INDUCTIVE LAW

Natural observation and philosophical reasoning can suggest an intelligent origin, but they cannot identify Him by name. Revelation (the self-disclosure of God through Scripture and the Incarnate Word) completes the inductive process by providing ultimate authority.

Psalm 19 presents this dual witness: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork… The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul” (Psalm 19:1, 7). Basil the Great unites these testimonies, saying (Hexaemeron I.2): “From the beauty of the visible things let us form an idea of Him who is more than beautiful; from the greatness of these perceptible and circumscribed bodies, let us conceive of Him who is infinite and immense.”

ECCLESIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE: FIDELITY TO FIRST REVELATION

If revelation is the definitive disclosure of the Origin, then all subsequent authority, whether canonical law or doctrinal development, must be in fidelity to that first revelation. Any contradiction is not merely error but idolatry.

St. Vincent of Lérins defines the rule in Commonitorium 23: “In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.” The Apostle Paul warns: “Even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). Thus, Church authority is legitimate only insofar as it guards and preserves the original apostolic deposit (1 Timothy 6:20).

AUTHORITY AS IDENTITY OF ORIGIN IN THE INCARNATION

True authority is not institutional self-assertion but identity with the Origin revealed in Christ. This authority is:

• Revealed in Scripture - the written testimony of divine self-disclosure (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

• Preserved in the Church - the living community entrusted with that deposit (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

• Worked out in personal life - reflecting moral law through good works (Ephesians 2:10) and holiness (1 Peter 1:15–16).

St. Gregory the Great summarizes this interplay in Pastoral Rule II.5: “The Holy Church corrects her children with words, strengthens them with examples, and helps them with prayer.” Authority is thus relational, moral, and sacramental.

CONCLUSION

From the experience of sentiency to the cosmic paradigm of life, from the Incarnation to the preservation of divine revelation, a coherent argument emerges: the universe is ordered by an intelligent Origin who has entered His creation to restore it. Life’s structure and beauty point toward this completion, and revelation anchors authority in fidelity to that original act. As Colossians 1:17 declares: “He is before all things, and in Him all things consist [hold together].” In a world of competing claims, the Church’s legitimacy rests not on power but on her unbroken union with the One who is both the Origin and the End, the Alpha and the Omega (Revelation 22:13).

COLLECT

O Eternal Word, by whom all things were made, who didst in the fullness of time take our nature upon Thee, that Thou mightest restore in us the beauty of Thine image; Grant us so to seek Thee with the diligence of faith, that beholding in Thee the pattern of all truth and righteousness, we may hold fast the first revelation delivered to Thy saints, and live in holiness and good works to the glory of Thy Name; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Original Whiteboard Discussion that Led to This Article!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Scripture

The Holy Bible, Authorized Version (King James Version). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Patristic Sources

• Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation of the Word. Translated by A Religious of C.S.M.V. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996.

• Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

• Basil the Great. Hexaemeron. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 8, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.

• Basil the Great. On the Holy Spirit. Translated by David Anderson. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980.

• Gregory the Great. Pastoral Rule. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 12, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.

• Gregory of Nazianzus. Orations. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 7, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.

• Maximus the Confessor. Ambigua to John, Ambiguum 7. Translated by Nicholas Constas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

• Vincent of Lérins. Commonitorium. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 11, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.

• Cyril of Alexandria. Commentary on the Gospel of John. Translated by David R. Maxwell. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015.

Philosophical Sources

• Aristotle. De Anima (On the Soul). Translated by Hugh Lawson-Tancred. London: Penguin Classics, 1986.

• Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Secondary Literature

• Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976.

• Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

• Torrance, Thomas F. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988.