The Role of Phthora in Ancient Greek Cosmology

Phthora is an extremely complex notion, crucial to ancient cosmology, physics, anthropology, and psychology. At its most basic level, phthora is the opposite of genesis: “going out of being” or “perishing” in contrast to “coming into being.” In this sense, genesis designates birth or generation, and phthora means death or disintegration. The fullest account of these two opposite motions is given by Aristotle in the text on genesis and phthora (variously translated as On Generation and Corruption or On Coming-to-Be and Ceasing-to-Be), in which Aristotle discusses these two central principles and explains how they work, but he also refers to it extensively in his Physics, in the Metaphysics, in On the Heavens, and elsewhere.¹

Phthora is an issue of substance in the sense that substantial change consists in the perishing of the substance or its transformation into a different substance or entity. Everything that comes into being or is born is therefore subject to phthora in the sense of disintegration and perishing, including inanimate objects. Phthora in the most proper sense refers to this ultimate dissolution into the elements; the eternal is aphtharton (Physics II.7; 198a). The material world is governed by the continual movements of becoming and perishing (or ceasing). The basic elements (fire, air, water, earth) cannot be eternal, because then they would not be subject to genesis and phthora (De Caelo III.6; 304b). Immaterial reality, by contrast, is eternal and not subject to any kind of change; it does not come into being or go out of being: some substances are eternally ungenerated and imperishable and thus do not admit of genesis or phthora.² These are the “divine” entities to which we do not have much access (Parts of Animals I.5; 644b). They are necessarily such and not subject to fate or accident (Metaphysics VI.2; 1026b–27a). Aristotle thinks it necessary for there to be an eternal, immovable substance that is not subject to phthora but generates all other movement (1071b).

In this regard, phthora points to an ontological status that defines everything finite as different from the divine in a fundamental way: the divine does not undergo disintegration or going out of being, but everything else does. (As some patristic thinkers will argue, even angels have their immortality not by nature but as a gift that could potentially be revoked, e.g., Philoponus, Opificio mundi I.9, I.15–18.) Only the eternal does not change and hence also does not disintegrate or perish. This is a presupposition taken for granted in the Greek imaginary, as is evident in Galen’s insistence: “The mind readily accepts that everything ungenerated is thereby also indestructible” (ap. 600.14). So being subject to phthora means to be finite, mortal, and changeable, thus not infinite, immortal, immutable, and incorruptible.

On a more basic level, genesis and phthora are also employed for the simple case of a state-of-affairs coming to be (gignetai) or ceasing to be (phtheiretai). In this sense, phthora can refer to any change in a basic state of affairs: something comes to be in this way or that and then ceases to be such. To undergo change and motion is to be subject to phthora. Coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be are not arbitrary or random: things usually change into their natural opposites. Aristotle gives the example of pale turning into dark and musical into non-musical rather than pale into musical, which makes no sense (Physics I.5; 188a). Everything—except substances—comes to be from and returns to its contrary, albeit sometimes via intermediary stages (189a). This overall harmony is preserved even in artistry or manufacturing, which obey the same rules about coming to be and ceasing to be, because they operate with the same natural forces (188b; Metaphysics VII.7; 1032a–b).

At the same time, contraries are destructive of one another, that is, work phthora on each other (192a). For the Greeks, the two notions always entail each other, as stated in a prominent Aristotelian commentary: “But if perishing is of necessity and in the very nature of everything that has come to be, it will apply of necessity, to everything that comes to be, that it must perish” (Quaestiones 1.18, attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias). Something that has a beginning or is generated always also has an end or a time of falling apart. Several of the Greek thinkers insist that if the universe is generated, then by definition it is impossible for it to be eternal, even the gods cannot overrule this. Philoponus, a Christian philosopher, draws on these insights in order to argue vigorously (against Aristotle) that the cosmos is created and thus not eternal: it relies on God for its existence and has beginning and end, i.e., genesis and phthora. (He also shares the broader Greek conceptions about opposites and contraries as they are articulated by Aristotle, e.g., Opificio mundi II.6.)

Becoming and perishing can apply either to simple or to compound things (Physics I.7; 198b). Aristotle draws a distinction between two kinds of movement from genesis to phthora, one that constitutes substantial change and one that refers to qualitative change. In the latter case, the entity to which the change happens does not itself perish (199a). Change can either affect the underlying entity or the entity can be changed wholly (199b). Occasionally, he will call one kind a “simple” becoming (haplē genesis) and the other a becoming “something” (gignesthai ti) (314a). (In most of these contexts, Aristotle discusses “becoming” far more extensively than “perishing”; it is often simply implied as the opposite movement.) That is, things can begin and cease to be in a radical sense (like being born and perishing) or they can change from one kind of element into another (317a–319b). Aristotle also notes that something ceasing to be cannot always mean a complete annihilation, because the universe would have long ceased to be altogether if that were the case (318a). Furthermore, nothing can come out of nothing (Physics I.8; De Generatione I.1–3; Metaphysics VII.8) Thus, genesis and phthora are linked to each other in a continual cycle. This is obviously closely connected to his discussions of actuality and potentiality, which govern the becoming and undoing of all things, and to his notion of “natural” movement, which governs the directions into which something moves or changes.

Aristotle’s discussion of the four causes relies on these insights about becoming and disintegrating: something comes out of or is generated by the causes (Physics II.3). They essentially describe how genesis and phthora function concretely, how something comes to be something else and therefore ceases to be what it was before. Something coming about or ceasing to be is governed by logical reasons and is not just the result of luck (II.4–6). Furthermore, phthora governs the relations between the primary elements of fire, air, water and earth (De Generatione I.3, II.3). (There is some debate over whether aether constitutes a fifth element that is not subject to phthora, because it is the element of the heavens or the eternal—at least for those thinkers, like Aristotle, who posit the heavens as eternal.) In this sense, there can be degrees of such exposure to phthora: earth is far more “corruptible” than air or fire, which are purer and warmer elements, thus thought to be more stable and closer to the eternal. Aristotle specifically points out that our common perception of this, which judges air for example to be less solid or real than earth, is contradictory to what is actually true: air and fire are more real and less liable to phthora than earth (318b). The change of one element into another—often through intermediary stages, especially for those elements least compatible with each other—involves phthora: fire degenerates into air, air into water, water into earth, which is the lowest of the primary elements. The opposites are thus not absolute but are tempered by degrees and respects.

Aristotle also considers the kind of change that happens when nourishment is changed into blood, that is, when something entering our body ceases to be what it is (food or drink) and becomes something else (the stuff of our physical bodies) (De Generatione I.4). (This obviously applies also to other such changes in the natural world.) In this change something persists, although it seems like the original substance is entirely annihilated. Thus, attributes of something can change without a complete perishing of the original substance (319b). More complex change involves more attributes (331b). A change in attributes, including growth and decay, is different from the fundamental beginning or perishing of the substance itself, i.e., genesis and phthora in the fullest sense (320a). But Aristotle reiterates that the reciprocal coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be of contraries, such as hot to cold, dry to wet, etc. are also a type of genesis and phthora (331a).

These are the basic presuppositions about how anything material in the cosmos begins and perishes that are assumed by the subsequent tradition for centuries, aside from the Aristotelian argument about the eternity of the world, over which there was significant debate in Christian and non-Christian sources. The commentary tradition through which Platonic and Aristotelian insights are handed down reiterates them, and they are either implicitly assumed or explicitly taught for most of the Byzantine era.³ Eusebius’s praise of philosophy as united with Christianity against paganism is perhaps unusually explicit: “When poets therefore, as they say, invent legends concerning the gods, while philosophers give physical explanations, we ought, I suppose, rightly to despise the former, and admire the latter as philosophers [i.e., lovers of wisdom], and to accept the persuasive arguments of this better class rather than the triflings of the poets. … if the physical explanations of the philosophers are true, the [pagan poets’] testimonies of the gods must be false” (Preparation for the Gospel III.XV.125b). Yet, even when the “Greeks” (or “Hellenes”) as a whole are condemned as pagan, including the philosophers, their scientific insights are silently assumed (especially evident in Basil’s Hexaemeron and On the Orthodox Faith by John of Damascus).

Phthora is often translated into English as “corruption,” capable of taking on moral connotations of corruptibility or defilement. In its fundamental meaning, however, phthora is neutral; it is first of all simply a description of how forces operate and how change happens. It describes the natural cycles of life and death, seed and maturation, the flourishing and decaying of all living things. Phthora is crucial for life to continue: plants must decompose for the seeds to be released and for other beings to be nourished; animals die when they have given birth or raised their young; humans make way for the next generation. Phthora in this sense is no more vicious than entropy, which is probably its closest contemporary cosmological parallel. Yet the concept can also take on other connotations. In a hierarchically ordered cosmos, what is not subject to phthora is clearly superior to what is so governed. Elements especially given to phthora are thought to be less valuable than those less subject to it, the ones that are more like the incorruptible eternal or divine. (This is not particularly counterintuitive; we still think of gold, silver, and platinum as more valuable than less stable or solid elements.) Plato’s emphasis on eternal, unchanging truths over the transitory and illusory nature of appearances illustrates this most clearly.

The finitude of beings and things that are subject to phthora entails not only death but all the other limitations of being finite: being prone to illness, pain, suffering, ignorance, and so forth. The fact that we are finite creatures means that our bodies will give out, that we fall ill, grow old and decrepit, and ultimately die. Our bodies, like all material bodies, will disintegrate and finally return to the elements. The animating principle of our material bodies, their soul, will depart and leave them lifeless and subject to decomposition. Yet, this is not a sinister curse or some fundamental evil; it is the very condition of having material bodies that live on a physical earth within a universe composed of elements. To be anything other than divine is to be finite or bounded and thus to be subject to phthora.

The Role of Phthora in Patristic Theology

Almost all patristic thinkers operate with these basic presuppositions about genesis and phthora, although they certainly debate and at times refine them. One key distinction between the patristic theologians and some (albeit not all) ancient thinkers is that they insist on the temporal nature of the cosmos: it is created by God and thus has a beginning and end. Origen (On First Principles), Athanasius (De Incarnatione), Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel), Basil of Caesarea (Hexaemeron), Gregory of Nyssa (On Human Nature), Maximus (Ambigua and Mystagogy), John of Damascus (On the Orthodox Faith), and many others insist that because the world is created, it is therefore subject to phthora. Phthora affects everything in the universe, all the elements, but especially everything on this Earth, including all living beings, their bodies, and the materials of which they are constituted. (Indeed, even those who think that the soul is imperishable—an issue on which there is by no means agreement among patristic authors—usually contend that animal souls are subject to phthora.) Many of the texts on creation—from Basil’s Hexaemeron (e.g., I.3) to Philoponus’s Opificio mundi (e.g., I.5) and various other commentaries on Genesis—reiterate the basic assumptions about phthora as perishability.

This transitory and fragile nature of the human condition is frequently discussed. Basil says that “the shape of the body is perishable” and wonders how this perishable body can serve as an image of the divine when “the imperishable is not depicted in the perishable, nor is the perishable an image of the imperishable” (Origin of Humanity, I.6). The divine is eternal, immutable, formless, and imperishable, while the weak human flesh is temporal, changing, perishable, and figured or circumscribed. Athanasius pictures the original human as mortal and subject to phthora but potentially able to achieve imperishability (aphtharsian), a possibility humans squandered in the fall (De Incarnatione 4). He argues that “human beings, turning away from things eternal and by the counsel of the devil turning toward perishable things [ta tes phthoras], were themselves the cause of perishing [phthoras] in death, being . . . perishable by nature [kata physin phthartoi] but escaping their natural fate by the grace of participation in the Word, had they remained good” (De Inc. 5). Had they remained steadfast in the Word, they would have been preserved from this natural corruption or perishability, but because of their sin, “corruption [phthora] thenceforth prevailed against them” (De Inc. 5). In fact, freeing us from phthora is cited by Athanasius as the primary (or perhaps sole) reason for Christ’s death. The term and its cognates appear in his treatise in almost every other sentence.⁴

In the patristic appropriation of this notion, phthora also comes to refer to the fallenness of the world, to its defilement and corruption in the sense of its being occupied by hostile forces. For John of Damascus, the fall meant that humans were “condemned to death and made subject to phthora” (Orthodox Faith III.1). These forces are expelled from the waters of baptism and from other elements by various types of blessings. Earth and water are more likely to be contaminated by hostile forces because they are naturally more unstable than fire or air. The possibilities of degrees of phthora also imply that one can to some extent become more or less corruptible (Orthodox Faith II.30). One increases one’s subjection to the forces of phthora by focusing on bodily and material dimensions, being swayed by the senses, and being ruled by passions, which all increase corruptibility. The first lines of Evagrius’s Eulogios are representative in this regard: “Those who hold the land of heaven as their own by means of ascetic labours do not fix their gaze on the stomach, nor on concern for perishable goods [tōn phthartōn] . . . On the contrary, by means of an intellectual vision they participate in a nourishing light from the highest realities, like the incorporeal beings who are surrounded by the radiance of the light of the divine glory” (Prologue, Eulogios 1). This turn away from concern with the perishable to focus on the imperishable is pervasive in the ascetic literature.⁵ One comes closer to the divine and imperishability by focusing on the soul or mind, the immaterial realm, by turning away from sensory dimensions, as far as that is possible, and by controlling one’s passions: all lead to an increase in incorruptibility and a certain measure of freedom from phthora. Saints—especially the ascetics—seek to separate from the perishable and focus on the imperishable, to become more and more assimilated to it. This obviously recalls Plato’s insistence in the Phaedo (and elsewhere) that we should focus on the imperishable soul rather than the desires of our perishable bodies, which will mire us further in perishability. This is why philosophy is “the practice of dying” (64a, 67c–e; reiterated, among others, by John of Damascus in chapter 3 of the Fount of Knowledge) and why the ascetic life was often referred to as the philosophical life. (Although Plato does not develop the cosmological and physical dimensions of genesis and phthora as fully as Aristotle, he certainly has plenty to say about the value of the imperishable over the perishable, which clearly had as much of an impact on Christian thinking as Aristotle’s more “scientific” views.)

Fallenness, in the sense of living in a world subject to phthora, can slide into sinfulness, focusing on what is perishable rather than what is eternal. And the most obvious instances of genesis and phthora at work, as in human pregnancy and childbirth—often closely linked to maternal and/or infant death in the ancient world—can come to be tainted by notions of defilement or corruption, not just in a physical but also a moral sense of pollution—thus the prayers for cleansing after childbirth. At the same time, destruction (such as fires, floods, droughts, or other phenomena that induce famine and death) are sometimes thought to be instructive because such instances of “natural” phthora teach us that everything perishes and we should therefore focus on what does not perish. Even our own perishing in death is a bonus in disguise in the sense that it means that thereby evil does not become permanent in our nature. John of Damascus maintains: “He condemned us to the phthora of death in order that what was evil might not be immortal” (Orthodox Faith IV.9). The line between natural forces of disintegration and the forces of evil is very thin and at times quite ambiguous.⁶

Furthermore, these notions become crucial for working out what it means for Christ to be fully human, to be born as a material being, to die, and to be resurrected. The church spent several centuries struggling to express how Christ can be said to be fully human and fully divine.⁷ Because Christ is God, he cannot undergo phthora; that would be a contradiction in terms. The eternal is unchanging (thus the patristic insistence on divine immutability and impassibility that baffles many people today) and cannot disintegrate or undergo perishing. God being immutable (i.e., without change; see Gavrilyuk 2004) and incorruptible (i.e., not subject to phthora) logically entail each other; anything subject to change is ultimately also subject to disintegration. Yet, for Christ to redeem us, he must be fully human and thus material, which means he must have a physical body that undergoes birth, growth, change, and disintegration. Christ’s hair and fingernails grew and thus had to be cut; he ate, digested, and defecated like any human being. So how can Christ’s basic subjection to phthora as a full human being, having a truly human nature, be reconciled with his being and nature as eternal and hence not subject to phthora?

One important element of the response became the claim that Christ is born without phthora. Mary is said not to have her hymen ruptured by this birth or to have undergone birthpangs, because both of them are clear instances of phthora, often associated theologically with the fallen nature of our world. Pain, rupture, breakage and disintegration are all instances of phthora at work. Thus, Christ’s divine nature is fully preserved in the virgin birth and at the same time hallows his mother to some extent in the process. Yet, he is fully human and thus subject to phthora in terms of his physical body—gestated by Mary’s pregnancy—and his human life on Earth is marked by phthora. How is this possible?

The patristic theologians work this out by distinguishing between two notions or aspects of phthora, essentially following Aristotle’s distinction between qualified or partial becoming/ceasing to be and simple or basic becoming/perishing (i.e., complete coming-into or going-out-of being). That is, they distinguish between human suffering and subjection to the forces and processes of this planet on the one hand and complete dissolution (i.e., destruction of substance or nature) and return to the primary elements (of fire, air, water, earth) on the other. Christ suffers the former but not the latter. John of Damascus stresses that if Christ had not undergone phthora in the first sense, then the incarnation would be a hoax or “stage trick”—and we would be saved “only in appearance” (Orthodox Faith III.28). Two notions of genesis come to correspond to this dual sense of phthora. Maximus and John of Damascus distinguish between genesis in the sense of having a beginning or coming into being and gennesis (with two nu) as being generated or born (Orthodox Faith IV.7).⁸ As God, Christ does not have genesis in the absolute sense, but he is generated (genneto) eternally from the Father and has a human birth (i.e., undergoes gennesis as a human being).

This applies even more profoundly to Christ’s death. The crucial verse here is Psalm 15:10 (in the Septuagint counting), which affirms that “you did not let your holy one see phthora,” and is cited by many patristic thinkers and liturgical texts to confirm that, as divine, Christ was not subject to phthora. Given the fundamental Greek conviction that opposites cannot mix and that the stronger can annihilate the weaker, this means that Christ’s nature, which is by definition not subject to phthora, can therefore overcome it: “trampling down death by death,” as the Paschal hymn proclaims. Thus, while the corruptible or perishable can be assimilated to the incorruptible (in the incarnation), ultimately the incorruptible or imperishable overcomes the corruptible (in Christ’s death as God). Christ undoes death and destruction by entering them, allowing them to do their work on him, and showing that they are unable to do so, thereby overturning them and ultimately annihilating them altogether.

This is often portrayed in theological and liturgical texts as a “hook” on which the devil or death is caught like a fish: by taking hold of Christ when he enters Sheol or Hades after the crucifixion, the powers of hell illegitimately appropriate something that is not theirs. As the rulers of phthora—and of the realm where all things end up as they disintegrate and perish—they try to grasp a nature that is not subject to phthora and to which they thus have no right. By swallowing up the dead Christ into its realm of disintegration, hell did something both illegitimate and logically impossible, inasmuch as the imperishable God cannot undergo absolute perishing or disintegration (the fact that none of Christ’s limbs were broken on the cross is read as further confirmation of this). John summarizes that “death approaches, gulps down the bait of the body, and is pierced by the hook of the divinity” (Orthodox Faith III.27). Christ must rise; his very nature as divine entails it. Just as light always overcomes darkness, the imperishable must overcome perishability (e.g., Opificio mundi II.6, II.16; Orthodox Faith III.27). This allows Christ to triumph over phthora, to open the gates of death, and to free all those subject to phthora and held in the realm of phthora, i.e., the realm of death and disintegration. While some of the imagery of trickery, which the patristic hymnographers seem to relish, might today strike us as odd or even inappropriate for God, this clearly is conceived as a logical, indeed cosmological, conclusion, a feat of material, physical “magic” (but eminently logical magic): what is not subject to phthora, by undergoing death (phthora in the sense of suffering and dying, though not in the sense of ultimate disintegration and perishing), thereby overturns and undoes death and corruptibility, precisely because it cannot succumb to phthora in the ultimate sense.

Incarnation and resurrection are thus deeply connected to each other through this very notion of phthora and its basic incompatibility with the divine. John of Damascus explains that the two natures of Christ are united without either changing its nature and without their being mixed together in any way, because such a mixing would be impossible; one would simply annihilate the other. That is to say, Christ is not a compound; the incarnation involves no mixing, mingling, or blending (Orthodox Faith III.3). The divine nature remains uncreated, immortal, invisible, and incorruptible. The human nature that had sinned, fallen, and become corruptible is made clean and incorruptible by uniting (but not merging) with the divine Word (III.12). This is why the resurrection frees us from corruption or perishing: the imperishable has transformed the perishable (III.12). And this is clearly seen by most of the patristic tradition as the primary and most desired redemptive result of Christ’s death and resurrection: He redeems us from phthora by vanquishing it in his own nature, which through his human nature becomes also ours (De Incarnatione 7–10; Orthodox Faith IV.4, IV.13, IV.27).⁹

The Role of Phthora in Orthodox Liturgy

These fundamental convictions are deeply inscribed within Orthodox liturgy and are abundant in the liturgical texts, both ancient and contemporary. On the most basic level, the language of “heaven and earth,” which pervades the liturgy as a shorthand way to refer to the whole cosmos, presupposes this cosmology. This phrase usually functions in the liturgical texts as a reference to the two fundamental realms or realities of being: visible and invisible, temporal and eternal, the realm that undergoes disintegration and the realm that does not (despite a certain slippage in these notions, especially in regard to the heavens). Maximus the Confessor probably works this out the most fully in a liturgical sense in his Mystagogy.¹⁰ The superimposition—and final reconciliation—of visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly, intelligible and sensory, body and soul, etc., as all imaged or perhaps even enacted in the liturgy, often baffles the contemporary, more literally-minded reader, and is frequently interpreted only as pretty metaphorical imagery. But Maximus is making fundamental cosmological and ontological claims about the ultimate impact of liturgy on the functioning of the cosmos through Christ’s redemptive actions and about the real physical and metaphysical changes it has wrought and continues to operate in every synaxis. These claims are not to be taken lightly or seen as purely poetic or merely metaphorical. This is how incarnation, crucifixion, the victory of the cross, redemption, and resurrection are actually supposed to work and be made real by the liturgy, especially through the Eucharist.

This is evident throughout the liturgical texts. For example, the affirmation that Christ is born without phthora is reiterated multiple times in every Orthodox liturgy, when it is said of the Theotokos: “Without corruption [or defilement] you gave birth to God the Word.” Variously translated, it is the central liturgical claim about the birth of Christ. This has profound implications for Mary and not just in regard to Christ’s birth. For example, in the liturgical texts for the Feast of Dormition—her falling asleep in death—she is affirmed to hallow the elements, as her body, which Christ preserves from phthora as a firstfruits of our own redemption from its destructive force, ascends to heaven after her death. Again, she suffers thanatos but not phthora in the ultimate sense: her body is “preserved incorrupt” in the tomb.¹¹

The conviction that Christ does not undergo phthora in the final sense, even in his death, is stated over and over again in Orthodox liturgy. Not only is it fundamental to the Paschal troparion—the central liturgical affirmation of redemption that Christ, as the “source of incorruption” (aphtharsias) overcomes death by death, which is sung over and over again, multiple times in each service, between the feasts of Pascha and Ascension—but Christ’s conquering of corruption and wielding victory over chaos and disintegration is a theme that pervades the liturgy. Many of the canons read during Matins refer to Christ as imperishable (or incorruptible), entering perishability/corruptibility in order to save us from it. Similar claims figure importantly in the September and Lenten celebrations of the cross, which is interpreted as a sign of this victory: just as the first tree/wood (of Adam) brought phthora, so the tree/wood of the cross triumphs over it. It is reiterated in all feasts of the Theotokos and also in the Christmas/Nativity services as the central achievement of the incarnation (“thy holy nativity [of the Theotokos and of Christ] . . . frees Adam and Eve from the phthora of death”). That Mary is preserved from “defilement” and kept “uncorrupt” by Christ’s birth is reiterated over and over again. The prayer to bring us out of or deliver us “from corruption” (ek phthoras) is similarly ubiquitous. The theme is also evident in the celebrations of baptism, including the important Feast of Theophany, where Christ is portrayed as expelling the forces of evil and disintegration and to regenerate all the elements, including contraries like water and fire, in order to give humans a share in “incorruption” (kai tēs aphtharsias). In various other liturgical feasts, the texts frequently affirm that the human nature, subject to decay and perishing, is refashioned in Christ and thereby freed from phthora. God takes on what he was not—human perishable nature—in order to renew it as imperishable.

Furthermore, the tradition insists that liturgical means are required for overcoming phthora and its consequences. Imperishability is acquired by degrees through baptism and Eucharist. One is cleansed of the external forces of corruption in the baptismal waters, which weaken the hold of phthora upon the person baptized and enable the process of gaining imperishability to begin by clothing the baptized in garments of “incorruptibility” (Orthodox Faith IV.13).¹² (This is one reason why permanently perishable things or beings—from icons to animals—are blessed but not baptized.¹³) One appropriates imperishability through the Eucharist, as one assimilates the divine imperishable and incorruptible nature into one’s own perishable and corruptible nature. John of Damascus employs variants of the term phthora multiple times in his discussion of the Eucharist (Orthodox Faith IV.13), but referring to the Eucharist as food or medicine of immortality is quite common. This transformation from perishability to imperishability is slow, partly because the two principles are so opposed to each other; thus, one must do it over and over again, as well as reinforce it with the rest of one’s life by striving against the corrupting forces of the passions, that is, to become firmly rooted in the unchanging eternal and not swayed by the perishable earthly. Presumably, this is partly why there are stories about ascetic saints who only very rarely participate in the Eucharist; given their progress, they perhaps do not require this pharmakon against phthora quite so frequently. It is also why the bodies of saints are often claimed not to decompose; their bodies already visibly (and by scent!) participate in imperishability. Maximus affirms that in the “universal consummation,” the human being “will be raised together with the universe, and he will recover the power no longer to be able to be corrupted (phtheiresthai)” (CCSG 35). (It is perhaps also worth pointing out that this is one reason why stability and imperviousness to change were so highly valued by the Byzantines. They are reflective of the imperishability and perfection of the eternal and begin to approach them by turning the earthly oikoumene into an icon of the heavenly order.)

The Role of Phthora in Orthodox Thought Today

What are we to make of this today? One thing emerges clearly: the contemporary Western practice of separating science, politics, and personal faith from each other does not work for the ancients. Orthodox theological doctrine and liturgical practice cannot be thought without the cosmology, physics, and anthropology that undergirded them. (They also had profound political and economic implications, which cannot be discussed here.) To a large extent, redemption for the Eastern patristic tradition means deliverance from phthora, that is to say, deliverance from finitude, with all its dimensions of human limitations, being subject to error, pain, suffering, aging, and perishing. Salvation does not designate merely a notion of one’s personal spiritual continuation after death, but it is intimately connected to the broader functioning of the cosmos and all its elements. The resurrection of the body affirmed by the creeds is understood as a transformation of the earthly perishable material into something imperishable that is no longer subject to earthly rules of materiality but cannot be thought in isolation from the basic presuppositions about material and immaterial substances. Notions of resurrection or the afterlife thus are not simply disconnected from the cosmological presuppositions but were articulated within their context and congruent with this worldview.

In this regard, it is clear that Orthodox theological convictions cannot be separated from “scientific” ones about the nature of matter, the ordering of the cosmos, or the generation of life. Yet, just as evidently, this is no longer the worldview assumed by contemporary scientific knowledge. While it is on some level congruent with basic notions of entropy and the life cycle of living things—life is only possible because of death, both on the macro scale of the death of the first generation of stars that enable all life on Earth and on the micro scale of bacteria and fungi that break down plant matter so new life can grow—it cannot possibly be maintained in its full complexity.¹⁴ We neither subscribe to ancient Greek notions of motion and change—including the convictions they entailed regarding geocentric cosmology or the stability of species—nor do our biology or chemistry (and the technologies made possible by them) match how the Greeks—both “Hellenes” and “Romanoi”—thought about the interaction of elements with or transformation into each other. The chemical processes that turn oil into plastics, the metals that are required for computers and mobile phones, even the basic physical rules that govern everything from flush toilets to airplanes, are all incompatible with the ancient scientific worldview. Very few of us are willing to do without these “achievements” of modern science and contemporary technology.

This raises real questions, however, about how we perceive liturgy to function today. Can (or should) it be “updated” to accord with more recent scientific “imaginaries”? Would something essential be lost if the language referring to materiality, motion and change, heaven and earth, corruption and perishing was removed from liturgical texts? What does it mean for them to be ubiquitous but no longer functional? What about the broader soteriological picture? What would it mean for the birth of Christ and veneration of the Theotokos if the logic of phthora were excised from it? How would one even begin to reconceive the idea of “trampling down death by death” without the logic of incorruptibility overturning the consequences of phthora? All these are far too fundamental to the Orthodox theological imaginary to be able to be removed or altered without complete breakdown in theological coherence. Yet, can the idea that finitude and natural processes of disintegration and perishing are somehow “unnatural”—perhaps linked to sin—and to be abolished by redemption still be maintained today? Conversely, affirming the worldview—impossible to do consistently for anyone who lives in the contemporary world—without actually subscribing to it, either results in serious schizophrenia for believers or empties the theological affirmations of any truly viable content, i.e., content that continues to function as it was intended when it was first formulated.

This clash of worldviews raises questions not only about doctrine but also about concrete liturgical practices. Do contemporary Orthodox still count on baptism and Eucharist to effect actual ontological change by transforming perishable materials into imperishability and literally undoing the effects of phthora? Yet, this is what the liturgy they celebrate claims to be doing: to enact the cosmos in miniature, both as a pattern of the divine prototype and as a means for its transformation. Patristic liturgy serves—in Plato’s famous words—as a “moving icon of eternity”: both as its image and as a means for its consummation. One of the reasons—perhaps the very point—of doing liturgy, at least for Maximus and other patristic thinkers, is not only to transform the people who participate in it but to serve the healing and unification of the entire cosmos. It would be hard to envision what this could mean for a Newtonian, much less for an Einsteinian, cosmos. Yet, excising the cosmological and physical dimension of Orthodox liturgy means to dismantle it at its very core, as the centrality of the victory of Pascha and of the practice of the Eucharist highlight. Does the Paschal triumph over phthora and the Eucharistic food that heals from phthora by making our bodies “imperishable” still have meaning on a planet destined for conflagration and in a universe condemned to the heat death of increasingly rapid expansion?

Especially in light of the environmental crisis, we sorely need a new conversation and collaboration between scientific insights and moral reflection today.¹⁵ Can the forces of life and flourishing triumph over the forces of death and destruction we have unleashed? Can the redemptive vision of the unification and harmony of all things articulated by the patristic authors provide a blueprint for a different, less destructive, way of dwelling upon the Earth? Can the basic principles underlying this ancient cosmology, as it is theologically worked out and enacted in liturgy, be made productive for our contemporary crises, even if many of its concrete scientific elements are no longer convincing? That is the challenge before any viable Orthodox theology today, at least if it truly wants to take seriously the contemporary intellectual imaginary and the existential plight of all living beings on this planet.