Section 06: Beauty, Creation, and Joy

The outward face of St. Porphyrios’s teaching of love: his conviction that beauty, nature, poetry, and even science are ways to God — that “to become a Christian one must become a poet,” that the whole creation is a “secret Gospel” and its creatures are “little loves” through which we reach the great Love that is Christ; and the application of all this to the raising of children, whom he counseled raising not by fear, scolding, and pressure but by the holiness and love of their parents — in joy, so that the child grows toward Christ freely and not in revolt.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite (canonized 2013)

Contents

File Topic
Nature, Poetry, and Science Beauty and the created world as ways to God: nature as a “secret Gospel”; the creatures as “little loves”; flowers and birdsong and the starry sky; the “poetic soul” the Christian must acquire; his delight in growing things and his openness to science and learning as further windows onto the wisdom of God
The Education of Children His counsels on raising children: the holiness of the parents as what truly forms a child; the harm of fear, scolding, pressure, and constant lecturing; raising children in joy and freedom rather than coercion; the priority of prayer over reprimand; the love between the parents as the soil of a good childhood

How to Use

  • Read Nature, Poetry, and Science for the joyful, world-affirming side of his teaching — the conviction that beauty and creation, rightly seen, lead the soul to Christ.
  • Read The Education of Children for the most practical and widely loved application of his teaching of love: how to raise children toward Christ without crushing them.
  • These themes are the outward expression of the core teaching in Section 05.

Cross-References