In the previous post, I noted that scholars have been questioning whether there is such a thing as Celtic Christianity. They point out that there are differences between the churches in different Celtic territories, that people treat our scant sources as pointing to a single reality even if they are separated by centuries, and that most of the things we identify with the Celtic churches were held by most of early medieval Christians, not just those in Celtic lands.

While all this is true, there were still some things that were unique in the Irish church. And even those things it had in common with the continental churches are worth exploring because they shed light on our modern ways of thinking. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, every age has its blind spots, but the past had different blind spots from ours. We can easily see those of writers from other eras, but those writers can also help us see our own.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the supposedly eco-friendly elements of early Irish Christianity.

Ecology and the Irish Saints

The idea that the Celtic saints had a strong emphasis on creational theology and the environment is embedded in most popular discussions of early Irish Christianity. We are told that the Irish saints loved nature and lived in harmony with it.

This understanding of the Irish saints comes far more from reading our modern ecological concerns back into the Celtic past than from the sources themselves.

Saints in the Wilderness

It is true that many Celtic saints withdrew into the wilderness and slept in caves, but they did not do this out of love of nature. Rather, this was a product of an asceticism that sought to use bodily hardship to mortify (i.e. put to death) the flesh and thus to grow in personal holiness. We see this as well in the practice of Celtic saints standing in cold water up to their waists or even their necks for hours when they prayed.

The Irish saints saw nature as dangerous. This is reflected in prayers that survive from the period which call on God for protection from storms, drowning, and other environmental threats. Wolves and otherworldly beings (werewolves, the fey, and the like) haunted the wilds and added to the dangers.

Nature as God’s Creation

But at the same time, natural forces were seen as created by God and could be invoked for protection. For example, the prayer known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate—a prayer that calls on God and all creation for protection against evil forces—includes the following:

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

So although nature was dangerous, it was also God’s creation and could be called upon as an ally by God’s people.

Celtic Christians also believed that the world contained sacred wells and other “thin places” where the visible and invisible world were unusually close together.

Nature as Sacramental

Yet the most significant aspect of the physical, visible world was not the world itself, but what it pointed to. The Irish saints along with other early medieval Christians and the Orthodox today understood the world as sacramental.

A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace. When we talk about a sacramental understanding of the world, we do not mean that it is a sacrament in the formal sense, but that like sacraments, the things in this world, though physical and visible, are symbols that connect with spiritual and invisible realities.

Some Examples from Scripture

We can see this in Scripture. In Psalm 1 the righteous person is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. The tree teaches us realities about the righteous person, and if we meditate on it, we can learn much about righteous living.

Jesus regularly used examples from the natural world in his parables to teach spiritual truths. Remember, though that he is the logos, the Word of God, the logic and reason underpinning reality, through whom the world was created. When he wanted an analogy to teach spiritual truths, he didn’t have to look around to find one; he had already infused the universe with the meaning he would use in his parables. It wasn’t so much that he found a metaphor to illustrate spiritual truth; rather, he was explaining the spiritual truths that were already present and encoded into the world from its creation.

A Way of Seeing

This way of understanding the world was not unique to the Irish. The idea that this world points beyond itself to spiritual realities is found in Augustine and in Eucherius of Lyons, from whom the Irish developed an approach to interpreting the world based on the metaphors of Scripture. In other words, this sacramental vision of the world was not a holdover from paganism (contrary to how it is sometimes presented) but is firmly anchored in the Christian tradition.

Western Christianity lost this way of understanding the world by the early modern period. Late medieval nominalism, the Reformation’s rejection of medieval allegorical exegesis, the rise of rationalism and science, seeing the physical world as just stuff to be used for our purposes, a materialist metaphysics that claims that matter and energy are all that exist, all undermined the sacramental vision. The result has been a world of fact devoid of meaning.

And if the world has no meaning, neither does human life.

But if Christ is the logos, the Word and Reason of God, is it conceivable that he would have created a meaningless universe? Isn’t it far more likely that the material world does mean something? Isn’t this what Scripture itself tells us?

No, the sacramental vision of the Irish Christians, the early church, and our Orthodox brothers today provides a deeper, more biblical understanding of the world than what modernity and postmodernity offer us. Our challenge is to recover this sacramental vision as an essential element in reenchanting our worldview and rediscovering meaning in the world and in our lives on this earth.