I consider that we have lost, in our time, much of the classical meaning of the concept of cosmos. When we talk nowadays about the cosmos, we talk mostly about the space located beyond the limits of the Earth and its atmosphere. We could think, thus, that, concerning the term “cosmos” in itself, we are dealing with a certain secularization of it. It is possible that our understanding of the word today is far from its initial richness. That is why I am now proposing, first of all, an incursion into the semantic field.

In a theological understanding, the cosmos is the entire world created by God, in other words, the hasamaim ve ethaaret – the heavens and earth from Genesis 1:1. And I intent to exploit, in this point of the debate, the meaning and importance of the ve conjunction, the way in which it expresses rather than just a formal correspondence, an organic relation between the sky, the heavens and the earth with all its dependences. The organic unity, the symphony and the synody, existent between the two constitutive structures of the cosmos is wonderfully expressed in the theology of cosmic Liturgy. This harmonious order in which the creation is consistent in itself but also transparent to divine energies is called divine order of the cosmos which, in its entire, ceaselessly celebrates the cosmic Liturgy. Father Dumitru Staniloae introduces an Eucharistic understanding of the world which makes this unity even more obvious. Thus, the Eucharist is the synaxis of the faithful under a bishop who is an icon of Christ, an event which manifests the relationship between humanity and all those who are ‘with God’ through Christ. But this Eucharist is to the image of celestial Liturgy, and the celebration of humans resembles the celebration of angels in the heavens. The angels are not only co-celebrators, but also object of our veneration, and this veneration relies on biblical arguments. (Genesis 48:4, Judges 13:15-16; Exodus 23: 20-23; 3, 15; Joshua 5, 13-16). While angels are object to our veneration, they are, in the same time, subject to the adoration of the Holy Trinity.

On the other hand, we should also clarify what we understand by culture, given the term has a wide variety of meanings as well. Culture, in its highest and integral sense, is the expression of beauty-well-good, the kalokagathos of Genesis 1:31, when God Himself acknowledges and confirms in a way the beauty – goodness of all things created. In this perspective, culture is a restatement of the alithical structures of creation, of their doxological unity and their revelation in paradisiacal configurations.

Briefly, we advocate for the understanding of the cosmos as a whole, as a unitary reality. Within the cosmos, man is the responsible reason of creation and anthropos leitourgos. In other words, he is the creator of cult and culture, and that is precisely why culture, even in present times, cannot be exclusively secular.