East Meets West: Consumerism & Asceticism

part 4: A Theology of Consumption

Our last discussion has brought us to the point where see that we need not simply a cultural anthropology of consumption but a theology of consumption rooted in the sacraments, ascetical practices (spiritual disciplines), and virtues that foster human flourishing and Christian holiness. We need a broad, dare I say catholic vision of human consumption and for this, we need to go back to the beginning. 

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Human beings were created hungry.

When God establishes the human family in the Garden He turns to the Man and the Woman and says:

See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food (Genesis 1:29, NKJV).

Whatever else might be true about us—and will get to that in a moment—eating and consuming the good things of the earth, is intrinsic to being human.  

“Humanity,” writes Fr Alexander Schmemann, “is presented, first of all, as a hungry being.” There is a certain kind of emptiness that is intrinsic to human nature and our personal identity. The sign of this, he says, is that 

Man must eat in order to live; he must take the world into his body and transform it into himself, into his flesh and blood. He is indeed that which he eats, and the whole world is presented as one all-embracing banquet table for man. And this image of the banquet remains, throughout the whole Bible, the central image of life. It is the image of life at its creation and also the image of life at its end and fulfillment: “... that you eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.”¹

Though I suspect Schmemann—and certainly many of his students—would raise an eyebrow for saying this, we are by nature consumers.

Love made food

Even in our fallen condition, eating is more than a mere concession to our physical nature. In the Scriptures, “the food that [we eat], the world of which [we] must partake in order to live, is given to [us] by God, and it is given to as communion with God.”²

We are, in other words, consumers by nature.

And when seen in the light of the Incarnation, and especially the Eucharist, the whole of creation “is divine love made food, made life” for us. “God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation: ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good.’”³

So while the human person “is a hungry being” what—or rather, WHO—we hunger for, is God. This is why ultimately

All desire is finally a desire for Him. To be sure, [the human person] is not the only hungry being. All that exists lives by “eating.” The whole creation depends on food. But the unique position of [humanity] in the universe is that [we] alone [are] to bless God for the food and life [we] receive from Him. [We] alone [are] to respond to God’s blessing with [our own] blessing.⁴

While we shouldn’t underestimate the formal, liturgical act of blessing creation in the sacraments, the primordial human act of blessing the material world is in our shaping creation through our labor.

By working, we bless

When God brings the newly created animals “to Adam to see what he would call them” (Gen 2:19) we get our first glimpse of what it means for us to be consumers in the midst of a life of communion.

St John Chrysostom says that the names Adam gave the animals “remain up to the present time” and that they serve as “a constant reminder of the esteem” humanity had “from the outset … from the Lord of All” (Homilies on Genesis, 14:20).

St Ephrem the Syrian says Adam naming the animals “make[s] known the wisdom of Adam and the harmony that existed between the animals and Adam before he transgressed the commandment.”  Not only do the animals come “[w]ithout fear” of Adam, Ephrem goes on to say, they did so without being “afraid of each other so that a predator” would walk with “an animal that would otherwise be its prey” (Commentary of Genesis, 2.9.3).

But there’s more to the story… 

1.  Schmemann, For the Life of the World, p. 11.

2. ibid., p.14.

3. ibid.

4. ibid.,  pp., 14-15, emphasis in original.