Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow said that “the truth of the Holy Scriptures goes far beyond the limits of our understanding,” adding that man was created last in order to enter into the cosmos “like a king and high priest.” According to the teaching of the Fathers, man’s royal and priestly role gives an ecclesiological accent to biblical cosmology. For St. Maximus the Confessor, the world is a “cosmic temple” in which man exercises his priesthood. He is priest of nature, and “he offers nature to God in his soul as on an altar.”

Paul Evdokimov in The Art of the Icon