For the Christian the world is not an orphan; nor is it simply an emanation of the absolute. Springing fresh from the hands of the living God, there it stands, desired by God, rejoicing and delighting in him with the joy described in the psalms and in the book of Job, when the morning stars sang together – a ‘musical commandment’, a ‘marvelously composed hymn’, as St Gregory of Nyssa said in his commentary on