ARTICLE Homo adorans: exitus et reditus in theological anthropology James M. Arcadi* Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL *Corresponding author. E-mail: jmarcadi@tiu.edu Abstract Thinking with and beyond Alexander Schmemann, this essay constructs a theological anthropology that conceives of humans as standing as priests at the centre of the cosmos. Within the exitus et reditus framework of neoplatonic thinking, the cosmos proceeds from and returns to the one God. Recent biblical theology has interpreted the imago Dei in a royal-functional sense. However, this essay argues for a priestly-functional interpretation of the imago Dei that comports better with the conceptual schema of Genesis 1–2 when read through an exitus et reditus lens. Ramifications for worship and work follow the con- structive portion of the essay. Keywords: Christian Neoplatonism. imago Dei; exitus; reditus; Alexander Schmemann; theological anthropology Alexander Schmemann’s mid-twentieth-century monograph, For the Life of the World, was a call to re-enchant the Christian conception of the cosmos in response to the secu- larising programme of modernism. In this and other works, Schmemann encouraged the Orthodox to retrieve a theological interpretation of their liturgical worship and encouraged all Christians to retrieve an ontologically thicker picture of reality than was presently on offer. These two themes converge in his pithy statement on theological anthropology from whence I draw the title of this essay, ‘“Homo sapiens”, “homo faber”… yes, but, first of all, “homo adorans”. The first and basic definition of man [sic] is that he is the priest’. 1 Schmemann holds that the fundamental feature of human- ity is that humans are worshippers – specifically priestly worshippers – of the one God from whence the cosmos came. What follows in this essay is not an exercise in exegesis of the Orthodox theologian’s corpus; rather, it is a constructive probing of the suggest- ive framework Schmemann sketches. I will here argue for a theological anthropology that conceives of humans as priests at the centre of the cosmos. This essay will progress – like many a sermon – with three points and a practical application. First, I will sketch a cosmological framework utilising the neoplatonic © Cambridge University Press 2020 1 Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), p. 15. Scottish Journal of Theology (2020), 73,1–12 doi:10.1017/S0036930619000656 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0036930619000656 Published online by Cambridge University Press