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Joshua Lollar, Humankind and the Cosmos: Early Christian Representations. By Doru Costache, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 75, Issue 2, October 2024, Pages 509–510, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flae050
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Doru Costache’sHumankind and the Cosmos: Early Christian Representations explores early Christian cosmology in the period from Ignatius of Antioch to John Chrysostom, addressing The Epistle to Diognetus, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Evagrius of Pontus along the way. Costache’s itinerary traces how cosmology became central to early Christian theology, which became, therefore, bound up with the perception, representation, and understanding of reality. The book is historically grounded but also draws connections between ancient Christian thought and contemporary cosmology, including string theory, dark matter, and quantum mechanics.
The term ‘cosmos’ (‘world’) has both a social and a natural meaning in Christian thought, where it can mean both ‘social order’ and ‘universe’. In his insightful reading of To Diognetus, Costache exploits this equivocation to establish a framework for the rest of the book. The universe is the home of the church, the human community with theological consciousness. Cosmic, social, and theological understandings—and misunderstandings—therefore travel together. In To Diognetus, this means that the Roman world’s mistreatment and misunderstanding of Christians reflect its mistreatment and misunderstanding of the natural world as revealed in its idolatry and polytheistic sacrifice. Costache thus shows how To Diognetus joins ethics, cosmology, and theology together. His incorporation of the ‘anthropic principle’, which affirms that consciousness is woven into the fabric of the cosmos, is particularly significant here as an explanation of human supremacy amongst creatures, allowing us to see man as central but not tyrannical.
