Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

5
COSMIC THEOLOGY
It is often claimed that one of the characteristics of Greek—or
Orthodox—theology is that it possesses a ‘cosmic’ dimension. It is a
claim made both about patristic theology, where it is maintained that
Latin theology came to lose its ‘cosmic’ dimension in comparison with
the Greeks, and about modern theology, where members of the
Orthodox Church (both Greek and Russian) are accustomed to making
large claims about their having preserved a ‘cosmic’ dimension in
their theology, as compared with the more limited horizons of Western
Christian thought. 1 Such a cosmic dimension to Christian theology
can be found in the New Testament, especially in Romans 8 and in the
later (possibly deutero-)Pauline epistles to the Colossians and the
Ephesians. To the Romans, Paul says that ‘creation waits with eager
longing for the revealing of the sons of God;…because the creation itself
will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the glorious
liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has
been groaning in travail together until now’ (Rom. 8:19, 21–2). What
in Romans is an allusion becomes a central theme in Colossians and
Ephesians, which speaks of the ‘mystery of [God the Father’s] will,
according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the
fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things
on earth’ (Eph. 1:9–10).
MAN AS MICROCOSM
This sense of a cosmic dimension is the convergence of various
concerns. One tributary is a commonplace of much classical
philosophy which saw the human being and the cosmos as mutuallyreflecting
images. In the cosmological myth related by Timaeus in the
Platonic dialogue of that name (the most influential account of the
nature of the cosmos in antiquity and late antiquity), the cosmos is
said to have come into existence as ‘a living creature endowed with
soul and reason’ (Timaeus. 30B), that is, analogous to a human being.