Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

62 INTRODUCTION
Conversely the human person is often described as a ‘little cosmos’
(mikros kosmos: contracted at the time of the Renaissance into
‘microcosm’). The interlocking realities of human being and cosmos
implied by such ways of thinking encouraged interpretations of the
biblical story of the human race, leading from Fall in Adam to
Redemption in Christ the Second Adam, that saw reflected in that
story a cosmic disaster as the consequence of the Fall and the
restoration of the cosmos as the final purpose of Christ’s saving work.
Another tributary was the growing tendency to interpret the creation
story of Genesis in terms of creation out of nothing by the Word of
God. This quickly became a settled conviction, since it provided a
rational justification for the huge claims that Christians were making
for Redemption in Christ when they spoke of his cosmic victory. For if
creation was the work of the Word of God and if Christ was himself
the Word of God Incarnate, then it made sense to claim that nothing
in the created order could call in question Christ’s victory.
THE FALL—A COSMIC DISASTER
In Greek theology, it became commonplace to interpret the Christian
story in cosmic, or metaphysical, terms. Even St Athanasius, a
Christian thinker of relatively unsophisticated philosophical culture,
interprets the Fall in terms of corruption and death, seen as affecting
the whole cosmic order. He explains why the disastrous effects of
Adam’s sin could not be arrested by his repentance by saying that ‘if
there had been only sin and not its consequence of corruption,
repentance would have been very well. But…human beings are now
prisoners to natural corruption.’ 2 Corruption, and its consequence and
sign, death, need to be arrested, and the only power equal to that is the
power of ‘the Word of God, who also in the beginning had created the
universe from nothing’. 3 Athanasius also attempts to root the nature of
corruption in the fact that the cosmos has been created out of nothing:
he speaks of ‘corruption that leads to non-being’, 4 corruption leads
creatures back to the non-being out of which they were created.
Athanasius’ unsophisticated, but evocative, ideas are constantly
encountered in later Greek theology. It is a cosmic theology in that it
is the cosmic dimensions of Adam’s Fall and Christ’s Redemption that
bring out their true significance. 5
GNOSTICISM AND THE COSMOS
But other kinds of cosmic theology had been broached among Greek
Christians. Gnosticism itself had been a form of cosmic theology. In
fact, the story of fall and redemption had been projected on to a