Book reviewed by Andrew Brown, August 2025
Humankind and the Cosmos: Early Christian Representations
by Doru Costache
Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021; 415 pages
Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae
ISBN 9789004465954, first edition, hardcover
AU$219

Doru Costache is Associate Professor in Patristics at the Sydney College of Divinity. His PhD is from Bucharest, Romania, and his specialisation is (Eastern) Orthodox Christianity and theology, particularly in the patristic or early church era. He is a prolific academic writer and an ISCAST fellow deeply interested in the science–Christianity interface.

In Humankind and the Cosmos, Costache does not so much return to his beloved early church as speak to us from his dwelling there. His sense of the ongoing relevance of Orthodox theology is one of this book’s twin poles. The other is the sense that Christian faith can meaningfully engage in scientific discussion in the present day and speak theological truth into that discussion.

To show that this engagement is possible, Costache wants to demonstrate that early Eastern Christianity not only excels in the contemplative sphere but speaks to the tangible realm that interests scientists. It is not purely ethereal. “The idea of this book comes from my discovering how very little we know about the early Christian worldview and what it says about people’s place within the universe” (p. 1). While Costache manifests a genuine affinity for the contemplative strengths of Eastern Christianity, he also regards “the backdrop of cosmic evolution, the genesis of our planet, and the emergence of life on earth” (p. 5) as an indispensable part of a theological view of the world and humanity’s place in it. The historical figures studied demonstrate ways of holding the two together.

Humankind and the Cosmos showcases a series of well-known patristic figures and works, from the Letter to Diognetus and Ignatius in the Apostolic Fathers, through Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Evagrius of Pontus, Basil of Caesarea, his younger brother Gregory of Nyssa and finally John Chrysostom, all with a trend-centred topical chapter structure. Many of these exclusively Eastern church figures (p. 25) will be known to readers by name, except perhaps Gregory of Nyssa, whose non-contemplative works have recently attracted more interest from scholars looking for models of integration of Christian theology and contemporary science.

The departure point for this study represents a challenge for Costache’s thesis: “Initially the early Christians did not consider the scrutiny of the natural world on its own terms a priority” (p. 27). Was parousia expectation a factor here? If you expect to be leaving home, you might not give too much thought to the furniture and construction of the old house. Yet in a musical analogy employed by the earliest figures in his list, the harmony of the Logos-based invisible substructure of reality manifests itself in the orderly worship of well-functioning church communities (p. 86) and in the visible cosmos (pp. 90–95); creation’s song is restored in the soul of the believer through Christ. Then Clement’s vast and sophisticated viewpoint extends to “grasp[ing] the universe together with its creator” (p. 119). Costache then attempts to prove that contemplation of nature retains a strong place in Clement’s disciple Origen’s thought even though “he might not be as intensely interested in the cosmos as Clement before him” (p. 161).

At the book’s midpoint, increasing consciousness of physical nature grows in the still dominantly contemplative thought of Athanasius and Evagrius, for whom the cosmos could function as “another scripture” (pp. 178, 209) making spiritual realities available to the Christian ascetic. Costache finds in Evagrius “genuine interest in the natural world,” debunking “the hypothesis that Evagrius believed in creation’s dematerialisation and that he proposed a spiritualist metaphysic” (p. 216). But with Basil, “the early Christian representation of reality progressed towards becoming … a genuine cosmology” (p. 219). Evagrius shows genuine interest in the detail of natural phenomena. In his Hexaemeron, “he described the creation from the vantage point of the available sciences” (p. 226).

Chapter 6 is the most groundbreaking in terms of patristic scholarship, exploring the Apology for the Hexaemeron of Gregory of Nyssa as an apologetic work intended, in the words of Juan Gil-Tamayo, “to harmonise … the creation narrative and scientific cosmology” (p. 300). Finally, concerning the theological significance of humanity in the cosmic order, Costache turns to John Chrysostom, who “refutes the objection,” both ancient and modern, “that humankind’s late arrival excludes its dignity” (p. 359).

The general trend Costache distils is this (p. 12): “Initially, Christians were hesitant about all things worldly,” yet “the cosmos and the relation of Christians to it sequentially moved from the periphery to the centre of their theological reflection.” Therefore, early Christians’ “view of reality and how they inhabited the earth,” which “goes largely unnoticed in the scholarship of the early Christian world,” can suggest, Costache concludes, “a superior solution to the widespread opinion in our age—that scientific and theological perspectives are incompatible. It also reveals an important task of contemporary Christians, namely, to replicate the achievements of past generations by redrafting the doctrine of creation in the framework of today’s scientific culture.”

This is not a book for someone who feels tired of reading at the end of a tweet. It is long, dense, and academic, representing cutting-edge patristic scholarship. It is a book to be taken seriously, not just in early Christianity studies but also in science and religion. Does Costache successfully demonstrate that the early church took a real interest in the external, physical world and offers feasible models for Christian engagement with science today? He shows that figures like Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, and John Chrysostom articulate a worldview (a favourite term) that treats the external world as theologically significant, inspiring praise of God. At times, Costache optimistically reads patristic thought more amenable to contemporary values or to his own mind than I believe it really was; for example, maintaining that Gregory of Nyssa was a sort of evolutionist in any sense we would recognise by that term today (pp. 332–33) or that early Christians “became more and more aware of the divine calling to safeguard the world and to contribute to its flourishing” (p. 366). However, his program of rediscovering the profound contributions of early Christian thinkers for integrative theological thinking and apologetic conversations today, once we cope with the necessary intellectual cross-cultural transitions, is truly worthwhile. He is to be commended both for his impressive mastery of patristic thought and scholarship as well as the sheer quality of his writing. This book is very clearly written and readily comprehensible when read with time and patience. If you are serious about understanding historic Christian cosmology and anthropology, this might be your book.