Associate Professor Doru Costache presented the paper whose title is given above at “The Fall in Science and Theology” conference. The event was organised by New Zealand Christians in Science in Auckland, 27 and 28 October 2023. The conference included a wide variety of speakers, approaches, and topics, all focusing on matters pertains to the Western doctrine of the Fall in the face of modern biology, especially genetics and evolutionary science.
The slides that accompanied the presentation can be found here. The audio recording of the paper can be found on NZCIS’ podcast:
A video recording of the paper can be accessed via the YouTube channel of AIOCS, here:
Here is the abstract of the paper:
Mainstream fourth-century theologians such as Athanasius of Alexandria and Basil of Caesarea consistently affirmed creation’s natural mortality. It is from them that I take my cue. The immortality of something that had begun to exist is inconceivable. Immortal by nature is only a being that exists eternally. Accordingly, there is no way of asserting the absence of natural death at any point of creation’s continuum. In turn, Athanasius, Basil, and their traditional confrères believed in the future immortality of creation, at the eschaton, the anticipation of which they considered to be Christ’s resurrected body and the glorified bodies of the saints. This patristic outlook collides with the widespread assumption that the prelapsarian creation was immortal and that it lost this characteristic because of human failures. I am not questioning this patristic outlook; I consider it both theologically normative and scientifically sound; instead, I am interested in understanding how these early Christian theologians construed what we, moderns, call “the fall.” Especially, I am interested in seeing what “the fall” amounts to in regard to creation’s natural mortality—and whether this patristic worldview can serve us, Christians, in contemporary conversations with scientifically minded people.
5 November 2023 © AIOCS
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