Exploring the World of the Early Christians

On 15 January 2022, the YouTube channel of the International Association of Patristic Studies launched a new series, Research in Patristic Studies in the 21st Century: Challenges, Possibilities and New Methods.

Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache, AIOCS’ Founding Director, was invited to give the inaugural talk of the series. He addressed the topic “Exploring the World of the Early Christians: Methodological Prolegomena.”

In this talk, the speaker offered a succinct outline of his training, sources, and research, in so doing providing the audience with clues in regard to his method, interdisciplinary in nature. Against this backdrop, he detailed matters pertaining to his approach in the recent monograph, Humankind and the Cosmos: Early Christian Representations, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 170 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021). He focused on the holistic worldview of the early Christians, for whom the relationship between God and humankind also includes the world, God’s creation. It is this holistic mentality that patristic scholars should strive to acquire, but the same goes for our culture of dichotomies and reductionisms that has led humankind to a dangerous point of its history.

The full text of the talk can be accessed here.