Doru Costache

Sydney College of Divinity · Theology

Byzantine astral iconography developed from early Christian and ancient visual culture, with the latter via a profound process of Christianisation. In turn, the early Christian fascination with astral imagery went through stages of transformation prompted by various factors. Among these, the influence of neighbouring cultures and the widespread int...

This editorial begins by surveying the status of Byzantine science and technology as a field integral to the history of science as an academic discipline. After addressing the marginalization of Byzantine science and technology until quite recently, the editorial then proceeds to show that the origins of this field are not recent. Building on the t...

The field of Patristics, or early Christian and Mediaeval Studies, traditionally works along the lines of historical and literary criticism. But this method is not always useful, especially when it comes to complex objects and circumstances. No wonder the current trend of replacing it, more often than not, by interdisciplinary frameworks. The artic...

A chapter on deacons and diaconate in Athanasius of Alexandria. It discusses the diaconate of Christ and the Spirit, then the "diaconal" ministry of angels and the Scriptures. It then analyses Athanasian references to deacons, their location in the church and their various activities.

We discuss David Bohm's dual contributions as a physicist and thinker. First, de Grijs introduces Bohm's universe, with an emphasis on the physical quest that led Bohm to the elaboration of an original cosmology at the nexus of science and philosophy. Next, Costache takes his cue from de Grijs' explorations by highlighting the affinity between Bohm...

Book review

By taking as a pretext the concept of scientifically engaged, or science-engaged, theology, this study presents theology as a hermeneutical approach to the scientific culture of any age and as a way of communicating the Christian message in conversation with contemporary culture. So understood, scientifically engaged theology is but a new word for...

We discuss David Bohm's dual contributions as a physicist and thinker. First, de Grijs introduces Bohm's universe, with an emphasis on the physical quest that led Bohm to the elaboration of an original cosmology at the nexus of science and philosophy. Next, Costache takes his cue from de Grijs' explorations by highlighting the affinity between Bohm...

Book review

For the philokalic tradition the burning hearts at Luke 24:32 are a charismatic experience of the divine presence that can best be understood as realised, or inaugurated, eschatology. To make this assertion intelligible, first I introduce philokalic literature as a body of Byzantine writings that map spiritual experiences. Second, I provide a rough...

This volume sets out to reopen the cold case of the unity of soul and body from a new angle—by examining ‘individual embodied lived experiences of human beings’, such as ‘different social roles’ and ‘the mysterious beginning and end of human life, together with the challenges of disease, ageing, emotional reactions and diverse perceptions’ (p. vii)...

Various representatives of the early Christian and the Byzantine theological traditions interpreted the paradise narrative in Genesis 2-3 contemplatively. The same goes for their approach to the garden's trees. The patristic sources reviewed here discuss the paradisal trees as one, two, and many. In the background of this representation can be disc...

A special section of Academica, the Romanian Academy's journal (ISSN 1220 - 5737), dedicated to Basarab Nicolescu at 80. This short essay is about Christianity as a philosophical school (goes hand in hand with my book chapters "The Teacher and His School" and "Elders and Disciples") and why we need to return to this perception of Christianity. Nico...

Bronwen Neil, Dreams and Divination from Byzantium to Baghdad, 400–1000 CE, Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. xiv + 230, ISBN: 978-0-19-887114-9 (hbk). $85.

The chapter suggests a patristically based approach to the glitches in the Christian engagement of contemporary scientific culture. The solution draws on well-represented distinctions in patristic literature, such as between science and ideology, and between description and interpretation.

A survey of the Orthodox churches present in Oceania.

In this volume, Costache endeavours to map the world as it was understood and experienced by the early Christians. Progressing from initial fears, they came to adopt a more positive view of the world through successive shifts of perception. This did not happen overnight. Tracing these shifts, Costache considers the world of the early Christians th...

book review

This chapter examines the written records of the fourth-and fifth-century monastic wisdom produced in and about the ascetic milieus of Egypt. I focus on two aspects related to ageing in that literature. First, the perception of Christian discipleship as ongoing growth, which culminates in the wisdom of the 'beautiful elder'. Motivated by this under...

This article analyses and interprets three passages from Saint Maximus the Confessor’s Ambigua (The Book of Difficulties) that touch upon matters of gender, sexuality, and the connubial life. My contention is that he construed holiness as achievable by celibate people, monastics, and married couples alike. To affirm conjugal life as a form of holy...

Byzantine hymnography remains an underestimated resource regarding the reception of Genesis 1–3. Andrew of Crete’s eighth-century Great Canon contains important pointers to the Byzantine way of reading the paradise narrative, but pays less attention to the creation narrative. To decode the Canon’s take on Genesis, I consider the liturgical genre to...

This paper considers whether Orthodox theology and spirituality can interact with science and technology peacefully and creatively. The issue lies with the popular assumption that the Orthodox follow the early Christians who, supposedly, opposed science and technology. However, traditionally, the early Christians approached human resourcefulness wi...

The Orthodox Church is uneasy about contemporary science. What causes its uneasiness is not exclusively its slow reception of modern culture. An important cause is the fact that contemporary research sidelines ethical and spiritual criteria. The practical application of scientific discoveries in the area of biotechnologies provides abundant evidenc...

This handbook surveys the long relationship between the often overlapping studies of the world around us and concepts of the Divine, from the ancient Greeks to the modern eco-theology movement. From Plato to Aquinas, from Augustine to Hildegard of Bingen, from discussions of the Hebrew Bible to the environmental sciences, this opens the field of th...

Overall, contemporary scholars consider Evagrius’ Chapters on Knowledge a metaphysical work which proposes a fully fledged cosmology. This cosmology refers to the preexistence of a spiritual universe and the final dematerialisation of the cosmos. Recent scholars, however, challenge the metaphysical assumption, advocating a monastic interpretation....

The Orthodox Church is uneasy about contemporary science. What causes its uneasiness is not exclusively its slow reception of modern culture. An important cause is the fact that contemporary research sidelines ethical and spiritual criteria. The practical application of scientific discoveries in the area of biotechnologies provides abundant evidenc...

The early Christians viewed Jesus, beyond his divine and human identity, as an accomplished philosopher who revealed to his disciples the highest philosophy. Jesus did not found a religion; he founded a school which resembled the philosophical schools of the time. Central to his school was the experience of teaching and learning. The goal of his sc...

In: Peter G. Bolt and James R. Harrison (eds). Justice, Mercy, and Well-Being: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Eugene: Pickwick, 2020: 134-47. In his Chapters on Love, which should be seen as a treatise on asceticism and compassion, Saint Maximus discussed a significant theme for the monastic milieus to which the work was addressed, as well as the...

Volumul „Imnografia liturgică bizantină. Perspective critice” poate părea provocator prin titlul său. „A critica” se reduce, pentru mulți, la a înșira defecte, lipsuri. La origine însă, în limba greacă, kritēs înseamnă judecător; „a critica” presupune așadar a analiza și evalua obiectiv afirmații, cântărind argumentele. Este și sensul în care autor...

Byzantine Understandings: Genesis, Theology, and Spirituality in the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete. Abstract: The early Christian and medieval reception of Genesis 1-3 is a rich field, but Byzantine hymnography remains an underestimated resource from this viewpoint. St Andrew’s Great Canon contains important pointers to the Byzantine way of re...

An encyclopedia article on Sardica: city, Christian church, fourth-century council, traditional perceptions, modern representations, historiography

Book review

Abstract: This article addresses the Orthodox Christian representation of reality, or doctrine of creation, and the possible need to rephrase and communicate its meaning within the parameters of contemporary scientific culture. To redraft the traditional Orthodox worldview today is both necessary and largely unproblematic. Rephrasing the doctrine o...

Cambridge Core - Church History - Dreams, Virtue and Divine Knowledge in Early Christian Egypt - by Bronwen Neil, Doru Costache and Kevin Wagner https://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/classical-studies/ancient-history/dreams-virtue-and-divine-knowledge-early-christian-egypt?format=HB

Dreams, Virtue and Divine Knowledge in Early Christian Egypt - by Bronwen Neil April 2019

A Theology of the World: Dumitru Stăniloae, the Traditional Worldview, and Contemporary Cosmology. Abstract: The remarkable contributions of Father Dumitru Stăniloae (1903-1993) ranged from traditional theology to patristics, from spiritual anthropology to asceticism, and from apologetics to mystical theology. Although his attentiveness to modern c...

The remarkable contributions of Father Dumitru Stăniloae (1903-1993) ranged from traditional theology to patristics, from spiritual anthropology to asceticism, and from apologetics to mystical theology. Although his attentiveness to modern cultural trends and ideas has been at times noticed, his input in terms of bridging the traditional representa...

In August 2007, the bilateral commission for Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue in Australia published The Ministry of Oversight: The Office of Bishop and President in the Church, the outcome of seven years of collaboration. Elsewhere, in a 2012 essay, I addressed aspects pertaining to this document with which educated Eastern Orthodox readers may fe...

[ Uncorrected proofs ] Chapter in The Gnostic World, Garry W. Trompf, Gunner B. Mikkelsen and Jay Johnston, Routledge Worlds (London and New York: Routledge, 2018) 259-70. Christianity has emerged in history as a community of learners, disciples of a Teacher, Jesus Christ, and his successors, the apostles. More a philosophical school than a religio...

[ Uncorrected proofs ] Chapter in The Gnostic World, ed. Garry W. Trompf, Gunner B. Mikkelsen and Jay Johnston, Routledge Worlds (London and New York: Routledge, 2018) 426-35. The following is of necessity a scanty survey of significant moments in the last millennium of Orthodox Christian experience. Sometimes divergent, the trends and figures ment...

Book review.

Book review.

This book comprises chapters by a group of eight scholars from Australia and three from abroad, aiming to offer fresh, interdenominational and interdisciplinary perspectives on the life, thought and legacy of one of the most influential preachers and theologians of early Christianity, John Chrysostom. The contributors to this volume utilise a range...

While most scholars have dated Chrysostom's Homilies on Genesis (CPG 4409) to 388, during his ministry in Antioch, evidence from the eighth homily strongly suggests that the text underwent a literary redaction or recension in Constantinople after 401, in the wake of the anthropomorphite crisis.

[ Uncorrected proofs ] Alongside representing the cosmos as creation called to immortality, several Greek fathers of the Church sketched a triadic trajectory of the human and angelic creation. Whilst, by the Creator’s will, the destination of all created being is endless existence, for the rational creation being and being for ever are not only gif...

Book review

Well-being is a familiar term in academic literature and public discourse. It captures the imagination by addressing issues related to the social good and the quest for personal happiness. It embraces a wide variety of concerns: age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, self-esteem, health, class, education, institution and ecosystems, among many issues....

Book review http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9809.12355/full

Aspects of Nellas' integrative and dynamic anthropology, at the intersection of patristic thinking and the theory of evolution.

Book review

In search for a particularly Christian approach to matters environmental, I explore the late sixth century writing, The Spiritual Meadow or Leimonarion, by John Moschus, which discloses its author’s reverence for the environment by way of numerous examples involving Palestinian ascetics. More precisely, the stories of Moschus illustrate a cosmic me...

The Athanasian corpus offers rich information in relation to sleep and dreaming, which currently is either ignored or misinterpreted. The complex approach of the Alexandrian father emerges in a range of contradictory stances on sleep and dreaming, sometimes depicted, positively, as natural phenomena and at times warned against because of the challe...

review essay

book review

The chapter addresses aspects of the melodic imagery utilised within two Alexandrine apologies, Exhortation to the Gentiles, by Clement, and Against the Gentiles, by St Athanasius, together with their significance for the early Christian interactions with broader cultural milieus, as well as for the articulation of the ecclesial worldview. Borrowin...

The chapter considers a particular interpretive strand within patristic tradition, for which the paradise narrative in Genesis constituted a metaphor of the spiritual life with Adam as a hesychast saint – virtuous, directly connected with God and transformed by this experience. The authors and the texts discussed herein, from St Silouan the Athonit...

This collection of essays by thirty of the foremost scholars in the field will for the first time present Maximus in his political, theological, and philosophical contexts. The works and life of Maximus are covered in four parts. The first section, Historical Setting, includes an update of Sherwood’s 1952 Date-List of Works of St Maximus the Confes...

review essay

The paper considers a particular interpretive strand within patristic tradition, for which the paradise narrative in Genesis constituted a metaphor of the spiritual life with Adam as a hesychast saint – virtuous, directly connected with God and transformed by this experience. The authors and the texts discussed herein, from St Silouan the Athonite'...

review essay

Now he would speak to them themes of song and joyous hymn, revealing many of the great and wonderful things that he devised ever in his mind and heart, and now they would make music unto him, and the voices of their instruments rise in splendour about his throne. Abstract: This paper addresses aspects of the melodic imagery utilised within two Alex...

This article presents three samples of transdisciplinary-like approaches within patristic Byzantine tradition, namely, Chalcedonian Christology (in conversation with Lucian Blaga’s notion of dogma), the multilevel interpretation of Scripture in St. Maximus the Confessor, and the Maximian and Palamite ideas of the rapports between science, technolog...

The paper begins by emphasising the contemporary understanding of the universe as an encoded message that does not require either an Encoder or a meaning, to which the author opposes the richer Clementine appraisal of the cosmos as theologically meaningful and existentially enriching. Furthermore, together with addressing the current lack of intere...

Sometimes, one finds in the Maximian corpus passages that reprimand gender, womanhood, marriage, sexuality, and pleasure. Analyzing some relevant texts, mainly from his Ambigua, this article proposes that the Confessor did not dismiss gender-related themes. Drawing on Paul, Gregory of Nyssa, and his own experience of holiness, Maximus was concerned...

The article signals the challenges posed by the new cosmological paradigm, and proposes the thinking of Fr Stăniloae as a traditional solution regarding the confluence of theology and science. It addresses the author's cosmological elaborations by focusing on three main areas, the movement of the universe, the rationality of the cosmos and the anth...

The paper discusses the apologetic character of the Nyssenian treatise, pointing out the naturalistic propensities and wide scientific information of its saintly author. Indeed, the Apology displays St Gregory’s great freedom in employing the available sciences in order to complement the theological narrative of creation. This approach offers an in...

The author explores chapters five and six of the Letter to Diognetus for a traditional alternative to the problematic attitudes regarding secular society that occur in contemporary Christianity. Thus he reiterates the challenge launched by Marrou more than sixty years ago, which is to infer from the Letter – beyond its immediate import for early Ch...

In his treatise On the Divine and Deifying Participation, St Gregory Palamas introduced an important nuance. Namely, he pointed out the existence of a radical difference between the direct (deifying) and indirect (providential) ways of experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit. By emphasising this difference, Palamas did not question the Holy Sp...

This article offers a contrary view to the modern myth of "Hellenic Alexandria vs. Christian Antioch." Fifth century Christology shows that it was quite the other way round. While Nestorius' concerns were largely metaphysical, focusing on preserving Christ's divinity "untainted" by the union with humanity, Cyril explored the outcomes of New Testame...