Abstract
Paul M. Blowers,
Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety
, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2012; 432 pp.: 9780199660414, £85.00/$160.00 (hbk)
This book is a development of the author's chapter on early Church doctrines of creation in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)). Like that earlier work, this monograph evinces his comprehensive grasp of primary material (both well known and obscure) and his keen eye for the relevant detail. The book offers a thorough overview of the development of the doctrine of creation in the early Church, situating individual authors within particular contexts and yet also integrating these writers into a longer narrative of development. In offering such a wide-ranging overview of this important subject, the book is a significant contribution to scholarship. Its author is to be commended.
The book has nine chapters. Its central argument is that the doctrine of creation as it developed in the early Church (both before and after Nicaea) was shaped less by philosophical cosmology than it was by a continued, centuries-long project to trace – and to participate in – the divine ‘strategy’ (Blower's ‘virtual if not literal translation of “economy”’, oikonomia (p. 307)) as it was ‘performed’ in Scripture and in creation itself. The first three chapters offer an introduction to the topic, tracing the cosmologies of Greco-Roman and Hellenistic-Jewish thought. Following this, a chapter covers the development of normative limits for creation theology in the early Church, a theology which developed around a narrative of divine oikonomia. In the middle part of the book, a chapter on the theology of the specific act(s) of creation is sandwiched between two sections on the exegesis of Scripture. The book closes with two chapters in which Blower outlines the ‘dramatic’ character of early Church doctrine on creation, focusing first on the incarnate ministry of Christ as the performed fulfilment of the ‘plot’ of the divine play, before considering the manner in which doctrines of creation structured the Church's position on liturgy, the ethical use of nature and ascetic discipline. Along the way, Blower demonstrates how Christian thought on creation intersected with developing doctrines on the Trinity, eschatology, salvation, baptism and so on.
Underlying Blower's project is an engagement with contemporary Christian thinkers (such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth and Hans Frei) who have found in ‘drama’ a productive field for theological thinking. This produces a problem, however. The way Blower handles his central organizing theme of ‘drama’ is somewhat ahistorical. Little discussion is offered of early Christian responses to theatre, dance and mime. Furthermore, given the book's focus on concepts deployed in ancient grammatical and rhetorical theory (e.g. oikonomia or anakephalaiōsis (i.e., ‘recapitulation’)), the lack of a discussion on the role of education in forming these concepts is regrettable. It is true, however, that such treatments already exist (e.g. Leonardo Lugaresi, Il teatro di Dio: il problema degli spettacoli nel cristianesimo antico [II–IV secolo] (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008)) and to cover them here would make a long book even longer.
Blower has responded to the need for an overarching and articulate treatment of early Christian doctrines of creation. The book he has produced shows us that a sound knowledge of these doctrines is crucial to thinking about theology more generally, both ancient and modern.