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Introduction: The Ontological Content of the Eschata
This protological approach to creation raises the question of the role of Christ in cosmology. If the being of creation is established, safeguarded, and guaranteed solely by uncreated/created Sophia or by the divine energies, which belong to divine nature and are com- mon to all three persons of the Trinity, is there any reason to intro- duce Christology into our doctrine of creation? If the world’s being is already firmly established at the beginning, what does the incar- nate Christ contribute to creation other than the transmission of divine energies, which were already given to it by the three divine persons at the beginning? And what about the Resurrection and the Parousia? Do they have any significance for the being of creation?
At this point, another important aspect of the protological ap- proach to creation arises concerning the being of creation, namely that of the cosmic significance of death . The Resurrection (both of Christ and the eschata) has to do with the defeat and the abolish- ment of death. In a protological approach, speaking of a cosmic death make no sense since the world’s being is firmly established and guar- anteed at the beginning. Death, in this case, appears to be an episode concerning exclusively the human being. Indeed, in the minds of most believers, death is thought of as a punishment inflicted only on humans for their disobedience to God—the death of non-humans or of creation itself counts little, if at all, in their consideration or concern. There is hardly any sense of cosmic death in most people’s minds; death simply disturbs the well-being of humans. Death, in this case, is the “last enemy” (1 Cor 15:26), not of the world but only of humanity.
In the lines that follow, we shall consider the question of wheth- er the being of creation was protologically established or whether it is dependent on the creation’s eschatological state (whether being can make any sense without ever-being). How is the world sustained in existence until the coming of the last days, and in what way does the divine economy provide creation with the ever-being which it needs in order to overcome the danger of a return to nonbeing and thus truly be? We shall try to answer these questions primarily by drawing from biblical and patristic sources which will, finally, be considered in relation to other, non-theological approaches to the subject of creation.
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