Paul Blowers: "The Groaning and Longing of Creation: Variant Patterns of Patristic Interpretation of Romans 8:19-23"

Romans 8:19-23 constitutes one of the crucial Pauline texts interweaving the themes of creation and redemption, and raising the question of the prospective participation of non-human and inanimate creation in eschatological transformation.  This paper will explore four distinctive patterns of patristic interpretation of this passage: (1) the Irenaean approach, treating the text as a decisive testimony to the ultimate and radical renewal of the whole of creation; (2) the Origenian approach, variously reworked in Gregory of Nyssa and Pelagius, which posits the groaning (and rejoicing) of spiritual or angelic creation on behalf of lower creatures in a kind of cosmic mimêsis; (3) the approach of Ambrosiaster and Augustine, which focuses mainly on the effects of human sin registered in the rest of creation; and (4) Theodore of Mopsuestia’s approach, which, applies the text to the “communion” (koinônia) of creatures, and so also relates it to the Christianized Stoic theme of “cosmic sympatheia” already substantially developed in the Cappadocians Basil and Gregory of Nyssa.