In his essay “Created in Incorruption,” Fr. Damascene of St. Herman’s Monastery in Platina, gives a detailed synopsis of the Patristic doctrine of pre-lapsarian creation, and the effects of the fall on mankind and the cosmos.
The theology of creation and salvation in Orthodox Christianity upholds the centrality and kingship of mankind while simultaneously embracing a cosmological vision that is largely absent in western Christendom. A common characteristic of all creation is corruption and death, and yet we are told that God is not the author of death (Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-14), and that all of creation awaits its redemption through the revealing of the saints (Romans 8:19-22), when all of heaven and earth will be united to God (Ephesians 1:9-10).
Man's body is closely related to its destined realization. As man is a composite of body and soul, the body too is called to submission to the Divine Logos, and through dominion over the irrational part of himself, divinity is mediated also to the body which thus participates in the attainment to the likeness of God. Man occupies a “middle” position in creation, straddling the division between the material world that we inhabit and the spiritual world of the angelic powers.
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