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The Fall, 2002 edition of Communio opens with a theme that brings into relief the distinctiveness of the Christian understanding of God: divine providence, understood as God’s tender, fatherly care for all of his creatures, especially for human beings. The troubles of the times impel Christians toward a rediscovery of the meaning of providence, not only, or even primarily, for the sake of their own peace of soul, but, above all, for the sake of the integrity of their Christian witness. Their task, now as always, is to affirm persuasively the intelligibility of God’s good creation—in light of what the Gospel proclaims about the death, resurrection, and cosmic lordship of Jesus Christ.

Olivier Boulnois opens the issue with “The Concept of God After Theodicy,” which makes a case for a christological understanding of providence that corrects the rationalism of Stoicizing theodicies both ancient and modern. Nicholas J. Healy’s “Inclusion in Christ: Background to a Christian Doctrine of Providence” lays the theological groundwork for the christological re-thinking of providence that Boulnois calls for. Proposing the cosmic lordship of the dead and risen Christ as the criterion for a Christian doctrine of providence, Healy argues that such a doctrine requires deeper understanding of the Spirit’s work of universalizing Jesus’ paschal mystery—in its unrepeatable singularity. In the end, providence is nothing other than the inclusion of all of history within Jesus’ once-only mission.

The next two articles explore divine providence in terms of a question that is unusual in contemporary theology: How do sin, grace, and redemption affect the material creation and, in so doing, shed light on the evil and suffering that, without Revelation, we might be tempted to think are connatural to it? In “‘Fallen’ Nature: How Sin Affects the Creation,” Michael Schulz, rejecting the reduction of evil to an inevitability of nature, insists on evil’s historical origin, an insistence that implies, in turn, that the fate of the material cosmos is closely bound up with man’s freedom. Kevin A. McMahon’s “Man and Woman at the Moment of Creation: A Covenantal Study of the First Sin” explores a similar theme from a different angle: in light of a biblical reflection on the relationship between creation and covenant, McMahon argues for a christological reading of the Genesis account of the first sin. In so doing, McMahon seeks to show that original sin, far from being rendered mythological by evolution, is a factor “retroactively” conditioning evolutionary history itself.

Our reflection on providence continues with an exploration of the thought of the Inklings. Lawrence D. Goodall’s “Of Universals, Angels, and Inklings” offers evidence that C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams conceived of universals as personal, after the manner of angelic powers, and thus suppose a dramatic cosmology in which responding to evil is a matter of choosing sides. In “Providence in C. S. Lewis’ ‘Space’ Trilogy,” Thomas Howard highlights Lewis’ awareness of the mysteriousness of divine providence as the encounter of divine and human freedom.

We next present two articles that, while less directly tied to the doctrine of providence, nonetheless touch on questions that form part of its background. Jacques Servais, writing on “Freedom as Christ’s Gift to Man in the Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” explores the relationship between finite and infinite freedom: man discovers his true freedom, Servais argues, precisely when he embraces, in gratitude, the gratuity of the God who cannot be degraded to a function of our projects and plans. In “Toward a Christian Theology of Inter-Religious Dialogue,” Roch Kereszty lays out the complex, mutually complementary theological criteria that must govern Christian participation in discussions with members of other religions. The Christian interlocutors, Kereszty argues, must combine allegiance to the fullness of revelation given objectively in Christ and the Church with a discerning openness to the ways in which aspects of other religions may lead to a renewed appreciation of this fullness (and, in so doing, find the way to their own deepen ing, purification, and integration into the truth of Christ).

Spirit and History features two short exegetical pieces by the great seventh-century theologian and martyr for christological orthodoxy, Maximus the Confessor (580-662). These brief works not only introduce us into the heart of Maximus’ thought, but also suggest the possibilities for a christological doctrine of providence that combines biblical theology with a profound metaphysical speculation in a seamless interweaving of many strands of the Tradition. In “Christ: The Goal of Providence” (the sixtieth of the Quaestiones ad Thalassium), Maximus, commenting on 1 Pt 1:20, shows that Christ, as the revelation of the inmost depths of the Father’s love, is also the ground of the intelligibility of creation and of its providential ordering. In “Human Freedom as the Pivot of the Providential Economy” (the sixth of the Opuscula Theologica et Polemica) Maximus demonstrates, on the basis of a theological exegesis of the Agony in the Garden, that the fulfillment of the providential economy hinged on Christ’s free, human Yes to the Father’s will—and that it was not only as God, but also as man that the eternal Son of God both worked and willed our salvation.

Notes and Comments concludes the Fall issue of the journal with two appreciations of The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann 1973-1983, an extraordinary window into the inner life of the great twentieth-century Orthodox theologian, whose rare combination of uncompromising Christian discernment and exquisite humanity is everywhere in evidence in the pages of the Journals. David L. Schindler, in “Introduction to Schmemann’s Journals,” highlights both the breadth of Schmemann’s concerns and his emphasis on the eschatological-sacramental meaning of the world—also and especially in the face of contemporary secular culture. In “Of Simplicity, Style, and Spirituality: The Schmemann Journals," Robert Slesinski likewise focuses on the eschatological motif in Schmemann’s work—a motif that underlies, Slesinski suggests, the remarkable freedom of Schmemann’s Christian judgment and the vividness of his experience of the Church as the presence of the Kingdom in the midst of the world.

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