The following is the complete, extracted text of the two chapters from Acquiring the Mind of Christ: Embracing the Vision of the Orthodox Church by Archimandrite Sergius (Bowyer). These chapters are presented together because they form a unified Orthodox presentation of atonement (salvation).
The Angry God of Anselm
Anselm of Canterbury’s doctrine of the Atonement has been said by some to be a key to understanding the rejection of the saving truth of Christianity by an untold number of people in the last millennium. They reject Anselm’s portrait of an angry God who is in need of being appeased; who pronounces people guilty or not. The modern Anselmian doctrine of Atonement reduces the powerfully transformative aspect of the Gospel to a juridical concept, drained of its life. The purpose of this chapter will be to briefly reveal and discuss some of the underpinnings of the Anselmian doctrine of Atonement: why they are harmful to the New Life in Christ, and by contrast, to show that the fullness of the Gospel message is found in the biblical-patristic context of the Orthodox Church. This is not a needless inquiry, but rather one which is necessary if we desire salvation.
One of the greatest miracles for people of ancient times was coming to know of the Gospel message: that the True and Living God was Love; a personal and living God Who gave His only Begotten Son, “not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17). Gods of ancient times were remote (e.g., the Greek god Zeus), murderous (the Hindu goddess of death, Kali), and even required sacrifices such as children (the Ammonite tribal god, Moloch, cf. Lev. 20:2). The concept alone that the Christian God was a personal God of mercy, love, and forgiveness, powerfully attracted great numbers; many even willingly faced the possibility of martyrdom for confessing their faith.
Christ came to bring Life to us who were dead in Adam because He Himself is “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). This is the foundation which the first Christians, from St. Paul the Apostle onward, understood as the key to salvation: that “forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil … abolish[ing] death and [bringing] life and immortality to light” through the Gospel (Heb. 2:14; ii Tim. 1:10).
For the first thousand years of Christianity, the Gospel message was not understood from the now common Scholastic mindset of Anselm. Today, Anselm’s ideas are unfortunately the most dominate perspective of Christianity in the Western world, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. The early Christians, just as today’s Orthodox Christians, understood that Christ releases us from sin by destroying its root, death. Those who have put on Christ are no longer slaves of sin, “because you are not under the Law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). For the “Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the Law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).
Anselm, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th century (1033-1109), was the father of modern Scholastic theology and philosophy. He has been seen by some to be the first to develop a doctrine of Atonement apart from the Church’s biblical-patristic heritage. By adjusting his theology to fit his society’s understanding of the time, Anselm utilizes a feudal ethic to rationally discern the unfathomable depth of the mystery of God.
Anselm can be seen as a bridge between St. Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. By using classical philosophy and logic as instruments of discovery (instead of a means of interpretation), Anselm’s doctrines made the infinite truth of God subject to a created finite intellect. In contrast, the Scriptures are quite clear that God’s revelation “is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11-12).
The current Roman Catholic position, originating from Anselm, officially states that “justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ, who offered himself on the cross as a living victim … whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men.” The question then is raised: How does this Atonement happen and who is it offered to? The Orthodox likewise see Christ as the One Who gave His life as a ransom for many.
Christ is the ransom that was paid to death as St. Athanasius the Great (4th century) says in light of Hosea 13:14: “The ransom was offered to death on behalf of all so that by it He once more opened the way to the heavens.” In stark contrast, the Anselmian Roman Catholic doctrine asserts that the debt was paid to God the Father to satisfy His infinite wrath, a byproduct of offense to His justice and honor. This doctrine of Atonement also states that sin is an affront to the Divinity, for which mere man cannot make reparation; it regards sin as a transgression in the legal sense rather than the Orthodox perspective of an illness of the heart and will. In this light, Anselm’s assumption is that a “divine honor” has been wounded and is in need of “satisfaction.” This necessitates a legal transaction by which Christ pays the Father with His own blood the debt incurred by man’s sin. The Resurrection of Christ does not occupy a central place in man’s redemption.
If God then is infinitely offended by our sin and is therefore in need of some infinite “satisfaction,” many can rightly (and unfortunately) begin to equate this God with a sadistic image of a father compelled by honor to inflict punishment. Thus God is made subject to justice. By subjecting God to this law of necessity and ascribing to Him human characteristics such as vengeance and anger, we make it appear that it is God who is in need of healing, and not man.
However, God never changes, for it is not God that is at enmity with man; but man who is at enmity with God. The foundation of a proper understanding of salvation is that God does not change: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). Thus, the Orthodox approach seeks to heal man, and not God, recognizing sin as a refusal of the Love of God, the entrance of death, and the deconstruction of the soul.
The Orthodox see the Fall of man from a medical perspective: as an illness of the heart that brings death by cutting off communion with the One Who is Life. Holistic healing is thus sought by the Orthodox with the end of restoring communion with God. The believer conquers death through participation in God’s Life through the sacraments and ascetical discipline. Conversely, the Anselmian understanding essentially declares man “not guilty,” and leaves him, unfortunately, unhealed and unchanged. This distorts the real message of Christian salvation: to “be partakers of the divine nature” (ii Pet. 1:4).
The formation of the Anselmian doctrine of Atonement is seen by modern commentators as “a revolution in theology,” beginning “a new epoch in the theology of Atonement.” This new doctrine stemmed from several factors. Foremost, a characteristic influence of the legalistic Roman mindset is exhibited in Western theologians as early as Tertullian which encourages and supports a juridical conceptualization concerning the truths of the faith. Anselm drew from Tertullian who sees man’s sin as a disturbance in the “divine order of justice,” and makes penance a “satisfaction to the Lord.”
Another strong influence on Anselm was St. Augustine. Not only did Anselm utilize St. Augustine’s concept of “limited Atonement,” but he also used his methods of theological and philosophical experimentation. After Anselm’s and subsequently Peter Abelard’s “revolution” in Atonement theology, most in the West became further estranged from the Orthodox experience. Thus arose a host of new supposed “developments” in theology from Catholic and Protestant scholars: Vicarious Atonement, which placates God’s anger; Don Scotus’ “merits” for the predestined; and indulgences, which apparently can “pay” the Church the fee for the offenders’ sins.
Four hundred years after Anselm, the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, was compelled to define the exact nature of Atonement in agreement with Anselm’s new understanding. This Council established that at the core of Anselmian Atonement was St. Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin.
The Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin, which entails all of Adam’s posterity inheriting guilt, sets certain parameters for the Anselmian doctrine that do not exist in the Orthodox biblical-patristic mindset. Due to a faulty translation of Romans 5:12 in St. Jerome’s Vulgate, St. Augustine formulates the doctrine that not only do all men inherit mortality and the inclination to sin, but they are guilty and legally liable before God for Adam’s sin. This doctrine profoundly affects the perspective of how one is saved and from what he is saved. St. Augustine makes a twofold distinction: a hereditary moral disability (the inclination to sin) and an inherited legal liability (guilty before God for Adam’s sin). The Council proceeded to anathematize all who refused to accept the doctrine of Original Sin: i.e., that all had received Adam’s guilt for his personal sin.
In this system, if Christ paid the debt to the Father, and if the sacramental life placates the wrath of the Father, then isn’t it no surprise that Protestantism developed as it did, questioning the need for the Church? It might be said that Anselm’s doctrine makes the Protestant Reformation possible, even inevitable. Consequently we must ask: How then does Christ’s saving act become effective for each person? And how is one freed from the Augustinian notion of Original Sin? For the Reformers, it was justification by faith alone, sola fide, which trusted in Christ’s vicarious sacrifice apart from the Church.
For Roman Catholics, justification came through the Pope and the Church by the grace of holy baptism. Atonement theology effectively makes the Roman Catholic Church the means of a legal justification which pronounces ‘not guilty’ through the sacraments, rather than a process which restored the innate ‘goodness’ of man.
The loss of the patristic perspective meant the loss of the full experience of the Church. Without it, Roman Catholic theology often became a narrow juridical procedure overly focused on appeasing God’s justice. This truncating of salvation is further reinforced by St. Augustine’s non-Orthodox conception of grace. For St. Augustine, it seems that man may never participate in God’s deifying energies, and therefore man and God remain forever external to each other. Ultimately, this leads to salvation not defined by communion with God, but rather primarily a moral and legal relationship.
In contrast, the Orthodox view of justification is being empowered by grace to live according to God’s will. By living according to God’s will, we effect our sanctification, thereby participating in God’s life. By being united with the One Who overcomes death, we overcome sin and death, participating in His victory, making it our own. In the Orthodox perspective, Anselm’s understanding of God’s wrath and punishment are non-existent.
The Orthodox Church teaches that Christ, by His very Incarnation, takes away the sin of the world. St. Gregory the Theologian says the passage “the Word was made flesh” (John 1:14) is equivalent to that in which it is said that “He was made sin or a curse for us” (i Cor. 5:21); not that the Lord was transformed into either of these — how could he be? But because by taking them upon him he took away our sins and bore our iniquities.
The beginning of the Orthodox view of the Atonement is the Incarnation. The middle of this process is the Cross, through which Christ, as St. Basil the Great explains, “gave Himself as a ransom to death, in which we were held captive, sold under sin, [and] descending through the Cross into hell — that He might fill all things with Himself — He loosed the pangs of death.” The end of this process was His rising on the third day. Through His rising, He “made for all flesh a path to the Resurrection from the dead, since it was not possible for the Author of Life to be a victim of corruption.”
The heart of the matter of Orthodox redemption is theosis and re-creation: “that in the dispensation of the fullness of time, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both that which are in heaven and which are on the earth, even in Him” (Eph. 1:10). The Good News is that all of God’s good creation is called to enter the Church, which is union with the Triune God. Through the union of the natures in the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ, the created world and the uncreated God are united.
In conclusion, our goal is not sin-redemption (i.e., Anselmian Atonement), but deification: that Christ might become formed in us. Through participating in Christ’s Death and Resurrection in the sacramental-ascetical life, we become living members of Christ’s Body in this world, delivered from death, the inclination to sin, and the darkness which comes from it. Being healed in our will by following the commandments of the Lord through the empowering action of the Holy Spirit, the Orthodox Christian is crucified with Christ, dying to the passions and sinful pleasures of the world (the old man), and becomes a partaker of the immortal energies of God through the Church. As Christ is continually formed in us, we become by grace everything that God is by nature. This is the Orthodox view of the Atonement; this is the Orthodox view of salvation.
Adam, the First-Created Man
The things of this world, when separated from God, deceptively promise fulfillment in the heart that they are incapable of delivering. They are created from nothing; their source is God’s creative energy (“He spoke, and it came to be” [Ps. 33:9 lxx]). Consequently, it is God Who is the fulfillment for which the heart longs. Man’s intuitive and innate search for fulfillment in the created world is inevitably a search for Paradise: Communion with God. In the quest for the fulfillment of life’s goals, people tend to have a common underlying motivation whether they are conscious of it or not: the acquisition of a perceived “Paradise.”
The account of Adam and Eve in the Holy Scriptures tells of a state in which the first-created man had communion with God, but was deceived, and lost communion through his own free choice. We will briefly explore some aspects of the biblical-patristic view of the reality of the first-created man, Adam; how he affects us, and how we can return to Eden through the Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Before one can properly examine the biblical-patristic context for understanding the Genesis account of man in the Garden, one must first be open to consider several factors. Unfortunately, the modern intellectual mind has an exceedingly difficult time in discerning the truth concerning the reality of the account of Adam in the Garden. To revisit Paradise ourselves, we must utilize other venues to understand the biblical account instead of preconceived notions and biased modern conceptions. Consequently, one must enter into a different level of perception, one which is in harmony with the vision that has been held in common for thousands of years by the faith which has received, held, and seen the Truth, living in the midst of the presence of the Lord God of Sabaoth: the Orthodox Church.
In seeking those things which are above, of course, one must not presume to be able to encompass the whole truth with the intellect, for this is the height of madness. St. Maximus the Confessor tells us “that the human intellect is not unaffected by man’s [present] corrupt and mortal nature…” for the intellect “shares in and so also suffers from the present corruptibility of the human body.” Let us then wisely begin by looking to those who have had experience concerning the Mysteries of God, the confirmed and “sure word of prophecy” (ii Pet. 1:19), looking to the miraculous unity of their vision for a way into the highest Truth: revelation, a confirmable knowledge that is by faith through God’s Grace.
Equally important when studying the origin of man is to recognize the bearing our beliefs have on our lives and actions. The question of Adam as the first man created by God is not trivial but rather a central one concerning the question of salvation. If someone believes that we are created in the image of God, they will inevitably live and treat people differently than if they think that the world, and those around them, are a result of spontaneous chance springing from primordial chaos.
Every man must have a father. Logic will tell us that everything has a beginning. Thus, having the genealogical account in the Gospel of Luke which lists Christ’s lineage from the first Adam to the Second Adam, it would be a strange inconsistency to consider the first Adam to be a non-existent allegory. If one calls into question the reality of the first-created man, it would not be long before the validity and necessity of the Second Adam, Christ, would also come into question, for they are inseparably interdependent.
Amazingly, the Jewish people have always been absolutely meticulous concerning their genealogies. We thus might even dare to think that the account of Adam in the Garden is so simplistic that it might become confusing to our ‘modern advanced intellectual prowess.’ We, too, might be beguiled: “as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so [our] minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (ii Cor. 11:3).
To rightly begin, we must first see and understand that the Genesis account is a book of prophecy. St. John Chrysostom explains that all the other prophets spoke of what was to occur after a long time or of what was about to happen; but he, the blessed [Moses], who lived many generations after [the creation of the world], was vouchsafed by the guidance of the right hand of the Most High to utter what had been done by the Lord before his own birth … therefore I entreat you, let us pay heed to these words as if we heard not Moses but the very Lord of the universe Who speaks through the tongue of Moses, and let us take leave for good of our own opinions.
Consider also St. Paul’s vision of Paradise (ii Cor. 12:2-4). St. Ambrose of Milan asks us concerning Paradise: [If it] is of such a nature that Paul alone, or one like Paul, could scarcely see it while alive, and was unable to remember whether he saw it in the body or out of the body … if this is true, how will it be possible for us to declare the position of Paradise which we have not been able to see? … The subject of Paradise should not then be treated lightly.
St. Ephraim the Syrian and St. Gregory of Nyssa explain that Paradise belongs to another level of reality, not situated in time and space, but enveloping this world and yet transcending it. St. John of Damascus tells us that it was “a site higher in the East than all the earth….” Therefore, St. Ephraim says, you should not let your intellect be disturbed by names, for Paradise [in the Genesis account] has simply clothed itself in terms that are akin to you … your nature is far too weak to be able to attain to its greatness….
Recall that even St. Mary Magdalene, when she first saw the Lord after His Resurrection, didn’t recognize Him except by hearing His voice (John 20:16). In the case of Ss. Luke and Cleopas, Christ was known in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:35). Why might this be so? St. John Chrysostom answers with a question: “Has anyone ever seen a resurrected body?” Of course not; no one had until the time of the Lord Jesus Christ’s Resurrection, and then only for forty days. If they could not then recognize the resurrected Lord Who from the Cross went to Paradise with the thief (Luke 23:43), how can we easily philosophize, without assistance, or be overly presumptuous concerning the present mystery of the Garden of Eden?
Sin and Death
Working backwards then, let us consider and examine the products and tangible ‘evidence’ of the Fall that are all too familiar yet perplexing to all: sin, corruption, and death. Using these as mirrors to reflect unseen realities, we will attempt to see through them a clearer picture of the reality of the place called Eden.
Death is a certainty in this world and indeed a great mystery. All creation is filled with life and beauty, and yet strangely everything eventually falls into decay and death. It happens sometimes so slowly that it seems somehow like a ‘natural’ process; just because seemingly ‘that is the way things are’. Why is this so? It is clear that at a personal level man has the power of life and death in his free choice. By choosing what is good and in accordance with the teachings of Christ, one gains peace and life. Conversely, by choosing that which goes against the commandments of God, one brings anguish, destruction, and death upon oneself and one’s surroundings.
Adam’s greatest sin was that he chose to live a life without God — a life apart from the source of life — which meant death and disintegration. In the biblical-patristic tradition death is unnatural and seen as an enemy that must be conquered. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (i Cor. 15:26). For it is written in the Scriptures, “For God made not death: neither does he take pleasure in the destruction of the living. For He created all things, that they might have their being” (Wisd. of Sol. 1:13-14). Man, by his own free choice, brings the possibility of death into this world, because:
God in the beginning, when He created man, created him holy, passionless and sinless, in His own image and likeness. And man was then precisely like God who created him; for the holy, sinless and passionless God creates also His creatures holy, passionless and sinless. But inasmuch as unalterability and invariability are characteristic of the Unoriginate and Uncreated Divinity alone, therefore the created man naturally was alterable and changeable… there was given to him a commandment not to eat from one tree only, so that he might know that he was alterable and changeable….
Death then is the result of the first-created man’s free will. By disobeying the commandments of God and being separated from Life, the first man was allowed to die by the mercy of God so that he would not remain forever separated from Life in “a living death.” Death is separation from God, a separation which occurs from sin. Therefore, at the heart of death is sin, “for the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Even though through the breaking of God’s commandment Adam’s soul ‘died’ and was separated from life, his body was allowed by God’s mercy to live for another 930 years, granting time for repentance, so that he might not perish forever. Because Adam and Eve had fallen into corruption, so too the children they produced inherited a similar nature infected with decay and death.
St. Maximus explains that after the fall the generation of every man was by nature impassioned and preceded by pleasure. From this rule no one was exempt. On the contrary, as if discharging a natural debt, all underwent sufferings and the death that comes from them…. Man’s life originates in the corruption that comes from his generation through pleasure and ends in the corruption that comes through death….
St. Maximus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. John Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, and others all teach that God had planned a non-sexual way for the first-created man to procreate in paradisaic conditions. Yet Adam’s transgression consequently made for a different way of procreation, a way that was entangled in corruption and decay.
The vast consensus of the patristic writings tell us that human nature inherited mortality and corruption as a consequence of Adam’s sin, but it does not receive Adam’s guilt for his personal transgression (as the Western theologians erroneously teach). Each person is responsible for their own sins, yet due to the inheritance of death, human nature has been weakened with a deep-seated inclination towards sin and passion, originating from its mortality, creating a vicious cycle of pleasure and pain.
Unfortunately, a faulty interpretation by Western theologians concerning the consequences of Adam’s sin had extremely vast ramifications pertaining to the perceptions of how man is saved and what salvation is. One dare might say that how one views Adam is how one will see Christ and His redemptive work. In fact, in the West the concept of justification is dependent on the doctrine of Original Sin. The Eastern and Western ideas concerning salvation and justification consequently are very different.
The biblical-patristic consensus thus far tells us that Adam was undoubtedly ontologically a real man, first-created between incorruption and corruption in a place beyond all human comprehension, dwelling and abiding in communion with God. Through his disobedience to God’s commandment by his free will, he was separated from the source of life, dying first in soul and then in body. From this first man, we inherit death, corrupting our will and inclining us to sin. The Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, appeared some seventy-five generations later at the “fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4); He “abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (ii Tim. 1:10).
The Tree and Paradise
Created between corruption and incorruption, St. Gregory the Sinaite says that [Paradise] is always rich in fruits, ripe and unripe, and continually full of flowers. When trees and ripe fruit rot and fall to the ground they turn into sweet-scented soil, free from the smell of decay … because of the great richness and holiness of the grace ever abounding there.
St. John of Damascus says that [Paradise] is temperate and the air that surrounds it is the rarest and the purest: evergreen plants are its pride, sweet fragrances abound, it is flooded with light, and in sensuous freshness and beauty it transcends imagination….
St. John continues, saying the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was planted in the midst of Paradise for trial, and proof, and exercise of man’s obedience and disobedience: and hence it was named the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil … to those who partook of it was given power to know their own nature.
This tree provided a boundary beyond which Adam and Eve could not go, acting like the curtain in the Old Testament Tabernacle that separated the holy place from the Holy of Holies, where the Tree of Life was. Correspondingly, the Tabernacle of the Old Testament and the Church building today are patterns of this heavenly tabernacle not “made with hands” (Heb. 9:24).
The patristic consensus tells us that, before the Fall, Adam in his natural state had a heart illumined by the All-holy Spirit. Adam’s partaking of the Tree disrupted the natural balance of perception, and his reasoning capacity became the primary faculty of perception. This caused a usurping of the primary faculty of the heart, resulting in confusion and a darkening of perception. The Tree was “good if consumed at the proper time, for the tree was theoria [the vision of God] which is safe only for those with perfect inclination.” Thus, the Tree would have become Adam’s deification if partaken of at the proper time.
As Adam partook of the Tree in Paradise, we too are faced with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which St. Maximus says is the world itself. Similarly, the world can lead us to God when it is used properly, serving as a window to see God’s infinite mercy and majesty, “for the Heavens are telling of the glory of God and the firmament proclaims His handiwork” (Ps. 18:1 lxx). But conversely, when used apart from God and selfishly for its own sake, it leads to emptiness, death, and hell.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (i Cor. 15:22)
The Troparion for the Pre-feast of the Nativity gives a clear picture of the restoration that Christ came to grant to Adam by becoming flesh:
Make ready, O Bethlehem; open unto all, O Eden. Adorn Thyself, O Ephratha, for the Tree of Life has blossomed forth from the Virgin in the cave. Her womb is shown to be a spiritual Paradise with the Divine Fruit, and those who eat of it will live forever and not die like Adam. Christ comes to restore the image which He made in the beginning.
God gave the promise of redemption as He cursed the serpent in the Garden immediately after Adam’s transgression: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). Christ, Who was born of a woman under the law, came to crush the head of the serpent by “destroy[ing] him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14).
The sacraments of the Orthodox Church are not directed at appeasing or propitiating God and His justice; rather, they are used to restore communion with the One Who is Life by conquering death and its inseparable offspring, sin. Christ destroys what St. Nicholas Cabasilas calls “the triple barrier” of separation from God: by His Incarnation, He destroys the separation in nature; by His death on the Cross, He destroys the separation by sin; and by His Resurrection, He destroys the separation of death.
Christ was born of the Virgin to have a nature like Adam’s before the Fall. As Eve was taken from the rib of Adam and Adam from the virginal ground, so too Christ was taken from the virgin earth of the Theotokos, that He might not be infected with the passiblity (corruption) and peccability (tendency to sin) that is inherited by the mode of engendering to which mankind became subject. The virgin birth of Christ is the indispensable hub which the plan of God’s salvation revolves around, making a new way for spiritual regeneration from above through His generation, being born of the Virgin that we might be born in the Spirit.
St. Maximus tells us that Christ’s “nature was without sin because His birth in time from a woman was not preceded by the slightest trace of that pleasure arising from the primal disobedience.” Thus, the True God and Creator of Adam took on all of Adam — his corruption and death — yet by not being engendered by a carnal conception, Christ avoided the instability of a corruptible will which tended towards disintegration and sin. Hence, Christ had an immutability in the disposition of His will which contributed to delivering human nature from the bondage of corruption and its effects on the will. He came to set our free choice aright because
Adam, [in] turning his disposition of will and his choice towards evil, had introduced passibility, corruption … [yet] Christ through the immutability of his disposition of will and choice, frees it from sin and restores to it, through resurrection, impassibility, incorruption, and immortality….
Hence, Christ works to reverse all that was done by the first-created man. By His Passion He conferred on us dispassion and by His death He brought us eternal life. His selfless obedience on the Cross and the incorruptibility of His will during pain, temptation, and death correspondingly healed the selfish disobedience of Adam which brought the corruption of the human will, one which came from the seeking of pleasure:
Pleasure and pain were not created simultaneously with the flesh. On the contrary, it was the fall that led man to conceive and pursue pleasure in a way that corrupted his power of choice, and that also brought upon him, by way of chastisement, the pain that leads to the dissolution of his nature.
The Gospel’s great truth is that there is salvation and healing for all people: the Cross! This is why Christ’s words to those who follow Him prove so true and powerfully transformative: “Deny [yourself], take up [your] Cross, and follow Me” (Matt. 16:24). St. Ignatius Brianchaninov explains that there is a wonderful relationship between the Cross and the commandments of Christ: when one chooses to do the commandments, the Cross is placed on our backs to carry, revealing a fallen state of the will that rebels against God which man must struggle against. The beginning of the way back to Paradise for “the old man” (Eph. 4:22) is to suffer and die with Christ; that “the new man” (Eph. 4:24) might find the Resurrection through being joined to the corporate Body of Christ, “impelling the whole of nature to rise like dough in the Resurrection of Life.”
Following the commandments, when empowered by the Spirit through the sacramental life, putting to death the corruptible will which causes the disintegration of our whole person through sin and unnatural passions; when the new man arises through baptism, empowered by the Spirit to perform virtue, he dwells in Christ by keeping the commandments, uniting himself through virtue to goodness, which is God’s energies. Therefore, the one who sees God through the purification of the heart is the one who “is crucified … to the world” (Gal. 6:14) by keeping the commandments, “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also might be made manifest in our body” (ii Cor. 4:10).
As previously stated, St. John Chrysostom tells us that Christ came to set aright our free choice for the fall was a volitional act, and therefore an injury to human will, a disconnecting of human will and God’s will … [therefore] healing must be the doctoring and restoration of the human will….
From holy baptism and chrismation onward, Christians are no longer under the dominion of sin, “for [they] are not under the Law, but under grace … for the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has made [them] free from the Law of sin and death” (Rom. 6:14, 8:3). Why? Because our “old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. 6:6). By becoming united to Christ, one body with Him through the sacramental life, we become part of His very “flesh and … bones” (Eph. 5:30), and subsequently we participate in His victory over sin and death. The holiness of the saints is due to the fact that they have united their will to the will of Christ.
Christ’s saving dispensation was of an absolute ontological necessity, for we know that “what is not assumed is not healed.” Everything that was lying in a state of corruption had to be restored by the incorruptible Word Who became flesh. It wasn’t renewed by a wave of God’s hand, but in an actual concrete action:
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil: and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily He took not on Himself the nature of angels; but He took on Himself the seed of Abraham (Heb. 2:14-16).
We can see Adam in ourselves primarily through our mortality, corruptibility, and our fallenness. Some modern Christian writers have said it is uncertain which might be a worse state: not to believe in God, or not to believe in one’s own fallenness. To become like Christ, the Second Adam, we must realize and see in ourselves the image and the marks of the first Adam, for the two are inseparably linked. It is only when we are deeply aware of the death in ourselves that we have the opportunity to know and see Christ as He truly is: the Life and Savior of all.
Thus, the importance of the ascetic struggle in this world must be an Orthodox Christian’s primary concern, not for the sake of placating God, but for healing our hearts, being purified of the passions and sins that bring death. Christianity without the Cross of the ascetic life is utopianism. To re-enter Paradise, one must follow Christ to the Cross, personally experiencing the suffering and death of the old man which, though momentary, leads us to an exceeding and “eternal weight of glory” (ii Cor. 4:17). Adam in his refusal to fast and in his search for pleasure, brought about his expulsion from Paradise, while Christ’s sufferings and death brought about healing and eternal life. Therefore we too must willingly and thankfully endure the sufferings of the flesh and disdain its pleasures; for the first restores God’s blessings while the second separate us from those blessings.
The Cross of Christ is the true Tree of Life, which is Christ Himself. Seen from this side of Paradise, in a post-lapsarian state, the Cross looks like an instrument of death, humiliation and “foolishness” (i Cor. 1:18). Yet when seen from the side of Paradise it is the Tree of incorruption, of an unfathomably luminous glory, and the very symbol “of the Son of the Living One.” St. Ephraim even says, “Greatly saddened was the Tree of Life when it beheld Adam stolen away from it; it sank down into the virgin ground and was hidden — to burst forth and reappear on Golgotha….”
By eating the fruit of the Tree of the Cross, the Eucharist, we gain that Life of immortality and deification which Adam was supposed to attain. Through the Cross, “the perfect redemption of fallen Adam,” Christ “raised us up, who were exiles far from God, whom the enemy despoiled of old through pleasure….”
The Church “has been revealed as a second Paradise, having within it, like the first Paradise of old, a Tree of Life, the Cross of the Lord.” Therefore the Church triumphantly sings:
Come, Adam and Eve, our first father and mother, who fell from the choir on high through the envy of the murderer of man, when of old with bitter pleasure ye tasted from the tree in Paradise. See, the Tree of the Cross, revered by all, draws near! Run with haste and embrace it joyfully, and cry to it with faith: O precious Cross, thou art our succour; partaking of thy fruit, we have gained incorruption; we are restored once more to Eden, and we have received great mercy.
The Person of Christ reunites in Himself heaven and earth; for wherever Christ is, it is Paradise. Nothing hinders communion with God now except for our unbelief and free choice. And yet Paradise cannot necessarily be seen as a locality from our current point of view, for we know that “the kingdom of God is within” (Luke 17:21). As St. Maximus explains,
[the] inheritance of the saints is God Himself, [and] he who is found worthy of this grace will be beyond all ages, times and places: he will have God Himself as his place.
The whole world is drawn back into Paradise through our union with Christ.
Adam received the curse: “Cursed is the ground for your sake … thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth” (Gen. 3:16-17); for this cause, Christ received the crown of thorns. Adam realized he was naked and was expelled from the garden; Christ hung naked on the Cross, bringing us back into Paradise. The sword was placed to guard the Tree of Life; the sword that pierced Christ’s side removed it. Adam stretched out his hands in disobedience; Christ stretched out His hands in obedience to the Father. Adam ate of the forbidden Tree out of pride, wanting to become like God; Christ tasted gall and bitterness in humiliation and the unthinkable self-emptying of His divinity (Phil. 2:5-8). As St. Paul says, “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as all in Adam die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (i Cor. 15:21-22).
In short, Adam failed to fulfill his calling; but Christ, point-by-point, set aright the stumblings of the first-created man. God foreknew Adam would fail; nevertheless, the Incarnation would have taken place, for Christ is the Lamb of God who “was foreordained before the foundation of the world” (i Pet. 1:20). The Lamb would not only take away the sins of the world and destroy death, but also fulfill the “mystery from eternity” (Col. 1:26): that at the “fullness of time” (Eph. 1:10), God would recapitulate all of creation in Christ.
For St. Maximus, the Incarnation is the primary reason for the creation of man — so that God might “be all in all” (i Cor. 15:28). God had an ineffably good plan for created beings long before the ages and before those beings. The plan was for Him to mingle, without change on His part, with human nature by true hypostatic union [i.e., union in His person], to unite human nature to Himself while remaining immutable, so that he might become a man, as He alone knew how, and might make humanity divine in union with Himself.
At the very heart of the reason for creation is the Incarnation; and subsequently, the deification of all of creation. This is the Gospel: that the old Adam was created for the Second Adam! For it was for the new man [i.e., Christ] that human nature was created in the beginning … for it was not the old Adam who was the model for the new, but the new Adam for the old.
Adam was made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26) and Christ is that image of God (Col. 1:15, ii Cor. 4:4).
Therefore, our worldview must radically shift. Christ is not only the Savior, but the Alpha and the Omega; He is the archetype towards which every created thing tends, for all things “were created by Him and for Him” (Col 1:16), to be united with Him. It was Adam who was formed in the beginning to be able to receive God so that he might be a partaker “of the divine nature” (ii Pet. 1:4). Christ, trampling down death by death, brought Adam back to life, and by virtue of His Incarnation made Adam a partaker of the Life of God.
We can thus conclude that Adam the first man, being created in a way that is beyond our understanding, through his disobedience infected human nature with corruption, sin, and death. Christ, the Second Adam, came, and through the Tree of the Cross conquered that death coming from the first Tree. By destroying death, He destroyed death’s inseparable companion: sin. Consequently, when we are united in the sacramental life to the Church, the real and living Body of Christ, we are freed from the power of sin and death. By grace, our will is empowered to fulfill the commandments, restoring the image of God in us, bringing about His likeness in us.
Thus the whole creation begins the movement to attain to its end. Through the dynamic transforming action of the Church, the uncreated and the created are joined in an inseparable marriage, without confusion, division, or change, through and in the Body of Christ. Thus begins the restoration of Paradise in this world which awaits the end of this process after the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.