This does not mean that there is not a place for an
understanding of God's just and righteous judgement against sin, his hatred and
condemnation of sin, his punishment of those who turn to darkness and harden
their hearts. But this is not what Anselm teaches. The more I study our own
Orthodox Fathers - St Athanasius, St Cyril and St Severus - the more I am
filled with their own sense of the deep and abiding love of God for mankind,
and the sense that the whole of the Holy Trinity is involved in earnestly
desiring the renewal of mankind in life above all else. The idea that one of
the Holy Trinity had to somehow become an object of hatred by another is far,
far from Orthodox.
I will not fill this forum with extensive passages from the
Fathers, but I can do if necessary, and perhaps I will write a paper explaining
my understanding. I need to write something for the next edition of the British
Orthodox Glastonbury Review in any case. But I will try to summarise my
understanding.
God, the Holy Trinity, created man as the object of divine
love. Looking upon Adam and Eve He said that what He had created was good. Man
was created from dust, and like all created beings was naturally mortal and
corruptible (corruptible is not the same as corrupt). But Adam and Eve received
the breath of life, the Holy Spirit, who was breathed into them and granted
them the gift of immortality and incorruptibility. This blessed life in the
Garden of Eden was contingent upon one thing only, that the law of God which
said 'you shall not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil' was not
broken. As long as Adam and Eve preserved themselves in obedience they retained
the gift of the Holy Spirit, and would have lived for ever in a state of
happiness with God.
But Adam and Eve were tempted, and by the exercise of their
own free will they chose to satisfy their own pleasure, and by choosing other
than God's will they fell into sin. Sin is nothing other than the exercise of
the human will apart from God. The Fathers are very clear that sin has no existence
at all. It is a wrong choice. A choice for self and not for God. When Adam and
Eve chose other than God they broke the one command they had been given, and
the curse fell upon them. Dust you are and to dust you shall return.
The Holy Spirit withdrew from Adam and Eve, it cannot dwell
where there is sin. Adam and Eve found themselves left in their own human
nature - mortal and corruptible. Human nature was not changed. St Cyril and St
Severus are absolutely insistent that our human nature has not become
corrupted. But our hearts are without the stabilising grace of the Holy Spirit
and our wills are shot to pieces, choosing other than God all the time. Yet
even when the curse fell upon Adam and Eve our Fathers teach us that this was
an exercise of God's mercy and love. It would have been a terrible thing if
mankind was allowed an immortality in sin, and so the length of a man's life
was cut short by his natural mortality. Even more, God granted that the soul of
a man might retain the gift of immortality so that it would always be drawn
beyond itself to the spiritual heights of heaven - which is why every man is
filled with a yearning for that which is eternal.
Cast out of Eden, man was doomed to suffer, to hunger and
thirst, and eventually to suffer a bodily death. Yet there was a greater doom,
since having lost the Holy Spirit he was already in a state of absolute death,
of separation from God.
Each of us is born into this condition of mortality and
corruptibility. But we are not born sinners. We are not born corrupt. Our human
nature is as it was when God created it and saw that it was good. Yet because
we lack grace and the Holy Spirit we all of us find that our will is turned
this way and that and quickly finds itself bound by sinful habit, ignorance and
self-love. We are born mortal, but not sinners. We choose to sin.
Yet we are still under the curse and in the power of death.
Not even so much the death of our bodies but the death of separation from Life,
from God Himself who was the true life of Adam and desired to be the true life
of all mankind. The ultimate problem which mankind faces is the righteous
judgement laid upon Adam which we all suffer the consequences of. Even if each
one of us stopped sinning, or somehow had never sinned throughout our whole
lives we would still be lost, not because our humanity is corrupt and sinful -
this is absolutely rejected by the Orthodox Fathers - but because we are all in
a state of gracelessness, and we all naturally lack the Holy Spirit. Even a
sinless man would suffer all of our human frailities and would die. Even a
sinless man would be left apart from God for eternity, because all of mankind
is in the state in which God's judgement upon Adam left us - we are mortal and
corruptible and do not have the breath of Life in us.
When the Holy Trinity willed to save mankind from this state
it was not possible that the curse be lifted simply as an exercise of mercy. As
has been said elsewhere in this thread, the mercy and righteousness of God must
both be satisfied. But the Fathers do not teach that God was so angry, or
filled with such wrath, that only a divine sacrifice could appease Him. Far
from it. The work of salvation is the will of the whole Trinity, which loves
man and wished his salvation.
No mere man could save man, because even a perfectly holy
life could not take away the curse which was justly spoken. Rather, it was
necessary that a new humanity be created, not by changing the substance of our
humanity, but by renewing the divine relationship with man so that the Holy
Spirit could once more take up a habitation in our hearts and souls.
The Word Himself became man as we are, save for sin. This
means that he took our own humanity from the Virgin Mary, a humanity which was
mortal and corruptible, but not corrupt. It was liable to suffer, to hunger and
thirst, and to die. If he was to save mankind then he must unite our own
humanity to himself, and not some other humanity that was not in our situation.
Being mortal and corruptible it was found in the state of being under the curse
of God. He shared our own condition, caused by sin, by Adam's sin, but he never
chose other than the will of God, and therefore there was never any sin in him,
and though his body was physically corruptible and liable to suffering and blamesless
passions such as hunger, there was never any trace of the moral passions which
we allow to grow and flourish in our own hearts.
The Fathers teach us that one of the reasons why our Lord
took our humanity by means of a Virgin Birth was not because he had anything
but the highest regard for the sancitity and holiness of marriage, but because
he wanted to show that he was the firstfruits, the founder, of a new spiritual
humanity in which those who were to be united with him would be sons and daughters
of God.
What did the Word do in his incarnation? The Fathers teach
us that it was necessary that he lived out our human life in obedience. He is
described many times as 'taking up the fight which Adam lost'. So we must
understand the incarnation as replaying what happened in Eden. In the Garden,
Adam, the man who held our human destiny in his hands, blew it in a big way.
Now in his earthly life, and clearly in the Garden of Gethsemane, the same
contest happens again, but this time Christ, the Word Incarnate says 'Your will
be done'. The failure of Adam had been redeemed in the obedience of Christ.
But this was not enough. A perfect human life had been lived
in obedience, which was the basis for the renewal of man's relationship with
God. But the curse remained. The curse was not an act if God's implacable
anger, but a necessary provision for the salvation of man. Therefore it was
necessary that the power of death, true death, be broken by an exercise of
power by the one who is true life. Death needed to be destroyed from within.
And to be destroyed from within it needed to be experienced by one who was
mortal and subject to death, therefore the Word became mortal in our own
humanity.
We see several features in his death. He died on the cross,
which the Holy Spirit had inspired the prophets to speak of as a cursed manner
of death. He was lifted up into the air, as Moses lifted up the golden serpent
in the desert for the healing of the people. He was unjustly accused of sin
when there was no sin in him at all. Even in his burial he was laid in a
borrowed tomb, signifying that the death he endured was not his own but was
that which was due to us.
If he sacrificed himself, and he said, 'No-one takes my
life, but I lay it down', then who did he sacrifice himself to? Certainly not
the Father, who had sent him to do this work of salvation - for God so loved
the world. Certainly not to the Devil - the prince of this world has nothing in
me. But surely he offered himself as a sacrifice of love for us. He did not die
INSTEAD of us - because we were already dead. But he died WITH us so that we
might live, might experience his life.
What happened when He died? In the first place he
experienced that separation of body and soul which we call death. His soul
descended to Hades (which I will not attempt to define) and brought out the
souls of the righteous to Paradise (which I will not attempt to define). His
body was preserved free from corruption - as the Fathers teach us - and as it
is written in the Psalms. Then on the third day, by an exercise of his power,
he destroyed death. A holy man destroyed the power of death. The curse had not
been taken away, in the sense of being quietly forgotten. Rather the Word
Incarnate, as a mortal man, died and then came out the other side.
A holy man, a perfect man, could not achieve this. The best
he could have achieved was a sad commendation by God, well done, but sorry you
are still cursed, you are still separated from God by true death. But the Word
Incarnate could not only live a holy life, but he could die, and more than that
he could raise himself from death.
But what does it mean for us? It means that a man, the
Divine man, representing all of mankind, has made a way through death to life
for us all. This Divine man has a humanity which is filled with resurrection
life, true Life, and with the Holy Spirit. Now we can be united with this man
and be born again into a new humanity. His life becomes our own. We participate
in this life by faith and by the sacraments. These renew in us the presence of
the Holy Spirit. He dwells in us not because we are perfect and holy but
because Christ is and we belong to Christ. By faith we cast ourselves in
humility before God alone and ask Him to have mercy on us. By baptism and
chrismation God unites us to Christ and we receive the benefits which He has
won for mankind. We receive the Holy Spirit who is our life, our true life.
Death is overcome for us and in us. Our turning to God in faith and repentance
allows God to forgive our sins, but forgiveness of sins is not all that we
need. We need both forgiveness AND the life of the Holy Spirit. Our sins are
forgiven because Christ, the Word Incarnate, has taken upon himself our death
and in swallowing up the power of death over us he has taken away the power of
the curse and has made it possible for our sins to be forgiven. He has lived an
obedient life on our behalf - as Adam could have done but did not. And so we
are able to say - do not look at my sins, Lord, but look at the obedience and
holiness of your own son.
So why do we still die? Well the curse has not gone away. It
was and is a righteous judgement against sin and against man who sins. It had
an effect because of Adam, and that effect persists. We are mortal and die as
mortals. But by faith and the sacraments we are united with God and follow
Christ through mortal death to life. We have already received the Holy Spirit
as a guarantee that we will rise to true life, because the Holy Spirit does not
dwell in those who are subject to death. If we have any experience of the Holy
Spirit at all then we can have faith that what has been begun will come to
fulness and fruition in the life beyond death. Our sins have been forgiven
because Christ has offered himself as a man who has done no sin, and who bears
the consequences of our sin himself. He entered our death and took it upon
himself.
But Christ has made a way for us through death to life. We
follow in his footsteps. We are baptised, we fast and pray, we allow ourselves
to be despised and treated as dead in the eyes of the world, we suffer and
eventually we die. But this is not the end, it is the means of passing beyond
the power of the just judgement of God and being restored to the place of
blessing and life.
Christ did not die to satisfy God's anger. He died to
manifest God's love. He died for us all, not standing in our place in the face
of an infinite wrath, though we must not forget that God is indeed angered by
our sin, and did indeed bring a just judgement and chastisement upon Adam and
us all, but even before the judgement was made God had already - as our Fathers
clearly teach - prepared a way of salvation to deal with the outcome of Adam's
sin, which he foresaw. He has always acted in love towards us, even before he
created us, and even when Adam sinned.
If we are found in Christ then mortal death holds no fears.
It is the path to life. It frees us from the power of the curse and brings us
to the place of promise. We can experience this now, if we are faithful. Life
in the midst of death. Life in the face of death. Life with power over death.
If I die surely I will live.
The teaching of Anselm reminds us that we should not
diminish the offence of sin in the eyes of God. It is death to us. It is the
opposite of life and therefore is anti-God. It repels God. But we should not
turn to Anselm to remind ourselves of the cost of our sin, and its
offensiveness. He is not Orthodox. He teaches a deformed Christianity. We must
always turn back to our own Orthodox and trusted Fathers and see how they
explain these things. And we can find much in our own Fathers about the
seriousness of sin. We should not base our theology on a Roman Catholic
teacher, this will lead to imbalance.
No mere man could save us. The judgement of God against us
was indeed an infinite judgement which could not be overturned. But it was
always the judgement of a loving Father, not an angry, wrathful and distant
deity. Only the Word Incarnate could overcome the divine judgement by
participating with us in the outcome of that judgement, by living with us and
for us, by dying with us and for us, and by rising to new life in the Holy
Spirit for us. God is love, not wrath. 'God so loved the world', not was 'so
angry with the world'.
My every sin deserves death and is a slap in God's face. But
God knows what I am like. Christ knows what I am like. Yet still I am offered
new life in Christ. He allows me to share in his renewed humanity though there
is nothing in me that warrants such kindness. All of this demonstrates to me
the overwhelming love of God towards us.
Penal substitution as popularly taught does not do justice
to God's love, nor is it rooted in the teaching of the true and Orthodox
Fathers. This is not the teaching of St Athanasius, St Cyril or St Severus.
Justice indeed had to be served, and the Fathers are constant in this theme,
God could not simply overturn His judgement, but this is never because he is so
angry, or because he is offended. He knew what we were like before he made us,
nothing is a surprise. Even his judgement is a mercy, as St Severus and St
Cyril teach us. And even while he was angry with a righteous indignation
against Adam and Eve, and against each one of us who follows them in sin,
nevertheless he was always loving with a perfect love towards those he had
created and chastised them and us rather than punishing us as we truly
deserved.
I could write much more, but I hope that this short summary
explains at least my own understanding of these things.
God bless all who seek to understand the truth, may the Holy
Spirit lead us into truth
Father Peter
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