The Divine Economy of Salvation
This is an excerpt from a thesis entitled Suffering and Death and in Orthodox Incarnation Theology submitted for consideration towards credit at St. Athanasius Theological College in Melbourne, Australia.
Suffering transformed
When Christ came to earth, he found man still grasping for an answer of the meaning of human suffering. He never gave a logical justification or some attempt to explain these difficulties away; instead He became a willing participant in it and in doing so changed the meaning, value and power of suffering forever. This is one of the keys to the Incarnation as revealed in the Church fathers. This event as one among so many is a mystery in the true Christian sense, its greatest implications are realised in the daily life of the Church that Christ instituted on earth.
In times of despair and suffering we often look at this fallen world and feel as if forsaken by God and in reality we are not alone as Christ Himself experienced something quite similar "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mk. 15:34). Rather than this being some statement about a rift in the divine relationship between Father and Son, it is an expression of the feeling of the effects of the sins we committed which Christ bore on our behalf.
In explaining this to us, the Fathers affirmed both the perfection of Christ's humanity and the purity of all the passions that he experienced and the impossibility of him experiencing, being tempted by participating in or committing sin. This is because Lord Jesus Christ experienced "... the feeling of our weaknesses… was in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin." (Heb. 4:15) The Fathers explained that Christ became man to return him from the isolation that sin created to bring him back to God. St. Athanasius illuminates us with the following:
"The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it." 1
A body like and not like ours
Our Lord Jesus Christ, as St. Paul revealed to us was the second Adam in the sense that through the incarnation, a man had again appeared who was born with the 'birthright of beauty' 2 as Adam was. St Athanasius here teaches us that it was a mortal body created out of nothing by our own but because it was His body it possessed the gifts Adam had originally been granted at birth. Humanity was originally created in the image and the likeness of God. St. Irenaeus teaches us that the image of God is a static impress of God in man but the likeness is something that is dynamic and is subject to growth. 3 Both of these were impacted by the fall but in the case of Adam, he was still a babe who was growing in likeness where Christ quite literally was as he ascended to the Cross: a perfect man.
Christ still possessed a mortal body because it had a physical generation like our own yet it was unlike our own fallen nature that was exposed to sin, death and suffering. Our Lord then submitted this spotless human nature to experience the trials and tribulations that all humanity experienced as St. Cyril explains to show the reality of His incarnation and to prove that He had not come in appearance only in the same way that he also performed miracles and great works to show that He was also divine.4
This is extended to the whole of human life as St Gregory the Theologian illuminates us by saying:
"Perchance indeed He sleeps, in order to bless sleep: perchance, again, He is weary, in order to sanctify weariness: and perchance weeps, to give dignity to tears." 5
Rather than our Lord's participation in our fallen state of weakness through His condescension of his perfect humanity being used as only a proof of his incarnation, he took on all the requirements of holy human living so that he would sanctify them and show us what it truly meant to be human and to raise us to that state, St. Cyril wrote:
"You will find each and every human experience duly represented in Christ, and that the affections of the flesh were called out into energy, not that, as in us, they might gain the upper hand, but that, by the might of the Word dwelling in flesh, they might be tamed and kept within bounds, and our nature transformed into a better state." 6
He, the Anti-Death
Lastly, it is important to mention that Christ died to destroy death. In his life, he was baptised to pave the way for our own baptism, circumcised to fulfil our requirement towards the law and lastly died so that he might rise and we would duly rise with him. Christ couldn't have died without external intervention because he possessed a perfect humanity. He was also the fullness of all Life and Truth, the very antithesis of death.
"The death of men under ordinary circumstances is the result of their natural weakness. They are essentially impermanent, so after a time they fall ill and when worn out they die. But the Lord is not like that. He is not weak, He is the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life Itself. If He had died quietly in His bed like other men it would have looked as if He did so in accordance with His nature, and as though He was indeed no more than other men. But because He was Himself Word and Life and Power His body was made strong, and because the death had to be accomplished, He took the occasion of perfecting His sacrifice not from Himself, but from others." 7
Christ was not prone to sickness for the same reason because he was not prone to the results of the fall and was as his works shown; He was a great source of healing to the souls and bodies of many. He suffered hunger and tiredness because these were physical properties of the body but sickness has a certain affiliation with death which is the antithesis to the nature of Christ.
"How could He fall sick, Who had healed others? Or how could that body weaken and fail by means of which others are made strong? Here, again, you may say, "Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?" Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection. And as to the unsuitability of sickness for His body, as arguing weakness, you may say, "Did He then not hunger?" Yes, He hungered, because that was the property of His body, but He did not die of hunger because He Whose body hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though He died to ransom all, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself." 8
We can see this in the 40 day fast that Christ performed after His baptism. Had He been a normal mortal, He would have starved to death but He was the Lord of glory and this was a requirement that He adopted through the incarnation for our sake. This shows Christ submitted Himself wilfully to a death that He didn't deserve and was against nature. It is clear to us that He didn't avoid the issue of injustice in the world on account of how He lived His life, sharing in it to a degree that surpasses any other member of the human race. We don't get an answer on the terms of Philo in words and empty promises but more powerfully by example in seeing the glory of His resurrection. This is something that has a strong impact on Church life and human life [...]
- St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, Unknown translator, St Vladimirs Theological Seminary Press, Crestwood NY, 2002 [back]
- Ibid [back]
- Adv. Haer.II,34,4 quoted by Anthony Zimmerman, In God's image and likeness, Not published, May 5, 1999, http://www.nochimera.com/zim_35imageandlikeness.html. [back]
- Book Review: The Orthodox Way, Hieromonk Patapios, date unknown, quoting Epistle 45, "To Bishop Succensus", Patrologia Græca, Vol. LXXVII, col. 236A, http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/review_tow.aspx [back]
- Gregory of Nazianzus Or. 37 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf210.iv.iv.iv.viii.html. [back]
- Cyril of Alexandria, on S. John xii. 27, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf210.iv.iv.iv.viii.html. [back]
- St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, Unknown translator, St Vladimir's Theological Seminary Press, Crestwood NY, 2002 [back]
- Ibid [back]
