FOA (friend of Athanasius)
at the Crossings Board meeting this June
S is for
Show
CS: It may have been that the Christians of Athanasius' day wondered whether a people as troubled and fearful and uncertain as they really could be loved by God and really could have a future. Many were attracted to the answer given by Arius, the pastor of a large congregation in Alexandria, and by other like-minded pastors and bishops, who assured them that Jesus Himself had been troubled and fearful and uncertain, yet the holy God had given Jesus the power to remain obedient and had called Him "Son." They held His example up to the people as an encouragement, for they, too, could be given this power and this reward.
Athanasius' predecessor in office saw danger behind this teaching, which was so comforting at first glance, and Athanasius spent his many years as bishop exposing this danger. The initial danger in this position is its assumption that all we need is for someone to show us what to do and to inspire us to do it. If one follows this line of thought, then ultimately, it is our own obedience in the midst of our struggles that will lead to our reward. Athanasius' response uses Christ in a different way. He begins by saying that it is true that people live their lives with fear and anxiety, sinning until they die.
TM: Is the human problem, then, so bad that even for the very best of us, self-salvation is not a possibility?
CS: Right. In fact, Athanasius says that no creature can save us. If Jesus is a co-suffering creature with us and nothing more, then He can be nothing except an inspiration for us. Then Jesus' obedience under stress was His own, and so was His reward. But that help is not help enough for us. Athanasius insists that it is the Creator in person who is needed to make a new creation because the problem is not merely that created humans do not know what to do or do not have the will power to do what is right. But let us hear this from Athanasius himself.
The first way, which was through Adam, was lost, and in place of paradise we deviated unto death, and heard the words, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). Then the Word of God, who loves humanity, puts on Himself created flesh at the Father's will, that whereas the first human had made created flesh dead through the transgression, He Himself might make it alive in the blood of His own body, and might open for us "the new and living way," as the Apostle says, "through the curtain (that is, through His flesh);" (Hebrews 10:20) and, "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)
TM: St. Athanasius has an approach that is different from what I am used to hearing, yet one that sounds so biblical. Often we think in terms of sinful individuals and of each person's inability to achieve righteousness by moral effort, and our need for personal forgiveness. But Athanasius's concern is environmentally large: the whole creation is lost and needs global renewal.
(In our Crossings terminology, we would say that the deadness of our created flesh is both the Advanced Diagnosis (what is wrong with us) and the Final Diagnosis, God's rejection. The new creation, that Christ becomes, is the Initial Prognosis. God's Advanced Prognosis for us is to join us to that new creation, His body, His church.)
CS: That is Athanasius' emphasis. We need this radically new "Way" because our problems are too serious. We have real cause for fear and anxiety. The world is saturated with sin and death, and we are too weak for external examples of righteousness to suffice. In this next section, Athanasius says that even if God wiped our slate clean every day by a creative Word, as at the beginning, we would fill the world with sin again and again.
[I]f God had merely spoken to undo the curse, as it was in His power, His power would have been shown, but humanity would have become such as Adam was before the transgression, having received grace from without, and not having it united to the body. ...Perhaps he would have been worse, because he had learned to transgress! That being his condition, had he again been seduced by the serpent, there would be fresh need for God to give command and undo the curse; and thus the need would have become interminable, and people would have remained under guilt not less than before, as being enslaved to sin; and, ever sinning, would have ever needed one to pardon them, and would have never become free, being in themselves flesh, and ever worsted by the Law because of the infirmity of the flesh.
TM: So sinners need pardon, clearly, but being "from without," pardon alone does not get to the bottom. It mercifully masks the symptoms, but does not cure the disease.
CS: Yes. The problem is that the Creator has cursed the first creation. In the next quotation Athanasius explains that only the Creator can reverse the curse. Furthermore, it is the Creator in person who is needed. To create something new through a mere pronouncement, as at the first beginning, will no longer do. (When he uses the adjective "originate," which means something with an origin, his point is that the Son, being eternal and divine, is not "originate.")
And how, were the Word a creature, had He power to undo God's sentence, and to remit sin, whereas it is written in the Prophets, that this is God's doing? For, "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression?" (Micah 7:18) For whereas God has said, "You are dust and to dust you shall return," people have become mortal; how then could things originate undo sin? But the Lord is the one who has undone it, as He says Himself, "So if the Son makes you free...," (John 8:36) and the Son, Who made free, has shown in truth that He is no creature, nor one of things originate, but the proper Word and Image of the Father's Essence, who at the beginning sentenced, and alone remits sins. For since it is said in the Word, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return," suitably through the Word Himself and in Him the freedom and the undoing of the condemnation has come to pass.
TM: Let me recap. Creation is lost. Actually, it is cursed. So salvation must come from outside creation. Salvation needs to be more than continual pardon, the world must be saved from the curse of futility, which only God can do, so Christ can do it.
CS: Now we can hear from Athanasius how Christ removes the curse. In commenting on Luke 10:22 ("All things have been handed over to Me by my Father; and no one knows Who the Son is except the Father, or Who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."), Athanasius points out the correspondence between our need and God's action in Christ. In Christ, God has absorbed the curse to bless permanently a new creation.
For humanity sinned and is fallen, and by its fall all things are in confusion: death prevailed from Adam to Moses (see Romans 5:14), the earth was cursed, Hades was opened, Paradise shut, Heaven offended, humanity, lastly, corrupted and brutalized (see Psalm 49:12), while the devil was exulting against us. Then God, being a lover of humanity and not willing that humanity in His image should be lost, said "Whom shall I send and who will go?" And everyone being silent, the Son said, "Here am I; send me!" (Isaiah 6:8) And then, saying, "Go," He handed humanity over to Him, so that the Word himself might become flesh and set it right in all things. For, it was handed over to Him as a doctor, to heal the bite of the serpent; as to life, to raise what was dead; as to light, to illumine the darkness; and, because He was Word, to renew the rational nature. Since then all things "were handed over" to Him, and He is made human, straightway all things were set right and perfected. Earth receives blessing instead of a curse, Paradise was opened to the robber, Hades cowered, the tombs were opened and the dead raised, the gates of Heaven were lifted up to await Him that "comes from Edom" (Psalm 24:7, Isaiah 63:1). ...For they were not "handed over" to Him, that, being poor, He might be made rich, nor did He receive all things that He might receive power which before He lacked: far be the thought: but in order that as Savior He might rather set all things right.
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FOA (friend of Athanasius) at the Crossings Board meeting this June |
CS: So, Athanasius has no disagreement with the Arians when they point to Christ's suffering. He did indeed suffer as we do, but not on His own account. Jesus suffered because He was carrying us, and this is how we will be carried through. In Jesus God unites us to Godself, suffering, weariness, confusion and all. Jesus is for us and is ours.
TM: Just as Christ had to be God to remove God's curse, He also had to be human to use His human body as a tool and means to remove the curse. As we just read in Athanasius, thus our renewal happens in Him, for us.
Being God, He had His own body, and using this as an instrument, He became human for our sakes. And on account of this, the properties of the flesh are said to be His, since He was in it, such as to hunger, to thirst, to suffer, to weary, and the like, of which the flesh is capable; while on the other hand the works proper to the Word Himself, such as to raise the dead, to restore sight to the blind, and to cure the woman with an issue of blood, He did through His own body. And the Word bore the infirmities of the flesh, as His own, for His was the flesh; and the flesh ministered to the works of the Godhead, because the Godhead was in it, for the body was God's. And well has the Prophet said "carried;" (Isaiah 53:4) and has not said "He remedied our infirmities," lest, as being external to the body, and only healing it as He has always done, He should leave people subject still to death; but He carries our infirmities, and He Himself bears our sins, that it might be shown that He has become human for us, and that the body which in Him bore them, was His own body; and, while He received no hurt Himself by bearing "our sins in His body on the cross," as Peter speaks (I Peter 2:24), we humans were redeemed from the things that affect us, and were filled with the righteousness of the Word.
CS: Now we come full circle. Fully to save creation, it needs a new "source," new "origin," which Christ provides.
Whence also, whereas the flesh is born of Mary, Bearer of God, He Himself is said to have been born, who furnishes to others an origin of being; in order that He may transfer our origin into Himself .... For no longer according to our former origin in Adam do we die; but henceforward our origin and all infirmity of flesh being transferred to the Word, we rise from the earth, the curse from sin being removed, because of Him who is in us, and Who has become a curse for us. And with reason; for as we are all from earth and die in Adam, so being regenerated from above of water and Spirit, in the Christ we are all made alive; the flesh being no longer earthly, but being henceforth made Word, by reason of God's Word Who for our sake "became flesh."
TM: So the renewal happens first in Christ and we get "plugged into" that new creation through baptism into Christ, so we have a new starting point: no longer decadent Adam but eternally glorious Jesus Christ.
CS: Note it is as human, as one of us, that Christ is eternally glorious. And that raises our aspirations!
For then, because the works were become imperfect and mutilated from the transgression, He is said in respect to the body to be created; that by perfecting them and making them whole, He might present the Church unto the Father, as the Apostle says, "without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind - yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish." (Ephesians 5:27) Humankind then is perfected in Him and restored, as it was made at the beginning, nay, with greater grace. For, on rising from the dead, we shall no longer fear death, but shall ever reign in Christ in the heavens.
For it is the Father's glory that the human who had come into being and been lost is found and that the one who has died is made alive and has become a temple of God. For, because the powers in the heavens, too, both angels and archangels, while worshiping Him forever, now also worship the Lord in the name of Jesus, this is our grace and highest exaltation, both that, even having become a human, the Son of God is worshipped, and that the heavenly powers do not consider it strange to see all of us who are united in body with Him being led into their regions. (Translation by Carolyn Schneider)
[Unless otherwise indicated the quotations from Athanasius come from Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser. Vol. 4, Select Writings and Letters of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, ed. Archibald Robertson. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987. Reprinted by permission. These were originally translated into English in the late 1800's. Carolyn Schneider has slightly modernized the English and substituted the NRSV translation of the Bible passages for the King James.]
carolyn schneider