God Created the Human Body to Be His Dwelling Place

“For as God created the sky and the earth as a dwelling place for man, so he also created man’s body and soul as a fit dwelling for himself to dwell in and take pleasure in the body, having for a beautiful bride the beloved soul, made according to his own image.” (PSEUDO-MACARIUS: THE 50 SPIRITUAL HOMILIES, p 243)

The monk known as Pseudo-Macarius writes in the 4th Century, however the idea that God created the human in order to dwell or tabernacle in humanity is well attested in the First Century.  In the Didache, we find this as part of the Eucharistic prayer:

“And after you are filled, give thanks thus:

We give you thanks, Holy Father, for your holy name, which you made to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge, faith and immortality which you have made known to us through your servant Jesus.”  (Louis Bouyer, EUCHARIST, p 116)

A Year for Renewal

Happy New Year!

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”  (Luke 4:18-19)

Life in the Church is about new beginnings – whether repentance, baptism, Pascha, Pentecost, Sundays or New Years.  All give us a chance to begin again, to experience a renewal of heart and mind.  From the 2nd Century we read in the Christian document, Epistle of Barnabus, how God is working to renew us, to regenerate us as His children.

He has thus renewed us in the remission of sins, making us in another pattern, as though our lives were that of an infant, making us completely anew. For Scripture is speaking of us, as he says to the Son: “Let us make humanity after our image and likeness, and it should rule over the beasts of the earth and the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea.” (Gen 1.26)  (On the Two Ways Life or Death, Light or Darkness: Foundational Texts in the Tradition, Kindle Loc. 1273-77)

We are spiritually being refashioned, transfigured and transformed in Christ.  Spiritual renewal is not a one time event, but a lifetime of growth in Christ.

Racism, Prejudice and the Good Samaritan

“Orthodoxy condemns in an irrevocable manner the inhuman system of racial discrimination and the sacrilegious affirmation whereby such systems claim to be an in agreement with Christian ideals. When asked “who is my neighbor?”, Christ answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Thus, He taught us to demolish all barriers of enmity and prejudice. Orthodoxy confesses that each human being – independently of color, religion, race, nationality or language – is a bearer of the image of God, is our brother or sister, an equal member of the human family.”  (from The 1986 Chambesy statement, found in For the Peace from Above, p. 82)  

See also my post Feeling the Sting of the Good Samaritan Parable

To Be Human Is To Be Like God

We can begin to expand on this by looking at what it means to say humanity is created in the “image of God” (Gen. 1:26-27; 9:6), a metaphor that is scarce in Scripture but that has come to play a huge part in Christian discussions of the uniqueness of human beings. “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image’” (Gen. 1:26). Today there is fairly widespread agreement that, as used in Genesis at least, image does not refer to a possession or endowment (like mind, reason, free will) but is a relational term. That is, it makes no sense without considering our relation to God – as God’s unique “counterpart” or covenant partner (we can know and love God in return) – and because of that, to other creatures, human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate.

Crucial also is the notion of representation: as God’s counterparts, human beings are God’s earthly representatives, his vice-regents, in the way that an ancient monarch was seen to represent a god or a physical image to represent a king. Bound up with this is the idea of resemblance or similarity: as God’s partners, humans are in some sense like God (hence the pairing of image with likeness). In short, to say that we are created in God’s image is to say that we are created as God’s unique counterparts and hence God’s representatives on earth, embodying, as creatures and alongside other creatures, the action and presence of God in and to the word.”

(Jeremy S. Begbie, Resounding Truth, p. 202)

Christ: God’s Image, Human Likeness

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:4-11)

The Scriptures reveal to us that Jesus Christ is both God’s image/ God’s icon and is in our likeness.  We in turn are made in the image of the incarnate Christ.

All icons are forms of  the theological artistry of Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is one of the few forms of Christianity in which beauty is central to its theology and which has a unique art form, the icon, which is purely theological. The icon is said to be theology in lines and color. Truth and beauty are the same reality.

In Genesis 1:27 we hear, “God created a human in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” The Bible has God being the first iconographer, for the word we read in English as “image” in Greek is icon.   In a sense all icons are icons of God – and yet, they are icons of humans. They reveal the image of God in each holy person portrayed in the icon.  For God came in the flesh (John 1:14) to reveal what we humans are to be, and to reveal that from all eternity God’s plan was to become human. The true human is in the image of God. As we read in John 10:34 – “Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’?”

And since we each have the image of God embedded in ourselves from the moment we are conceived, we too are able to share in the divine life. We do not have to begin our search for Christ or God out there somewhere, for the Kingdom of God is within each of us. We can find that icon which God put in our hearts. God’s own image is imprinted on each human. God is not just a God distant from us but is present in us. No amount of sin could take that away. No matter how sinful you are and no matter how distant you might feel God is, God is never further away than a prayer.

If we want to know something about this God who created us, all we have to do is look at the people around us, for each is created in the image of God. We learn about God and about ourselves through truly seeing others, not with our eyes, but truly from and through our own heart. This is why love for one another is so central to the teaching of Christ. It is the only way to see others in God’s image. It’s the only way to see the world as full human beings.

If we want to know what God had in mind as the perfect human being, we look not to the creation of Adam, but rather to the incarnate Christ. For Adam is created in the image of the incarnate Christ. It is not until Christ comes that we see upon whom Adam was modeled and only with Christ and in Christ do we see fully what it is to be human. We don’t go back in time to try to discover what Adam was at the beginning of creation, rather we look to who Christ is, even now in the Kingdom of Heaven.

In Orthodoxy, we think of Adam and Eve not created as the perfect human beings, but rather as a potential human beings. Eve and Adam were given opportunity to mature into perfect humans, but they like all of us chose to follow their own path rather than God’s. But we all have before us the potential to become the human beings God intended for us to be. That is the nature of the spiritual life, of taking up the cross and denying yourself to follow Christ. For Christ to become fully human, he had to empty himself. If we want to follow Christ and become fully human we too have to learn how to empty the self, to deny the self, so that we can be united to Christ.

Orthodoxy does not have Eve and Adam falling from the heights of perfection into some abysmal depraved state. You won’t find Orthodox Church fathers and mothers talking about original sin, a phrase that dominates in Western Christianity but was unknown in the Christian East.

A key phrase in the writings of St. Paul is

Therefore as sin came into the world through one human and death through sin, and so death spread to all humans because all humans sinned— (Romans 5:12)

It is not sin that spread to all humanity. We are not controlled by the power of original sin. It is mortality that has spread to all people, mortality is the true enemy of humanity. Death is what Christ came to destroy through his own life and resurrection. For us Orthodox, salvation is made known not on the cross but in the resurrection of Christ.

Adam and Eve were given free will and could choose their way to godly perfection, or not. But they, like each of us continued to be in the image of God. We never lose that perfect image of God in ourselves no matter how much we fail as humans or sin against God.

Eve and Adam were created to be who and what Christ is. If we want to know what a human being who is perfect would look like and do, we have to seek out Christ. For as St. Paul says

Christ is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, … For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:15-20)

As Christians we are to share in that ministry of reconciliation which Christ began – uniting all things in heaven and on earth in Himself. What Christ is, we are to become. Again St. Paul writes

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

In Christ, God became human that we humans might become like god, to become godly, to share in the divine life. This is always what God intends for us His human creatures.

In 1 Corinthians 15:47-49, St. Paul promises us:

The first human was from the earth, a human of dust; the second human is from heaven. As was the human of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the human of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the human of dust, we shall also bear the image of the human of heaven.

We are created to share Christ’s glory, which is to share the glory of the Lord.

It is true that we share in Adam’s nature, we are made from the dust of the earth, which in turn is made from the dust of the stars. We share in Adam’s nature, but so too Christ has come to show us that our true nature is not in the dust but in the heavens and in the heavens of the heavens. In Christ we are united to divinity, we share in the life of the Holy Trinity. We experience that life on earth and are lifted from earth to heaven.

Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.    (Ephesians 4:22-24)

We are in Orthodoxy endeavoring to be more human, not less. We are not trying to escape the earth or our bodies, for God came to earth to become incarnate as a human being. Spirituality and salvation both consist in deification, theosis, which means becoming more human, becoming like Christ, the God-man, in whose image we each are made. We each are to become, as St. Peter says (2 Peter 1:4), “partakers of the divine nature.”

( A message delivered on 20 September 2018 at Ohio Northern University)

If You Want to Be Perfect

In the Gospel lesson of Matthew 19:16-26, a man comes to Jesus and asks Him:

 “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?”

Jesus replies by telling the man to keep the commandments, but then adds this:

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

Not only does this man walk away from Christ, but even His disciples are astounded and ask:

 “Who then can be saved?”

St. Basil the Great comments:

“‘Become perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Mt 5.48]. Do you see how the Lord restores to us that which is according to the likeness? If you become a hater of evil, free of rancor, not remembering yesterday’s enmity; if you become brother-loving and compassionate, you are like God. If you forgive your enemy from your heart, you are like God. If as God is toward you, the sinner, you become the same toward the brother who has wronged you, by your good will from your heart toward your neighbor, you are like God.’

Note:  In Basil’s theology the ascetical practice of both outwardly displaying virtue and inwardly cultivating a disposition of a godly attitude, from which right action springs, reforms the likeness. Modeling ourselves after the gratuitous precepts of Christ reorders and rejoins the likeness to the image. Thus, he exhorts the reader “to put on Christ,” because “drawing near to him is drawing near to God. Thus the creation story is an education in human life. “Let us make the human being in our image.” Let him have by his creation that which is according to the image, let him also come to be according to the likeness. For this God gave the power.”    (On the Human Condition, p. 44)

According to Genesis 1:26,  “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . .’”  Because the Church Fathers thought every word of Scripture was significant, they believed that the image and likeness were two different things.  Each human is made in the image of God – each of us in a mysterious way is an icon of God.   But, we were not made as perfect beings – we co-create ourselves with God – we have to choose to be in God’s likeness, and we have to work on that.  That is the point of asceticism and self denial, that we make ourselves conform to the likeness of God – to become more Christlike.  We become more perfectly human when we deny our self, our passions, and become more like Christ – loving, merciful, forgiving.

If we live just according to what we often think of as our human nature, we live just according to the nature we inherited from Adam.  But this is not perfect human nature.  We have to strive to be perfect as God is perfect.  That is why Jesus concluded today’s Gospel lesson with the words:

“With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

St. Paul teaches us this same lesson with his words:

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.   (1 Corinthians 15:45-50)

Crown Them With Glory and Honor

The Groom and Bride are crowned (wed) to one another with these words: “Lord our God, crown them with glory and honor.”

As the above words, taken from an Orthodox wedding service indicates, some in the Orthodox Church believe it is exactly when the Priest blesses the wedding couple with the words of Psalm 8:5, “Crown them with glory and honor“, that the couple are considered united in the sacrament of marriage.  An interesting commentary on Psalm 8:5 might give us insight into how Orthodoxy understands both what it is to be human and how marriage fits into the divinely instituted sacrament of marriage.

Genesis 1:27 states that humankind, male and female, is created in the divine ‘image.’  What does this mean? Certainly it cannot mean that humans bear some kind of physical resemblance to God, for in contrast to neighboring peoples who fashioned idols of their gods, Israelites were absolutely forbidden to make any physical image of Yahweh.  So the idea that humans have any kind of physical likeness to God would be unimaginable to the biblical authors. Scholars still debate the precise meaning of the phrase ‘in the divine image,’ but many believe that Psalm 8:5 provides important insight. The psalm praises God for creating humanity as ‘a little lower than God, / and crowned . . . with glory and honor.’  In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for ‘glory’ (kabod) is regularly used of Yahweh, but here it is applied to humans. Kabod or ‘glory’ refers to God’s reality or presence made visible, and the psalm indicates that God somehow shares this divine reality with humankind.  …

describing humans as created in the image of God suggests that God shares something of God’s own self with the human creature. Further, humankind is created to be a visible manifestation of God on earth; this is a major purpose for human existence. … creation of humankind in the image and likeness of God above all points to ‘something happening’ between God and the human race.  ‘What God has decided to create must stand in a relationship to him.’ Against this background, it becomes evident that the Priestly redactor presents a stark contrast between the religious beliefs of Israel and Babylonia. In the Babylonian creation myth, humans are created to serve the gods as slaves serve their masters.   (Marielle Frigge, Beginning Biblical Studies, p 90)

Joachim & Anna

When the priest blesses the wedding couple with the words, “Lord, crown them with glory and honor”, he is asking the Lord God to make His presence manifest in the couple being united in marriage and in one flesh.  God is sharing His divinity with the couple newly united in marriage and they together – two in one flesh – are revealing this presence of God in humanity.  It is a revelation that doesn’t occur in one human alone, but the goodness of God being revealed in the couple as couple.  The couple is not created by God to serve God as God’s slaves, but to reveal God present in humanity.  Matrimony is revealing “something happening between God and the human race” in a way that one person alone is not capable of revealing.  Humanity is created by God to be in communion with God.  The community of marriage makes this union between God and humans visible in a unique way. It reveals how God makes male and female in God’s own image – in other words as icons of God.

The two become one flesh – and this is in some mysterious way revelation of the incarnation of God.

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church . . .”  (Ephesians 5:31-32)

“Blessed is the Man…” AND Also the Woman

Jesus answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female . . . ?”   (Matthew 19:4)

There is neither … male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  (Galatians 3:28)

St. Basil the Great writing in the 4th Century addresses an issue that is still relevant today – are women somehow excluded from the life of holiness because they are not males?  Obviously,women in his day felt excluded from the life in the Church, as many do today.  While his answer will not satisfy some today, he does argue that there is no difference between holiness in men and women, and that God equally honors both male and female.

.‘Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly’ [Psalm 1:1].  What is truly good, therefore, is principally and primarily the most blessed. And that is God.

..But before I explain what it is ‘not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly,’ I wish to settle the question asked at this point. Why, you say, does the prophet single out only man and proclaim him happy? Does he not exclude women from happiness? By no means. For, the virtue of man and women is the same, since creation is equally honored in both; therefore, there is the same reward for both. Listen to Genesis. ‘God created man,’ it says, ‘in the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them.’ They whose nature is alike have the same reward. Why, then, when Scripture had made mention of man, did it leave woman unnoticed? Because it believed that it was sufficient, since their nature is alike, to indicated the whole through the more authoritative part.

‘Blessed, therefore, is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly.’

(The Fathers of the Church: St. Basil Exegetic Homilies, pp. 155-156)

Jesus looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.”  (John 8:10-11)

Demonic Influence vs. Free Will

“…angelic and demonic thoughts as gifts or temptations from the outside involve some degree of free choice. While it is not in a person’s power to decide whether a demonic or angelic thought will pass through one’s mind, people can choose to act on it or to ignore it. Upon determining the origin of a given thought, a person is quite free to reject the thought or admit it by lingering on it. No matter how enticing a demonic thought maybe, it can only urge not coerce. This can be seen both in the account of the fall and of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness.

Being made in the image of God, each human being receives as a royal birthright the sovereign power of the intelligence and the free will. In fact, Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, well-aware of the radiant examples of the martyrs and great ascetics, writes,

‘God bestowed on our will so much freedom and power, that even if every kind of sensual provocation, ever kind of demon, and the entire world united to take arms against our will and vehemently to make war against it, despite all that, our will remains entirely free to despise that attack and will what it chooses to will or not will what it does not choose to will.’”

(Fr. Alexis Trader, Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy, p. 60)

The Courage to Be Human

John 5:1-15
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath. The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed.” He answered them, “He who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’” Then they asked him, “Who is the Man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?”But the one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

This Gospel speaks about obeying God rather than looking for mere miracles/magic in one’s life, and not making rules and rubrics more important than God Himself.

But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’  (Jeremiah 7:23)

The Paralytic heard the voice of God when Christ spoke to him and he obeyed the voice of God.  Notice in the Gospel lesson Jesus doesn’t say anything about healing the paralytic.  Jesus issues a command and the paralytic walks in the way that God commanded him – literally!  He was made well – it was well with him – because the paralytic obeyed God’s voice.  Hebrews 3:7-11 describes exactly what it is like when God’s people do not hearken to His voice:

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall never enter my rest.'”

The Paralytic did not harden his heart but rather he heard God’s voice and obeyed for immediately he got up and picked up his bed.  He chose to obey this voice which apparently he recognized immediately as God’s – and as the events unfold it becomes obvious that prior to this, this man did not listen to God’s voice.

At the very end of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the healed paralytic, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”   This seems to imply that the paralytic had gotten himself into the condition in which he was in and had suffered for 38 years.  Somewhere in his life, he had made choices that had long term consequences.  He had been ignoring God’s voice for a very long time, but at this moment he changes his life.

But there is a message of hope – even if you are in the condition you are in because of your choices, it is possible to change, to make other choices, to get things right in your life.  To learn from the past and to take path in life, even if late in life.

Jesus asks us as he asked the paralytic 2000 years ago, do you want to be made well?  Are you willing to make the spiritual changes in your life to start on a new path – to start life over again?  Are you willing to listen to the voice of God and walk in His ways?

Are you willing to change, or make the changes necessary for a new life?

And we can ask ourselves:

Do I want to give up my grudges, when I have not yet gotten vengeance on those who hurt me?  Do I want to give up my righteous anger, when I have not vindicated?  When I have not yet been validated by others recognizing the righteousness of my case?

Do I want to give up the pains, sorrows and excuses for my behavior?  Or do I want to hold on to them because they help me justify my behavior?

Do I want to give up my lusts and desires?  Or perhaps like St. Augustine I want to say, “Deliver me, O Lord, from my sexual lusts, but not just yet for I still enjoy them”?

We are human beings, we do have free will, free choice and personal responsibility.  In any given situation we can rise above our biologically determined desires  and say no to our self.  We can choose a behavior, a morality, we can refuse to do something we feel driven to do – whether by hormones or emotions.

About 20 years ago a radio talk show psychologist said:  “You know the final excuse that really gets my hackles to full quivering attention?  It’s when callers protest that they are ‘only human.’  ONLY human?  As if one’s humanness were a blueprint for instinctive, reflexive reactions to situations, like the rest of the animal kingdom.  I see being ‘human’ as the unique opportunity to use our mind and will to act in ways that elevate us above the animal kingdom.”  (Dr Laura Schlessinger, HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?, p 9)

The attitude of that psychologist fits well into Orthodox spirituality which sees us humans as being specially gifted by God precisely to rise up above our animal nature.  It doesn’t deny that we have animal desires, instincts, genetics.  It just says but God has blessed us with hearts and minds that can choose to rise above the limits of our animal nature.

We are indeed dealt some things in life – our genes or even our epi-genetic make-up,  the time and place of our birth, the family we are raised in.  We have no control over these things and they do influence our lives.

However, our situations in life are not completely determined by external conditions, they also result from our character, courage, morality, values, life-style and choices.

It is possible for us to change many things about ourselves and the choices we make.

St. Symeon the New Theologian writes:    “Baptism does not take away our free will or freedom of choice, but gives us the freedom no longer to be tyrannized by the devil unless we choose to be.  After baptism it is in our power either to persist willingly in the practice of the commandments of Christ, into whom we were baptized, and to advance in the path of His ordinances, or to deviate from this straight way and to fall again into the hands of our enemy, the devil…. We are created good by God – for God creates nothing evil – and we remain unchanging in our nature and essence as created.  But we do what we choose and want, whether good or bad, of our own free will.”

Jesus calls us to grow and to change:

A Call to repentance

Call to forgiveness

Call to the truth

Call to love.

 

Each of these are telling us to change, to become what we are not yet.  Each is a call to be courageous enough to be human – rise above your instincts, your desires, your DNA and become what God created every human to be – God like.

We, like the paralytic, need to hear God’s voice, recognize it as God’s, and to walk in His ways.