In this post, I will discuss chapter 5 of Ware’s book, The Orthodox Way, “God as Man,” which focuses on the mystery of the incarnation and all that it entails.
Beginning his chapter with a passage from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” that talks about a mysterious person walking beside the poet, Ware states that the figure in Eliot’s poem provides us with the very meaning of Jesus as Savior—he is the one who walks beside us when our strength is almost gone, the one who is with us “at the time of our greatest loneliness or trial” and tells us that we are not alone.
Ware then brings to our attention to the Jesus Prayer that is recited by Orthodox Christians around the world, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and briefly touches upon three things about the prayer and what it tells us about the incarnation of Jesus Christ. The first is his personal name, Jesus, which means Savior. The second is his title, Christ, which means Anointed One. The third is the word mercy, which signifies love in action. What the prayer, thus, indicates is both what man’s problem is and what God’s solution is. Because of his sin, man is in need of salvation from God, which He makes available through Jesus, who is both God and man, who has been anointed by the Holy Spirit to bestow mercy on mankind.
If you have grown up in church, all of this seems rather “par for the course,” in that it is pretty close to what you’ve learned in church all your life about Jesus. You might be tempted to add that the reason God became man was because Adam sinned and contaminated the whole human race. Thus, the work of Christ makes it possible for us to get back to that pre-sinful state. Of course, if you did that, you wouldn’t be getting the Orthodox understanding of Christ and the fall exactly right. For Ware tells us that Orthodoxy teaches that even if there had been no “fall,” that God would “still have chosen to identify himself with his creation by becoming man” (70).
What this means is that the primary purpose of the coming of Christ wasn’t, so to speak, to “clean up Adam’s mess” so that we could (to allude to Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock”) “get ourselves back to the garden.” When you think about it, why would anyone want that? To be naked, naïve, without knowledge and wisdom, and thus not truly be according to God’s likeness? As Ware states, the Incarnation of Christ isn’t merely a reversal of the fall or the restoration of man to his original state. Rather, “when God becomes man, this marks the beginning of an essentially new stage in the history of man, and not just a return to the past. The Incarnation raises man to a new level; the last stat his higher than the first” (70).
Orthodoxy does not view Adam as the ideal human state. He was created in God’s image, with the potential to grow into God’s likeness, but he had not yet achieved that yet. When he sinned, that ability to grow into God’s likeness got derailed, so to speak. Thus, Christ’s work is seen as “getting man back on track,” so that through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, man can, by becoming more like Christ, growing into God’s likeness.
Thus, humanity as we know it is the “first stage” of God’s creation. This is what Genesis 2-3 is describing: Humanity (i.e. the figure of Adam) is created in God’s image but because he sins and suffers death, he never becomes like God. The work of Christ, though, elevates humanity (at least, human beings who put their faith in him) to the “next stage” and a higher level of God’s creation, where human beings can become like Christ, who is the first perfect man, in the sense that he is both the image of God and fully like God. Or as Ware states, “The Incarnation, then, is not simply a way of undoing the effects of original sin, but it is an essential stage upon man’s journey from the divine image to the divine likeness” (71).
In other words, the reason Adam sinned—the reason why we sin—is because we are not yet fully human. We are not a finished product.
Shoeboxes and Eternity
Now, here is where it gets really interesting. Ware doesn’t address this in the chapter, but I think it is an appropriate time to emphasize what I’m about to say. It relates to what I said in my previous post regarding linear time and eternity. Imagine a diorama shoebox, with everything in the shoebox depicting human history proceeding from left to right in a chronological, linear fashion. On both the left-hand edge and right-hand edges of the shoebox are curtains that prevent anything in the shoebox from seeing what is outside the shoebox.
What is, in fact, outside the shoebox is eternity. But it isn’t just something that was before the left-hand edge came into being or that comes after one passes through the right-hand edge. Eternity encompasses the entire shoebox. Now, for those of us living within the “shoebox of time,” so to speak, in order for God to communicate to us what His eternal purposes are for us, has drawn upon the curtains at each end of the shoebox a certain backdrop, full of imagery and symbolism, that helps us interpret our existence within the shoebox in light of the eternal realities that are beyond (in fact, all around) the linear timeline of history we know.
The imagery drawn on the left-hand curtain is that of the story of Genesis 1-11. In particular, the story of Adam, although positioned and told to us as an event in the past is reality providing the defining rubric by which we understand the present identity of the human race in the shoebox of time: (1) Created in God’s image with the potential to become according to God’s likeness, nevertheless (2) still naïve, immature creatures who are not yet, in fact, like God, and thus (3) the fact that we sin and die is evidence of this very thing. Thus, the story of Adam is the description of humanity in the shoebox. Therefore, when we speak of things like, “When Adam sinned,” although in that way of speaking of human history it seems like it was at some point in the past, in reality it is a description of everyone’s existence in the shoebox. When did Adam sin? Not back then in the past, but now, every second of time, because you and I are Adam.
The imagery drawn on the right-hand curtain is that of Revelation 21-22—that of Christ reigning in the new heavens and new earth and the Church being united to him as a bride. This is the goal for humanity and the created order within the shoebox. Now, notice that to even say that is the “goal” of humanity is to place it in time, but the goal is something that which is beyond time and outside of the shoebox. But in order for us to even begin to understand that eternal reality, it has to be communicated to us in some intelligible way inside the shoebox. Christ reigns now, He is Lord of all creation now—not at some point in the future.
Thus, although we journey along in our lives in this “shoebox” of the first creation along the linear timeline of history, the ultimate spiritual journey is (as I said in the previous post) from the lower to the higher, from this limited experience of this creation bound by time to the ultimate experience of the new creation that fully intersects and communes with the divine life of God. Here, we are creatures made in God’s image; there we will be creatures who have been transformed and resurrected into sons of God who will be according to God’s likeness. We will be taken up into the life of Christ the Son.
This is what God’s plan has been all along: To create something and then to imbue it with His very life, to enter into His creation in order to transform it into something more—to integrate the concrete and the spiritual.
All that said, although I understand the language of saying, “Christ came to reverse the curse,” or “Christ came to undo the effects of original sin,” I think it can be misleading, if we are not careful. For that language implies (by the sheer inadequacy of language) that there was, in fact, a time in history before there was a curse or original sin. Sin and the curse are inevitabilities within this shoebox of history because we are Adam—and since we are not yet fully human and fully like God, we screw up, sin, and die. And thus, the reality of the Incarnation is that God becomes man, takes unto Himself sin and the curse, and succumbs to even death in order to use those things as the means by which we creatures are transformed into sons of God.
Conclusion Thus Far
In John Mayer’s album Continuum, he has a song entitled, “In Repair,” in which the last line is “I’m in repair, I’m not together, but I’m getting there.” I always found that line interestingly paradoxical, for if you are “in repair,” that implies there was a time in the past when you were not in need of repair. At the same time, I doubt Mayer is implying that was ever the case. When he sings, “I’m not together,” he is stating an existential fact that relates to all human beings—none of us are “together.” We never have been. Our fundamental state and nature as human beings is one of “not being together.”
And yet, there is the last part of the line: “I’m getting there”—getting to that point where one “is together.” But that state is one in which we have never been, so it is technically wrong to say we are “in repair.” Nevertheless, the sentiment in that line is strangely truthful and accurate when understood in the light of the Incarnation. In order for us to even begin to understand salvation, and Christ’s role in that salvation, we must use the story of Adam and language that is bound by our limited historical perspective. At the same time, though, we must always realize it points to something more, something beyond time.
When John gets a glimpse of the New Jerusalem in the New Heavens and Earth, he sees the Tree of Life and the River of Life that was in Eden but is now in the New Jerusalem. Hence, salvation in Christ isn’t a “getting back to the garden,” for the garden was never the goal. Life as Adam was never the goal. This creation, this shoebox, was never the endgame. It was always a womb in which we were initially created, but out of which we are to be born. But there is both continuity and discontinuity: The entire genetic material in an embryo and a fully mature adult; a seed and a fully grown plant; a man of dust who bears God’s image yet is not fully like God, and a man of heaven who bears God’s image and is according to God’s likeness.
I’m in repair. I’m not together, but I’m getting there.
(In my next post, I’ll tackle the rest of Ware’s chapter, “God as Man”)
