The gates of Paradise have been opened

We do not know if every one followed Christ when He rose from hell. Nor do we know if every one will follow Him to the eschatological Heavenly Kingdom when He will become ‘all in all’. But we do know that since the descent of Christ into Hades the way to resurrection has been opened for ‘all flesh’, salvation has been granted to every human being, and the gates of paradise have been opened for all those who wish to enter through them. This is the faith of the Early Church inherited from the first generation of Christians and cherished by Orthodox Tradition. This is the never-extinguished hope of all those who believe in Christ Who once and for all conquered death, destroyed hell and granted resurrection to the entire human race.

Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), “Christ the Conqueror of Hell – The Descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern and Western Theological Traditions”

I know that I quoted this once before, but it seems particularly apt at this time!

 

The Second Adam

The first Adam, progenitor of the human race, was unable to fulfil the vocation laid before him: to achieve deification and bring to God the visible world by means of spiritual and moral perfection. Having broken the commandment and fallen away from the sweetness of Paradise, he had closed the way to deification. Yet everything that the first man left undone was accomplished in his stead by God Incarnate, the Word-become-flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ. He trod that path to us which we were meant to tread towards him. And if this would have been the way of humanity’s ascent, for God it was the way of humble condescension, of self-emptying (kenosis).

St Paul calls Christ the ‘second Adam’. Contrasting him with the first, he says: ‘The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven’ (I Cor. 15:47). This parallelism was developed by St John Chrysostom, who referred to Adam as the prototype of Christ:

Adam is the image of Christ … as the man for those who came from him, even though they did not eat of the tree, became the cause of death, then Christ for those who were born of him, although they have done no good, became the bearer of righteousness, which he gave to all of us through the Cross.

Gregory the Theologian makes a detailed comparison between Christ’s sufferings and Adam’s fall:

For each of our debts we are given to in a special way … The tree of the Cross has been given for the tree we tasted of; for our hand stretched out greedily, we have been given arms courageously extended; for our hands following their own inclination, we have been given hands nailed to the Cross; for the hand that has driven out Adam, we have been given arms uniting the ends of the earth into one. For our fall we have been given his raising up on a Cross; for our tasting of the forbidden fruit, we have been given his tasting of bile; for our death, his death; for our return to the earth, his burial.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to the Teaching and Spirituality of the Orthodox Church, 79-80.

 

Opened for all humanity

As the last stage in the divine descent (katabasis) and self-emptying (kenosis), the descent of Christ into Hades became at the same time the starting point of the ascent of humanity towards deification (theosis). Since this descent, the path to paradise is opened for both the living and the dead, which was followed by those whom Christ delivered from hell.  The destination point for all humanity and every individual is the fullness of deification in which God becomes ‘all in all’. It is for this deification that God first created man and then, when ‘the time had fully come’ (Gal. 4:4), Himself became man, suffered, died, descended to Hades and was raised from the dead.

We do not know if every one followed Christ when He rose from hell. Nor do we know if every one will follow Him to the eschatological Heavenly Kingdom when He will become ‘all in all’. But we do know that since the descent of Christ into Hades the way to resurrection has been opened for ‘all flesh’, salvation has been granted to every human being, and the gates of paradise have been opened for all those who wish to enter through them. This is the faith of the Early Church inherited from the first generation of Christians and cherished by Orthodox Tradition. This is the never-extinguished hope of all those who believe in Christ Who once and for all conquered death, destroyed hell and granted resurrection to the entire human race.

Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), “Christ the Conqueror of Hell – The Descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern and Western Theological Traditions”

 

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev on seeking God

A Christian should humbly recognise that God is a mystery beyond anything which might be attributed to him. A person who attempts to comprehend God’s essence is, according to Gregory [the Theologian], like someone who runs after his own shadow: the faster he runs, the faster the shadow moves. The way towards God can never end with the comprehension of God’s essence: its end is silent amazement before the mystery. In this state all discursive knowledge falls silent.

The heroine of the Song of Songs seeks her lover but cannot find him, pursues him and cannot reach him. The image of the pursuit has been interpreted in the Christian tradition, for example by Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, to mean the soul’s pursuit of God, who eternally flees from her. The soul seeks God, but no sooner does she find him than she loses him again. She attempts to comprehend him, but fails to do so, endeavours to embrace him, but cannot. He moves with great speed and always transcends the soul’s capabilities. To find God and to catch up with him would mean that we had become divine ourselves. The laws of physics dictate that if the material body were to travel at the speed of light it would turn into light. So it is with the soul: the closer she is to God, the more she is filled with light and becomes a bearer of light.

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to the Teaching and Spirituality of the Orthodox Church. (London, DLT, 2002) 24.

 

On God and language

People who in ancient times tried to say something about God did not make any attempt to describe him, to say what he is in himself, but tried only to indicate what happened to a person when he suddenly found himself face to face with God, when he was suddenly illumined by Divine grace, the Divine light. All that the person could do was fall down in sacred awe, worshipping the one who is incomprehensible and who at the same time had revealed himself to him with such closeness and in such a miraculous light.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, quoted in Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to the Teaching and Spirituality of the Orthodox Church. (London, DLT, 2002) 14.

Metropolitan Hilarion makes some interesting points on the associations that the word “God” has in different languages:

In languages of Germanic origin, Gott has associations of falling to the ground.

The Slavonic and Russian Bog is related to the Sanskrit bhaga and means “dispensing gifts.”

Here we find God expressed in terms of the fullness of being, perfection and bliss. These properties, however, do not remain within God, but are poured out onto the world, onto people and all living things. (14)

The Greek word Theos, from which the Latin Deus and the French Dieu derive, has a more complex evolution of associations. For Plato, it meant “to run” because it was associated with a multitude of gods and it was only with the Septuagint that the word was applied to the one God. Saint Gregory the Theologian developed a different etymology from that of Plato and claimed that the name Theos derived from the verb ethein, meaning to be set alight or to burn. Saint Basil the Great links it to God placing (tetheikenai) and beholding (theasthai) all things, the latter of which is also picked up on by Saint John of Damascus.

I am the most linguistically challenged person around, so will have to take Metropolitan Hilarion’s word on this. But I find it significant in pointing out the associations that words have in different cultures.

 

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev on dogma

In our own day there is a widely held view that belief in religious dogmas is not obligatory: even if they still have a certain historical value, they are no longer vital for Christians. Moral and social agendas have become the main preoccupation of many Christian communities, while theological issues are often neglected. This dissociation between dogma and way of life, however, contradicts the very nature of the religious life, which presupposes that faith should always be confirmed by deeds, and vice versa. Thus, in the Epistle of James we find: ‘Faith apart from works is dead’ (Jas. 2:26). St Paul, on the other hand, claims that ‘a man is justified by faith apart from works of law’ (Rom. 3:28). The ‘works of law’ here means the Old Testament rites and sacrifices which are no longer necessary after Christ’s saving sacrifice. Good deeds are necessary and essential, yet when separated from faith they do not in themselves lead to salvation. We are justified by faith, but only by a faith which informs the way we live.

No less alien to Christianity is the dissociation of dogma from mysticism, or of theology from the spiritual life. There is an essential interdependence between dogma and mysticism: both lead to knowledge of the truth, but in different ways. ‘And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’, says the Lord, who himself is the only Truth, Way and Life (John 8:32; 14:6). Every dogma reveals truth, opens up the way and communicates life, while each heresy puts us at a distance from truth, closes off the way to salvation and renders us spiritually dead. The struggle for dogma which the Church has conducted throughout her history is, as Vladimir Lossky demonstrates, a fight for our being to be brought into the true Life, for our union with God and deification…

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to the Teaching and Spirituality of the Orthodox Church. (London, DLT, 2002) xiii-xiv.