You
will say, then, what is this reason, in accordance with which the change of our
painful life to that which we desire does not take place at once, but this
heavy and corporeal existence of ours waits, extended to some determinate
time, for the term of the consummation of all things, that then man's life may
be set free as it were from the reins, and revert once more, released and free,
to the life of blessedness and impassibility? Well, whether our answer is near
the truth of the matter, the Truth itself may clearly know; but at all events
what occurs to our intelligence is as follows. I take up then once more in my
argument our first text: God says, "Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness"; and "God created man, in the image of God created He
him". Accordingly, the image of God, which we behold in universal
humanity, had its consummation then; but Adam as yet was not made. For the
earthly creature is called Adam by etymological nomenclature, as those tell us
who are acquainted with the Hebrew tongue - wherefore also the Apostle, who
was specially learned in his native tongue, the tongue of the Israelites, calls
the man "of the earth" [choikos, 1 Cor. 15:47] translating the name
Adam into the Greek word. Man, then, was made in the image of God; that is, the
universal nature, the thing like God; not part of the whole, but all the
fulness of the nature together was so made by omnipotent wisdom.'
Thus
we see that 'men have a common nature, one single nature in many human
persons. This distinction of nature and person in man is no less difficult to
grasp than the analogous distinction of the one nature and three persons in
God.
Above
all, we must remember that we do not know the person, the human hypostasis in
its true condition, free from alloy. We commonly use the words “persons” or
“personal” to mean individuals, or individual. We are in the habit of thinking
of these two terms, person and individual, almost as if they were synonyms.
But, in a certain sense, individual and person mean opposite things. As long as
human hypostases do not go beyond the limitations inherent to them on the
individual level, they will remain incapable of realizing the universal
consummation of which St Gregory speaks, incapable of truly bearing within
themselves all the fullness of being. Imperfect, non-universal hypostases-
“human individuals”- will not achieve full and universal unity in their
relations with those who are like them; they will remain only partially united,
within the limits of their capacities.
St
Maximus writes: “In Christ, who is God and the Word of the Father,
"dwelleth the fulness of the godhead bodily" [Col. 2:9] according to
His nature, And in us the fulness of the godhead dwells by grace, [ ... ] for it is not inappropriate that in us, too,
Who are "words" by adoption. the fulness of the godhead should dwell.
St Maximus is here in full agreement with St Paul, Who says: 'that ye might be
filled with all the fulness of God' [Eph. 3: 19].
Elsewhere,
too, St Maximus has written: 'When all this has been accomplished, [man], having
united created nature with uncreated Nature through love (O, the greatness of
God's mercy towards us!), will present them united and identical, for he will
be totally and entirely permeated by the fulness of God, having become all that
God is excepting the identity of essence. In giving himself, he receives God in
His fulness; in his ascension to the very God, he receives as a reward God
Himself, who is the end of movement for everything that moves, and the secure
stillness of all who strive towards Him, the infinite goal of every act.
Thus
we may say that by Christ's incarnation, by His death on Golgotha, by His
resurrection from the dead, by the ascension of human nature to its equality
with the Father, and by the descent of the Holy Spirit, God has accomplished
absolutely everything necessary for our salvation. If, in the history of the
world, the unity of which we have written remains unrealized, this is entirely
due to men's resistance to the love of Christ. This unity cannot be realized
without the efforts of men themselves, for love cannot be imposed from outside.
St Maximus tells us that when God brought reason endowed creatures into being
He imparted to them four divine attributes: existence, eternal being, goodness
and wisdom. Of these qualities, the first two were directly bestowed by God
upon reasonable nature, whereas the two others - goodness and wisdom - depend
on the human will, so that what God is in Himself by Nature, His creature may
become by participation. Existence or non-existence depend on their Author,
but participation in divine goodness and wisdom depends not only on God but
also on the will of man.
In conclusion, let us recall these lines of
the eminent Russian theologian, Father Georges Florovsky:
'The
Church is one. This unity is the very existence of the Church. The Church is
unity, unity in Christ which is "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace". The Church is established and grows in the world precisely for
this unity _ "that they all may be one". The Church is a single body,
which is the Body of Christ. "We have all been baptised in one Spirit, and
form one body." And it is only in the Church that this unity is possible
and realizable. Only in the Church is it genuine and real, in the mystery of
the love of Christ, in the transfiguring power of the Spirit, after the image
and likeness of the consubstantial Trinity.
Reference:
Truth and Life. Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov. Essex 2014.