Atonement

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RECOVERING BIBLICAL AT-ONE-MENT : M. M. M. NINAN your seed and her seed; he will be on the watch for your head, and you will be on the watch for his heel." From then on it was proclaimed that he who was to be bom of a virgin, after the likeness of Adam, would be on the watch for the serpents head—this is the seed of which the apostle says in the Letter to the Galatians, “The law of works was established until the seed should come to whom the promise was made." He shows this still more clearly in the same Epistle when he says, "But when the fullness of time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman.” The enemy would not have been justly conquered unless it had been a man [made] of woman who conquered him. For it was by a woman that had the power over man from the beginning, setting himself up in opposition to man. Because of this the Lord also declares himself to be the Son of Man, so renewing in himself that primal man from whom the formation [of man] by woman began, that as our race went down to death by a man who was conquered we might ascend again to life by a man who overcame; and as death won the palm of victory over us by a man, so we might by a man receive the palm of victory over death.“ The theme is that God's embrace by way of Christ's incarnation, death, and resurrection renewed all things. He renewed all things because he won a decisive battle against the powers of evil. The power that had led us captive in Adam was now crushed and trampled on in fulfillment of the promise of God that the battle with evil would be won through the seed of the woman in the fullness of time. This reversing event was accomplished by a man united to God, so that "as our race went down to death by a man who was conquered we might ascend to life by a man who overcame. Even as death is the consequence of the first man, so life over death is the victory of the second man." The Orthodox tradition, while not necessarily denying notions of vicarious substitution, maintains an understanding of the atonement that more heavily emphasizes participation. As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware explains, salvation is best spoken of in terms of “sharing, of solidarity and identification.” In Christ, God participates in what man is in order to allow man to participate in what God is. That this union is the very meaning of the doctrine of atonement is confirmed by the basic etymology of the English word: at-one-ment. Christ, as both man and God, is the “meeting-point” between the created and Uncreated. He is where “eternity enters into time” and “time penetrates into eternity.” Finally, Irenaeus relates this divine embrace to the matter of our spirituality. He emphasizes the powers by which God, in union with our humanity in Jesus, accomplished the recapitulation and united us all to God again. 122
RECOVERING BIBLICAL AT-ONE-MENT : M. M. M. NINAN St. Maximus the Confessor, “Ad Thalassium 22: On Jesus Christ and the End of the Ages,” in On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings from St. Maximus the Confessor, trans. and ed. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken, Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir‟s Seminary Press, 2004), says: “The Word‟s plan, even from before the creation of the world, was to “mingle” with human nature in a hypostaticunion, becoming a man in order to deify man‟s nature within Himself.” And again in St. Maximus the Confessor, “Ambiguum” ”By his gracious condescension God became man and is called man for the sake of man and by exchanging his condition for ours revealed the power that elevates man to God through his love for God and brings God down to man because of his love for man. By this blessed inversion, man is made God by divinization and God is made man by hominization.” In the Eastern tradition it is participation, and not substitution, that is identified as the chief method of the atonement. St. John of Damascus writes, “But He in His fullness took upon Himself me in my fullness, and was united whole to whole that He might in His grace bestow salvation on the whole man. For what has not been taken cannot be healed....He, therefore, assumed the whole man, even the fairest part of him, which had become diseased, in order that He might bestow salvation on the whole.” (St. John of Damascus, “Exposition”) The problem God faced was to redeem mankind - all his grandsons - back into his own family was to get it down without taking away their sonship freedom - retaining their image and likeness with the Father. Nay more than that - a reversal of the law of entropy - for entropy to decrease. The choice therefore was to open up a highway which they can choose by their free will to get into the world where the tree of life is made available for every one who choses to do so. The only way to do this without violating the law of entropy was to enter into the fallen world himself, take the whole chaos of the world on himself and connect it to the infinite source itself. The entropy of the rest of the world can be reduced and order can be brought back provided there is a space where all the disorder can be accumulated. This is exactly the statement of the sacrifice of Jesus on the God means. Having connected the dying world to an infinite source of energy, the isolation of the universe is reversed and 123
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Atonement

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