THE TREE OF FAITH LETTERS
Introduction
In the Letters which follow, the secular ‘historical’ interpretation of the Holy
Scriptures has no place. This ‘historical’ way of approaching the Scriptures has
long been acceptable to ‘liberal’ Protestant ‘theologians’, indeed it is regarded
by such as the only intellectually acceptable way of understanding and interpreting
the Bible text. The outcome of such an attitude is entirely predictable; from the
outset it imposes a philosophical embargo on anything and everything that does not
come within its limited field of vision. If it is to be understood properly, the
Bible must be treated for what it claims to be, a revelation granted to mankind,
but often passing beyond man’s limited intellect and experience. The ultimate authority
of Holy Scripture (God’s Word written) rests not with the text, venerable and outstandingly
well-
The Letters were written as the best way of demonstrating the way in which the Faith revealed in the Holy Scriptures has been clarified by the Fathers in the face of false interpretations and the intrusion of alien teachings. It seems that there is no brief and easily available presentation of this kind. Much helpful material is to be found, but only in scholarly books and articles. The Letters are also a reminder of the need to think deeply about the Faith. Many believers assume that they can get by with just a superficial grasp of the Faith, but St. Paul insists “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” (Romans 12:3). To know, understand, and to communicate the Faith is a duty laid on all believers. The otherwise overwhelming challenge of the times in which we live demands that we cease to be slack in this matter. For this reason the Letters demand serious thought; we are required to take leave of worldly attitudes and standards.
Some important Greek terms, used and refined by the Fathers, have been introduced, explained, and are then used over again, printed in bold type. Quotations come from a variety of sources and the passages from the Scriptures have been compared with the original texts and modified where the sense of the original seemed to require it. Since we read the Fathers mostly from translations, the subtleties and linkages which are evident in the originals are passed over; I hope, however, that the fundamental force and purpose of such quotations stands clear.
At the conclusion of the twenty-
(The title of these Letters is taken from the name Teklehaimanot given to a famous Ethiopian Saint and(meaning ‘The Tree of Faith.’; it is the name also of the priest who suggested the need for this course of instruction.
Index and Preface
Introduction
Letter 1. Knowing God -
Letter 2. From uncreated to created
Letter 3. The Holy Trinity -
Letter 4. Logos and purposefulness -
Letter 5. Man -
Letter 6. The spirit of disobedience and the corrupted will
Letter 7. The pathway of obedience
Letter 8. A far vision of salvation -
Letter 9. Suffering -
Letter 10. Virginity -
Letter 11. The Incarnation of the Word
Letter 12. The Incarnation -
Letter 13. Obedience on two levels -
Letter 14. Power and awareness -
Letter 15. The blindness of evil
Letter 16. Eucharist and Life
Letter 17. Gethsemane -
Letter 18. The suffering and death of Christ -
Letter 19. Death and the death of death
Letter 20. Resurrection -
Letter 21. Ascension -
Letter 22. The Holy Spirit and the Church
Letter 23. Ministry in the Holy Spirit in the Church
Letter 24. The Colony of heaven
Comment and a list of Greek terms
Letter One: Knowing God -
Some eighty years ago there lived in India a famous Christian preacher, Sahdu Sundar Singh. Sundar was converted to Christ at the age of fifteen and became a wandering ‘holy man’ or Sahdu. Many years later Sundar's father sought to become a Christian too and asked his son for guidance. Sundar's reply was "If you want to know about Jesus, read the Bible, if you want to know Jesus you must pray to him." In this very simple way Sundar Singh summed up the first steps in knowing God.
2. First of all, it is a matter of wanting to know God. In the Letter to the Hebrews we read :
“... for whoever would approach God must believe that he exists and that He rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6b).
People from many different cultures have an awareness of some kind of Supreme Being. Sundar's father would already be such person, but his son's way of life convinced him that he needed to know more. To know more the father had to want to know more.
3. Next, Sundar points out that there are two further steps to knowing God: knowing about Him and knowing Him personally. These two steps êin knowing can be understood easily from our everyday experience. A friend tells me about an acquaintance of his. When I ask to meet him, the friend arranges such a meeting. Hearing about the person strengthens my belief that he exists, meeting him personally confirms that belief. But meeting is only a part of knowing; if meeting develops into friendship I can begin to say that I know the person. Commitment is the gateway to greater knowledge.
4. The Bible contains, among many other things, a record of men and women who committed their lives to God: Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, and, supremely, the Virgin Mary. Others failed to follow up their initial commitment, men such as King Saul and Judas Iscariot. To know God truly and effectively, information about Him must be turned into commitment to Him. This is the message of Sundar Singh.
5. The decision to read the Bible can be understood as already a form of commitment,
a commitment to seek God. We turn to the Bible because it claims to be the Word of
God -
6. So far we have dealt with the subject of knowing God in a very simple way. The Bible itself often conceals the profundity oêf its message under quite simple stories and accounts. In other places we need to work hard to understand what is being written. This is where wanting to know God becomes so important; we need the courage to press on and not be discouraged when the pathway of knowledge becomes steep.
7. One mistake above all others needs to be avoided -
“The scriptural Word knows of two kinds of knowledge of divine things. On the one hand, there is relative knowledge, rooted only in reason and ideas, and lacking in the kind of experiential perception of what one knows through active engagement; such relative knowledge is what we use to order our affairs in our present life. On the other hand, there is that truly authentic knowledge, gained only by actual experience, apart from reason and ideas, which provides a total perception of the known object through a participation by grace. By this latter knowledge, we attain, in the future state, the supernatural deification that remains unceasingly in effect.” (Ad Thalassium 60)
Letter Two: From uncreated to created.
To gain a true knowledge concerning God we begin with ‘reason and ideas’, recognizing,
as St Maximus the Confessor reminds us, that these functions of our minds are in
the realm of knowing about God and must not be mistaken for the fullness of what
God intends us to know. However, such knowledge has its place and, since it is impossible
to know God truly by our own unaided efforts, He has provided ‘reason and ideas’
as a necessary preliminary to His self-
2. First of all we need to concentrate upon the very first verse of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) The ‘beginning’ here is that of the heavens and the earth, meaning the universe in its totality. Note that there is built into these words a sense of purpose on the part of the Creator. This is the only ‘beginning’ there is because God has no ‘beginning’. As mentioned in Letter One, the Bible often refers in a very simple way to the profoundest of thoughts and here we have an example.
3. Many people at some time in their lives ask themselves ‘where does it all begin?’
referring to everything they see around them and, indeed, to their own place in this
world. This question was one which the ancient Greek philosophers tried to answer
-
4. The Bible, therefore, provides a challenging starting point; our beginning has its source in a Creator to whom we give the name God. Because He is the Creator, God is not part of His creation. Because He is creation’s Source, His is the purpose behind everything He has created. To know God truly is to know the purpose for which we and the universe around us exist. This is the foundation for what we might call the ‘Christian philosophy’.
5. The Christian Fathers, especially those with a background of classical Greek education,
were able to draw out and clarify the philosophical principles embedded in the scriptural
revelation. This was a necessary task because the Christian Faith was under constant
attack from well-
6. The Fathers distinguished between two forms of existence, uncreated and created. God has neither beginning nor end, He is from ‘everlasting to everlasting’ (Psalm 90:2b), he is also the Creator. As the Creator He is not governed by the conditions of created existence. Time, space, and matter are the familiar conditions which govern us and our universe but they do not apply to the Creator. We have no means of explaining what God is. His ousiâ, the Greek word the Fathers used to indicate being or existence, which we translate as essence (or substance), is beyond our capacity to know. St. Basil summed the matter up in a few words:
“ ... we say that we know our God through His activities, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His activities come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.” (Letter 234)
However, the Bible, as the divine self-
7. We can also make use of moral qualities, as did Our Lord:
“A certain ruler asked Him, “good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Luke 18:18.)
From this the Fathers draw the necessary implication. To be truly good is to be consistently and perpetually good, good without lapse. If God is good he is unchangeably good. Here we come to another important distinction between ourselves and our Creator. God is unchangeable (cf. Malachi 3:6), He never changes, nor has He ever changed. Time is His creation; creatures, ourselves included, exist within time and are subject to change, but the Creator himself is not.
8. Bearing in mind that God, according to the biblical revelation, is the source
of all else that exists, He alone truly exists, is true being, so that all other
beings derive from Him and depend on him for their continuing existence. The totality
of the universe (and here we include the ‘invisible’ world of heaven and the angelic
beings) exists because God, the Uncreated, wills it to be so. Our continuing existence
depends totally on our relationship to God and if that relationship is disrupted
we sink back into non-
9. Further on in this series of letters we will be discussing the ‘Fall’ of Man,
but St. Athanasius, when dealing with this subject, makes a clear statement on the
dependence, or contingency, of mankind as created being -
“... if, out of a former normal state of non-
10. We can picture this as a flow of sustained and sustaining existence from the
Creator, the only true being and source of existence, to His creation. While that
flow is maintained creation is sustained in existence, once it is repudiated created
existence relapses toward a state of non-
In the next Letter we look at what also is revealed by Scripture about the Creator himself.
Letter Three: The Holy Trinity -
We begin this letter by returning to the first few verses of the book of Genesis.
Remembering also the principle set out by St. Basil:“ ... we know our God through
His activities, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His activities
come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.”, we can rely upon the
Holy Scriptures as pre-
2. Here, then, are the first three verses of the Book of Genesis. We have already considered the first verse and it is time not only to add the second and third verses, but also to quote the opening verses of St. John’s Gospel:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form
and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God was moving
over the face of the waters. And God said “Let there be light and there was light.”
(Genesis 1:1-
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word Was God.
He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through Him, and without Him
was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light
of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
(John 1:1-
3. In the passage from Genesis we are introduced not only to God as Creator, but to the Spirit of God and to His Word (“and God said”). It is St. John who develops this last point and we note the distinction made between God and His Word. This distinction occurs many times over in the Old Testament. In the prophecy of Isaiah we read:
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my Word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10, 11)
Also, in Psalm 33, we find the following significant passage:
“By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made and all their host by the Breath of His mouth.” (Psalm 33:6)
4. Others might see such passages as no more than poetic expressions, but not so
St. John, his fellow Apostles and Evangelists, nor the Fathers of the Church. For
them the door to the mysteries of the Scriptures had already been unlocked, they
not only ‘knew about’, they ‘knew’. They knew the ‘Word made flesh’ and the ‘outpouring
of the Spirit’ (Joel 2:28). They understood the deeper meaning of the Holy Scriptures
and that the very first verses of the Bible introduce a Creator who is not a solitary
divine being but a Unity of Three -
5. The term ‘Word’, logos in Greek, is rich in meaning. Logos carries the notion
of an idea being expressed through speech. Logos, therefore, includes communication,
rational self-
6. There is a simple model which is helpful although inadequate. It is the model of the human being who uses speech to communicate and who, at the same time, uses breath to carry the speech. The model is useful because it points to the revelatory role of the divine Logos in creating, sustaining, and ultimately redeeming the whole universe, and also the cooperative role of the divine Pneuma in these undertakings. The model is, nevertheless, also inadequate because speech and voice are functions of a single being whereas believers, from the Apostles onward, recognise that the Word and the Spirit must be distinguished from one another and from the Father, while maintaining that God is One.
7. The fact that God is both One and Three was never a difficulty for St. Paul, St.
John, or anyone else who has arrived at a true belief, because this belief is arrived
at by means of relationship -
8. Historically, the intellectual difficulty in reconciling the notion that God is
both one and three led to false teaching. If God is one, how does he relate to the
Word and the Spirit? Is there only One God, with the Word and the Spirit subordinate
to Him -
9. Arianism was a heresy of the first type, denying the true divinity of the Son
and the Holy Spirit; it was a pagan philosophy posing as Christianity. The Arians
were skilful at using the Scriptures to disguise their teaching, skilful enough to
deceive devout believers who were not prepared to think the Faith through. For this
reason Arianism became for many years a serious threat to the true Faith. Arianism
attracted those who wanted a ‘religious’ outlook on life but one based ultimately
on the non-
10. To St. Basil of Caesarea, his brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and his friend, also St. Gregory, of Nazianzus, (known as the Cappadocian Fathers) fell the task of clarifying terms. First of all it was necessary to make a distinction between the two terms, ousiâ and hypostasis. Up to that time ousiâ and hypostasis were virtually interchangeable in meaning. From now on ousiâ was used to indicate the kind of existence (essence) shared by a class of individuals, or even represented by just one individual. Hypostasis now indicated the actual being partaking of that ousiâ. St. Basil, writing to his brother, Gregory, explains the difference:
“My statement then is this. That which is spoken of in a special and particular manner is indicated by the name of the hypostasis.” and later: "This then is the hypostasis or “subsistence;” not the indefinite conception of the essence (ousiâ), which, because what is signified is general, finds no standing (a play on the derivation of the word hypostasis) but the conception which by means of the expressed particularities gives “standing” and limitation to the general and unlimited.” (Letter 38)
11. Although these two terms can be distinguished in thought, they cannot be separated in reality. As St. Basil says, ousiâ has no standing except when limited by hypostasis, while an hypostasis loses its identity when separated from its ousiâ. Both terms appear only infrequently in Scripture and then with differing shades of meaning. Nevertheless the Cappadocians provided the means to grasp the notion of Trinity. God is one because His Essence (ousiâ) is one. God is three because there are three divine Persons (hypostases). If we leave matters there, however, we have little more than a scheme; more needs to be said. Peter, James, and John all share the same human essence and are three individual men (i.e. three hypostases with the same ousiâ). If the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share the same divine essence how can they avoid being three Gods?
12. The solution to this question leads us to a yet more profound level of understanding.
Although we use the same terms for both, divine uncreated existence is radically
different from created existence. In uncreated existence the essence is undivided;
in created existence the essence is divided. For us, therefore, essence, being divided,
is a set of characteristics and qualities which allow us to place individuals in
particular groups -
13. The words of our Lord, as quoted by St. John in the fifth chapter of his Gospel, introduce us to this notion of communion in the divine life. The whole section from verse 17 to verse 33 carries this message and can be summed up thus: “For as the Father has life in Himself, so he has given the Son also to have life in Himself ... ” (John 5:26). St. Gregory of Nazianzus in his five ‘Theological Orations’ picks up the quality of dynamism in the scriptural texts and presents the same teaching in terms of motion:
“Therefore Unity having from all eternity arrived at Duality, found its rest in Trinity. This is what we mean by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is the ‘Begetter’ and ‘Emitter’; without passion of course and without reference to time, and not in a bodily manner. The Son is the ‘Begotten’ and the Holy Spirit the ‘Emission’; for I do not know how this could be expressed in terms altogether excluding visible things.” (Oration 29:2)
14. St. Gregory struggles with the limitation not just of language but with the difficulty
of expressing the uncreated in terms of the created. The terms that he does use are
based on St. John’s Gospel where the Son is called ‘The Only-
Note:
In the uncreated life of the Holy Trinity, freedom is true freedom, total and unforced because it is love. Within the creation, bounded by the conditions of time, space, and matter, freedom is understood as the ability to choose one thing in preference to another.
A further note:
St. Augustine of Hippo, the great Western Father, also attempted to counter Arianism
in his writing ‘On the Holy Trinity’. The attempt was not particularly successful.
Augustine argued that the titles ‘unbegotten’ as applied to the Father and ‘begotten’
as applied to the Son indicated not a difference of essence, as the Arians maintained,
but an abiding and unchanging set of relationships within the divine essence. Augustine’s
argument, although clever, tended to over-
* Most translations of this phrase render it as “The Only-
Letter Four: Logos and purposefulness -
Towards the end of Letter 3:14 the following was said about the mutual self-
“It is to be noted that this self-
The notion of freedom will be important as we move on to consider created existence which we have already described as:
“The totality of the universe (and here we include the ‘invisible world of heaven and the angelic beings)…” (Letter 2:8)
This universe does not exist because of some need on the part of the Holy Trinity; God did not have to make the world, nor is the world some kind of emanation of the divine essence. The universe is something entirely new, the product of God’s free and unforced love. Moreover, as we have already noted, the universe, which has come into being out of nothing, is, for that very reason, distinct from its Creator, the eternal source of all being. At this point we pick up some matters which have been mentioned earlier but need further explanation.
2. Guided by the heading of this letter, we return to the term ‘The Word’ or Logos. In Letter 3:5 we have already looked at this term and St. John, in the opening verses of his Gospel, leaves us in no doubt that this term refers to the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, through whom:
“all things came into being and without Him not one thing that exists came into being.” (John 1:3)
We also saw that the Greek term Logos is rich in meanings such as speech, communication,
rational self-
“... if, out of a former normal state of non-
3. Motion in the created order of things is different from what we described as motion
in the divine life. In the created order motion means movement from one point to
another, from one time to another, or from one state of being to another. These kinds
of motion do not apply to the Holy Trinity who abides the same eternally. Following
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, I have taken up the notion of movement to indicate the
abiding love, the perpetual self-
4. By contrast, the created order is bounded by space, time, and matter so that,
as noted above, motion means movement from one place to another, from one time to
another, or from one state to another. The first instance of created motion is that
from non-
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said “Let there be light and there was light.”.
The words translated by ‘without form and void’ (tohu wa bohu in Hebrew) imply emptiness and chaos; the word tohu is used by Isaiah in the following:
“For thus says the Lord, God Himself, who created the heavens, Who formed the earth and made it. He established it: he did not create a chaos (tohu), He formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other, I did not speak in secret, in the land of darkness: I did not say to the offspring of Jacob ‘seek me in chaos (tohu.)’ I, the Lord, speak the truth, I declare what is right.” (Isaiah 45;18, 19)
5. From these two quotations we see purposeful progress, motion from chaos to order. This is the divine ordering of the creation and the rest of the first chapter of Genesis describes the further stages by which creation is established, culminating in the creation of man made in the image and likeness of God.
6. The Greek Fathers provided a useful clarification here: Since the universe is created by the divine Logos the purposefulness built into creation can be described as the divine plans, the logoi, for all existing things. We might think of the logoi as the ‘blueprints’, the specifications to which every creature, whether animate or inanimate, whether material (embodied) or immaterial (bodiless), must conform if it is to follow and fulfil its divinely appointed purpose.
7. In the next letter the particular logos of man will be considered. (Here logos is printed in italic indicating the divine plan for mankind) It remains, therefore, to stress that the logoi are not portions of God’s essence embedded in created matter. As St. Basil, quoted earlier, said:“ ... we say that we know our God through His activities, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His activities come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.”
8. The Fathers, and here St. Basil in particular, recognise that two modes of being,
internal and external, so to speak, are involved in God’s being. The first is the
divine essence, ousiâ, which is beyond everything our created minds can ever know.
The second is the divine energy, energeia, a term from the New Testament. The model
for this energeia is quite simple; the acts, appearance, and speech of a man (the
means by which we recognise and relate to him) are as much that man as his internal
make-
9. Although we can distinguish the different roles of the Persons of the Holy Trinity as they affect us, the divine energy (energeia), expressed in the divine activities and purpose, is common to all three Persons, its is the mode of the divine being as it is directed toward the created order. This distinction will help us to understand, when we arrive at that point, the words of St. Peter when he writes in his Second Letter that we ‘become partakers of the divine nature’. (I Peter 1:2)
Letter Five: Man -
This letter begins with a quotation from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis:
“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” So
God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female
he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth and subdue it ...” (Genesis 1:26-
2. In the following chapter there is a further account of the creation of man:
“ ... the Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)
This quotation gives us an important insight into the nature of man. For the Fathers the term ‘nature’ (physis in Greek) presented difficulties at times. For the moment we can leave this problem to be dealt with in the appropriate Letter. The advantage of talking about ‘nature’ is that it allows us to treat two differing elements as a unity when describing an individual or class of beings: a man is an example of human nature or manhood, composed of soul and body.
3. The two quotations above provide what we may describe as the divine view of human
kind. The first indicates God’s purpose in creating man, the second gives a further
explanation of that purpose by describing the make-
4. Hebrew, Greek, and for that matter English also, have two terms meaning ‘soul’
and ‘spirit’. In all three languages the two terms are often used to mean the same
thing -
5. Two further points should be made here. There is no suggestion in Scripture that
the human soul moves from one body to another upon the death of the first. Likewise
there is no notion that the soul alone matters and that the body is only a temporary
habitation for the soul. These are teachings which have their source in paganism
and the Fathers repudiated them firmly. (The great Christian scholar, Origen, seems
to have taught that the soul existed before the body -
6. The human soul, therefore, can be distinguished from the body, but it remains always the soul of that particular human being. By comparison with the body, the soul is immortal in that it survives the death of the body. This immortality, however, is not the immortality of God, its continuing existence depends entirely on the soul’s Creator; its immortality is dependent upon its relationship to the Holy Trinity.
7. The first quotation contains the words,“ Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness ... “ It then adds, “ and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” The meaning of this second part of the quotation is taken up in Psalm 8, quoted in turn in the Epistle to the Hebrews:
“What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou carest for him? Thou didst make him for a little while lower than the angels, Thou has crowned him with glory and honour, putting everything in subjection under his feet”.
In Hebrews this statement is applied to the Risen Lord Christ in his capacity as the one who, on behalf of us all, fulfills the destiny assigned to mankind; this is to be understood as the fulfilment and completion of man’s logos, by which completion the whole creation will ultimately arrive at union with the Holy Trinity.
8. The Fathers, reading the Scriptures with close attention perceived that the creation of man is described differently from the origin of the rest of creation. With everything else God decrees, “Let there be ...” but when it comes to man God deliberates “Let us make ...”. So man is singled out to bear the image and likeness of God and commanded to rule over the rest of creation. The composite character of man’s nature, both material and immaterial, is provided so that man may fulfil this role since creation has both material and immaterial dimensions.
9. Because man bears the image of God, there is something added to the soul of man which raises him above the level of all other creatures. The Fathers see this image expressed in several ways: in man’s ability to reason (intellect), in his freedom of choice (the natural will) and his immortality of soul. Many of the Fathers also distinguish between the ‘image’ and the ‘likeness’. The ‘image’ corresponds to the nature of the soul (as above), the ‘likeness’ refers to the moral perfecting of man. This perfecting is designed to bring us to the point where we are ‘filled with all the fullness of God’. (Ephesians 3:19). This is the perfecting not just of man but, along with him, the whole creation of which he is the crown. This is that ultimate offering of glory to God from his creation and the participation in His eternity and all embracing love.
Letter Six: The spirit of disobedience and the corrupted will.
The third chapter of Genesis draws our attention to the matter of freedom of choice.
The choice is either to obey or to disobey God. Willing obedience is the true fulfilment
of created freedom because through it man sustains his life-
2. The Scriptures, being inspired, open for us doors into the spiritual realities
which lie behind the written words. These are the unseen realities which shape our
everyday lives and experiences. The Fathers understood this characteristic of the
‘God-
3. The Holy Trinity abides eternally as a communion of Persons and, on the level
of created being, communion with God is necessary for continuing existence. Man is
created for communion with God, a communion (koinôniâ in Greek) which will lead
eventually to his being ‘filled with all the fullness of God’. (Ephesians 3:19).
For this fulfilment of his nature and purpose (logos) man must choose freely to obey
God -
4. The serpent’s identity is revealed in stages throughout the Scriptures, finally appearing as:
“The great dragon .... that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.” (Revelation 12:9).
The Scriptures provide a ‘profile’ of Satan: he is an angelic being, created immaterial
and, being an angel, possessing free-
5. Satan tempts man, Adam and Eve, in a subtle way -
“Now the serpent ... said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any
tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit
of the trees of the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the tree which is
in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent
said, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be
opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that
the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree
was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave
some to her husband and he did eat.” (Genesis 3:1-
6. Adam and Eve, tempted by Satan, turn away from God in an act of freely-
7. Note also that what should have been occasions for joy are now mixed with suffering,
childbirth will involve pain, work becomes hard toil. Man is driven from Eden, losing
constant communion with the Holy Trinity -
8. The third chapter of Genesis is expounded to great effect by St. Paul in the fifth
chapter of his letter to the Romans; this repays careful reading. The narrative set
out in Genesis, Chapter 3 is a straightforward account, but beneath this simplicity
there lie profound realities. This chapter of Genesis describes the breakdown of
the relationship between God and man and, through man, with the whole creation. Man
succumbs voluntarily to temptation and is responsible for the breakdown of the relationship
and his own plunge into the continuing state of death and non-
Letter Seven: The pathway of obedience.
This Letter is introduced by an extensive quotation from Letter 6:7:“Man’s nature
remains God-
2. Man’s act of deliberate disobedience, as recounted in Genesis, Chapter 3, is known
as the Fall. Man’s ‘natural will’ (thelêsis in Greek), his ability to make free choices,
being a divinely created endowment of man’s nature (his logos), remains unchanged
by the Fall. There is in the human logos another inbuilt element, pathos -
3. Man has chosen to seek pleasure and fulfilment in and through created things.
For other creatures such an attitude is natural, that is, in accordance with their
logoi, but their existence is derivative, they are not in themselves the source of
life. Man’s logos can only be fulfilled in koinôniâ with the Holy Trinity; this
is his only true source of life, and, ultimately, through him, the fulfilment of
all creation. By making this false choice man has degraded himself to the level
of the animals, brought death upon mankind and condemned the rest of creation to
frustration (see Romans 8:19-
“... what should have been occasions for joy are now mixed with suffering, childbirth
will involve pain, work becomes hard toil. Man is driven from Eden, losing constant
communion with the Holy Trinity -
This is a punishment, a consequence of man’s deliberate choice, but it also provides a stimulus for repentance, for seeking God afresh, and for opening up a new path to salvation.
4. St. Paul asserts, in Romans Chapter 5, that all men have sinned and have received
an unavoidable inheritance. His descendants do not inherit the personal guilt of
Adam, but they do inherit an impaired and misdirected will (gnômê) which ensures
that every human being commits sin. The Fathers clarify the manner in which this
inheritance is transmitted from generation to generation through a very careful following
of the scriptural record. It is important to understand this clarification as it
has a bearing on the Incarnation, as we shall see in a future Letter. The origin
of mankind falls into two categories. Adam and Eve form the first category because
neither were born of parents -
“The first man received his existence from God and came into being at the very origin
of his existence and was free from corruption and sin -
5. To the first of these two categories, true and natural existence, the Fathers
apply the term genesis (origin), for the second category, existence by procreation,
the confusingly similar word, gennêsis (birth), is used. Although the use of these
two words is confusing at first sight, they mark out two distinct sources and forms
of human existence. In order for man to be rescued from the power of Satan, sin and
death, a new kind of birth is necessary, a birth which undoes the effect of gennêsis
and restores mankind to his true natural existence, or gennêsis. Since this true
natural existence was lost by disobedience, the pathway to restoration will be that
of obedience -
6. Mankind, existing under the ‘law’ of gennêsis, and, destined for death and the
return to non-
7. To be obedient to God man must have faith in Him; it is only thus that man can know the will of God sufficiently to respond in obedience. The Old Testament, therefore records the cumulative effect of such faith. This will be the subject of the next Letter.
Note:
The term gennêsis is applied in a different sense to the Second Person of the Trinity.
In the Nicene Creed He is described as gennêthenta, begotten, in order to distinguish
Him from the other two Persons of the Trinity -
A further note:
Western Christendom has been deeply influenced by the teaching of St. Augustine of
Hippo on ‘original sin’, the sin transmitted down the generations from Adam. As we
saw above, the Fathers link this ‘original sin’ with the gnômê, the corruption of
the God-
Letter Eight: A far vision of salvation -
The Fathers, following faithfully the Apostolic witness, perceived that the Scriptures
could not be understood unless the final self-
“It should be noted at this point that the Fathers have no doubt that it is by the Word of God, the Logos, that this fellowship with the Holy Trinity is brought about. Even before the Incarnation it is the Word and Son who communicates with man through the Holy Spirit.”
The Fathers recognised that the Holy Trinity is active throughout the Old Testament
in ways appropriate to the Three Persons. Christianity is the fulfilment, not merely
the successor, of Judaism. God communicates with the Old Testament Saints in a manner
which guides them towards the fullness of the Truth in Christ. The prophetic ministry
typifies the period before the Incarnation, the apostolic commission characterises
the period after the Incarnation. What we have in the Old Testament is a far vision
of salvation, a partial unveiling of the saving purposes of the Holy Trinity. Nevertheless,
there is one necessary and constant element which is present in both the Old and
New Testaments -
2. The Old Testament culture is a culture of personal relations and this remains
fundamental also for the New Testament. The Fathers were keenly aware that the Gospel
could be subverted by the intrusion of pagan philosophical and religious ideas. To
counter this danger the Fathers were led, as has been noted already, to recast the
Greek language, especially as it was used by the philosophers, to make it capable
of bearing a Christian significance. Another less obvious form of subversion arose
from presenting the Faith in a legalistic manner, a characteristic more typical of
both Jewish and Latin culture. In order to maintain sound doctrine it was necessary
to return time and again to the Holy Scriptures in order to vindicate the personal
character of mankind’s saving relationship with the Holy Trinity -
3. Within the Holy Scriptures we have a well-
“... for whoever would approach God must believe that he exists and that He rewards those who seek him" (Heb 11:6b).
This present Letter 8 needs to be read in conjunction with Hebrews, Chapter 11. At
the end of the chapter we are reminded that the ministry of the Old Testament Saints
is insufficient in itself. Nevertheless, although it is preparatory and incomplete,
this Old Testament ministry is firmly based on two elements which are pleasing to
God -
4. The two elements of faith and obedience are closely linked because they are based on a personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is understood clearly throughout the whole of Scripture that in spite of his ‘fallen’ state, man can achieve a positive relationship with God such that God regards him as ‘righteous’. What Hebrews, Chapter 11 also tells us is that such human righteousness is the basis on which God carries forward the work of redemption. In another example we find that in St. Luke’s Gospel the parents of John the Baptist are described as:
“... righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” (Luke 1:6)
In its context this means that Zachariah and Elizabeth expressed their faith and obedience through a devout observance of the Law given by God to Moses. This clearly is more than mere legalism; the rest of the chapter shows this righteous couple living out a very positive spirit of cooperation with the will of God.
5. The picture we are given is of righteousness as an active obedience and response
to the Holy Trinity, even where the fullness of the Truth has not yet been revealed.
It is this quality which is at the heart of true sinlessness before God. Mankind
still needs a deliverance which can only come from God. Nevertheless, God will not
save men and women from their universal and abiding condition of eternal death unless
they exercise their free-
In the next Letter it will be necessary to take up the role of suffering in the redemption of mankind.
Letter Nine: Suffering -
The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is summed up in the opening verses of the following chapter which reads as follows:
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily surrounds us, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who in place of (this is the more meaningful translation of the Greek) the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken His seat at the right hand of God.” (Hebrews 12: 1 & 2).
The previous chapter of Hebrews has recorded both the triumphs won through faith and the suffering involved in faith; these are consequences which the incarnate Logos has taken upon Himself, choosing in His love for His creation to be a man among mankind in preference to the joy of heaven. He has done so in a manner which is redemptive in its effect.
2. In Letter 7 the link between suffering and the Fall of man was described. Man,
seeking pleasure in and through created things, became liable to the experience of
pain and suffering. To counter the pain, the consequence of his self-
3. This situation is clearly described by St. Paul and it is worth setting out his words at some length. St. Paul is explaining that the Law given to Moses serves to clarify man’s situation as one of spiritual slavery. The Law is good but it only increases man’s awareness of his slavery to sin and death, it cannot save him. Although the Apostle uses the first person singular, the passage is best understood (along with the majority of the Fathers) as referring to the universal experience of mankind:
“For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the Law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law, at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with my mind I am slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave
to the law of sin.” (Romans 7:14-
In the terminology of the Fathers, man’s thelêsis, directed towards the ‘law of God’, is enslaved, through gnomê, to the law of sin.
4. The Scriptures provide a model for the predicament of mankind, and its solution,
in the account of the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt and their deliverance by
God through the ministry of Moses. The events of the Exodus, including the deliverance
at the Red Sea and the journey into the Promised Land, foreshadow the ultimate saving
work of Christ. The Fathers seized upon all aspects of this journey of deliverance
as providing relevant spiritual parallels -
“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our ancestors were all under the
cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud
and the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual
drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and the rock was
Christ. Nevertheless God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck
down in the wilderness.” (I Corinthians 10:1-
St. Paul goes on to describe how those who failed on the journey did so because they turned back in desire to created pleasures, to the fleshpots and slavery of Egypt, instead of travelling on in obedience and faith. Here also we begin to be made aware that the gnômê, although it is the thelêsis wilfully misdirected, can be used to open up a pathway to salvation from the side of mankind.
5. In Letter 7 we came across the term pathos, the capacity in man’s nature for being
moved by God towards the fulfilment of man’s logos, his participation by grace in
the divine life. We saw that pathos could also be redirected toward false objectives
and pleasures. This new kind of pathos is no part of the original logos of man,
it is the product of man’s misuse, through the gnômê, of his divinely gifted thelêsis.
The redirection, as already noted, brings with it corresponding pain and suffering,
a punishment consequent upon man’s deliberate act of disobedience. At the same time
such suffering provides a stimulus towards repentance -
6. The redirecting of the gnômê towards God is achieved by the exercise of faith
and obedience towards Him. Suffering here becomes an opening toward God. The spiritual
quest signified by the Exodus under Moses is prophetic but also limited. The fundamental
problem of man’s fallen nature remains unresolved. Man needs not just redirection
toward God but re-
Letter Ten: Virginity -
Man, although enslaved to sin and death, can respond to God through faith and obedience
but he cannot deliver himself out of that slavery. What we too easily regard as the
‘natural’ man is man made ‘unnatural’ by the Fall. Adam’s failure with its consequences
for all mankind has to be reversed. There needs to be a new Adam, a truly natural
man, who is able to restore to man his truly natural existence. In his truly natural
state man has free-
“The third chapter of Genesis draws our attention to the matter of freedom of choice.
The choice is either to obey or to disobey God. Willing obedience is the true fulfilment
of freedom because through it man sustains his life-
2. Just as all mankind has a unity with Adam in Adam’s disobedience and its consequences, so mankind can find a new unity in the New Adam. The problem is how to erect a barrier against the evil which permeates all mankind when all men, from the very moment of their conception and as a consequence of the manner of their conception, are born into slavery.
3. At this point it is helpful to remind ourselves of the words of St. Maximus the Confessor which have been quoted already in Letter Seven:
“The first man received his existence from God and came into being at the very origin
of his existence and was free from corruption and sin -
4. In Letter Seven also we saw that St. Maximus the Confessor was referring to two distinct categories of human existence: true and natural existence, to which the Fathers apply the term genesis (origin), and existence by procreation, described by the confusingly similar word gennêsis (birth). The two terms mark out the two distinct sources and forms of human existence. In order for man to be rescued from the power of Satan, sin and death a new kind of birth is necessary, a birth which undoes the effect of gennêsis and restores mankind to his true natural existence, or genesis.
5. As usual, the Fathers are here clarifying the teaching of Scripture with particular reference to the birth of Our Lord from the Blessed Virgin Mary. What the Fathers perceived as crucially important was that the New Adam must be the offspring of both categories of existence. To restore the true nature of man, His existence must proceed from genesis but, to be one with us in our present condition of slavery, He must also be born through gennêsis. What Mary offered at this point was her total faith in God and obedience to His plan of redemption. Only a birth through the womb of a spotless virgin could fulfil the necessary requirements for initiating the final completion of the plan which had been prepared through the Saints of old. For this reason the Fathers, following the example of St. Matthew, have always perceived that the true significance of the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel.’ which means, ‘God is with us’” (Isaiah 7;14), resides, not the historical situation in which the prophecy was spoken (which requires ‘a virgin’ or young woman and not the definite ‘the virgin’ of the actual text), but in the future fulfilment of a greater deliverance.
6. The Fathers do not miss the true significance of the ‘Virgin Birth’ as the necessary condition for raising the only effective barrier against evil and for restoring man to true natural existence in the New Adam. This is why the Lord insists to Nicodemus that he must be ‘born again’ (John 3:3ff.) and why Baptism, our genesis which cancels the effect of our gennêsis, is the Sacrament of New Birth in Christ.
7. St. Ignatius of Antioch speaks, in a rather dramatic way, of the Incarnation as a secret hidden from Satan and leading to the overturn and destruction of sin and death itself:
“For our God Jesus Christ was, according to the dispensation of God, conceived by Mary, of the seed of David, but of the Holy Ghost; He was born and baptized, that through His passion, He might purify water ‘to the washing away of sin.’
Now the virginity of Mary, and He who was born of her, were kept in secret from the prince of this world; as was also the death of our Lord: three of the mysteries the most spoken of throughout the world, yet done in secret by God. How then was our Saviour manifested to the ages? A star shone in heaven beyond all the other stars, and its light was inexpressible, and its novelty caused amazement. All the rest of the stars, together with the sun and moon, were the chorus to this star; but that sent out light exceedingly above them all. And there was confusion to think whence this new star came, so unlike to the others. Hence all the power of magic became dissolved and every bond of wickedness was destroyed; ignorance was taken away, and the old kingdom abolished, God appearing in the form of a man, for the renewal of eternal life. From thence began what God had prepared; from thenceforth things were disturbed; forasmuch as He designed to abolish death.”(Ignatius, Ephesians 18 and 19).
What has been said above prepares the way for a consideration of the crucial issue of the nature of the Incarnate Word.
Letter Eleven: The Incarnation of the Word.
I can do no better, as I enter upon this subject, than to quote the words of St. Athanasius:
“For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of
God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no
part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with
the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new
way, stooping to our level in His love and self-
2. St. Athanasius makes it clear that this is a true and abiding incarnation, not just a temporary embodiment in a human form. This is a true union deliberately planned and chosen by the Word and Son of the Father:
“Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear: had that been so
He could have revealed His majesty in some other and better way, but He took it directly
from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father -
3. You will see from this passage that St. Athanasius (4th Century) understands the role of Mary the Virgin Mother of God in the same way as St. Ignatius (1st Century) before him and St. Maximus the Confessor (7th Century) after him. This illustrates the way in which the Holy Tradition is both transmitted and expressed down the ages, clarifying and confirming what has already been manifested in Scripture against the deforming pressures of other times and cultures. St. Athanasius wrote ‘On the Incarnation’ while still a very young man, a few years before one of the most threatening deformations of the Faith, the Arian heresy, (see also Letter 3:9) had appeared.
4. The heresy took its name from the Egyptian priest, Arius, who put forward a reinterpretation of Christianity along the lines of the pagan philosophical/religious concepts of his time. The basic pattern of such concepts starts with the ‘One’, totally immaterial and supremely Good. Between the ‘One’ and this material and evil world there descends a hierarchy of beings like rungs on a ladder, each progressively more material and more remote from the ‘One’. This is not creation in the Christian understanding of the term. but a descent from the immaterial into the material. This was a widespread and common view and Arianism was a christianised form of it. The Father represents the ‘One’, the Word is the ‘demiurge’, emanating from the ‘One’, who, as the primary agent and source of creation, produces, in turn, the Spirit as a secondary and subordinate agent. In this way a descending hierarchy of beings is established; only the ‘One’, the Father, is truly God.
5. Arianism was, therefore, a clever and attractively paganising reinterpretation
of the Scriptures. The danger it posed created the need for an unprecedented Council
of the representatives of the Church throughout the Roman Empire (by now the dominant
position of Christianity within that empire made the Church’s unity a matter of grave
political importance). This First Ecumenical Council authorised the Creed in which
the term homoousios (see Letter 3:9) was officially adopted. As noted in Letter 3:9
this term undercut totally the Arian doctrine, but because it was a source of concern
to many (because of its non-
6. Athanasius became the great champion of the Nicene Creed and suffered exile after
exile by decree of emperors sympathetic to the Arian cause. Ultimately, however,
the orthodox Faith prevailed and the Nicene Creed, receiving its final form at the
Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople I), was confirmed as the universal creed
summarising the true Faith. It was the struggle against Arianism which brought home
the urgent need re-
7. The battle against Arianism has secured for all time the true Christian understanding of Jesus Christ as God from God. It was equally necessary to secure the understanding that Jesus was also at the same time truly man. This second necessity was never far from the minds of St. Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers. As the Scriptures witnessed, this had always been the belief of the Catholic Church, but unless it was made as clear as possible that Jesus embodied the perfect union of the divine and human in one person, the Holy Tradition was liable to the same deformation that Arianism had attempted. The Fourth Christian century saw the overcoming of the one danger, the following century found itself facing the second.
Letter Twelve: The Incarnation -
Although the battle against Arianism had clarified and confirmed the Catholic doctrine that Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly man, and also truly one, the Church had then to deal with two false attempts to clarify the way in which, being God and man, Christ is, nevertheless, one. This was a question of the relationship between Christ’s divine nature or Godhead, and his human nature or manhood. In attempting to affirm both His Godhead and His manhood, the union between the divine and the huma