The Race of Adam, the Race of Man: On the Nature of the Church

by the Very Reverend Dr. Michael Azkoul [1]

 

 

An old adage has it that, “All religions may be wrong, but only one religion can be right.” In other words, where the doctrines of religions conflict, religions clash. If God is the author of a religion, however, there is no incongruity. As St. Paul says, “God is not the author of confusion” (I Corinthians 14:33). He will not teach Christians one thing, the Jews another, the Moslems another, the Hindus another, and so on. Nor will He will reveal to Roman Catholic Christians that the Pope is the head of the Church, while to the Orthodox and Protestants He does not. He will not teach the Roman Catholics that the Filioque is correct, yet to the Orthodox that it is false. He will not disclose to the Calvinists the doctrine of Predestination, while to others He does not. To cite again the words of the Apostle Paul, “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling: one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all...” (Ephesians 4:4-6).

The Orthodox hold, therefore, that the Church is one and that She has one exclusive nature. She is not shattered into various denominations (“churches”) with a diversity of doctrines. Were that so, there would be no unity of faith, and we would be compelled to believe that God has deliberately divulged to us false doctrines—unless, of course, we espouse the idea that God has no concern for Truth and that He does not care what we believe or whether we worship Him with erroneous teachings. Were these things true, the Church would lose Her place in the Divine Economy as the organ of salvation. There would be no need for the Prophets, Apostles, and Fathers of the Church. Meaningless would be the declaration of St. Peter: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God...” (I St. Peter 2:9-10).

There is something more to what we might call “Christian exclusivism” than is commonly recognized. The Church is far more than an historical organization. She is not simply the temple on the comer. She is an organism and, as St. Irenaeus and St. Justin Martyr called Her, a “New Race.” She is a new beginning. We know that the human race began with the first man, Adam, who was also “the figure of Him that was to come” (Romans 5:14). Christ is the second Adam. In order to be joined to the second Adam, it is necessary to be born again. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemos, who asked Jesus about salvation. Jesus said to him: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” He must be “bom of water and of the Spirit...” (St. John 3:1-6). The Lord is referring, here, to Baptism, a Mystery that leads children and adults into the Church, which is the figure of the Kingdom of God. Baptism, then, is the first step in the process of salvation.

Adam could not conquer death or exculpate sin; hence, the reason for the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Christ. Christ did what Adam could not: He made possible the rebirth of the body and soul of those who are joined to Christ in His Church, which is His Body. In other words, Baptism is rebirth, regeneration, and membership in the race of Christ. Born of the “earthy” first man, we have no access to the Divine Life. “Reborn” of the heavenly Second Man, Jesus Christ, we enter the New Race and adopt the one immutable Faith.

Adam was formed from the virgin earth, while Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. The Church is, in turn, bom of Christ, emerging from His side while He suffered on the Cross. The Church is also the New Eve, the Mother of all those baptized into the Church, the Body of Christ. Too many theological scholars ignore the witness of the Holy Fathers to this typology. Instead, they stress the idea that the Virgin Mary’s virginity served to protect Christ against “original sin,” which would have been transmitted to Her Son if She had given birth to Him in an ordinary way. This notion of “original sin” is largely the product of fifth-century religious disputations. [2] Also, some scholars argue that, largely because of the influence of monasticism, the dogma concerning Christ’s virginal birth, was spawned by the Church’s abhorrence of sex. [3] Patristic typology does not posit a connection between the Virgin Mary’s virginity and “original sin” or sex, but establishes the parallel between Christ (the New Adam) and the Old Adam through the Virgin Birth. Let it be understood, as an important “aside,” that if Christ had been born in a normal way, He would have inherited mortality, not “original sin” and guilt, from Adam.

There is something else that explains the Theotokos’ virginity and Her central place in the life of the Church. The Fathers describe Her as the second Eve. In other words, Christ is betrothed to the Church, which unites the baptized into an ekklesia, the Body of Christ, “the Great Mystery,” as St Paul proclaimed. He is “the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29): the first to overcome the Devil, death, and sin, something that is achieved by the faithful through Baptism into the Church, which is also the New Eve. Let me underscore that the Theotokos is the New Eve, untouched, in the Incarnation, by normal birth-giving and the travail thereof. In the words of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, “What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed by faith.” [4] She is, indeed, the Church. Thus, there would be no salvation without the role played therein by the New or Second Eve; for, to quote Father Georges Florovsky, “the Church is salvation.”

A few more important concepts help us to understand the nature of the Church. Let me turn to the profound theological nomenclature of the Church’s Christology. If the Church is the Body of Christ, a proper understanding of the One (Christ) cannot be separated from the other (the Church). What characterizes the Lord characterizes Her. He is visible and invisible. So is She. He is human and Divine. So is She. The Synod of Chalcedon (451) declares that the Lord’s Humanity and Divinity are united without confusion and without separation. Likewise, the Church’s human dimension is united to Her Divine dimension, and this without confusion or assimilation. Everything in the Church is understood in this same way. Thus, the water of Baptism welcomes the Holy Spirit without absorbing Him. The Eucharist, in the form of bread and wine, becomes the Body and Blood of Christ, without the bread and wine becoming the very substance of the Holy Spirit. As the Incarnation of the Lord is a Mystery, so, in like manner, is the Church.

In consequence of what I have said about the formulations of Chalcedon, if we alter them, we simultaneously lose a true grasp of the nature of the Church. That is to say, if we alter the relationship of the human to the Divine in Christ, we alter the composition of the Church. Thus, if, as many Protestants teach, the Humanity and Divinity of Christ are separated, so are the humanity and Divinity of the Church. The Church in Heaven and on earth become partitioned. Moreover, She becomes invisible and the Mysteries are deprived of deifying Grace. Hence, the true believer is known only to God. He is a member of the invisible Church. If Protestantism does not generally speak of deification or sanctification as we Orthodox understand it, it is because of a subtle Christological bifurcation, expressed in the notion that the earthly “church” is invisible. This is precisely the heresy of Docetism. [5] This is also not unlike the Christology of the Nestorians, who say that the Divinity of Christ flows through His body as “water through a pipe.” [6]

If the mortal cannot put on the immortal and the incorruptible, since the Divinity of Christ has not been joined wholly and perfectly to His humanity, according to the non-Chalcedonian Christological heresies, the mission of the Church, which is to restore, deify, and sanctify man, is nullified. Let me illustrate this point with the example of extreme Monophysitism, which teaches that the Divinity of Christ absorbed His humanity and He thus has but one nature. If this is so, then the Church is also only Divine. All the Mysteries (Sacraments) of the Church, therefore, have no created side. This suggests that the members of the Church are eventually swallowed up into the Divine Nature. This is essentially the monophysitic notion of deification. It is far from the Orthodox view of Christ and the Church.

I recall that the eminent Orthodox theologian, Father Georges Florovsky, in several of his writings, notes that Roman Catholicism is also marked by a certain crypto-Nestorianism, evidenced by the fact that it places very little emphasis on deification in its soteriology. If it (along with Protestantism) has no developed theology of deification, it is largely because of the idea that Grace is created, an idea that also involves an errant Christology. Clearly, the claim that the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, is the head of the Church and a source of created Grace in that role, means that he is the single head of a single organism. In effect, the Holy Spirit passes through him to the faithful. But the Spirit of God and Uncreated Grace belong to the whole Church, and the Orthodox episcopate, for us Orthodox, is a confederacy in which each bishop and his flock constitute the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church in a specific place.

For us Orthodox, our faithful are of “the Race of Christ.” The rest of the world is of “the Race of Adam.” Protestants generally have a subjective view of the Church, centered on some “personal relationship with the Lord.” Their Christology is drawn from the Scriptures alone, tainted by such things as Schweitzer’s quest for the “historical Jesus.” This Christology produces their ecclesiology. Roman Catholicism draws on its theological tradition, but focuses on Scholasticism. Neither Protestantism nor Roman Catholicism rests its beliefs on the Biblical-Patristic tradition of the Prophets and Apostles. St. Cyprian’s remark that none can be saved outside the Church, just as none were saved among those outside of Noah’s Ark, is a stark reminder of the exclusiveness of Christ’s Church. No wonder that the saintly Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) once declared that membership in the Orthodox Church was more crucial than merely proclaiming the right Faith. Naturally, in defining the nature of the Church, we do not, at the same time, dismiss the mercy of God, which is inexplicable, unfathomable, and in all ways aimed at the salvation of all mankind.

 

NOTES

1. Protoptesbyter Father Michael Azkoul holds a B.A. degree in philosophy from Calvin College, a B.D. degree in theology from St. Vladimir's Seminary, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Michigan State University. He has taught at Michigan State University, St. Louis University, and Washington University. Among his more recent books is God, Immortality and Freedom of the Will According to the Church Fathers: A Philosophy of Spiritual Cognition (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006). Still active at eighty-five years of age, Father Michael serves in the jurisdiction of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece.

2. The Orthodox understanding of man’s fall and the introduction of sin and death into the human condition is properly described as “the ancestral curse,” by which we become subject to the “disease” of sin and death, which are healed by the Divine Mysteries of the Church, beginning with Baptism, and by which the image of God in man is cleansed and restored.

3. In actuality, abstention from sex in monasticism has nothing at all to do with contempt for procreation. Celibacy in monasticism is the prefigurement of the life to come, where there is no marriage and no birth-giving. Christ and St. John the Baptist were both virgins, for example, as a commitment to the advent of God’s Kingdom. They set the example for monastics.

4. Adv. Haer., Ill, 22.4.

5. A heresy of Gnostic origin that contended that Christ’s Human Nature was not truly human, but either illusory or “pure spirit’’ appearing as a phantasm.

6. This Christology is ordinarily called “Dyophysitism” or a Christology of “two distinct natures.” Unlike Monophysitism, it does not overtly deny the Perfect Human Nature of Christ, but, in granting a certain relationship between Christ’s (Perfect) Human and (Perfect) Divine Natures, it does not acknowledge that they are inextricably bound together.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXXIV (2017), No. 2, pp. 20-24.