Thursday, November 11, 2021

Historical Theology: What's Your Problem, Man? - The Theology of the Human Condition





Question: If we think about the story of salvation as a story of mankind having an insurmountable problem, and God solving that problem for us, what is the best way to conceive of mankind’s “problem”? What exactly is this problem, and how does God solve it?

In our Western evangelical tradition, we have a quick answer to this question: sin. Sin is the problem of humanity. However, what we may not realize is that we often think about sin only according to one of its many Scriptural metaphors—that of a legal wrongdoing against God’s law, which puts us in need of legal satisfaction. Thus, we speak mostly about salvation in terms of “forgiveness.” While this element of the theology of sin is certainly present in Scripture, it is not the only way of thinking about mankind’s problem. In fact, it was not the predominant way of thinking about the human condition in the early church.

Irenaeus of Lyons: What was God’s original purpose for humanity?

We tend to assume that God created humanity in its intended state—that when he created Adam and Eve, their situation represented the ideal state of the human condition: innocence of wrongdoing and relationship with God. However, this is merely one interpretation of the Genesis story, and it’s not the only one. An earlier interpretation comes to us from Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 200 AD), who interpreted Genesis to say that God created Adam and Eve in a situation of moral infancy (for instance, no knowledge of right and wrong—Gen. 2:15-17; 3:4-5), and thus God’s original intention was that humanity should grow towards ever greater moral and spiritual development, and ever deeper relationship with God. It is a view of humans as being always in progress towards God, with the Garden of Eden as just the starting point, not the final ideal.

If this way of thinking about humanity is true, then sin is not simply a case of “paradise lost” which can be restored by dealing with sin’s legal debts. Rather, sin must be seen as an obstacle on our path to our greater growth towards God. Sin, in this conception, is not a legal offense against God, it is a failure to live up to what God has intended for humanity. (This is, in fact, the closest literal definition for the Hebrew word for sin: “missing the mark.”)

The Plot Thickens: The Effects of Sin

Irenaeus of Lyons
According to Scripture and tradition, there are three main results of our sinful failure to live up to God’s intention for us.

1.) First, there is ancestral sin (sometimes called “original sin”)—the inherent, inborn tendency of all human beings to choose sin rather than God (Rom. 3:23; 5:12). This is often described by the church fathers as having the nature of a disease—as such, we need healing from sin (Ps. 41:4; Mark 2:17; James 5:16; 1 Pet. 2:24).

2.) Second, there is death (Rom. 5:12). There are two dimensions to this—because of sin we suffer spiritual death, which is separation from God (John 5:24; 8:51); we also suffer physical death (Gen. 3:19; Rom. 6:23; 8:10). Physical death is an obstacle to gaining of God’s goal for us—we cannot be ultimately united with an eternal God if we are not eternal ourselves. Thus, physical death needs to be overcome. (On the other side of the coin, though, many early church fathers considered that God’s penalty of physical death in response to Adam’s sin was actually a mercy—“so that sin would not be everlasting.”)

3.) Third, there is bondage to Satan—his kingdom is characterized by rebellion from God, so by choosing our own way instead of God’s plan, we have essentially transferred our allegiance to Satan’s kingdom. But to get out from under Satan’s dominion, we need more than a simple transfer of allegiance—Satan’s kingdom has no citizens, it has only slaves. As such, we are in need of freedom (Acts 26:17-18).

What Did Jesus Accomplish for Us?

1.) By the mere fact of Mary’s assent to God’s plan (the reversal of Eve’s rejection of that plan) and the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus united human nature and divine nature in his own person (John 1:14), and opened a way for us to fulfill our ultimate destiny of being raised up into union with God.

2.) By his teaching and his example of godly living and self-sacrifice, Jesus taught us how to live so as to grow towards our ultimate goal (Phil. 2:5-6; 2 Pet. 1:3).

3.) By his death on the cross, Jesus became the ultimate sacrifice for sin (Col. 1:22). In Jesus, the Son of God gave himself up to the penalty of death—both physical death and, at least for a moment, spiritual separation from the Father (Mark 15:34).

4.) By his Resurrection from the dead, he defeated death definitively, shattered the power of Satan’s kingdom, and began the healing of the human race from sin (Rom. 5:19; 6:9; 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 54-55; Heb. 2:14-15)

5.) By his ascension to the Father’s side, he glorified human nature into full union with the Father (Heb. 4:14-15); thus, as we become united to him through the Holy Spirit, we begin to share in the life of God himself (1 Cor. 6:19; 2 Pet. 1:4).

A Deeper Vision of Salvation

According to the early church, then, forgiveness is only one part of what God has done for us in salvation. He has begun the healing of our sin nature, he has defeated the power of death, and he has redeemed us from our slavery to Satan’s kingdom. Not only do our sins not count against us now, but we are actually able to continue the journey that God intended for humanity from the very beginning—to grow progressively deeper in virtue, higher in our knowledge of God and our practice of love, and, as we grow, to experience more and more union with God’s own nature. Ultimately, the church fathers believed that we could grow so close to God that his own nature—his goodness and beauty—would fill us up in the same way that iron in a forge takes fire’s own nature into itself. As C. S. Lewis puts it, “Christ became man so that men could become ‘little Christs’.”