Throughout Salvation History, God has striven to mend the relationship man had lost in the Fall and to reconcile humanity back to Himself. In the Old Testament, this reconciliation takes place through covenants made with biblical figures such as Noah, Abraham, and Moses, through whom God comes to dwell among His People, Israel. But this relationship did not carry the same intimacy it once held, for in the Fall man had completely severed himself from God and all goodness which flowed forth from Him. Rather it is through the coming of Christ that this reconciliation finds its glorious fulfillment where, by entering into our humanity, Christ restores man to a truly intimate relationship with the Father, reconciling all people with Him. To verify this claim, we will examine three things in light of scripture and the sacred teachings of the Church. The first of these will be man, in which we will examine man’s creation, the purpose for which man was made, and how the Fall impacted man’s state and relationship with God. Next, we will examine Christ’s ability to restore man to God by examining Christ as the Image of the Father, His understanding of the Father’s Plan, and the necessity of His full divinity and full humanity in reconciling man with God. Lastly, we shall assert that Christ, being the True Image of the Father, understands humanity sicut signaficatum est–as it was meant to be–and, by merit of His Incarnation, establishes a more intimate relationship between God and man than before by coming to dwell among man as man Himself.
To understand how Christ restores man to his original identity, we must first discuss man’s creation and know his prelapsarian state, that is, the identity of man before the Fall. Now, God created man in His image, saying: “Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth.”1 God made Adam from the earth and breathed His Spirit into Him, and then He made Eve from his side. It was at this point following man’s creation that all things were in perfect harmony with one another, and the Catholic Catechism lists three distinct harmonies which man possessed in relation to all else.2 The first of these was man’s perfect self-mastery, meaning that he had no desire for sensual pleasure nor want for any material goods, and he could suffer no illness or fatigue. I shall refer to this as the Enkratêian Harmony, taken from the Greek adjective ἐγκρατής; from ἐν (en, “in”) which indicates power over something, and κράτος (krátos, “power”), thus roughly translating to “inner-power.”3 The second harmony was harmony with one another–in the case of Adam, harmony with woman–where each of their roles served to uplift the other and there was no disparity of power or any misunderstanding between them.4 I shall call this the Koinonian Harmony, from the Greek word κοινωνία (koinonia), which conveys fellowship and joint participation. And lastly, man had perfect harmony with creation; the elements did no harm to him, and the beasts were docile and subservient to man. This perfect union with ourselves, one another, and nature was known as the “original justice” or the “triple harmony,” and subsisted from a greater harmony with God, who dwells in all things. I shall call this harmony with God the Agapēan Harmony, from the Greek word ἀγάπη (agapē), which expresses God’s love for man and man’s reciprocal love for God. Through these harmonies, man could exist as the caretaker of the world, for though everything within creation was made to serve him, man was not its master; God was the master of the garden–of the very world–and man was simply His servant who tended to His creation: “Look, the heavens, even the highest heavens, belong to the LORD, your God, as well as the earth and everything on it.”5 But the greatest of all these was the personal relationship man had with God, for throughout the Edenic narrative, and even directly after the Fall, Adam and Eve are presented as communicating with God. The passages suggest our first parents walked with Him in the garden–if not in a physical manifestation than certainly with His Presence–for God came to them after they had eaten of the fruit and they hid from Him because they were naked.6
Although he was in every way perfect, man was also naïve. The only thing he ultimately lacked in that state was godhood itself, a thing owed to none but God. Thus, man was allured by the false promise of the serpent, who said “you shall become like God.”7 This was Adam’s ultimate offense: that in his disobedience he had chosen to place something that was not God before Him and, in doing so, spurned the agapēan love of God, inheriting the state known as Original Sin. As a result, man also acquired concupiscence–that is, the tendency to sin and stray from God’s grace–and though Baptism cleanses the soul of Original Sin, concupiscence still lingers as its after-effect.8 Indeed, by partaking of the fruit man had become “like” God, but not in the way he had been led to believe: “See! The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil! Now, what if he also reaches out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life, and eats of it and lives forever?”9 Man came to know of good and evil, but he came to choose evil over good, so God took from him the Tree of Life so that he may not exist in evil perpetually. Death entered the world as the inherent consequence of man’s separation from God–who is Himself life unending–for it would have been better for man to die in body and be saved in soul than to live forever away from God. But though man abandoned God, God does not abandon him, and even from the moment of the Fall He promises that salvation would come to man in His words to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; they will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.”10 From that moment on there was hope that one day the right order of the world would be restored.
This promise is pursued by God throughout the Old Testament, where He establishes covenants with Israel and comes to dwell among the Israelites first at Mt. Sinai, then through the Ark of the Covenant, and then through the Temple in Jerusalem. Yet humanity’s relationship with God was still incredibly distant and strained. Even to God’s chosen people, Israel, numerous laws and strictures were put in place regarding how one is to address and interact with God, and even so much as uttering the name of God without the proper ceremony was considered blasphemous. 11 It is not until the coming of Christ that God’s relationship with man becomes as deeply personal as it was before the Fall. For through the Incarnation of Christ and His entering into our full humanity, while maintaining full divinity, the agapēan harmony is restored, and likewise all the other harmonies which subsisted from that relationship.
Now we must consider how the person of Christ is capable of restoring man to his relationship with God. This necessitates briefly dwelling on the nature of the Word, or the “Image,” in relation to the Father and His Plan. Theologically, the word “Image” with an uppercase “I” is used to reference the Second Person of the Trinity, that is, the Word. Gregory of Nazianzus writes that the Word is “consubstantial with the Father; He stems from the Father and not the Father from Him, it being the nature of an image to copy the original and be called after it.”12 Aquinas further asserts that, in order for an image to be called a “true image,” it must derive from another alike to it in species.13 Now because the Father is perfect, it follows that the “True Image” derived from Him–this being the Word–must also be perfect in its understanding of that from which it derives, in this case being the Father. This understanding of the Word extends to an understanding of the Father’s ultimate will, and Christ Himself alluded to this, saying: “Amen, amen, I say to you, a son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees his father doing; for what he does, his son will do also. For the Father loves his Son and shows him everything that he himself does.”14 Therefore it can be established that Christ, being in His divinity the True Image of the Father, holds a perfect understanding of the Father’s plan for human salvation.
Now, because the Word is the full understanding of God and His Plan, it would proceed that only the Word could restore man to the relationship he was meant to have with God. Maximus the Confessor, reflecting on the Mysteries of Christ, writes: “This mystery was known solely to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit before all ages. It was known to the Father by his approval, to the Son by his carrying it out, and to the Holy Spirit by his cooperation in it.”15 This is not to say the Father or Spirit would be powerless to take on the mission of redeeming man–for they all ultimately participated–but rather that the Word, being the Father’s perfect understanding, would be the one sent forth to do this task, for the Father knew, in His Word, the world sicut signaficatum est–as it was meant to be. Thus it is The Image, the Word, who fully understands humanity’s lesser image, and it is He who was sent to return man to the relationship he was originally designed for by entering into human nature and reconciling it with the Father.
By what way, then, is man restored to his relationship with God? Whereas the Old Testament relationship with God was distant and fearful, Christ, by taking on human flesh, allows humanity to enter into a more personal relationship with the divine. It was necessary for the Word–which, being the True Image, was also fully God–to become fully man in the Incarnation, for if anything less than full God and full man had made this attempt, then God and man could never be reconciled in such a way. While Israel could not see this progressive plan for their salvation in the Old Testament, the Church recognizes God’s plan in full, for it has been revealed to Her by Christ in the New: “I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.”16 Christ, through His humanity, not only restores man to the relationship with God we were meant to have at creation, but rather than remaining servants Christ makes man His friends. No longer is God something infinitely unfathomable as He was to Israel, even though they still held a unique relationship with Him unlike all other nations. God still retains His same authority, His same glory, His same might, for He is eternally unchanging. But now, by having entered into human flesh, the Word becomes more relatable to us and we can foster a genuinely human relationship with The Son who is fully human yet fully God. Thus it is through the Son that we may come to better know the Father, and this is why Christ said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”17 By entering into our full humanity, Christ inherently makes Himself more relatable so that we are able to establish a personal relationship with Him, for we become “equal” to Christ in His humanity, but not in His divinity. It is through accepting this relationship with Christ that the lost enkratêian, koinonian, and agapēan harmonies are restored to us.
First let us examine the enkratêian restoration, or the restoration of human self-mastery through Christ. Having lost his own self-mastery, man was made a slave to his passions, and depravity became the devotion of many ancient generations. Though God granted Moses the Ten Commandments and the Law, this was not enough to change the inherently damaged intent that lay within the hearts of men, for to muster such virtue was a feat impossible for man alone.18 But Christ, by engaging in a genuine relationship with us, allows us the grace necessary to triumph over our shortcomings and to practice true self-mastery: “while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”19 Through Christ’s grace we can achieve a mastery of virtue previously inaccessible to the regular man, one that not only allows us to repent for our committed sins, but also to renounce sin and ask for strength so as to not fall to it again.
Next is the koinonian restoration, that is, the restoration of our relationship with others. Merely a single generation following the Fall, the first murder is committed by the children of Adam, and from then on all generations would spill blood over land or power or material goods. But Christ offers to reconcile mankind with himself and with one another, and this invitation is perpetuated through the institution of Christ’s Church–specifically through the ministry of the sacraments–for the ultimate mission of the Church is to recall mankind to the pristine unity which he had lost at the Fall and restore him to it.20 This is why we call the Church Catholic, from the Greek word καθολικός, which means "universal" or accessible to all, for all are invited into the saving embrace of Her Light. By establishing one universal, or catholic Church, Christ no longer limits deliverance to a single people as it had been in the case of the Israelites. Rather, He opens salvation for the entirety of the world to partake in should they hold fast to His word. This understanding of God’s universal desire for humanity is expressed in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”21 Here it does not say God so loved “a single people” or “a single kingdom,” but that He loved the world and all that inhabited it, for in the beginning He had made the world good.22
Lastly, there is the agapēan restoration. This restoration restores to us the deeply personal relationship with God that humanity once had at creation, and is expressed distinctly in two ways: through the full humanity and divinity of Christ, which enables Him to act as the bridge between God and man; and through the Eucharistic miracle–the sacrament of Communion–which unites us to the Mystical Body of Christ, composed of all the faithful both in heaven and on earth. We established earlier that it was necessary for God to become man so that man could relate more deeply to God. Yet the human relationship with the divine is also preserved through the Eucharist. The Eucharist is Christ’s full Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, and so it establishes a dwelling of God alongside man greater than that which was in the beginning, for now we not only walk with God as Adam did in the Garden but we also receive Him into ourselves. By such a sign, the coming of Christ is neither limited to a singular historical event, nor to one that is distantly foretold to come, but rather it is a presence that actively remains with the faithful and will remain among them even unto the end of time: “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God.”23
But perhaps this seems to be a romanticization. Indeed, baptism frees us from the stain of Original Sin, but do we not still suffer concupiscence and mortality? Do we not spill blood in war, and does not nature remain turned against us? It is true that even today man repeats the same fatal sins as his ancient fathers, but that does not mean the sacrifice of Christ was in vain. The world, indeed, is imperfect, scarred forever by man’s original separation from God. Sin and death continue to stand as the greatest dividers of humankind, and it is not until the end of time that they will be finally vanquished, and the united Church will stand eternally beside Her spouse, Christ. But though humanity is not wholly united in this life, it is the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ that merits each and every one of the baptized a restoration to the initial perfection and unity of Adam and Eve, one that will find ultimate fulfillment at the Resurrection. Thus, by having our harmony with God restored to us, even in this life, every instance of temptation presents us with the same choice presented before Adam and Eve at the very beginning: to place something else before God, or to choose Him. Every act of sin is likewise a repetition of that same Fallen Act in Eden, damaging or entirely severing our relationship with God. For Christ’s sacrifice does not override our free will, and He does not force salvation upon us. Yet now we are blessed with more than what Adam had in the happy fault of the Garden, for through Christ we are also given countless opportunities to restore our relationship with God after each and every fall of our own, up until our final breath.
We have examined three things in light of scripture and Church teaching: man, his creation, his purpose, and his relationship with God following the fall; Christ, his relation to the Father, His understanding of the Father’s Plan, and his full humanity and divinity; and lastly, we asserted that Christ, being the True Image of the Father, understands humanity sicut signaficatum est–as it was meant to be–and, by merit of His Incarnation, establishes a more intimate relationship between God and man than before by coming to dwell among man as man Himself. My purpose here was not to provide any new information, but rather to reaffirm what has always been so: that the coming of Christ not only restored us to the relationship Adam and Eve had before the Fall, but merited for us an even greater inheritance; that by Christ’s humanity God would no longer be something infinitely unfathomable, but that we could relate to Him in an authentic human way. Adam and Eve falsely believed that by eating the fruit of the Tree they would become like God and live forever, yet God remedies their fault by instead becoming man in the person of Christ so as to die for us upon a tree–that is, the Cross–and restore us to true life.
