www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Scripture and Patristic Writings a serious theological issue

You have it backwards.

According to the Eastern Church Fathers, Christ is the first and Adam the second man. The Fathers state that Adam was made in the image of Christ -- not the other way around.

See Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way for an excellent introduction to this topic. See also Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Orthodox Church.

Please go back and read the Fathers -- you will see immediately the point they are making. This is a serious theological issue and one which should be discussed sometime. But probably not under this heading or in this forum.

[ All: Good references please, even quotes. And please don�t tell me to go read some book, or that I�ll find the answer somewhere in my local library.]

Sacred Scripture, Tradition, trumps "custom."

The original statement was that of being backwards:



Are you saying the quoted scripture


has it backwards?

You have it backwards.

According to the Eastern Church Fathers, Christ is the first and Adam the second man. The Fathers state that Adam was made in the image of Christ -- not the other way around.

See Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way for an excellent introduction to this topic. See also Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Orthodox Church.

The deification of man and of the whole created universe would thus be accomplished. Since this task which was given to man was not fulfilled by Adam, it is in the work of Christ, the second Adam, that we can see what it was meant to be.
--Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood: St. Vladimir�s Seminary Press, 1976), 110.

But the plan of God was not destroyed by the sin of man; the vocation of the first Adam was fulfilled by Christ, the second Adam... Christ achieves them successively by following the order which was assigned to the first Adam... On the cross He unites paradise, the dwelling place of the first men before the fall, with the terrestrial reality where the fallen descendants of the first Adam now dwell
--Lossky, The Mystical Theology, 133-4, 137.

... Christ, the second Adam, now fulfils this recapitulation...
--Lossky, The Mystical Theology, 165

The mission of the first Adam accordingly must be fulfilled by the celestial Adam, namely Christ... it was necessary that God should become man, and that the second Adam should inaugurate the �new creation� in surmounting all the divisions of the old one. Indeed by His virginal birth,...Thus we cannot rediscover the fullness of Adamic nature except in Christ, the second Adam...But the new creation in Christ, the second Adam,... The second Adam will choose God exactly there, where the first had chosen himself...
-- 75, 77, 84

For Maximus the Confessor the Incarnation and recapitulation of all things in Christ is the true goal and aim of creation; the Incarnation, therefore, was foreseen and foreordained independently of man's tragic misuse of his own freedom. This view fits in exactly with Maximus' idea of created 'nature' as a dynamic process oriented toward the eschatological goal--Christ the incarnate Logos. As creator, the Logos stands as the beginning of creation, and as incarnate, He is also its end when all things will exist not only through Him but in Him. In order to be in Christ, creation had to be assumed by God, made His own; the Incarnation therefore is a precondition of the final glorification of man independent of man's sinfulness and corruption. (Byzantine Theology, pages 160-161)

Every created thing has its point of contact with the Godhead; and this point of contact is its idea, reason or logos whic is at the same time the end towards which it tends. The ideas of individual things are contained within the higher and more general ideas, as are the species within a genus. The whole is contained in the Logos, the second person of the Trinity who is the first principle and the last end of all created things. Here the Logos, God the Word, has the 'economical' emphasis proper to antenicene theology. He is the manifestation of divine will, for it is by Him that the Father has created all things in the Holy Spirit. When we examine the nature of created things, seeking to penetrate inot the reason of their being, we are led finally to the knowledge of the Word, causal principle and at the same time end of all beings. All things were created by the Logos who is as it were a divine nexus, the threshold from which flow the creative outpourings, the particular logoi of creatures, and the centre towards which in their turn all created beings tend, as to their final end. ... Thus the primitive beatitude was not a state of deification, but a condition of order, a perfection of the creature which was ordained and tending towards its end. (Mystical Theology, 98-99)

It was the divinely appointed function of the first man (understood here historically, in time -- my explanation), according to St. Maximus, to unite in himself the whole of created being; and at the same time to reach his perfect union with God and thus grant the state of deification to the whole creation. It was first necessary that he should suppress in his own nature the division into two sexes, in his following of the impassible life according to the divine archetype. He would then be in a position to reunite paradise with the rest of the earth, for, constantly bearing paradise within himself, being in ceaseless communion with God, he would be able to transform the whole earth into paradise.

"For the name Adam is not yet given to the human, as in the subsequent narratives. The human created has no particular name, but is universal human. Therefore by this general term for human nature, we are meant to understand that God by His providence and power, included all humanity in this first creation. ... For the image is not in a part of the nature, nor is grace in one individual among those it regards; this power extends to the whole human race ... In this respect there is no difference between the human made in the first creation of the world and the human who shall be made at the end of the world; both bear the same divine image." (St Gregory of Nyssa)

Now as the former always remains the same, while that which came into being by creation had the beginning of its existence from change, and has a kindred connection with the like mutation, for this reason He Who, as the prophetical writing says, "knows all things before they be," following out, or rather perceiving beforehand by His power of foreknowledge what, in a state of independence and freedom, is the tendency of the motion of man's will,�as He saw, I say, what would be, He devised for His image the distinction of male and female, which has no reference to the Divine Archetype, but, as we have said, is an approximation to the less rational nature.

15. The cause, indeed, of this device, only those can know who were eye-witnesses of the truth and ministers of the Word; but we, imagining the truth, as far as we can, by means of conjectures and similitudes, do not set forth that which occurs to our mind authoritatively, but will place it in the form of a theoretical speculation before our kindly hearers.

What is it then which we understand concerning these matters? In saying that "God created man" the text indicates, by the indefinite character of the term, all mankind; for was not Adam here named together with the creation, as the history tells us in what follows? yet the name given to the man created is not the particular, but the general name: thus we are led by the employment of the general name of our nature to some such view as this�that in the Divine foreknowledge and power all humanity is included in the first creation; for it is fitting for God not to regard any of the things made by Him as indeterminate, but that each existing thing should have some limit and measure prescribed by the wisdom of its Maker.

17. Now just as any particular man is limited by his bodily dimensions, and the peculiar size which is conjoined with the superficies of his body is the measure of his separate existence, so I think that the entire plenitude of humanity was included by the God of all, by His power of foreknowledge, as it were in one body, and that this is what the text teaches us which says, "God created man, in the image of God created He him." For the image is not in part of our nature, nor is the grace in any one of the things found in that nature, but this power extends equally to all the race: and a sign of this is that mind is implanted alike in all: for all have the power of understanding and deliberating, and of all else whereby the Divine nature finds its image in that which was made according to it: the man that was manifested at the first creation of the world, and he that shall be after the consummation of all, are alike: they equally bear in themselves the Divine image.

18. For this reason the whole race was spoken of as one man, namely, that to God's power nothing is either past or future, but even that which we expect is comprehended, equally with what is at present existing, by the all-sustaining energy. Our whole nature, then, extending from the first to the last, is, so to say, one image of Him Who is; but the distinction of kind in male and female was added to His work last, as I suppose, for the reason which follows.

Our whole nature, then, extending from the first to the last, is, so to say, one image of Him Who is; but the distinction of kind in male and female was added to His work last, as I suppose, for the reason which follows.

You have misunderstood the issue as presented by the Fathers...

"The Word, having taken a clod of the newly made earth,...

"According to the Eastern Church Fathers, Christ is the first and Adam the second man.

As Constantine Tsirpanlis writes, "The first man, containing in himself all of human nature, ...That is why in Adam's race the multiplicity of persons, in no way contradicts the ontological unity of the nature common to all men".

I would also note that, as both Meyendorf and Lossky point out, St Gregory's understanding of the division of the sexes as "added later" and thus not part of the original creation becomes the standard interpretation of gender relations in later fathers, especially St Maximus the Confessor and St John of Damascus. Some fathers even suggest that the sexual organs did not exist prior to the fall. And, following this through, there is a suggestion among some fathers that there will be no sexual differentation in paradise but that all "will be as the angels". This is an interesting concept and raises questions about the relationship of gender to the human person. I would encourage you to read the writings of Sister Nona Harrison (among others) on these subjects.

Marriage in the order of creation

1603 "The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage."87 The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity,88 some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. "The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life."89

1604 God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love.90 Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator's eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: "And God blessed them, and God said to them: 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'"91

1605 Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: "It is not good that the man should be alone."92 The woman, "flesh of his flesh," his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a "helpmate"; she thus represents God from whom comes our help.93 "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh."94 The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been "in the beginning": "So they are no longer two, but one flesh."95

Marriage under the regime of sin

1606 Every man experiences evil around him and within himself. This experience makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman. Their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation. This disorder can manifest itself more or less acutely, and can be more or less overcome according to the circumstances of cultures, eras, and individuals, but it does seem to have a universal character.

1607 According to faith the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations;96 their mutual attraction, the Creator's own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust;97 and the beautiful vocation of man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth was burdened by the pain of childbirth and the toil of work.98

The theologians gathered at the Doubletree Hotel at Horton Plaza for the June 6-9 [1996] convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America continued to slide into open dissent. The majority of the professors and priests rejected the "institutional church," complained about Vatican "authoritarianism," passed resolutions in support of Richard McBrien's recently censured book Catholicism, and commissioned a statement on women's ordination....

Sister Nona Harrison, an Eastern Orthodox nun dressed in a traditional black habit, claimed that the Orthodox Church is loosening its stance against women's ordination, and that Bishop Kallistus Ware has recently changed his mind and is about to publish an essay in favor of women's ordination. She added, "Given the attitude the Orthodox generally have to papal assertions of universal authority, the recent developments may have the unintended effect of encouraging further discussion of women's ordination in the Orthodox Church." Her statement was followed by cheers and loud applause.

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:G-5PNZKCKDUJ:www.sdnewsnotes.com/ed/articles/1996/0796lp.htm+%22Nona+Harrison%22+orthodox&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us