lowlyman
posted on Apr 12, 2010 - 02:46 AM
Mina,
well said. thank you.
From minasoliman:Forgive me if I wasn't clear. This is after all a hard issue to understand, and part of the reason is the mystery that surrounds it. All quotes in this message are from St. Athanasius' "On the Incarnation."
I was differentiating between two weaknesses, one that is natural, and one which although intertwined within our nature seems to be "unnatural". (using the word "nature" quite loosely, as really all things under nature occur, disease or no disease; so disease is natural, but not part of man's essence or nature)
You must know, moreover, that the corruption which had set in was not external to the body but established within it. The need, therefore, was that life should cleave to it in corruption's place, so that, just as death was brought into being in the body, life also might be engendered in it. If death had been exterior to the body, life might fittingly have been the same. But if death was within the body, woven into its very substance and dominating it as though completely one with it, the need was for Life to be woven into it instead, so that the body by thus enduing itself with life might cast corruption off.
This "weakness" God did not possess. Another example of unnatural weakness is that of our souls, which causes one to sin. Christ did not have such weakness in body or soul. Therefore, He was not going to be sick, and He was not going to sin. But I don't connect the two, I only bring them together in analogy. For one concerns the body, and the other concerns the soul, and sometimes both concerns both.
Let's examine this quote from St. Athanasius:
When this happened, men began to die, and corruption ran riot among them and held sway over them to an even more than natural degree.
Notice at the very beginning, man fell under corruption and the natural law of death. However, man became enslaved to corruption, and their nature began to rot worse than ever imagined. He repeated this again:
Indeed, they had in their sinning surpassed all limits; for, having invented wickedness in the beginning and so involved themselves in death and corruption, they had gone on gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any one kind of evil, but continually, as with insatiable appetite, devising new kinds of sins.
And again:
So burdened were they with their wickednesses that they seemed rather to be brute beasts than reasonable men, reflecting the very Likeness of the Word.
What was God to do in face of this dehumanising of mankind, this universal hiding of the knowledge of Himself by the wiles of evil spirits?
This comes to show that there are those who live naturally under death without guilt (like Christ and many of our saints), and then there are those who unnaturally go from their bad state which they were born into, to completely worse ones.
It is very possible therefore, there's also a body, well immunized under the natural laws, that is still under the natural law of death, and there's a body that is beyond the natural means, disease.
Also, something else to keep in mind here. Man who sinned, lost the grace of the Word, by which kept them in incorruption. The Word Who became man, His humanity was united with His divinity. His humanity which was by nature corruptible, but was filled with the grace of incorruption. Therefore, His humanity was not under the sway of disease, decay, and sin, but He confronted the most violent death for mankind, even while still in communion with Incorruption.
Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father.
...
The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father's Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection.
...
Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word's indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all.
Again, look how St. Athanasius gives this analogy:
You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel: "I came to seek and to save that which was lost. This also explains His saying to the Jews: "Except a man be born anew . . ." a He was not referring to a man's natural birth from his mother, as they thought, but to the re-birth and re-creation of the soul in the Image of God.
In other words, just as we bring in the perfect person in which the artist must use to fix his damaged portrait of him, Christ came to be a perfect example and the artist to which He fixes our damaged humanity. How could this happen if we were to believe Christ was damaged in some fashion, with sinning and disease?
How is any of this not Julianism you ask? I repeat Julian believed Christ's humanity was IN ESSENCE incorruptible, but St. Athanasius believed Christ humanity was IN ESSENCE corruptible:
The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it.
Though He used the body as His instrument, He shared nothing of its defect, but rather sanctified it by His indwelling.
To Julian, the body of the Word was in essence, by nature, not liable to death, even if theoretically separate from the Word. And therefore logically St. Severus thought, this makes no sense, as all creation is liable to death and non-existence, and if Christ's body was not like all creation, Hid death was not real. St. Athanasius said, His body was liable to death, and so His death was real. Even though it lived in incorruption by communion with the Word, He allowed it to undergo death, and because of this grace of incorruption, He also conquered death.
Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord's body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished. Death there had to be, and death for all, so that the due of all might be paid. Wherefore, the Word, as I said, being Himself incapable of death, assumed a mortal body, that He might offer it as His own in place of all, and suffering for the sake of all through His union with it, " might bring to nought Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver them who all their lifetime were enslaved by the fear of death."
Think also of those holy saints whose bodies have not decayed because of the degree of holiness they have lived in the grace of God.
So to answer one more question, how else to people naturally die? People naturally die when the spirit separates from the body. The means by which this is done is this: either death controlled people, which lead to decay, disease, and finally weakness to the point where one cannot hold the spirit and body together, or by allowing the flesh to separate into body and spirit. The latter only God the Word in flesh can do.
Does this clarify things more, or have I just confused you even more?
Joined: Apr 04, 2006 | Posts: 288
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