'So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them' (Gen.1:27). Because a solitary egocentric monad is incapable of love, God created not a unit but a couple with the intention that love should reign among people. And because the love of the couple is not yet the perfection of love and being, God commands: 'Be fruitful and multiply' (Gen.1:28).
All ancient religious tradition maintain that humans are composed of both material and spiritual elements; but the correlation between the two has been understood in different ways. The dualistic religions view matter as originally evil and hostile towards humanity: the Manichaeans even believed that Satan was the maker of the material world. Classical philosophy regards the body as a prison in which the soul is kept captive or incarcerated.
Materialists claim that in the early developmental stages of the human race people were like animals and led a bestial way of life: they neither knew God nor did they possess concepts of morality. Opposed to this are the Christian beliefs in the bliss of the first humans in Paradise, their subsequent fall and their eventual expulsion from Eden.
The biblical story of the Fall prefigures the entire tragic history of the human race. It shows us who we were and what we have become. It reveals that evil entered the world not by the will of God but by fault of humans who preferred diabolical deceit to divine commandment. From generation to generation the human race repeats Adam's mistake in being beguiled by false values and forgetting the true ones - faith in God and verity to Him.
After Adam and Eve sin spread rapidly throughout the human race. They were guilty of pride and disobedience, while their son Cain committed fratricide. Cain's descendants soon forgot about God and set about organizing their earthly existence.
The first-created Adam was unable to fulfil the vocation laid before him: to attain deification and bring to God the visible world by means of spiritual and moral perfection. Having broken the commandment and having fallen away from the sweetness of Paradise, he had the way to deification closed to him. Yet everything that the first man left undone was accomplished for him by God Incarnate, the Word-become-flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ. He trod that path to the human person which the latter was meant to tread towards Him.
In the Gospels Jesus Christ is simultaneously revealed as both God and man: all of His actions and words are those of a human being and nonetheless marked with the divine imprint. Jesus is born like all other children, but from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin rather than from a husband and a wife. Brought into the temple like other infants, He is greeted by a prophet and prophetess who recognize Him as the Messiah.
The Gospels speak of Christ as both divine and human, and church Tradition was faced with the task of formulating a dogma on the unity of the divinity and humanity in Christ. This dogma was developed in the course of the Christological debates of the fourth to seventh centuries.
By the middle of the fifth century, a new wave of Christological debates became linked with the names of Eutyches, an archimandrite from Constantinople, and his supporter Dioscorus, St Cyril's successor to the episcopal throne of Alexandria. Eutyches spoke in terms of the complete 'merging' of the divinity with the humanity into a 'single incarnate nature of God the Word'. 'I confess that our Lord consisted of two natures before the union, but after the union I confess one nature', said Eutyches.
In the sixth century some theologians, while confessing the two natures of Christ, spoke of Him as having a single divine-human 'action', a single energy. Hence the name of the heresy called Monoenergism. Again, at the beginning of the seventh century another movement arose, Monothelitism, which recognized in Christ only divine will by claiming that His human will was completely swallowed up by the divine. Apart from pursuing purely theological goals, the Monothelites hoped to reconcile the Orthodox with the Monophysites by means of a compromise.
In the New Testament Christ is a called the 'ransom', or 'redemption', for the sins of the human race (Matt.20:28; 1 Cor.1:30). The original Greek word lytrosis means 'ransom', that is, a sum of money the payment of which gives freedom to a slave or life for someone sentenced to death. The human person fell into the slavery of sin and required redemption in order to liberate him from this slavery.
'There can be no Christianity without the Church', wrote a martyred Russian Orthodox bishop at the beginning of this century. The Church is Christ's Kingdom, purchased by the price of His blood and into which He leads those whom He has chosen as His children and who have chosen Him as their Father.
The words of the Nicene-Constantinople Creed, 'I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church', define the Church as a divine-human organism.
The Church is one , for she is constituted in the image of the Holy Trinity and reveals the mystery of unity in essence, while being differentiated in hypostases: she consists of a multitude of separate hypostatic persons welded together by unity in the faith and in the sacraments.
From apostolic times there existed in the Church a hierarchical priesthood: certain men chosen to celebrate the Eucharist and lead the people. The Book of the Acts (6:6) speaks of the election of seven deacons (Greek diakonos , 'servant', or 'minister') and their being set aside to serve. The apostles founded Christian communities in the various cities of the Roman Empire where they preached and ordained bishops and presbyters to lead these communities.
Throughout the entire history of the Church only men have been permitted to serve as priests and bishops. This is not a tradition that merely stems from the inequality between men and women in the ancient world. From the very beginning priesthood has been a service of spiritual fatherhood. A woman can be a mother, wife or daughter, but she cannot be a father. And while motherhood is not inferior to fatherhood, its mission, service and vocation are different.
We can judge the Church's attitude towards women by the high position accorded to the Most Holy Mother of God. The Church glorifies Her more than all of the saints and even more than the angels. She is praised in hymns as 'more honourable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim'. The Holy Virgin is the Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church - it is in Her person that the Church glorifies motherhood
In the Orthodox tradition the icon is not merely an adornment in the church building or an object to be used in worship: people pray before it, they kiss it and treat it as a sacred object.
The Holy Cross has particular significance for the Church. An instrument of death, it has become the instrument of salvation. St Basil the Great identifies the 'sign of the Son of man' mentioned by Christ in connection with His Second Coming (Matt.24:30) with the arms of the Cross pointing towards the four ends of the universe. The Cross is a symbol of Christ Himself and is infused with miraculous power.
The Church exists on earth, yet at the same time she is turned towards heaven; the Church lives in time, yet breathes eternity. This experience of communion with eternity forms the basis of the church calendar and the cycle of worship throughout the year, week and day. It is in the year that the Church recollects and experiences the whole history of the world and the human person, the entire 'economy' of the salvation of the human race. In the yearly cycle of feasts there passes before us the life of Christ from His Nativity to His Crucifixion and Resurrection; the life of the Mother of God from her Conception to her Dormition; and the lives of the saints glorified by the Church.
The Nicene-Constantinople Creed speaks of one Church. Yet there are many Christian confessions in the world that call themselves churches. It is not uncommon for these confessions to refuse each other Holy Communion and even to be mutually hostile. Do these things destroy the unity of the Church? Is it not the case that a formerly single Church has disintegrated into various denominations and lost its unity?
The above texts are taken from the 'Online Orthodox Catechism' by Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev), as adapted from his book, The Mystery of Faith. These materials are copyright by the author, and are used here with permission. They must not be reproduced in any manner, including reproduction on another website.
