Let me now, in this letter summarize and emphasize what I think are some of the crucial points I was trying to make in the previous letters.

Creation came from nothing and it is constantly being threatened with the return to this nothing. It is only through communion with God that creation exists and once this communion is broken, death results. If this relation between man and God were to be totally torn apart, the universe would cease to exist. The very fact the cosmos is, testifies to the fact that God cares for His creation. Man, being composed of the material and non-material was to be the mediator between creation and God but, through Adam, this pathway was closed in what we refer to as the Fall.

There are several widespread misconceptions here. One is that death entered creation as a result of man’s disobedience. This position is challenged by the theory of evolution which says that death was always a property of the world and this is in keeping what I had stated above about creation coming into being from nothing. Death is the property of createdness irrespective of any disobedience. The Fall is the term that we use to state that man failed in his mission of mediator for creation.

Another major misconception in discussions of man’s fate is to postulate that the soul is what we need to concern ourselves with and it is through the soul that we will eventually survive. As we will see shortly this is not exactly what Christianity teaches. This is more akin to what Platonism teaches and not what Christianity puts forward.

A final misconception that I want to refer to is that salvation redeems man from sin. True as this may be, sin is not the disease that man needs to be cured from. Sin is the result of the disease which we call death and it is freedom from death that man needs. Unfortunately, salvation has often been portrayed in moral and juridical terms where man’s death has been brought on by man’s sin. The major focus is on man’s misdeeds and omitting almost totally the concern with how to get rid of death.

It would then seem that the solution to this problem is very simple. Let God forgive man and things will be put aright. This would be true if man’s main fault was sin but it was not. It was Athanasius who pointed out that God could have forgiven Adam, Adam who wept and regretted his actions. And it was Athanasius who pointed out that man’s problem is not moral but ontological, that is, pertaining to his being. Man’s being had to be ‘modified’ by becoming united with uncreated being which could confer eternal life. Maximus, another Church Father, points out that the incarnation would have happened even without the fall because creation had to be given the gift of immortality through union with God. As a result of the Fall, man enjoys a counterfeit life, a life which can best be characterized as survival, which needs to be transformed into the life that does not die, into true life

To accomplish this, the initiative has to come from God and this has to be a union rather than a mere submission or forgiveness between the created and the uncreated. No effort at doing good, at obeying the law will save us. (of course, this does not mean that we should not strive to do good and avoid sinning.) It is Christ who fulfils the requirement of conferring onto creation the gift of union with God.

But there is still another important factor that needs to be in place. The initiative and action of God cannot go contrary to man’s freedom or it would not be an action of love but of coercion. And the complete expression of human freedom came when Mary replied to the Angel: yes, let it be according to God’s wish. Mankind, through Mary, gives a free assent to God and the process of salvation now steps into high gear.

The dogma about the virgin birth underlines the centrality of the fact that this birth of Christ was not just something natural continuing enslaved nature in its natural state, but involves the interaction of God with creation so as to bestow on it a new and eternal life. Some see the dogma of the virgin birth as simply unnecessary mystification. But it underlines the important teaching that creation in itself cannot redeem itself. It needs input and union with the uncreated, with what is outside it.

Some have claimed that it is the soul that counts and the body is obviously secondary since it is corruptible. To propose that we somehow survive through our soul is contrary to the purpose and reason for creation. Why have matter at all if it can simply be discarded? And when we witness the corruptibility of matter, it doesn’t take much to convince us that matter is indeed of secondary importance and should be discarded. But this view attacks the whole idea of creation and matter in general. That is why the Church has doggedly held onto its belief in the Resurrection and not some survival of the ‘soul’ because it is the Resurrection, and only this, that makes sense of the material universe.

And here again I want to return to the point I had made previously. I had stated that Christianity is not a religion since the basis for religions is a desire and search for universal justice. The highest value becomes ‘fairness’. Christianity does not bring a new teaching in morality or ethics but neither does it abandon morality. It does not teach a new morality or new moral laws. Therefore, when Christianity is lumped into comparisons or contrasts with religions, this is not being fair to those religions or to Christianity. We are comparing two very different things. So what is it about Christianity that is new?

One of the things about Christianity is that it does not accommodate death, it does not come to terms with death which it sees as an enemy of all of creation. How many times we hear that death is natural – it’s almost a part of life. But Christianity has always taken the position that death is never good, it is always an outrage against creation, against life and against man. Christianity does not come to terms with death or accept it. Death is always an unwelcome intruder into creation and death is the enemy to be vanquished from creation and this is what Christ brings to the world.

Christ creates a new humanity which is no longer subject to the laws of the Old Creation and through this he defeats death. Christianity does something (and of course, through this doing, it also teaches and explains), something that has been planned by God from before Genesis, before creation. What it accomplishes is the creation of a new human being endowed with eternal life. What it accomplishes is a bridge over the divide between the mortal and the immortal. And it clings tenaciously to the value and importance of the material and undoes the artificial separation between matter and spirit.

So why do we not see more of a change in the empirical world? Why are we still subject to the old laws of nature?

This is a question that has troubled many. Even in the Gospels you see reference to it in the challenge giving by the onlookers to Jesus – if you truly are the son of God, do something, get off the cross and we will believe you. But the matter is not so simple. What Christ has brought the world is new life, genuine life but we still have to deal with survival which is what we still mistakenly call life. When people die now it is not because Christ has failed in his mission to defeat death. It is to see this ‘biological death’ as a defeat of survival but not of true life.

Yes, new possibilities for humanity, and for the cosmos, have already been opened up but they have not been completed. It is time now for each of us to join Mary and to offer God our individual yes and to join in, and contribute, to the project of inaugurating the new creation. There is still much work that needs doing – the whole of creation has to be redeemed and renewed. The call to do this honors one of the greatest gifts given to man – his freedom. The accomplished work of Christ is not forced onto humans who may not be willing to accept it, We each of us is involved freely in bringing in the New Creation with no compulsion from God. We had no say in our biological genesis, in our conception and birth. But we do have a say in being born into the New Creation.

The question raised above is still tainted with a magical view of what transpired in the life and death and Resurrection of Christ. He did remind his followers that much tribulation and persecution awaited them but he also reassured them that the situation had changed and we need to now, each of us, make our contribution. We want quick and easy and obvious solutions but that is not the way that God acts. Just consider the billions of years in earth’s history. How patiently God overlooked His creation waiting for it to finally bring forth beings who could offer this creation back to God as a gift of adoration. For some of us time is a nuisance, a hindrance that separates us from the eternity that will bring us paradise. But time was created by God and He uses it for His purposes in spite of all of our demands and He uses it in a manner very different from ours.

In closing, I want to say the following to you. The answer to the question why are things not different lies with us. If we want to know that the world has changed for the better, then we need to get involved in that change. We cannot sit on the outside and complain. It is not a matter simply of logical arguments. As Gregory Palamas wrote: there is always a counterargument to an argument, but how can one argue against a life well lived? And it is good lives that we are called to live in love of God and neighbor and of creation and then we will show that the world has indeed changed.

Sincerely
Bar-Abbas