|
What We Believe About The Father Almighty We continue our examination of that summary of the core of Orthodox faith found in the Nicene Creed. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made: Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man; And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried; And the third day He arose again, according to the Scriptures; And ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father; And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets; And I believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. The words we will focus on tonight are "father," "maker" (which can be used interchangeably with the word "creator"), "heaven" and "earth," and "visible" and "invisible." There are two ways in which we can speak of God: 1) as He is in Himself; or 2) as He relates to creation. When we speak of God as Father are we speaking of God as Father in Himself or are we speaking of God as He relates to the creation? God is father in both of these senses, but when we say in the creed that God is Father the sense that is used primarily is the first sense. That God is in Himself, in His own very being, a Father because God has a Son. He is the Father of His Son, Jesus Christ. Even if there had been no creation at all, God would still be a Father because God from all eternity from has the one called the Son of His love. Every thing that God is, both the Father and the Son and the Spirit, they are all likewise. The only difference between the Father and the Son is that the Father is the Father and the Son is the Son. Both the Son and the Spirit have their origins in the Father. The Son is begotten of the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The source of their existence is the Father. The Trinitarian God is not three independent gods because the persons of the Son and the Spirit have their origins in the Father. He is the cause of being of the Son and the Spirit. There never was a time when the Father was without His Son and the Spirit. God is by definition of His very being the Father of the only begotten Son (begotten outside of time in the eternal present of God). God lives in the eternal present of His being and in that eternal present the Son is eternally begotten (and likewise, the Spirit eternally proceeds) Therefore, central to the profession of the Orthodox faith is the eternal fatherhood of the Father. Speaking of God the Father as He relates to the creation, we must be very careful to avoid modern humanistic expressions such as the, "fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man," that speak of human beings by definition as somehow being children of God. To be a child of God in the most precise sense one must be begotten from the being of the Father Himself. And there is only one such being, the Eternal Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore we cannot speak of human beings as being children of God in that sense. Rather we are creatures of God. To the extent that we define father as the one who originates life or initiates life, even on the human level, we can say that God the Father is the initiator of everything that is, and in that sense He is the Father of all creation. The essential difference between the creature and the Son of God is that the Son of God is begotten from the being of the Father personally while the human being is created out of nothing. Everything that God does for His creation is concerned with taking this creature of God, the human being, and making it possible for him to share the same life that His only begotten Son has. That is the destiny God wills for the human being. The mission of the church is to enable us to share the very life of the only begotten Son of God. We must say two more things. First, we see in God being the eternal Father of the only begotten Son that God is not a "monad," an isolated individual being. The Father is never alone. He always has with Him the Son and the Spirit. As we said previously, God is love. You cannot have a perfect communion of love if you are alone. God is from the heart of His being love and in the very being of God there is a perfect eternal communion of love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Secondly, when we speak of God as Father we are not to project onto Him a merely human understanding of "father." For example, human masculinity should not be projected onto to God. People are male or female and things are neuter. But God is God and he is ultimately beyond all the adjectives that human language has for description. Creation is a reflection of God, but we can never obscure the immense difference there is between the Creator and the creature, on the one hand. On the other hand, however, it is at the core of the God who reveals Himself that he speaks of Himself as Father, not as mother. Therefore, those who de-sexualize all the language that is used to describe God (i.e., advocates of "inclusive language") go outside what has been revealed by God. Essential to how God has revealed Himself is that He is Father. The Son begotten of Him is son and not daughter. And when the Son enters the world He takes the existence of a human male. Jesus in His humanity was a human male. Jesus in His divinity is God, beyond all descriptions of human gender. There is not too much that needs to be said about God as the Father almighty. Almighty means having all power over everything. The Greek word for Almighty is "pantocrator" and is the name of the icon of Christ found in the dome of Orthodox church buildings. When we say that God is the creator we day that God called into being out of nothing everything that is by a divine act. It is unique to the Judeo Christian revelation to profess faith in a God who creates out of nothing ("ex nihilo"). While other systems of the world’s thought may have a creator god, it is a god who makes order out of pre-existing matter. Matter co-exists with god in these systems. There are several consequences that flow from our belief the God created ex nihilo. For example, by definition, our understanding of time is that it is linear. There is a point at which time begins (creation) and a point at which time ends (the end of the age). History has a beginning and it has an end. This is essential to the Orthodox faith. Creation à--------------------TIME--------------------à End of the Age The other philosophical and religious systems of the world tend to see time as a series of eternally recurring cycles. Things happen over and over and over again without beginning and end. History has no inherent meaning in this construct. The idea of the human being having several lives within recurring cycles is absolute incompatible with Judeo Christian faith. God calls into existence everything that is by His divine act. He orders it according to His divine wisdom. Therefore, there is nothing accidental in creation. Creation did not happen by chance. The Orthodox Church says very little about how we are to understand the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. It does say this. God created everything out of nothing. God created man in His own image and likeness. Man is a unique creature. Just as we say that the difference between God and creation is infinite, so we would also say that no matter how much we human beings have in common with the rest of creation there are some things that are so different about us that the difference between the human being and the rest of the visible creation also is immeasurable. The Church has never dogmatized (pronounced a definite statement of doctrine in any of the councils) that the description of creation in the opening chapter of the Genesis is to be understood in a literal or historic sense (e.g., that God created the world in six, twenty-four hour days). * What must be said without any unclearness, though, is that there is no "chance" in creation. Creation comes into existence by an act of God. The order that exists in it is by the plan of God. The human being can never be understood as simply the end product of the process of evolution.God created everything visible and invisible. There are two created worlds – one that is seen and another that isn’t. God first called into being a world of spiritual beings that we call the angelic world. Subsequent to that he created the visible world. Why is there a creation? God did not create because he needed to. God is complete in Himself; He did not need to fulfill some lack in Himself. But, rather, out of the fullness of His being, by an act of His free and perfect will, God in His goodness called this creation into being and he did it through His Son, for His Son. From the overflowing of His love and goodness, God created all that is as a gift for His Son. God is never aloof from His creation. While, one the one hand, the difference between God and His creation cannot be measured, on the other hand God is intimately involved or engaged with the creation. The creation is very dear to God - so dear that He Himself enters creation to redeem and save it. The relating of God to creation in the person of His Son is central to the Orthodox faith. Let’s now focus on the most essential aspect of the visible world – man. Man is created as the apex of the visible creation. What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him? Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than God, and dost crown him with glory and majesty! Thou dost make him to rule over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under His feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name in all the earth! (Ps 8:4-9) And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Gen 1:27) Man is unique because he is the only being that is described as being created in the image and likeness of God. Not even the angels are described this way. There is in the human being a breath of the life of God Himself. Man is described by many fathers of the church as being two things. First, man is a microcosm. "Micro" means small, "cosmos" means world. Man is within Himself a small world, a microcosm of both the visible and invisible creation (both spiritual and empirical existence). Man cannot be reduced or dichotomized into a spiritual piece and a material piece. But, rather, man is a union of the spiritual and the material. This union is of utmost importance to understanding the fall of man from an Orthodox perspective. The fall led to the entrance of death into the world. Death, a great catastrophe never intended by God, causes the unnatural division of the material from the spiritual. The Orthodox tradition does not say that the spiritual aspect of man is exalted while the physical is lowly or degraded. Such an understanding is not Christian. Rather, it is a product of ancient "dualism." One of its most basic expressions comes from the Greek philosopher Plato who describes man as a soul imprisoned in a body. In Orthodox Christianity, the body, like all the rest of material creation, is understood as being good. Man exists at the border of the visible and invisible creation. He is within Himself both worlds in one. Secondly, man is spoken of as being the "mediator." God intended for man to be the mediator, the link, between all the created universe and God. Cosmos ß---------------à Man ß---------------à GOD Man was to be the means through which the entire created universe was sanctified by God. This unique creature made in the image and likeness of God, man, was to eternally return in an act of praise and thanksgiving the whole creation to God. This is the same as saying man was created to be the priest of creation. Man was created not to die but to live forever, to share the same life that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share (not in their essence, but in their energy). Science knows the human being as "homo sapiens" (man who knows). But the revelation of God is that the human being is called to be "homo adoras" (man who adores, who worships, who offers to God as priest everything that has been created). The next time we will speak of the invisible world and the fall of the human beings from the place and destiny that God intended for them. * For a forceful argument for a literal interpretation based on the writings of the Church fathers seeGenesis, Creation and Early Man |