ANTHROPOLOGY

ANTHROPOLOGY. The word means the study, in our case theology, of the human being. It is important to stress two things about Orthodox anthropology: first, Orthodoxy’s emphasis on the mystery of the human being and, second, that a proper appreciation of this mystery is necessary for the correct understanding of sin (q.v.), of salvation, of the person and work of Christ, and indeed of all theology (q.v.). The mystery of human existence is rooted in Gen, particularly Gen 1:26, and the creation of “Man” or humankind-i.e., both male and female-as “in the image and according to the likeness” of God. The “image of God” in the Church Fathers (q.v.) is understood in both an individual and a collective sense, as it is in Gen 1:27. “Adam” is at once the first human and all of humanity, anthropos in general. From the moment of creation, the first human is intended to sum up all of creation in “himself” and offer it to the Creator. In its original potential, human existence is therefore a microcosm, a little world, and is called to mediate between God in Trinity (q.v.) and the universe. Individually each human has the vocation to mirror the divine energies; and collectively all humanity finds its ultimate vocation in the call to image forth the uncreated Trinity as a union of persons bound together in a single life and love.

This is the vocation that Adam and Eve failed to accomplish and that Christ accomplished once and for all, ephapax (Heb 7:27). The Fall was a failure of the will, a deliberate rejection of the vocation to act as universal priest, and a turning instead, inwardly, to the glorification of self and, outwardly, to the worship of creation in place of the Creator. This is the original apostasy that, together with its consequences, Orthodoxy sums up under the phrase, “the ancestral sin” (to propaterikon hamartema). Here we may note significant differences with the thought of Augustine of Hippo (q.v.). The latter saw the inheritance of the Fall as that “original sin” from which every human being inherits both guilt and condemnation. It is a disaster so great that the image of God has been, if not obliterated, then at least rendered powerless. The will is frozen in evil. For Augustine this condemnation is transmitted from one generation to the next through sexual procreation, hence the extraordinarily great importance he attaches to sexual appetite, concupiscence (q.v.). The Greek Fathers, on the whole, differ from him. The ancestral sin does not destroy the will, but it does weaken it. The mystery of the divine image remains. Those consequences that the first sin unleashed, however, alter the conditions of existence in such a way as to render sin virtually inevitable. The powers of sin and death, as Orthodoxy reads Paul (e.g., Rom 5:12), have a personal, hypostatic existence. They are alien and inimical forces, the devil (“he who has the power of death,” Heb 2:14) or “prince of this world” (e.g., Jn 14:30), who have invaded God’s creation through the sin of the first humans. Instead of integration, the fallen world is thus locked in a process of disintegration and corruption that leads toward ultimate nonbeing, a relapse into the nil from which creation was originally called.

This process applies first and foremost to the human microcosm. Created as soul and body and meant to bring together spiritual and physical reality, and so finally to bridge the chasm between Creator and creation in such a way as to bring the community of the latter into the likeness of the divine community of the Trinity, the fallen human composite is the first to come apart. Soul and body are at war with each other, each part feeding on its inferior. The intellect (nous) looks to the emotions for satisfaction. The emotive capacity of the soul turns to the body and its natural appetites, while the body takes its sustenance from lifeless matter. All is therefore reversed. Everything becomes a matter of appetite fueled in the last analysis by the demands of a demonic pride.

Into this cycle of consuming and dying Christ, the “Second Adam,” came to restore humanity to its original calling by accomplishing that vocation, once and for all, in himself. Through his birth, death, and resurrection, he restored the lost integration of humanity and established the “new creation.” It is up to the individual Christian, however, to discover in him- or herself the realization of Christ’s accomplishment and presence, i.e., to arrive through him in the Holy Spirit (q.v.) at the manifestation of his likeness. All potential has been restored in Christ. The powers of sin and death have been overcome and “life reigns from the tomb,” to quote the Easter oration of Joh n Chrysostom (q.v.). Heaven and earth have been united forevermore.

Nonetheless, in Orthodoxy the mystery of the image of God in every human being demands the possibility of both assent and refusal. The grace (q.v.) of Christ cannot be “irresistible.” Although the ontological condition of nature has been altered-or better, restored-in Christ, each person is required to bring his or her own will into conformity with the salvation that he, uniquely, has accomplished. This is the place for what Orthodox asceticism (q.v.) calls the “ordeal” (agon), the reeducation of the will. Nature has been healed, but the person-hypostasis, or irreducible individuality-of every human being is called, with the assistance of grace, to realize in itself what has already occurred through the union of human nature with the Second Person of the Trinity (the “hypostatic union”). Orthodoxy requires, in short, that every human person choose what he or she has already become in Christ Jesus. Hence, God permits his creature to be “tempted,” i.e., put to the test. This life is thus the “arena,” the place of combat-or better, the sphere of that choice required by the Creator out of respect for the mystery of his creature’s freedom (q.v.).

In turning to the modern debate over human nature, particularly the issues of gender raised by contemporary feminism, “gay rights,” and “alternative lifestyles,” Orthodoxy displays at once a certain intransigence and a replay of debates from its own past in the patristic tradition. Intransigence because the nature of sexual relations-and sexual politics-must be read in the light of a revelation not easily dismissed in order to be in accord with contemporary fashions. Given the revelation, for example, it is difficult to see how an argument defending the possiblity of sexual intercourse between people of the same gender could be constructed. Holy Tradition (q.v.) is consistently unambiguous on that score.

The matter of gender, however, is much more complex. Here we might suggest that a key lies in the particular scriptural account of creation to which one gives precedence. Gen 1 presents male and female as simultaneously and (presumably) equally made “in the image.” Gen 2, on the other hand, seems to have the male created first and the woman second as “an help meet for him” (KJV). A very ancient line of patristic exegesis, running from at least Origen to Gregory of Nyssa (qq.v.), sees the first account as eternally valid and the second as a divine provision for the Fall. According to this reading, probably influenced by gnosticism (q.v.), gender is a feature of fallen humanity. This approach, however, raised very serious problems for Christian Orthodoxy concerning the permanent value of the body. It led in practice to a kind of spiritualism that was also inimical, in the long run, to the cosmic significance of Christ. On the other hand, priority accorded to the second account, for example, the path of Symeon the New Theologian (q.v.), raises grave and perhaps justified contemporary difficulties regarding justice and equality. The issue is therefore open and the debate in the Orthodox world has only just begun.