Paradise
PETER C. BOUTENEFF
The Greek Paradeisos (cf. the Persian Pardez, meaning “enclosure”) in the Septuagint refers to any enclosed garden (cf. Num. 24.6; Neh. 2.8; Eccl. 2.5; Jer. 29.5), but remains particularly associated with the Garden in Eden (Gen. 2–3, 13.10; also Is. 51.3; Ezek. 28.13). In Second Temple Jewish literature (e.g., 1 Enoch 60.8, 23, 61.12; Apoc. Abraham 21.3, 6; 3 Baruch 4.10) as well as in the New Testament (Lk. 23.43; Rev. 2.7), Paradise comes to refer also to the destination of the righteous, whether it is an earthly or heavenly topos. St. Paul’s mystical experience which associates Paradise with the Third Heaven (2Cor. 12.2–3) has deeply influenced the Greek patristic literature, and is frequently cited.
PARADISE AS THE GARDEN OF HUMAN ORIGINS
Paradise as the earthly garden in Eden, into which the first-created humans were placed, and which Genesis 2 locates on Earth (in what is modern-day Iraq), is treated variously in the Greek fathers. Theophilus of Antioch, almost unique among the early writers for the absence of a typological (christological) exegesis of the Paradise narrative, is concomitantly almost unique in attempting to pinpoint the chronological dating of the events narrated in Genesis 1–3 (as did Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Chronicle, no longer extant). Conversely, and possibly following Philo (cf. Laws of Allegory 1.43), Origen practically mocks anyone who would interpret Paradise as an actual place with physical trees and chewable fruit (On First Principles 4.3.1). Precisely this notion, however, featured strongly in Ephrem’s Hymns on Paradise (Brock 1990). Gregory of Nazianzus is open and provisional in his interpretation: God placed the human person in Paradise, “Whatever this Paradise actually was,” and introduced him to trees which Gregory supposes might represent contemplation (theoria) (Oration 38.12).
Contemporary Orthodox theologians tend to follow the fathers in paying scant attention to the question of the physical historicity of the Paradise of Genesis 2–3, focusing rather on its existential significance or more often on its christological sense. Those who address the question of historicity answer it variously. Fr. Seraphim Rose insists on a literal reading of Genesis 1–3, rejecting any evolutionary theory and believing the universe to be less than ten thousand years old. Archbishop Lazar Puhalo associates the insistence upon the physical historicity of Genesis 1–3 with a weak faith in God, who quite evidently creates through an evolutionary means over the course of billions of years. A range of positions exists spanning these extremes, alternately accommodating or rejecting evolutionary theories and the scientific dating of the universe at 13.7 billion years. But again, most focus on the existential character of the narrative (Orthodox hymnography and patristic texts usually place “us” in the Garden, and lament “our” sin therein), or the christological (Adam being a type for Christ [Rom. 5.14], and the entire narrative describing what Christ comes to restore).
PARADISE AS DESTINATION
Some of the Greek fathers saw Paradise, albeit in various ways, as the resting place of the (righteous) dead. Some periodically distinguished Paradise from Heaven, the former being a kind of interim space before arrival in Heaven (cf. Origen, First Principles 2.11.6). Reckoning Paradise as the destination of the righteous relied on several factors that presented the age to come as a return to origins. One was the dynamic of typology, which related the events, personae, and even the “space” of Eden to the passion and resurrection of Christ. Christ is the New Adam, Mary the New Eve, the tree of the cross is the new tree of life, and the heavenly Paradise, and/or the church, is the new Eden. This manner of understanding the Scriptures came to a particularly full theological expression in St. Irenaeus’s concept of recapitulation (Adversus Haereses).
Of related significance is the understanding of the age to come as a restoration (apokatastasis) (cf. Acts 3.21). “The end is always like the beginning,” says Origen (First Principles 1.6.2). Although steeped in a classical Greek mindset which espoused a broadly cyclic understanding of time and destiny, he is here speaking of a restoration – through subjection to Christ in the Holy Spirit – to a single end which is like the single beginning. In so doing he articulates a consistent trajectory of thought in the Greek fathers. This is not properly understood as a return to a place or state that was ever historically realized, but rather as the realization of the divine will, the fulfillment of the original (or better, eternal) divine intention and principle (logos) for humanity, unrealized by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Frequently, then, the effective identity of end and beginning is expressed through this common topos of Paradise.
On this score, while the primeval Paradise was seen as an ideal place and condition, its human denizens (the biblical Adam and Eve) are not generally portrayed as icons of a fully realized state of human personhood. Maximus the Confessor asserts that humans fell “together with their coming into being” (To Thalassius 61). Irenaeus, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Ephrem the Syrian understood Adam and Eve to be “works in progress,” innocent like children and, if anything, terribly weak. They partook of a fruit that was always intended for human consumption, but not for persons in their yet-underdeveloped state. The Eucharistic Anaphora of Basil the Great says that the human creature was placed in Paradise with “the promise of immortality.” Adam and Eve represent an unrealized potential, while the icon of perfected, immortal humanity is the New Adam, Jesus Christ, through whom humans may now attain to the Paradise always intended for them, as a life in free and full communion with God – a place of ineffable, inexhaustible, and ever-surprising sweetness, beauty, and joy.
SEE ALSO: Ecology; Original Sin; Soteriology
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Bouteneff, P. C. (2008) Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Brock, S. (trans.) (1990) St. Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Paradise. Crestwood, NY:
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Rose, S. (2000) Genesis, Creation, and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.