In Adam our nature was split or dissected into two through sin. Yet in Christ this split is healed completely. This then is the abolition of death, or rather of mortality. In other words, it is the potential and dynamic restoration of the fullness and wholeness of human existence. It is a recreation of the whole human race, a “new creation” (ή καινή κτίσις),a new revelation of Divine love and Divine power, the consummation of creation.
One has to distinguish most carefully between the healing of nature and the healing of the will. Nature is healed and restored with a certain compulsion, by the mighty power of God’s omnipotent and invincible grace. One may even say, by some “violence of grace.” The wholeness is in a way forced upon human nature. For in Christ all human nature (the “seed of Adam”) is fully and completely cured from unwholeness and mortality.
This restoration will be actualized and revealed to its full extent in the General Resurrection, the resurrection of all, both of the righteous and of the wicked. No one, so far as nature is concerned, can escape Christ’s kingly rule, can alienate himself from the invincible power of the resurrection.
But the will of man cannot be cured in the same invincible manner; for the whole meaning of the healing of the will is in its free conversion. The will of man must turn itself to God; there must be a free and spontaneous response of love and adoration. The will of man can be healed only in freedom, in the “mystery of freedom.” Only by this spontaneous and free effort does man enter into that new and eternal life which is revealed in Christ Jesus. A spiritual regeneration can be wrought only in perfect freedom, in an obedience of love, by a self-consecration and self-dedication to God.
This distinction was stressed with great insistence in the remarkable treatise by Nicolas Cabasilas on The Life in Christ. Resurrection is a “rectification of nature” (ή άνάστασις φύσεως έστιν έπανόρθωσις) and this God grants freely. But the Kingdom of Heaven, and the beatific vision, and union with Christ, presume the desire (τρυψή έστιν της θελήσεως), and therefore are available only for those who have longed for them, and loved, and desired.
Immortality will be given to all, just as all can enjoy the Divine providence. It does not depend upon our will whether we shall rise after death or not, just as it is not by our will that we are born. Christ’s death and resurrection brings immortality and incorruption to all in the same manner, because all have the same nature as the Man Christ Jesus. But nobody can be compelled to desire. Thus Resurrection is a gift common to all, but blessedness will be given only to some.
And again, the path of life is the path of renunciation, of mortification, of self-sacrifice and self-oblation. One has to die to oneself in order to live in Christ. Each one must personally and freely associate himself with Christ, the Lord, the Savior, and the Redeemer, in the confession of faith, in the choice of love, in the mystical oath of allegiance. Each one has to renounce himself, to “lose his soul” for Christ’s sake, to take up his cross, and to follow after Him.
The Christian struggle is the “following” after Christ, following the path of His Passion and Cross, even unto death, but first of all, following in love. “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren… Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (7 John 3:16; 4:10).
He who does not die with Christ cannot live with Him. “Unless of our own free choice we accept to die unto His passion, His life is not in us,” says St. Ignatius. This is no mere ascetical or moral rule, not merely a discipline. This is the ontological law of spiritual existence, even the law of life itself.
~Adapted from Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption
