The Resurrection (Part I), by V.N. Lossky
The Father accepts the Son’s sacrifice ” “by economy” (“po domostroitelstvu”): “man had to be sanctified by God’s humanity” (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 45, On the Holy Pascha). Kenosis [God’s self-limitation, His Divine condescension, especially in taking on human nature in Christ – Ed.] culminates and ends with Christ’s death, to sanctify the entire human condition, including death.
Cur Deus homo? Not only because of our sins but also for our sanctification, to introduce all the moments of our fallen life into that true life which never knows death. By Christ’s resurrection, the fullness of life is inserted into the dry tree of humanity.
Christ’s work therefore presents a physical, even biological, reality. On the cross, death is swallowed up in life. In Christ, death enters into divinity and there exhausts itself, for “it does not find a place there.” Redemption thus signifies a struggle of life against death, and the triumph of life. Christ’s humanity constitutes the first fruits of a new creation. Through it a force for life is introduced into the cosmos to resurrect and transfigure it in the final destruction of death.
Since the Incarnation and the Resurrection death is enervated, is no longer absolute. Everything converges towards the apokatastasis ton panton, that is to say, towards the complete restoration of all that is destroyed by death, towards the embracing of the whole cosmos by the glory of God become all in all things, without excluding from this fullness the freedom of each person before that full consciousness of his wretchedness which the light divine will communicate to him.
And so we must complete the legal image of redemption by a sacrificial image. Redemption is also the sacrifice where Christ, following the Epistle to the Hebrews, appears as the eternal sacrificer, the High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek Who finishes in heaven what He began on earth.
Death on the cross is the Passover of the New Alliance, fulfilling in one reality all that is symbolized by the Hebrew Passover. For freedom from death and the introduction of human nature into God’s Kingdom realize the only true Exodus. This sacrifice, this surrender of will itself to which Adam could not consent, certainly represents an expiation. But above all, it represents a sacrament, sacrament par excellence, the free gift to God, by Christ in His humanity, of the first fruits of creation, the fulfillment of that immense sacramental action, devolving first upon Adam, which the new humanity must complete, the offering of the cosmos as receptacle of grace.
The Resurrection operates a change in fallen nature, opens a prodigious possibility: the possibility of sanctifying death itself. Henceforth death is no longer an impasse, but a door into the Kingdom. Grace is given back to us, and if we carry it as “clay vessels,” or receptacles still mortal, our fragility will now take on a power which vanquishes death. The peaceful assurance of martyrs, insensible not only to fear but also to physical pain itself, proves that an effective awareness of the Resurrection is henceforth possible to the Christian.
~Adapted from V. N. Lossky’s book “Orthodox Theology: An Introduction,” translated by Ian and Ihita Kesarcodi-Watson), cited in: http://www.stjohndc.org/Russian/homilies/HomiliesE/e_0205.htm.
