Falling at the First Instant
Part 1, Revisiting My "Theology of Everything"
Back in September I shared a thirteen-part series entitled "A Theology of Everything" which was my attempt to pull a lot of theological threads together concerning creation theology, soteriology, and eschatology.
Regarding creation theology, I got a lot of questions about one of the ideas I floated. So, I want to return to that series to address some of those questions.
But before turning to that topic here's a summary of some of the critical ideas from the "Theology of Everything" series:
Creation is both ex Deo and ex nihilo, both "from God" and "from nothing." Created ex Deo, the ground of our existence rests upon God. Everything is spiritual. But as creatures our finite being is shadowed by non-being. Creaturely existence, therefore, tends in one of two directions, either toward Being or non-being, toward God or the void.
Borrowing from Maximus the Confessor, at the first instant of creation humanity severed its connection to God. This is experienced by the creature as a moral and ontological catastrophe. Morally, the creature apprehends its moral distance from God and experiences dismay. Our eyes are opened to the knowledge of good and evil and with that awareness comes shame and hiding from God. Moral distance from God is experienced by the creature as "guilt," "wrath," and "judgment." Ontologically, upon separation from God creaturely being begins to drift toward non-being. Death, disease, damage, and decay come to haunt creaturely existence.
Anticipating the creature's separation following creation, God provides remedies for the moral and ontological catastrophe suffered by the creature. Morally, pardon is made visible within history in the life and death of Jesus. Assurance of mercy is communicated to the creature. Ontologically, by uniting created being with Being in the hypostatic union, Christ reestablishes ontological connection with God. This ontological connection, made available by the Holy Spirit, allows created being to survive death as demonstrated by the victory of Christ's created flesh over death in his resurrection.
Having made these gifts available, both pardon and Spirit, God calls creatures back to Himself. This journey toward God is both moral and pneumatological. Creatures moving toward non-being, deeper into Sin and Death, are called upon to repent, summoned to "turn around" toward Being and Life. Creatures who persist in rebellion, like the Prodigal Son, journey into the "far country." They walk into the void and suffer the encroachments of non-being, morally and ontologically.
Creatures united with Christ's Spirit will experience transfiguration and resurrection. Just as Christ was raised, so they will be raised to enjoy life incorruptible. Creatures who are not united with Christ's Spirit will experience death as an ontological catastrophe. Non-being will eclipse creaturely being, throwing the creature into darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. But not wishing any of his creation to suffer the fate of non-being, God continues to sustain the creature's existence. Existing ex Deo, the creature's life remains necessarily open to God. Experiencing the pedagogy of death and the outer darkness the creature will, eventually, repent and begin its journey toward God. Apokatastasis, where all created being comes to rest in God, is the completion and fulfillment of God's creative labors. Until then, creation suffers the birth-pangs.
Of these ideas, the one that I've received the most pushback and questions about concerns Maximus' notion that creation fell the first "instant" of creation. As I shared in the original series, on three different occasions in his writings Maximus the Confessor describes how humanity fell the "instant" we were created. Two examples:
"...our nature unnaturally fell at the instant it was created, thus depleting its whole potential." (Ambiguum, 42)
"But at the instant he was created, the first man, by use of his senses, squandered this spiritual capacity--the natural desire of the mind for God--on sensible things." (Ad Thalassim, 61)
I've been asked about what this might look like or imply for our readings of Genesis. I'll share some speculations about this in the next post.
Regarding this: “Ontologically, upon separation from God creaturely being begins to drift toward non-being. Death, disease, damage, and decay come to haunt creaturely existence.” Im trying to figure out how this stacks with evolutionary science. Obviously, there was death disease, and decay before this instaneous human Fall. How does the fall then have anything to do with these creaturely aspects of non-being.
I think if we start Christologically central, beginning at ‘The Cross’, where a Triune God who is outside our artificial notions about the boundaries of space and time, we can potentially see how the very essence of his ontological being – [Love] requires Freedom – even freedom for the Creation to in effect, make itself. Emergently, this brings forth a hominid who possesses a gnomic will with the potentiality for free will agency, along with an existential awareness of its own terminable condition. 'Non-being' in one sense, could be thought of a reversion back to a purely animal state, denying an awareness of a Creator and embracing only genetically wired appetites. Paradoxically humanity is also epistemologically insatiable and corporately will push beyond the restrictions of its own biology, which results in a kind of pre-wired Nihilism. For a loving God who exists in the eternal now, Creation itself is simultaneously an act of kenotic condescension whereby through stellar and biological evolution, God lovingly enters into human flesh and unites himself with our nihilistic self-slaughter. Jesus is in a sense, the terminus of human evolution where he inverts the biological imperative, which leads to “Non-being” and transforms it into a beautiful spiritually resurrected one.