It was [the devils] plan to obilterate man through death, dissolving him in matter. And to all appearances he succeeded, since after burial the body surrenders to the earth the constituent elements which it received from it and is dissolved into it. This was contrived by the sower of sin... to make the works of God disappear and to dissolve the elements that hold them together in being. (St John Chrysostom) The wisdom of God, however, intervenes at this point with great discernment, enriching the passive movement to the grave with an element which may be called active, and thus trnasforming it. Death becomes the means by which the human body penetrates into the interior of the earth, reaching the inmost parts of creation. With death, man touches the boundaries of the universe, becomes air, water, and fire, matter and energy, an element of space. The dust returns to the earth as it was, says Ecclesiates (12:7). But this dust is no longer only matter. It carries in actual fact the principle and the form of man, as St Maximos would have said. Thus the material creation which, as we have seen, clothed man in its corruption in an organic way, is now dressed, it could be said, from within, once more in an organic way; thanks to the other aspect of the two-fold reality which death itself constitutes, is dressed with a new element which, as the human body, is receptive of incorruption. For this reason, along with the final resurrection of bodies which He wil bring about at His Second Coming, Christ will also bring about the transformation of the universe into a new earth and a new heaven. --Nellas, Deification in Christ, p.65-66
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 01:32:58 +0000
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