DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS
Genesis 2:4-19
(3/13) 1st
God
Said-IV ~ God Charges Mankind: Genesis 2:4-19, especially
16, 17: “And the Lord God gave a charge to Adam, saying, Of
every tree which is in the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil - of it ye shall not eat, but in whatsoever day
ye eat of it, ye shall surely die.” St. Symeon the New Theologian records
that “the Holy Fathers tell us that God became man in order that through
His becoming man He might again raise up human nature into the blessed
state” of that divine condition that was ours before the transgression of
Adam. Then St. Symeon draws this
conclusion: “Therefore, we must know in what way it is that man, through
the Economy of Christ’s Incarnation, may again come into that blessed
state.”[1]
The common starting point of the Fathers from which they understand the
original state of mankind is the sixth day of creation (Gen. 1:24-31). Today’s reading expands our
information about that special, final day of creation. We learn that man, as well as every
“living creature according to its kind” (Gen. 1:24), was brought
forth from the “dust of the earth” (Gen. 2:7,19). St. John of Damascus teaches that
“all that is produced,” man and animals alike, is “subject to
change....For those things must be subject to change whose production has its
origin in change,” that is, “in being brought into being out of
nothing, and in transforming a substratum of matter into something
different.”[2] How, then, did God intend for man to
change?
Man differs from the other living creatures in that
“God...breathed upon his face the breath of life, and the man became a
living soul” (vs. 7); and, as we learned yesterday, man was thereby made
according to the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26). Thus, God furnished man’s nature
with free will, simultaneously imposing “a law on him, not to taste of
the tree of knowledge.” St.
John of Damascus elaborates: if man “should preserve the dignity of the
soul by giving the victory to reason, and acknowledging his Creator, and
observing His command, he should share eternal blessedness and live to all
eternity, proving mightier than death.
But if he should subject the soul to the body, comparing himself in
ignorance of his true dignity to the senseless beasts, and shaking off his
Creator’s yoke, and neglecting His divine injunction, he will be liable
to death and corruption, and will be compelled to labor throughout a miserable
life.”[3]
God placed man in the
Now that our Lord Jesus Christ has become Incarnate, the image of God
has once again been clearly manifested to mankind that we might turn back to
God. However, returning to our
Creator only happens, as St. Athanasios teaches, if we “have got rid of
all foreign matter that has affected our soul, and can show it in the
simplicity as it was made.”
Seeing Christ, the soul is brightened as it “beholds in a mirror
the image of the Father, Whose image the Savior is.”[5]
Illumine our hearts, O Master, with the pure light of Thy Divine knowledge.[6]