The mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God and His Word brings about the divinization of man. The Holy Fathers of the Church emphasize that God became man in order to make man God. No human being can attain deification except through the Son of God and His incarnate Word. Contemporary theologians debate whether the incarnation necessitated the fall of Adam and whether the incarnation was independent of the fall of man. This discussion arises because there are texts by the Church Fathers about this fall.

A) The general position of the Church Fathers

It should be noted from the beginning that the Holy Fathers do not confront this question in a hypothetical Scholastic manner. They did not think about whether Christ would have been incarnated or if Adam had not fallen. These questions indicate an excessive use of reason in an effort to understand the mysteries of God, and this is typical scholasticism and not orthodox theology. The theology of the Orthodox Church is concerned with the events that took place and deals with the issue of healing human nature and all people. This theology looks at fallen human nature and how it is healed in order to achieve the divinization that occurred through the incarnation of God.

In the patristic teaching, in the incarnation, the Son of God and His Word were united hypostatically with human nature, and thus this nature was deified and became the true and only medicine for man’s salvation and deification. Through holy baptism, a person can become a member of the body of Christ, and through holy communion he can participate in the deified body of Christ, the body that he took from his mother, the Lady. If this hypostatic unity between the divine and human natures had not occurred, deification would not have been possible. For this reason, incarnation was the ultimate goal of human creation. The suffering of Christ and his cross are the things added by the fall of Adam. Saint Maximus says that the incarnation was for the salvation of nature, and the sufferings were for the purpose of liberating those who through sin possessed death.

Saint Athanasius the Great says that the Son of God had to be incarnated for two basic reasons. First, to change the corruptible into incorruptible and the mortal into immortality, which did not happen through simple repentance but rather through God assuming the mortal and susceptible human body. Secondly, so that man may be renewed in Christ because the Son and the Word of God are the first example of man.

This theological position of Saint Athanasius does not contradict the position of the other Church Fathers, whom we will see shortly, who speak about the fact that the divine incarnation does not assume the fall as an absolute condition. This is for two basic reasons.

Firstly, because in the analyzes that he presents, Saint Athanasius looks at fallen man in particular and speaks about the fall of man and his renewal. The saint's theology is based on existing truth. He is seriously concerned with renewing and reforming this human being who has been clothed with death and the possibility of temptation.

Secondly, because it talks about the mystery of the divine incarnation and God’s management as we know it today. When he talks about incarnation and deification, he means the incarnation of Christ, his suffering, his cross, and his resurrection. Saint Athanasius finds this sufficient and does not proceed to other analyses.

Therefore, the assumptions of Saint Athanasius the Great differ from the assumptions of other holy fathers, whom we will discuss in the next part. They don't talk about the same things. We must be able to enter the minds of parents and teach them so that we are not mistaken.

b) The position of Saint Nicodemus of Athos

In his analysis of the patristic teaching on the same point, Saint Nicodemus reaches the conclusion that the incarnation of the Son of God and His Word was not the result of the fall of man, but rather was the primary goal of his creation, because in this way it is possible to reach theosis. This seems true when we consider that the fall of Adam would not have “obligated” God to become human nor would Christ have taken on human nature forever. This is what leaves us to conclude that the fall occurred in order for God to be incarnated, and that in the end it was not a bad thing, but rather a blessing.

St. Nicodemus of Athos develops this theological point in an excellent study entitled: “A Defense of the Popular Text on Our Lady the Mother of God in the Book of the Invisible War,” which constitutes an example of a theological essay. Saint Nicodemus of Athos was a great theologian in the Church because he deeply understood patristic teaching and expressed it in an influential and fruitful manner.

He identified the motivation for writing his defense with a phrase from the book “The Invisible War,” which was widespread at the time. He wrote: “The whole visible and invisible world was created for this purpose, for the Mother of God, and the Mother of God was for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

This article aroused some theologians of that time who expressed doubts about it. That is why Saint Nicodemus wrote at the beginning of his defense: “Since some commentators interested in sacred theology and who have read what I wrote about the Lady Theotokos... are confused... I apologize here for my failure to solve their problem.” It is admirable that the saint began his defense with great humility without slandering or criticizing the theologians of his time who were criticizing him. He presents his explanation without passion, but calmly and soberly. In fact, theological issues require serious dialogue, otherwise the Holy Spirit does not work.

After presenting his theological arguments, which we will present below, he concludes: “I believe that these few words are sufficient to apologize to the grateful rulers and readers for what I wrote about the Mother of God, and I ask them not to blame me excessively, because I do not write what I wrote from my opinion or from my belief, but rather I followed the doctrines of the theologians who spoke before me. If some people rebuke me out of emotion, let them rebuke Maximus the God-bearer, Gregory of Thessalonians, Andrew the Great, and others from whom I borrowed this doctrine.

This text is amazing and shows the saint's way of dealing with similar situations. At first, Saint Nicodemus speaks politely. He describes his readers as grateful and asks them not to blame him excessively. He hopes that his accusers are not motivated by passion. Although he knows that they are full of passions, he does not level superficial accusations against them. Then he emphasizes that he does not express his own view, but rather narrates the teaching of the holy Fathers of the Church from whom he borrowed this phrase.

In what follows, we will analyze further the theological view of Saint Nicodemus of Athos, according to which “all the visible and invisible world was created for this purpose, for the Mother of God, and the Mother of God was for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ,” meaning that the incarnation of Christ was the original goal and purpose of creation. This means that this is how man was united with God, and therefore the incarnation was independent of the fall of Adam.

c) Divine providence is God's prior will

To support his view, Saint Nicodemus takes passages from the Bible and the Holy Fathers of the Church. From the Bible he takes mainly three passages. The first is from Proverbs, where it says: “The Lord caused me to make his way at first, before his works of old” (Proverbs 8:22). The second is from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, where Christ is called the firstborn of all creation: “He who is the image of the invisible God is the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). In a similar way, the passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans states: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29).

In his interpretation of these passages on the basis of the teachings of the Holy Fathers, he says that they do not refer to divinity, because the Word was not created by God, nor is He the first of creatures, as Arius said. Rather, these passages refer to the humanity of Christ, which “is the beginning of every judgment that God prophesied before any "Another thing, it's the first thing he's done." Thus, the mystery of the management of the incarnate Son and the Word of God begins from all the ways of God. He is the firstborn of all creation “and was determined before the appointment of all the saved.”

Saint Maximus the Confessor has a distinctive passage that supports his view. I will quote a large part of it here because its meaning is important and has weight. “The mystery of the incarnation is great and profound. It is the blessed matter for which all things have their goals established.” The incarnation of Christ is a great and profound mystery for which the Holy Trinity created the entire world. Saint Maximus continues: “It is the goal that God envisioned in advance for the first creation, specifying what we call the goal for which everything came into being without it being anything.” This statement is amazing because it shows that the secret of the incarnation is the divine purpose that was from the beginning of the creation of beings and everything was for this purpose and not for any other purpose. This means that the decision to incarnate came before. Of course, this must be understood in the sense that time does not exist in God. Saint Maximus continues expressively: “God created the essences of beings with this purpose. It is mainly the goal of divine providence and the things He provides, and toward this goal is the sum of all the things He has made in God.” God created the world for this purpose, so the goal of divine providence and the restoration of all creation is incarnation.

This passage is so surprising and special that no one can explain it any other way. So, if this passage from the teaching of Saint Maximus is correct, it will prove that the deification of man actually occurred through the hypostatic union between the divine and human natures in the person of the Word of God. Thus, the Lady Theotokos, from whom Christ took flesh, was the result of the creation of the entire world, visible and invisible. Man is the sum of all creation.

St. Gregory Palamas says, referring to the affirmation of the Father at the baptism of Christ in the Jordan River: “This is my beloved Son,” that this voice shows that everything that was in the Old Testament, the law, the promises, and adoption, was imperfect “nor chosen and perfected according to God’s foreordained opinion.” Rather, he was looking towards the present goal and continuing towards the present, and these things were completed.” Then he says that not only the events of the Old Testament, but also the beginning of the world and man were directed towards Christ. As he continues, he emphasizes that man was also created for this purpose. Man was created in the image of God “in order to one day be able to contain the archetype.” Here, Saint Gregory Palamas wisely distinguishes between God’s prior will, which is His good desire, and His final good will, i.e. the incarnation of the Word of God, on the one hand, and God’s will by provision, i.e., the law of the Old Testament, on the other hand. The incarnation of the Son of God and His Word is the prior divine desire and is therefore independent of the fall of man.

Saint Nicodemus of Athos, referring to these passages, concludes: “Have you heard that God created man in His image so that he would be able to contain the archetype of the incarnation? For this reason, God made man a unit of the rational and sensory world, and a summary and summary of all creatures, so that by uniting with him, he is united with all creatures, as St. Paul says, and the Creator and creation become one through the hypostasis, according to Maximus the Divine One.

The fact that the divine plan, the secret of the incarnation of the Son of God and His Word, is the prior will of God, appears from the fact that the angels benefited from the incarnation as well. We know very well that man sinned, not the angels who glorify God without ceasing. The fact that the angels benefited from the incarnation means that this good was in God’s mind and is His perfect will and not a plan. According to Saint Nikita Stethatos, the angels were without inclination toward evil, but after the incarnation, and especially after the Resurrection of Christ, they became steadfast against evil “not by nature but by grace.” They achieved steadfastness, according to Saint John of Damascus, and they attained steadfastness, according to Saint Gregory Palamas. Thus also man would have attained deification by grace through the incarnation of Christ even if the fall had not occurred.

Of course, we must repeat that the Fathers did not approach this topic hypothetically, since this approach is the Scholastic way of thinking, but we used this hypothetical phrase in order to provide special emphasis on the positive fact that through Christ came the divinization of man. Through the incarnation of Christ, the angels, in addition to being unchangeable, also became more receptive to enlightenment.

Saint Nicodemus uses other arguments to show that the incarnation is the original will, as the Prophet Isaiah calls it, being ancient and the first among his designs. In God there is essence, hypostasis and powers. The powers, and the action by which God participates with creatures, are external. The hypostasis is more internal and the essence is deeper within. “By these three God has forever established these three general bonds.” The Father shares essence forever with the Son and the Spirit, through the birth of the Son and the emergence of the Spirit. “The Son assumed a hypostatic relationship of communion with humanity. Through this relationship, he knew in advance and realized in advance the actual unity that follows this relationship in time.” In the same way, “God assumed an eternal relationship...to share powers with the remaining creatures, and through this relationship he knew in advance and foreknowledged the fate of all mental and physical creatures.” Since this hypostatic relationship is more internal than the relationship of forces, prior knowledge of the hypostatic unity between the divine and human natures is prior to and more original than the unity with forces.

This also appears in the words of the Holy Fathers about the Mother of God, who is the person who served the mystery of the Incarnation and who presented her body to be the hypostatic unity between the divine and human natures. Thus, Saint Andrew of Crete says, “The Mother of God is... the object of God’s covenant with us. It reveals the difficult and incomprehensible depths; It is the goal set in advance for all generations to create generations; It is the crown of divine prophecies; It is the indescribable and indescribable divine will in every sense of the word before eternity to protect man.

This theological view is acceptable if we remember that Christ is the beginning, middle, and end of the creation of the world and the divinization of man. Only from this perspective can we see that the mystery of the incarnation is independent of the fall of man. Saint Maximus the Confessor says that our Lord Jesus Christ is “the beginning, middle, and end of generations, past, present, and future.” In interpreting these words, Saint Nicodemus of Athos says that this secret is the beginning of creation, because the goal of this secret was the beginning of the knowledge that preceded the creation of all creatures and the reason for this knowledge and this creation. It is the middle because it granted the fullness of God's foreknowledge and thus immutability to angels, immortality, incorruption, and salvation to humans. It is also the end because this secret became perfection, deification, glory, and blessing for angels, humans, and all creation.

D) Conclusions after analyzing this theological position:

Saint Nicodemus reaches two conclusions. First, that “the mystery of the Incarnation must have occurred, first and foremost because this mystery was the prior will of God, as we say with Saint Gregory of Thessalonians, primarily because of the infinite, essential and supreme goodness of God, and rather because of this The most profound foundation of paternal goodness, as Maximus the God-bearer said.” Secondly, because this was necessary for all spiritual and physical creations as their beginnings, middles and ends, as was shown.

The second conclusion is that the Mother of God, being the most direct and explicit means and necessary common cause of this mystery (because the body of Christ is the body of Mary according to Blessed Augustine), was known in advance and granted by God before all other creatures, and all other creatures died and came into being through her, being This is the goal that God had in mind beforehand, and it is also the end for which all things were created, as Saint Andrew said.

It may seem at first glance that everything explained here, based on the teaching of the Holy Fathers, refers to theoretical matters that have no bearing on spiritual life. But this is a mistake because the doctrine has a deep and intimate relationship with man’s spiritual life. This truth is proven in this theological teaching.

Everything we have seen shows that the Word of God became man not to appease divine goodness, as Western theologians say, but to deify human nature with love and benevolence. Appeasing divine goodness gives a legal dimension to spiritual life because it indicates that all our asceticism aims to appease God. On the other hand, it is not God who needs healing, but us. Therefore, the incarnation of Christ was God's prior will and the ultimate goal for the creation of man. Man would not have been able to achieve communion with God if there had not been a hypostatic unity between the divine and human natures of Christ, because there is a great difference between the created and the uncreated. The creature would not have been able to unite with the uncreated had this hypostatic unity not existed between the two in the person of Christ. What was added by the fall of man was Christ's suffering, cross, death, and resurrection. These matters are understood, of course, by the fact that through his incarnation, Christ assumed an extremely pure human nature, but susceptible to death and passion.

I consider it my duty to conclude by saying that Saint Nicodemus of Athos, as appears from these few things that we have mentioned, is a great theologian and father of the Church in the patristic and ecclesiastical tradition. He is an Orthodox theologian who sees human salvation in treatment within Orthodox presuppositions. If some see things otherwise, it is because they do not know the teaching of Saint Nicodemus, which they read in fragments and through their own assumptions. To them, the saint repeats the words he addressed to his accusers at the time: “I hope you do not blame me excessively, because I do not write what I wrote from my opinion or from my belief, but rather I followed the beliefs of the theologians who spoke before me. If some people rebuke me out of emotion, let them rather rebuke Maximus the God-bearer, Gregory of Thessalonians, Andrew the Great, and others from whom I borrowed this doctrine. To Him who gives the beginning glory forever.”

Metropolitan Irotheos Vlachos
Arabization of Father Antoine Melki
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