Why is the Incarnation so important?

It never ceases to amaze me, that in the 20 some odd years that I lived proclaiming a faith in Christ, before coming to His One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, that I so completely failed to see the nexus between His incarnation and our salvation
The parish priest who guided my wife and I into the Orthodox Church often told us that we were entering into a completely different religion, and I must admit that this puzzled me , and certainly caused a degree of discomfort. And , as it turns out, it should have. In his recent blog entry “I really wasn’t kidding-There’s another Gospel out there”, Fr. Stephen has a good deal to say about the harrowing of hell (Or hades) by Christ. He is shocked that apparently conservative Anglicans, from whose ranks he came, have rejected this doctrine. Of the Orthodox view, he states:

“The Descent into Hades is not a minor theological side issue. Iconographically, it stands at the very center of the faith. If one reads St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation you can quickly see that in the doctrine of the Divine Solidarity (an image he uses to describe how it is that Christ saves us), Christ’s descent into Hades is utterly necessary to the Christian understanding of His victory over sin and death. The services of the Orthodox Church surrounding Pascha are all grounded on the dogma of Christ’s descent into Hades and His victory.”

Christ takes human flesh to hell, and defeats sin and death there clothed in it.
I must admit, that as a Protestant, I had no clue that such a doctrine existed, or why it may be important to our salvation. Fr. Stephen goes onto state that:

I will be bold, very bold indeed, and say that if this doctrine of Christ Descent into Hades is not known, then the most essential doctrines of our salvation are misunderstood and incorrectly taught. This is not to create an argument about whose Church is more correct, but to state a simple and plain fact of theology. If the primary story of our salvation is not a matter of agreement, then the conversation regarding the faith has barely begun.

A bold statement indeed, but one that is absolutely true. What has become apparent to me over my nearly 7 years of being Orthodox (yes, I am still an infant) is that there are so few points on which we agree with the West, though we touch our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters hands on issues of ecclesiology and much doctrine, and hold certain similarities in common with our Anglican brethren as well as various other Protestant groups, we remain largely divided on many other issues, not the least of which seems to be the incarnation, it’s purpose and function in Christology, soteriology, eschatology, heck, just Theology in general.
Commenting on this same subject Bishop +HILARION states:

The descent of Christ into Hades is one of the most mysterious, enigmatic and inexplicable events in New Testament history. In today’s Christian world, this event is understood differently. Liberal Western theology rejects altogether any possibility for speaking of the descent of Christ into Hades literally, arguing that the scriptural texts on this theme should be understood metaphorically. The traditional Catholic doctrine insists that after His death on the cross Christ descended to hell only to deliver the Old Testament righteous from it. A similar understanding is quite widespread among Orthodox Christians.

On the other hand, the New Testament speaks of the preaching of Christ in hell as addressed to the unrepentant sinners: ‘For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirit in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited’[2]. However, many Church Fathers and liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church repeatedly underline that having descended to hell, Christ opened the way to salvation for all people, not only the Old Testament righteous. The descent of Christ into Hades is perceived as an event of cosmic significance involving all people without exception. They also speak about the victory of Christ over death, the full devastation of hell and that after the descent of Christ into Hades there was nobody left there except for the devil and demons.

How can these two points of view be reconciled? What was the original faith of the Church? What do early Christian sources tell us about the descent into Hades? And what is the soteriological significance of the descent of Christ into Hades?

He goes on to point out that the teaching of the Early Church Fathers is clear, citing examples from various 2nd, 3rd and 4th century writers, including but not limited to Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch and Iraneus of Lyon, the latter being significant in that he was clearly a “Western” writer if you will. Further discussed in the later writings of Athanasius, and John Chrysostom. Later still John Damascene and Maximus The Confessor. He also expounds at some length the thoughts of Gregory of Nyssa on the subject,from whcih comes the following extensive quote:

Gregory of Nyssa entwines the theme of the descent in hell with the theory of ‘divine deception’. On the latter he builds his teaching on the Redemption. According to this theory, Christ, being God incarnate, deliberately concealed His divine nature from the devil so that he, mistaking Him for an ordinary man, would not be terrified at the sight of an overwhelming power approaching him. When Christ descended in hell, the devil supposed Him to be a human being, but this was a divine ‘hook’ disguised under a human ‘bait’ that the devil swallowed[11] . By admitting God incarnate into his domain, the devil himself signed his own death warrant: incapable of enduring the divine presence, he was overcome and defeated, and hell was destroyed.

This is precisely the idea that Gregory of Nyssa developed in one of his Easter sermons on ‘The Three-Day Period of the Resurrection of Christ’. Judging by its contents, this homily was intended for Holy Saturday, and in it Gregory poses the question of why Christ spent three days ‘in the heart of the earth’. This period was necessary and sufficient, he argues, for Christ to ‘expose the foolishness’ (moranai) of the devil, i.e, to outwit, ridicule and deceive him. How did Christ manage to ‘outwit’ the devil? Gregory gives the following reply to this question:

As the ruler of darkness could not approach the presence of the Light unimpeded, had he not seen in Him something of flesh, then, as soon as he saw the God-bearing flesh and saw the miracle performed through it by the Deity, he hoped that if he came to take hold of the flesh through death, then he would take hold of all the power contained in it. Therefore, having swallowed the bait of the flesh, he was pierced by the hook of the Deity and thus the dragon was transfixed by the hook.

This train of thought obviously still had a profound influence in the west not only in the middle ages and into the Renaissance as well, as evidenced by writing’s like Gustav Aulen’s Christus Victor, but also into the 20th Century as evidenced in the writings of C.S. Lewsi, particularly in his classic “Chronicles of Narnia. I was reminded of this just last evening as Sally and I watched the Disney production of “The Lion , The Witch and The Wardrobe”. As Aslan rises from the dead, he tells the astonished Lucy and Susan (not unlike the Holy Myhr-bearing Women) that the White Witch did not fully comprehend the “Deep Magic”of Narnia which he himself had been an integral part of, in fact having been it’s very author.

Another sterling example of where a disconnect with Incarnational Theology creates a gap is clearly in the celebration of the Ascension.

I suppose that there are a few High Liturgical Church’s who still celebrate this important feast along with the Orthodox, but again, as a fairly devout Protestant, I was clueless about the Feast, and more importantly about it’s importance. I knew the Gospel story, but didn’t really see or understand any practical application of it. Our parish priest, Fr. John Peck is most fond of this feast, and I have always appreciated his patented line about Jesus ascending bodily to heaven, taking human flesh to the very throne of God, not “dropping it off like some 2nd stage booster rocket” Once again, the implications of the Incarnation are clear, no incarnation, no chance for theosis, no restoration of fallen Adam in any sense other than perhaps a purely judicial one.
The undisputed masterpiece with regard to the importance, imho, is clearly that offered by Athanasius, “On The Incarnation of The Word of God” (I am particularly fond of this version with an excellent introduction by C.S. Lewis) I’m sure that many of you, who have had the patience to read this far have already read this piece, if you have not, may I heartily recommend it.
I suppose I have said all of this to say, that the more time goes by, the more I am convinced that the doctrine of the Incarnation is so important, that , as Fr. Stephen rightly points out with regard to the subsequent harrowing of hell, a failure to understand it’s implications makes dialog difficult. We can’t blame individual persons for their ignorance so much as we can blame religious institutions who have failed for one reason or another to teach it. It is why it is paramount for Orthodox Christians everywhere to engage and educate the culture.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”

~ by rdreusebios1 on May 24, 2007.