Articles By: Michael Glerup

Over the last decade Hollywood has become fascinated with prequels. It seems that for every successful fi lm, movie studios want to create an elaborate backstory to reexamine the origins of popular heroes or villains. Some prequels were conceived as prequels at the outset. George Lucas conceived the first Star Wars movie as the fourth in the trilogy, so Star Wars I, II, and III were prequels that were projected to be released later. But most prequels—Batman Begins, Casino Royale, and the television show Smallville, for example—were conceived only after the original movie release was financially successful and the principal characters were embedded in the popular imagination.

Many well-meaning evangelists have “softened” the gospel demand “to pick up your cross and follow Me” for the gospel of personal well-being. Or is its source the Bible? Theophylact, the 11th century archbishop of Ohrid (modern day Bulgaria), suggests that even members of early Christian communities believed that life for the faithful, based on their reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, should be prosperous and secure:

“Many Christians found afflictions hard to bear because they had read in the law that a prosperous and secure life was promised to those who serve God. Peter therefore approaches the subject by telling them that they are greatly beloved. He then goes on to warn them not to be surprised at their sufferings, which come to them as tests from God.”

The early church struggled to navigate between two competing conceptions of the body—the holistic, biblical view and a dualist, Hellenistic (Platonic) view. The latter view, except in rare circumstances, advocated a strict differentiation between the soul and the body. The former affirmed the body as God’s good creation and made physicality a lasting aspect of human life. Though there would be a short duration of separation of the soul from the body after death, Christian writers looked forward to the reintegration of body-soul on the last day.

My recommended practice is meditating on passages of scripture in relation to the movement of God in history. A surprising fruitful practice for me, I learned from early Christian writers, is to mediate on scripture in light of the Pauline mystery.

I travel to Africa quite often to meet with African academics and church leaders. Recently driving from one worship service to another with the president of a local Seminary, we discussed the difference between these local church worship expressions and those more influenced by western denominations and missionaries. He said the difference in these local churches is that at every worship service there are one to two hours of thanksgiving. Each Sunday, various members of the congregation come up front and offer testimonies of praise and gratitude for what God has done for them that week. Two hours I asked? Thinking—the only thing I can do for two hours on Sunday is watch pro football. Yes, two hours of appreciating God’s activity in their lives and neighborhood, he replied. I remember the cognitive dissonance I experienced. What I experienced was poverty, hunger, garbage, and crumbling infrastructure not an environment which offered a compelling case for two hours of honest gratefulness.

In the following selection, Augustine contemplates the parable of the rich fool (Lk 12:13-21) in light of Prov. 13:8 “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.”

A number of significant Protestant voices since the Reformation have argued that the early Christian writers, under the dualizing influence of Hellenistic philosophy, made the contemplative life preferable to the life of charitable action. Documentation supporting this thesis was readily available, as in the following passage from John Cassian’s Conferences:

As for those works of piety and charity of which you speak, these are necessary in this present life for as long as inequality prevails. Their workings here would not be required were it not for the superabundant numbers of the poor, the needy, and the sick. Those are there because of the iniquity of men who have held for their own private use what the common Creator has made available to all. As long as this inequity rages in the world, these good works will be necessary and valuable to anyone practicing them and they shall yield the reward of an everlasting inheritance to the man of good heart and concerned will.

But all of this will cease in the time to come when equality shall reign, when there shall no longer be the injustice on account of which these good works must be undertaken, when from the multiplicity of what is done here and now everyone shall pass over to the love of God and to the contemplation of things divine. Men seized of the urge to have knowledge of God and to be pure in mind devote all their gathered energies to this one task. While they still live in the corruption of the flesh they give themselves to that service in which they will persevere when that corruption has been laid aside. And already they come in sight of what the Lord and Savior held out when He said, “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God”[1]

Cassian argues charitable action is desirable because of the inequality that exists in this life. In the future, though, inequality will not exist, and therefore charitable action will no longer be required.

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To appreciate the early Christian writers position on transformation it is helpful if the reader is sympathetic to the theological assumptions under which these writers worked. Early Christian writers operated under the assumption that God’s action in history (particularly the Incarnation), God’s teaching, and God’s being along with the practices of the Church (baptism and Eucharist) produced genuine knowledge that if applied properly (discernment) under the right circumstances (holiness of life) may affect personal transformation. This transformation encompassed the whole person—affective, intellectual, moral, and social. The Greek term most often used to describe this transformation was theosis, that is, deification. The choice of this term was deliberate and directly challenged pagan usage of apotheosis, in which human beings, particularly emperors, advanced to the rank of the divine. For the early Christians it was abundantly clear that human beings belong to the created order. As created, human beings remained finite whereas God was infinite.

Incarnation and Deification

Very early in the church’s reflection on scripture, the concept of deification was associated with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Athanasius’s formula, “the Word of God… became human so that we might become God” was one of the more famous examples. Athanasius reasoned that humans are most unlike God in the fact that they sin and die. Yet Christ became a human being in order to redeem humanity from sin and death. Consequently, in doing so, Christ makes humans Godlike, that is, deifies humanity. In addition, human beings, originally created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26) lost their rootedness in that divine image because of sin. Athanasius taught that it was through the Incarnation that the image of God was renewed, “The Word of God came in his own person, in order that, as he is the image of the Father, he might be able to restore man who is in the image.” As such the Incarnation affirms the image character of humanity and opens up the possibility of our development/transformation into the likeness of God.

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The early Christian writers were well versed in the metaphors of scripture. They explored these metaphors within the context of the overarching narrative of scripture and employed a variety of strategies to achieve their goal of an integrative reading. A basic element of the interpretative process was to determine reliable meanings of important words used in various contexts and genres.

Basil of Caesarea takes the opportunity in his Commentary on Psalm 1 to explore life as a way. Basil states:

We read in the Book of Psalms: “Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor follows in the way of sinners.” Life has been called a “way” because everything that has been created is on the way to its end. When people are on a sea voyage, they can sleep while they are being transported without any effort of their own to their port of call. The ship brings them closer to their goal without their even knowing it. So we can be transported nearer to the end of our life without our noticing it, as time flows by unceasingly. Time passes while you are asleep. While you are awake time passes although you may not notice. All of us have a race to run, towards our appointed end. So we are all “on the way.” This is how you should think of the “way.” You are a traveler in this life. Everything goes past you and is left behind. You notice a flower on the way, or some grass, or a stream, or something worth looking at. You enjoy it for a moment, and then pass on. Maybe you come on stones or rocks or crags or cliffs or fences, or perhaps you meet wild beasts or reptiles or thorn bushes or some other obstacles. You suffer briefly then escape. That is what life is like. Pleasures do not last but pain is not permanent either. The “way” does not belong to you nor is the present under your control. But as step succeeds step, enjoy each moment as it comes and then continue on your “way.”[1]

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[1] Thomas Spidlik, Drinking From the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary. Translated by Paul Drake. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1994, 38.