The Fall and Salvation

In St. Athanasius' book On The Incarnation he speaks about the role of Christ in reversing the effects of the Fall, but what do these words like the Fall and Salvation mean? In the Bible, God created the world and everything in it. In the whole of creation only man was given the likeness of God and free will. Strangely enough it is this very trait, the ability to make the decision to follow God or not, that is the root of all the problems in Creation. God gave us free will so that we could choose to do good over evil making us truly good. Instead, we chose evil. This first sin seemed to somehow change the whole of creation dooming it to death. God is life, and when we chose evil over him, we began to die. A common metaphor depicts the poison of a venomous snake entering man's veins killing him slowly despite the fact that the snake has been driven off. Even if creation once again turns to God, the poison in us will still kill us. In order to destroy this poison, an antidote is needed. This antidote to the poison of sin that causes death is brought to creation through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Christ's Incarnation is key to the salvation of creation, but not the most important. By entering creation Christ links it with God. By doing this he in a sense reunites us with God, but the poison of sin was still present and as a result death was still inevitable. In a very real sense all of creation is part of God. It is by this that Christ was able to destroy death. By dying, Christ as God caused all of creation to die concluding the effects of the poison, but by rising from the dead, Christ gave life again to all creation. While not the prettiest part of Christ's coming the death of God was central to everything else. Only by this act could God end the power of all sins past, present, and future forever. Since God cannot be dead, he revitalized all of creation in his resurrection.

It is interesting to note that while many believe that creation was made for the benefit of man, this is far from the case. All of creation was made for its own sake and man was placed as its keeper and guardian. Many also say that the greatness of man is shown by the fact that God became man. This is also a flawed notion. Christ came to save not glorify. That God became man is as far from a cause for self-glorification as there can be. It simply shows that out of all of creation man is the part that needs help. It is through the fault of man that sin and death came into the world. The rest of creation must suffer our fate as well. Those who work against the damage that our sins have caused to rest of creation seem to have a far better relation with animals and other parts of creation than others who do not. It may be that this closeness to creation comes from being close to God, but it may also be that those who attempt to undo damage done to creation by the Fall become closer to what they were meant to be. Far from trying to be the lords of creation, we should attempt to alleviate the pain that we have caused in any way possible.