By Father Nikolay Afanasiev
5. The death, Resurrection and glorification of Christ was a victory over the world: “… take courage, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). This victory over the world was a defeat for the devil – “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18) – and his exile: “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John 12:31). The exile and the defeat have an eschatological meaning. They will turn into the complete destruction of the devil at the moment of the Second Coming of Christ, but even now it has happened in the Church. And even now it is spreading in the world, since in the world dwells the Church, against which the gates of hell will not prevail. The very existence of the Church is a defeat for the devil, and in an eschatological sense – his destruction. Until this complete destruction, however, the expelled archon of this world continues to reside in it.
Until the coming of Christ to the earth, the Jews believed that they possessed the light embodied in the Torah, and therefore the rest of the nations resided in darkness. With His coming, however, the true light turned out to be not the Torah, but Christ Himself. Jews and Gentiles who renounced the light found themselves in the darkness, which is the sphere of the devil. The evil aeon (Gal. 1:4) is the human world, which has voluntarily loved darkness. The archon of this world, expelled by Christ, is strengthened by the will of people who voluntarily surrender themselves to his power. The evil aeon consists of the “sons of disobedience”:
“You once lived according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2). As the aeon of the archon of this world, it is an aeon of lies. “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Lying is not only a denial of truth, but also a denial of life, since the devil is a murderer. Therefore, the evil aeon is an aeon of death. Living in the world through the old aeon, the archon of the world continues to operate in the world either alone or through other spirits. “Our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). That is why “the whole world lies in evil (ἐν τῷ πονηρῷ)” (1 John 6:19), it is primarily an “evil aeon”. If we take into account John’s tendency to use expressions with a double meaning, then ἐν τῷ πονηρῷ could mean “in evil” and “in the evil one”. The world lies in evil, and the old aeon lies in the devil, in the deposed archon of this world. Abiding in evil makes the state of the world transitory. “For the fashion of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31). The old aeon is established in the world, which concentrates in itself all the forces of evil. “The mystery of iniquity already does work” (2 Thess. 2:7). When the end comes, the world will become an old aeon, and with it the present image of the world will also change. But the world changes and its image passes not only in the direction of the old aeon, but also in the direction of the new one. The Church is another image of the world, born in the Spirit and through the Spirit. If since Pentecost the world has lived under the sign of destruction, then it is not the world as God’s creation that is subject to this destruction, but the old or evil aeon. From that day on, two realities appear in the world, unequal and non-equivalent. Compared to the reality of the Church, the reality of the world becomes ghostly, since it has no life in itself and cannot receive it from the “prince of this world.” The Spirit is the principle of life, and the world in its image of the old aeon is a world of the flesh or of the fruits of the flesh. The world has not “become bitter” in Christ, but the world exists in Christ. The world becomes reality in Christ, and the world outside of Christ is only an appearance. The error of Docetism is that it affirms the appearance of Christ’s flesh, instead of affirming the ghostly flesh of the world outside the Church, which is the Body of Christ.
6. Christ’s victory was His enthronement. He became Lord (Κύριος).
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). This confession of faith of the Church of Jerusalem corresponds to the confession of faith of St. Paul the Apostle, which in all probability also has a Jerusalem origin: “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11). If we compare this passage with 1 Cor. 15:24-28, then its eschatological significance is indisputable. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, Christ has become Lord of the entire reconciled world, that is, as we have already seen, of the new aeon, the beginning of which is the Church. Christ is Lord of the Church, which is his Body. God “raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places… and put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body” (Eph. 1:20-23). It should be noted that in the New Testament writings Christ is nowhere named Lord of the cosmos, but on the contrary, it is emphasized that His kingdom “is not of this world.” We should not underestimate this statement by spiritualizing it or by transferring this kingdom to the invisible world. The words of Christ should be understood in their literal sense. The kingdom of Christ is not of the present world, it is not of the aeon in which the world continues to reside. Christ cannot be Lord of a world that lies in the power of the evil one (1 John 5:1-9). It would be wrong to think that this kingdom of Christ is the result of the peculiarities of John’s writing. We find the same understanding in St. Paul the Apostle: “For even if there are gods in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him” (1 Cor. 8:5-6). In the present world there are many “gods and lords,” but we have one Lord. We must resolutely abandon the individual-collective understanding of the New Testament scriptures. “We” is not some collection of separate “I’s,” but the Church of God in Christ. On the other hand, “gods and lords” is just another way of saying that the world lies “in evil.” Being life (John 14:6), Christ cannot be Lord of the present aeon, in which the evil aeon resides, since he cannot be Lord of death, which is subject to destruction. “And then will the end come… the last enemy that will be destroyed is death… then the Son himself will also be subjected to the One who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all” (Cor. 15:24-28).
In this breakdown of the kingdom of Christ, I differ from O. Kuhlmann, whose book Christ et le Temps (Christ and Time) I hold in high esteem. Christ reigns in the Church, and through her in the entire new aeon. He reigns where there is true life. Only the Church has true and real existence, and outside of it there exists only a ghostly existence or false reality, since all this existence is subject to death. Christ’s coming in glory will be the complete revelation of the new aeon and the destruction of the evil one. If we admit that Christ reigns in the present world, then we must admit that this kingdom will come to an end, since the image of this world is passing away, and with it must pass away the kingdom of Christ in this world. Christ is king: His kingdom is limited in the Church, but it has cosmic significance by virtue of the cosmic nature of the Church itself.
I do not want to complicate my topic with the completely independent question of salvation, but I must very briefly mention it, since it is related to the topic of the world. Both the reconciliation of God with the world and the salvation of the world by God have an eschatological significance, since they are directly related to the Church. God sent His Son, Who became flesh, to save the world. Bishop Cassian, in his report on the topic of “The Problem of Evil,” read on Pentecost last year (1951), affirms that the goal of the saving ministry of the Son of God is the world in its entirety. This is true, but only on condition that the salvation of the world is considered as the creation of a new aeon. The saved world or the world in Christ is not the world in its givenness. Salvation was accomplished by Christ in His Body and it is accomplished through the Church, which is His Body. Therefore, salvation, despite what Bishop Cassian thinks, Cassian, is carried out by seizing those who are to be saved from this world, but this does not in the least undermine the idea of the salvation of the world in its entirety.
7. Church and cosmos – such is the perception of the world by the original Church. Cosmos is the world in which the Church resides, but in which the mystery of lawlessness is already taking place, transforming this world into an evil aeon. The relationship of the world to the Church and the Church to the world is determined by the nature of this world. At the heart of this relationship was mutual demarcation. “What communion has righteousness and lawlessness? What fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement can there be between Christ and Belial? Or what fellowship has a faithful person with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (2 Cor. 6:14-16). This is the complete alienation of the Church from the world in its givenness, resulting from the ontological difference between them. If in the Old Testament Israel was empirically separated from the other nations, then the Church in the real sense turned out to be taken away from the world. The estrangement of the Church from the world is conditioned by the impossible agreement between it and the world. “According to the elements of the world” is opposed to “according to Christ” in the difficult-to-interpret passage of Col. 2:8.[1] In agreement with E. Percy in Die Probleme der Kolosser und Epheserbriefe I believe that this verse is about the opposition of the new aeon and the world.
The thought of St. John the Evangelist coincides with that of St. Paul the Apostle. In him the eschatological consciousness was much more strongly developed than in St. Paul the Apostle, and therefore the relationship between the cosmos and the Church is expressed in a different form. “The whole world lies in the power of evil” (1 John 5:19). There can be no communion between the Church and the world, since there can be no communion between righteousness and lawlessness. We see the same principle of attitude towards the world in the Synoptics: “No one puts a piece of unbleached cloth on an old garment; otherwise the new piece will tear away from the old, and the tear will be worse. No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the wineskins, and the wine will run out, and the wineskins will be ruined; but new wine must be put into new wineskins” (Mark 2:21-22). We are too accustomed to moralizing the meaning of words in Christ, while they have primarily an ecclesiological meaning. There can be no communion between the world and the Church, and therefore there can be no synthesis, since a patch of new material cannot be sewn onto the world, as onto an old garment, just as new wine cannot be poured into old wineskins. The whole attitude of the Church towards the world is limited to the fact that the Church resides in it. This sojourn of hers in the world is a time of sorrow: “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33) and a time of hatred for the Church: “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19). But this sorrow, caused by the world’s hatred, cannot prevail over joy: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). Both sorrow and joy are the sorrow and joy of the “last days.”
The Church’s presence in the world lies in God’s plan, as arising from the very nature of the Church: “I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you” (John 17:11). The Church is the beginning of the new aeon that is present in the world. This is why the Church’s departure from the world is impossible. A Church that is present outside the world would cease to be the Church. “The field is the world; the good seed are the sons of the kingdom, but the weeds are the sons of the evil one” (Matt. 13:38). In the world, both “the sons of the kingdom” and “the sons of the evil one” reside, but the Kingdom consists only of the sons of the Kingdom. Until the harvest, the Church remains in the world to be the light of the world: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to everyone in the house” (Matt. 5:14-15). Here, too, as in most other cases, the “you” is not a collection of separate “I’s,” but the Church in which these “I’s” exist. A Church that has left the world and renounced it would be a lamp placed under a lily. There is no other light in the world than “the true light, which enlightens every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9). This is the light by which the world lives, which has not yet become definitively an evil aeon. Until the separation of the old and the new aeons has taken place, the world remains the field of action of the Church. By leaving the world, the Church would renounce not only her mission, but also the love of God, who loved the world as His creation, and this love of God remains in the world until the Son appears in glory. The problem of the Church’s acceptance or non-acceptance of the world is a false problem. The Church cannot accept the world as its own, since the Church is not of the world, but it cannot reject it either, since the Church resides in it and has a special mission in relation to it.
8. The position of the Church in the world determines the attitude of its members towards it. Believers in Christ are a new creation. “Therefore, whoever is in Christ is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). However, the new man continues to remain in the old man. He resides in the world and cannot leave the world. He cannot live only in the Church, but must live in the world and among the world. Insisting on separation from the world, St. Apostle Paul emphasizes that this separation does not mean leaving the world. “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with fornicators; and not at all with the fornicators of this world, … for otherwise you would have to go out of the world” (1 Cor. 5:9-10). From these words of the apostle it is clear that the thought of leaving the world seemed impossible to him. In this he was in agreement with the entire early Church. “I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15). Complete separation from the world is possible only at the time of the coming of Christ in glory, who “… will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21). The flight from the world into the wilderness was completely unknown to the early Church, which knew that the new creature that believers have become in Christ resides in the old man and that this residence, like the residence of the Church in the world, lies in God’s plan. Christian apologists have emphasized, perhaps even more than necessary, that Christians reside in the world. I will allow myself to recall the well-known words from the Epistle to Diognetus: “Christians are neither separated from other people by land, nor by language, nor by character. They do not inhabit their own cities anywhere, nor use any distinctive speech, nor lead a particularly strange life… But inhabiting cities, both Hellenic and barbarian, as has happened to everyone, and following local customs of dress and behavior, as well as in the rest of their life, they show in a strange and truly strange way the state of their state. They inhabit their own homeland, but as strangers. They participate in everything as citizens, but suffer as foreigners: every foreign homeland is theirs and every homeland is foreign… They are in the flesh, but they do not live in the flesh. They walk on earth, but they are citizens in heaven.” At the beginning of the 4th century, no church writer could have repeated these words.
Christians live in a world from which they are freed. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). This was freedom from sin – “… whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34), freedom from the world which lies in evil. This freedom from the world through belonging to the Church made the first Christians freer in their communion with the Gentiles than the Jews. It allowed for the possibility of communion with them; communion with those who belong to the world should not be communion with sin. Hence arose the quite special position of Christians with regard to participation in the life surrounding them. St. Apostle Paul allows for the possibility of “using” the world, but this use must leave Christians free from the world. “The time left is short… and those who use this world – (let them be) as not using it; for the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:29-31). Of course, this is an eschatological point of view for using the world, but we must bear in mind that for the first generation of Christians no other point of view was possible. St. Apostle Paul does not deny either joys, sorrows, or married life, but all this for him should not be a goal in the life of Christians. If we want to find some general formula for his attitude towards the life of Christians in the world, we could express it in the following way: for Christians it is permissible and even lawful to have a relative participation in the life surrounding them, and service to this world is inadmissible.
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). For the original Christian consciousness, the treasure that Christians desired to acquire lay exclusively in Christ. There also lay their heart, and where the heart is, there is love. “Do not love the world, neither the things that are in the world: if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). Love for the world would mean love for the sin in which the world finds itself. For Christians, the object of love can only be Christ and the Church that is in Christ, and not the world that is in evil. The one excludes the other. Therefore, “… do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Friendship with the world is friendship with the evil one, and therefore enmity with God. Christians cannot be friends with the one for whose deliverance they pray: “deliver us from the evil one.” To give your heart to this world and to love it means to love darkness more than light, to set yourself against Christ and to uphold the authority of him whom Christ has cast out. In the same epistle from which the words about not loving the world are taken, we find a hymn of love for the brother. There is no doubt that brother means first and foremost a member of the Church, but, of course, not only that. “He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in the darkness. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:9-11). If loving the world means being in darkness, then this is precisely what hatred of the brother who is in the world means. Love is a gift that is given in the Church. The love of man has a saving meaning when it is directed towards man, and not towards the world outside the Church, which is in darkness. Only God’s love for the world can have a saving meaning for the world, and man’s love for the world means his return to this world from which he was delivered by Christ. That is why God’s love for the world does not include man’s love for the world. God loved the world as His creation in order to save those who believe in His Son, and man can love the world only in that state in which the old aeon has appeared in it. Dislove of the world is dislove of evil, and love of the brother is a struggle against evil in the world.
9. The cosmos in the New Testament writings means, first of all, humanity, but as in the Old Testament, the concept of cosmos also includes the whole of creation. The fall of humanity from God was the enslavement of creation. “The creation (ἡ κτίσις) was subjected to futility (ματαιότητι), not willingly, but by the will of Him who subjected it” (Rom. 8:20). We cannot fully establish the meaning of ματαιότητι, nor can we establish what St. Apostle Paul meant when he spoke of the “subjected” creations. However, it is perfectly clear that all creation (ἡ κτίσις) shared the fate of the human race. That is why the beginning of the new aeon was the beginning of their liberation. Creation, like the Church, “waits with eager longing for the glory of the sons of God,” to be freed from “the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:21). Ἡ κτίσις means not only nature, but also the entire creation of God, including the angelic world. The liberation of “creatures” and their reconciliation, as well as the liberation of man, is a new creation in the Spirit. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away” (Rev. 21:1). The liberation of the “creatures” is anticipated in the Church, but in the world they still remain enslaved. They continue to serve the archons of this world unwillingly. The accumulation of evil in the evil aeon corresponds to a still greater enslavement of the creatures, accompanied by a certain liberation of “powers” which are not reconciled to God and therefore are, if not evil by nature, at least not good for the purposes for which the “archon of this world” uses them.
10. The eschatological perception of the world was completely natural for the early Church. The first Christians lived under the sign of the imminent coming of Christ in glory, which would become the complete revelation of the new aeon and the destruction of the evil one. However, we should not confuse the eschatological perception of the world with eschatological tension. The eschatological perception of the world was the church perception, and therefore the only legitimate one. Now it is difficult for us not so much to understand as to feel this perception of the world. Together with the eschatological tension, we have also lost the church attitude towards the world, since we have forgotten or almost forgotten the eschatological nature of the Church. The Church becomes one of the realities of “this world”, even if it is the highest. Of course, the Church cannot renounce its eschatological expectations, because a Church that renounces such would cease to be the Church of God in Christ. The point is that eschatological expectations ceased to play a significant role in her life: they were displaced by other perceptions of the world, which pushed them into the background.
I want to conclude my presentation by indicating the beginning of this process, which is the most significant in the history of Christian thought.
In the 2nd century, and especially in the 3rd century, the eschatological tension decreased, but the eschatological perception of the world remained in general the same as it had been in the early Church. Christians sought to improve their position in the Roman οἰκουμένη, but none of them imagined that the Roman Empire itself could become Christian. When Tertullian asked himself what would happen if the Roman Caesar became a Christian, he was frightened by his question. The only answer he was able to find was that a Caesar who became a Christian would cease to be a Caesar. The Christian mind did not think of a “Christian empire,” since such an empire was excluded from the Christian perception of the world. When what Tertullian had feared happened, and the Roman Caesar became a Christian without ceasing to be Caesar, the church’s thought was surprised: it was not prepared for such a change in its position in the world. It was necessary to live and act, and there was no time to reconsider the previous attitude towards the Roman Empire. The broad and brilliant prospects that seemed to open up before the Church gave birth to the daring illusion that the kingdom of Caesar had become the civitas christianorum. Once the impossible had happened and Caesar had bowed his head before Christ, it seemed possible to build the city of the Lord on earth, in this world. This was the greatest spiritual revolution, which overturned the entire original church understanding of history. The new aeon has revealed itself in this world, but not in the glory of the coming Christ, but in the glory of the Caesar residing on earth. The idea of the city of God on earth inevitably led to the loss of the eschatological understanding of the Church, and also of the eschatological perception of the world. Of all the sayings of Christ, the words that His kingdom is not of this world have been forgotten the most. Christians have tried more than anything to forget the warnings of St. Apostle Paul that there is no communion between righteousness and lawlessness, between light and darkness – just as there is no and cannot be agreement between Christ and Belial. The world has remained what it was before, since it cannot be other than the Church, until the revelation of the glory of Christ in the world, but the attitude towards the world has changed. We still wonder to this day whether the Church has found itself in the state, or the state in the Church, but without a doubt, the boundaries between them have become imperceptible. One of the Byzantine emperors claimed: “Everything is permitted to kings, since on earth there is no difference between the power of God and the king; everything is permitted to kings, and they can use God’s along with their own, since they received their royal dignity from God, and there is no distance between God and them.”[2]
This idea has collapsed, but the idea of the kingdom of Christ “in this world” and “above this world” has remained in the Christian consciousness. Modern thought tries to overcome the dualism of Church and world, as if the eschatological dualism can be overcome without renouncing the Church. Hence the attempts to justify the state and law in a Christological way, as if the state and law in this world need justification. Again, from here arise philosophical attempts to accept the world, as if the Church had ever accepted or not accepted the world.
The optimistic perception of the world found its expression in the idea of the “City of God”, but it in turn strengthened the pessimistic rejection of the world. A desire to leave the world arose. This was the flip side of the idea of the “City of God”. It is characterized by the increased awareness and feeling that evil in the world is invincible and that the world not only lies in evil, but that the world itself is evil. The idea that the world is evil was absolutely foreign to the original church consciousness. The understanding of the first Christians was that the world remained God’s creation, not the creation of the demiurge. However, the existence of monasticism in the Christian state was evidence that in the depths of the church consciousness there lived a dissatisfaction with the realized city of God on earth.
The New Testament consciousness opposed the optimistic and pessimistic perception of the world with the tragic perception of the world, which excluded both excessive optimism and extreme pessimism. The Church found herself in a world in which she would reside until the appearance of Christ in glory. Confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, she confessed that everything already belongs to her. “Whether the world or life or death, whether the present or the future, all are yours” (1 Cor. 3:22). In the eschatological perception of the world in which the Church resides, there is an old or evil aeon, but in view of the mission she received from Christ, it is the field of her activity. Until the final demarcation of the old and new aeons occurs, the world continues to be under the sign of the love of God, who sent His Son into the world so that those who believe in Him might not perish but have eternal life. The goodness and beauty that God first created in the creation of the world continue to remain in it, although they do not belong to him, but to the Church in Christ. In the Church, tragedy has been resolved and is resolved by the fact that the victory has already been secured. “This is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith” (1 John 5:4).
Notes:
[1] Col. 2:8: “Beware, brothers, lest anyone takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the rudiments of the world, and not according to Christ.”
[2] Nicetas Choniates – History of the Reign of Isaac 3, 7.
Source in Rusian: Afanasyev, N. The Church of God in Christ: a collection of articles, Moscow: PSTGU Publishing House, 2015, pp. 294-314. // Афанасьев, Н. Церковь Божия во Христе: сборник статей, М.: „Издательство ПСТГУ“ 2015, с. 294-314.
