Living in the Fourteenth Century, St. Gregory Palamas clearly postdates the Great Schism. He was also a theologian and defender par excellence of the orthodox theology and practice of hesychasm. Moreover, he was an incredibly articulate and philosophically sophisticated writer, being in large part responsible for helping clarify the Essence-Energies distinction. One would think therefore that he was in a perfect position to reject vicarious satisfaction or penal substitution as regards the Atonement. A profound theologian and apologist, if there was someone who was in a position to be aware of the incompatibility between a juridical, substitutionary atonement and orthodox spirituality, it was St. Gregory Palamas.
In the collection of his homilies that have come down to us, St. Gregory’s Sixteenth Homily will be of especial interest. Its lengthy given title is: About the Dispensation According to the Flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Gifts of Grace Granted to Those Who Truly Believe in Him: Also Teaching that God was Able to Redeem Man from the Devil’s Tyranny in Many Different Ways But Rightly Preferred This Dispensation, Delivered on Holy Saturday.
One of the first things a reader might notice as they study this homily is its magisterial character. St. Gregory seems to effortlessly touch upon numerous key doctrines related to God’s saving dispensation, seamlessly tying them all together in a masterful synthesis. From the multiple Biblical images of Christ’s atoning work, to the economy of His Incarnation, to the Nativity, to the Ascension, to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration and adoption, to God’s wrath and justice, and so on, Gregory shares with his audience a grand soteriological panorama, all the while supporting his arguments from Scripture. One wonders what audience heard such a homily!
Turning to the subject at hand, that of Penal Substitutionary Atonement, it will be made clear that St. Gregory includes it as one of the essential perspectives undergirding the logic of the Atonement. And at least one thing can be gleaned from this fact of a multifaceted Atonement, with its array of Scriptural images, that no single model of the Atonement completely captures the reality of Christ and His Cross. The Cross of Christ is a Mystery that exceeds any exhaustive description. Not a weakness, however, this is part of its essential glory! More than merely a demonstration of versatility, then, and certainly not systematic, St. Gregory’s wide ranging exhortation is preserving and communicating a key insight about the Mystery of the Atonement, that its suprarational quality exceeds all partial explanations and yet binds them all together in a seamless and glorious whole. His homily thus stands as a testament against soteriological reductionism.
As vitally important and theologically necessary as the foregoing observation is, it would not escape soteriological reductionism if one were to then balk at the particular significance of each facet and therein fail to take account of their unique, precious qualities. The whole does not swallow the parts, but sets them in glorious relief. A symphony, the Atonement is neither a cacophony nor a solo. Each voice must be heard and understood in its own right and in relation to the others, and in relation to orthodox Christology. But in today’s day and age, what was once clear to the Fathers has now become muddled. Whole sections of the Atonement have been muted and escorted away by sophistical ushers. People caw and cavil at the juridical aspect of the Atonement, running away from any assertion of God’s unbending righteousness and just wrath against sinners. In seeking to make much of God’s mercy, they trample on His justice, not realizing that in doing so they have emptied His mercy of its holy glory.
That being so, it must be pardoned that throughout the previous studies there has been such a consistent focus and emphasis being made regarding this particular facet of the Atonement. This is so not because it is the only or even the most important aspect, though it is certainly not the least, if such a judgment can even be made about any facet of such a wondrous subject; this is so because of the profound degradation it is being subjected to. We cannot lose what the Scriptures teach and the Fathers have handed down, and so it is with fear and trembling, and great respect for God’s Word and the Church Fathers, that we seek to remove the veil that has been so unjustly cast over this aspect of the Atonement. May God grant light for the unfolding of St. Gregory’s teaching on the glory of the Atonement.
At the beginning of Homily Sixteen, after declaring God’s sovereign freedom as regards any absolute need for the Word of God to Incarnate in order to save man, St. Gregory asserts that God’s “method of deliverance… had justice on its side, and God does not act without justice” (About the Dispensation, 115). Notice the inclusion of justice as being essential to God’s saving activity, and moreover that this “method was most in keeping with our nature and weakness” (ibid, 115). What, then, was the situation to which our nature and weakness had brought us? Gregory answers: “Man was justly abandoned by God in the beginning as he had first abandoned God” (ibid, 115). Man voluntarily made himself a servant of the Evil One, and thus, yet according to “the good Lord’s consent, death came into the world” (ibid, 115-16). Man’s abandonment was just, for God does nothing without justice, and even the entering in of death was according to God’s sovereign, which is to say His ruling, will.
Man’s nature, St. Gregory continues, is “defiled by transgression” (ibid, 117). He calls it “the original condemnation” (ibid, 117). As such, we are “born and living in passions” (ibid, 121), and death is “passed down by heredity” (ibid, 122). In fact, we “were by nature separated” from God (ibid, 123). Incurring God’s displeasure, “man was led into his captivity when he experienced God’s wrath, this wrath being the good God’s just abandonment of man” (ibid, 124). Having lost his connection with God, Adam’s condemnation was not restricted to himself as if it were a private and isolated event, for “our human nature was stripped of this divine illumination and radiance as a result of the ugly transgression” (ibid, 132).
Reflecting on the statements above, the fact becomes obvious that man’s condemnation has an inescapably juridical element to it. Not only does St. Gregory assert the general principle that God does absolutely everything with justice, he also asserts that specifically that Adam’s condemnation was just, for Adam transgressed God’s command. And not only Adam, but all of human nature is justly condemned. God’s very wrath is now man’s hereditary inheritance from Adam, mankind as a whole being justly abandoned by God. This question of the “wrath of God” Gregory explains as “God’s just abandonment of man” (ibid, 124). Therefore, as he says elsewhere and in reference to John’s Gospel (3:35-36), “those who did not believe he threatened with God’s inescapable wrath,” because for he who does not believe, “the wrath of God abideth on him” (ibid, 121). In fact, “we had been vessels of wrath” (ibid, 129; cf. Romans 9:22-23). The wrath of God is therefore a present (eschatological) reality in which fallen man is currently existing, and thus it is not only a future condemnation. Gregory’s understanding is that man is born a child of wrath (cf. Ephesians 2:3), for “we were children of wrath, as God had justly abandoned us because of our sin and disobedience” (ibid, 122). We “were by nature separate” (ibid, 123). Thus wrath is both a juridical category and a state of being, that of separation, although not a metaphysical separation for that would entail non-existence. As such, man is legally condemned to death according to the hereditary condition of his fallen human nature and his willful transgression.
The just consequence of man’s abandonment results, finally, in man’s death. But is death, according to St. Gregory, merely a question of receiving a limited lifespan? It could seem this way from the opening statement of the homily when he says that Christ “saved man from mortality” (ibid, 115). But in Gregory’s teaching throughout this homily, man’s mortality is expressly twofold, for “because of the devil’s overwhelming evil, death became twofold” (ibid, 116, cf. 118). Man’s mortality is thus twofold, both physical and spiritual, and Christ healed this twofold death, as Gregory states: “He healed our twofold death and freed us from our double captivity of soul and body” (ibid, 126). Christ therefore did not address only the problem of the human lifespan, but his more fundamental problem of spiritual death, which is to say separation from God, also. Since, “of necessity bodily death followed this spiritual death, so the evil one caused our double death” (ibid, 126). Christ’s relation to man, therefore, as his Savior, included addressing this double problem of man’s just condemnation: “death both of the soul and of the body, temporary and eternal” (ibid, 128).
St. Gregory sees that man’s problem is not simply physical death. It is not simply that man is born alive and then one day dies; man is not mortal in this conventional sense. For bodily death follows spiritual death; it does not precede spiritual death. Man is born thus with this fallen human nature that is justly condemned and separated from God, which is to say spiritually dead. In other words, man is according to his fallen nature born spiritually dead (cf. Ephesians 2:1-3) and in a state of separation from God. As a servant of the devil (ibid, 115), mankind is now made “to share his [the devil's] own sin and spiritual deadness” (ibid, 126). Man is, essentially, born in communion with the devil. St. Gregory states that even “after death our souls [have] been deserted by God” (ibid, 126).
It is shocking to behold the darkness into which the light of Christ shines. It is pleasant to discuss the light. The reality of man’s being separated from God, however, is difficult to fathom, and intrinsically inspires aversion (whether to the reality or to the mere suggestion of it), and beyond this the notion of an eternal hell can seem grossly disproportionate. Although the question of the proportionality of an eternal hell was dealt with in a previous study, and the absolute condemnation of universalism in another, it is also worth noting that St. Gregory affirms an eternal hell. After a faithless man sinks from bad to worse: “Eventually, after the wretched soul has lived apart from the body without repenting, it will be handed over, together with the body, to the endless, unbearable bondage of eternal damnation which God has prepared for the devil and his angels” (ibid, 119; cf. 128; Matthew 25:41). This is the second death following the Final Judgment (cf. Revelation 20:7-15). This horror is why Gregory can say: “Except for sin nothing in this life, even death itself, is really evil, even if it causes suffering” (16.33, pg 130).
On this subject, one further way to understand how it is that hell is eternal is because God will not ultimately destroy anything He created good, even if it perverted itself, which is to say He will not annihilate anything that has being or existence. Impious men and demons are therefore not annihilated, contra annihilationism, and the reason includes the simple fact that God created them. He won’t absolutely annihilate that which has at least that measure of goodness, that bare fact of having existence. They are preserved therefore in their being for this reason. But, because of their evil turn of free will, they persist in everlasting hell without so much as an iota of injustice.
Moving forward, Christ addressed our twofold death problem. Since human nature itself was justly condemned, “the incarnation of the Word of God was the method of deliverance most in keeping with our nature and weakness, and most appropriate for Him who carried it out, for this method had justice on its side, and God does not act without justice” (ibid, 115). Not an act independent of His justice, even less done in isolation from His justice, in St. Gregory’s mind, the justice of God was integral to the Incarnation. It is in this light that St. Gregory speaks of God’s just abandonment of man, and so it is necessary that man be justly restored, for “man had been surrendered to the envious devil by divine righteousness” (ibid, 116). Therefore, Gregory argues, “it was clearly necessary that the human race’s return to freedom and life should be accomplished by God in a just way” (ibid, 116). In other words, there is a definite juridical element to the Atonement. Since man’s nature was conquered by the devil, Gregory considered it “also necessary for the conqueror [the devil] to be conquered by that nature [via the Incarnation] which he [the devil] had conquered [man’s]” (ibid, 116). Man’s sin gave the devil legal right over him. For this reason and “to this end it was necessary and indispensable that a man be made who was sinless” (ibid, 116). Sinlessness, in short, was required as a condition of justice.
The question now is, how does St. Gregory present the manner salvation? Or more narrowly, how is human nature justified? To answer this, Gregory presents at least two foci, one incarnational and one sacrificial. Under the heading of the Incarnation there are two aspects. There is, first of all, the ontological fact of his taking on human nature and, second, the ministerial activity centering on Christ’s teaching and healing ministry among men. He states of the ontological aspect: “God took human nature upon Himself to show that it was so far removed from sin and so cleansed that it could be united with His person and remain eternally undivided from Him” (ibid, pg 119). That Gregory has in mind a connection between our Fall, His Incarnation (ontology and ministry inclusive), and our justification, he states also with an eye to the ministerial activity that, “when we had cast ourselves down and fallen away from this vision [i.e. our original blessed condition among God and His angels], God came down to us from on high in His surpassing love for mankind, without in any way giving up His divinity, and be living among us set Himself before us as the pattern of the way back to life” (ibid, 119). Here the salvific nature of the ontological aspect of the Incarnation is woven together with what is sometimes termed moral exemplarism. Thus, through both His life and ministry, “human nature was justified, as not being evil in itself, but God was justified as well, as not in any way being the cause and maker of evil” (ibid, 119). In this way the notion of justification is woven into the Incarnation, which is to include both Christ’s life and ministry. This aspect of justification is addressed especially to the righting of our human nature, and to revealing God’s goodness and justice thereby, for “by this act He proclaimed to all that God is both good and just, the Maker of good things who upholds fair judgment” (ibid, 119-20).
The second foci of St. Gregory’s presentation of the Atonement is that of sacrifice. This immediately calls to mind the Old Testament sacrifices which serve to inform the very concept of sacrifice. Thus St. Gregory speaks of the Lord, in the context of His meeting with St. John the Forerunner, as “the Lamb of God who was taking away the sin of the world, thus proclaiming in advance His sacrifice and slaughter for our sins” (16.14, pg 121). This immediately brings into the Atonement a dimension beyond the stage of the appropriation of human nature, and beyond His being “our teacher, using words” (16.10, pg 119), but one that is cultic and therefore juridical. St. Gregory thus speaks of the Lord’s “plan for our salvation” (16.20, pg 123) as not only Christ's atoning for man in terms of His having a human nature and being a moral exemplar leading the way, but also as incorporating a necessary juridical dimension of the Atonement which includes that God has to be propitiated, for “God had to be reconciled with the human race” (16.20, pg 124). In order to accomplish this, “a sacrifice was needed to reconcile the Father on high with us and to sanctify us” (16.21, pg 124). Notice especially the directionality, that the Father is being reconciled by the Incarnate Son. In other words, although it is the foundation for the sacrifice, man's problem is not solved only at the level of Christ's appropriation of our metaphysical status as a human being, for “there had to be a sacrifice which both cleansed and was clean, and a purified, sinless priest” (16.21, pg 124). And so Christ, as the High Priest, was Himself that sacrifice, calling to mind the legal, cultic sacrificial system. As St. Gregory concludes this paragraph, he again highlights the greatness of the “plan of salvation,” and stresses again that “all these things were done with justice, without which God does not act” (16.21, pg 124), the devil even being “justly deceived” (16.22, pg 124). An additional reason he gives is that “the devil would not have ceased from boasting if he had been subdued by God’s sovereign power and not pulled down from his authority by justice and wisdom” (16.22, pg 124). The juridical element, then, is necessary to abolish any hold that the devil may seek to boastfully maintain on legal grounds.
Generally, if a notion of God’s justice is essential to the Atonement, then necessarily this means there is a juridical aspect, for this is simply to say the same thing in a different way. It is also no different to affirm that it is forensic and legal. These are only different ways of saying the same thing, different words conveying the same basic concept. Moreover, the Law of God is not only legal, it is also cultic, which is to say the sacrifices themselves have a juridical, forensic, or legal aspect to them. The very notion of atonement is legal and cultic. It is thus passing strange when people deny the juridical element of the Atonement. It is clear that, due to their interconceptuality, to affirm that Christ’s death is related to justice, to a sacrifice, or that it is in any way atoning, it is and must be forensic. To deny this would be Neo-Marcionism.
Of course, the Atonement is more than a matter of law, but it is not less than a matter of law, either. Those who seek to reduce the Atonement to personal or cosmic ontology (e.g. theosis) and moral influence are succumbing to Neo-Marcionism, denying the very Law which, to the smallest details, Christ intentionally fulfilled: “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18). Theosis is essential to the Atonement, certainly, but this cannot be made to undercut Christ’s Personal attentiveness to the Law, which is to say His own attentiveness to His own legal covenant and to His own Scriptural word understood more broadly to include the entire Old Covenant canon. This element of Christ’s work cannot be ignored, much less surrendered. “Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets,” Christ’s life was framed by the Gospels and Epistles as a fulfilling of the Scriptures. This is the reason for the New Testament refrain, “the Scripture was fulfilled...’” (Mark 15:28; cf. Luke 4:21; John 13:18, 17:12, 19:24, 28, 36; Acts 1:16; James 2:23). If God Himself is so attentive and careful to fulfill His own word, and this word is inescapably legal and so covenantal, then to deny the juridical elements of the Atonement is not only to deny the faithfulness of God in keeping His own word, it is to deny the Atonement. This Neo-Marcionism leaves everyone still in their sins. It is a different Gospel.
Returning to St. Gregory’s exposition of the Atonement, it is clear that the Incarnation and active obedience of Christ in themselves were not intended to accomplish the totality of man’s sanctification, and so a holy sacrifice was yet needed to complete the process: “Sanctification is accomplished by each person’s offering and sacrifice of firstfruits, but as the firstfruits have to be pure, we are not able to offer such a sacrifice to God. This is why Christ was revealed, who alone is undefiled and presented Himself as an offering and a sacrifice of firstfruits to the Father for our sake” (16.22, pgs 124-25). To sanctify means to make holy, thus in order to accomplish our sanctification a legal, vicarious sacrifice was required, and just so He offered Himself for us and in our place. In this way, and without diminishing the other aspects of the Atonement, “Christ overturned the devil through suffering and His flesh which He offered as a sacrifice to God the Father, as a pure and altogether holy victim - how great His gift! - and reconciled God to our human race” (16. 24, pg 125). This is a penal (which is to say legal, the legal consequence or punishment for sin) substitutionary (which means standing in the place which meets what the law demands, which is our punishment, i.e. twofold death) atonement that reconciled God the Father to man, which is thus not only an expiation or cleansing of sin but a propitiation of the wrath, which is to say the just abandonment of man, by God, reconciling or turning Him back to man in all justice. Christ, it cannot be forgotten, underwent this “passion according to the Father’s will” (16.24, pg 125). St. Gregory Palamas certainly does not leave vicarious satisfaction out of the Atonement!
The foregoing is what “procured life that was truly immortal, life that will not be subject to the second and eternal death, to the coming damnation, which is worse than ten thousand deaths” (16.24, pg 125). As St. Gregory says: “Had He not been human, it would not have been possible for Him to suffer; and had He not been God, and remained impassible in His divinity, He could not have suffered death in the flesh for our sake, thereby bestowing upon us resurrection, or rather, rising from the dead and immortality” (16.30, pg 128). Therefore and “for this reason the Lord patiently endured for our sake a death He was not obliged to undergo, to redeem us, who were obliged to suffer death, from servitude to the devil and death, by which I mean death both of the soul and of the body, temporary and eternal” (16.31, pg 128). And so, in a vicarious sacrifice that fulfills the just punishment of sin, the obligation of death, Christ addressed the twofold death of man, that of soul and body: “Since He gave His blood, which was sinless and therefore guiltless, as a ransom for us who were liable to punishment because of our sins, He redeemed us from our guilt” (16.31, pgs 128-29). Guilt therefore served as an obstacle to man's salvation, a guilt which required a holy victim in place of guilty and unholy man.
Christ’s sinlessness, it might be added, refers not only to His intrinsic holiness as a divine Person, but also necessarily points to His active obedience to the Father and to a correspondingly sinless life of obedience under the Law, doing all things with justice. Since it was God’s will that Christ God in terms of His human nature meet the demands of justice on the Cross, given that He does all things with justice, His Cross is therefore an act of God’s justice. Moreover, since God’s Law does not stand apart from His will, and Christ’s divine and human wills are in perfect accord, Christ in terms of His human nature without doubt obeyed the revealed will of God contained in the Law and so manifested this other aspect of sinlessness in His active obedience to the Law.
Although it takes us beyond the immediate consideration of St. Gregory Palamas, the Law as revealed is, in a significant sense, the Law ab extra, from outside, but it would be a mistake thereby to conclude that the Law is an arbitrary imposition. As created, man was inclined towards the good. Free will as created in man by God is therefore not a neutral space hovering somewhere between good and evil, but an objective orientation and inclination towards the good, which is to say righteousness. Man was created good, and with an original righteousness. Thus the Law is written on men’s hearts by virtue of his created nature. Therefore, when man fell and died spiritually, separated from God, this original righteousness was obscured such that, in the revealed Law man’s own original righteousness was represented back to him as external Law, as command, as a demand with consequences, which is to say blessings and curses consequent to the Law’s observance or non-observance. Thus to break the Law of God is not to break an arbitrary code of divine policy, but to move against the externally revealed law of one’s own created nature. There is in this way a metaphysical component to being in a position of trespass. Moreover, in obeying the Law one does not heal the woundedness of fallen human nature, but simply comports with what man’s own nature demands. It is impossible to perfectly or exhaustively obey this law due to the fallenness of human nature, and yet it is still required that it be obeyed simply because it is intrinsically for man to do so, to conform to the Law of His own created nature. Thus man is objectively in sin as regards his breaking of the revealed Law, and also in sin as regards his nature being fallen and at odds with the same Law as written on his heart. This is how death meets all men, even in those cases where the breaking of the external Law is not imputed. Christ, then, being perfect man, held this Law in perfect righteousness, and as such His holiness was both internal and external, for He also obeyed the Law as revealed ab extra.
Speaking about Christ’s sinlessness would be redundant if it had no specific, functional meaning. Obviously the Son of God is sinless, so why insist on it? For one, it refers to His active obedience of the Law. Christ was motivated to “fullfill all righteousness,” to fullfill the Law, every jot and tittle, and to resist all points of temptation (although Jesus was not internally tempted ab intra, in Himself, in His Person, but externally tempted ab extra by the Devil). Thus His sinlessness has a positive aspect which is also bound up in man’s salvation and union with Christ. Thus in man’s union with Christ His perfect obedience is made theirs. According to the exchange, Christ made what was ours His and what was His ours, and so what He is and has by nature He makes ours by grace. Thus we are made to participate in His divine nature, but no less are we made to participate in His sinless human nature as the New Man through our co-crucifixion, co-resurrection, and co-ascension (16.17, pg 122; 16.35, pg 130-31; cf. Homily 21, pgs 170-76). Therefore, what is true of Christ is made true of us, and so if in union with His Person His divine nature is present in us together with His human nature, for we are “in Him,” then the active, obedient sinlessness that is essential to His human nature is likewise made ours.
Moreover, Christ’s sinlessness has a sacrificial aspect. In order for Christ to be an atonement for sin, He also has to be a sacrificial Lamb without spot. Therefore, in union with Him, Christ’s sinlessness is applied to us as the ground of our justification by His blood. His sacrifice is acceptable to the Father on the grounds that He is sinless, and so this aspect of sacrificial purity is insisted upon as well in the insistence on Christ’s active or ministerial sinlessness. It is not that Christ is sinless merely because He somehow avoided sinning. Christ is holy by nature, and so His human nature, like iron in a fire, was utterly aflame with holiness, and so insisting on Christ’s sinlessness functions to affirm all of the foregoing. No mere affect of praise, it is a confession of vital truth. Thus Penal Substitutionary Atonement is deeply connected with theosis, for His holiness is not only imputed to us, it not only justifies, but also is imparted and so sanctifies man. The Spirit of Christ in us is the energy that drives theosis. Theosis is thus, in other words, not the development of personal holiness as such, but the greater manifestation of Christ’s holiness in us, the hope of glory.
A more general objection regarding PSA may arise and which must be addressed, for someone may argue and attempt to skewer PSA on the horns of a dilemma by asserting something like this: “If the punishment for sin is loss of communion with God, which is to say separation from God, which is also to say the suffering of His just wrath, then either the Son is two persons (i.e. Nestorianism), one who suffers and one who doesn't, or the Son is not of one essence with the Father (i.e. divided Trinity).” Now, those objections do not follow, and for the simple reason that the two horns are attached to a false dilemma. As such, to the first horn of the false dilemma, the Son is necessarily one divine Person with two natures, and He suffers according to His human nature, lest someone deny that Christ could suffer at all (i.e. Docetism or monophysitism). It is axiomatic that Christ had a human nature that could suffer, and so the question is not whether He could suffer, but what He could suffer. If Christ could not suffer what is fitted to human nature, save sin, then the critique is actually emerging from some kind of Docetism or Monophysitism, as if Christ did not really incarnate and have a full human nature and so could not really be said to suffer. As another Gregory, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, writes, although in regards to Apollinarianism:
“If the whole of his [Adam’s] nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole. Let them not, then, begrudge us our complete salvation” (Epistle 101).
In other words, if Christ could not suffer what is fitted to human nature, then He was not fully man, thus denying orthodox Christology and consequently unravelling the Atonement. This horn therefore presupposes a heretical position in order to make its objection, and can be readily dismissed. Although Christ in Himself was not fallen, nothing prohibits Christ from suffering what is fitted to the whole of man’s fallen nature, his double death, for in fact He came precisely in order to do this, as in the Patristic dictum from the same Epistle of St. Gregory of Nazianzus contra Apollinarianism, “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed.” As St. Gregory Palamas stated: “He healed our twofold death and freed us from our double captivity of soul and body” (16.24, pg 126).
To the second horn, the separation from God is not metaphysical or moral, for it happens within the context of full and total agreement between Unbegotten Father and Eternally Begotten Son, therefore guaranteeing and necessitating their continued, eternal, consubstantial unity. The term “separation” in this false dilemma is being exaggerated to mean something it does not. Separation does not mean metaphysical cleavage, but extreme agony of soul: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38). This statement of Christ has untouched depths, for it is the beginning of the bearing of the Cross. Metaphysical cleavage from the Father is therefore a logical impossibility, not only for the Son who is by nature consubstantial with Him and eternally existent, but for any and all created beings because it is only by His maintaining a created entity's existence that it can even be said to have existence at all. If the term separation were taken as meaning metaphysical cleavage during any entity’s separation from God, then it would entail annihilationism, which is prima facie denied. Man’s punishment for sin is already separation from God, and yet he exists. Therefore for Christ to bear this punishment of separation cannot mean a metaphysical separation, but extreme agony of soul. The critique can therefore be dismissed since it fails to be able to account for how any man could be metaphysically separated from God and yet remain in existence. If even in fallen man the separation entailed by sin is not metaphysical but relational, as in a relation of alienation, then no cleavage is entailed and therefore there are no grounds for the objection.
Returning to St. Gregory Palamas, hopefully now we can answer the question raised at the beginning: How is human nature justified? As was shown, St. Gregory Palamas has at least two aspects, one of which is the metaphysical appropriation of man’s nature which includes also His active ministry, the other is His sacrifice for sin. These aspects form an essential unity in the Person and work of Christ that, yet, are rightly distinguished. Man’s justification is begun metaphysically with the Incarnation, and yet He is thus not justified apart from Christ’s vicarious sacrifice, and as such it is the death and resurrection of Christ as our penal substitute that justifies and redeems from guilt. St. Gregory, moreover, consistently accounted for and affirmed God’s wrath being appeased, God’s wrath being the just abandonment of the sinner. Christ bore this punishment in man’s place as a vicarious sacrifice, both expiating sin and propitiating the Father, and yet this penal substitution entails no metaphysical cleavage of the Trinity or multiplication of the natures of Christ into two Persons. Nestorianism is thus denied, despite what the Monophysite and Neo-Marcionite positions may seek to assert.
To conclude, it is worth noting that the Homily studied above is incredibly profound and deserving of more study, for it contains yet more riches of insight and wisdom into the Atoning work of Christ. Especially fascinating is the incredibly diverse array of Biblical images and concepts which are woven into a tapestry of glorification of God and exhortation to man that, regrettably, the present study had to pass by. Multiple aspects of the Atonement can be discerned here and are worth exploring at greater length, such as ransom, binding the strong man, regeneration, adoption, despoiling hell, the double nature of death and of resurrection, the twofold nature of resurrection, and so on. That being said, there is still the more systematic reading of St. Gregory’s other works where they touch on the Atonement which would serve to extend and complete what is so far but an indicative study. What has been argued above, however, is firmly established in favor of PSA, and yet more can be brought to bear to magnify the exposition of St. Gregory’s Spirit-filled utterances on this subject.
-Fr. Joshua Schooping
