The New Humanity - Part 6

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 5 with:

 

" Through the receiving of the Spirit this new humanity became what St. Paul

calls the dwelling-place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22). In other words,

we are made into the temple of God in which the Spirit can dwell. St. Paul

describes this in writing to the Ephesians where he speaks of the " immeasurable

greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great

might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead "

(Ephesians 1:19,20). It was God who raised Christ from the dead. Christ made

that sacrifice of himself, the total sacrifice, and thereby he overcame death

which was the consequence of sin. The disintegration of man was healed by this

surrender on the cross which is also the reintegration of man. St. Paul

continues, " And made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far

above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is

named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come " (Ephesians

1:20,21). This is a reference to the cosmic powers of which we have spoken.

Jesus, through the resurrection, is raised above humanity and also above the

whole cosmic order, above all the cosmic powers, and, as St. Paul puts it, he is

made " to sit at God's right hand in the heavenly places " . That refers to the

transcendent order of consciousness. It is appropriate to translate these

biblical images into the framework we have been using so far. We have spoken of

the three worlds where the earth is the physical order, the air is the psychic

or psychological order, and the sky, or heaven, the spiritual order. God dwells

in heaven, in the spiritual order, whereas, significantly, the spirits are said

to dwell in the air. (P.109) St. Paul speaks of the " prince of the power of the

air " (Ephesians 2:2). The spirits of the air, along with angels and other

beings, represent an intermediate state, the psychic or psychological realm.

Man, of course, dwells on the earth. So Jesus goes beyond the physical and

beyond the psychic world, beyond the angels and the gods, to the transcendent

world, the transcendent reality itself. " He has put all things in subjection

under his feet, " which means, as we have seen, that the whole material creation

becomes subordinate to him. "

 

Here now, is Part 6.

 

Enjoy!

 

violet

 

 

The New Humanity - Part 6

 

(P.109) The passage continues, " and has made him the head over all things for

the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all "

(Ephesians 1:22,23). The Church is this body of humanity which has been rescued

from sin and restored to life in the Spirit and now it becomes " the fullness of

him who fills all in all " . The word " fullness " in Greek is 'pleroma' and it

corresponds to the Sanskrit 'purnam'. In principle, the whole creation has been

restored to that fullness. Whereas sin is disintegration and falling apart,

redemption is reintegration. It is the gathering of everything into a whole,

bringing it into the fullness of God. The whole of humanity is gathered into the

fullness of the divine life. And further, all things, the whole creation, as

well as the whole of humanity, now become the body of Christ. Christ is, as it

were, the soul of that body and he reunites it in the Spirit, with God. " The

fullness of him who fills all in all " means that the whole creation is now

filled with this power of the Spirit, through Christ who is himself that

fullness, in whom " the fullness of the godhead dwelt bodily " (Colossians 2:9).

That is the understanding of the new humanity which emerges in the New

Testament.

 

When the Church is seen in this way it is being understood in the highest sense.

We need to recover this insight and emphasise it today. The Church as it is

known today may seem to bear little resemblance to it, but this is the vision of

the Church in the New Testament and in the early Church Fathers. (P.110) For

instance, in the Shepherd of Hermas there is a beautiful passage where the

Church appears as an old woman. The Shepherd asks why she appears like an old

woman and the text says it is because " she was from the beginning and for her

all things were created. " So the Church is the new humanity, the body of

humanity, which God planned from the beginning. It falls into sin and is divided

and disintegrated but now it is reunited. Its previous separations are healed,

it is reintegrated and becomes the body of Christ, the body filled with the Holy

Spirit. In this sense it is from the beginning and for this all things were

created (Cf.Colossians 1:16-18) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cf. The whole

creation and humanity is created precisely for this unity in God through Christ.

That is the plan of salvation as seen in the New Testament.

 

All this makes it evident that this work of the Spirit has been going on in all

humanity from the beginning. Certainly at Pentecost a fullness of the Spirit was

revealed, but the Spirit was present from the time that man fell from Eden. The

redemptive work of the Spirit was already taking place from the very beginning.

In all primitive peoples and in the hunting, agricultural and pastoral peoples

there was a presence of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is present in all creation,

in all humanity, drawing humanity back to God, back to Christ, back to the

Truth.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith)

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

Pgs. 109-110