19.

 What is the central message of the Orthodox Christian faith?

            Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos makes this matter clear and understandable by giving some needed preliminary information. He states that nowhere in Holy Scriptures does it appear that God is reconciled with men, but that Christ reconciles man to God. Moreover, the metropolitan notes, it appears in the whole of patristic Tradition that God is never opposed to man, but man opposed himself to God by having no communion or participation with Him. Thus, man makes God his enemy, but God does not make man His enemy. Through the sin which he commits, man sees God in an angry and hostile way.

            Orthodox Christianity's central message is that God the Son has taken the initiative in breaking down the wall of separation that man's sinfulness created between God and man. The human race from the start had fallen away from the divine life by embracing sin, and it had fallen under the power of death. However, some two thousand years ago, in an act of self-emptying and abasement, God the Son directly intervened in human history by becoming incarnate. By His Incarnation, death on the Cross and Resurrection from death, Christ destroyed the power that death had over mankind. Through His teaching and His whole saving work, Christ reconciled to God a humanity that had grown distant from God and enslaved in sins, and He abolished the authority that the devil had acquired over men. By bridging the abyss that separates men from God, and through the union of man and God in His own Person, Christ opened the way to eternal life in Heaven for all who would accept it — that is, He enabled people to find eternal life and happiness with Him.

            In connection with this message, Nicholas Cabasilas, the great Byzantine theologian of the fourteenth century, makes these additional comments:

Though men were triply separated from God — by nature, by sin and by death — yet the Savior made them to attain to Him perfectly and to be immediately united to Him by successively removing all obstacles. The first barrier He removed by partaking of manhood, the second by being put to death on the Cross. As for the final barrier, the tyranny of death, He eliminated it completely from our nature by rising again [The Life in Christ, p. 106].

Concerning the Theanthropos (God-Man) Christ and His ability to save people, He is the Pre-Eternal God (Jn 1:1-3). He is consubstantial (of one essence, one nature) with the Un-Originate Father, and He is equal with the Father in authority and honor (Jn 5:17-24). Christ is the Only-Begotten Son of the Father (Jn 3:16), He is the Almighty Logos of the Father, and He is the Lord of All (Phil 2:9-11).