Paradise as the Landscape of

Salvation in Ephem the Syrian

Thomas Buchan

Thomas Buchan•Assistant professor of theology at

Asbury Theological Seminary in Orlando, FL

•Author of :

•“Blessed is who Has Brought Adam from Sheol?

•Christ’s Descent to the Dead in the Theology of St. Ephram the Syrian”

The richness of the 4th century

•Deification is present in the writings of the early Christian theologians , i.e. St. Irenaeus.

•Many patristic luminaries such as the Cappadocian fathers and many in the Orthodox tradition.

•Athanasius of Alexandria’s treatise On the Incarnation of the Word of God (Christ was made man that we might be God)

•Mar Ephram the Syrian was crafting his own expressions of the concept of salvation as the divinization or deification of humanity.

Mar Ephram “Harp of the Spirit”

306 - 373•Mar. Ephram was contemporary of St Athanasius and died a month after the Pope of Alexandria

•Born in the Mesopotamian city of Nisibis (borders between Turkey and Syria).

•No less than St. Athansius, Mar Ephram conceived of salvation in Christ as the deification of humanity.

Mar Ephram and St. Athansius deification’s

expressions•In the Hymns of faith:

•He gave us divinity / we gave Him humanity

•Hymns on the Nativity

•descended and become one of us that we might become heavenly

•Blessed is He Who came in what is ours and mingled us into what is His.

Mar Ephram and St. Athansius deification’s

expressions (cont.)

•Homily on Our Lord: “Glory to the One Who took from us in order to give to us, so that we should all the more abundantly receive what is His by means of what is ours.

•It is He who was begotten of Divinity, according to His nature

•and humanity, which was not according to His nature

•and of baptism, which was not His habit

•So that we might be begotten of humanity, according to our nature

•and of divinity, which is not according to our nature

•and of the Spirit, which is not our habit

Genesis 1-3 (the paradise narrative)

•emphasized the unity of God’s works of creation and redemption in the economy of human salvation.

the economy of human

salvation.•.... refers to God’s activity in creating

and governing the world, particularly to his plan for the salvation of the world in the person of Jesus Christ, a plan which is being accomplished through His Body the Church, in its life and sacraments.

Catechism of the Catholic Church,

Glossary, “Economy of Salvation”

Genesis 1-3 (the paradise narrative)

•For the last 50 years Mar Ephram’s view of paradise have appeared in scholarly literature.

•Mar Ephram returned again and again to the paradise of Genesis.

•Hymns of Paradise.

•Homily on Our Lord

•Commentary on the Diatessaron Collections of hymns :On the Nativity, On Virginity, On the Church and On Nisibis.

The Paradise Narrative and the Devine Intent for Humanity’s

Deification•Paradise is part of the earthly creation, “planted” on the 3rd day.

•Paradise was not merely earthly.

•This describe the simultaneous situation of paradise both in moral and spiritual relation to the inhabited earth.

•The created cosmos intended to serve as the venue for divine and human communication (For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you-Luke 17:21)

The Paradise in Mar Ephram’s writings

•A mountain that dwarfs all other mountains (Jewish literature).

•The circular base of the paradisiacal mountain encompassed both the land and the sea of the terrestrial earth.

•He describes each part of it in a symbolic way (the Shekinak, vertical distance, tree of knowledge, tree of life)

How God honored Adam?Humanity was created by God in an

exalted state reflective of God’s image and glory.

•The dominion Adam received over earthly things, same to God over heavenly things.

•God formed him with His own hands.

•Breathed life into him.

•God set him as ruler over Paradise and all that it is outside paradise.

•God clothed Adam in glory

•God gave him reason and thought to perceive the majesty of God.

•Given rule over creation (a second god over creation)

Purpose of God’s decree in Mar Ephram’s

thoughts•God gave His creation everything,

even immortality.

•God set them a simple commandment relative to a great reward. Not to eat from one tree.

•God gave them all of the Paradise so that they would be under no constrain to transgress the law.

Mountain of Paradise

•Adam and Eve obey God.

•Receive reward of the fruit of the Tree of Life.

•The Tree was located at the summit of Paradise.

•They need to ascend the mountain.

•move into closer communion with the divine.

•Draw near to the Shekinah of God’s presence at the paradisiacal peak.

•By this way they should -by free will and actively -choose the immortal life.

Reality

•Through misapplication of their wills, Adam and Eve transgressed the commandment.

•Fall into Sin

•Humanity was exiled from Eden.

•Denied access to the Tree of Life.

•God placed a living fence.

The Paradise Narrative as an

interpretive framework for the

history of Redemption

•Humanity was not entirely cut off from paradise and its participation in the divine life, although expelled from the Garden and barred from reentry.

•According to Mar. Ephram, humanity was living in the foothills below the mountain.

•When humanity continued sinning, God found them unworthy to be neighbors to Paradise.

•Mar Ephram found assurance of this possibility in some biblical figures: Enoch and Elijah (God’s good gift of free will) P.151

•Representation of paradise and through God’s presence either in Noah’s ark or in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple

Possibilities of Spiritual access to

Paradise

Incarnation of Christ and His work of

redemptionTo Mar Ephram this represents the fulfillment of all the types and symbols of the Old Testament by which God had revealed aspects of the divine intent for the salvation of humanity.

Redemption and deification of

humanity in Christ•When Mar Ephram’s discussed the

redemption and deification of humanity in Christ, he used the paradise narrative as a hermeneutic of salvation.

•He interpreted the events of Christ’s Incarnation, life, death and resurrection using Genesis 1-3, as he viewed salvation in Christ as the recovery of all that was lost in Adam.

The renewal of the image of God in Adam/Humanity

•INCARNATION: “Clothed” in Adam (the fallen humanity) to restore His fallen creation.

•Continued in the events of His earthly life and ministry.

•BAPTISM: Adam to restore his robe of glory which he had originally in Paradise.

The renewal of the image of God in Adam/Humanity (cont.)

•HUMAN FREE WILL: Christ’s obedience and temptation on the mountain in the wilderness and Adam’s temptation and disobedience on the mountain of paradise.

•His death and resurrection: returning Adam/humanity to the life of Eden.

All these changes did the Merciful One make

Stripping off glory and putting on a body;

for He had devised a way to reclothe Adam

in that glory which Adam had stripped off.

Christ was wrapped in swaddling clothes;

corresponding to Adam’s leaves,

Christ put on clothes in the place of Adam’s skins;

He was baptized for Adam’s sin,His body was embalmed for Adam’s death,He rose and raised Adam up in His Glory.

Blessed is He who descended, Put on Adam and ascended.

•Freewill succeeded in making Adam’s beauty ugly, for he, a man, sought to become god.

•Grace, however, made beautiful his deformities and God came to become a man.

•Divinity flew down to draw humanity up,

•For the Son had made beautiful the deformities of the servant and so he has become god, just as he desired.

•To enable Christians to locate themselves and move freely within the spiritual geography of the paradise to which they have been returned in Christ.

•The cross of the Lord is the Tree of Life, the source of humanity’s intended immortality and communion with God.

•Accordingly the body of Christ (the Eucharist) was seen as the fruit of the tree.

The Paradise Narrative as the spiritual geography of the church

God planted the fair Garden, He built the pure church;

upon the Tree of Knowledge He established the injunction

....In the church He implanted the Word

which causes rejoicing with its promises, which causes fear with its warnings:

he who despises the Word, perishes , he who takes warning, lives.

....The effortless power, the arm which never tires,planted this Paradise, adorned it without effort.But it is the effort of the freewill that adorns the

Church with all manner of fruits.The Creator saw the Church and was pleased;

He resided in that Paradise which she had planted for His honor

just as He had planted the Garden for her delight.

Mar Ephram's vision of the church

• Seeing the church as a paradise as overly optimistic looks to be a naive triumphalism.

• But as a promotor of Nicene Orthodoxy, he was keenly aware of challenges posed to Christian unity by doctrinal disputes.

• Many time he engaged in theological polemics against Arians, Marcion, Bar Daisan and Mani

• Mar Ephram's awareness of church's own shortcomings can be clearly seen in his hymn On the church:

• The kings who used to provide shade, cooled in the droughts.

• We ate their fruits, we were ungrateful for their branches.

• Our soul luxuriated in the bounties and shadows.

• Our mouth raved and attacked our Creator.

• Battles in the shadows we waged with our investigations.

• He has stripped away our shade to make us mindful of our drought.

• In Mar Ephrm's thought, paradise -the environment intended by God for the deification of humanity- had been opened by Christ, and made accessible to a humanity for whom the image of God was renewed in baptism, free will was restored in the imitation of Christ, and the life of immortality was accessible in the Eucharistic fruit of the Tree of life.

Conclusion• Mar Ephram was a theologian for whom the

mystery of salvation in Christ consisted in humanity's deification through communion with God.

• Mar Ephram's conception of deification can be most fully appreciated in light of his interpretation and appropriation of elements from the paradise narrative of Genesis 1-3.

• Paradise is the environment for human union with the Divine Trinity, starting from the "beginning" through the course of history of salvation.

Conclusion• Through the second Adam,

access to the Tree of life was restored, and through Christ's sacramental presence in the church's Eucharist.

• Though humanity's return to paradise would not be fully realized until the escheat on, Christians could proleptically participate in the life of Eden Regained in the paradise of the church.

May the prayers of Mar Ephram be

with us all, amen.

Glory be to God forever, Amin