"The Passion of the
Christ"
Recent film reviews express the sentiment and views of
many Christians regarding the film "Passion of the Christ".
One reviewer says, "Unfortunately, Mel Gibson is so intent
on heaping unimaginable punishments on Jesus that it
prevents the Passion of Christ being the transcendent
cinematic and spiritual experience for which we might have
hoped. Rather, in creating the suffering of Jesus in such
shockingly realistic and unrelenting fashion, Gibson has
deprived his hero of the very humanity central to the key
mystery of Christ being both God and man. The Passion of the
Christ is too one-dimensional to provide the expected
exultation - too earthbound, perhaps, to soar to the
heavens".
In recent interviews, Gibson has said that the purpose of
his film was "to express the hugeness and horror of Jesus'
sacrifice". That it does. He also said that ultimately "it
is a story of faith, hope and love". To that end it fails.
The message of love and tolerance is lost in the
blood-spurting detail of the brutal scourging and
crucifixion.
However, whatever the artistic merits of Mel Gibson's
film, it clearly has had a profound effect on people
already. The Passion of Jesus has been depicted in many ways
over 2000 years with successive generations offering
interpretations.
The effect has been to keep the story of Jesus' sacrifice
alive, to give it immediacy and relevance to each generation
and to promote thought and understanding. Gibson's
contemporary interpretation certainly continues that
tradition and will be valued by millions of people for that.
However, Christ's passion and death has a quality, a weight
which belongs to Him alone. It is a manifestation of God's
great love for the human race. "For God so loved the world
that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in
Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John
3:16).
Why was it necessary for Christ
to suffer?
Christ became incarnate to correct Adam's error. Adam
received the Divine image but did not keep it, since it was
obscured by the fall. Christ succeeded by His Incarnation to
preserve the human image and to make the flesh immortal.
Adam failed to conquer the devil and died. Christ conquered
the devil and death. In order to suffer and die, Christ
assumed human nature and passibility and mortality - without
sin. He deified man through His own self-humbling or
self-emptying. He suffered in His body to show His great
love for man.
Christ's passion was voluntary. Because man could never
have achieved deification it was necessary for Christ to
unite the Divine with the human nature to conquer death
which is the consequence of sin. Therefore man cannot
conquer the devil and death unless he unites himself with
Christ.
Christ reconciled man to
God
After the fall, man separated himself from God. He was
hostile to God. He was under the dominion of the devil and
had to be brought back into communion with God. God did not
need the blood of His Son to save man. He accepted it to
free man from the tyranny of the devil, to sanctify man by
the human nature of His Son and to provide the cure for
man's immortality.
Christ's Divine and Human
Nature
God is one essence but three different persons. The Son
has the same essence or nature as the Father and the Holy
Spirit, but He is a distinct person. He is equal to the
Father and the Holy Spirit. All three co-exist
simultaneously. They all possess the attributes of
omnipresence and omniscience. They are all associated in the
act of creation and redemption. This is called the doctrine
of the Blessed Trinity, that there are 3 persons in one
God.
An example in human nature, is the relationship between
our mind, its ideas and the expression of these ideas in
words.
Christ is one person, yet has two natures. His Divine
nature is united with his human nature - without change,
confusion or division. "Without change", means neither the
Divine nor the human nature was altered, that is, neither
the Divine nature became human, nor did the human nature
lose its distinct attributes. "Without confusion", means
that the Divine nature performs all things Divine and the
human nature performs all things human. "Without division",
means that the two natures never separated, so when Christ
did what was Divine, His human nature followed, and when the
human acted, His Divine nature co-operated. Each nature
acted "in communication with the other".
For example, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ
expresses fear in the face of His passion. He began to be
sorrowful and deeply depressed" (Matthew 26:37-38). Because
He took on a mortal body He was naturally afraid. He knew he
was about to die. The soul's natural fear of death is due to
the fact that there is a close connection between the soul
and body and therefore when the soul is being prepared to
leave the body, it is natural to be deeply distressed.
Christ's Divine will yielded to His human nature to fear
death. As man He was troubled by the memory of death, but as
God He transforms the fear at once into boldness and through
His authoritative power He invited death to come. In Christ
it was a natural fear and not a supernatural fear.
Example 2, Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus because He
loved him and also because He saw the corruption of human
nature after sin and penetration of death. Man was not
created to die, but sin introduced mortality. Christ is not
only God by nature, but also man. Therefore His human nature
suffered.
Example 3, Why did Jesus need to pray? Christ did not
need to pray as He was always united with His Father, but He
did so to identify Himself with our person and to teach us
to pray and in this way to achieve communion with God. Also
by His prayer, He shows that He honours His Father. Christ's
human nature always obeyed and submitted to the Divine will
-"Nevertheless not as I will, but as you will". While His
human will differs from the Father in essence, nevertheless,
it follows the Divine will and so becomes the will of the
Father. Similarly, Christ teaches us to apply God's will,
even if it is different from our own human will.
Example 4, Since Christ is one person with two natures,
whenever one question is asked about him it must be
separated into two questions, one applying to each
nature:
(a) Did Christ get tired, hungry, thirsty? - in His
Divine nature, no! In His human nature, yes!
(b) Did Christ die? - in His human nature He did die. But
in His Divine nature He did not die.
(c) Did Christ know everything? - As God He did, since
God is omniscient. But as man Jesus said that He did not
know the time of the Second Coming. {Mat 24:36].
(d) Could Jesus Sin? - As God He could not have sinned;
but as man He could have sinned but He did not. Jesus was
"in ail points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews
4:15), that is to say, while He never sinned, He was really
tempted and therefore it was possible for Him to sin -
otherwise His temptation would have been a charade. Jesus
possessed the power of free choice, which means whatever
moral choice He made, He could have done otherwise. This
means that He chose not to sin (which was always), He could
have sinned as man but He did not.
Christ's Divinity remained
undivided in Body and Soul
Death is a separation of the Body and Soul. Christ gave
up His Soul, His spirit to His Father. "And bowing His head,
He gave up His sprit" (John 19:30).
However, this does not mean that there is also a
separation of the hypostatic union of the Divine and human
nature. His Divinity remained undivided in Body and Soul -
in spite of the soul's separation from the body. Therefore
His soul descended into Hades with His
Divinity in order to release the righteous men of the
Old Testament from the power of death, while his Body
remained in the tomb with the Divinity, without
suffering, decay and disintegration, precisely because there
was the unified Divinity He lay in the tomb incorruptible
until the third day because His body cannot be touched by
corruption because it is full of the Divine Presence.
The righteous men of the Old Testament attained
deification but death had not yet been conquered and they
went to Hades. Through Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, He
descended into Hades and freed them from the Kingdom of
Death.
Prior to the Resurrection Christ's body was pure and
chaste, but mortal and _ destructible. After His
Resurrection He had an indestructible Body which never
hungers nor thirsts because it is united with His
Divinity.
Christ reconciled man to God through Himself. We are now
able to participate in the purifying, illuminating and
deifying energy of God.
Adapted from "The Feasts of Our Lord" by
Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos of Nafpaktos
from The Truth, March 2004, v. 18/3, Greek Orthodox
Archdiocese of Australia,
Christian Missionary Society of the Ascension of our Lord
publication, Perth, Western Australia
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