Limping to the eschaton

Christ in Genesis

True theology is an epektasis (perpetual progress), an eternal arrival into the mysteries of God, full of twists and surprises that—despite their delightful novelty—always turn our gaze towards the same familiar Face. Theology is an unending response to the inexhaustible invitation of God to enter into His Wisdom and share in His life. True theology has no absolute “ground,” no self-referentially “proven” foundation that would justify a set of syllogisms. The foundation of all true theologizing is the person of the Word, who reveals (that is, incarnates) Himself in Scripture and nature. Theology begins with faith in Christ and ends in love of Christ—in the experience of God face to face. Anything less is of the enemy.

I’ve often been asked what my “best” argument for Christianity is. I always struggle to find a response. While it is true that I am not a skilled “apologist,” the more fundamental cause of my struggle is the overwhelming abundance of converging ideas, patterns, and “coincidences” that run through the diverse nomenclatures of metaphysics, Scriptural typology, natural science, and more. This overwhelming abundance—this apophaticism—does not easily lend itself to concise articulation. As G.K. Chesterton writes in Orthodoxy:

It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up.

Today I would like to share some fascinating “convergences” that I’ve recently been meditating upon.

In Genesis 3:15, we read the curse against the Serpent:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

The obvious implication of this prophecy is that the “head-crushing” and the “heel-striking” are two sides of one event. The head of the Serpent is crushed under the foot of the Seed; as the Serpent strikes the foot, that very foot crushes him. As we sing in the Psalms, the wicked “fall in their own nets”; their own acts of self-assertion ultimately reduce to self-negation.

Here, in the third chapter of Genesis, we can already perceive the logic of the Cross. On the Cross, the Serpent “strikes the heel” of Jesus—he leads his servants (the apostate Jews and the pagan Romans—the unfaithful “harlot” and the raging “beast,” respectively) into betraying, beating, and crucifying Him. This is the worst thing humans had ever done, the pinnacle of unfaithfulness. And yet, it is the supreme revelation of the faithfulness of God, the greatest thing He has ever done.

In crushing the head of the Serpent on the Cross, Jesus simultaneously overturns the curse of Man. After foolishly seizing wisdom for himself, Adam is cursed with death: “dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return” (Genesis 3:19). Adam is formed as a union of dust and Spirit—earth and heaven—but, through rejecting communion with God, he loses the Spirit and falls back into mere dust. Adam’s curse provides necessary information if we are to understand the curse against the Serpent: “You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:14). Adam is cursed to become dust; the devil is cursed to eat dust—the devil eats dead humans. His domain, his kingdom, is the realm of the dead. And since the whole creation falls in Adam, the devil becomes “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31).

Now, we can go back to the Cross with a deeper appreciation for what it achieves. The devil’s power is over the “dust” of dead humans, and so Eternal Life Himself becomes a dead human. He enters into the dust, but instead of being swallowed by it, He fills it with His Spirit. This is the “trick” God plays on the Serpent—the Serpent thought he had consumed the Anointed One, but he was, in fact, consumed by Him. He thought he had delivered a mortal wound, but in this very act his head is crushed. He fell into his own net.

The Serpent does wound the Seed. On the Cross, Christ’s side is pierced, and from that side flows blood and water—the Eucharist, eternal life. While the Serpent tricked Man into seizing divinity for themselves, the God-Man tricks the Serpent into participating in His act of freely giving His divine life to the world—he meant it for evil, but God meant it for good (Genesis 50:20). And because the Eucharist constitutes us as the very body of Christ, we participate both in His Serpent-inflicted wounds and His Serpent-destroying head-crushing. The wounds the Church experiences—the slander, persecutions, abuse, poverty, and martyrdom—are the very means by which the Gospel spreads throughout the world. We read about this in the Book of Revelation, which is primarily concerned with the apostolic age. The following is an overview of Revelation 12:13-17.

When Christ ascends to heaven, He triumphs over the “princes and principalities” of the air and casts the devil down to the earth. Enraged, the dragon raises up persecutors to pursue the “woman” (the Church in Jerusalem); the most notorious among them is Saul of Tarsus. But the woman is “given the two wings of the great eagle” and flies into the wilderness, which refers to the scattering of the disciples from Jerusalem (see Acts 8). The dragon sends Saul to bring the Christians back to Jerusalem in captivity, but while in pursuit, Saul is converted. Seeing that his plan to destroy the Church in her infancy has been thwarted, the dragon shifts into a crafty serpent and pours poisonous water like a river out of his mouth. This refers to the Judaizing heresy, the first major dogmatic dispute in the Church, one that even certain apostles were temporarily influenced by. For a time, it seemed like the Serpent may succeed in sweeping the woman away with his flood. That is, until the very man he had originally raised up to persecute the Church, Saul (now Paul) of Tarsus, intervenes. In his epistles—most forcefully in Galatians and Romans—Paul dismantles the Judaizing error by proclaiming that justification comes through faith in Christ, not through circumcision or the works of the Law. And in Acts 15, at the Council of Jerusalem, he persuades Peter, James, and the other apostles to render the definitive judgment: Gentiles are not bound to the Mosaic Law to be saved. Thus “the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river”—the Church itself absorbs and neutralizes the flood the serpent had loosed, and the woman is preserved. “Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus,” and this is the (spiritual) war we continue to fight today.

In this war, we may—indeed, we certainly will—be wounded, because we are the body of Christ. Our heels have been struck; we are limping to the eschaton. And yet, we may have faith that

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.