are like the symptomatic description of a cold: sneezing, temperature, a tendency to be other than our usual, pleasant selves. Invisible to us is the action of the virus, and of the antibodies. The analogy breaks down because we can now describe viruses and antibodies. Perhaps it is more like trying to convey the meaning of a sentence without saying the sentence; we can never get behind words and symbols.
The earliest images and metaphors were very simple. The Cross was seen as the location of a great battle between Christ and the devil. In the resurrection we see the victory of Christ, who, like a modern marine detachment, has attacked the terrorist hideout and freed the hostages. The devil attacks Jesus, fooled by his human nature, only to be overwhelmed by the divine power concealed within. Such a way of thinking appeals to us strongly, since we naturally identify with stories. Writers such as Tolkien, Lewis and Stephen Donaldson give us the same myth in different terms. It closely relates to our own experiences of life as a struggle, sometimes with forces within us we do not understand or like very much.
The idea is sometimes more subtle. To say we are captive to the devil accords with part of our experience. But our sense of freedom and of choice leads to the idea that we also are in rebellion against God. As such, we incur the need for forgiveness so that we can escape due punishment. The debt we owe is too great for us to pay, and so God pays it in Christ taking upon himself the just deserts of our offences. It can be put more acceptably by saying that Jesus makes the sacrifice necessary to all true forgiveness. We also, however, have a sense of helpless choosing; that we know we will do the same bad thing over and over again. This is so despite all we know about God, Christ and ourselves. St Paul puts the problem in a way almost everyone can relate to from time to time:
I cannot understand my own behaviour I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate. When I act against my own will, that means I have a self that acknowledges that the Law is good, and so the thing behaving in that way is not my self but sin living in me … with the result that instead of doing the good things I want to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want … In short, it is I who with my reason serve the Law of God, and no less I who serve in my unspiritual self the law of sin.
Romans 7:14–25
Paul’s predicament is that of someone who would dearly love to be able to swim the English Channel. Exercises, practices, diets cannot alter a basic inability to swim for twenty-odd miles. He just cannot do it. Nor can I, and nor can you, I would guess. Such a way of thinking leads to saying that there is something damaged about our very human nature. We know perfectly well what we are called to by God, but our daily experience can be more like that of fish trying to build a space rocket: just not what we are made for.
A more theologically respectable way of putting it would be to say that the image of God has been wiped out, or at least defaced, in us. Where we should reflect a true picture of God’s love, we produce a dim and scattered chaos. It is possible, though, to get this very wrong. One can think, for example, that the spirit is willing, while the flesh is weak. This truth is taken too far if we mean that we are good spirits trapped in a body of sin. St Paul sometimes says things like this, but not in this meaning. For him, the whole human, soul and body, is fallen; not something anyone with honest insight into themselves would dispute.
If our whole nature was fallen, our whole nature is restored in Christ. This is why the Church has always insisted on the full and real humanity of Jesus. The idea is that by contact with his divine nature, the human nature was revivified and restored. Some thinkers took this further to say that we become divinized in Christ, though it is never easy to say what that means. Christ became what we are, so that we may become what he is. Pressing the idea leads us to horrible complexities about Christ’s human soul, and how to square his real human knowledge with his real divine omniscience.
Fortunately we do not have to solve any of these; my money is on those fish beating us to it if we try. Each of the views outlined has its own problems and inconsistencies. The devil does not seem any less vigorous now than he was before; indeed, advancing human technology seems to give him a positive advantage. That God should slay his own Son to satisfy his just vengeance does not encourage one to approach the throne of grace. Jesus bearing the pain of our forgiveness is touching, but not always relevant if we ignore it, while his exalting of our nature seems to make our actions irrelevant. But I hope it is also clear that each of the views contains insight into our condition. For example, the satisfaction ‘theory’ in itself shows our reluctance to take seriously the parable of the Prodigal Son.
A problem these views have in common, perhaps, is that they are quite abstract. Undoubtedly we have a human nature, but it is not very tangible in itself. What is tangible is our collection of broken loves and fallen promises. Troops mopping up resistance after the decisive battle are just as vulnerable to individual bullets as they were before the victory. Knowing our forgiveness, we still sin. The question of what incarnation, death and resurrection have to do with us today still needs to be asked.
Part of an answer can be gained from looking at where we start. Most of us live more or less scattered lives in less or more satisfactory relations with other scattered livers. What do we miss? One vital thing is the realization of our state. I have described this state as one of need, of dissatisfaction, of incompleteness, of fear, frustration, boredom, loss, sorrow, whatever. The acknowledgement of this state I have called faith, though it so often looks like doubt. The second thing is the sense that the emptiness is not all there is, or all there might be. We still try to get on with each other, and regret the times when we do not. This sense is called hope. The last ingredient is a foundation to both, a still point against which we can rest whatever may happen. It may not surprise you if I call this love.
Imagine that you are the cook for a large group of people. They live in the middle of a desert and are very hungry. You are sorry for them and do your best to feed them. It involves spending most of the day gathering the small plants and roots that grow in the rocks, and the nights digging for water in which to soak them so they are soft enough to eat. There are just enough stringy weeds, but only just. You do your best, but it is still not what they need, let alone what they want. So relations are strained. You have come to resent their demands as much as they resent your failure to satisfy them. One night a mysterious stranger appears and puts in your hand a cardboard box full of cheese and pickle sandwiches. You are so famished you eat them all, and then the box. He comes the next night, and you wolf the lot. Now you can have sandwiches, you don’t want roots and plants, and you eat the box only to hide the evidence. And so you no longer find food for other people with the same zest; you are not hungry like they are. Some time later, now you are better fed, you spare a glance for the nocturnal stranger. He has changed recently: more haggard about the eyes, thin about the wrists. This will not do! You cannot have him starving to death, worn out with fetching food; no more sandwiches if he dies. You offer him a sandwich: ‘Why don’t you have one?’ He looks at you and answers, ‘Because they are for you.’ And then you understand. It is the same with our lack of love. We cannot love as we should, as others need. We do not love ourselves even. But this is exactly where we are made in the image and likeness of God, in our ability to relate to other persons; or, more precisely, in our inability not to interact. The blessing has become a curse, as our inner loss spreads. We do not have enough for ourselves, still less for others. But then, in the middle of the fallen world a man speaks words the like of which men and women were created to speak:
I am the bread of life. Anyone who comes to me will never be hungry; anyone who believes in me will never thirst … Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that you can eat it and not die. I am the living bread that has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.
John 6:35, 50–51
Jesus offers you love, for you, and for you to pass on. He gives what was lacking, the real food we long for from God and from each other. He stands in the
