Today You Will Be with Me in Paradise The Incarnation and the Intercession of the Saints

Rev. Dr. Nicholas Newman 

In the Ainoi of Orthros for the Sunday of Forgiveness (the day before the beginning of the Great Fast), one of the hymns describes Adam lamenting after the expulsion from Paradise: “I, who was once robed with the glory of immortality, now go about miserably as a mortal, wearing the rough hide of death.” In Paradise, Adam and Eve experienced an existence with no experience of sickness, no experience of sorrow, no experience of death. 

In falling for the deceit of the serpent and eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve replace God at the center of their existence with themselves, and so, they sever their connection to God. God is the source of life, and by cutting themselves off from Him, they are unable to maintain their own existence, they die. The fall, the turning away from God is the catalyst for sin, destruction, and death to enter into the world. Even worse, humanity cutting itself off from God not only brings death of the body, but brings death of the soul as well. Adam and Eve follow the serpent, they are no longer douloi tou Theou, servants of God, but have made themselves servants of Satan instead. Instead of becoming more and more like God, then, instead of participating in Theosis, instead, as ontological beings, we have participated more and more in the demonic powers, become more and more like them instead of like God.  

Humanity, then, was trapped in slavery to Satan, and this slavery extended into the afterlife as well. The noetic reality of this captivity to Satan is described as the captivity of the soul in Sheol, the underworld, ruled over by a demonic being, who is usually referred to in Orthodox hymnography as Hades.  

The reality of this captivity to Satan is seen in the way that the dead are spoken of in the Old Testament. God tells Adam in Genesis 3:19: “for dust you are, and to dust you will return.” The human body, apart from God’s sustaining presence, the human body is not immortal, and so returns to the elements from which it was made. Death is portrayed as a return to the earth: “When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish” (Psalm 145 [146]:4). Death brings an end to the human being. His plans, his hopes, his dreams, all of these things do not survive the grave. This is echoed in Ecclesiastes 9:5: “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.” Death seems like a complete dissolution, the dead know nothing themselves, and they are themselves forgotten. This imagery almost makes one think that there is no actual afterlife, that death results in the complete annihilation of a human being. In Isaiah 38:18, however, he discusses people who participate in nekyomanteia, a divination practice that poses questions to the dead: “And when they say to you, ‘Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,’ should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?” While the Prophet Isaiah certainly discourages the use of mediums and diviners who inquire of the dead, he does not say that this is because the dead are incapable of responding. As we see in I Samuel 28: 3-25, however, that the Prophet Isaiah does not prohibit the contacting of dead spirits because they don’t exist. In this passage, King Saul goes to a medium, who contacts the spirit of the dead Prophet Samuel, the spirit of the Prophet then speaks with King Saul, and explains to him why God has departed from him. 

This language of destruction and annihilation makes sense in the context of the captivity of humanity in Sheol. Having cut ourselves off from God, we are unable to fulfill our purpose, which is worship of God. So, we see in Psalm 113 (115): 17: “The dead shall not praise thee, O Lord, nor any that go down to Hades.” Psalm 6:5 says something similar: “For in death no man remembers thee: and who will give thee thanks in Hades?” Death is the end of human purpose, as there is no worship of God in the grave. Isaiah 38:18 echoes this as well: “For that are in the grave shall not praise thee, neither shall the dead bless thee, neither shall they that are in Hades hope for thy mercy.” Without the ability to worship, humanity is unable to become more like God, and so Theosis becomes beyond the reach of humanity.  

Despite this, we see in the Old Testament a foretaste that this state of being, cut off from God, is not going to be forever. Psalm 116:15 tells us that: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” If the saints, literally devout or righteous ones, are cut off from God forever in death, because as Isaiah says: “the living shall bless thee” (Isaiah 38:19), and the dead do not, then it would be almost a perverse thing for God to delight in their deaths, since they will be no longer able to continue in their relationship with Him. The righteous, although we find out from Christ in the Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus that the righteous are in Sheol, albeit a part of Sheol separate from the unrighteous called the Bosom of Abraham, are “in everlasting remembrance” (Psalm 112:6). This is not a reference to us remembering them, but rather that they are eternally in God’s remembrance, which brings eternal life. We see this reflected in what the Prophet Isaiah says: “For thou hast chosen my soul, that it should not perish” (Isaiah 38:17). Despite what he will say in just a couple of verses, Isaiah prophetically exclaims that the soul is not cut off from God, which is real death, but is chosen that it “should not perish,” that it will live eternally! There must, then, be an eventual restoration of the relationship between humans and God, through which we are once again able to approach God in worship after death, and become more like God through Theosis. We even see the effect of this restoration in the Old Testament. In 2 Kings 13:20-21, the bones of Elisha restore a man who is dead to life. The sanctity of this righteous man and the power given to him by God remains in his body even after death, the grave and its separation of the body from the soul is shown not to be an eternal state, but something that will come to an end in a restoration of our natures. 

What restores our nature is the Incarnation. God Himself takes on human nature, and in doing so restores it to its pristine state. Christ speaks differently about the dead than the Old Testament does: “‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living’” (Matthew 22:32) These men are very much dead, but Christ tells us that they, in fact, live. In the Incarnation, death loses its meaning: “Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). Christ is not saying that the soul and the body will no longer be separated, that physical death no longer occurs, this too will be accomplished, but in the general resurrection at the Second Coming. Physical death still occurs, but those whose bodies are in the graves are no longer separated from God. We see this expressed iconographically in the Icon of the Resurrection. Christ descends to Sheol, to the underworld, where He destroys that demon who holds the souls of the dead captive. Christ, in the Icon drags our forefather Adam and foremother Eve out of their tombs. He is not raising them from the dead by reuniting their souls and bodies, yet, but is restoring their natures and taking them out of Sheol.  

Humanity was unable to do this itself, we were unable to restore our nature and break free from the grasp of death, and unable to, eventually, effect our own Resurrection. The restoration of our human nature allows us to once again become partakers in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), our personal nature, however, still needs to be brought into alignment with God’s Will, so that we do not fall again. Christ speaks of this in John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” In order to participate in Christ’s restoration of our nature, we must “believe.” This is not an academic belief, however, πίστις can be better understood as “faithfulness” rather than as an academic “belief.” When Christ says “he who believes in Me” is better rendered as “he who is faithful to me.” In living faithfully to Christ, that is by participating in the mystical life of the Church, which is His Body, we will also participate in His healing of our nature, which allows us to become like the angels (Mark 12:25). Those who do not live faithfully, remain dead in their sins (Ephesians 2:1-5). 

The reality of our renewed nature is seen in Revelation:  

“After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying. ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ ... ‘These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them’” (Revelation 7:9-15).  

No longer trapped by death, those who have remained faithful to Christ are united with Him even after the separation of their soul and body, what we colloquially refer to as death. This change of state seems to have little effect on them, however. In life, they worship Christ, after “death” they continue with this uninterrupted. In this passage, we see that Christ is in the midst of this assembly of the saints. This is the same promise He makes to us: “when two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). In the Eucharistic assembly of the Church, when we are gathered together, we are united in Christ to one another, we are one Body, and whether we are alive or dead is irrelevant. They become that great cloud of witnesses, which Paul describes in Hebrews 12:1.  

Our relationship with the Saints is predicated on this unity in Christ, within His Body. In their podcast The Lord of Spirits, Fr. Stephen DeYoung and Fr. Andrew Damick discussed that the colloquial “praying to” a Saint is not a great way of describing what is actually occurring. In James 5:16, we are told to: “confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” If we ask someone to pray for us, we would not think of this as praying to them, but rather joining together in prayer. The intercession of the Saints is the continuation of this type of relationship into eternity. We ask this “righteous man” to join us in our prayer, and so worship together. 

The intercession of the Saints is a part of the eternal worship before the throne of Christ, one that we participate in through our meeting in assembly, where Christ is present. Our relationship with the Saints is predicated on this Eucharistic assembly, flowing as it does into every part of our lives. When we pray before an icon of the Saint in our homes, it is because the worship of the assembly flows into our worship in the home. The Saints are alive in Christ, as alive as we are, and join with us in an eternal worship of Christ our God.