He is God, He is All Things

God Glorifies Himself in the Human: A Christological Anthology

Another reading for the anthology, this time the preface to Melito of Sardis’ On Pascha (if you’re not yet familiar with this text, watch Fr John Behr’s superb introductory lecture):

1) The Scripture of the exodus of the Hebrews has been read,
and the words of the mystery have been declared; 
how the sheep was sacrificed,
and how the people was saved,
and how Pharaoh was flogged by the mystery.

2) Therefore, well-beloved, understand,
how the mystery of the Pascha
is both new and old,
eternal and provisional,
perishable and imperishable,
mortal and immortal.

3) It is old with respect to the law,
new with respect to the word.
Provisional with respect to the type,
yet everlasting through grace.
It is perishable because of the slaughter of the sheep,
imperishable because of the life of the Lord.
It is mortal because of the burial in the ground,
immortal because of the resurrection from the dead.

4) For the law is old,
but the word is new.
The type is provisional,
but grace is everlasting.
The sheep is perishable,
but the Lord,
not broken as a lamb but raised up as God,
is imperishable.
For though led to the slaughter like a sheep,
he was no sheep.
Though speechless as a lamb,
neither yet was he a lamb.
For there was once a type, but now the reality has appeared.

5) For instead of the lamb there was a son,
and instead of the sheep a man;
in the man was Christ encompassing all things.

6) So the slaughter of the sheep,
and the sacrificial procession of the blood,
and the writing of the law encompass Christ,
on whose account everything in the previous law took place,
though better in the new dispensation.

7) For the law was a word,
and the old was new,
going out from Sion and Jerusalem,
and the commandment was grace,
and the type was a reality,
and the lamb was a son,
and the sheep was a man,
and the man was God.

8) For he was born a son,
and led as a lamb,
and slaughtered as a sheep,
and buried as a man,
and rose from the dead as God,
being God by his nature and a man.

9) He is all things.
He is law, in that he judges.
He is word, in that he teaches.
He is grace, in that he saves.
He is father, in that he begets.
He is son, in that he is begotten.
He is sheep, in that he suffers.
He is human, in that he is buried.
He is God, in that he is raised up.

10) This is Jesus the Christ,
to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

A few quick reflections and suggestions for teaching:

1. This passage, as the whole of the work, needs to be heard, not just read. It was made for performance, and even in translation it sings. Try it!

2. Every claim Melito makes is rooted in Old Testament passages. (He does not quote from the New Testament.) It would be worth trying to identify as many as you can.

3. In what sense is Jesus, the only begotten, a “father”? Whom does he beget and how?

4. Rowan Williams, speaking of the letters of Paul, observes that “no existing conceptual framework in the ancient world could make coherent sense of all the claims made about Jesus by his disciples and their followers—in particular their claims about his death, resurrection, and ascension.” Now, notice just how incredible and even outright unthinkable Melito’s claims really are. The Paschal mystery—the work of Christ, the effect he had on things—is eternal and undying, renewing all things, and at the same time also provisional and passing away. Christ is both God and all things that are not God. And yet, as the defining reality, he both is and is not one with the types that reveal him. We should ask ourselves how such claims came to be made, and what making sense of them requires of us. Answering those questions will take us deep into what is best about Christology.