creator: taking dust from the earth which I now am and mixing in his power,
he now,finally, fashions a true, living, human being,‘the glory of God’.
What is brought to pass in Christ is now achieved in those who follow him,
those who now, in him,‘use’death to the ultimate point of becoming clay in
his hands—most immediately and visibly, the martyrs.^17 In all these ways, the
stated intention of God in thefirst chapter of Genesis—to make a human
being—is completed. The passage from thefirst creation account to the
second—when God takes our dust from the earth—traces our passage from
the givenness of our existence to our creation by God through death, that is,
to birth into being a living human being, as exemplified by Ignatius’martyr-
dom. Through death, becoming earth in the ground, we are brought to the
second creation account, where God takes the earth and fashions it into an
anthrōpos, a living human being, the glory of God.
LEARNING‘The human being is earth that suffers,’according to Barnabas. But for this
suffering to aid our transformation into humanity requires the other thread of
learning we mentioned earlier, and learning in a very specific way: we need to
learn to see everything as in the hands of God, so as not to be simply blind
irrational animals, but rather creatures who are able to give theirfiat, their‘let
it be’. In this way we rise above ourselves and our immediate surroundings, to
have a larger, broader, and higher perspective regarding what life is, and what
it is to be human.
Learning is needed to make suffering—the common fate of males and
females—into the creative process by which we become human. A very clear
statement of this is given by Gregory of Nazianzus, recognized by the early
church alongside the evangelist John as another‘theologian’:
I take it as admitted by men of sense, that thefirst of our advantages is education
[παίδευσις]; and not only this our more noble form of it, which disregards
rhetorical ornaments and glory, and holds to salvation, and beauty in the objects
of our contemplation; but even that external culture which many Christians ill-
judgingly abhor, as treacherous and dangerous, and keeping us afar from God.
For we ought not to neglect the heavens, and earth, and air, and all such things,
because some have wrongly seized upon them, and honour God’s works instead
of God; but instead [we ought] to reap what advantage we can from them for our
life and enjoyment, while avoiding their dangers; not raising creation, as foolish
men do, in revolt against the Creator, but from the works of nature apprehending
the Worker, and, as the divine apostle says, bringing into captivity every thought(^17) On the‘use’of death, see esp. Maximus the Confessor,Questions to Thalassius61.
26 John Behr