was, I am” (John 8:58). Jesus of Nazareth would not likely have talked that way,
but if these are the words of the Eternal Christ, then “I am the way, the truth,
and the life” is a very fair statement that should neither offend nor threaten
anyone. After all, Jesus is not talking about joining or excluding any group;
rather, he is describing the “Way” by which all humans and all religions must
allow matter and Spirit to operate as one.
Once we see that the Eternal Christ is the one talking in these passages,
Jesus’s words about the nature of God—and those created in God’s image—seem
full of deep hope and a broad vision for all of creation. History is not aimless,
not a mere product of random movement, or a race toward an apocalyptic end.
This is good and universal truth, and does not depend on any group owning an
exclusive “divine revelation.” How different from the clannish form religion
often takes—or the anemic notion of individual salvation for a very few on one
minor planet in a still-expanding universe, with the plotline revolving around a
single sin committed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers!
The leap of faith that orthodox Christians made from the earliest period was
the belief that this eternal Christ presence truly was speaking through the
person of Jesus. Divinity and humanity must somehow be able to speak as one,
for if the union of God and humankind is “true” in Jesus, there is hope that it
might be true in all of us too. That is the big takeaway from having Jesus also
speak as the Eternal Christ. He is indeed “the pioneer and perfector of our
faith,” as Hebrews puts it (12:2), modeling the human journey rather perfectly.
To summarize, because I know this is such a huge shift in perspective for
most of us:
The full Christian story is saying that Jesus died, and Christ “arose”—yes, still
as Jesus, but now also as the Corporate Personality who includes and reveals all
of creation in its full purpose and goal. Or, as the “Father of Orthodoxy,” St.
Athanasius (296–373), wrote when the church had a more social, historical, and
revolutionary sense of itself: “God was consistent in working through one man
to reveal himself everywhere, as well as through the other parts of His creation,
so that nothing was left devoid of his Divinity and his self-knowledge...so that
‘the whole universe was filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters fill
the sea.’ ” *2 This whole book could be considered nothing more than a footnote
to these words of Athanasius!
The Eastern church has a sacred word for this process, which we in the West
call “incarnation” or “salvation.” They call it “divinization” (theosis). If that
sounds provocative, know that they are only building on 2 Peter 1:4, where the