NOTES for Co2 5:1-10

The Christian commentators interpreted Paul's words concerning the earthly tent differently. For some it was associated with earthly life in general, with this earthly house, which sooner or later man will have to leave, others saw in this tent the not transformed body, which is called to change, and that will come a new body transformed by the breath of God. In a certain sense, probably both are just.

And it is necessary to pay all the same attention on the fact that the Greek word translated usually into English as "hut" or "tent", in the Greek translations of the books of the Old Testament is of the same root as the word "tabernacle", indicating this sacred hut, which for the Jews during decades was the only sanctuary. This sense does not also disappear in the texts of the New Testament: John for example says that the Word "lives among us in the tent" (or in "the tabernacle"; the King James Version translation proposes in this case "dwelt among us").

In such a context and Paul's words acquire a special meaning. It already begins to be not only about the earthly life or the not transformed body, but, maybe, first of all the Christians, as living sanctuaries, probably, approximately in the same sense, in which in another message Paul compare the Christians to the Temple, where dwells the breath of God.

Well then it turns out that the entire life of the Christian, current and future is defined by the measure of his participation in the life of the Kingdom. Actually, it is already not about two different lives, but about one, which, beginning in the not transformed world in the not transformed body, goes on later in the world transformed in forms corresponding to this transformed world. Probably, it can’t be otherwise in the Kingdom: because the Kingdom for the Christian is not the future, but the present; and for the rest it is not about the essence, but only the forms.

As the world changes, transforming and becoming more and more a part of the Kingdom, is also transformed, becoming more and more a part of the Kingdom, the life of each of its inhabitants. The essence remains besides invariable: no matter what was the form, a Christian always lives the life of the Kingdom, inhales his breath, and witnesses of it to the world. And the form and the timing of changes are defined by God.

At the end of today's reading there are words saying that the love of Christ embraces us. The apostle explains why this happens, and what is required of us in order to be embraced by Christ's love. His thought is expressed in our Russian Synodal translation with less than full clarity. It says here: "the love of Christ embraces us, reasoning thus: if One died for all..." In the original, however, the apostle Paul writes: the love of Christ holds us, κρίναντας τούτο, having understood that One died for all. The Slavonic text at this point says: "we who have judged this," and it uses a simple past form, not the present tense used in the Synodal translation. Blessed Jerome of Stridon, translating this text into Latin, emphasizes this aspect even more: in the Vulgate these words read, "nos aestimantes hoc..." This verb means "to evaluate," like the English word "to estimate" derived from it.

So this is what is being said: the love of Christ embraces us and fills our whole life when we estimate the greatness of His sacrifice, when we understand and realize that in Him all of us truly died. More than that, it is important to realize this as an accomplished fact. Not to speculate, searching for meaning in a religious phenomenon, but to judge, to understand that this has already happened and, as a historical fact, has direct relevance to us. Only in this way can one receive this love, without which life loses its support.

In its view of history, humanity has still not invented anything beyond the alternative of progressivism or catastrophism. In exactly the same way, in its view of the human being, we stand before a choice between philanthropy and misanthropy. It is not hard to be convinced that the view of history naturally correlates with the view of the human being: a misanthrope will hardly believe in progress leading to universal happiness and prosperity, while one who believes that the human being is originally good will almost certainly also believe that in the life of humanity there are no insoluble problems and that universal happiness is attainable, at least in principle.

The biblical view of history, however, is antinomic: on the one hand, the entire history of the Christian era is nothing other than the history of the advancing and ever more fully revealing Kingdom, the projection of which into the untransformed world is the history of Christian righteousness, or, as it is usually called, Christian holiness; on the other hand, the whole history of the "Christian" world is the history of that evil in which, according to the word of the Gospel, the world lies, and which manifests itself in "Christian" history. The biblical view of the human being is just as antinomic: on the one hand, the path of righteousness was open to the human being in every age, and God gave His people the Torah as a guide on this path; on the other hand, as God says through the author of the Prologue of Genesis, "every intention of the human heart is evil from his youth", and nothing can be done about this before the full transformation of human nature. Thus it turns out that the coming of the Kingdom, neither in the life of an individual person nor in the history of humanity, resembles in the least that progress of which philanthropists of all times and peoples dreamed, being sure that gradual improvements both of technology and of morals would finally bring humanity into a golden age.

On the contrary, the coming of the Kingdom presupposes the polarization of the mutually opposing forces of the Kingdom and the forces of that evil in which the world lies. This is so both in the history of humanity and in the life of an individual person. And the more such a person is rooted in the life of the Kingdom, the more noticeably that evil connected with his fallen nature manifests itself in his life, both inner and outer. As in humanity in the course of world history, it does not, of course, appear anew from nowhere and does not even increase in size; it simply becomes more noticeable, just as its opposition becomes more noticeable.

But this opposition is pushed all the more toward the "external", to the periphery of life, the more the seeker of the Kingdom is rooted in its life. Then less and less periphery remains; it gradually disappears, while there is more and more of the inner, that in which the life of the Kingdom manifests itself. Only this process cannot be completed in an untransformed world wounded by evil. It is completed in the Kingdom, and the one who does not see the Kingdom does not see its completion either. A completion that coincides with the triumph of the Kingdom and the full transformation of creation.