Humanity
“We have insisted on going our own way without bothering with the will and ways of our Creator. Yet this attitude is the bedrock of human sinfulness. From the initial sin of Adam and Eve, humankind has declared its independence from its Creator. But this desire to be one’s own god has led humanity farther and farther away from the source of life and goodness. Indifference is a benign form of the rejection of God and everything that He represents. The hatred that underlies this uncaring attitude was revealed whenever God tried to win humans back to Him. When the Creator has tried to reveal His good for human persons, they have bristled with indignation. Accordingly, Paul said, “By the law comes knowledge of sin” (OSB Romans 3:20). The law commands, corrects, and holds humans accountable to the divine will. And so, it stirs up animosity. Man willfully subjects himself to corruption rather than acknowledge His dependence on and responsibility to His Creator.” (Fr. Basil)
“…when we can no longer make any offering of our lives to God for the life of the world, at that point precisely we are in danger of losing our humanity. This can be the berserker; it can be the heroin addict; it can be the cruel intellectual in his cold ivory tower; the moralizing uncompassionate preacher; it can be the selfish rich. All alike have left behind both priesthood and shame, and thus are seeing their own humanity slip away.” (Timothy G. Patitsas)
“…humans are not created perfect in the beginning. Humans have to choose their destiny – whether to be mere animals or to choose to be more godlike. Humans are created with the potential for perfection, but each person has to make the choices that moves towards or away from perfection. Adam and Eve are created neither mortal nor immortal – this is part of the destiny they must choose for themselves and humankind. Humans are the interface between the immortal and the mortal, between the physical and spiritual, the rational and irrational. Thus, from the beginning God intended there to be a synergy between humanity and divinity, but humans rejected this loving cooperation and chose to go at life on their own and to their own detriment.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“Christianity was born…because followers…experienced Him after His crucifixion and death as more powerfully alive than before, as sharing, indeed, the very life of God, a life that He in turn made available to them through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The resurrection of Jesus was not regarded as a simple continuation of His mortal body through resuscitation—a historical event—but as a new form of existence as the “life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45) who could touch and transform all other human bodies. It ended one world and began another: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:16; Gal 6:15). By virtue of His resurrection, then, Jesus is much more than a Jewish messiah; He is a new Adam (1 Cor. 15:45; Rom 5:12—21), the firstborn of a new humanity (Rom 8:29; Col 3:11).” (Luke Timothy Johnson)
“So if we once again ask ourselves the question, what is the essence of Christianity, then we must answer: it is the humanity of God, the joining of the finite and temporal human spirit with the eternal Divinity, it is the sanctification of the flesh, for from that moment when the Son of Man, the Human One, took on our joys and our sufferings, our love, our labors, from that moment, nature, the world, everything in which He was, in which He rejoiced, as a human being and as God-man, no longer is rejected, no longer is degraded but is raised up to a new level and is made holy…Christ didn’t come just to settle some cosmic score with death; He also came to show us, in His own flesh, what humanity was intended to be and what it will again become by His grace.” (Father Alexander Men, Father Michael Plekon, Sarah Clarkson)
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