The following post was written by Sergio Garibay, you can read his blog TheosisPlus – Ancient Christianity Explored from its Cosmology or follow on Twitter.
Unveiling the Cosmic Priesthood:
Humans as Divine Agents in Biblical Theology
Exploring Humanity’s Roles Intermediaries between Heaven and Earth towards the New Jerusalem
“It was as if I heard your voice from on high (Jer. 21:15), saying ‘I am the food of grown adults; grow and you will eat me. Nor will you change me within yourself, as you change the food of your flesh, but you will be changed within me.’
And I acknowledged that according to his iniquity do you teach a man, and you have made my soul to waste away like a cobweb (Ps. 39.12).” – St Augustine, Confessions-Book VII
Humanity is made for more than just heaven… Such must be the main narrative in our reading of scripture from Genesis to Revelation. From Adam appearing as the first patriarch and priest, to the law aiding to restore what was lost, all the way to Christ and the city of God, the New Jerusalem descending to Earth. Unfortunately for my Mormon friends, I do not think God would pick Missouri. Plus, I dare to say, the New Jerusalem already has foundations in Rome, Kyiv, Constantinople, Baghdad and, of course, Jerusalem… and of course, this includes Missouri. This is because the New Jerusalem is not a city like what we have built, but the restoration of the human society to our unfallen logoi. Since the beginning, God has accounted for the fall of humanity and our restoration into the Heavenly Host (Divine Council), thus our assignment of the law and grace is founded into our role as anointed priests, thus our name, we are christos after Him the Christ.
Christ
Christos, Messiah, Christ… we have encountered this word often in our reading of scripture to where we might forget to reflect on the meaning of the deeper sense. Christ is the Greek term for the Messiah. It conveys a Jewish and Near Eastern sense of more than a title. It is not the last name of Jesus as I used to think growing up. Although, it connects Jesus with his lineage in both the spiritual and biological sense, something that I will briefly cover. The term Messiah means “the anointed one”. It draws from the Near Eastern world and its theological richness. We must then understand Christ as the Logos, the highest being of the world of perfect and unfallen ideas before we can understand our role as Christians (little Christ in this sense).
In the near eastern world, anointment is associated with four main practices: ritual, medical, burial, and symbolic. We can see them come into play in the gospels and thus influence the reason Christians are anointed as the fullness of their reception into the Church. The first of these is the ritual. Ritual anointment showed the ritual act of consecration and purification by which the gods gave on you with a divine blessing. The kings, for example, were anointed as a sign that the gods had chosen them to rule and thus give them with divine gifts such as wisdom, strength. Thus, the legends of ancient times were heroes chosen by the gods by which they have been given divine favors and brought forward change to a corrupted world, an immediate form of salvation, into the political and societal necessities of the era. The second of these practices is the medical sense. Oils and ointments were medical since they contain medical qualities in various degrees. Perhaps this is the easiest to understand since, as a society, we still involve their use to an extent for certain illnesses. These forms of anointments produced physical healing and, thus, were important across ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia (and across the world). The third sense is the burial one, from ancient Egyptian practices of mummification to near eastern rituals of funerary practices. Not only did anointing the bodies aid in managing the smell but also signified a spiritual purification. It prepared the soul to enter the afterlife clean of all corruption. The last sense connects these previous senses into one final stage, the symbolical peak of reality. For ancient humans, heaven and earth are not separated by a veil but exist within their same reality. Thus, the anointing of an individual marked their legendary beginning as a hero. They received both the divine blessings of the gods, and the healing properties of the bodies, but also the healing and thus transforming properties of the divine anointment affected the soul. Anointment bridged the separation of the material and the spiritual worlds. It revealed that which was hidden and elevated our hero to a divine role within the world. Anointment was therefore a moment of metamorphosis by which a common mortal got divine properties; one dares to say a moment of demigodhood.
All these characteristics are also reflected in the Old Testament in which our heroes (David, for example) are anointed. There are multiple little christs in the narrative of antiquity which Christian thinkers such as Origen, St Maximus the Confessors, and others see as foreshadowing the peak of human history in Christ.
“Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them, so that they may serve me as priests. Take one young bull and two rams without blemish and unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers spread with oil. You shall make them of choice wheat flour… You shall take the anointing oil, and pour it on his head and anoint him. Then you shall bring his sons and put tunics on them” Exodus 29:1-2,7-8
The anointing of the priesthood symbolizes the God of Israel giving divine gifts to Aaron and his sons. In it, the priests are made as bridges between heaven and earth. They are crowned as priests as new מָשִׁיחַ (messiahs). To be a priest is to be a messiah, a christos. In the same sense, the altar of the sacrifice is set apart as the place in which the messiahs at the ritual reality of which heaven and earth are unified and by which mortals are united to the Divine Realm (e.g., Leviticus 8:10-12). Throughout the Mishnah (Jewish oral law) as well, we encounter the practice of anointing the ill as part of caring for them (Shabbat 14:4) in which the medical necessity allows it during the Sabbath. The same appears in the practice of burial ritualism in Judaism in which the washing of the body (a final mikvah for the body and the soul) is done along with the anointing of it (Katan 3:6). These practices are ten transfigured into the New Testament in which the Jewish movement of followers of Jesus reflect Jesus as the New Messiah that is the anointed one, is anointed by perfume and ultimately anointed upon his death. In Hebrews 1:9, Paul drives the narrative that Jesus is the anointed one by God, the New David which draws a parallel from Psalm 45:7 (this is a reference also to the Little Adonai of the Qumran, something which I won’t talk about in this essay). Jesus thus as an anointed (Christ) priest then fulfills his ministry by anointing the sick (Mark 6:13), and thus, Jesus is Himself the bridge between Earth and Heaven (Luke 4:18) which He unites upon his death and resurrection as a pneumatic and physical wedding of two worlds united in one flesh: His.
It is then that Jesus is the Christ. The High priest among us, the new Melchizedek, offers the sacrifice of bread and wine. The High Priest is the New King of Israel, thus the New David. He is King-Priest in this sense, the Messiah of messiahs, the “most anointed one”. I do not mean the most anointed one as if he was a well-fried French fry, but, as he fulfills the role of King and Priest of not just Israel but all nations. He is the Divine Name (Logos) of the Father incarnated and manifested in our material world as fully human and fully divine, the second person of the mystery of the Godhead. He is the fulfillment of the heroes of the old as a hero of the new.
Thus, this then drives us toward our anointment. We are messiahs too.
The Little Christos
“But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge. As for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and so you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in him.”
1 John 2:20,27.
Christianity is referred to as the religion of the way in Acts 9:2. This draws from the Jewish binary parallel of the two paths that can be traced to other Jewish second temple eschatological writings like the Testament of Asher, and which later appears again in the Didache. These are the two ways, the two paths, the path of life: light and the path of death: darkness. We are, therefore, beings united with Jesus and are branched into Him and thus anointed as kings, priests, and prophets. By such anointment, we become participants of the divine gifts which share us like God. The sons of man are elevated into the status of sons of God and we, therefore, as part of the New Jerusalem, become little messiahs. This is the path of life by which we are transformed. But the transformation is alone within us. It continues to externalize us and affect others. Like the heroes of old, the saints and martyrs of new are called to affect the society and culture around them to draw all men and all existence into Christ. It is by us becoming new bridges between the hidden realm and our realm that we continue to draw ever closer to the eternal (in our sense of temporal parameters) movement of Earth towards the New Jerusalem.
The Genesis of Our Cosmic Priesthood: Adam
The priesthood of humanity draws once again its narrative from the Near Eastern mythological bases. We have gathered throughout comparative studies the reconstruction theories which appear to be the most correct. In them, we see the combination of shamanic priestly figures combined with ancestor worship highlighted in ritualistic and communal worship, such as the Midianites, who appear to be the earliest Yahweh worshippers that we can trace. These worships drive us to see that spring, harvest, and other gathering and agricultural key dates are transformed into religious ritualistic movements with some of them continuing into the second temple and after (Shavuot for example also known as Pentecost among Greek-speaking Jews).
These holidays manifest in the priesthood of humanity and the tangential connection with ancestor worship. This important tangent has continued to exist and has been preserved into what Christians and Jews of today will call “scripture”. This is clear at the beginning of the book of Genesis.
“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and the cattle, and all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God, he created them; male and female, he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
Genesis 1:26-28
These verses connect to the humans being made into the Divine Council of Israel. Mankind is inserted into this pantheon of Divine Beings and given the key to administering the earth primarily in the physical sense. Thus, foreshadows the divine council bases which appear in 1 Kings 22:19-22, Isaiah 6, and Job 1 and 2 in which God manifests that He is bestowing power to rule to a group of individuals or one individual. In this, the High God, the uncreated One is bestowing the power to humankind. This story gets meditated also into the midrash in Gen. Rab 8:4. God, therefore, bestows humankind with the power to rule over all of nature and anointed us by creating us divine with the first commandment: to multiply. This multiplication furthers the priesthood into all the descendants of humankind. Genesis 1 proceeds from the priestly sources which compiled the Torah during the time in which it was written down. Genesis 2, from the J-Yahwist source, also highlights this. Humankind is divine and created in a divine matter in which is given a priesthood.
The Law and Aaron
In both Jewish legends, which are formed into the later rabbinical stage of the second temple and the Hebrew Bible itself. The role of the law is given a central role. First, the law is understood as a means of justice, order, and guidance for the people of Israel. In the sense of the near eastern people, it developed likely from the Code of Hammurabi. It appears to include a civil, legal, and religious context in which it shaped Israel to become the exemplary kingdom by which the High God will be revealed. Ultimately, by which the King of the Jews will subject all nations to Him (Paul identifies this in Philippians 2 as well). The Old Testament takes shape in the law’s understanding as a method of restoring the relationships and wrongdoings caused by the cosmological battle between order and chaos. Something which appears in Genesis 1 in which, following Jewish-Enochian theology, God defeats the beasts of chaos and brings order to create the world. In this same sense, the law prescribes restorative and compensative requirements to the victim(s) affected by one’s wrongdoing(s). The law’s aim is not just to restore and compensate for what was lost, but to restore the reconciliation and seek forgiveness. Thus, it occurs in the dynamic idea of centering the restoration of humanity to a state of righteousness.
Ultimately, the main purpose of the law is a spiritual dimension. It seeks to provide the practices for the reconciliation of the world with God into which God will manifest. The Jewish tradition of such narrative is taken into key place in the books of the Zohar, in which the law is reflected as God’s commandments by which He will be able to penetrate this realm slowly and continuously and become manifested, eventually. The law is then in both the physical and spiritual relationship highlighted by the intents of justice, peace, and wholeness of the whole community. A wholeness of community is accomplished by the guidance of the spiritual and civil authorities, which act as one body. Thus, Aaron takes a center play in this world of restoration.
Both in Exodus 29:30 and Leviticus 9, then we encounter a key role of the law in the divine sense which is transferred to the priesthood. The Urim and the Tummim. While not a lot is known about these breastplates. We can see that they were the opposite decision-making by which the priests communicated with God. One acted curse and the other was innocent. In our modern sense, imagine a judge with plates that let him communicate with God to decide if someone was guilty or not guilty. In these, the priests could see God’s will regarding military, land, or juridical decisions (Numbers 27:21, 1 Samuel 14:37-42). The male priest is given a central role of restoring and communicating with God. He acts as the bridge between the divine and the earth. The law is therefore only able to take full power and exist in the priesthood’s sense. Without one, it becomes an imperfect reality which fades into forgotten memories.
Anointed Into Christ
It is then that we arrive at the final realization of our reality. Our anointment is which draws the inner divine image hidden without ourselves out and reflects us into our roles as divine beings of God’s councils. We are then made as priests to serve the Lord (Rev. 5:10) by which our acts, our works, participate in the divine restoration of the fallen earth towards the New Creation.
“In the Qumran documents, raz often occurs in connection with God’s secret counsels and plans. here, raz often means “divine mysteries having a cosmological emphasis about the creation of the world and the luminaries.”
Mathai Kadavil, The World as a Sacrament
The hidden cosmological secrets or sacraments of God are called to transform mankind into this aspect of obtaining the divine natures (2 Peters 1:4) by which we can even become judges of angels (1 Cor. 6:3). Humanity is called to take a central role into God’s council and to become inspired into the hypostatic nature of Christ by which our fallen nature is transformed into one of the divine beings which resembles the angels (Mark 12:25). Humanity is then re-elevated to act into the divine council by which our actions and prayers transform the world and participate into the relationship of the Godhead (Rev. 5:8). The human-self and community are not just called to be church-goers in this sense, by the verse sense of our anointment in which the divine nature is revealed at our chrismation, we become little messiahs. The role of mankind is then taken into a divine commandment in which clothed in animal skins (as St Gregory of Nyssa accounts is the clothing in which we take upon eating the fruits), we are highlighted into the very same nature of the Son.
The Apocalypses of Our Cosmic Priesthood: Jesus and the Church
“God created the world for the sake of the Church… The world of humans by its creation is already designed for deification, in the Incarnation and Pentecost… In short, in the Church, the two aspects of Wisdom mutually permeate one another and are entirely inseparably and unconfused.”
-Fr. Sergei Bulgakov, Sophia the Wisdom of God
Our priesthood is therefore elevated into the cosmological narrative of the Church. It does not serve apart from it but is united with it. The outwardly characteristic of the Church is one of many broken pieces and since the Reformation the character of which this piece is the truest has become the main highlight of many theological endeavors, as well as unfortunately persecutions and deaths. While the external character of the canonical boundaries of the Church is not the point of the question in this essay, the ontological is part of the reflection. The ontology of the church is the mystical relationship in which we are drawn into the Heavenly Host (the communion of the Saints). Grace is the result of the fulfillment of the law by Christ, in this case like the law the main ontological purpose and central aspect of the restorative physical and spiritual purposes remain not weakened but strengthened. The Church as the deposit of the Heavenly Host manifests the restorative purpose and divine order of the mysteries of God.
In it, our priesthood and divine image are taken root in Christ’s divine nature. The divine name which is united into Christ via the hypostasis unites with us in the third hypostatic relationship. In the Church we are called to be guardians of nature, to promote charity, and ultimately to become restored into the resurrection.
The Apocalyptic nature of our priesthood takes place in the Parousia. The Parousia as the New Pentecost takes place in the restoration of the world. The purpose of God creating the church and the plan of creating the church before creation comes to be is to narrate the aspect of the divine ascend into which the human is saved from the world, but also in which the salvation of the world occurs. From the beginning of Genesis in which the narrative of the chaos beasts is defeated by God, to the defeat of death by God in the person of Jesus. The fullness of our priesthood is then taken in the destruction of the fallen state and the renewal of the earthly-divine world by God through the divine-human aspect. Earth and heaven are made one, Revelation 21 serves as a parallel of Isaiah 66. God restores the world and dwells among humankind no longer separated by a veil, but in a tent mishkah among us. The heavenly city is the perfect city that men tried and has tried in our times to recreate through buildings, nations, and laws, but since they are fallen in nature continue to fall and fail eventually. But the New Jerusalem, through our perfected worship in Christ, our participation in nature. While in Ezekiel 40-42, the perfect temple is revealed, in Revelation 21, John reveals to us the perfect city. The city becomes the temple, all of creation, and the cosmos becomes permeated dwelling in the presence of God. The dream of the Jews in the narrative of Enoch 90:28-29 and Jubilees 1:27:28 is achieved here. Thus, the creation of the new world, of the cosmos, of the New Jerusalem is only possible in which God has willed with the angels: the central participation of humankind as priests of the cosmos in which our prayers and our activities have an impact in heaven and on earth.
The sons of man will become the sons of God.
