Creation always wanted Jesus

Thomas (ST II-II, 2, 7) argues that every saved person, including Adam, had explicit knowledge of the incarnation of Christ: “the object of faith includes, properly and directly, that thing through which man obtains beatitude. Now the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion is the way by which men obtain beatitude . . . . Therefore belief of some kind in the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation was necessary at all times and for all persons.”

Yet the content and shape of the belief in the Incarnation differed according to differences of times and persons.” Prior to his sin, Adam “believed explicitly in Christ’s Incarnation,” but only in a specific respect: “in so far as it was intended for the consummation of glory, but not as it was intended to deliver man from sin by the Passion and Resurrection.” For Thomas, then, not only was Adam destined to be consummated with a glory that he did not yet possess, but this hope for glory required “Christ’s Incarnation.”

How could Adam have known this? Thomas points to Paul’s quotation from Genesis 2:24 in Ephesians 5:32, and particularly to Paul’s comment that “this is a great sacramentum . . . in Christ and the church.” Thomas comments, “it is incredible that the first man was ignorant about this sacrament.”

via Peter J. Leithart » Blog Archive » Adam’s sacrament.

COMMENT:

I don’t know what Adam knew. But I do think there was a creational design that aimed toward the incarnation quite apart from sin.

For one thing, Paul writes in Romans 5.14 of “Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.” He speaks of Adam’s sin, but in context I don’t see how Adam could have failed to be a type if he had triumphed over the temptation.

But there is a much more explicit statement in Ephesians 1. The background to it is in Genesis 1 and the second day of creation:

6 Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. 8 God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

What is missing from the second day, uniquely, is God seeing that what he had made was good. He doesn’t call the “expanse” good. What could this lack of goodness mean? We know from Genesis 2 that when God said something about Adam was “not good” it meant he was incomplete. God made Eve to complete Adam. But he could have made Adam and Eve together. Instead, he made Adam alone to discover his need and receive provision.

So there seems to be a similar need embedded in the division between heaven and earth. Creation had a need for Heaven and Earth to come together.

And Jesus did this, as Paul writes to the Ephesians and others:

In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.

I’m surprised Thomas didn’t mention this because the word “mystery” sacramentum is used in the passage. Jesus not only came to save creation from sin, he came to complete creation in glory by uniting it together with the heavens.

 

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