Adam

Made in the image of God

Adam is the first-formed man, the father of all mankind, and the prototype of humanity,. Created by God from the dust of the earth on the sixth day, Adam received the breath of life, becoming a living soul destined to know God and exercise dominion over creation.

The creation of Adam is understood not as the production of a static, finished being, but rather as the initiation of a dynamic process of becoming.

The *image* Adam (and we) are made in, or tselem in Hebrew, refers to the ontological and structural properties of human nature that reflect the Divine, such as rationality, Free Will, creativity, and the capacity for dominion.

This image serves as a representation, much like a statue represents a king. The likeness, or dmûwth, signifies the potential for spiritual maturity, sanctity, and virtue that Adam was called to achieve through the exercise of Free Will in cooperation with divine grace.

While Adam possessed the image by virtue of his creation, the likeness was an immature state intended for development. Adam was created with a specific vocation: to attain deification, or Theosis, and to bring the visible world into union with God through spiritual and moral perfection.

He was placed in Paradise - the Garden of Eden - to undergo a spiritual education, functioning as a priest of creation tasked with mediating between the sensible and intelligible worlds.

The Universal Mediator

The cosmological framework articulated by Saint Maximus the Confessor positions Adam as a microcosm, a laboratory in which all of creation is concentrated. As a being composed of both body and soul, Adam partakes of both the material and spiritual realms, possessing the natural capacity to unite disparate elements of the universe.

This mediating role required Adam to transcend five specific cosmic divisions: male and female, paradise and the inhabited world, heaven and earth, the sensible and the intelligible, and finally, the created and the uncreated,.

Adam was tasked with unifying these polarities through love and obedience. By overcoming the division of the sexes through a life free of passion, he was to reveal the common principle of human nature. By living a holy life, he was to transform the entire earth into a paradise.

Ultimately, the human person was designed to unite created nature with the uncreated God, allowing the whole of creation to be interpenetrated by divine grace. This high destiny indicates that Adam was created for a life superior even to that of the angels.

The Ancestral Transgression

The Fall of Adam is viewed not merely as a legal infraction but as a failure of this cosmic vocation. Adam and Eve attempted to grasp the knowledge of good and evil prematurely, before acquiring the spiritual maturity necessary to handle such knowledge.

This act constituted a rejection of the divinely appointed fast intended for their growth and a turning away from the Creator toward the creature.

In the Eastern Christian understanding, the consequence of Adam’s sin is termed ancestral sin rather than original sin. This distinction emphasises that humanity inherits the consequences of the fall, chiefly death, corruption, and a diseased nature, but not the personal guilt of Adam’s transgression.

The image of God in man was tarnished and distorted by this event, but it was never obliterated; the capacity for communion with God remained.

Following the expulsion from Paradise, Adam and Eve were clothed in garments of skin. Patristic interpretation, particularly that of Saint Gregory of Nyssa, identifies these garments not merely as physical clothing but as the addition of biological mortality and the irrational animal nature to the human condition.

These garments signify the transition from a state of incorruption to a state subject to death, sexual reproduction, and the struggle for survival. However, this imposition of mortality is viewed simultaneously as a punishment and a merciful remedy.

Death prevents sin from becoming immortal, and the dissolution of the body allows the divine Potter to eventually refashion the vessel of human nature free from the corruption of evil.

Adam and the Christological Archetype

The relationship between Adam and Christ is central to understanding the theological significance of the first man.

While chronologically Adam precedes Christ, theologically Christ is the archetype for Adam. Adam was created in the image of the Incarnate Word; the incarnation was not merely a reaction to the fall but the pre-eternal plan of God to unite created and uncreated natures.

Saint Paul identifies Christ as the Last Adam or the Second Adam,. Where the first Adam failed through disobedience, the Second Adam succeeded through perfect obedience. Christ recapitulated the history of Adam, reversing the trajectory of the fall. By taking on human nature, Christ fulfilled the task of mediation that Adam left undone, uniting heaven and earth, and destroying the power of death,.

This theological reality is vividly depicted in the icon of the Resurrection, or Anastasis. In this image, Christ is shown descending into Hades and destroying its gates.

A crucial detail in this iconography is Christ grasping Adam and Eve by the wrists rather than the hands,. This gesture symbolizes that humanity, entrapped by death, cannot save itself; it requires the forceful, redeeming action of God to pull Adam, and by extension all of humanity, from the abyss,.

Liturgical Commemoration

The expulsion of Adam is commemorated liturgically on Forgiveness Sunday, also known as Cheesefare Sunday, which immediately precedes the onset of Great Lent. On this day, the faithful contemplate the tragedy of the fall, weeping with Adam before the closed gates of Paradise. The hymns of this season depict Adam lamenting his nakedness and the loss of the divine glory he once possessed.

This commemoration serves a pedagogical function, inviting believers to identify with Adam’s exile and to undertake the Lenten fast as a means of return. The season of Lent is presented as a restoration of the fast that Adam broke, offering a path to recover the lost likeness of God.

The writings of Saint Silouan the Athonite further articulate this theme through the poetic voice of Adam, who grieves not merely for a lost garden but for the loss of the sweetness of the love of God,. In this view, Adam represents the collective human experience of alienation from the Divine and the deep, intrinsic longing for restoration.

The Total Adam

The concept of the Total Adam suggests that the name Adam functions as a collective term comprising humankind in its entirety. Because human nature is possessed of an essential, ontological unity, the entire race participates in the condition of the first-formed man.

The fragmentation of humanity into competing individuals is a consequence of the fall, whereas salvation involves the gathering of this fragmented nature back into unity.

Through the Incarnation, Christ assumes this Total Adam, purifying and deifying human nature. The destiny of Adam is therefore not abandonment to corruption but resurrection and glory. The trajectory that began in the Garden of Eden and was interrupted by the fall is resumed and completed in the New Jerusalem, where the human person is fully united with God, fulfilling the primordial command to become like the Creator.