The fulfillment of God’s perfect will, which is the revelation and the incarnation of the Idea of the Being in the fact, in the duty to show it to us, as being the witness of the past, if this did indeed take place in the past. And firstly this most great of God’s works we find being prophesied of God to the protoplasts during their banishment from Paradise, and the condemnation for their disobedience to the word and law of God. In connection with the legislation of the protoplasts we observe the Idea of the Being as the law of their free activity by the affirmative law, «eat» from all the fruit of Paradise, and by the negative, «eat not» from the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge.
«And the Lord God gave a charge to Adam, saying, of every tree which is in the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – of it ye shall not eat, but in whatsoever day ye eat of it, ye shall surely die» (Gen. 2: 16-17).
Unto the violators of the moral law, namely, the protoplasts, which were for this account condemned, God manifested the restoration of their fall, the rise of the penalty, and their return to the obedience of the divine law by means of the incarnation and revelation of that very same law against which the violation was made. And He did prophetically reveal to them the fulfillment of this great work in the world for the salvation and perfection of mankind. Upon cursing the author and introducer of sin for the seduction of the infant and imperfect protoplasts, God declared beforehand by the following words the overthrow of his dominion, through the man that was to be born of an only Woman, of the seed of a woman, that is, of a Virgin, for the salvation and instruction and perfection of mankind:
«And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this thou art cursed above all cattle and all the brutes of the earth, on thy breast and belly thou shalt go, and thou shalt eat earth all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed, he shall watch against thy head, and thou shall watch against his heel» (Gen 3:15-16).
The woman which was to beget the Logos of God from her own seed, and not from the seed of a man, was to hate Satan with an implacable enmity, and Satan was likewise to hate her; so that there would be an irreconcilable hatred which results from the contrary nature of the Woman and Satan. And by means of this enmity God foretells as to what this Woman is, which was to beget the Saviour of mankind. But that there would also be an irreconcilable hatred between her seed and Satan’s because of the contrary element resulting from the nature of the two seeds. The seed of the Woman is her offspring, which she was to beget, He is the Saviour of the people; but as for the seed of Satan, are his moral children which possess his wicked nature. The woman’s seed shall watch against Satan’s head, and he, on the other hand, shall watch against His heel. This signifies that He that was to be born of the Woman, will reflect upon Satan’s thoughts, and will watch to disperse and frustrate his wicked schemes; while Satan will reflect upon the Saviour’s heel, i. e., His undermost part – the part opposite the head – His corporal and material life, and he will watch to hurt his enemy with a bodily injury, and to inflict a wound and suffering in His body. The head is the uppermost part of the body, the most essential and most important and ruling in the body; while the heel is the undermost, the lowest and basest, whose infliction does not destroy the head, while the infection of the head does indeed destroy the heel. It therefore signifies that the Woman’s seed will wound Satan in the head and shall destroy him utterly, and he will wound his enemy in the heel, and shall hurt Him temporarily; notwithstanding Satan will not be able to divert and frustrate the design and intent of the Woman’s seed. From this prophecy of God given to the protoplasts it becomes evident a) that the Woman has been sealed for this end, being foreordained in the plan of Creation that it will be born in the world not having voluntarily tasted of sin. Therefore she is very virtuous; b) that this Woman shall beget a son without the seed of a man, inexperienced of man; c) that the seed to be begotten of her shall watch against Satan’s head and shall be thereby watched against the heel; d) that there shall be a struggle and war between the two until the Woman’s seed will disperse Satan’s head, and he will wound His heel. The birth of this seed from the Woman is the birth of a Man. But how is He to be born without a man? What is His hypostasis had this not been in the seed and from the seed of man? Whence then could His hypostasis be? The Woman that begot Him only gives Him the body and the flesh, that is the human nature, but not the hypostasis also, which is in the seed of man, in the begetting element of the male sex. Whence this then, since it has been prophesied that the Woman was to give birth without a man, that is being a Virgin? This is not to be found in the Woman, for the Woman gave birth by having conceived without a man. Therefore is it not evident that this is with God? And if the hypostasis of the Woman’s seed is with God, it would not then be human, because it is not being born of man, but it is divine and of God. This then is the hypostatical Idea of the Being, the ontological law in God, which, while being an eternal God, receives the form and nature of man in the womb of the Virgin, and is born of her in the world according to the laws of nature. The Hypostasis of the Logos in having entered the Virgin’s womb, and assumed within her humanity, was born in a human form. And this is the first prophecy given to the protoplasts of God concerning; the Godman that was to be born of a Virgin. Wherefore before the real outcome of things we observe their prophetic proclamation, after which follows also the realization of things prophecied. This prophecy is the fundamental one amongst the other prophecies, it is the Gospel of God’s promises concerning the Saviour; and all the other prophecies are, as if to say, an unfolding and explaining of this sublime prophecy, wherein is the entire drama of the Godman’s incarnation being prophetically revealed. For instance, in the prophecy, «And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed», is revealed the Godman’s incarnation and His perfect virtue, which is opposed to and wars against Satan’s perfect vice; it is the enmity and war between the two contrary natures of virtue and vice. On the other hand, in the prophecy, «He shall watch against thy head, and thou shalt watch against his heel», is revealed the purpose of the incarnation of the God Logos, and the means whereby He will pursue His fulfillment. Herein is also revealed the achievement of His intent against vice, the defeat and fall of Satan, his ruin and destruction, and finally His sufferings in the world, and His death at His departure from the body. Nevertheless this wound is curable, but Satan’s, which was to be of the head, is incurable. Therefore the one, of the Godman, is able of being cured, while that of Satan remains incurable for ever. It is therefore being prophecied that after the Godman is to endure sufferings and shall die bodily in the struggle against Satan, He shall be again resurrected, and shall live eternally, the same as God, even in a human form, dispassionate and invulnerable in the future. Whereupon, as concerning what the nature of the Godman, and what His war against the contrary nature of Satan, what the purpose of His incarnation and what the means leading thereto, what His life in general and His death and resurrection, and His triumph against Satan, all these are contained in this prophecy, wherein is contained the sum-total of prophecies concerning the Saviour.
This admirable prophecy given to the protoplasts by God as the Gospel of the coming of the Saviour that was to free them from the hands of Satan, and having been unfolded specifically by the prophets of God’s Old Testament, is in harmony with both the nature and requirement of man, and the nature of Creation in general; it was necessary that this should come to pass, and its completion should be witnessed to us by history, if it actually came to pass. During the years of Caesar Augustus, the Roman monarch, about 1993 years ago, there appeared in the country of Judaea a man named Jesus Christ, preaching himself as the son of the living God, and alleging that He was sent of God in the world in order to establish and do the work and intent of God. He speaks of himself as of God and man, as the son of God, and as the son of man, and His ego He proclaims as being eternal. He invites all to the faith and knowledge of Him, that He is the son of God made human, even as was said by the prophets, that He is the promised Messiah, the Emmanuel, the Godman, the mysterious meaning of Jehovah, of the Being. He speaks and enjoins as a God. He teaches the unfeigned and true virtue, and seeks to draw and raise man to God. He shrilly declares to the world that He is the truth and the light of the world, the eternal One, the beginning and the end of beings, the perfect work of God’s perfect volition, the moral sun of the moral and spiritual world, and the universal center of Creation. He explains the nature of God and Himself, and shows His equality to God, and admits His consubstantiality to God before all. He speaks of Himself as being wholly sinless, and challenges officially the Pharisees of the congregation of Israel to reprove Him of sin, if they can. He maintains that He speaks as He knows, and that He can not speak other than what He knows and has heard, than the testimony of His own conscience, and that He can not speak falsehood as did the Pharisees. He confirms and ratifies the logical law of cognition by judging according to conscience, perception, and the testimony of reason, in an inductive and reductive and deductive manner, and attest the principle of contradiction, of causality, and of purposefulness. He confirms and ratifies the moral law of volition by willing and doing the perfect good on account of the good, and by not willing nor doing the thing that is evil on account of the evil. He confirms the prize of virtue springing from God, the eternal life, and the punishment of vice, the eternal damnation. He confirms and ratifies the political law of action, by keeping Himself first His duties to God and unto others and observing His ordinances perfectly even to the last tittle, by living, and cognizing, and acting, and conducting Himself in the law of God, for the sake of which He even died in order to sanction this by means of His most holy example. He publicly preaches contrition and conversion from evil-doings, and promises pardon unto those that repent and are being converted from the way of unrighteousness. He preaches the law of penitence and pardon as the forerunner of the law of ethics and its perfection in Him. He confirms that through Him is the salvation of the sinner, and through Him is the perfection of the one saved and has received remission of sins. He preannounces the judgement and righteousness of God as impending against those that disbelieve Him and spurn the law of God. He promises that He was sent of God not to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He proclaims His everlasting judicial coming according to which he shall come to judge and not to save the world. He reveals to us that time was given for our perfection, and when this is ended then will the everlasting kingdom of God come to earth as a perpetual and eternal one. He bases His teaching a) on the Old Testament prophecies; b) on His most moral and most perfect life; and c) on the power of His miracles. He refers to the prophecies concerning Himself in order to prove His identity, that He is the Messiah sent of God. He makes mention of His most sinless life in order to confirm His divine descent. He refers to His miracles in order to prove His divinity. He assails unbelief through three witnesses and considers this as a guilty and unpardonable aphasia. He draws the logical people’s faith in Him through three witnesses, and only through His life He astonishes all Creation, because, as the prophet says, «His excellence covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise» (Habakkuk 3-3). The virtuous and most sinless life of the Godman is the greatest of all miracles. He raises the dead from the graves, He heals those that were blind from birth and those that were inflicted with incurable diseases; and in general, «He heals all manner of disease and sickness among the people» (Matt. 4.23), thus proving Himself a benefactor over the healing of the sick; He does good by means of both kinds of beneficence, the bodily and the spiritual, and the bodily He uses as a means to benefit the soul, whose immortality He preaches and whose eternal personality He confirms by declaring the straightforwardness thereof.
He inexorably attacks the vice of Satan; He wars and struggles against him when tempted by him in the wilderness, thus defeating and casting him far away from Him. He fights against him in the society, and finally on the Cross, whereat He also destroys him completely, because through His death on the Cross He very methodically and skilfully overthrows Satan’s darkness over the dominion of the people. And after this glorius and unique victory He cries out, «be of good cheer» all ye that believe in me, «for I have overcome the world» (John 19.33); while from the Cross He shouts, «it is finished» (John 19.30). Satan, through his instruments, accomplishes the bodily death of Him that crushed his head to pieces, but is caught in His trap after having risen from the dead and having established upon the earth His everlasting dominion. This event is the fulfillment of the prophecy given to the protoplasts by God, it is the Gospel of salvation and history. Therefore between the Gospel of the ideal Godman, the Gospel of the prophecy concerning Him, and the Gospel of the Godman’s revelation, there is an identity and a perfect concord; and this is because the ideal Godman is the One prophecied by the prophets, and Which revealed Himself in the country of Israel 1993 years ago. Since, therefore, the Virgin Mary was holy and blameless and from childhood being dedicated to God, after having received the good news from the angel Gabriel concerning the conception of the Logos from the Holy Spirit, and the birth of Emanuel, she conceived Him in her womb, and begot Him in the den at Bethlehem, and nourished Him as a Mother does with her only begotten, and rejoiced greatly at the sight of Him as her beloved son. Therefore when seeing Him suffering unjustly upon the Cross, as the guileless Lamb of God, her maternal bowels were shocked and greatly pained, until seeing Him resurrected and rejoiced so greatly that no one can take the joy away from her, for it is eternal, even as He said of this,
«And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you» (John 16-22).
Apostolos Makrakis 