Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?” (Ps 8:4).
We hear this psalm verse every Saturday evening at Great Vespers. It is v. 4 of Ps 8. It concludes the 1st Kathisma. One could hear this psalm, in one of its contemporary translations, and not be alerted to its intrinsic Christology. If you will remember: the Psalms—in the mind and Tradition of the Church—are about Christ. They are hymns, surely. And they were written by men who had only a faint semblance of the Anointed One, the “Holy One of Israel,” the “Christ”, in mind. However, when we read the Psalms in parallel to the events of the Gospel, and in conjunction with the testimony of the Prophets, we will see plainly Christ in them.
This Psalm, Ps 8, is no exception. But as I have already suggested, the figure of Christ is only apparent in the more traditional, or “grammatically unaltered,” translations. The New International Version renders the psalm thus:
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet…” (Ps 8:3-6, all italics mine).
“What is mankind that you are mindful of them. … You have made them a little lower than the angels… .” Contemporary translations are in the bad habit of appropriating texts, for purposes of (quote) “inclusivity” and “equality.” “Man” becomes “mankind.” “Sons of God” becomes “children of God” and so forth. In many instances, there is no (or very little) harm done. But in this instance, the entire interpretative crux of the psalm is lost. For comparison, the King James Version renders the psalm thus:
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, [but] hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet (Ps 8:3-6, all italics mine).
Here, we see more clearly: this psalm is not about mankind generally; rather, it is about the Son of Man, specifically. “What is… the Son of Man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, [but] hast crowned him with glory and honor” (vv. 3-4). The Son of God, the Son of Man, was
“… incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man, and was crucified for our sake under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And on the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead” (Nicene Creed).
This psalm testifies not only to the Christ, but also to his incarnation and his bodily glorification. Without the proper terminology, apart from the context of true Christology, we might miss this point entirely. We may hear this psalm and think, “Ah yes, man who was made… lower than the angels, God even cares for him.” But we would miss its Christological insight.
A brief tangent (I’ll tie everything together shortly): in Medieval Christian thought, borrowing from Plato and Plotinus, the Church—notably, the Western, Roman Church—formulated the scala naturae, the “ladder of being,” called elsewhere, the “Great Chain of Being.” In this cosmic framework, existence is structured hierarchically: God is at the top of the ladder; base minerals and elements (rocks, mud, water) are at the bottom. The Great Chain of Being posits a kind of “existential superiority” to spiritual beings. God is pure spirit and infinite; therefore, he is the Supreme Being. Angels are spiritual, but finite and corporeal. That is to say, they have a finite, spiritual form, though no physical “body.” Below the spiritual are all physical beings: humans, animals, plants, base matter. If you know your history of philosophy, then you will understand: there is a deep bias towards the spiritual over the physical in the ethics of ancient and Neoplatonic philosophy. The allegedly Christian sects of the Gnostics and the Manicheans embraced this worldview. “Spirit is good. Matter is bad.” The goal of the spiritual life, therefore, is to become “all-spirit.” This is a terribly unbiblical philosophy, but it has always been present as a detrimental influence in the history of Christian theology.
And I think if we are all being honest, this same worldview has probably touched each of us in our own spiritual development. How many of us have not heard a similar characterization of a loved one’s death: “She’s in a better place now. She’s an angel in the armies of God. She’s gotten her wings! She’s watching over you now, as your guardian angel!” This is a blatant falsehood. This is not true theology. This is not a biblical anthropology. Nowhere in Scripture do we read that when a man dies, he ascends the scala naturae, the Hierarchy of Being, becoming a more “spiritual” being, a wholly spiritual being, an angel. In Orthodox Christian theology, angels and men are two distinct classes of being. Angels cannot fall to become men. Men do not become angels (or demons!) upon their deaths.
In our Orthodox Christian literary tradition, we have, courtesy of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the Church’s earliest angelology, On the Celestial Hierarchies. In this text Pseudo-Dionysius categorizes the ranks of the angelic hosts (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, etc.). And in Pseudo-Dionysius, the Church has found a rational basis for her own hierarchy: bishops, priests, deacons, laymen. However, here, Pseudo-Dionysius never synthesizes the two hierarchies beyond analogy. Repeated, for those in the back: the goal of the Christian is not to become “all-spirit,” to become an angel. The goal of the Christian life, aided by the intercession and protection of the angelic hosts, is to become more fully fashioned into the image of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ (cf. Rom 8:29), to become, that is, truly human.
Ok, now let’s make those connections: tomorrow (and today, on the eve of the Feast of the Synaxis of the Bodiless Powers), the Church commemorates those “messengers” (malǝ’ākhīm, “sent ones”; angelloi, “sent ones”), who have been pivotal in affecting the salvation of mankind, through their constant defense from the demonic hosts. The Church commemorates the angels as servants of God, and as “saints,” meaning “holy ones,” “separate ones,” not by virtue of the Holy Spirit of God—which is what hallows a man—but by virtue of their moral distinction. The angels are the faithful spiritual host; the demons, the unfaithful, profane spiritual host. On this Feast, the Church also takes an opportunity to emphasize the telos of man, and the angelic role in attaining to this goal. Man was not created for angelic life (as his natural end), but was created for true, human life, which is an imitation of the fully glorified, incarnate life of the Son of God. We heard today from the Apostle in Hebrews:
“For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. But one testified in a certain place, saying: ‘What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You take care of him? You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, and set him over the works of Your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.’ For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him” (Heb 2:5-8).
Here, the Apostle gives to the Church her interpretive liberty with the psalms. Speaking of Christ, the Apostle quotes the same Psalm 8, which we quoted earlier. “You have made him a little lower than the angels…” (v. 5). Who was made a little lower than the angels? St. Paul continues in Hebrews:
“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Heb 2:9-10).
And truly, it is almost a shame that we do not hear the very next verse, for it gives the entire passage its salvific thrust (so I will say it for you!):
“For both he that sanctifies and they who are being sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (v. 11, italics mine).
Christ was made a “little lower than the angels,” in the sense that he was incarnate, suffered, died, and was crucified for our sake. And in Christ, we are made higher than the angels, though we be flesh and blood. Through the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God, and our co-participation in his resurrected and deified and glorified humanity, we become to the angels a new creation (cf. 2 Cor 5:17), something previously unseen, unheard of, from the foundations of the earth. We become a mystery; we become sons of God, awesome and terrible, like our Lord in glory. We become, as St. Peter says, marvels “into which things the angels [themselves] desire to look” (1 Pet 1:12). Glory to God.
Through the intercession and protection of all the bodiless powers of heaven, O Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!