(A lot of these thoughts came after mulling over this fantastic course by Dr. Mark Garcia at Greystone Connect.)
Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of His nature. The Father loves the Son. So, in eternity past, this eternal love is the fitting ground for the Father’s determination to glorify the Son. To do this, He ordains that all things be made through the Son, be perfected in due course under His wise providence, and ultimately be brought into reconciliation in the Son. The Son, in loving obedience to the Father, embraces the inheritance and glory of the eschaton and all the responsibilities that providence brings with it.
In Eden, all things were ordered to Him, but creation was not yet perfected to the degree required for the consummation and the full glorification of the Son that awaits in the eschaton. Thus, in eternity past, He permitted the fall (not coercively but in foreknowledge) and wisely ordered even this evil toward a greater good. Eden was excellent, but not final.
Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…
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In Eden, man was perfect in their innocence, but imperfect in their completion. God’s redemptive work on humanity after and because of the fall makes them somehow more complete in the eschaton than in Eden. Glorified mankind will reflect God to a greater extent than did Adam and Eve in their innocence. Eden was a stepping stone towards this ideal. To say Eden was reality as God ultimately meant it is to imply that God’s plan was frustrated.
“He judged it better to bring good out of evil than to allow nothing evil to exist.”
—Augustine, Enchiridion 8.27
In the OT, God continuously draws near to man in ever-increasing ways, leading to the incarnation to show His desire for unity, for all things to be recapitulated and reconciled to God in Christ. Hidden in the cleft of the rock, longing to see God’s glory, Moses did not see it, for no man can see God and live. Instead, that glory was revealed by God’s self-disclosure in Word. The Word is the revelation of God. His self-revelation is true glory.
The Word became flesh. Interestingly, once John says that the Word was made flesh, he never refers to Christ as the Word again throughout the Gospel. Christ is undoubtedly still the eternal Word, but now we can see the Word. We can see God and not die. Like Moses wearing the veil to protect Israel from the fullness of God’s glory, the Son took on our humanity (“the veil, that is, his flesh”) not to conceal God but to reveal Him savingly, and, in a true way, humanity can now see God in the incarnation. God becomes man that we might become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4), being conformed to the image of His Son.
Christ dies. This is not a sad moment in God’s plan. This is His moment of victory. He is doing the act that will lead to the final reconciliation. He is fulfilling the responsibilities of His inheritance. By His atoning death “for our sins” and His triumph over death, He secures justification and peace with God for the redeemed and inaugurates the new creation (Eden > Fall > Cross > Salvation > Glory).
History under providence reaches its consummation and the eschaton begins when all things are summed up in Christ: the redeemed fully reconciled, every enemy subdued, and creation itself liberated from corruption. This is why the Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” Because we have to see this. We must! Seeing Christ is the whole point. Seeing God is everything. Being in His presence is the entire movement of reality. It is God crafting man anew after the likeness of Christ, renewing them in His image and drawing them into His Son. To be in Christ is not just a rosy feeling. It means becoming truly like Him, and it necessarily means seeing and experiencing His glory.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
(Colossians 1:15-20)
Excellent! “In eternity past, he permitted the fall…”