Angelology

I am currently revising and expanding the material presented in this paper in preparation for an upcoming Theopolis Explorations volume. The forthcoming book will explore some important areas that I was not able to cover at length in this paper, notably how the imago Dei relates to humanity's destiny as council as well as Enochic literature and other Pseudepigrapha.

This paper was first presented to Dr. Peter J. Leithart and Dr. James B. Jordan at Theopolis Institute on March 11, 2017.

My treatment of the Divine Council really is the exploration of a story.  In this story man was created by God as a child—an infant, really—and is steadily brought to maturity.  The fall of Adam immediately presents an obstacle to how this maturation is supposed to progress, but it does not frustrate God’s plan; instead it directs the story to an even more glorious conclusion.  This is the story of how God elevated mankind to his place in Council through Jesus Christ, the man.

A monster below, on the left side, swims in all those rivers. He comes with his mighty scales, each one as strong as iron, and he arrives there in order to draw water and defile the place. All the lights are darkened before him; his mouth and his tongue flame with fire; his tongue is as sharp as a mighty sword until he gets as far as entering the sanctuary within the sea, and then he defiles the sanctuary, and the lights are darkened, and the supernal lights disappear from the sea.

The Book of the Archangels is a Christian magical text, traceable to the early Medieval period, but likely originating in late Antique Byzantium. This text was hitherto only published in its original Greek form, by R. Reitzenstein , and is here translated for the first time into English.

El cardenal Ugo Poletti, vicario del papa en la diócesis de Roma, me confirió la facultad de exorcista, el encargo fue inicialmente como ayudante del padre Cándido Amantini. El padre Cándido era el único exorcista en el mundo con treinta y seis años de experiencia a tiempo completo. Yo no podía tener mejor maestro. Me encaminé a un apostolado entre sufrientes a quienes nadie comprendía: ni familiares, ni médicos, ni sacerdotes. Hoy, la pastoral en este sector, en el mundo católico, está del todo descuidada. Cada catedral debería tener un exorcista como tiene un penitenciario; y tanto más numerosos deberían ser los exorcistas cuanto más necesarios fuesen: en las parroquias más populosas, en los santuarios. Pero los exorcistas son mal vistos, combatidos, les cuesta encontrar hospitalidad para ejercer su ministerio. Se sabe que los endemoniados a veces aúllan y eso basta para que un superior religioso o un párroco no quiera exorcistas en sus locales, tal parece que vivir tranquilo y evitar cualquier griterío vale más que la caridad de curar a los poseídos. Igual que todo médico ha de estar en condiciones de indicar a sus pacientes cuál es el especialista al que deben recurrir en cada caso (un otorrino, un ortopeda, un neurólogo...), así todo sacerdote debe poseer ese mínimo de conocimientos para comprender si una persona necesita o no dirigirse a un exorcista. Entre las normas dirigidas a los exorcistas, el Ritual les recomienda que estudien «muchos documentos útiles de autores acreditados». Pero cuando se buscan libros serios sobre este asunto se encuentran muy pocos. Está el libro de monseñor Balducci: Il diavolo (Piemme, 1988), pero el autor es demonólogo, no exorcista. El libro del padre Matteo La Grua, exorcista: La preghiera di liberazione (Herbita, Palermo, 1985) y el libro de Renzo Allegri, también exorcista: Cronista all'inferno (Mondadori, 1990); una colección de entrevistas serias que narran casos límite, los más impresionantes, seguramente verídicos. Parto de verdades reveladas y aceptadas como la existencia de los demonios, la posibilidad de las posesiones diabólicas y el poder de expulsar a los demonios que Cristo concede a aquellos que creen en el mensaje evangélico. Son verdades contenidas en la Biblia, profundizadas por la teología y que constantemente enseña el magisterio de la Iglesia. En estos dos últimos años algo ha cambiado: se han publicado importantes documentos episcopales, ha aumentado el número de exorcistas, varios obispos practican exorcismos y nuevos libros se han editado. Algo se está moviendo. La Creación Es Cristocéntrica Solemos pensar en la creación de un modo equivocado, esta es la falsa sucesión de hechos: Creemos que un día Dios creó a los ángeles; que los sometió a una prueba, y del resultado de ella surgió la división entre ángeles y demonios, es claro que el demonio es también una criatura de Dios. Los ángeles se vieron premiados con el paraíso y los demonios, castigados con el infierno. Luego, Dios creó el universo, los reinos mineral, vegetal, animal y, por último, al hombre. Adán y Eva en el paraíso pecaron, obedeciendo a Satanás y desobedeciendo a Dios. En este punto, para salvar a la humanidad, Dios pensó en enviar a su Hijo. Tanto así nos equivocamos que después llegamos hasta el punto de darla por descontada. No es ésta la enseñanza de la Biblia ni la de los santos padres. Con semejante concepción, el mundo angélico y la creación son ajenos al misterio de Cristo. Léase, en cambio, el prólogo al Evangelio de san Juan y léanse los dos himnos cristológicos que abren las Epístolas a los Efesios y a los Colosenses. Cristo es el primogénito de todas las criaturas; todo fue hecho por él y para él. No tienen ningún sentido las disputas teológicas en las que se pregunta " si Cristo hubiera venido sin el pecado de Adán ". Él es el centro de la creación, el que compendia en sí a todas las criaturas.

shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, in this fashion: his right hand upon his left. He shall confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their rebellions, whatever their sins; he shall put them on the head of the goat with a declared and explicit oath by the great and glorious Name.

Angels are and have always been a popular topic.  Nonetheless, much confusion remains in popular and even scholarly literature. The present study aims to provide clarity about angels (מלאכים, literally ‘messengers’) in Genesis and Exodus by situating the texts in their ancient Near Eastern contexts and examining how they adapt the ideas of those contexts to fit their own unique theological agenda.  The resulting portrait is derived from but clearly distinct from its ancient Near Eastern analogs.

In many biblical theophanies, the deity appears in an anthropomorphic shape. Scholars often argue that such anthropomorphic symbolism comes to its most forceful expression in the Israelite priestly ideology, known to us as the Priestly source, wherein God is depicted in “the most tangible corporeal similitudes.

Medieval depictions of music-making angels were powerful devotional devices, overriding beliefs that angels were bodiless and silent. 1 Nonetheless, the categories of angels, sacred images, and liturgical music overlapped to such a high degree in the course of worship that images of angel-musicians could perform the roles of angels themselves. 2

The thought of Thomas Aquinas was fundamentally and pervasively hierarchical. This is evident whether one considers his ontology, structured by the tension between being and unity, the interconnected subjectivities which are what fundamentally subsist for him, his hermeneutic of Scripture with its assimilation of scripture and theology producing total system, the ways natural and theological virtues exist in God, angels, and humans, or his understanding of the Church and the relation of the Papacy either to the lower ecclesiastical orders or to the secular. His sources of the Neoplatonic tradition which ran from Iamblichus to Damascius and Simplicius work to produce this mentality. First is the authority of Dionysius the Areopagite and, subordinately, Boethius, the Liber de Causis—at Paris among the writings of Aristotle listed for lecture—, and later Ammonius, Simplicius and Proclus themselves, as well as others. Either assisting those authorities or counterbalancing them in producing this frame of mind are Augustine, Aristotle and the Peripatetics. This paper works out the relation between his doctrine of providence and his hierarchical thinking relative to these sources and authorities.

The exegesis of the burning bush theophany set forth in Eusebius of Caesarea's Prophetic Extracts and Proof of the Gospel adds a distinctive and original voice to the rich chorus of Jewish and Christian interpreters of Exodus 3. Eusebius posits a disjunction between the visual and the auditory aspects of the theophany – the angel appears, the Lord speaks – and departs from the mainstream of Jewish and Christian tradition by depicting Moses as a spiritual neo-phyte whose attunement to God ranks much lower than that of the patriarchs of old. Even though scholars point to the overall anti-Jewish context of this exege-sis, it is difficult to find satisfactory terms of comparison for some of its details. It appears, therefore, that Eusebius' understudied Prophetic Extracts and Proof of the Gospel offer a surprisingly original interpretation that should enrich the scholarly account of the Wirkungsgeschichte of the famous burning bush episode.

Resumo: O livro hebreu de Enoque (3Enoque) é a última das obras apócrifas atribuídas a Enoque, sétimo patriarca antediluviano. Dos vários trabalhos relacionados com a personagem, 3Enoque é uma obra diferente, focada no elemento místico. Existem inúmeros nomes angelicais nos seus quarenta e oito capítulos, começando com o misteriosa Metatron, que não é outro senão o próprio Enoque transformado em anjo. É descrito como uma figura controversa, também chamado "Javé Menor", e possui vários títulos e funções. A história do nome Metatron tem uma natureza e etimologia muito obscuras, que até hoje têm dividido os pesquisadores. Abstract: The Hebrew Book of Enoch (3Enoch) is the last of the apocryphal works attributed to Enoch, seventh antediluvian patriarch. Of the various works related to the character, 3Enoch is a different work, focused on the mystical element. There are numerous angelic names in its forty-eight chapters, starting with the mysterious Metatron, which is none other than Enoch himself turned into an angel. He is described as a controversial figure also called "The Lesser Yahweh", owning several titles and functions. The story of the name Metatron has a really obscure nature and etymology, which makes researchers disagree even today.

Although the treatises concerning the biblical angelology are numerous and varied, they tend to repeat methodologically groundless projection of additional meaning on the figure of messenger. This approach seems to derive from the low sensitivity towards the Hebrew and Aramaic text of the HB on the one hand and the affinity to much later exegetic systems on the other. As a result, the angels of the HB are often presented as a complex yet internally coherent and organized group of spiritual beings playing strictly specified roles. Notwithstanding this notion, the source analysis shows that the biblical angelology is much less developed than suggested by the general descriptions. This paper has therefore three main purposes. First and foremost it is (1) to penetrate the most original meaning of the Hebrew word mal’akh within the HB. The data collected by means of statistic linguistics shall be presented (2) to refute the most common inaccuracies present in the literature dealing with the subject of biblical angelology and (3) to advocate the interpolation theory as neatly explaining the origins and nature of the biblical “angels”.

Uno dei criteri in base ai quali l'ebraismo rabbinico scelse, tra la vasta letteratura religiosa ebraica antica, quali libri si dovessero considerare Sacra Scrittura e quali no, fu proprio il ruolo che in queste opere rivestono gli angeli. Presentati nella Bibbia canonica come semplici portaordini di Dio (come nel sacrificio di Isacco) o suoi tirapiedi per i compiti più imbarazzanti (come nella distruzione di Sodoma), nei testi non canonici risalenti al periodo del Secondo Tempio gli angeli appaiono come figure molto più complesse e importanti. Il loro ruolo è alle volte tradizionalmente subordinato a quello divino: possono essere latori del volere divino agli uomini e delle preghiere umane a Dio, o sacerdoti del suo culto spirituale nell'alto dei cieli, o esercito del bene in battaglia contro le forze del male alla fine dei tempi (come nella Regola della guerra dei Figli della Luce contro i Figli delle Tenebre da Qumran). Ma essi appaiono anche come detentori di poteri sovrumani e magici che gestiscono autono-03 Capelli.indd 57 03 Capelli.indd 57 4 I titoli delle sezioni nella vecchia Bibbia CEI chiamavano ancora «angelo» l'antagonista notturno di Giacobbe allo Jabboq (Gen 32), che per il testo masoretico è un 'ish («uomo»), e che per la sostanza del testo è Dio stesso (cfr.

La angelología es la rama de la teología encargada del estudio de los ángeles. El término "ángel" procede del latín angĕlus, que a su vez  deriva del griego ἄγγελος ángelos (mensajero). El término hebreo más parecido es מלאך (malaḵ), que posee el mismo significado . La creencia en los ángeles existe desde las primeras fases de la historia del judaísmo y aún continúa tanto en dicha religión como en el cristianismo y el Islam. Sin embargo, este aspecto de la religión ha variado ha variado constantemente a lo largo de los siglos, y los estudiosos han mantenido no pocas discrepancias en él debido siempre a los enfoques tomados, la religión de la que parten y las fuentes consultadas, generando así diversos sistemas angelológicos . Por eso mismo, en este trabajo el objetivo será centrarse en profundidad una de las fuentes más ricas en material angelológico: la literatura henóquica. Concretamente en el mundo de los ángeles que aparece en las obras atribuidas al patriarca antediluviano Henoc: 1Henoc, 2Henoc y 3Henoc, textos que van de la apocalíptica intertestamentaria a la mística.
El resto de la literatura bíblica y las obras talmúdicas tampoco pueden quedar fuera este estudio por varios motivos: El primero de ellos radica en el propio Henoc. Su presencia directa en los textos bíblicos es muy escasa, y la información que aparece en torno a él en Génesis es muy diferente si se compara con la del resto de patriarcas bíblicos. Por otra parte, las menciones bíblicas y rabínicas a las obras relacionadas con Henoc ayudan a comprender este tema de una manera mucho más ordenada, conociendo la opinión de los sabios judíos de diferentes épocas acerca del contenido angelológico y místico de estas obras, generalmente alejado de la ortodoxia.
¿Cómo se desarrolla la figura de los ángeles? ¿Dónde está su origen en la historia del judaísmo? Ese es otro de los objetivos a escudriñar en esta comunicación. Si bien es cierto que en el colectivo judío (especialmente el heterodoxo), estos seres tuvieron un amplio desarrollo, gran parte de su origen no procede únicamente de la fe mosaica, sino del contacto con otros pueblos con diferentes religiones y dioses. La angelología judía muestra su propia visión de las relaciones entre el Dios judío y los dioses y entidades sobrenaturales de otras religiones de la Antigüedad (especialmente Babilonia, Persia y Grecia), apropiándose de ellos y dándoles un nuevo carácter, convirtiéndoles en ángeles, en servidores del “Dios único”, o en sus opositores. De este modo, los dioses se "convierten", pasan a formar parte de la tradición hebrea, transformándose y siendo seres poderosos pero supeditados a una deidad superior.

The late Luigi Enrico Rossi has taught us the importance of submerged literature. 1 His method is an efficient way to bypass the tyranny of Canon and of the mechanisms that made this canon persist through the ages. By tracing the threads of the 'mainstream' tradition, one is able to detect fine threads of earlier traditions, which had once existed in a full-fledged literary and social environment before being stripped of their context and absorbed into a different milieu. In this work of literary archaeology, a professional excavator can achieve much by tracing early relics and reconstructing the mythology, theology, or narratives that had once been woven around them. 2 This idea is as relevant to ancient Near Eastern literature or the Hebrew Bible as to classical literature.

This paper details how St. Thomas Aquinas' Trinitarian theology provides a hinge for the first book of the Summa Theologica, and how the treatise "On the One God" is deliberately structured to parallel "On the Blessed Trinity", that is to say, that its thematic organization parallels the order or taxis of the Trinitarian processions; this in turn provides the format of Thomas' later discussion of other rational beings, like humans and angels.

This book discusses the occurrence of angelic imagery in early Christian discourse about the Holy Spirit. Taking as its entry-point Clement of Alexandria s less explored writings, Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae propheticae, and Adumbrationes, it shows that Clement s angelomorphic pneumatology occurs in tandem with spirit christology, within a theological framework still characterized by a binitarian orientation. This complex theological articulation, supported by the exegesis of specific biblical passages (Zech 4: 10; Isa 11: 2-3; Matt 18:10), reworks Jewish and Christian traditions about the seven first-created angels, and constitutes a relatively widespread phenomenon in early Christianity. Evidence to support this claim is presented in the course of separate studies of Revelation, the Shepherd of Hermas, Justin Martyr, and Aphrahat.

Christian interactions with the spirit world of African traditional religion (ATR) remain problematic because Christian missionaries have not adequately come to terms with the spiritual realm of ATR and the supernatural worldview of the Bible. In this article I propose a way beyond this impasse. I overview the cosmology and spirit world of ATR and African Christianity's variegated responses to these traditional beliefs. Having critiqued these responses, I survey the supernatural worldview of Scripture and its mythological narratives concerning the spiritual realm. I suggest that a responsible retrieval of these scriptural phenomena can help theologians reconcile the spirit world of ATR within a biblically-informed African theology, thereby yielding new pathways for the inculturation of Christianity in the African context.

Readers have long wondered what is the meaning of the dog that briefly appears in the Jewish fairy tale known as the Book of Tobit. This article considers common answers such as influence from Ahikar, the Odyssey, influence of Persian culture and influence of folktale and goes into depth of the dog's significance in human culture, especially in connection with healing and defeating dragons and evil spirits and raises questions about the dog's possible connection to the archangel Raphael.

Cada catedral debería tener un exorcista como tiene un penitenciario. Pero los exorcistas son mal vistos, combatidos, les cuesta encontrar hospitalidad para ejercer su ministerio. Entre las normas dirigidas a los exorcistas, el Ritual les recomienda que estudien «muchos documentos útiles de autores acreditados».  Parto de verdades reveladas y aceptadas como la existencia de los demonios, la posibilidad de las posesiones diabólicas y el poder de expulsar a los demonios que Cristo concede a aquellos que creen en el mensaje evangélico. Son verdades contenidas en la Biblia, profundizadas por la teología y que constantemente enseña el magisterio de la Iglesia.  Solemos pensar en la creación de un modo equivocado. Con semejante concepción, el mundo angélico y la creación son ajenos al misterio de Cristo. Él es el centro de la creación, el que compendia en sí a todas las criaturas: las celestiales (ángeles) y las terrenales (hombres). A la luz de la centralidad de Cristo se conoce el plan de Dios, que creó todas las cosas buenas «por él y para él». Y se conoce la obra de Satanás, el enemigo, el tentador, el acusador, por cuyo influjo entraron en la creación el mal, el dolor, el pecado y la muerte. San Atanasio describe que los ángeles también deben su salvación a la sangre de Cristo. La centralidad de Cristo nos dice que sólo en su nombre podemos salvarnos. Y sólo en su nombre podemos vencer y liberarnos del enemigo de la salvación, Satanás. El plan unitario de la creación estaba orientado a Cristo: hasta la aparición de Jesús en el mundo, ese plan no podía ser revelado en su claridad. De ahí la rebelión de Satanás, por querer seguir siendo el primero absoluto, el centro de la creación, incluso en oposición al designio que Dios estaba realizando. De ahí su esfuerzo por dominar en el mundo y por servirse del hombre. La mayoría de los escritores contemporáneos, y aun los teólogos católicos, aunque sin negar la existencia de Satanás y de los ángeles rebeldes, consideran como un deber y una demostración de sabiduría su descrédito y  subestiman su influencia sobre las cosas humanas. La cultura contemporánea, considera como una ilusión de épocas primitivas atribuir a agentes, distintos de los de orden natural, la causa de los fenómenos que nos rodean. Es evidente que la obra del maligno se ve enormemente facilitada por esta postura, sobre todo cuando la comparten aquellos que, por su ministerio, tendrían el deber de impedir su maléfica actividad.

In his discussion of the nature of the resurrection body in 1 Cor 15:35–49, Paul employs the metaphor of God’s sowing of the natural/earthly body and the raising of the spiritual/heavenly body, distinct bodies fit for their respective habitats. In order to demonstrate this, Paul enumerates a list of the creatures who inhabit the earth followed by those who inhabit the heavens, the resurrection body being likened to the later. Scholars have generally understood the background of this list to be found in the creatures from Genesis 1, even though they do not follow the same order. Some suggest the reason for this discrepancy is that the list simply evokes the cosmology of popular Greek philosophy. This article seeks to propose an alternate answer to this problem. The enumeration of terrestrial and celestial creatures here in 1 Cor 15:39–42 follows the same order as the aniconic discourse of Deut 4:15–19. If this is the text to which Paul alludes, he is likely drawing on an exegetical tradition in the Second Temple period. This tradition reads Deut 4:15–19 as part of a wider Deuteronomic scriptural matrix employed to describe the nature of the cosmos, constructed and administered by God, having appointed the celestial bodies as divine or angelic delegates in his cosmic polis (e.g. Philo, Spec. Laws 1.13–19). This reading not only supplies a strong argument for Paul’s particular enumeration of creatures, but also provides a more robust account of the passage in its wider context, connecting the language of the abolishing of the principalities and powers (1 Cor 15:24) with his earlier discussion regarding the judgment of the cosmos and the angels (1 Cor 6:2–3).

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How is it that when people on earth encounter heavenly beings these consistently appear in human guise; yet, when, in turn, humans enter the celestial world these selfsame human visitors seem to take on qualities of angelic beings? Could it be that the properties of the very different environments profoundly affect the nature of both residents and visitors? To answer these questions this article looks at the various texts dealing with epiphanies and heavenly journeys and descents from the perspective of the spaces that form the settings of these narratives. The sample texts will shed light on the correlation between the nature of heavenly angelic/divine and earthly human beings, on the one hand, and the substances that both realms are thought to consist of, on the other. The analysis of the texts will enable us to indicate a structure through which to create a paradigm by which other narratives of human—divine encounters may be tested and understood. In addition, this paradigm will be able to better explain the mechanics of both boundary crossings and transgressions.

The angelological section of a late medieval Book of Hours (Paris, ca. 1420-1430) culminates in a prayer that draws extensively on angelic imagery from the Book of Revelation. As this Apocalyptic prayer seems to have no parallels in the secondary literature, a transcription and translation of its text are provided here. The prayer ignores the many afflictions of the Apocalypse and focuses wholly on the vision of the highest heaven. Moreover, its paraphrasing of Biblical passages makes a number of approximations that inform about popular Christian belief of the time. While the angelological section of the manuscript was provisionally identified as the Hours of the Angels, the available text from this section lacks any rubrics for the canonical hours. Two manuscripts – Comites Latentes 124 (ca. 1500) and the surviving fragment of Les Heures de Savoie (the Savoy Hours, ca. 1335-1370) – are identified as containing versions of the Hours of the Angels, allowing their texts to be compared with the angelological section of the Parisian book. As an aside, it appears from first principles that folios 5 and 12 in the current remnant of the Savoy Hours (Beinecke MS 390) were contiguous in the original manuscript, a proposal consistent with information provided in 1911 by Count Durrieu about lacunae in the now-lost main codex. These two folios preserve a portion of the Savoy Hours of the Angels, one that differs considerably from the corresponding segment in Comites Latentes 124. Despite the variability evident in authentic Hours of the Angels, it seems that the angelological section of the Parisian manuscript may represent some other devotional text, such as a meditation on the celestial hierarchy that is not partitioned according to the canonical hours.

John Climacus's seventh-century ascetical and spiritual masterwork, the Ladder of Divine Ascent, drew on and reformulated the themes and trajectories of Chalcedonian ascetic spirituality in ways that would prove decisive for later Byzantine theologians. This paper seeks to elaborate the conceptualization of Climacus's spirituality through a sustained exploration of his treatment of angels and his understanding of the ascetic life as 'angelic.' In the monastic literature that Climacus inherited and that formed him, three tensions emerge with respect to the predication of "angelic" to ascetics: optimism and doubt about the possibility of a 'care-free' state, alternative conceptions of "liminal" progress, and opposition of individualism and community. Climacus not only holds together these tensions, but by coupling them with his own original ideas carefully develops the possibility of ascetic imitation of angels.

… Now observe a deep and holy mystery of faith, the symbolism of the male principle and the female principle of the universe … there is the line where the male and female principles join, forming together the rider on the serpent, and symbolized by Azazel .

The study explores the eschatological reinterpretation of the Yom Kippur ritual found in the Apocalypse of Abraham where the protagonist of the story, the patriarch Abraham, takes on the role of a celestial goat for YHWH, while the text’s antagonist, the fallen angel Azazel, is envisioned as the demonic scapegoat. The study treats the application of the two goats typology to human and otherworldly figures in its full historical and interpretive complexity through a broad variety of Jewish and Christian sources, from the patriarchical narratives of the Hebrew Bible to early Christian materials in which Yom Kippur traditions were applied to Jesus’ story.

The denial of angelic rule in the world to come (Heb 2.5) provides an important clue to the purpose of Christ's exaltation over the angels in Heb 1-2. The excessive reliance upon angels for national deliverance and personal protection within Second Temple Judaism posed a threat to the pre-eminence of Christ among Jewish Christians. Rather than seek 'help' from angels, the author exhorts his readers to hold firmly to their confidence in Jesus. For as messianic 'Son', only Jesus is able to 'help' them (Heb 2.18; 4.16) remain faithful through the perils of the coming eschatological judgment. New Test. Stud. , pp. -. Printed in the United Kingdom

This article explores the imagery of fear found in 2 Enoch and its significance for the glorious transformations that Enoch undergoes during his heavenly journey. This transition from the fallen human form to the state of the celestial citizen, achieved through fear, evokes some protological allusions, namely, the protoplasts' fear in the Garden of Eden after their fall. This article argues that the fear of the visionary thus serves as an important prerequisite for the reversal of the fallen nature of humanity and as the first step towards the restoration of its nature to the prelapsarian state.