Christ at Creation: Vicariousness

C.S. Lewis in his brief essay, The Grand Miracle, discusses the centrality of Christ's Incarnation, Death and Resurrection.

He discusses something fascinating:

"In the Incarnation we get, of course, this idea of vicariousness of one person profiting by the earning of another person. In its highest form that is the very center of Christianity. And we also find this same vicariousness to be a characteristic, or, as the musician would put it, a leitmotif of Nature. It is a law of the natural universe that no being can exist on its own resources."

Now we have vicariousness in nature often presented as an evil, while in Christianity it is the fundamental part of salvation. We don't eat (at least spiritually) the body of Christ for nothing. It illustrates how we benefit by his death.

We don't know for certain whether physical death (as opposed to spiritual death) was present from the beginning of creation.

If it was, it may be explained by Christ creating a Universe that would show his attributes. One of these attributes is the bringing of life through death. As Lewis said this is a fundamental element in nature.

Another aspect Lewis describes is the selectiveness of God that often ignores merit:

"We, with our modern democratic and arithmetical presuppositions would so liked and expected all men to start equal in their search for God. One has a picture of great centripetal roads coming from all directions, with well-disposed people, all meaning the same thing getting closer and closer together. How shockingly opposite to the Christian story! One people picked out of the whole earth; that people purged and proved again and again. Some are lost in the desert before the reach Palestine; some stay in Babylon; some becoming indifferent. The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear - a Jewish girl at her prayers. That is what the whole of human nature has narrowed down to before the Incarnation takes place."

Lewis continues describing how nature follows the same undemocratic selection. After the Incarnation God's selection expanded back to the whole of humanity as it had been with Adam and Eve. It makes me wonder if the reason why Christ completes and deepens so many universal themes is that he created them out of his nature.

When all are resurrected for death or life, we will see a final divorce between life and death. In that we may finally see the universe complete the theme of Christ.