Recapitulation Theory: Retracing Our Steps

Regret

Regret is powerful. Give it an inch, it’ll take a mile. Its grasp can haunt a person, consume their dreams, leave them in wallowing and doubt. There was a surprisingly useful article in a psychology journal that argues the idea that “greater perceived opportunity within life domains evokes more intense regret.” In other words, if you come across a situation that you’re able to control the destiny, and your choice is perceived by you as being the hinge on whether you’re going to find the greener grass and realize great success; if you find later that you pushed the wrong button (and denied yourself that big opportunity), you’re going to feel regret rear its ugly head. That especially is the case when an alternate path didn’t lead you to a comparable flowery place to that envisioned.

Statistically, the categories where people feel the most regret are in their education (nagging about 30 percent of people), career (bugging about 20 percent of folks), romance (causes angst for about 15 percent), and parenting (resulting in woes for about 10 percent). Pehaps even you can identify with at least every so often being haunted by regret in one of those domains.

The Generations of Adam

After being tossed out of the Garden of Eden, and barred reentry by angels with flaming swords, it is hard to imagine that Adam and Eve didn’t look back to the good old days with regret. You have to wonder how long the angels were stationed there with the flaming swords. As long as Adam’s lifetime? Generations? Centuries? There is no clear indication in the text. But as Adam and Eve begin to encounter a harsh, arid land, how couldn’t it cross their minds that it would be so lovely to go back in time and untake those bites of the fruit. By the time a few more generations come around and all of humanity is bent towards sin and evil, a shocking thing happens. Right before Noah (Genesis 6:5-6):

Genesis 6:5–6 ESV

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

The fact that God Himself had regret is something that is utterly profound. He saw the opportunity for something beautiful when he created man. The opportunity that he envisioned and made choices for didn’t materialize. God Himself wished that he had not made the choice to make man. If you ever think that your regret is something that is insurmountable, is all-consuming, that your regret makes it impossible to make the right next move, just think about God’s regret that He made man. Yours can never come close to that.

Genesis 6:7–8 ESV

So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

God was done with it all. He was blotting out life. Then we find what could be the most incredible use of the conjuction “but” in Scripture. God looked at all of mankind, ready to scrap it all, and He saw Noah. God still saw a glint of opportunity. He reversed his decision (by excepting one man and his family from it). By the time the waters recede and the ark finds dry land, it is clear that God has a new plan, that regret had not won and that it never would.

Genesis 8:20–22 ESV

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

From there, the long trajectory is to bring man back to the opportunity that God had for them, to undo what Adam and Eve had done.

Starts with Mary and Eve

Mary’s obedience begins to untie the knot left by Eve’s disobedience. Jesus is born the Second Adam, with only God as His father, just like Adam of old. As Mary started the great reversal, so too would Jesus spend his life undoing everything that Adam did.

As soon as Jesus got started in his public ministry, He went into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. All of His responses to the devil were lifted straight from the scrolls of Deuteronomy (that text that had been the culmination of the 40 wilderness years). But unlike the Israelites, Jesus had no manna, He had no food, He had no water. He survived by the providence of God alone, and He didn’t grumble. That great obedience to God led to death on a tree. Through that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil came death. Through that tree on Calvary came life.

The cross holds no power without the incarnation. It is only through God becoming man that Adam’s deeds can be reversed. Jesus found life from a tree. Adam found death. Death passed to Adam’s descendants by blood, life passes to Christ’s descendants by grace through faith.

Irenaeus

The idea that Christ lived and died to counteract the life and sin of Adam is known as the recapitulation. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is where the word ‘recapitulation’ comes from. God was (Ephesians 1:9-10):

Ephesians 1:9–10 ESV

making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

That uniting of all things in Jesus, or summing up all things in Him, is what has become termed ‘recapitulation.’ It’s another very old theory of atonement, nuanced in the second century by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons (situated in modern-day France). In this view of the cross we find that the problem of humanity emanates from Adam. That problem is death. Jesus took on that punishment. He bore the curse that God gave Adam and Eve upon exiting the garden, that curse which was upon man. But Jesus succeeded where Adam failed.

Surprisingly, Irenaeus locates a massive share of the recapitulation in Jesus time in the wilderness. Irenaeus wrote:

Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” Book 5, 21.2 (excerpts)

Now the Lord would not have recapitulated in Himself that ancient and primary enmity against the serpent, fulfilling the promise of the Creator, and performing His command, if He had come from another Father. But as He is one and the same, who formed us at the beginning, and sent His Son at the end, the Lord did perform His command, being made of a woman, by both destroying our adversary, and perfecting man after the image and likeness of God. And for this reason He did not draw the means of confounding him from any other source than from the words of the law, and made use of the Father’s commandment as a help towards the destruction and confusion of the apostate angel. Fasting forty days, like Moses and Elijah, He afterwards hungered, first, in order that we may perceive that He was a real and substantial man—for it belongs to a man to suffer hunger when fasting; and secondly, that His opponent might have an opportunity of attacking Him. For as at the beginning it was by means of food that [the enemy] persuaded man, although not suffering hunger, to transgress God’s commandments, so in the end he did not succeed in persuading Him that was an hungered to take that food which proceeded from God. For, when tempting Him, he said, “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” But the Lord repulsed him by the commandment of the law, saying, “It is written, Man doth not live by bread alone.” As to those words ‘[of His enemy,] “If thou be the Son of God,” [the Lord] made no remark; but by thus acknowledging His human nature He baffled His adversary, and exhausted the force of his first attack by means of His Father’s word. The corruption of man, therefore, which occurred in paradise by both [of our first parents] eating, was done away with by [the Lord’s] want of food in this world…. The pride of reason, therefore, which was in the serpent, was put to nought by the humility found in the man [Christ], and now twice was the devil conquered from Scripture, when he was detected as advising things contrary to God’s commandment, and was shown to be the enemy of God by [the expression of] his thoughts. He then, having been thus signally defeated, and then, as it were, concentrating his forces, drawing up in order all his available power for falsehood, in the third place “showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,” saying, as Luke relates, “All these will I give thee,—for they are delivered to me; and to whom I will, I give them,—if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” The Lord then, exposing him in his true character, says, “Depart, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” He both revealed him by this name, and showed [at the same time] who He Himself was. For the Hebrew word “Satan” signifies an apostate. And thus, vanquishing him for the third time, He spurned him from Him finally as being conquered out of the law; and there was done away with that infringement of God’s commandment which had occurred in Adam, by means of the precept of the law, which the Son of man observed, who did not transgress the commandment of God.

For Irenaeus, the infringement of God’s commandment by Adam was undone by Jesus’ conquering Satan by the Law of Moses.

Grace and Righteousness

Paul’s letter to the Romans sums of the fullness of the recapitulation (Romans 5:18-19):

Romans 5:18–19 ESV

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Jesus undid everything that Adam messed up. Jesus was the rekindled opportunity that God saw when He was filled with regret and looked at Noah. God was resolute to overcome His regret, and in a way that only God can do, He was able to go back in time, to right the wrongs. That is what the cross still does. It cleans up the mess of regret and brings back opportunity in its fullness. One tree undid the other. From it we find life, as the curse is canceled and death is no more.