The Word Became Flesh: an introductory essay on understanding the human and divine natures of Christ Read online

The Word Became Flesh: an introductory essay on understanding the human and divine natures of Christ

  Terry R. Lynch

  Copyright 2014 Terry Lynch

  Dedication

  In gratitude to God for the Shepherd of Pope Francis, Supreme Pontiff to the Church of God. And in special gratitude for the papacy of his predecessor Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI who has had a profound impact upon my faith.

  Acknowledgements

  The Doubting Thomas’

  Dr. Ros Buttle, Liverpool Hope University, tutor of the CCRS

  Protestation

  The following is a Protestation that was composed by Saint Teresa de Avila to be placed at the beginning of the first printed edition of the “Way of Perfection,” which was issued at Evora soon after her death. I wish to adopt this for my own book, in the habit of prayer and service to God.

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  “In all that I may say in this treatise, I submit myself to what is held by our Mother, the holy Roman Church, and if there be in it anything contrary to this, it will be unintentional.

  For the love of God, therefore, I beseech the theologians, who are to see the work, very carefully to examine it, and to correct any such faults, with many others that may be found in it of whatever kind.

  If there be any good in it, may it be for the glory and honour of God, and for the service of His most holy Mother, our Patroness and our Queen, whose Habit I wear, though utterly unworthy of it. ”

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  Table of Contents

  *The Word Became Flesh: an introductory essay on understanding the human and divine natures of Christ*

  Bibliography

  About the Author

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  The Word Became Flesh: an introductory essay on understanding the human and divine natures of Christ

  “Taking up St. John’s expression ‘The word became flesh’, the church calls ‘Incarnation’ the fact that the Son of God assumed a human nature in order to accomplish our salvation in it.” (CCC #461) “The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.” (CCC #464) Jesus became man, an established figure in the history of mankind, born poor so that we can become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9; Matthew 20:28; Matthew 20:28; 2 Corinthians 6:10; Philippians 2:6-8; Revelation 2:9). He came from an area of high poverty and poor health demographic (Martin SJ, 2014, p. 77), the son of a tektōn (Martin SJ, 2014, pp. 59, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95, 110, 112, 113, 121, 125, 474); he learnt a trade from his foster father Saint Joseph. (Martin SJ, 2014, p. 83) “The Son of God…worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin,” (CCC #470) Jesus was tested and tempted (Luke 4: 1-13). The human and divine nature of Jesus’ existence are established facts and accepted dogma of the Catholic Church, “the Incarnation implies three facts: (1) The Divine Person of Jesus Christ; (2) The Human Nature of Jesus Christ; (3) The Hypostatic Union of the Human with the Divine Nature in the Divine Person of Jesus Christ.” (Anon., n.d.) Jesus born of the Virgin made incarnate by the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 7:14-16; Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38) is “the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation.” (Anon., n.d., p. 103) This was to refute heresy that said the two natures were separate but in one body, “The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis.” (CCC #467)

  “The Incarnation is the belief that for the salvation of the world, the Son of God, while remaining fully divine, became truly and fully human. At a particular time and place in history he was born of the Virgin Mary, died on a cross under Pontius Pilate and rose from the dead with a glorified humanity. From Nicea I (325) to Constantinople III (680), church councils have rejected various attempts to tamper with or deny the full humanity and the full divinity of Jesus Christ.” (E.Farrugia, 1991, p. 103) “The miracle of the Incarnation” writes Father Martin, “was not only that God became human, but also that this was accomplished through a Virgin.” (Martin SJ, 2014, p. 58). “The Virginal Conception of Jesus is the act by which Mary conceived Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit and without the intervention of a human father. On the basis of the Gospels, the Christian tradition and Church teaching have always held that Jesus was so conceived. … The fact that Jesus was born of a woman points to his humanity. The fact that he was conceived through a special intervention of the Holy Spirit points to his divinity. He is ‘Emmanuel, God with us.’” (E.Farrugia, 1991, p. 261) Thus the incarnation is a miracle as the Creator has by means beyond the natural law which governs our dominion on this earth bypassed accepted facts to make God present on this earth beyond biological fact as a creative act of God. “The virginal conception itself is not a historically verifiable datum. Nor can it properly be called a “biological fact”, since it transcends any biological process. It is God’s creative act, similar to the raising of Jesus’ dead body to a new life in the spirit. We can accept it only in faith, in response to the affirmation of the evangelists and to the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church.” (Kereszty, 1991, p. 58)

  St. Paul says “as was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:48) Through the incarnation comes the ability for God with us to perfect in the whole human experience and unite us with the divine will (Matthew 1:23; 2:6; Mark 1:2; Luke 7:27), the mystery of the cross which will undo the curse of Adam, and reinstate his lost inheritance through hypostatic union. “Christ Jesus is God and he is Man; he is one subject, one person, existing in two natures, divine and human. He who is God is Man.” (F. Ocariz, 1994, p. 90) “As the centuries pass, the evidence is accumulating that, measured by his effect on history, Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet” (LaTourette, January 1949) “Ephrem held just as there is no redemption without Jesus, there is no Incarnation without Mary” (XVI, 2008, p. 153) Pope Benedict reminds us here of Jesus as divine which brings redemptive mercy with authority from God the father, and merges it like a seamless garment to his human nature inherited from his mother Mary. “Mary’s motherhood, which began with her fiat in Nazareth, is fulfilled at the foot of the Cross” (XVI, 29/11/2006) “[Mary's] Son first had to be the Child of the Father in order then to become man and be capable of taking up on his shoulders [on the Cross] the burden of a guilty world.” (Balthasar, 1991, p. 74), the fiery sword was quenched by the water at his side. “From the moment of her fiat Mary began to carry all of us in her womb” (XVI, Wednesday, 29 November 2006) (Saint Anselm) so at the foot of the Cross, Mary became Mother of Humanity (John 19:26), Joseph her spouse the protector of the Church, Saint Peter the head of the children of God and Jesus Son of Man as now with the Father by the deliverance of his spirit as Our High Priest. The later act would as the Incarnation brought the fire of tongues that established the Universal Church lead by the Holy Spirit. For Mary to carry hypostatis in her womb the baby genome would have the equal measure of 24 Chromosomes fro
m the Father (God, divine) and 24 from the human mother coalescing in one proposon and one hypostasis. “To imply that Jesus is somehow excluded from ordinary natural laws and biological patterns (including having DNA and male chromosomes) would, in my view” says John Haught, Georgetown University professor of theology, “be a failure to take the incarnation seriously” (Flam, 2008, p. 52) explaining Jesus’ real and concrete form with reference to understanding him as one proposon and one hypostatis, true God and true man consubstantial with God, the Father. “No other historical human being spoke and acted in such a way that soon after his death, his own contemporaries proclaimed him to be equal to the one transcendent God.” (Kereszty, 1991, p. 369) Jesus is the second person of the trinity, made flesh by the third, the Spirit that makes God to man, vice versa, one in holiness. Just as man had become the natural law having dominion over the land (Genesis 1:26), the one of heaven had become incarnate as the one of the earth to save it from original sin that separated Adam and Eve from God. (Genesis 1:26) Blotting that which was good by eating of the fruit that God had forbidden, both were expelled from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:12, 18, 21, 24, “very good” 31, Genesis 2:15, Genesis 3 1:24); “Cursed is the ground because of you.” Man will; “through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you” pointing to Christ’s Cross. “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1: 15) and to do this “he came to reveal the Father (Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22), to do His will (Heb. 10:5-9), to fulfill prophecy (Luke 4:17-21), to reconcile the world (2 Cor. 5:18-21) to become our High Priest (Heb. 7:24-28) “for there is one God (Romans 3:30, 10:12, 1 Cor. 8:4), and one mediator (1 Cor. 8:6, Gal 3:20) between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (Matt 1:1, Rom 1:3) "The idea can exist that God disguises himself as a man in Jesus, or that needing to make himself visible, he makes gestures by means of a human reality which he used in such a way that it is not a real man with independence and freedom, but a puppet on strings which the player behind the scenes uses to make himself audible. But this is mythology, and not Church dogma, even though it may be a fair description of the catechism in many Christians' heads..." (Rahner, 1966, pp. Vol. 4, 118)

  An argument taken up by Lyons, this idea of Christ as a divine puppet is ludicrous as C. S. Lewis writes “of his great humility he chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane.” (Brouwer, 1999, p. 172) Jesus clearly did not wish to die and had made human friends; he freely gave his life so those he loved could freely receive life. (Psalm 51:12; Romans 8:32)

  “The Word of God, incorporeal, incorruptible and immaterial, entered our world. Yet it was not as if he had been remote from it up to that time. For there is no part of the world that was ever without his presence; together with his Father, he continually filled all things and places.” (Athanasius, 4th century) “Within the Virgin he built himself a temple, that is, a body; he made it his own instrument in which to dwell and to reveal himself. In this way he received from mankind a body like our own, and, since all were subject to the corruption of death, he delivered this body over to death for all, and with supreme love offered it to the Father. He did so to destroy the law of corruption passed against all men, since all died in him. The law, which had spent its force on the body of the Lord, could no longer have any power over his fellowmen. Moreover, this was the way in which the Word was to restore mankind to immortality, after it had fallen into corruption, and summon it back from death to life. He utterly destroyed the power death had against mankind—as fire consumes chaff—by means of the body he had taken and the grace of the resurrection. This is the reason why the Word assumed a body that could die, so that this body, sharing in the Word who is above all, might satisfy death’s requirement in place of all. […] The corruption of death no longer holds any power over mankind, thanks to the Word, who has come to dwell among them through his one body.” (Athanasius, 4th century) He was a sinless sacrifice (2Co 5:21; 1 Peter 1:17-21), he purified man with the crucifixion and as the Passover lamb of God salvation to sinners whom as demonstrated with Cain and Able did not know what they were doing, “am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4: 8-10) Jesus understood man as a Son of Man born as a true man from a true God (Nicene Council, 325AD); this understanding comes from the heart of flesh promised and new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26), Jesus says to the repentant thief (that is the Adam whom regrets partaking in the forbidden fruit and expulsion) “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:39-43). Jesus raised high on the cross is the true Saviour of the World, King of Kings, (Bousset, 1970, p. 314) “the true meaning of his kingship is revealed only when he is raised high on the cross” (CCC 440).

  As gazing upon him whom was pierced (Zechariah 12:10; John 19:37), Jesus perfects faith in the Church bringing his teachings to fruition in its magisterial sacraments, the holy anointing of man by Christ. “Forgive them Father” (Luke 23:34) Jesus petitions God the father in familial communion through his human experience as one proposon in Christ in hypostatic union, coming to know him by eating at the table and breaking bread with him, lifting our hearts to him on high who came low to dwell amongst us (Luke 24:13-35). Pope Benedict writes in his memoirs how Josef Pascher, a theologian at the Munich faculty had seen Jesus “by virtue of the Incarnation” (XVI, 1998, p. 50) as becoming the natural law like man, “that is, as a consequence of the Word becoming man: the Word, thus associated himself with the necessity of institutional and legal forms. Pascher had made an interesting intellectual pilgrimage.” (XVI, 1998, p. ibid) Thus revealing that as Benedict writes “intelligence is rich in love and love is rich in intelligence” (XVI, n.d., p. 30.) it is through pondering the Logos in the heart that the realisation of the teachings of Christ come to be known to man through the Incarnation, through the experience of “doing this in memory of me” along the road to God. Like Saint Justin’s reconciliation with philosophy and the Gospel as being of the same wellspring, as the true man of Adam eating of the fruit of the tree of Jessie and becoming one proposon in one hypostatis. Like Cain and Able whom seek to please their Creator with him looking upon each gift according to the ability of man, brothers and co-workers in the same field, longing to unite fully “restless until their heart rests in him” (Saint Augustine).

  Peter Kreft says that "forgiveness is the reason for the crucifixion, and the crucifixion is the reason for the Incarnation," (Kreft, 2001, p. 123) therefore in order for God to reconcile the sinful discord of man to God, Christ had to be of full human experience (Mark 1.41; Luke 19: 41-42; Mark 14: 33-34) and of full divine authority to lift the curse. Pope Benedict XVI writes “[Jesus] comes from God and hence establishes the true form of man’s being. As Paul says, whereas the first man was and is earth, he is the second, definitive (ultimate) man, the ‘heavenly’ man, ‘life giving spirit’ (1 Cor. 15:45-49). He comes, and he is at the same time the new ‘Kingdom.’ He is not just one individual, but rather makes all of us ‘one single person’ (Gal 3:28) with himself, a new humanity.” (XVI, n.d., p. 335) Dietrich Bonheoffer says, “in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form.” (Bonheoffer, 1995, p. 301) “By his death, Christ liberates us from sin; by his Resurrection, he opens the way to a new life” (CCC #654) and “dignity that each human being” writes Pope John Paul II, “has reached and can continually reach in Christ, namely the dignity of both the grace of divine adoption and the inner truth of humanity.” (Paul II, 1979, p. 11.14) Jesus fully human and fully divine in the incarnation God labours to restore man by the sweat of his brow in his passion (Gen. Op. Cit.) to “make all things a new” (Revelation 21:15) as Kreft says through his Crucifixion with the food being the Eucharist. The thorns in Genesis are for the inauguration of His Kingdom by which the Rom
an soldiers crowned him (in the regalia of the “saviour of the world” known since Augustus). Joseph Ratzinger says that “the new humanity that comes from God is what being a disciple of Jesus is all about” (XVI, n.d., p. 335) this is the mystery of the Cross. By being a disciple of Jesus in his mission of a new humanity, the body of Christ is removed from the cross and laid in the tomb by the secret disciple to ensure that the land is not cursed again with Deuteronomy 21:23, he takes upon his shoulders and is hung on a tree by our sins.

  Jesus’ fully human form comes out in his desire not to die, as he says in Gethsemane “may this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39) however he shows his fully divine nature in the familial commune with God as he says “thy will be done not mine” (ibid.), he suffers obedience (Hebrews 5:8) for the sake of man as a true son, a true man. The divine nature can also be seen in his ministry when he grows in knowledge and self-revelation and says “the father and I are one” (John 10:30) as in a familial communion. Christ’s obedience even to death on a cross (Philippians 2:8) reverses the disobedience of Adam (Romans 5:19), from His rib comes the new things (Isaiah 43:19) of rebirth (Corinthians 1 15:45-49, Acts 2:14.22-33). “Received beneath the Cross ...poured out from the pierced Heart of the Son, an incarnation of God’s love for humanity” (Deus Caritas Est, nn. 13-15). Man is reborn as a new creation in a new humanity (2 Corinthians 5:17-21), in his fully human and fully divine natures we are now reconciled by reason for the incarnation in one proposon in one hypostatis. Agape love is a love of all (John 15:13) as God looks upon them and sees it is good, and very good (op. cit. Gen.) by this love we are called into the one body of Christ (Romans 12:5). Although man is made new from Christ (as the new Adam) in his fully human nature, the divine cannot be sinful nor separated therefore Jesus remains “the same yesterday, today and tomorrow” (Hebrews 13:8) the perfecter of man’s faith.

  The sacrifice of God is a stumbling block for the Jewish people (1 Corinthians 1:22-25); and the Gentiles seek wisdom, Saint Justin whom reconciled the Greek philosophy with truth (XVI, 2008, pp. 18-19) tells of how the Logos incarnate came to dwell amongst us as rabbi or teacher, imparter of wisdom (Isa 11:2; Luke 4:1; 1 Cor 1:30). “All the other great religions (except the Jewish) only claim their leaders – Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed, for example – were special teachers sent by God. Christianity claims that Jesus was God himself ‘made man’ and therefore all his teachings has very special authority. The heart of Christianity must be explained in this way.” (Anon., 1961, p. 215)

  The disciples often call Jesus “Rabbi,” (John 3:2) one of those being Saint Peter whom was the first Pope, the keeper of the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, the vault of Christ’s teachings in the magisterium of the church often portrayed as gatekeeper (John 10:1-10; Peter 2:20-25). Saint Justin, philosopher and martyr, tells of an encounter with a mysterious old man on the seashore “Pray that, above all things, the gates of light may be opened to you; for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and his Christ have imparted wisdom.” (XVI, 2008, p. Op.Cit.20) (Dialogue with the Hebrew, Trypho, 7, 3). Another encounter on the seashore was by the way of Saint Augustine whom had asked a child with a shell what he was doing to which he replied trying to take up the ocean, Augustine imparted he could no more do that then take up the whole majesty of God. Therefore Christ had become the vessel shell of God, he had been baptised in the Jordan via the Incarnation to be washed in the majesty of God, and washing the body with mercy could the body become fully immersed in hypostatic majesty. Jesus’ fully human experience comes with Saint John’s baptising of him and of Saint Peter allowing Jesus to wash his feet saying “the master is no greater than the servant and the servant is no greater than the master” (John 13:16; 15:20; Matthew 10:24), “you do not understand this now but later you will.” (John 13:7)

  Thus revealing understanding of Jesus, human and divine, as subject to remembering and pondering things of God in hearts like his earthly mother (Luke 2:19) and how Jesus grew in wisdom in Luke’s Gospel from 12 to 30 (XVI, n.d., pp. 231, 233, 234, 235, 238, 324). “The Cross is his throne, and as such it gives the correct interpretation of this title. Regnavit a lingo Deus-God reigns from the wood of the Cross... Jesus used for himself, according to the Gospels; Son of Man-this mysterious term is the title that Jesus most frequently uses to speak of himself. In the Gospel of Mark alone the term occurs fourteen times on Jesus’ lips.” (XVI, n.d., pp. 321, 322). Don Wilton writes, “The Immaculate Conception was not just about the epitome of love and grace, it was about the willingness of the Son to travel the journey of the human experience.” (Wilton, 2005, p. 28). As fully human Christ “laboured with human hands, thought with a human mind, acted with a human will and loved with a human heart” (VI, 1965, p. 22). Father James Martin SJ cites three things of Jesus that reveal our understanding of Jesus’ fully divine and human natures (SJ, n.d.), he argues shows Jesus’ fully human characteristics which required energy and apathy to save those of contrite hearts (Mark 7.24-37; Matthew 5:22; Mark 14:36). Jesus means ‘God Saves’ Christ ‘Anointed One’ that is in the person of Christ one proposon in one hypostatis, consubstantial with the Father (Acts 2:14.36-41). This can be seen when the woman whom bled touched the fringe of his cloak and was healed showed how his divine and human nature are one person, as he is aware divine power had transferred him through his human senses (Mark 5:25-34; 13:32). Pope Francis says akin to the anointing of Aaron whereby the oil poured down his beard and to the fringe of his cloak, as Christ means anointed that God made known in Jesus anoints his people “the desire of our people to be anointed with fragrant oil, since they know we have [salvation]” (Francis, 2014, p. 109).

  People that “if, according to the flesh the Mother of Christ is one alone, according to the faith all souls bring forth Christ: indeed, each one intimately welcomes the Word of God” (Saint Ambrose, Exposition of the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke, 2:26-27). His fully human nature is reconciled as he is praying to the Father as Moses did but could not see the face of God (Exodus 33:20) with the divine nature that reveals the Father and Son as one, Christ making God visible to and in all (John 12:45; 14:19). As at the crucifixion to ransom man (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), the veil of the temple is torn (Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38) to enable a life giving spirit to possess (Romans 8:11; 1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Galatians 4:6; Ephesians 3:17; 2 Timothy 1:14; 1 John 3:24; 1 John 4:13), “in the first coming [Incarnation] Christ was our redemption; in the last coming he will reveal himself to us as our life: in this lies our repose and consolation” (XVI, 2006) (Saint Bernard, Discourse 5 on Advent, 1) revealing Jesus as “the Human Face of God and Divine Face of Man” (Zenit, n.d.).