[Note: This completes this series of posts. The entire series can be found here on this blog. I have also posted it here as a single html document.]
Conclusion
It may not be hyperbole, nor redundant, to say that for Christianity everything is in some way a reflection of Christology. Ecclesiology is founded on a proper Christology; what you say about the Church you effectively say about Christ. What you believe about the Mysteries (or Sacraments) is an outgrowth of what you believe Christ has come to do. The reverence or inattention you give to Mary comes from your vision of Jesus. Whether or not you believe the classical dogma of the Trinity will determine what you believe about Jesus. Christology is the dogma upon which hang all the unique beliefs and practices of the Christian Faith.
The divisions among Christians are not so monstrous simply in terms of a lack of institutional unity. Rather such divisions are so hideous because they divide not a Church, they sever Christians from one another not merely over whether baptism is necessary to salvation or not, no, such divisions are hideous because they attempt blasphemy: the division of Christ within himself. Whether or not the Church is to have bishops is not a matter of Church polity, it strikes at the heart of what we believe about Jesus. If we believe differently about the Church, we believe differently about Jesus. The implication is inescapable: to preach a different Church is to preach a different Christ. The Incarnation is that central to every particle of our faith.
These several doctrines of Christianity make sense only in light of the Incarnation. Philosophy does not comprehend Christian theology. Philosophy attempts to reduce talk of God to logical syllogism and rational category. But no person can be reduced to a logical formula or defined in a single concept, or even a group of concepts. And if this is true of human persons, how much more the Second Person of the Trinity. Philosophy must reduce God to a concept. But God is not a concept. God is a Person, indeed a Trinity of Persons. Philosophy cannot synthesize this. Confronted by the Incarnation, philosophy is burst asunder, unable to hold together the paradox. Theology shares this same ultimate failure when theology takes its cue from philosophy rather than from prayer, worship and poetry.
But one thing philosophy can witness to is that on Christianity's own unique terms, which is to say, on the terms of the Incarnation, it is coherent. Philosophy may not accept the cornerstone of Christianity, the Incarnation of Christ. But philosophy can attest that having been built on and from that cornerstone, the lines are straight. The various patterns are woven expertly together into a whole so beautiful, so pure, so real that one is left speechless and penitent.
Christ himself has appeared to us. Glorify him.
The Incarnation and Mary
We have already seen how the Incarnation is not just an isolated point of doctrine among a list of other points of doctrine which Christians are called to believe. Rather, the Incarnation is the foundation and limit of all our doctrines, from the Holy Trinity, to salvation, to the Church and Sacraments. But most especially is this so in terms of Mary, our Lord's mother.
Christians believe what we do about Mary precisely on the basis of the Incarnation. If there were no Incarnation, Mary would be among the great saints of the Old Testament, and a worthy exemplar. But it is hard to see how she would be more remarkable, say, than Elijah. That she was, and is, a holy woman, would no doubt be true. However, it is not on account of her holiness that we remember her. We honor her, and call her blessed, because from her our Lord took his humanity, and in her womb he resided for nine months. She is unique among all human beings, and apart from her obedience there would be no Incarnation. God prepared just one woman among all women to bear the Son. Upon her voluntary acquiescence hung all of salvation history.
And because she said yes, because all those years of preparation and her consecration to virginity and her life in the Temple were not in vain, God blessed us in her by sending us his Son through her. Mary was mortal and subject to death as we all are, and she needed the same redemption we need. But she, and no one else, is the Mother of our Lord, and so we honor her with special honor.
It is because of the Incarnation that the Church knew and teaches us, that Mary remained a virgin after the birth of our Lord. It is because of the Incarnation that the Church knew and teaches us, that on Mary's falling asleep, the Lord himself raised her to incorruptibility. It is because of the Incarnation that the Church knew and teaches us, that Mary has a special place among God's saints and a special efficacity in interceding for us. It is because of the Incarnation that the Church knew and teaches us, that the Mother of our Lord is our own Mother, too. It is because of the Incarnation that the Church knew and teaches us, that Our Lady is truly all-holy, Panagia.
Who, believing that Mary held in her womb the Living God, could ever suppose that Mary would not remain virgin? Who, believing that Mary gave birth to the One who redeemed us from death, could ever think that Christ would not also raise her from corruptibility upon her own death? Who, believing that Mary is truly the Mother of our Lord, could ever subscribe to the notion that Mary is no better than us and no more powerful an intercessor for us? Who, believing that her own words indicating all generations would call her blessed, could ever think that she is not, by virtue of the Incarnation, our own Mother, too? Who, believing that the ministry of Christ brought into union the human and divine, believing that by virtue of Christ's baptism in the Jordan all the waters on earth have been blessed, could ever think it improper to call she who nursed at her breast the Great God and Savior of us, all-holy?
All that Mary is to us, she is because the Person who was conceived in her womb, whom she carried for those nine months, whom she bore in a stable, is Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made. All that we believe about Mary is predicated upon her Son. If we believed these things apart from the Incarnation, we may well be suspected of idolatry. But believing in the Incarnation we cannot but believe these things about Mary, and call her what she is, indeed: the Mother of our God.
When one begins seriously to think through the logic of the Incarnation, then it is simple and self-evident: Mary has a unique place in salvation history, and all that we know of her from the Church--in the Church's Scriptures, the Church's worship, and the Church's tradition or life--is manifestly true . . . on the basis of the fact of the Incarnation.
I, myself, did not always understand the Church's devotion to and respect for the Virgin Mary. Good Protestant that I was, I frankly was suspicious of the requesting of Mary's prayers, cast a doubtful eyebrow upward at the Rosary, and would never be caught praying the Akathist to Mary. But all that began to change when I began to think through the implications of the Incarnation. Less than a year after my graduation from Bible college, after careful thought, I began to pray the Rosary from time to time. But even then, that was a rare practice, and I never otherwise asked Mary's intercessions of more fully thought through what the Church knows about Mary.
Until two years ago. It was mid-October 2002, and I was on an individual retreat at a Benedictine monastery in central Michigan. There were many things on my mind that weekend, not the least of which was the subject of the Orthodox Church and several doctrinal matters I'd been studying and meditating on for several months. Among those things on my mind was concern for my marriage. Not that Anna and I were having any serious troubles, but as all couples from time to time experience, I did not then feel that we were as close as we could be. It sometimes felt that we were two individuals, very much in love, but nonetheless more a couple than a union. So, after browsing through the monastery library for a good part of Saturday afternoon, I came across the Akathist to the Theotokos, a long and lyrical hymn about the Virgin Mary. I determined that during the meditation hour after compline, I would pray that prayer. So I did. And at the end of it, I asked Mary to pray for Anna and I, that we would be more one than two.
What I will know relate is simple fact: Within a month of that prayer, Anna was pregnant with our daughter Sofie. Some will scoff at the coincidence. Others will solemnly declare that when it comes to prayer, there are no coincidences. All I can say for sure is that the after-effects of that pregnancy are precisely what I asked for in that prayer, and likely what the Blessed Lady herself asked for as well. Can I prove this to you? No. I will not try. But I know what I believe. And that is enough for me.
Since that time two years ago, the logic of the Incarnation has made its way into my understanding about Mary, Mother of Jesus. And because of the Incarnation, I believe what I do about Mary. She is the Mother of our Lord, and my Mother, too.
More honorable than the cherubim, more glorious beyond compare with the seraphim, O thou who without stain, bore God the Word, true Mother of God, we magnify thee. So did Elizabeth, Mary's cousin. So do I.
[Note: It's been over a month since my last entry in this series. The entire series can be found here. Once complete, I will format the entire series into a single html document and will post the URL for those interested.]
The Incarnation and the Sacraments
When one turns to the Sacraments, or the Mysteries, one has not ceased to have to do with the Church. There are two extremes one may fall prey to here, both of them a separation of the Sacraments from the Church, and both of them denials of the fullness of the Incarnation.
On the one hand one may consider the Sacraments apart from the Church in that they are efficacious on their own merits and the faith of the individual. But Sacraments administered apart from the Church are little more than magical mummery, and something the Reformers rightly reacted against. Parents who, themselves little more than nominal Christians, never darken the doorway of their local parish, but insist on having their children baptized are one example, but not the only one. Christians who make confession and attend worship only once or twice a year are another example. My intent here is not to judge the misunderstandings of otherwise genuinely sincere religious persons, nor to determine their eternal destiny, but to highlight that the Sacraments are the life of the Church in concretum, most especially the Eucharist, on which more in a moment.
On the other hand, one may separate the Sacrament from the Church by the nullification of their reality and efficacy. This is typical of the Protestant response. But this is a response little short of the denial of the Incarnation altogether. Protestants, of course, do not intend to deny the Incarnation. But in asserting that God saves us apart from human cooperation and actions, apart from material things, is to implicitly deny the need for God to save us in the human cooperation and actions of Jesus, and the material things he blessed by his life and work: the cross, bread, wine, children, men, women. If we deny these material elements of the present life of the Church—bread, wine, oil, wood, water—then we must also deny the material elements of the historically located salvation God has accomplished for us. If the one cannot save us now, neither can the other.
But the fact of the matter is that just as those material elements were necessary for the outworking of the grace of God in the time, place, life and ministry of our Lord Jesus, then those same material elements are necessary—yes, necessary—for the outworking of the grace of God in the time, place and ministry of our Lord Jesus today, which means in the Church, who is his Body. When I say necessary, I do not intend to mean that God is not able to save whom he will. This is the age-old and unfathomable mystery of how God will judge those who have never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel. We know only that whatever God will do will be according to his love for all mankind and his great mercy. Rather, by necessary I mean that which God has clearly revealed as necessary for us to do and to believe. Thus, repentance, faith and immersion are necessary elements for the initiation into the grace of God's life. Consumption of the sanctified Gifts of bread and wine are necessary elements for the nourishing of body and soul and for the continuation in that grace into which we have been initiated.
The Sacraments mark and delimit all the major creases in the fabric of human life: birth (baptism and chrismation), growth and maturation (confession and Eucharist), sickness (unction, or the anointing with holy oil), marriage, and worship and prayer (priesthood). Certainly one may do all these things apart from the ministrations of the Church, but in so doing one does not actively participate in the life of the Church. These Sacraments are fundamentally and always about life: its beginnings, its continuation, its healing from disorder, its union of husband and wife who together by God's grace create human life, and with God the source and author of all life.
The Sacraments are given us not as individuals but as members of Christ's Body. The Sacraments, indeed, are given in Christ, in his Body. There are no Sacraments apart from Christ's Body, because there is no life apart from Christ. And if we desire life, we can only find it in Christ, which means we can only certainly find it in his Body, the Church. This life is not some attenuated spiritual realm separate from the material realm—the Incarnation itself reveals to us that life, the life only Christ can give, is a fullness of body and soul. Our salvation is as material as it is spiritual. If we make of our salvation anything less than a salvation of both body and soul, we make a lie of the cornerstone of the Christian Gospel: the Incarnation of God in and as the God-man, Christ Jesus. And because our salvation is both material and spiritual, we must participate in the life of the Church, which means the life given us in the Sacraments.
This is eminently and primarily exemplified in the Eucharist. The Church received from Christ himself the truth that what we now call the Lord's Supper, the Holy Eucharist, is the mysterious reality of the joining of material reality, the bread and wine, with the divine reality, Christ's real presence. This is accomplished in the prayers of the Church (in the person and ministry of the praying priest) for the Holy Spirit to descend upon the bread and wine and to make these things what they really are in the Lord's Supper, the Body and Blood of the Lord. Just as Jesus did not cease to be God in being human, nor cease being human in being God, so the Holy Gifts, sanctified by the Holy Spirit in the prayers of the Church, do not cease being at once bread and wine and Christ's Body and Blood. And in this joining of the human and earthly with the divine and heavenly is accomplished our participation in grace. The Incarnation gives us this truth, and all our life in the Church celebrate it and make it real for us each day.
Indeed, not only does the Holy Eucharist testify to us of the Incarnation, but it gives us, too, the promise of the Resurrection. Just as bread and wine—which in themselves are subject to decay and corruption, and in themselves give no life—when they are made Christ's Body and Blood are raised from death and corruption and made participants of Christ's life, ministering his actual presence to us (and so they are handled with the utmost of reverence and humility by only those specially set apart for this ministry), so too when we partake of that life by consuming them, begin ourselves to participate in the Resurrection from the dead accomplished in Christ.
This participation, in holistic concert with what we know, believe and experience in the Incarnation, not only saves us spiritually but saves us bodily. So we have received from the Church the histories of those handful of saints who were known to have been sustained by consumption of the Holy Eucharist alone, desert dwellers who fasted continuously, eating only the Holy Gifts and only on the occasions in which such Gifts were made available to them.
This participation of the Resurrection is true, however, not only of the Eucharist, though preeminently so, but is true of all the Sacraments. In baptism and chrismation we are raised to newness of life and given a promise of the final Resurrection to come. In confession we are raised from the corruption of our deeds which foster death in us. In the marriage blessing of the Church our human relations, which can only ultimately bring separation and dissolution, we are raised from schism to union, and from death and mortality, new life is given. In holy unction, the disease which is a present foretaste of final death, disorder is put to rout and we are made whole and raised from our beds of corruption. And in ordination to the priesthood all the vocations of men are raised from their infection of selfishness and lust and greed, all the disordered priesthoods of the father in the home, the pagan celebrant before his idols, and that of the fool who worships none but himself, are raised from decay and brought into the only worship and prayer that can give life: the celebration and honoring of the Holy Trinity.
But not only is the Incarnation the centerpiece bringing into coherence our understandings and dogmas of the Trinity, theosis and salvation, the Resurrection, the Church and the Sacraments, it also beautifully explicates the person and place of our Lady, Mary, the Mother of God.
The Incarnation and the Church
The Incarnation is not only the dogmatic center from which the spokes of the Trinity, union with God, and the Resurrection extend, but it is the doctrinal foundation of the Church as well. In fact, I do not think it too hyperbolic to state that ecclesiology is Christology. What we believe about the Church is, and ought to be, a reflection of our belief about Christ. And because the Incarnation is the foundation of our soteriology, what we believe about the Church will also reflect what we believe it means to be saved. That is to say, the doctrines about salvation and the Church are essentially linked to one another, in and through the dogma of the Incarnation.
The Church is Christ's Body. This is often thought of as a metaphor, a comparison between two different things. It is that. But the strength of such a comparison comes only from the reality it purports to limn. Or to say it another way, it only counts as a metaphor because it is true. But if the Church is Christ's Body it shares the same divine-human realities that Christ himself exhibits. If Christ is the theandros, the God-man, then the Church is similarly theandric, divine-human. If, in Christ's Person, the union of two natures was accomplished perfectly, so in the Church is the accomplishment of the union of the human and divine. If in the Person of Christ is the hypostasis which accomplishes the union of the human and divine, without separation, confusion, change or division, and if it is on this union that our salvation is predicated, then our incorporation into the Church is an experience of that hypostatic union, and it is only in the Church that we experience such a salvation.
This divine-human nature of the Church is often overlooked in our mostly Protestant and evangelical culture here in the U.S. Even the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, careful as is her theology, experiences the Protestant influence when her members feel free to hold their own contradictory opinions over the teaching of their church, or live lives in direct violation of her strictures, and still consider themselves members in good standing. (I'm too new to Orthodoxy to comment on Orthodox parish culture here in the U.S.) In many churches, then, on any given Sunday, the Church is not seen as a theandric entity, but rather as a fraternal organization: recite the pledge, pay your members' dues, vaguely own the organization's ethos, but pretty much do what you want, so long as you still get to call yourself "Brother So-and-so." And if ever the Church does or requires something you don't like, lobby to change it, or just leave and go elsewhere.
This is a focus on the human aspect of the Church, though a distorted one, but it completely misses, in an Arian-like heresy, that the Church is as divine as is her Head, the Lord Jesus. And in missing the divine nature it diminishes and distorts the human nature.
The reality is that the Church is a divine entity, while it is a human one. We human members of the Church do not contribute to it its divine element; we are incorporated into its divine life. It is true, that in God's unfathomable wisdom, we humans enter the Church still struggling with the sin and passions which continue to suffuse our persons. But our sinfulness does not diminish the divine reality of the Church. Rather the divine reality, if we freely struggle in concert with that reality, purges us of our sin. Indeed, the necessity of struggling against sin, as lived in our own specific particularities and under guidance of the Church, in the Church's priest or confessor, is part and parcel of being a member of the Church, for the characteristic facet of the life of the Church prior to the consummation is the struggle against sin and the enemies of God.
While the divine nature of the Church bestows upon her divine authority, and while that authority is worked out in the various institutional ways adapted to multiple times and cultures, the institution is not the primary structural form of the Church. If the Trinity is a relation of divine Persons, and if the incarnate Christ was the union of the divine and the human, then the primary structural form of the Church must be the family. God the Father is the heavenly patriarch of the Church, the Father who is iconized in the priest, for the priest (at the authorization of the bishop) is the human representation of Christ, and whoever has seen the Christ has seen the Father. The Churchly family then is one with authority, with hierarchy, but it is a divine-human one, one exercised in grace by faith. The Church is not a democracy, she has a Head, and that Head has given to his ministers authority to loose and to bind. But this authority is familial, so when the heads of the Church consult in council, their decisions are accepted by the faithful family. This is the manifestation of fatherly authority and is no autocracy, for the faithful family may say to her heads, "This is not of the apostles," and she has for not all councils are authoritative. But the Churchly family knows that authority nonetheless has been given and looks to her Bishops for the faithful transmission of the authentic mind and witness of the Church.
This familial, patriarchal mixing of the human and the divine then does not diminish that divinity, though the members of Christ's Body struggle always against their sins and passions, but rather, the divinity of the Church raises the human and deifies it. But this deification can only happen in the Church, for one becomes a Christian not as an orphan but as a newborn child into a large family. Only those certified as members of the family, through the apostolic authority and the grace of God in baptism and chrismation, can have confidence of their heritage. This does not eliminate the possibility, indeed the reality, that orphans have been, are, and will continue to be born to the Church, but these are known to God alone, and his dealings with them are subject to his discretion. One can say with certainty where the Church is, how far extends the familial boundaries. But one cannot so surely say where the Church is not, or what long-lost son or daughter will find their way home in the consummation.
So, the Church is life for us, because in the Incarnation the human is united to the divine, we are deified, and given a family with memories, heirlooms and names, all things which signify for us life. And if the Church is the locus of life and salvation through the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, then the Mysteries (or Sacraments) that it is hers to safeguard and to freely give, are another manifestation of the energetic grace of God and a means of our salvation.
The Incarnation and the Resurrection
The bodily Resurrection of Jesus from the dead follows necessarily from the Incarnation. If it was essential to God's work of accomplishing our salvation that Jesus be fully human and fully divine, that is to say, if it was essential that Jesus have a human body, then the human body is essential to the afterlife. We are not, after all, going to be disembodied spirits in heaven. If our salvation is accomplished bodily, then our resurrection from the dead will be a bodily one. This is borne out in the several resurrection narratives in the New Testament. In Luke 24:39-43, Jesus asks his disciples to “handle him” to see that it is he. He asks them for a piece of broiled fish, which he eats in their presence. In John 20:17, Jesus exhorts Mary Magdalene not to “cling to him” which she could not have done if he were an immaterial spirit. Later in the chapter, at 20:27, he encourages Thomas to put his fingers into the nail marks in his hands, and to place his hand into side. Given Thomas' reluctance to believe Jesus had risen from the dead without tangible proof, one would be hard pressed to understand Jesus' words in any other way than to indicate he is, indeed, a bodily presence. We may well question how it was the nail marks and the spear wound remained as tangible signs of the crucifixion in his resurrected body, but this does not take away from the central point: Jesus rose bodily from the dead. Paul himself continues in this tradition, in 1 Corinthians 15, explaining that the resurrection from death is essential to the Christian gospel, and that such a resurrection involves a body, though such a body is a spiritual one, different, if continuous, with our flesh and blood body.
More to the point, without the Incarnation, the Resurrection is a useless and unnecessary addendum. If there were no Incarnation, then either through moral striving, or through noetic enlightenment, or both, we have our salvation. We need no Resurrection because we need no bodily salvation. It is the bodily aspect of the Incarnation that demands a bodily Resurrection, even if that body is of a kind Paul can only describe as spiritual and heavenly.
Non-Christian religions, and Christian heresies, very much want to downplay or dismiss the Incarnation for an emphasis on the immaterial soul. The material world is maya, or worse, concretely evil. But this sort of understanding doesn't stand up to the sort of unconscious counterevidence we live each day. While many of us may prize, admire, and even envy, the intellectual acumen of our beloved, or the purity of their soul, in point of fact, we also want the body that goes along with that mind and soul. We may well one day discover what it is like to kiss telepathically, but I rather suppose few of us would enjoy it as much as the more conventional kissing we do. We may well miss the mere presence of our beloved when they are absent from us, but it is not a mere presence we wish to embrace. We prefer the warmth of body pressed to body, the tautness of the muscles executing the embrace, the scent of the hair, the fragrance of the perfume. We may occasionally engage in mental fantasy, but what we truly want is the humiliating joy of the sexual embrace. In short, our joy and satisfaction in our beloved is tied to a body. Does it not make sense that our future hope will not be something disembodied, but more truly embodied? I understand both the Scriptures and the Church Fathers and the Saints to affirm that there will be no sexual intercourse in heaven. But I cannot imagine that there will not be embrace.
But my own predilections aside, the logic of the Incarnation and the explicit texts of the Scriptures necessitate a bodily Resurrection. The Church Fathers have said emphatically that nothing that has not been assumed can be saved. Jesus, being fully human as well as fully divine, is the reality of not only a mind, a heart and a soul that is filled and transfigured with Life, but so, too, the flesh, the body. Union with God must include the transfiguration of the physical, if the Incarnation is what Christians claim it to be. God does not merely save our souls, he saves our bodies as well. We see this in the biblical accounts of Jesus' own bodily Resurrection, but in the accounts of the lives of the saints whose bodies withstood impossible physical travails, seeming impervious to the elements. Limbs did not freeze in subzero temperatures. Extremes of fasting did not destroy the flesh, for Life transfigured them and made real Christ's own words: they had food of which we do not know, for their food was to do the will of God.
The Resurrection, just as the Incarnation, is not only about the body, but it is not not about the body. Just as death involves soul and body, so the Resurrection involves soul and body. The principle of death lives in us physically, as well as morally and spiritually. Though we live in a society that takes great pains to hide the fact of death, we do not escape it's reality. We fall sick. We age. We grow old. But the grace of God is that from the moment of our new birth, we begin to experience the Resurrection. Death must still take its toll on us, just as our Lord had to suffer death. But just as death has been swallowed up in the death of Christ, so too, our baptismal death gives us a pledge of our inheritance, so that though outwardly day by day we waste away, inwardly we are being recreated in the new man (2 Corinthians 4:16).
The Incarnation and Union with God
The Incarnation is the lynch pin to the Christian understanding of union with God. In some religions, union with God is accomplished through the acceptance of esoteric doctrines regarding God. In other religions, union with God is accomplished by the divesting of the illusion of selfhood and personhood, the melting, as it were, of oneself into the divine and impersonal essence. But in Christianity, union with God is accomplished only through the God-man, Christ. As Christ, himself, declared: No one comes to the Father, except through him (John 14:6). Union with God is accomplished in and through a particular Person.
Christianity is different from other religions in that union with God is accomplished by grace through faith. It does not preclude human striving, for Christians are called to work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13). But it precludes any possibility of that union on the basis of human effort alone (Ephesians 2:8-10). Christianity is different in that, though it does require the acceptance of certain doctrines, of certain ways of life, for Christ called all Christians to be taught everything he commanded (Matthew 28:20), salvation is not accomplished on the basis of the acceptance of these doctrines alone. It is not merely an intellectual faith. It does not compartmentalize the intellect off from the body, the mind from the heart, the soul from the spirit. It is different also in that, though it does require the taking on of a certain form of living, for Christ called all Christians to obey everything he commanded (Matthew 28:20), salvation is not accomplished on the basis of human effort alone. It is not merely a religion of good deeds.
Christ is neither merely a divine Teacher, or merely a moral Exemplar: he is the Author of Life. Being the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word in whom all things were created, all that he says and does is Life. If we are in union with him, we are in union with the Father and the Holy Spirit, we have life in ourselves. This union with God, this indwelling within us of Life, is accomplished in a synergy of grace and faith with our free will. We will to receive him who comes to us. We will to partake of the divine nature revealed to us and manifest in us. This union is accomplished by grace, not by our mere human striving, through the means of faith, which we both freely will and freely receive as gift.
Contact with this Life within us does not leave us the same, but changes us, transfigures us. We cannot partake of the holy without ourselves being sanctified. We cannot be given life without becoming ever more alive. We must strive always to fight the principle of death which has infected our flesh, soul and spirit. And that striving is painful and costly. It is death to the death which infuses us. We must strive because the principle of free will is never abrogated. We may as freely reject the gift as we freely received it. Union is a process, a way of life, that cannot be said to have been accomplished until we are finally resurrected in the consummation of all things.
Just as Jesus is the union of the human and divine, and in this way, our only way to union with God, so the union with God is a transfiguration in that Life that affects heart, soul, mind and strength. It has been said that nothing that has not been assumed can be saved. Jesus, being fully human as well as fully divine, is the reality of not only a mind, a heart and a soul that is filled and transfigured with Life, but so, too, the flesh, the body. Our striving is not merely one of moral effort, of spiritual war, but a striving that involves “strength” our body. Christian theology is completely holistic: every nook and cranny of our lives is invaded by God's gracious energies. And that invasion, that whole union results in the transformation of all that we are, all the we do, all that we say and think.
This union with God, in short, is pervasive, involving the whole of a human being, body and soul, mind and heart. We know that it is completely transformative because of the relation of the Incarnation with the bodily Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
The Incarnation and the Trinity
Without the Incarnation, we would have no certain knowledge of the Trinity. We would have hints and indications, for our Christ-centered reading can now see them in the holy texts of the Old Testament. But we would have no clear revelation from God. Only the revelation of God in Christ makes known to us the fact that God is a Trinity of Persons. In the Son, God is revealed as the Father; in the Son we are given the promise of the Pentecostal advent of the Holy Spirit. Christ, himself, testified that he and the Father are one (John 10:30), and took on himself the holy Name, “I AM” (John 8:58). In Christ's birth, the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin Mary (Luke 1:35). In Christ's baptism, the Holy Spirit manifested himself with the Father and the Son (Luke 3:21-22). Apart from Christ there is no revelation of the Trinity.
This means that attacks on the reality of the Incarnation, arguments which seek to diminish the truth about Christ's Person, are also attacks and arguments against the teaching of the Trinity, and similarly, arguments against the Trinity are an attack on the Incarnation. If one seeks to diminish the Personhood of Christ, one will also diminish the Personhood of the Father and the Holy Spirit. But if we diminish the Personhood of the members of the Trinity, we no longer have a Trinity, but a variety of modes in which God manifests himself. We may still ascribe Personhood to God (as does Judaism and Islam), but we have no Trinity.
Yet if we have no Trinity, we have no Christianity. The belief in the Trinity is inscribed in the Nicene Creed, the only affirmation of faith accepted universally by all the Church. I do not mean to denigrate the other creeds (such as the Apostles' Creed) which have come down to us, but rather to emphasize that the one Creed which has universal acceptance from all the Church necessitates a Trinitarian understanding of God for all Christians. So, if we deny the Incarnation, we deny the Trinity which Christ revealed to us, and, in effect, we deny the Christian Faith.
I have drawn some sharp lines of demarcation here, with regard to the implications of the Incarnation and belief in the Trinity, a line which says, “This is Christian” and “This is not Christian.” But I want to emphasize why the conjoining of the Incarnation and the Trinity is both important and a blessing to us.
If God is not a Trinity of Persons, as Jesus revealed, then Christ is little more than an avatar, the embodiment of a divine principle or force, but not fully God. God is making a revelation in Christ, if Jesus is nothing but an avatar, but is not revealing himself (Hebrews 1:3). Furthermore, Jesus cannot be a unique manifestation of God, since there can be many avatars of God without diminishing other manifestations. Yet if Jesus is uniquely God, not only can he reveal God's Person, God himself, to us, but there can be no other manifestation of God that attains this revelation or reaches this height of glory. In other words, if there is no Trinity, as classically understood, then Jesus is not uniquely God in the flesh. He may be an avatar, but there may be greater avatars to come. Jesus need hardly be considered the last and greatest. Furthermore, if Jesus is only an avatar, he does not fully manifest God or the divine principle. He may represent the highest revelation yet known, but this hardly need be a complete and final revelation. Furthermore, if there were no Incarnation, we would have no knowledge of the Trinity. The two doctrines are inseparably connected at the point of the Person of Jesus.
The blessing of the revelation of the Trinity in the Incarnation is that God is revealed as both a unified essence and as a union of Persons. God is a unique being, a singular essence, of which like there is no other. If God were not a Person we would be hard pressed to avoid the risk of failing to distinguish this essence from any other unique physical or metaphysical essence. For all we know, God may just be something like gravity, or the mystical aether once thought to form the essence within which the universe existed. But if God is a Person, even a Person distinctly different from our human experience of personhood, then not only is he supremely unique, as he may be as a force, but more to the point, it is possible to have fellowship with him, for only persons can said to be in fellowship with one another. I have accidental encounters with rocks. I do not have fellowship with them. I may “know” rocks, but not in the same way I know my wife. Or, for that matter, God.
In other words, the Incarnation opens up the reality of the Trinity to us—dimly as we can comprehend it—which itself opens up the real possibility of relationship, fellowship with God. We can relate to God as persons. We need not annihilate our personhood so as to achieve some sort of impersonal union with an impersonal force or principle. We may, as it were, become ever more human, not less, in our fellowship with God.
Which brings me to the next implication of the Incarnation: the accomplishment of union between ourselves and God.
The Reality of the Incarnation
Let's be absolutely clear on this: if one does not understand the Incarnation correctly, one will not live correctly other Christian doctrines. If one tends to emphasize the divine attributes of Jesus (and thus in some way to deny the human aspects), in sort of a Gnosticism or adoptionism, then one will emphasize belief over action, inner spiritual-emotional states over the pragmatic struggle of living in the ways Jesus lived, and participating in his life. If one tends to emphasize the human attributes of Jesus (and thus in some way to deny the divine aspects), in a sort of docetism, then one will emphasize the more superficial behavioral states of Christianity, indeed, to steer towards chilianism (the heresy of utopia) over the proper adherence to the Faith once for all delivered to the saints. Only a correct understanding of the Incarnation can keep the human being whole and avoid the anthropic schism which dehumanizes. Of course, being correct on the Incarnation does not guarantee correctness on other doctrines; one may still go wrong in some way. But the centrality of the Incarnation necessitates proper fidelity to God's revelation in Christ: it is the plumb line of the Christian Faith.
God's supreme revelation to humankind was not given in a nation, nor in a written text. God's last word to us is his Son (Hebrews 1.1-4). The fulfillment of his Covenant is the Person of Christ. There is nothing else left for God to do: his final will has been accomplished in Jesus of Nazareth, though it is clear that this accomplishment is even now being worked out in the final consummation of all things.
It is precisely this single ultimate revelation in Christ that is the focal point, the beginning and the end, of all Christian theology. If God did not take on human flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ, then all that Jesus said and did, however we may construe it as noble and exemplary, is empty of meaning and promise. But if Jesus is whom he claimed to be, if the Second Person of the Trinity did, indeed, receive our humanity from Mary, then everything he said and did changes everything we say and do, all our thoughts and inner passions. If Jesus is he who is from everlasting, then every particle of our physical being, all the invisible inner stuff that makes us uniquely who we are, soul and spirit, thought and energy, bone and sinew, every breath and surge of blood, is changed, transfigured in the glory that is his.
The Incarnation matters. On it depends everything that ever was, is, or ever shall be.
[Note: This is the first post of a multi-part essay on the Incarnation.]
Introduction
It all starts with the Incarnation. Take away the Incarnation and all of Christian theology falls apart. Christianity is utterly unique—whatever similarities it shares with other faiths—on this one point alone: it teaches as non-negotiable dogma that Jesus is God-made-flesh. Take that away and the doctrine of the Trinity falls apart, as does the promise inherent in Jesus' bodily Resurrection from the dead, and of union with God in Christ. So, too, does the doctrine of the Church and her Sacraments, as well as the proper understanding of Mary. All of these uniquely Christian doctrines, these ways of life, are emptied of any reality if the Incarnation is taken away.
This is why insistence on absolute fidelity to the Christian teaching and way of life on the Incarnation is crucial. Everything uniquely Christian about our faith depends on it. If you go wrong on the Incarnation, you cannot go right on any other doctrine. In terms of the standard on Christian teaching on the Incarnation, one must look to the definition given at the council of Chalcedon (here):
Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us.
Simply put: in Jesus' one Person are two natures and two wills, human and divine, operating in perfect union and harmony, providing for us in his Person a bridge to the Father, and not a bridge only but the single means of union with God, of a partaking of the divine nature.