The Incarnation...

[IgnatiusJReilly]

I was talking with a guy the other day who said that he abandoned Christianity because of the impossibility of the Incarnation.

His logic went like this:

1. God created everything.
2. Jesus was born of Mary
3. Therefore God created Jesus
4. But, Jesus is God
5. Therefore God created Godself which is impossible (i.e. a house doesn’t build itself).

It’s my understanding that we don’t believe that Jesus is made (begotten not made), but I’m wondering about the human nature of Jesus. Was that made?

From what I’ve read, we believe that the Person of Christ (one Person, two natures) put on humanity. Is this the same as being created human?

 

[FightingFat]

Jesus had to empty Himself of His divinity in order to become man.

Your question reminds me of Karl Rahner’s statement- the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.

 

[IgnatiusJReilly]

I’m in new waters here and, therefore, I don’t have a good handle on the language of this topic. I apologize in advance for being out of my league here.

With that cleared up…

What does it mean that he emptied himself of divinity? Was he no longer divine on earth? But still God?

 

[FightingFat]

He is always God’s divine Word.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

It’s my understanding that we don’t believe that Jesus is made (begotten not made), but I’m wondering about the human nature of Jesus. Was that made?

From what I’ve read, we believe that the Person of Christ (one Person, two natures) put on humanity. Is this the same as being created human?

Hi Ignatius,

You’ve got it. Christ’s Divine Nature was not made, and always existed – since it is God.

Christ’s human nature is a creature – it was created. This includes His Body, His Soul, and the powers of His soul such as His human intellect and human will.

VC

 

[MarcoPolo]

Part of this is “mystery” which cannot be known by man’s reason alone, but only by it being revealed to us. How can someone be 100% human and 100% divine? Jesus was. He is the bridge that reconciled the insurmountable chasm that formed between God and mankind at the Fall of Adam & Eve. He unites humanity and divinity, hence that is why it is only through Him that we can be united with God forever.

 

[Wildgraywolf]

This helped me immensely…

John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God.

John 1:14
…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

 

[IgnatiusJReilly]

Hi Ignatius,

You’ve got it. Christ’s Divine Nature was not made, and always existed – since it is God.

Christ’s human nature is a creature – it was created. This includes His Body, His Soul, and the powers of His soul such as His human intellect and human will.

Ok. If I’m okay there, then I want to tell my friend that his logic fails. The house building itself is not what the Church teaches about the Incarnation because it is not the Person of Christ that is created in the Incarnation but rather the human nature of Christ that is created.

And, now, I’m concerned that this statement I want to make might be heretical.

Because I don’t want to say that Christ’s human nature is an accident (in the Aristotiliean sense). But, if it’s not an accident, then is some essential part of Jesus being created at the Incarnation that didn’t exist before? I’m pretty sure that’s heretical, too.

I know this is a mystery and all that, but as much as possible, I want to give a faithful accounting of what the Church teaches here.

 

[bbentrup]

This segment of the Nicene Creed is very relevant:

We believe in God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
and all that is seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he was born of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.

or the version of the Apostle’s Creed:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

Jesus existed from all eternity, the only begotten son of God, but he was conceived in his human nature by the Holy Spirit and placed in the Virgin Mary’s womb from whence he was born.

Hope that helps.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Ok. If I’m okay there, then I want to tell my friend that his logic fails. The house building itself is not what the Church teaches about the Incarnation because it is not the Person of Christ that is created in the Incarnation but rather the human nature of Christ that is created.

Right.

And, now, I’m concerned that this statement I want to make might be heretical.

Can you make the statement you are concerned about explicit? I’m not sure if you mean the following or something else.

I don’t want to say that Christ’s human nature is an accident (in the Aristotiliean sense). But, if it’s not an accident, then is some essential part of Jesus being created at the Incarnation that didn’t exist before? I’m pretty sure that’s heretical, too.

Complicated topic.
I’m not sure I can do it justice. What I can tell you is that your instincts are correct that Christ’s human nature is **not **an accident.

This doesn’t mean, though, that His human nature is an essential part of Him, because there is another option – the way in fact it actually happened – whereby the human nature is united in the pre-existing Person to the Divine Nature.

In Christ, the Divine Person of the Word perfects the human nature and gives it subsistence – whereas in the case of our human nature the nature has its own subsistence (our own personhood.) This explains why when Christ assumed a human nature He did not also assume a human “personhood” along with that nature. This also shows how when the Word assumed a human nature, the Word or Divine Nature didn’t change, rather the human nature was changed insofar as it was given subsistence by the Divine Person and did not have subsistence by way of human personhood.

Again, complicated topic, and I don’t do it justice. As far as the basic question: is Christ human nature an accident? The answer would have to be no. In fact, I think a Council condemned such a proposition, but I don’t know which one. Anyone know? (Perhaps against Nestorius?)

VC

 

[IgnatiusJReilly]

This doesn’t mean, though, that His human nature is an essential part of Him, because there is another option – the way in fact it actually happened – whereby the human nature is united in the pre-existing Person to the Divine Nature.

That’s what I needed right there. Thanks!

 

[IgnatiusJReilly]

When will I ever learn to go there first?

*470 Because “human nature was assumed, not absorbed”,97 in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ’s human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ’s human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from “one of the Trinity”. The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity:98

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.99*

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Good thinking!

You can say, if you’d like, that in Christ there is only one actor, but two principles of action. In other words, Christ, the Person could choose to act in His human nature or in His Divine Nature, but it was always Him (the Word) who acted.

VC

 

[jimmy]

I’m in new waters here and, therefore, I don’t have a good handle on the language of this topic. I apologize in advance for being out of my league here.

With that cleared up…

What does it mean that he emptied himself of divinity? Was he no longer divine on earth? But still God?

The second person of the Trinity became man. He ‘put on man’ in the words of many of the saints. But He was a divine person. In that one person are both the nature of man and God which maintain the properties of both man and God. So Jesus the Christ is uncreated and created; He is immortal and mortal; He is invisible but visible; both in one person. It is the complete revelation of God. God has become man and taken our nature upon Himself that He might bestow upon us His very nature. And to explain this the prayer of commixture in the Maronite Catholic liturgy says,

You have united, O Lord, your divinity with our humanity and our humanity with your divinity; your life with our mortality and our mortality with your life. You have assumed what is ours,and you have given us what is yours,for the life and salvation of our souls. To you, O Lord, be glory for ever.

This is the whole meaning of the incarnation. Just like Christ was a divine person who took upon Himself the human nature, we are human persons who take on the divine nature. So through Christ we become immortal though we are mortal; uncreated though we are created; all in one person. Christ has descend that He might lift us up. He has emptied Himself(kenosis) that we might be raised.

 

[IgnatiusJReilly]

You can say, if you’d like, that in Christ there is only one actor, but two principles of action. In other words, Christ, the Person could choose to act in His human nature or in His Divine Nature, but it was always Him (the Word) who acted.

Yes, that makes it a lot simpler to communicate. Quite elegant, actually.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Ignatius,

I just thought I’d go back to your friend’s original logic, and comment on it.

His logic went like this:

1. God created everything.
2. Jesus was born of Mary
3. Therefore God created Jesus
4. But, Jesus is God
5. Therefore God created Godself which is impossible (i.e. a house doesn’t build itself).

If you look closely, you can see the problem is in point #3. Your friend is assuming (it’s not an uncommon assumption, really) that the human nature of Jesus had a personhood. But there are not two persons in Christ, only one. If you make the distinction between Person and Nature, your friend’s schema should look like this:

1. God created everything.
2. Jesus, the Person, was born of Mary
3. And God created Jesus’s human nature.
4. But Jesus is God
5. Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God

What do you think?
VC

 

[IgnatiusJReilly]

1. God created everything.
2. Jesus, the Person, was born of Mary
3. And God created Jesus’s human nature.
4. But Jesus is God
5. Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God

What do you think?

That’s right. The doctrine of Mary as Mother of God follows from our belief about the Incarnation. It’s amazing how these ideas just kind of flow into each other.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Yes.

And, I found your friends objection
Ignatius's friend:

. . .a house doesn’t build itself.

to be reminicent of Fr. Robert Southwell’s poem The Nativity of Christ, which reads in part:
Behold the father is his daughter’s son,
** The bird that built the nest is hatch’d therein**,
The old of years an hour hath not outrun,
Eternal life to live doth now begin,
The word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,
Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep.

Although Fr. Southwell is speaking of Mary as the nest, built by Christ.

VC

 

[FightingFat]

I would really recommend a reading of Kelly, J.N.D., Early Christian Doctrines, (Continuum, London, 2006).

This would provide you with a solid background understanding of how these ideas were discussed by the Church Fathers (I think a study of Nicea, Athanasius and Augustine would be very helpful).