The Incarnation

[Mermaid]

Hello All. I’ve been discussing the Incarnation with a non-Christian friend, and she posed a couple of questions to me that I am not able to answer. Perhaps you can help. Her questions are:

Question 1: Since Chrisitians worship Jesus as the Christ, and they believe Him to be both fully divine and fully human, does the enfleshment of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity constitute a fundamental change and/or addition to God? In other words, did God take something that is essentially the product of Creation (human flesh) and “add” it to Himself?

Question 2: Since Christians worship a Being that is fully divine but also fully human, are they guilty of idolatry in that they worship something created, i.e. the flesh taken by Jesus Christ?

I admit that I am at a loss as to how to answer my friend. If anyone here could shed some light on this, I would be most grateful. :whacky:

Thanks.

 

[JCPhoenix]

Mermaid:

Question 1: Since Chrisitians worship Jesus as the Christ, and they believe Him to be both fully divine and fully human, does the enfleshment of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity constitute a fundamental change and/or addition to God? In other words, did God take something that is essentially the product of Creation (human flesh) and “add” it to Himself?

Question 2: Since Christians worship a Being that is fully divine but also fully human, are they guilty of idolatry in that they worship something created, i.e. the flesh taken by Jesus Christ?

Thanks.

Your friend must come at you from an atheistic perspective. Ask him who is the AUTHOR of creation?

Jesus was born of a Virgin. Why? To interrupt the flow of the Creation he himself created…born of a woman, but concieved through the Holy Spirit–this broke the chain of original sin. (I’m sure this concept is beyond your friend, so don’t bring it up).

God created us, as human beings of flesh in a necessarily finite world. He sent us his only begotton son, which is the physical person of the Holy Trinity. We are physical, and we need the physical to relate to. And as we are created in God’s image, we are also both flesh and spirit–and God is all spirit, God is infinite, and he can do whatever he wants. So he came as flesh to save us from our fleshly desires and sins in such a way that we can observe and unite our own sufferings to his own.

So your friend either betrays his own actual doubts or contradicts himself with his question. How could God take something “created” and "add " it to himself? This is nonsense. God is the CREATOR, he makes the rules and he does the creating. Your friend’s question denies the authority and the authorship of God and puts it on another plane. He implies that God is not the source of all life and all existance. He implies that God is taking something created by some other and “adds” it to himself…and this is nonsense.

Secondly,

If God chooses to create for himself a 3rd person, namely Jesus Christ, as flesh, it is not idolatry for Jesus was sent. Jesus actually said, “He who believes in me believes not so much in me as in the Father who sent me”. (I"m not sure of the actual wording). How, then, would worshiping Jesus be idolatry? When we worship Jesus, we worship God. Jesus was created by God, and is an extension of God as another person of the Trinity.

The Holy Trinity is a mystery our created, finite minds cannot grasp. Show your friend a triangle. At the top, is God (God is completely spirit, he has no gender), and pick another point…this is Jesus. The 3rd point is us, Creation. The last person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit.

God created Jesus, his son, through the Holy Spirit, through our Blessed Mother, a human, to help us become one in the very body of Christ. God and Jesus then love us through the Holy Spirit, forming the complete triangle–we, the Creation of God, are one with him, but only through the intercession of Mary and her divine/human Son, Jesus.

I’m not sure I explained that very well…I just don’t have the right words to express this. So please, someone, explain this more clearly.

God reaches us where we’re at and came to us because without intervention we as the created ones have no ability to even exist in and of ourselves.

 

[JimG]

A clarification: Christians don’t worship a “Being” that is fully divine and also fully human. Rather, in Jesus we worship a Person. That Person is a divine person, not a human person.

That Person, God the Son, the Word begotten of the Father, is a divine Person with a divine nature, who, in order to effect our salvation, took on a human nature (but not a human person.)

In taking on a human nature, God did not add anything to the divine nature. The divine nature is already All in All. In some sense, you might say that he “added” divinty to humanity, in that God the Son took on a human nature.

 

[barsapp]

Benedict XIV, from the Constitution, "Nuper ad nos., March 16. 1743

1463 Chalcedon [see n. 148], fourth in order, and I profess that which was defined against Eutyches and Dioscorus, both of execrable memory, that the one and same Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, was perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, true God and true man consisting of rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father in regard to His divinity, and consubstantial with us in regard to His humanity, in all things similar to us, without sin; that before time He was born of the Father according to divinity, but that in these latter days the same One, for us and for our salvation, was born of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, according to humanity, and that the one same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten must be recognized in the two natures without confusion, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably, never removing the difference of the natures because of their union, and preserving the peculiar character of each nature joined in one Person and substance; that this same Lord is not separated and divided into two persons, but is one and the same Son and Only-begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ: likewise that the divinity of our same Lord Jesus Christ, according to which He is consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is impassible and immortal; moreover, the same Lord was crucified and died only in the flesh, as was also defined in the said Synod and in the letter of St. Leo, the Roman Pontiff [cf. n. 143 f.], by whose mouth, the Fathers in the same Synod declared that Blessed Peter the Apostle spoke, and by this definition there is condemned also that impious heresy of those who, when the Trisagion transmitted by the angels was being sung in the aforementioned Synod of Chalcedon: “Holy God, strong God, immortal God, have mercy on us,” added these words: “Who was crucified for us,” and thereby asserted that the divine nature of the three Persons was passible and mortal.

 

[pilchard]

Brilliant answer by JimG… both the accusation of Idolatory and the quesiton about God “adding something” to Himself are answered by a consideration of Jesus’ Personhood. In worshiping Jesus we enter into a relationship with a PERSON - and Jesus is not a human person but a divine person. God remains unchanged by the incarnation becasue God’s personhood - Father Son and Holy Spirit remains. There is no human person to be added - because Jesus’ personhood was divine

Brilliant answer.

As regards answering your friends quesiton - I guess you might try and develop an analogy based on our experience of RELATIONSHIP. When we fall in love with someone we fall in love not with a being - but with a PERSON. The world turning upside down experience can hardly be casued / explained in terms of the physical. The personhood of ones object of affection transcends all such considerations.

Was it Blondel who said: Material things have to be known to be loved. Spiritual things have to be loved to be known