Notes on the Incarnation, October, 1999
FOCUS School for Ministry, Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida
Daniel Prechtel

AGAINST GNOSTICISM AND DUALISTIC SPLIT OF CREATION AND SPIRIT

“For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that might receive the adoption of sons?”
St. Irenaeus, 2nd century, Against Heresies, Book III, Ch. 19

“The glory of God is a person, fully human, fully alive.”
St. Irenaeus, 2nd century

AGAINST ARIANISM,  THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINITY AND HUMANITY OF CHRIST--EASTERN THEOSIS

“For he was made man that we might be made divine; and he manifested himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and he endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.”
St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 4th century defense against Arianism

Nicene Fathers emphasis on Jesus as the restorer of the imago dei in humanity.
Gregory of Nazianzus-- “what has not been assumed has not been healed.”

Council of Chalcedon, 451, formalized the tension of the two natures of Christ, divine and human.  The source of salvation has to be God, but the focus of salvation must be a human being.

6TH CENTURY RULE OF ST. BENEDICT

Chapter “On Reception of Guests”:
All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ (RB 53:1)
Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received; our very awe of the rich guarantees them special respect.(RB 53:15)

AROUND THE 12TH CENTURY, SHIFT FROM LEGALISTIC REDEMPTION EMPHASIS TO COMPASSIONATE NATURE OF GOD THROUGH JESUS’ HUMANITY

Jesus became a human being because God the compassionate One
could not suffer and lacked a back to be beaten.
God needed a back like our backs on which to receive blows
and thereby to perform compassion as well as to preach it.
Meister Eckhart, 13th century Rhineland mystic (Meditations with Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox)
 
 

CHRIST CONTINUING TO BE INCARNATED IN US

What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son
takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself?
And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and if I am not also full of grace?
What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son
if I do not also give birth to him in my time and in my culture?
This, then, is the fullness of time;
When the Son of God is begotten in us.
Meister Eckhart, 13th century Rhineland mystic (Meditations with Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox)

AWARENESS OF THE UNIVERSAL CHRIST

“As Kingfisher’s Catch Fire” Gerard Manley Hopkins
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is --
Christ -- for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

INCARNATIONAL BASIS FOR SPIRITUALITY (INCLUDING SACRAMENTAL UNDERSTANDING) AND SOCIAL ACTION

Ethicist F.D. Maurice (1808-1872)
Kenneth Leech writes: “Maurice held that all humans beings were created in God’s image and knit together in Christ, and that baptism was the sacramental recognition and assertion of what was already in principle the case. For Christ had ‘entered into the state of the lowest beggar, of the poorest, stupidest, wickedest wretch whom that Philosopher or that Pharisee can trample upon’, in order that he might ‘redeem the humanity which Philosophers, Pharisees, beggars and harlots share together.’”(Leech, Experiencing God, 246-247)

Steward Hedlam (1847-1924) articulated Christian Socialist Movement in Britain:
“You are literally, as he himself said, feeding, clothing, housing Jesus Christ when you are feeding, clothing, housing any human being; bad food, ugly clothes, dirty houses, not only injure the body, but injure the soul; nay more, they do great injury unto God himself.” (Leech, 247)
“[In] light of the incarnation, the present contrast between rich and poor cannot be justified for a moment. In light of the incarnation, the social revolution, in the plain meaning of the words, is justified, nay, demanded.” (Leech, 248)

Conrad Noel (1869-1942) incarnation as the continuing process of God’s sanctification and transformation of the world:
“God is perpetually ‘intruding’ himself into this world, and is himself its very substance. Every wayside flower is a sacrament of his Body and Blood, and every human heroism a revelation. This is the Catholic Faith which except a man believe faithfully, without doubt he will shrivel into mean and narrow death.” (Leech, 250)

Russian Orthodox greeting, similar to passing the peace:
“In your eyes I see the face of Christ.”

Press here to return to Lamb & Lion Spiritual Guidance Ministries.