catholicism 101 / part 17

Catholicism
101

(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)

Church of the Holy Cross

June 28, 2008

Part 17

Christian Duty:  Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds: Concerning God:  Jesus Christ: The Incarnation (2)

-      The Purpose of the Incarnation (why was God made man?)

o  To save us, to redeem us from sin, certainly.

o  Had there been no sin, would God have become incarnate?

§  We don’t know for sure – it is not a part of the deposit of faith, and the Church does not deal in counterfactuals:  the narrative of salvation is about the data – what is given. Christian doctrine is concerned with facts.

§  Though we don’t know for sure whether, or in what form, the incarnation of God might have happened had there been no sin, yet there are reasons to believe that God would have become incarnate in any case.

·     Fr Staley says “…there are weighty reasons for believing that God’s purpose of becoming man was prior to and independent of the fall.”

·     As we saw last time:

o  The Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon) put it
this way (against the “Monophysites”):  “We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. 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.”

o   This is important because it means that the life, the power, the immediate influence of the Godhead was in all that Christ
did and said, every moment of his life on earth; it means that the words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth are the words and actios of God himself, and that they are therefore salutary in an ultimate way:  they save us.

·     This is the greatest gift imaginable:  that our very nature, who we are, is transformed by being united to God in Christ.  Who we are is now, and is forever, wrapped up in Who God is, because who we are has been hypostatically, irrevocably, united to who He is.

·     It is difficult to imagine that this greatest of all possible gifts is only given because of sin, that we are better off because of our rebellion.

·     But that is a strand of Christian belief:

Adam lay y-bounden

Bounden in a bond;

Four thousand winter

Thought he not too long;

And all was for an apple

An apple that he took,

As clerkes finden written

In theire book.

Ne had the apple taken been,

The apple taken been,

Ne hadde never our Lady

A been heaven's queen.

Blessed be the time

That apple taken was!

Therefore we may singen

'Deo Gratias!'

            (Anonymous c. 1450)

·   But something about this doesn’t seem right, and if it is not right, then what can we deduce about the purpose of the incarnation?

o  “It is that the whole creation may be united to the Creator, God choosing man’s nature for this end, since man is the
representative [the priest] of creation.”

§  Cf. Hebrews 2.10:  “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.”

§  Cf. also Ephesians 1.9f: “For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

o  Had there been no sin, no fall, there may well have been an incarnation (indeed, I think it is safe to assume there would have been), but the Lord would certainly not have had to suffer and die.  His suffering and death are the consequence of sin.  Sin makes his suffering necessary.

§  Our response to this fact must be gratitude, thanksgiving, EUCHARIST, and praise to God, because despite the fact that we despised his love for us and turned away from him, he was not deterred in his plan to be united to us forever, but accomplished it anyway, even though the price for him was the suffering and death of Jesus.  God could have
scrapped the whole show and been within his rights.  Instead, he sent his only Son, though it meant his Son would suffer horribly, and die.

§  That is the greatness of God’s love, and that is the truth about who God is, which is disclosed totally on the cross.  There is nothing more to learn about God.  That’s why Paul says “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2.2).  Because that’s all there is to know:  that our rebellion could not quench God’s love, “though involving the incarnate god in the added humiliation of suffering as the fruit of our sins.”