Tag: incarnation
God became sarx
It’s a little-known fact that we Orthodox don’t celebrate Christmas. Sorta. We celebrate the Nativity according to the flesh of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ.
I’ve been reminded several times within the past few days, months removed from Christmas, of the oddness of this expression according to the flesh, and even the crudeness of the terminology in the original language. God became sarx – meat; that’s the crude word that gets blanded down in English as “flesh.”
But first, a patristic snippet:
Come, then, let us observe the Feast. Truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the Nativity. For this day the ancient slavery is ended, the devil confounded, the demons take to flight, the power of death is broken, paradise is unlocked, the curse is taken away, sin is removed from us, error driven out, truth has been brought back, the speech of kindliness diffused, and spreads on every side, a heavenly way of life has been ‘in planted on the earth, angels communicate with men without fear, and men now hold speech with angels.
Why is this? Because God is now on earth, and man in heaven; on every side all things commingle. He became Flesh. He did not become God. He was God. Wherefore He became flesh, so that He Whom heaven did not contain, a manger would this day receive. He was placed in a manger, so that He, by whom all things arc nourished, may receive an infant’s food from His Virgin Mother. So, the Father of all ages, as an infant at the breast, nestles in the virginal arms, that the Magi may more easily see Him. Since this day the Magi too have come, and made a beginning of withstanding tyranny; and the heavens give glory, as the Lord is revealed by a star….
To Him, then, Who out of confusion has wrought a clear path, to Christ, to the Father, and to the Holy Ghost, we offer all praise, now and for ever. Amen.
(St. John Chrysostom, “Homily on Christmas Morning”)
Imagine here my frequent disclaimer of being a theolgian.
The Church early on insisted on emphasizing the incarnation because it was true, it was scandalous, and a current heresy threatened to spiritualize Jesus away.
That era was shot through with gnostic dualism, wherein the flesh and spirit not only were separate, but the flesh was pretty base and embarrassing. Men were to transcend the flesh. Surely God would have nothing whatever to do with it. Apart from the Jews, few in that era even believed God had created this nasty, stinky old material world.
But flesh and spirit aren’t separate. We’re unified persons, and our personhood is inseparable from our bodies. That’s why Christians treat the body with respect. That’s at least part of why the Church historically has disallowed cremation.
(That’s even why marriage is gendered, not unisex. Men and women, moms and dads, are not fungible – but I’ll let someone else address that if you’re interested.)
So great is the dignity of human sarx that the second person of the Trinity, having assumed it (as celebrated at the Nativity according to the flesh of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ), did not leave it behind when he ascended again to the Father.
He remains incarnate. The Incarnation is forever.
That is why Christian churches should, and some do, still celebrate the Ascension. It is difficult to imagine that those for whom God-in-the-Flesh, Theanthropos, acsending to God the Father in human flesh is no big deal, are adherents of the Christian faith in any serious sense.
Gnosticism has lingered for 2000 or more years. I guess the urge to think that it doesn’t matter what your body does so long as “your heart’s right” is damned near irresistible.
But there is no room for gnosticism in the Christian faith proper, even if it persists in Christendom. God becoming human sarx drove a silver stake through that monster’s heart.
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I wrote the material above before I began my Lenten reading, including Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon’s The Jesus We Missed. I suspect that before I’m done, I’ll wonder why I presumed to write anything so puerile as this.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
The Logic of the Incarnation
I was talking this week to someone who formerly had a socially respectable degree of Christian faith, but seems to have lost it to a socially acceptable degree now. He was patiently alluding, for the benefit of the folks he knew were more robustly religious and needed an analogy to raise their consciousness, to the equal absurdity of all religions:
We laugh at the idea of Joseph Smith finding stainless steel plates and translating them with special glasses and angelic assistance, but a virgin getting pregnant and bearing the Savior of the world seems perfectly logical to us.
Well, actually, no. It doesn’t seem logical at all. The Incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is more scandalous than logical, and is at best a major paradox:
Today He Who holds the whole creation in His hand is born of a Virgin.
He Whose essence none can touch is bound in swaddling-clothes as a mortal man.
God, Who in the beginning fashioned the heavens, lies in a manger.
He who rained manna on His people in the wilderness is fed on milk from His mother’s breast.
The Bridegroom of the Church summons the wise men;
the Son of the Virgin accepts their gifts.
We worship Your birth, O Christ.
We worship Your birth, O Christ.
We worship Your birth, O Christ.
Show us also Your Holy Theophany!
Bah! Humbug! That sort of thing offendeds just about everyone who heards of it. God is god and humanity is humanity and never the twain shall meet in actual history. Everybody knows that. We really prefer it that way. There’s probably even something in the Constitution about it. It’s related to the ease with which we “evicted Him from public schools,” isn’t it?
The earliest pan-heresy, Gnosticism, tried in various ways to make Jesus’ incarnation logical – to take off the rough edges. The Proto-heretic Arius cleaned it up by making Jesus Christ a (mere) creature. Thomas Jefferson made his own spiffy little Bible that took out that parts that offended him.
That’s probably how most heresies start: trying to make things logical, as if we understood God well enough to tidy up after Him. (I owe that insight to Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon.)
So if you think that the event we Christians are celebrating today is logical, you’re probably celebrating some distorted and sanitized version. But if you think it’s shocking, you might just be onto something.
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Saturday, August 11, 2012
Holy Friday thoughts
First, repeated from last Holy Week, some excerpts from the Orthodox services of Great and Holy Friday (from Fordham University), with apologies for formatting and with an inserted video of the beloved, now reposed, Bishop Job singing the 15th Antiphon.
TODAY JUDAS FORSAKES THE MASTER
AND TAKES THE DEVIL AS HIS FRIEND.
HE IS BLINDED BY THE PASSION OF AVARICE.
DARKENED, HE FALLS FROM THE LIGHT.
HE SOLD THE SUN FOR THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER.
HOW THEN, IS HE ABLE TO SEE?
BUT HE WHO SUFFERS FOR THE WORLD HAS RISEN AS THE DAWN FOR US!
TO HIM LET US CRY ALOUD:
YOU SUFFER FOR US AND WITH US: GLORY TO YOU!TODAY JUDAS COUNTERFEITS PIETY
AND DEPRIVES HIMSELF OF THE GIFT OF GRACE.
THE DISCIPLE BECOMES A BETRAYER.
IN A GESTURE OF FRIENDSHIP HE CONCEALS DECEIT.
HE FOOLISHLY PREFERS THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER TO THE MASTER’S LOVE
AND BECOMES A GUIDE FOR THE LAWLESS ASSEMBLY.
BUT LET US GLORIFY CHRIST, OUR SALVATION!…
HE WHO CLOTHES HIMSELF WITH LIGHT AS WITH A GARMENT
STOOD NAKED FOR TRIAL.
HE WAS STRUCK ON THE CHEEK BY HANDS THAT HE HIMSELF HAD FORMED.
A PEOPLE THAT TRANSGRESSED THE LAW
NAILED THE LORD OF GLORY TO THE CROSS.
THEN THE CURTAIN OF THE TEMPLE WAS TORN IN TWO.
THEN THE SUN WAS DARKENED,
UNABLE TO BEAR THE SIGHT OF GOD OUTRAGED,
BEFORE WHOM ALL THINGS TREMBLE.
LET US WORSHIP HIM.…
THUS SAYS THE LORD TO THE JEWS:
MY PEOPLE, WHAT HAVE I DONE TO YOU,
OR HOW HAVE I OFFENDED YOU?
TO YOUR BLIND, I GAVE SIGHT, YOUR LEPERS I CLEANSED,
THE PARALYTIC I RAISED FROM HIS BED.
MY PEOPLE, WHAT HAVE I DONE TO YOU,
AND HOW HAVE YOU REPAID ME?
INSTEAD OF MANNA, GALL; INSTEAD OF WATER, VINEGAR;
INSTEAD OF LOVING ME, YOU NAIL ME TO THE CROSS.
I CAN BEAR NO MORE.
I SHALL CALL THE GENTILES MINE.
THEY WILL GLORIFY ME WITH THE FATHER AND THE SPIRIT,
AND I SHALL GIVE THEM LIFE ETERNAL.TODAY THE CURTAIN OF THE TEMPLE IS TORN IN TWO
TO CONVICT THE TRANSGRESSORS,
AND EVEN THE SUN HIDES HIS RAYS,
SEEING THE MASTER CRUCIFIED.THE CHOIR OF THE APOSTLES CRIES OUT TO YOU,
O LAWGIVERS OF ISRAEL, SCRIBES AND PHARISEES:
BEHOLD THE TEMPLE WHICH YOU DESTROYED!
BEHOLD THE LAMB WHOM YOU CRUCIFIED!
YOU DELIVERED HIM TO THE TOMB, BUT BY HIS OWN POWER HE AROSE.
DO NOT BE DECEIVED, O JEWS.
HE IT IS THAT SAVED YOU IN THE SEA AND FED YOU IN THE WILDERNESS.
HE IS THE LIFE, THE LIGHT AND THE PEACE OF THE WORLD.…
TODAY HE WHO HUNG THE EARTH UPON THE WATERS IS HUNG ON THE TREE.
THE KING OF THE ANGELS IS DECKED WITH A CROWN OF THORNS.
HE WHO WRAPS THE HEAVENS IN CLOUDS IS WRAPPED IN THE PURPLE OF MOCKERY.
HE WHO FREED ADAM IN THE JORDAN IS SLAPPED ON THE FACE.
THE BRIDEGROOM OF THE CHURCH IS AFFIXED TO THE CROSS WITH NAILS.
THE SON OF THE VIRGIN IS PIERCED BY A SPEAR.
WE WORSHIP YOUR PASSION, O CHRIST.
WE WORSHIP YOUR PASSION, O CHRIST.
WE WORSHIP YOUR PASSION, O CHRIST.
SHOW US ALSO YOUR GLORIOUS RESURRECTION.
…
Beholding her own lamb led to the slaughter, Mary followed with the other women, in distress and crying out: Where do You go, my child?
Why do You run so swift a course? Surely there is not another wedding in Cana to which You now hasten to change water into wine? Shall I
come with You, my child, or shall I wait for You? Give me a word, for You are the Word. Do not pass me by in silence, for You kept me
pure.
…
Second, an excerpt from another old post that reflects my 20 years as a Calvinist after nearly 30 years as an Evangelical and before I became Orthodox:
Will Campbell, formerly a hero of mine (I’ve not kept up with him), was taunted by a skeptical friend to summarize his “simple Gospel” in ten words or less.
…
But I recently encountered a school of theology, the leading proponent of which boiled the Gospel down by another 50%: “The Word became flesh.”
The theologian was John Williamson Nevin, a mid-19th century theologian, who together with his better-known colleague, Philip Schaff (whose name is associated with public domain English translations of the Early Church Fathers), considered himself a true Reformed theologian, in opposition to both Puritanism and Revivalism, then respectively the emeritzed and regnant errors pretending to the “Reformed” title.
…
But Campbell’s formulation is a relatively revivalist version compared to Nevin’s incarnational version. And the spirit of those two versions is vastly different.
In the revivalist version, The Fall really ticked God off, and the incarnation was merely a set-up; God the Son couldn’t be crucified for our sins, to cure God’s anger problem, until he became human and grew up. The center, the big deal, the only part that matters, is the atonement — viewed as the assuaging of God’s anger — at Calvary.
To Nevin, though, the incarnation is inseparable from the atonement, the “at-one-ment,” of God and humanity, as God the Son even took our glorified human flesh back to heaven with Him at His ascension. We are, in a real sense, united with Christ in His humanity, not just in His divinity — and that union is cemented again and again in the Eucharist, where we partake of His Body and Blood, not merely being reminded, in a heightened sense, of His divinity and His joining us for just long enough to die for us.
…
There’s little doubt that Nevin was much closer to Catholicism and Orthodoxy than are the Puritan and Revivalist counterfeit Calvinists ….
It would be disingenuous as well as speculative to say that “I would still be Reformed if Nevin had prevailed over [Revivalist Zwinglian Charles] Hodge.” The way I came to Orthodox Christianity doesn’t allow that kind of speculation readily, quite apart from it being based on an imaginary world. I would be more inclined to speculate that “if Nevin had prevailed, Reformed theology would be part of a ‘big tent’ Catholicism/Orthodoxy today.” If that had happened, I think I’d still prefer “Orthodox Orthodoxy” over “Reformed Catholicity.” But a Reformed Catholicity would be nothing to scoff at.
My older brother, by the way, holds to a Lutheran Catholicity that, although I don’t understand it, also is nothing to scoff at.
Finally, a mere link to yet another blog that reflects my Calvinist years: Calvinist Concessions Galore: Why Not Orthodoxy?
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Today holds three services for me: Royal Hours at 7 am, Unnailing Vespers at 3 pm, and Lamentations at the Tomb at 6:30 pm. I’ve had a lousy Lent, distracted by many, many things, but despite continuing juggling of responsibilities, Holy Week has been a very great blessing. I’m looking forward to St. John Chrysostom’s Pachal Homily which says, in effect, “even if you’ve had a lousy Lent, it’s now to to celebrate Christ’s glorious Resurrection.”
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Calvinist Concessions galore – why not Orthodoxy?
I seldom comment critically on Reformed Christianity – Calvinism, my last waystation before Orthodoxy – but a very telling set of concessions from a Calvinist scholar leaves me wondering what thoughtful Calvinists think they stand to lose by
- giving up on restoring missing elements of balance to Calvinism and
- returning to the Church that never abandoned those elements.
Continue reading “Calvinist Concessions galore – why not Orthodoxy?”
Tasty Tidbits 8/30/11
- Code words, dog whistles, Biblical illiteracy, and politics of fear.
- School Choice is Here to Stay – for good reason.
- Not just recovery: deleveraging recovery.
- Cum grano salis.
- Information gluttony.
- The foundation of human dignity.
Annunciation
From W. H. Auden’s For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, excerpts from a section on the Annunciation. This is not a hack writing sentimental doggerel; the poetry deeply probes this foundational mystery of the Faith, and the indispensable role a young Jewish maiden, with terror and rejoicing, played in our redemption.
Is Christianity “a Religion”?
I know the title question will produce “Well, duuuuuh!” from some quarters, but I’ve heard it argued on and off for years that Christianity is not a religion. Yesterday, I read something that seems to frame the question differently. I frame the question as I do because what I read so framed it by calling Christianity “the end of religion.” Continue reading “Is Christianity “a Religion”?”
Ascension Day
We observed Ascension Day “by anticipation” yesterday evening. (Our liturgical day begins at sunset, and we sometimes stretch it a bit, as an evening liturgy is better attended weekdays than a liturgy at, say, 6:30 a.m.)
My former Church, the Christian Reformed, took Ascension Day seriously, as did others in the Reformed tradition. That was on paper, at least. On the ground, the three Reformed Churches of generally Dutch background would typically pool resources, as not one of them could get a credible showing on its own for an Ascension Day service. (I assume it was otherwise a century or so ago.) That puzzles me now, more than ever.
I have noticed for decades the tendency of people to say things like “I grew up in X Church, but I never heard the gospel until my lovely wife Boopsie, then my fiancé, invited me to Y Church.” I may blog on that notion some day, because I have heard it said of the Orthodox Church — of which Church I know such a claim is false. The reason I know it is false is what may be worth blogging.
But as for Ascension, I can say that I grew up evangelical, then spent 2 decades in the Christian Reformed Church, but never apprehended until I was Orthodox that our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ not only sits at the right hand of the Father, from where he intercedes for us, but that He sits there in glorified human flesh!
The incarnation was no mere temporary expedient, so that the Son could take on crucifixion and death for us and thus placate the anger of the great sky bully (His Father) and get us (who actually deserved and were destined for such treatment) off the hook. That view of the Atonement is troubling on many levels.
But perhaps the most decisive proof of its inadequacy is that 40 days after the Resurrection, Christ did not go to the mountain and there shed his body, rising wraithlike to the Father before his disciples’ eyes. No, He rose in the body, taking it with Him.
So the Atonement — frequently broken down into separate word, “at one -ment”— has to do with reconciling humanity, flesh and blood as well as spirit, with the Holy Trinity.
This was the original plan. This was the eventuality of God’s little chats and walks with Adam and Eve in the Garden. And this original plan is what our Blessed Second Adam has restored.
No wonder we have sacraments and relics as well as prayers and meditations. Salvation is for the whole person, and all persons. Reconciliation at all levels is so important that the Eternal Son, being fully God, humbled and emptied Himself and joined our race for eternity.
A Church that can’t spark interest in Ascension Day must be missing something huge about that.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 