Incarnation as Re-Creation

O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth;

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Son, Redeemer of the world;

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Holy Ghost, Sanctifier of the faithful;

Have mercy upon us.

O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, one God;

Have mercy upon us.

By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation

Good Lord, deliver us.

The Creation - James Tissot

In the beginning, God created all things through the Word. All matter and all life has being only insofar as that being is gifted by God. All being is participatory. When man rejected God, he turned away from being and fell into corruption. Man, made from nothing, returns to nothingness without his Creator. In the beginning, God formed man from the Earth and gave man dominion over the Earth. Man’s rejection of his Creator consequently unleashed disorder and corruption upon Earth. The redemption of man and the redemption of Earth go hand in hand as a form of re-creation.

God could have destroyed this world and begun anew. His being is not dependent upon his creation. But this would not be fitting, as St. Athanasius writes:

Now in truth this great work was peculiarly suited to God’s goodness. For if a king , having founded a house or city, if it be beset by bandits from the carelessness of its inmates, does not by any means neglect it, but avenges and reclaims it as his own work , having regard not to the carelessness of the inhabitants, but to what beseems himself.

A Human Skeleton - James Wark

Man has a complex problem as his sin carries both intrinsic and extrinsic penalties. Man rightly deserves God’s wrath for violating his law – a law not merely of whim, but of being itself. Man surrenders himself and the world to the domination of the Devil. Finally, both man and the created order are subject to the corruption and decay of Death. Repentance can restore man’s relationship with God, but the deprivation of grace and corruption of nature needed to be repaired.

In the beginning, in a timeless moment, God the source of all being created the world outside himself through the Word. And it was very good. But man chose darkness over light because his deeds were evil. 

Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time and of time
A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,
A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning   there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning. 

A moment when the Word of God entered his creation and began to re-create it from the inside. 

What was required for such grace and such recall, but the Word of God, which had also at the beginning made everything out of nought? For His it was once more both to bring the corruptible to incorruption, and to maintain intact the just claim of the Father upon all. For being Word of the Father, and above all, He alone of natural fitness was both able to recreate everything, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be ambassador for all with the Father. (St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word)

 Man brings sin and death into the world, the Word of God made man brings forgiveness, and life, and resurrection.

Then He also points out the reason why it was necessary for none other than God the Word Himself to become incarnate; as follows: “For it became Him, for Whom are all things, and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory , to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering;” [Heb. 2:10] by which words He means, that it belonged to none other to bring man back from the corruption which had begun, than the Word of God, Who had also made them from the beginning. (Ibid.)

Salvation, therefore, is incarnational. It can never be simply thinking or believing or doing the right thing. What is necessary is union with the Word of God. It is through union with Christ that we can

The Incarnation - Msgr. Anthony A. LaFemina

participate in his perfect humanity and have our nature restored.

And that it was in order to the sacrifice for bodies such as His own that the Word Himself also assumed a body, to this, also, they refer in these words : “Forasmuch then as the children are the sharers in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death He might bring to naught Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Ibid.)

But this is no surprise. This is Our Lord's own proclamation in the holy gospels. He says "Except a man be born again, except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." "If I wash thee not, thou has no part with me."

The incarnation teaches us that we are unable to save ourselves. Our believing the right things or doing the right things cannot heal the corruption of our nature. Only in being united to Christ, the Word of God that created the world, can we be re-created in the image of God. In the Word-made-Flesh we see the image of God perfect in man. Only through union with him can we participate in the sanctity of his nature, the perfection of his life, the sacrifice and satisfaction of his death, and the victory of his resurrection. Only through the Incarnation can the world be made new.

A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.

Life of Christ - Unknown 15th Century Artist

The Incarnation as the Source of Meaning

So much of what passes for modern Christianity has forgotten that all theology is essentially Christology. One place where this is especially clear is the abandonment of a robust theology of the Incarnation. When was the last time you heard a sermon on the Incarnation? For the early Church, as evidenced by the writings of the Fathers, the Incarnation was an issue of central importance – one which frequently divided the orthodox from the heretics.

This Advent, I am meditating on the Incarnation and what it means for all of theology. Being a political theorist by training, this meditation necessarily leads into thinking about human nature and community. The Incarnation stands utterly opposed to Gnosticism – of both the theological and political variety. As such, it is the foundation of a truly Christian philosophy. I plan to continue developing these ideas over the Advent season.

-

In his book, Miracles, C.S. Lewis describes the Incarnation as an invasion,

The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation.… Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.… every particular Christian miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the character and significance of the Incarnation. There is no question in Christianity of arbitrary interferences just scattered about. It relates not a series of disconnected raids on Nature but the various steps of a strategically coherent invasion—an invasion which intends complete conquest and “occupation.”

This is also how Our Lord presents himself. When asked to read the Scripture at the synagogue in Nazareth, he reads from the prophet Isaiah,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Then he closes the scroll, sits down, and says,               

This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

When St. John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Our Lord if he was the Messiah, Our Lord replied, 

Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me. 

I have often heard Christians warn against forgetting about Easter during Christmas time, because the Cross is the true meaning of Christmas. I disagree; the Incarnation gives meaning to the Cross, Christmas gives meaning to Easter. For this reason, C.S. Lewis calls the Incarnation, “the Grand Miracle”:

the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. (emphasis added)

The Incarnation shows us that Our Lord’s conception, birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, and awaited return do not merely provide us with a covering for our sin and a ticket to heaven. The Incarnation is Our Lord’s invasion of the territory surrendered by Adam to Sin, Death, and the Devil. By taking on flesh and man’s nature, Our Lord redeems it and all that was put under the dominion of man. This is why Our Lord’s life is as important to his mission as his death and resurrection. In the words he spoke, he declared his kingdom. In the miracles he performed, he showed his kingship.

In his poem “Chrouses from ‘The Rock’” T.S. Eliot attempts to describe the central importance of the incarnation. He begins by describing the man’s struggles in the world of sin, their search for God, their turning to idols or to despair, echoing again and again, “Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness upon the face of the deep.” Then he describes the Incarnation.

Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time and of time,/A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,/A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.

Our Lord can heal the brokenhearted, preach deliverance to the captive, and proclaim good news to the poor, because in his suffering, he redeemed suffering. We do not have to despair, we do not have to “stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards.”

The faith and the love are in the waiting. Our Lord has proclaimed his kingdom; the victory is ours. As we await his return and final victory, we are called to proclaim the good news of the Incarnation. While this means first a proclamation of the forgiveness of sins and union with Christ, this also means the proclamation of the redemption of human life. There is, therefore, a Christian – that is Incarnational – way of living every aspect of life. Incarnational Christians do not deny the goodness of material existence, the reality of pain or disease or suffering, of human love and sexuality and family. Through the Incarnation, Christians see human life validated and perfected. The Incarnation is simultaneously an affirmation and an inspiration.

But the Incarnation also forbids Christians to become escapists. Just as God did not abandon his creation but entered it in order to redeem it, so Christians should not expect a ticket out of God’s work of redeeming the world. We will not be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, as Isaac Watts reminds us. If we would reign with Our Lord, we must fight with him. This fighting is primarily done through the proclamation of the good news on all fronts. We must proclaim the good news against sin, against economic exploitation, against racism, against fear, and against despair. We must build for the kingdom.

 The Church is the kingdom of God on earth through union with Christ, a kingdom not of this world. She is the door through which one is welcomed into the kingdom of God. Because Christianity is Incarnational, Christians must distance themselves from anyone who would seek to proclaim Christ without the Church. There is no unembodied path to God.

The Incarnation is the fount of meaning for a world crushed by Evil. Through it suffering and loss are redeemed. Through it man and nature are affirmed. The Incarnation of Our Lord provides the pattern and inspiration for the work of the Church in furthering his invasion of the kingdom of Sin, Death, and the Devil. The Incarnation provides the hope for the King’s return and the final victory.