Lutheran Ping!
Christ is Born, Glorify Him!
Posted on 12/30/2008 5:40:20 PM PST by Huber
"The Cross of Christ on Calvary stands beside the path of that admirable commercium, of that wonderful self-communication of God to man, which also includes the call to man to share in the divine life by giving himself, and with himself the whole visible world, to God, and like an adopted son to become a sharer in the truth and love which is in God and proceeds from God. It is precisely besides the path of man's eternal election to the dignity of being an adopted child of God that there stands in history the Cross of Christ, the only-begotten Son..." — Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, 7.5.
"Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a 'commandment' imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is 'divine' because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a 'we' which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is 'all in all' (1 Cor 15:28)." —Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 18.
I.
What, really, is the point of Christmas? Why did God become man?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in a section titled, "Why did the Word become flesh?" (pars 456-460) provides several complimentary answers: to save us, to show us God's love, and to be a model of holiness. And then, in what I think must be, for many readers, the most surprising and puzzling paragraph in the entire Catechism, there is this:
The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (par 460)
So that "we might become God"? Surely, a few might think, this is some sort of pantheistic slip of the theological pen, or perhaps a case of good-intentioned but poorly expressed hyperbole. But, of course, it is not. First, whatever problems there might have been in translating the Catechism into English, they had nothing to do with this paragraph. Secondly, the first sentence is from 2 Peter 1:4, and the three subsequent quotes are from, respectively, St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, and (gasp!) St. Thomas Aquinas. Finally, there is also the fact that this language of divine sonship—or theosis, also known as deification—is found through the entire Catechism. A couple more representative examples:
Justification consists in both victory over the death caused by sin and a new participation in grace. It brings about filial adoption so that men become Christ's brethren, as Jesus himself called his disciples after his Resurrection: "Go and tell my brethren." We are brethren not by nature, but by the gift of grace, because that adoptive filiation gains us a real share in the life of the only Son, which was fully revealed in his Resurrection. (par 654)
Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life. (par 1996)
Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God's gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us "co-heirs" with Christ and worthy of obtaining "the promised inheritance of eternal life." The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness. "Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due.... Our merits are God's gifts." (par 2009)
The very first paragraph of the Catechism, in fact, asserts that God sent his Son so that in him "and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life." God did not become man, in other words, to just be our friend, but so that we could truly and really, by grace, become members of his family, the Church. Christmas is the celebration of God becoming man, but it is also the proclamation that man is now able to be filled with and to share in God's own Trinitarian life.
II.
Several years ago I wrote a short article about theosis in which I stated the following:
This doctrine of divinization reverberated dramatically within my heart and mind. As an evangelical Protestant I had not questioned the doctrines of the Trinity or the Incarnation, but neither had I really seriously contemplated the dynamic between mankind and these two greatest mysteries of the Christian Faith. They were facts and truths, but were not, for me personally, the object of prolonged scrutiny. In a real sense, I had not grasped what this data meant for me beyond believing (rightly so) that God loved me and became man. My mental assent to these facts was undeniable, but there remained a rather static and frozen quality to my intellectual and spiritual life as a Christian.
About this same time I also began reading Karl Adam's classic The Spirit of Catholicism, in which he writes that "the Church . . . cannot be contented with developing any mere humanity, or perfection of humanity. This is not the object of her work. On the contrary her ideal is to supernaturalize men, to make them like God." He also notes that "the central fact of the glad tidings of Christianity" is that man is called to "participation in the divine life itself." This was stunning language. It seemed so bold and grand, almost a bit arrogant––wasn't this giving too much credit to man? On the contrary, I soon realized that for so long I had giving far too little credit to the Triune God. But didn't it fly in the face of Scripture, which pointed to our unworthiness before the holiness of God? No, it showed how great of salvation we have been called to receive, "For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust" (2 Peter 1:4)
What I soon discovered, in the course of entering the Catholic Church on Easter Vigil, 1997, is that this language and this manner of contemplating salvation is downright foreign to many Catholics. It is disturbing for some and puzzling to others. For me, it made sense of so many passages of Scripture that I had, as an Evangelical, either passed over uneasily or interpreted as being somehow metaphorical or poetic in nature:
See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. (1 Jn 3:1)
For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. (Rom 8:19)
Well, yes, I thought: of course we are "called" children of God. After all, God loves us and he sent his Son to die for us; in addition, we know that "the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 Jn 4:16). But it was all rather hazy. What I knew with most certainly was what I was saved from: sin and death. What I was saved for, strangely enough, was not nearly as clear. To be good, certainly. To do the right thing, yes. But, frankly, there was something missing in the rather standard Evangelical message of salvation I knew so well.
III.
These somewhat random remarks are inspired, in part, by a November 9, 2008, article in Christianity Today. "Keeping the End in View" was written by James R. Payton, Jr., a professor of history at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, and author of Light From the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition (IVP, 2007). On one hand, Payton's article is an interesting and often helpful introduction for Evangelicals to "the strange yet familiar doctrine of theosis." He puts his finger squarely on the problem I grappled with many years ago:
Sometimes, though, the way we talk about salvation makes it sound like little more than a get-out-of-hell-free card. With our emphasis on what sinners like ourselves are saved from, do we know what we are saved for? Is salvation solely about us and our need to be forgiven and born again, or is there a deeper, God-ward purpose?
He then quotes from Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus—the same quote found in paragraph 460 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Later, he writes, "In his mercy, God promised salvation through a deliverer, but for Eastern Orthodoxy, salvation is less about rescue (though it is about that) and more about return. Christ rescues us from our enemies and redeems us to God, so that we get back on the right track to becoming like him." He quotes an Orthodox leader who sums up theosis succinctly: "We become by grace what God is by nature."
This is all well and good. But it was curious to me that no mention was made of the Catholic Church. Nor of any sort of ecclesiology, or the nature of grace, or of the sacraments, all of which are essential to a full and balanced understanding of theosis. Perhaps brevity was the problem as Payton does take up those issues in his book.
Some candy for the theological section of the brain...
“”In his mercy, God promised salvation through a deliverer, but for Eastern Orthodoxy, salvation is less about rescue (though it is about that) and more about return. Christ rescues us from our enemies and redeems us to God, so that we get back on the right track to becoming like him.” He quotes an Orthodox leader who sums up theosis succinctly: “We become by grace what God is by nature.”
That’s a pretty good synopsis, H.
I have to say I got hung up early into the piece, until I resolved the multiple interpretations of the word “right” in English — not quite as bad as “love,” but a misreading will quickly send one off down the wrong path.
6] We believe, teach, and confess that the Son of God, although from eternity He has been a particular, distinct, entire divine person, and thus, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, true, essential, perfect God, nevertheless, in the fulness of time assumed also human nature into the unity of His person, not in such a way that there now are two persons or two Christs, but that Christ Jesus is now in one person at the same time true, eternal God, born of the Father from eternity, and a true man, born of the most blessed Virgin Mary, as it is written Rom. 9:5: Of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever.
7] We believe, teach, and confess that now, in this one undivided person of Christ, there are two distinct natures, the divine, which is from eternity, and the human, which in time was assumed into the unity of the person of the Son of God; which two natures in the person of Christ are never either separated from, or mingled with, one another, or changed the one into the other, but each abides in its nature and essence in the person of Christ to all eternity.
8] We believe, teach, and confess also that, as both natures mentioned remain unmingled and undestroyed in their nature and essence, each retains also its natural, essential properties, and does not lay them aside to all eternity, neither do the essential properties of the one nature ever become the essential properties of the other nature.
9] Accordingly, we believe, teach, and confess that to be almighty, eternal, infinite, to be of itself everywhere present at once naturally, that is, according to the property of its nature and its natural essence, and to know all things, are essential attributes of the divine nature, which never to eternity become essential properties of the human nature.
10] On the other hand, to be a corporeal creature, to be flesh and blood, to be finite and circumscribed, to suffer, to die, to ascend and descend, to move from one place to another, to suffer hunger, thirst, cold, heat, and the like, are properties of the human nature, which never become properties of the divine nature.
11] We believe, teach, and confess also that now, since the incarnation, each nature in Christ does not so subsist of itself that each is or constitutes a separate person, but that they are so united that they constitute one single person, in which the divine and the assumed human nature are and subsist at the same time, so that now, since the incarnation, there belongs to the entire person of Christ personally, not only His divine, but also His assumed human nature; and that, as without His divinity, so also without His humanity, the person of Christ or Filii Dei incarnati (of the incarnate Son of God), that is, of the Son of God who has assumed flesh and become man, is not entire. Hence Christ is not two distinct persons, but one single person, notwithstanding that two distinct natures are found in Him, unconfused in their natural essence and properties....
24] On account of this personal union and communion of the natures, Mary, the most blessed Virgin, bore not a mere man, but, as the angel [Gabriel] testifies, such a man as is truly the Son of the most high God, who showed His divine majesty even in His mother's womb, inasmuch as He was born of a virgin, with her virginity inviolate. Therefore she is truly the mother of God, and nevertheless remained a virgin.
Christ is Born, Glorify Him!
Just for you, s!
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. . ..” —C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
I beg to differ with Benedict, and will make my case in the words of the Jesus, as recorded in Matthew 22:37-40, to wit:
“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ (Here quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5, although Deut. says “might” rather than”mind.”)
“This is the first and great commandment.
“And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
“On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Note that the Master declines to conflate love of God with love of neighbor, but rather posits two distinctly differently ranked commandments, the second subordinate to the first yet still a commandment from God.
Well hey, it's all in the scriptures...I had no idea Evangelicals were that ignorant of scripture...
Is that what they mean when they say, “The Divine Ms. Middler?”
Thanks for this. With a little more chocolate I may begin to understand.
“Is that what they mean when they say, “The Divine Ms. Middler?””
Only in America! :)
“...but rather posits two distinctly differently ranked commandments, the second subordinate to the first....”
Where do you get the idea that the second is less than the first?
“I beg to differ with Benedict, and will make my case in the words of the Jesus, as recorded in Matthew 22:37-40,...”
You do understand that the only reason you can have any confidence at all the Christ actually said what Matthew records is because The Church determined 1600+ years ago that Matthew was worthy of belief and then only because most of it was consistent with what The Church “always and everywhere believed”?
This’ere Catholic says: Yay Lutherans!
Dare I say, “Theosis with th’ mostest?”
***“...but rather posits two distinctly differently ranked commandments, the second subordinate to the first....”
Where do you get the idea that the second is less than the first?
“I beg to differ with Benedict, and will make my case in the words of the Jesus, as recorded in Matthew 22:37-40,...”***
Let us go for more extended verse. Mark 12:
5 One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?”
29
Jesus replied, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!
30
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’
31
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
No other commandment greater than these.
***You do understand that the only reason you can have any confidence at all the Christ actually said what Matthew records is because The Church determined 1600+ years ago that Matthew was worthy of belief and then only because most of it was consistent with what The Church “always and everywhere believed”?***
You mean that theology created behind the doors of a strip mall church in the wee hours over several gallons of whisky is not as, if not more, valid than the theology of the early Church Fathers and the Apostles which came from Jesus?
“You mean that theology created behind the doors of a strip mall church in the wee hours over several gallons of whisky is not as, if not more, valid than the theology of the early Church Fathers and the Apostles which came from Jesus?”
Yeah; whiskey, grape juice, whatever; that’s exactly what I meant! :)
That’s very good, L!
I am reasonably certain that the vast majority of Lutheran laity and most of the ELCA clergy are unaware that the Lutheran Confessions (cited in every ELCA congergation Constitution as what “we believe”) teaches and confesses that the Mother of Our Lord is rightfully titled the Blessed Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary!
very true
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