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WVKayaker:

Well, In my first post I tried to avoid polemics and you want to turn this into a theological discussion. Fair enough. The criticisms in your previous post are in fact an implicit heresy with respect to failing to completely grasp the implications of the Incarnation. The Incarnation in readers digest language is the orthodox doctrine that the eternal son of God assumed a complete human nature and was born of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, as Our Sunday’s Visitors Catholic Encyclopedia (p. 530) states “The union of the divine and human natures in Christ is a permanent and abiding one. In addition, a fundamental soteriological conviction is at stake in the doctrine: Whatever is not assumed is not saved. According to the scriptures, the Incarnation has the salvific purpose that embraces both the restoration of the image of God in us through the cross of Christ and the foretaste of the perfect union with God that is our destiny in Christ.”

Catholics meditate on the Incarnation constantly, as evidenced by the Annunciation being part of the Rosary and the Church requirement that the Faithful are obliged to attend the Christmas Liturgy regardless of which day it falls. More importantly, and I think this gets more into the crux of the matter, while Protestants accept the doctrine of the Incarnation, the implications for Protestants with respect to the Incarnation creates problems for their doctrines of justification. Lets take the mere fact that Christ loved our bodies (i.e. Human nature) enough to take a body himself). Since all the Creeds confess the orthodox doctrine of the “resurrection of the body” (Apostles Creed) and “We look for resurrection of the dead” (Nicene Creed), the Doctrine of the Incarnation is important and related to these statements as we will continue to have our bodies in heaven, albeit in a glorified form consistent with Christ’s Glorified body

No Catholic doctrine can be separated from the Incarnation as it can’t be separated from the person of Jesus Christ. In criticizing Catholics for having a corpus on the Cross, Protestants are implicitly embracing Gnosticism as many Protestant confessions have an anti-physical bias.

For example, Protestant doctrines about justification which say that God imputes his Grace, which amounts to a covering of the human person, is in opposition of the Catholic position which in readers digest language “God’s Grace restores us unto God’s image and is a foretaste of the perfect union with the Trinity.” The failure to contemplate the full implications of the Incarnation impacts how most Protestants view the Sacraments, as the Protestant understanding of Sacraments has the anti-physical bias which thus prevents them from understanding the orthodox understanding of the Eucharist and Baptism as they are taught in Scripture.

In a similar fashion, your picture of a Cross [without Christ on it] does not in fact make a theological statement about the resurrection, as there were two other individuals crucified with Christ. If you want to make a statement about the resurrection, perhaps you should have an “empty tomb” and do away with the Cross all together. Again, one can hypothesize that you believe in a Christianity and thus Christ, without the Cross. Christ himself stated that we all would have to pick up our own Crosses and follow him (Mk 16:24)

Catholics have a corpus on the Cross because once again, it points to the reality of the “Incarnation”. The Cross and Resurrection of Christ and through God’s Grace results in the fact that are bodies are restored to a glorifed state, what is referred to as “Theosis”, which is rooted in Incarnational Theology, and this doctrine was explicitly taught as far back as St. Irenaeus of Lyons (AD 170-175), who I might add again, was writing against “The Gnostics”, hmmm, hmmm.

Again, as I alluded to earlier, Catholic soteriology is grounded in the orthodox doctrine of Christ’s Incarnation. Thomas Howard, in Evangelical is Not Enough (p. 36) writes: “The Incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed. All of our inclinations and appetites and capacities and yearnings and proclivities are purified and gathered up and glorified by Christ.”

One of the biggest problems with Protesant doctrine of soteriology is that it separates Incarnation from Cross, which is again Gnostic heresy. As I alluded to earlier, the Catholic Doctrine, all of it, connects the Doctrine of Incarnation with the Doctrine of the Cross. Sacraments are tied to both Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery (Passion, Death, Resurrection, etc). Again, Pope Benedict’s great quote from his book Jesus of Nazareth where the Pope links Incarnation and Cross Together will suffice to illustrate this point:

Pope Benedict states “ In this Chapter the theology of Incarnation and the Theology of the Cross come together; the two cannot be separated. There are thus no grounds for setting up and opposition between Easter theology of the Synoptics and St. Paul, on one hand, and St. John’s supposedly purely incarnational theology, on the other. For the goal of the Word’s becoming-flesh spoken of by the prologue is precisely the offering of his body on the Cross, which the sacrament makes accessible to us”

So the Catholic Church sees that through the Incarnation and Cross/Resurrection/Ascension, God has given us access to his Mercy and Love and by his Grace, which God gives us through the Sacraments, the inner person becomes renewed and transformed by Grace and through that Grace we become United to God and thus like God by Grace which of course God is by nature. In other words, Christ trough his Grace allows us to “partake in the Divine Nature” (c.f. 2 Peter 2:4). So through the incarnation of Christ, God is now really accessible to us and wants us to be in “communion with him”.

St. Paul in Acts 17-28-29 (he quotes some pagan poets here) states “For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your poets have said, for we too are his offspring. Since we therefore are the offspring of God, we ought to not think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver or stone by human imagination.” Later on St. Paul talks about “a man who has been appointed, and he provided confirmation by raising him from the dead” (c.f. Acts 17:30). So, St. Paul speaks of living and moving with God and links it to Christ, who became incarnate.

St. Paul in Ephesians speaks of the concept of “Theosis” again where he states “who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, ‘to be holy and without blemish before him’” (c.f. Eph: 1:3-5). He writes “and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the Fullness of God” (c.f. Eph 3:19), and coming to “mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ” (c.f. Eph 4:13).
St. Paul in Chapter 6 of Romans takes up this theme here as well. In verses 1 to 4, he mentions Baptism then he states “For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection” (c.f. Rom 6:5). Later St. Paul writes about being “conformed to the image of his Son” (c.f. Rom 8:29), which Catholics and Orthodox believe happens at Baptism (going back to Romans 6) and restores what was loss before the fall when Man and Woman was created in the Image of God (c.f. Gen 1:26-27).

So Catholic Theology, and The Eastern Orthodox Theology, has much more Theological depth than just being saved by God covering us with Grace, while still seeing us as filthy and Depraved (One of Calvin’s 5 Points of TULIP). While we distorted our Image (Divine Image, as we were originally created in God’s Image) as a result of Adam and Eve’s Sin (The Fall), through Christ, God is going to not only restore our True Image, but through his Grace, bring us into communion with the Holy Trinity, which is Love itself, and thus partake in the Divine Nature.

St Paul further writes “that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth” (c.f. Eph 4:22-23). St Paul writes “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God…Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect” (c.f. Rom 12-1-2).

St Paul speaks of May the God of peace himself make our perfectly holy an may you entirely, spirit, soul and body, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (c.f. 1 Thes. 5:23) and why we are called which was “for obtaining the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (c.f. 2 Thes 2:14). St. John states whoever remains in God’s Love remains in God and God in Him. In this love brought to perfection among us we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world” (c.f. 1 John 4:16-17).

Two other passages point to the connection between Incarnational theology and the Cross/Resurrection. In 1 John 3:2 we read: “We know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” and St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians where he states: Christ will “transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body.” (c.f. Phil 3:21). Note here that St. Paul still uses the term “body” albeit one with a different form (glorified) similar to the body Christ has at the Transfiguration (c.f. Mt 17:1-13; Mk 9: 2-13; Lk 9: 28-36)

So, through Christ’s Incarnation, he joined our humanity and glorified it Himself and by the Paschal mystery [passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, one unified salvific act of God], we are to be united with God in a communion of Love, and to live for all eternity.

In summary, to separate the Incarnation from the paschal mystery, is nothing short of a repeat of the Gnostic heresies of the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Church.

Regards