12/18/2016 5:45:20 PM PST · by blam · 165 replies
Breitbart ^ | 12-18-2016 | Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.<
Posted on 12/21/2016 9:57:37 AM PST by Salvation
As Christmas draws closer, we continue to ponder the approaching mysteries. Today we will consider some of the things St. Thomas Aquinas taught regarding the Incarnation.
Why did the Lord choose to come to us through a woman, Mary? He could have come in any manner He pleased. Yesterday, we pondered why He took true flesh and a human nature to Himself rather than just coming as a kind of ghost or simply as God. But even in becoming truly and fully man, He could have chosen to bypass conception, gestation, birth, infancy, and youth entirely. He could have appeared suddenly on earth as a grown man—but He did not. Why not?
Remember, too, that although He chose to come through an earthly mother, he bypassed the participation of an earthly father (in the physical sense). If the biological role of a human father was bypassed in His taking flesh, why was the role of a human mother not similarly bypassed?
St. Thomas pondered this question in his Summa Theologica (part III, question 31, article 4) and set forth three reasons. St. Thomas’ commentary is shown in bold italics, while my poor remarks appear in red.
[First,] Although the Son of God could have taken flesh from whatever matter He willed, it was nevertheless most becoming that He should take flesh from a woman. First because in this way the entire human nature was ennobled. Hence Augustine says (QQ. lxxxiii, qu. 11): “It was suitable that man’s liberation should be made manifest in both sexes.”
So, in this manner both sexes were ennobled. The male sex was ennobled because the Word became flesh and was male. The female sex was ennobled because it was from Mary that Christ took His humanity.
Secondly, because thus the truth of Incarnation is made evident. Wherefore Ambrose says (De Incarnation vi): “Thou shalt find in Christ many things both natural, and supernatural. In accordance with nature he was within the womb … but it was above nature that a virgin should conceive and give birth: that you may believe that He was God, who was renewing nature …”
Both the natural and the supernatural are evident in Christ’s conception and incarnation. St. Thomas emphasized the elevated need for the natural so that we might avoid the heresy of thinking that Christ’s humanity was not real due to its wholly supernatural origin.
And [as] Augustine says (Ep. ad Volus. cxxxvii): “If Almighty God had created a man formed otherwise than in a mother’s womb, and had suddenly produced him to sight … would He not have strengthened an erroneous opinion, and made it impossible for us to believe that He had become a true man? … But now, He, the mediator between God and man, has so shown Himself, that, uniting both natures in the unity of one Person, He has given a dignity to ordinary by extraordinary things, and tempered the extraordinary by the ordinary.”
So it was fitting that Christ should be born of a woman, Mary, so as not to lose the natural in the supernatural, but that both the natural (because He is true man) and the supernatural (because He is true God) should balance and complete each other.
Thirdly, … the first man was made from the “slime of the earth,” without the concurrence of man or woman: Eve was made of man but not of woman: [though since], other men are made from both man and woman. So [it] …. remained as it were proper to Christ, that He should be made of a woman without the concurrence of a man.
In other words, it seems fitting or proper that because Adam and Eve were both created outside of the usual order of things, the New Adam, Christ, would be made in a unique manner. Eve was made without the help of another woman, but was drawn by God directly from the man, Adam. In a kind of balancing parallelism, the New Adam was made by God directly from the woman, Mary, without the help of a man.
St. Thomas seems to point to a kind of poetic balance, not a necessary balance. Saying that something is fitting does not mean that it is necessary or required, only that it is well suited to the situation. On the one hand, something can be fitting because, by it, we humans can more easily understand it. On the other hand, something can be fitting because it best suits God’s own purposes.
My first thought when reading the article header was "this is a serious question?????
The answer as to why Christ came as a child to the Virgin Mary and lived the life He did is all in the Holy Bible. Certainly don't need a bunch of religious dogma to try and explain it when the answer is there for anyone who chooses to read it for themselves.
That's a whole separate discussion, why Christ came: to remove the barrier between God and Man (tearing of the veil) so that we who seek Him don't need a middle-man.
Humans are not typically born any other way.
And the answer would have been to tick off the loonie liberals.
Obviously the correct answer is Christ came to be the perfect sacrifice required for the forgiveness of our sins. He also removed the barrier between man and God (tearing of the veil) .......
Sheesh. I picked the wrong week to start cutting back on my two pots of coffee/day habit.
The Msgr. stated it more elegantly.
Why? Because we are humans and God’s plan for redemption made before the foundation of the creation required a perfect man to appease the righteousness of God. See Genesis wherein the woman ( Eve) was told that her seed would crush his ( Sataan) head and he would bruise his heel.
Follow this prophecy throughout the old Testament, then see it fulfilled in the New Testament- it is the one and same plan of Salvation from the beginning. The NT tells us that Christ ( the anointed Son of God) Emmanuel ( God with us) was born of a woman, under the law to redeem those that were cursed under the law....
Got it? Ask Christ Jesus ( the Risen Savior) to save you from your lost and depraved state as all humans are and to redeem ( purchase back-meaning you are sold to someone- Sataan via the fall) you and regenerate ( re create) you in the image and likeness of Himself. He will, He promises that all who call on Him will be saved.
Then, ask the Holy Spirit, promised by Christ, to all who receive Him, to guide you into all truth. It IS that simple. You will be made a new creation ( one that has never existed before) and walk in newness of life to the glory of God the Father.
It is a personal, one on one relationship with the Almighty Creator God via being born into His family by the exchange act of His Son- the God who became man, the Man who is God..... Don’t follow any other Gospel- the one Paul and the Apostles presented- that is “By Grace ( free gift) are you saved though faith and not of yourselves, so none can boast”. Not works ( man can do no thing that pleases God, except believing in His Son).
If you are a skeptic, search out the scriptures an prove my statements wrong.....when you come to the end, you still have choice as Christ will not force Himself on you.
Merry Christmas!
“Why Was Christ Born of a Woman?”
Because, that’s just how awesome the miracle of life is.
God’s plan was an immaculate womb in which Jesus could develop.
Mary, Immaculate, pray for us.
Perhaps a 4th.
A woman, Eve, was the first to sinner. Christ was sinless but born of a sinner (Mary a woman & representation of the first sinner Eve) to redeem mankind from sin.
If Christ had an earthly father, he would have an earthly Nature without a divine Nature and He would not have been able to declare himself to be the Son of God.
I suppose it would be impressive if he was born of a man.
However, it would not be taken seriously as it would not be a natural birth.
It had to be the way it was because that’s how he said it would be beforehand.
Everything is as it is supposed to be. Not a leaf falls from a tree without His hand in motion.
Because no man wants to feel like he’s being kicked in the balls over and over, for 8 hours.
In his book, “The Pagan Temptation,” Dr. Thomas Molnar (1921-2010) describes and devastatingly critiques this ancient evil creed that is lethal in theory and in practice issues in the madness overtaking our culture. He writes that from Plato to Plotinus, it was held as axiomatic that the fall of divine sparks into the evil material realm was either inexplicable or explained as punishment in an earthly hell. At any rate it was a plunge from being as one with or an aspect of the monistic Divine Substance into the multiple, or binary.
Binary means for example that where good and evil were not distinct one from the other and there had not been two sexes but just one androgynous being, now good and evil are opposites and there are two distinct sexes. This being the case, the revolutionary impact of Christian teaching about the supernatural and the natural dimensions, creation ex nihilo, the Incarnation, Resurrection, the fall of man, the two created sexes, the Ten Commandments and Gospel of salvation was nothing less than a scandal to ancient pagan thinkers and completely unacceptable to their modern counterparts. Thus the modern neo-Gnostic Karl Marx declares:
“The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed.” (Karl Marx, Marx and Satan, Richard Wurmbrand, p. 59)
The Genesis account of creation ex nihilo was repugnant to ancients because if true meant that matter, which is evil, was of God’s creation and neither eternally pre-existed creation or came into existence by way of an exploding cosmic egg (Big Bang).
The Incarnation was utterly repulsive because for the Divine Substance or Void to incarnate within an evil body was as unthinkable as it is for contemporary neo-Gnostics whose view of depersonalized man, an evil meat machine, holds that the material brain's function is determined by genetics, thus the mind (i.e., divine spark, essence, pattern, pure spirit) is constrained by evil grey matter, chemicals, genes and body fluids. In “Against the Christians” (frag. 77) Porphyry, disciple of Plotinus and Arnobius, writes:
“How can one admit that the divine should become an embryo, that after his birth he is put in swaddling clothes, that he is soiled with blood and bile, and worse things yet?” (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, p. 27)
The closest pagan thinkers came to Incarnation was with a purely negative connotation in the teachings of Pythagoras and Empedocles. They taught that souls or sparks fallen from the divine Substance are subsequently incarnated in animal forms as punishment. Salvation was secured through the mystery cults which,
"...afforded their devotees the opportunity to erase the curse of mortality by direct encounter with the patron deity or in many instances by actually undergoing an apotheosis, a transfiguration of human into divine. The process of 'initiation' in the mystery religions, therefore, had as its objective the liberation of the soul from its earthly...chains" (C.K. Barrett cited in "The Interruption of Eternity," Carl A. Raschke, p. 28)
The Light came into the world and banished the ancient evil creed, but men who are evil preferred darkness because they favor the evil creed..
Quite simply - Hebrews 2:14 “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;”
Though women are concieved and born into sin, women do not genetically or spiritually transmit sin to their offspring. Because she was the mother of all living Adam called her Eve.
In contrast, it is in Adam that all die.
This is why Jesus, though born of a human, and therefore sin stained woman, was born sinless, His Father being sinless God and His mother being unable to transmit sin to Him.
1 Corinthians 15:21 for since by man came death by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
22 For as in Adam all die, so as in Christ shall all be made alive.
How could He die for our sins, and then rise from the dead, if He was never “born”?
The example He gave to us would be flawed if Jesus just “APPEARED” as an adult, because we didn’t.
That a person can be born, die, and rise again to eternal life, just as He did. Jesus is that example.
All we have to do is believe in Him and accept His free gift.
That’s a very interesting idea which I had not seen before.
I am amazed at how little Catholic leadership knows of and about scripture...Why was Jesus born of a woman??? So he could be fully human in the flesh...And why is that important??? So Jesus the man could die...You can't kill God...God doesn't die, ever...God needed a Son who could die...And feel pain...
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Really poor title!
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