When people try to ‘put Christ back in Christmas’ it often means
only sentimental tales or moralizing. It’s a tiring season but nevertheless I
want you to work your minds and chew on some theology, because this is what the
feast is all about. Otherwise His birth is no more important than Mohammed’s.
The basic preposterous claims made by Christians are these two. (If you don’t
understand that these are preposterous except from a Christian perspective you
don’t realize what is being said.)
I. THIS CHILD IS GOD.
Everything that we would say about God, we say about this child. We say that no
one made Him, that He has always existed and will always exist, that He can
never change, that He cannot die, that He knows all things, that He is the
Creator of all things and their judge. He is the Word, the Law, the order that
holds the universe in existence. One reason He was conceived by a Virgin is
that in a normal human conception a new person comes into being. but He is not
a new person. He is the same person of the Word of God which created the
heavens and the earth. He is the Word which spoke to Moses from the burning
bush and on Mount Sinai. (cf 1 Cor. 10:6).
But He is not the Father, and the Father is not the Son. The
Council of Nicaea (325) expressed it by saying that He is of the same essence (omoousios)
with the Father. That is, He is the same kind of being that the Father is, but
not the same individual person. He has always been with the Father; there was a
never a time when He did not exist. It is the Father’s pleasure always to share
with the Son to be everything that the Father is, and it is the Son’s pleasure
always to obey and submit to the Father.
II. THIS GOD IS HUMAN. God.
who is by nature invisible. indescribable, without location or limits or time,
immortal and unchangeable, has accepted to be visible, describable, located,
limited, to have an ‘hour’, to grow, to change. to learn, and to die. The
marvel is not that he is in a manger. but that He is any place. Everything we
would say about a human being, we say about this man, with one exception. We
say that he has a real human body, soul, mind, and feelings. The Sixth
Ecumenical Council (68]) affirmed that He has a real human will, in addition to
the Divine Will. (cf Matthew 26:39). The Council of Ephesus (430) affirmed that
Mary must be called Theotokos (Mother of God) because the child she bore is
truly God. not just a human baby who later was indwelt by God (cf Luke 1:41-44).
And she is truly His mother; He takes His human nature, his ‘genetic 0001’ from
her just as any child does from its parents. As the Fathers put it, He did not ‘pass
through her like water through a tube.’ He learns and experiences from her what
any child must experience from its mother. so He is truly ‘kin’ to us and
shares the life we live. The Council of Chalcedon (451) expressed this mystery
by saying that He is the union of two natures (God and man) in one person or
individual:
.the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood ... of
one essence with the Father with respect to the Godhead, and of one essence
with us with respect to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin;
begotten before the ages of the Father with respect to the Godhead. and in
these latter days, for us and our salvation. born of the Virgin Mary, the
Mother of God, with respect to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord,
Only begotten, in two natures, without confusion, without division, without
change, without separation, the distinction of the natures being by no means
taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being
preserved, and concurring in one person and individual ...
The one exception, the one human trait we do not attribute to Christ
is sin, although ‘He was in every way tempted as we are’ (Hebrews 4:15) Yet in
a mysterious way He even accepts the consequences of sin (death) in order to
win victory over them for us.
Furthermore, Christ has not ceased to be human now that He no
longer physically walks the earth. If so, His humanity would never have been
real, for humanity is not something we can lay aside. This is part of the
meaning of His bodily Ascension; redeemed human nature reigns in heaven with
the Father. (cf Hebrews 4:14, Ephesians 2:6).
As I said, to say these things is preposterous: we cannot
understand how it can be. I do not try to explain it. I urge you to affirm it
in awe, and to accept no ‘explanations’ of it which in fact deny the mystery,
such as that He is ‘God acting as a man’ or ‘a man God dwelt in’ or ‘part God
and part man.’ St. Gregory the Theologian (4th century) says that He
‘assumed’ (accepted as his own) everything that belongs to human nature in
order to heal it. to restore it to His Father. So, says St. Gregory, ‘that
which is not assumed is not healed’; if anyone says, for example, that He lacks
a real human soul, the human soul is not healed. Christ cannot be the mediator
between God and man if He is not truly God and truly man, and we just have
another religion of human wisdom. This is the ‘real meaning of Christmas’; don’t
settle for anything less.
©1987, Fr. Paul Yerger