{"id":16848,"date":"2016-08-22T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/?p=16848"},"modified":"2016-11-21T16:48:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T21:48:45","slug":"reflections-on-incarnation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/2016\/08\/22\/reflections-on-incarnation\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on Incarnation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Word became flesh. We reflect on this, perhaps, too little. But at the very beginning of\u00a0the third century, somewhere between 203 and 206, the theologian Tertullian, called the\u00a0father of Latin Christianity and founder of Western theology, wrote a work entitled De\u00a0Carne Christi<\/em>: a treatise expressly on the flesh of Christ. Sometimes theological and\u00a0spiritual writing speaks of the Incarnation in ways which testify in theory to the truth of\u00a0the Word made flesh, but seem in practice rather abstract and even fastidious -\u00ad as if the\u00a0religion of the Incarnation requires us, paradoxically, to maintain a certain reserve when\u00a0it comes to human bodies. But for Tertullian, the flesh of Christ is more than an idea<\/em>,\u00a0necessary to complete our intellectual affirmation of Christ\u2019s humanity. If theology can\u00a0sometimes seem more comfortable with the flesh become word, in Tertullian the Word\u00a0become flesh is evoked with concrete immediacy and intensity. He offers us an unusual\u00a0level of engagement, both imaginative and speculative, with what is actually at stake \u00ad- the\u00a0fact that the life of God gives itself in<\/em>, and unfolds itself through<\/em>, our interior and exterior\u00a0experiences of bodily existence, our own bodies and the bodies of others. He asks us to\u00a0think of the body as, for us, God\u2019s own place<\/em>\u00a0-\u00ad not an obstacle or a veil to Divine presence,\u00a0and more than something simply entailed<\/em> by the Incarnation, but in itself, in all its\u00a0dimensions, as the place of enactment of Divine life \u00ad- which it already is, in Christ, and\u00a0which it is becoming, in us.<\/p>\n

The palpable intensities of the human body are themselves fields of connection, of union,\u00a0with the Divine. The Son of God, Tertullian writes, shows Himself and communicates\u00a0Himself in<\/p>\n

muscles similar to mounds of dirt, bones similar to rocks and even hillocks\u00a0and gravel, the interlacing of nerves like forking roots, the branching network\u00a0of veins like winding streams, the downy fuzz like moss, hair like grass, and\u00a0the hidden treasure of marrow like the ores of the flesh.<\/em><\/p>\n

Such language forces us to bring together what theology and spirituality can seem to hold\u00a0somewhat apart. Grace is in our muscles and bones, our nerves and veins, the down and\u00a0the hair and the marrow of our lives in the flesh. And this is because, in Christ Himself,\u00a0the grace of human union with the Word realizes itself in the interior and exterior actions\u00a0and undergoings of His bodily life. He was God as<\/em> flesh, and because of this it is, not just\u00a0by means<\/em> of the flesh, but in<\/em> the flesh, that we come to God.<\/p>\n

To deepen our sense of the implications of this, we can turn to St Irenaeus. Born twenty\u00a0years or so earlier than Tertullian, and dying at about the same time as the younger man\u00a0was composing his theological poetry of the flesh, Irenaeus, in perhaps the most famous\u00a0of his theological insights, taught that the glory of God is a living man, and the life of\u00a0man is the vision of God<\/em>. There are various ways in which Irenaeus\u2019 saying can be\u00a0interpreted \u00ad- but they all seem to configure themselves around the same conviction as\u00a0Tertullian\u2019s: that human bodily life, not in abstraction from the body but in and through\u00a0its very depths, knows, in Christ, a uniquely privileged intimacy with the Divine.<\/p>\n

We can take first Irenaeus\u2019 idea that the glory of God is a living man<\/em>. Here the living man<\/em>\u00a0can be thought of as Christ Himself, who precisely as a man<\/em>, in the bones and muscles of\u00a0which Tertullian speaks, receives and manifests Divine glory. But the living man<\/em> may also\u00a0be any human being existing in<\/em> Christ, fulfilled through Him as an epiphany of Divine\u00a0glory, in flesh rendered more deeply itself because freed from sin and mortality. And there\u00a0is a third possibility, which is distinct from the perspective of sin and redemption even\u00a0though it can be integrated with it. According to this third possibility, the living man<\/em> may be man as such, even as a sinner<\/em> \u00ad- because human being, in its very constitution<\/em> by what\u00a0Tertullian calls the<\/em> ores of the flesh<\/em>, is gifted with manifesting the glory of God, which sin\u00a0may obscure but cannot efface. Here human being as the image of God<\/em>\u00a0-\u00ad the ground of His\u00a0love for us, the foundation of His desire to be among us -\u00ad is located by Irenaeus in the\u00a0living man<\/em> simply as flesh. We are therefore in the image of God not only because of our\u00a0spiritual<\/em> powers of intellect and will, as if the body had somehow to be seen through<\/em> if the\u00a0Divine image is to be discerned. The glory of that image is manifest in embodied life itself<\/em>,\u00a0in the nerves and the veins and the marrow. And if we ask how this can be, the answer\u00a0must be that embodied life is not simply other<\/em> to God, but on the contrary reflects the\u00a0image and glory of the Incarnate Word, the Word made flesh, Who is our archetype.\u00a0According to one interpretation of Irenaeus, then -\u00ad not to mention of St Paul \u00ad- it was both\u00a0from<\/em> the Incarnate Word and to foreshadow<\/em> Him that men and women were first created.\u00a0So although, in the order of creation, the first Adam, in Eden, precedes the Second, in\u00a0Bethlehem, in the mind of God it is the other way round: the Second precedes the first. It\u00a0is in derivation from the Word made flesh, and for the sake of being consummated in\u00a0Him, that humanity \u00ad- and indeed the entire cosmos -\u00ad is brought into being in the first\u00a0place. This is a point to which we shall return.<\/p>\n

But if we look for a moment to the second part of Irenaeus\u2019 saying \u00ad- the life of man is the\u00a0vision of God<\/em> \u00ad- we can discern at least two ways of understanding it, in both of which the\u00a0emphasis falls once more on the flesh. One interpretation is that Irenaeus means that it is\u00a0in seeing<\/em> God that our life, raised to eternity, consists. But what are we to make of this\u00a0seeing God<\/em>? Perhaps we should not think too readily beyond<\/em> its bodily implications. Is\u00a0seeing God<\/em>, in other words, no more than a metaphor for intellectual<\/em> or spiritual<\/em> vision?\u00a0Or can we speak of seeing<\/em> God more literally, for example in thinking about heaven in\u00a0terms of seeing the Risen and Ascended flesh of the Word? Christ\u2019s bodily visibility is\u00a0certainly not annulled<\/em> by the Resurrection and Ascension, even though it enters into a\u00a0unique mode, as the Resurrection appearances attest, and is eventually, in the Ascension,\u00a0withdrawn. But perhaps that withdrawal is only for a time? Can\u2019t we think of heaven as\u00a0being essentially focussed upon the flesh of Christ, giving itself to us in a renewed and\u00a0everlasting transcendental visibility? Surely the flesh assumed by the Word, and taken up\u00a0by Him to the right hand of the Father, doesn\u2019t simply fall away as somehow extraneous to\u00a0heavenly vision, so that the Word made flesh ceases, in eternity, being our mediator?\u00a0Can\u2019t we say that His Crucified and Risen Flesh mediates always<\/em>, not only as our\u00a0Redeemer, while we are still on earth, but also in heaven, as the ground and context of our\u00a0vision of the Divine Persons? Our Resurrection, embracing the restoration of our power of\u00a0sight, and indeed of all of our bodily powers of apprehension, could then be better grasped\u00a0as essential to the fullness of Heavenly life; and we could say, more rigorously than usual,\u00a0that it is indeed true that the life of man, not of his soul alone but of man himself<\/em>, is\u00a0intimately fulfilled in the vision of God<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But there is a second way of interpreting what Irenaeus says, consistent with the first but\u00a0different from it. The life of man<\/em> is the vision of God<\/em> can be taken to mean, not our vision\u00a0of God<\/em>, but God\u2019s vision of us<\/em>. In other words the vision of God<\/em> can be interpreted as\u00a0God\u2019s own vision<\/em>, and this would then be identified as having the life of man<\/em> as its object,\u00a0so that we would have here another statement of the Son\u2019s intimate affinity<\/em> with our\u00a0flesh. He desires to enter into our life \u00ad- to see us by seeing with<\/em> us. The life of man, visible\u00a0to us in the flesh as our own life, is the vision that the Son desires to be His<\/em> in coming\u00a0among us: our human flesh is the object of Divine predilection, our bodily life -\u00ad the\u00a0muscles and the bones, the down and the hair and the rest -\u00ad is what He seeks and finds,\u00a0not only in us but in Himself, in the Incarnation \u00ad His desire, for our sake, to dwell among<\/em>\u00a0us by dwelling in<\/em> us.<\/p>\n

And of course this desire has a redemptive<\/em> dimension. If, in dwelling among us, the Word\u00a0makes visible to Himself, as His own life, the life that is ours, it is thereby to heal us. But\u00a0His dwelling among us may also have a dimension even larger than redemption, from the\u00a0perspective we mentioned earlier and to which we can now return. If creation itself takes\u00a0place in light of the Incarnation of the Son, if the Second Adam ultimately precedes the\u00a0first, then quite apart from sin and redemption we<\/em> are in the Incarnate Word before He<\/em> is\u00a0in us. The Incarnation can then be thought of as taking place above all to manifest<\/em> this.\u00a0The whole creation originates and is consummated in the eternally foreseen Word made\u00a0flesh. We can say that it is His<\/em> flesh that gives flesh to the world. Even beyond fallen flesh\u00a0and the horizon of redemption, the origin and destiny of our<\/em> flesh is revealed and\u00a0completed in the flesh of the Word.<\/p>\n

After this excursion through Irenaeus, let us return for a moment to Tertullian. His\u00a0treatise on the flesh of Christ emerges near the very beginnings of post-\u00adBiblical theological\u00a0reflection, and in that treatise he was contesting ways of thinking which were already\u00a0influential, and which henceforward have seemed to offer a perennially fascinating\u00a0distortion of the Gospel. According to this distortion, the flesh of Christ was somehow set\u00a0apart<\/em> from ordinary human flesh. This setting apart can be thought of in various ways. It\u00a0might be denied that the flesh of the Word was really human flesh at all. It might also be\u00a0claimed that the flesh of the Word originated<\/em> in a special way -\u00ad for example, from the\u00a0stars, which exist according to a higher grade of being than mundane nature. Most subtly,\u00a0it could be said that the flesh of the Word had its own special and superior way of existing,\u00a0like but also unlike that of other human beings. None of these ways of denying the identity\u00a0of Christ\u2019s flesh with our own is orthodox. And indeed no way whatsoever of denying this\u00a0identity will be orthodox, because it is essential to the Christian conception of salvation\u00a0that the Incarnate Word takes to Himself everything<\/em> that is ours, except sin, because only in this way can the wounds and consequences of sin be redeemed. If there were any\u00a0positive difference between Him and us, then that difference, as expressed in us, would\u00a0fall outside the scope of redemption, and accordingly we would not be saved. When\u00a0Tertullian so intensely evokes the palpable and pulsing affinities between the flesh of\u00a0Christ and our own, and between our flesh and what we might call the flesh of the world \u00ad-\u00a0the dirt and the rocks, the moss and the grass, the roots and the streams \u00ad- all this is meant\u00a0by to show where the flesh of Christ belongs<\/em>. It belongs here<\/em>: in<\/em> the world because for<\/em> the\u00a0world.<\/p>\n

In fact the Gospel can be said to consist in precisely the claim that in belonging here<\/em> the\u00a0flesh of Christ also<\/em> belongs to God. For the world, in its very flesh, is not alien to God, not\u00a0a realm from<\/em> which we have to take flight in order to find Him or be with Him. As\u00a0creation, the world comes<\/em> from the Trinity -\u00ad a truth which, in the Incarnation, the Son has\u00a0clarified and fulfilled by Himself coming to the world. And we can better appreciate the\u00a0point Tertullian is insisting upon, if finally we reflect upon the miraculous conception of\u00a0the Word made flesh.<\/p>\n

At first sight, however, this doctrine can seem to cut across the identity of the flesh of the\u00a0Word with our own, because His miraculous conception might be thought to remove<\/em> His\u00a0flesh from ours, since it originates differently, beyond the order of human procreation.\u00a0And sometimes, indeed, one finds accounts of Christ\u2019s conception which suggest there\u00a0was something other\u00ad-worldly<\/em> about His flesh, rendering it inaccessible to our own\u00a0experience of embodiment. The flesh of the Word, it is implied, is mysteriously secluded\u00a0from us, placed at an enigmatic distance which we are unable to traverse.<\/p>\n

But another interpretation of His miraculous conception points in a different and better\u00a0direction. Let us take for granted that flesh as such is not alien to God, and that this is\u00a0shown when the Word Himself takes flesh and dwells among us. What more eloquent way\u00a0could there be to testify to a Divine affinity with the flesh, than by insisting that the flesh\u00a0of Christ owes itself to the action of the Holy Spirit? If the Holy Spirit initiates the flesh of\u00a0Christ, and that flesh is identical to ours, doesn\u2019t this suggest in turn that, in Christ, our\u00a0flesh is revealed as itself a reflection of the Divine?<\/p>\n

Something obstructs this interpretation, however, which is the suggestion that it is by\u00a0means of natural procreation that original sin gets transmitted. There are actually two\u00a0ideas here. The first is that the procreation of the flesh is fundamentally a natural<\/em> process,\u00a0operating in a certain independence from God. The second is that, since the Fall, there\u00a0exists a very intimate connection between the procreation of the flesh, on the one hand,\u00a0and our alienation from God, on the other. Of course these two ideas work together. The\u00a0claim that procreation is basically a natural process, removed from God, is what makes it\u00a0possible to suppose that since the Fall procreation has been hijacked by original sin. And\u00a0within this way of thinking, it seems obvious why the sinless Word takes flesh\u00a0miraculously exempt from procreation. If original estrangement from God is secreted in\u00a0the link between procreation and the flesh, the miraculous origin of the flesh of Christ\u00a0ensures that, in Him, this whole disastrous pattern is overcome. From this it is a very\u00a0short step to suggesting that His flesh cannot indeed be identical<\/em> to ours, but instead has\u00a0the prerogative of mysteriously purified difference from our inescapably tainted\u00a0embodiment.<\/p>\n

But as Catholics we do not have to think in this way. The transmission of original sin, The\u00a0Catechism of the Catholic Church<\/em> reminds us, is a mystery that we cannot fully\u00a0understand<\/em>. We are not obliged to accept that it takes place by means of procreation, or\u00a0that the flesh is thereby especially intimate to it. And so we can suppose a different kind of\u00a0explanation for the miraculous conception of the Word made flesh. Perhaps it is to be\u00a0explained, not because procreation transmits estrangement<\/em> from God, but paradoxically\u00a0because it channels an affinity<\/em> with Him, handing over, as it does, the flesh in which His\u00a0image is realized. But why, in that case, would Christ be exempt<\/em> from procreation?\u00a0Perhaps because the deceptive appearance of it as a purely natural process had to be\u00a0removed, so that its actual truth could be clarified. Christ\u2019s exemption from procreation\u00a0miraculously un<\/em>veils what procreation, in a veiled<\/em> way, brings about: the image of God in\u00a0the flesh.<\/p>\n

And why should such a clarification occur at the founding moment of the Incarnation?\u00a0Precisely because the Incarnation speaks always and only of Divine union<\/em> with the flesh.\u00a0From this point of view it is fitting that, in the very beginning of the revelation of this\u00a0truth, there should be a wonderful confirmation that the flesh is, indeed, the site of God\u2019s\u00a0Self-\u00adgift to the world.<\/p>\n

By Fr Philip Cleevely, Cong. Orat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Word became flesh. We reflect on this, perhaps, too little. But at the very beginning of\u00a0the third century, somewhere between 203 and 206, the theologian Tertullian, called the\u00a0father of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Incarnation-Cropped.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8brX6-4nK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16849,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16848\/revisions\/16849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}