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PAGE 5—December 16,1976
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BY FATHER ALFRED MCBRIDE, O. PRAEM.
Any discussion of Jesus and His
divinity/humanity could benefit from noting
the contrast between the god of philosophy and
the God of the Bible. The god of philosophy is
immutable, while the God of the Bible is
empathizing with people’s needs. The
philosopher’s god doesn’t worry about people
and is not affected by their needs. Such a god is
like a watchmaker. He winds up humanity and
lets it go on its own. He can forget the “human
clocks” because he wound them up so well.
That god is “up there and far away,” well out
of range of human suffering and anxiety. Not
so the empathizing God of the Bible.
Secondly, the god of the philosopher is all
knowing, but the God of the Bible is involved.
The idea of the all-knowing God makes Him
seem like an eye in the sky, a cosmic watchdog,
a puppet master holding power over people
because he knows their every move. This kind
of god knows all about people, but is not
involved in their struggles and yearnings.
Knowing “about” someone is not enough.
Lovers do more than simply know about each
other. Yes, the God of the Bible penetrates the
secrets of the human heart, but not like a
scientist looking curiously and dispassionately
into a microscope. God’s knowledge is not for
the purpose of ruling us so much for the goal of
loving us and involving Himself in our future.
Thirdly, the god of the philosophers is all
powerful, a heavenly official sending bulletins
to an unruly flock. Such a god is an emperor in
an unapproachable throne room. People are
supposed to feel like ants before this God. But
the God of the Bible is so powerful that He is
vulnerable - woundable. He loves people so
much that He joins their struggles for freedom
and dignity and yet He exposes Himself to their
betrayals. They can wound Him. The Bible is
full of stories of people scorning and abusing
the love of God. Small wonder that the most
pathetic moment of the passion is the scene
when Judas kisses Christ, using a most intimate
gesture of love as a curse.
The life of the prophet Hosea acts out this
image of the vulnerability of God. Hosea
marries a prostitute, thus beginning his wedding
night on a most precarious perch. Against all
good sense he pledges love to a woman very
likely to prove unfaithful to him. What
neighbor, relative and friend would not have
warned him? They were right. His wife soon
reverts to her promiscuous ways. Out she went
time after time with other lovers. But Hosea
really loved her and opened himself to her
endless repudiations. Still Hosea never fails in
his love for her. Again and again he goes out to
her and calls her home to his love.
“So I will allure her; I will lead her into the
desert and speak to her heart... I will espouse
her forever in love and mercy.” Hosea 2, 16-21
Hosea is an image of the vulnerable God of
the Bible. The greatest manifestation of God is
Christ. “He is the image of the invisible God,
the first born of all creatures.” (Col. 1,15) The
greatest antidote to the god of the philosophers
is the God of the Bible, and the best of all
places to find Him is in Jesus. People in their
foolish pride are always trying to be gods. God
in His inexpressible humanity is content to
become a human being.
The qualities of the God of the Bible -
empathy, involvement, vulnerability - are
found preeminently in Christ. The unbelievers
who raise their fists to the heavens against the
presumed unsympathetic, uninvolved and
coercively powerful god are venting their rage
against an idol - the god of the philosophers.
The day they find Christ, the incarnation of the
living God, they will know unimaginable love.
The Bible finally says that God is love.
Because of Christ we can know what that
statement means, namely, a way of living in the
world that never takes a refusal of love and
acceptance for an answer. To God, “no” is not
an answer, it is a renewed challenge to His
creative love. To Christ, “no” is a call to pour
out even more love and forgiveness to create
the possibility of hope for the other. And then
one day, as in millions of cases, a free,
responsible and grateful “yes” is heard.
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The Man We Are Meant To Become
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BY WILLIAM E. MAY
Each Sunday we confess our belief in “Jesus
Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten
of the Father, God from God, Light from
Light, true God from true God.” We likewise
profess our belief that this true God, “for us
men and for our salvation,” “came down from
heaven,” and that “by the power of the Holy
Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and
became man.”
Yes, Jesus is truly God. And truly man. We
cannot comprehend fully this great truth, but
we must take care not to misunderstand it.
Perhaps the most difficult thing for us is to
accept the reality of Jesus’ humanity. One of
the oldest heresies in the Church, one that
troubled the apostolic Church and was
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vigorously rejected by the New Testament, in
particular by John’s Epistles, was docetism.
According to this heresy, whose name is derived
from a Greek word meaning “to appear,” Jesus
looked like a man, talked like a man, acted like
a man, but deep down He was not really a man
precisely because He was God! Docetism,
unfortunately, is a subtle heresy and is, in a
sense, the perennial temptation of the
Christian.
The docetic view really takes the core out of
our belief and makes it impossible for us to
identify ourselves with Jesus. And we must
identify with Him because this is one of the
major reasons why God became truly one of us.
In becoming man, Jesus reveals to us the
deepest truths about ourselves. And docetism
makes it impossible for us to recognize these
truths.
A docetic mentality makes it as difficult for
us to identify with Jesus as a “Mighty Mouse”
view would make it difficult for ordinary mice
to identify with Mighty Mouse. The reason is
simply that Mighty Mouse is a radically
different kind of mouse from other mice; he
doesn’t really share their experiences and it is
impossible for them to share his. And for the
docetist, Jesus is a different kind of man from
other men; in fact, He really isn’t a man at all.
So how could He share our experiences? How
could we share His?
The truth is that Jesus is perfectly human;
He is the kind of man each of us is called to be,
meant to be, and can be precisely because He
came to show us how to perfect humanity.
Jesus was like us in every way except sin.
But what does this mean? It means that we
can identify ourselves with Jesus by accepting,
as He did, our common humanity - by
receiving it as a precious, priceless gift from
God. And this humanity is not something
abstract. Rather it is something concrete and
tangible, something we can see, smell and
touch, something we can love and cherish,
something for which we can even sacrifice our
lives. And it is something we can spit upon,
despise, destroy and crush. For the humanity
we share with Jesus is the same humanity we
discover in the persons with whom we live each
day.
Each person is, as it were, a new epiphany of
the humanity that we bear within ourselves and
that Jesus, true God, bears within Himself.
Jesus tells us that our vocation as human
beings, as His brothers and sisters, is to reach
out and embrace with love everyone who bears
the image of man - for every human being
bears the image of God. We are to love those
who share our humanity with the same love
with which Jesus loves us. Only by doing this
can we realize to the fullest the meaning of our
humanity; we become the kind of men that
Jesus is.
One thing more. We must remember our
faith holds that Jesus is still a man. When He
rose gloriously from the dead and ascended into
heaven, to “sit” in glory with his Father, He did
not cease being a man. It isn’t as though, His
earthly life over, Jesus “went back to being
God full time,” as it were. This would be a
docetic way of considering things. Jesus was
“full-time God and full-time man” during His
life on earth. And He is still “full-time God and
full-time man.” He is the man that each of us is
meant to become, that each of us will be, if we
seek to unite our lives with His and to live in
Him.
THE HUMANITY OF JESUS was “transparently clear” to
His contemporaries, Father John J. Castelot writes. “Even after
He stilled the storm on the lake, the dumbfounded disciples
expressed their amazement this way: ‘What sort of man is this,
that even the winds of the sea obey Him’?” (Mt. 8,27). Jesus
calms the waters in this woodcut by Paul Gustave Dore. (NC
Photo)
“THE BIBLE is full of stories of
people scorning and abusing the love of
God,” Father Alfred McBride writes.
“Small wonder that the most pathetic
moment of the passion is the scene
when Judas kisses Christ, using a most
intimate gesture of love as a curse.” In
this 16th century woodcut by Albrecht
Durer, Judas kisses Jesus as the soldiers
prepare for the arrest. (NC Photo)
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Jesus Christ Is Lord
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
“The Word became flesh and made his
dwelling among us” (Jn. 1,14). Thus simply
does John the Theologian state the stupendous
mystery of the Incarnation, the enfleshment of
the second Person of the trinity, as later
theologians would put it. Such penetration into
a truly unique reality, one which completely
transcends human experience, did not come
overnight, in one blinding flash of
understanding. It was the result of years,
decades of Spirit-guided reflection.
The humanity of Jesus was, of course,
transparently clear to His contemporaries. The
reaction of the synagogue congregation at
Nazareth was typical: “Where did he get all
this? What kind of wisdom is he endowed with?
How is it that such miraculous deeds are
accomplished by his hands? Is this not the
carpenter, the son of Mary . . .?” (Mk. 6,2-3)
Even after He stilled the storm on the lake, the
dumbfounded disciples expressed their
amazement: “What sort of man is this, that
even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Mt.
8,27)
If someone had answered: “This is the Word
made flesh, the Son of God incarnate,” he
would have been greeted with
uncomprehending stares. The disciples were
pious Jews; for them there was one God,
Yahweh, and that He should have a son was
unthinkable. In many ways they could see, hear
and experience Jesus’ humanity. Faith was
needed for them to discern His divinity, and it
was the Resurrection which ushered in the era
of faith, the age not of seeing but of believing.
We are so used to the reality of the divinity
of Christ that it may have lost for us its
wonder, its impact, its inexhaustible
implications. That a real man, with all our
human weaknesses, should be at the same time
not just a son of God, but the Son of God in
the fullest sense of the term - this is actually
mind-boggling! But our family familiarity with
the idea may prevent us from appreciating what
a bombshell it was when it first burst upon the
minds of the disciples. And even after they had
accepted it in faith, there still remained the task
of realizing it, then putting it into words.
It seems they balked at saying simply: “Jesus
is God.” For them Yahweh was God and Jesus
was not Yahweh. But as time went on they
found many equivalent terms to express their
belief in His divinity. Perhaps the most
impressive was the one which became the
central confession of Christian faith: “Jesus
Christ is Lord!” The Greek word Kyrios was
the accepted translation of the Hebrew word
Adonai (Lord), and this in turn was used as a
substitute for the sacred divine name, Yahweh.
Could they have proclaimed their faith in their
divinity of Christ any more clearly?
Although the Gospels are ostensibly records
of Jesus’ earthly career, they are not simply
that. They were written by men steeped in the
faith of the Christian Church. Even Mark, who
portrays a very human Jesus, opens his Gospel
with a profession of faith: “Here begins the
gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk.
1,1).
And when Mark brings his account of Jesus’
life to a close on Calvary, he has the Roman
centurion proclaim the faith of the (Roman?)
community for which he was writing: “The
centurion who stood guard over him, on seeing
the manner of his death, declared, ‘Clearly this
man was the son of God’!” (Mk. 15,39)
At the other end of the Gospel spectrum,
John’s Gospel gives incontrovertible evidence of
the Church’s faith in Christ’s divinity: “The
Word became flesh . . . and we have seen his
glory: the glory of an only Son coming from
the Father, filled with enduring love” (Jn.
1,14). This Gospel has Jesus making statements
which clearly reflect the faith of the Church: “I
solemnly declare it: before Abraham came to
be, I AM” (Jn. 8,57. “I AM” is, of course, the
divine name). “The Father and I are one.” (Jn.
10,30). “Philip,” Jesus replied, “after I have
been with you all this time, you still do not
know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the
Father” (Jn. 14,9).
But at least a decade before the first Gospel
was written, Paul was writing “to the church of
the Thessalonians who belong to God the
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess.
1,1). “May God himself, who is our Father, and
our Lord Jesus Christ make our path to you a
straight one” (3,9). At the beginning of
Romans, he introduces himself as an apostle
“set apart to proclaim the gospel of God . ..
concerning his Son, who was descended from
David according to the flesh but was made
Son-of-God-in-power according to the spirit of
holiness, by his resurrection from the dead:
Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1,1-4).
Especially reassuring are these warm,
personal words of the Beloved Disciple: “We
have seen for ourselves, and can testify, that the
Father has sent the Son as savior of the world.
When anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the
Son of God, God dwells in him and he in God”
(1 Jn. 4,14-15).