Christmas Day (6)

Christ, Redeemer of All

Jesu, the Father's only Son,

whose death for all redemption won,

before the worlds, of God most high,

begotten all ineffably.

The Father's Light and Splendor Thou

their endless Hope to Thee that bow:

accept the prayers and praise today

that through the world Thy servants pay.

Salvation's author, call to mind

how, taking the form of humankind,

born of a Virgin undefiled,

Thou in man's flesh becamest a Child.

Thus testifies the present day

Through every year in long array,

that Thou, salvation's source alone

proceedest from the Father's Throne.

Whence sky, and stars, and sea's abyss,

and earth, and all that therein is,

shall still, with laud and carol meet,

the Author of thine Advent greet.

And we who, by Thy precious Blood

from sin redeemed, are marked for God,

on this, the day that saw Thy Birth,

sing the new song of ransomed earth.

All honor, laud, and glory be,

O Jesu, Virgin-born, to Thee;

whom with the Father we adore,

and Holy Ghost forevermore. Amen.

6th Century Hymn; tr: John Mason Neale

Graphic:The Sancta Sanctorum Icon, Palestinian, 6th century

Incarnation and theosis

Unique to  Christianity is its astounding concept that God has become man.

The incarnation or the enfleshment  is the concecpt that Christ  being  born of a virgin indicates his divinity, his being born of a woman shows his true humanity. According to the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), Christ is fully human and fully divine. This union is sometimes called the hypostatic union.

As the early Church Fathers like Irenaeus (2nd c.) and Athanasius (4th c.) frequently said, God became man so that man might become divine.

Incarnation and theosis The Divinization of Humanity

 Because of the fact that divinity and humanity are united in the person of Christ, our humanity can now be united with God's divinity. We can share in the nature of the triune God.

So there's a two-way movement. God humbles himself, stooping downward to us, taking on our
nature, so that we can then be elevated, taking on his nature. The incarnation is the basis of our
divinization, but it is also the basis of the atonement. By taking on human flesh, Christ was able to pay thepenalty for the sin of all humanity through his death on the cross. Before being able to share in God's lifeand nature, humanity needed to be cleansed of sin. This cleansing is accomplished through Christ offeringhimself for our sins.

this article is adapted from Ortho-Wiki

"Christ has no Body, but Yours"

A Prayer of Teresa of Avlia

 
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.


 Born in Spain, Teresa entered a Carmelite convent when she was eighteen, and later earned a reputation as a mystic, reformer, and writer who experienced divine visions. She founded a convent, and wrote the book The Way of Perfection for her nuns. Other important books by her include her Autobiography and The Interior Castle.

God Puts on a Frame of Flesh

He became what we are that he might make us what he is.
Athanasius

God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.
C.S. Lewis

The mystery of Christ, that He sunk Himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.
Martin Luther

The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.
C.S. Lewis

As far as the Incarnation is concerned, I believe firmly in it. I believe that God did lean down to become Man in order that we could reach up to Him, and that the drama which embodies that Incarnation, the drama described in the Creed, took place.
Malcolm Muggeridge

Nowhere is salvation conceived of as a flight from history as in Greek thought; it is always the coming of God to man in history. Man does not ascend to God; God descends to man.
George Eldon Ladd

The Incarnation was the necessary means to bring about the salvation that we human beings would never have attained by our own power. The Word of God became human in order that we might become God through God’s graceful, divine life. He comes to restore the likeness of God in us.

Irernaeus

graphic: The Descent of Peace, 1803-1817, most likely c. 1815  by William Blake

Theosis

C S Lewis on Theosis

God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.
C.S. Lewis

The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.
C.S. Lewis

Teaching of the Early Church: Theosis (2)

Irenaus and Primary Purpose of the Atonement.

“For [God] promised, that in the last times He would pour Him [the Spirit] upon [His] servants and handmaids, that they might prophesy; wherefore He did also descend upon the Son of God, made the Son of man, becoming accustomed in fellowship with Him to dwell in the human race, to rest with human beings, and to dwell in the workmanship of God, working the will of the Father in them, and renewing them from their old habits into the newness of Christ” (Against the Heresies, III.17.1). theosis

“For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God” (Against the Heresies, III.19.1). theosis

“…the Word of God, who dwelt in man, and became the Son of man, that He might accustom man to receive God, and God to dwell in man, according to the good pleasure of the Father” (Against the Heresies, III.20.2). theosis

“…our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself” (Against the Heresies, V. Preface). theosis

“But we do now receive a certain portion of His Spirit, tending towards perfection, and preparing us for incorruption, being little by little accustomed to receive and bear God…” (Against the Heresies, V.7.1). theosis

early chruch teaching; the Incarnation (12)

The Revealing of the Hidden Mystery
from the Treatise of Hippolytus against the heresy of Noetus, 3rd century

There is one God, and we can come to know him through sacred scripture. So then, let us look at what scripture proclaims, let us discover what its teaching is.  As the Father wants to be believed, so let us discover what its teaching is.  As the Father wants to be believed so let us believe; as he wants the Son to be glorified, so let us glorify him; as he wants the Holy Spirit to be given, so let us receive him.  We must not act in accordance with our own mind or our own will; we must not do violence to what God has given.  We must look at things rather as God has chosen to make them known through scripture.

God, existing alone, without contemporary of any sort, decided to make the world. He conceived it in his mind, willed it, spoke the word, and so made it, and immediately it came into being, formed as he had willed it.  It is enough for us simply to know that God had no contemporary; apart from him there was nothing.  But though alone, God was manifold.  He was not without reason or wisdom or power or counsel.  All things were in him and he was all.  When he willed, and as he willed, he revealed his Word, at times which he himself had determined.  Through his Word he made all things.

The Word was in God and was invisible to the created world, but God made him visible.  He spoke, as he had done before, and, begetting light from light, he sent forth his own mind to the world as its Lord.  He who formerly had been visible only to God and invisible to the world was now made visible, so that through this manifestation the world could see him, and be saved.

The Word is the mind of God; he came into the world and was shown forth as Son of God.  All things, then, come into being through him, and he alone is from the Father.

It was this one God who gave the law and the prophets.  In giving them, he made them speak by the Holy Spirit: the Father’s power inspires them, and they proclaim the Father’s purpose and will.

And so the Word was manifested.  Saint John sums up what the prophets said and shows that this is the Word through whom all things came to be: ‘In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God.  Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him’.  Later he goes on: ‘The world had its being through him, and the world did not know him.  He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him’.

graphic: byzantine Icon

Irenaeus (125-202)

The Theology of Irenaeus

The central point of Irenaeus' theology is the unity of God, in opposition to the Gnostics' division of God into a number of divine "Aeons", and their distinction between the "High God" and the wicked "Demiurge" who created the world. Irenaeus uses the logos theology he inherited from Justin Martyr, but prefers to speak of the Son and the Spirit as the "hands of God," using figures for the Trinity which antedate the more precise language of the Cappodicians. Christ, for him, is the invisible Father made visible.

His emphasis on the unity of God is reflected in his corresponding emphasis on the unity of salvation history. Irenaeus repeatedly insists that God created the world and has been overseeing it ever since. Everything that has happened is part of his plan for humanity. The essence of this plan is maturation: Irenaeus believes that humanity was created immature, and God intended his creatures to take time to grow into his likeness. Thus, Adam and Eve were created as children. Their Fall was thus not a full-blown rebellion but a childish spat, a desire to grow up before their time and have everything now.

Everything that has happened since has therefore been directed by God to help humanity overcome this and grow up. The world has been designed by God as a difficult place, where human beings are forced to make moral decisions - only in this way can they mature. Irenaeus likens death to the whale that swallowed Jonah: it was only in the depths of the whale's belly that Jonah could turn to God and do his will. Similarly, death and suffering appear evil, but without them we could never come to know God.

The high point in salvation history is Jesus Christ. Irenaeus believes that Christ would always have been sent, even if humanity had never sinned; but the fact that they did sin determines his role as a saviour. He sees Christ as the new Adam, who systematically undoes what Adam did: thus, where Adam was disobedient about the fruit of a tree, Christ was obedient even to death on the wood of a tree. Irenaeus is the first to draw comparisons between Eve and the Theotokos, contrasting the faithlessness of the former with the faithfulness of the latter. In addition to reversing the wrongs done by Adam, Irenaeus thinks of Christ as "recapitulating" or "summing up" human life. This means that Christ goes through every stage of human life, from infancy to old age, and simply by living it, sanctifies it with his divinity. Irenaeus is therefore forced to argue that Christ did not die until he was quite old!

Irenaeus thus thinks that our salvation comes about, essentially, through the incarnation of God as man. He characterises the penalty for sin as death and corruption. God, however, is immortal and incorruptible, and simply by becoming united to human nature in Christ he conveys those qualities to us: they spread, as it were, like a benign infection. Irenaeus therefore understands the atonement of Christ as happening through his incarnation rather than his crucifixion , although the latter is an integral part of the former. 

from  Orthodox wiki

Brother Lawrence (1611-1691)

The more one knows God, the greater one desires to know Him. Knowledge is commonly the measure of love. The deeper and more extensive our knowledge, the greater is our love.

We must know before we can love. In order to know God, we must often think of Him. And when we come to love Him, we shall then also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure.

I see Him in such a manner as might make me say sometimes, I believe no more, but I see.

People seek methods of learning to know God. Is it not much shorter and more direct to simply do everything for the love of Him? There is no finesse about it. One only has to do it generously and simply.

It is the Creator who teaches truth, who in one moment instructs the heart of the humble and makes him understand more about the mysteries of faith and even about Himself than if he had studied them for a long term of years.

God alone is capable of making Himself known as He really is. We search in reasoning and in sciences, as in a poor copy. What we neglect to see is God's painting Himself in the depth of our soul.

I walk before God simply, in faith, with humility and with love; and I apply myself diligently to do nothing and think nothing which may displease Him ... and this without any other view than purely for the love of Him, and because He deserves infinitely more.

In continuing the practice of conversing with God throughout each day, and quickly seeking His forgiveness when I fell or strayed, His presence has become as easy and natural to me now as it once was difficult to attain.

We are made for God alone, who can only be pleased when we turn away from ourselves to devote ourselves to Him.

I know that for the right practice the heart must be empty of all other things; because God will possess the heart alone; and as He cannot possess it alone, without emptying it of all else besides, so neither can He act there and do in it what He pleases, unless it be left vacant to Him.

We ought to give ourselves up to God, both in temporal and spiritual things, and seek our satisfaction only in fulfilling His will. Whether He leads us by suffering or consolation, all is the same to one truly resigned.

We only deceive ourselves by seeking or loving God for any favors which He has or may grant us. Such favors, no matter how great, can never bring us as near to God as can one simple act of faith. Let us seek Him often by faith.

 Let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God.

The end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshippers of God we can possibly be, as we hope to be through all eternity.

The most excellent method of going to God is that of doing our common business without any view of pleasing people but purely for the love of God.

We ought not to grow tired of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.


The more one knows God, the greater one desires to know Him. Knowledge is commonly the measure of love. The deeper and more extensive our knowledge, the greater is our love.

We must know before we can love. In order to know God, we must often think of Him. And when we come to love Him, we shall then also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure.

I see Him in such a manner as might make me say sometimes, I believe no more, but I see.

God does not ask much of us. But remembering Him, praising Him, asking for His grace, offering Him your troubles, or thanking Him for what He has given you will console you all the time ... lift up your heart ... little remembrances please Him.

We should, once and for all, heartily put our whole trust in God and make a total surrender of ourselves, secure that He will not deceive us.

There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God; those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.



quotes from the letters of Brother Lawrence  (compiled in the text of "Practicing the presence of God") 17th century

Early Church teaching: the Incarnation (6)

The Word, the Wisdom of God, was made flesh 

from a Sermon of  Peter Chrysologus

The blessed apostle has recalled that two men gave a beginning to the human race, namely Adam and Christ; two men equal in physical nature but unequal in merit; truly alike in their bodily structure, but totally dissimilar in their own origin.  ‘The first Adam', he says, ‘became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

That first Adam was made by this last, from whom he obtained the soul to give him life; the last was author of his own making: he did not look for life from another, but himself alone bestowed life on all.  The first Adam is moulded from the vile dust of the earth, the second comes forth from the precious womb of the Virgin.  In the first Adam earth is changed into flesh, in the last, flesh is raised up to God.

And what more?  This last is the Adam, who when forming the first set his own image in him.  Hence he assumed his role, and received his name to prevent the loss of what he had made to his own image.  There is a first Adam, then, and a last Adam: the first has a beginning, the last has no end.  Because this last is in truth himself the first, as he says, ‘I am the first and the last...'.

‘As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven'.  How shall those not born in such a condition be found so, remaining not as they were born, but as they were reborn?

This is the reason, brothers, why the heavenly Spirit makes fertile the womb of the virginal font, by the secret admixture of his light, that it may bring forth as heavenly creatures, and bring back to the likeness of the Creator, those whom their origin in earth's dust had produced as men of dust in miserable state.  So now reborn and refashioned to the likeness of our Creator, let us fulfil the apostle's command: ‘Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven'.

Now reborn after the pattern of our Lord, as I have said, let us bear the full and complete image of our maker; not in majesty, in which he is alone, but in innocence, simplicity, meekness, patience, humility, mercy and concord - in which he designed to become and to be one with us.

graphics: upper: Zairian Christ, lower: south park Jesus

Hippolytus on the Incarnation (7)

Hippoolytus on the Incarnation    There is only one God, brethren, and we learn about him only from sacred Scripture. It is therefore our duty to become acquainted with what Scripture proclaims and to investigate its teachings thoroughly. We should believe them in the sense that the Father wills, thinking of the Son in the way the Father wills, and accepting the teaching he wills to give us with regard to the Holy Spirit. Sacred Scripture is God’s gift to us and it should be understood in the way that he intends: we should not do violence to it by interpreting it according to our own preconceived ideas. God was all alone and nothing existed but himself when he determined to create the world. He thought of it, willed it, spoke the word and so made it. It came into being instantaneously, exactly as he had willed. It is enough then for us to be aware of a single fact: nothing is co-eternal with God. Apart from God there was simply nothing else. Yet although he was alone, he was manifold because he lacked neither reason, wisdom, power nor counsel. All things were in him and he himself was all. At a moment of his own choosing and in a manner determined by himself, God manifested his Word, and through him he made the whole universe. When the Word was hidden within God himself he was invisible to the created world, but God made him visible. First God gave utterance to his voice, engendering light from light, and then he sent his own mind into the world as its Lord. Visible before to God alone and not to the world, God make him visible so that the world could be saved by seeing him. This mind that entered our world was made known as the Son of God. All things came into being through him; but he alone is begotten by the Father. The Son gave us the law and the prophets, and he filled the prophets with the Holy Spirit to compel them to speak out. Inspired by the Father’s power, they were to proclaim the Father’s purpose and his will. So the Word was made manifest, as Saint John declares when, summing up all the sayings of the prophets, he announces that this is the Word through whom the whole universe was made. He says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through him all things came into being; not one thing was created without him. And further on he adds: The world was made through him, and yet the world did not know him. He entered his own creation, and his own did not receive him. This excerpt from St. Hippolytus’ treatise against the heresy of Noetus (Cap. 9-12: PG 10, 815-819)

Early Church Teaching: the Incarnation (6)

Life itself appeared in human form

 ‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes and touche with our hands, concerning the Word of Life'.  Who could touch the Word with his hands, were it not that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us?

 This Word, who became flesh in order that he could be touched by hands, began to be flesh in the Virgin Mary's womb.  But he did not then begin to be the Word; for St John says, ‘That which was from the beginning'.  See how his letter corroborates his gospel, from which you heard a short time ago, ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God'.

Possibly some may understand ‘concerning the Word of life' as a vague expression referring to Christ, not meaning that very body of Christ which was touched by hands.  But you must take into account what follow, ‘And life itself was made manifest'.  It is Christ, therefore, who is the Word of life.

 And how was life manifested?  It was from the beginning, but it had not been manifested to men; yet it had been revealed to the angels, as they saw it and were nourished by it as if it were their bread.  What does scripture say?  ‘Man has eaten bread of angels'.

 So the life itself was made manifest in the flesh, because it depended on ‘manifestation', that a reality only perceptible to the heart might also be visible to our eyes, and thus heal our hearts.  For the Word is seen only by the heart, but the flesh is seen also by bodily eyes.  There was in fact flesh which we could see, in order to heal the heart, the means by which we could see the Word.

‘And we are witnesses', he says, ‘and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest among us'; to make the text clearer it is permissible to read ‘was made manifest to us'.

‘That which we have seen and heard therefore we proclaim to you'.  My dear brethren in Christ, take note of this: ‘that which we have seen and heard therefore we proclaim to you'.  They - namely the writers - saw the Lord himself, present in the flesh and heard the words from the Lord's own lips, and proclaimed them to us.  So we also have heard, but we have not seen.

Is it to be concluded that we are less blessed than those who heard and also saw?  How then does the writer add, ‘that you say have fellowship with us'?  They saw, we have not seen; and yet we are in fellowship with them, for we hold a common faith.

‘And our fellowship is with God the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.  And', he adds, ‘we are writing this that you joy may be complete'.  This complete joy of which he speaks is in that very fellowship itself, in that very love, in that very unity.

from St Augustine's commentary on the first letter of St John

graphic: Incarnation,  acrylic on canvas

Christmas Day (3): the incarnation (5)

 O Christian, be aware of  your nobility

from a Sermon by Leo the Great, 5th century

This is the day our Savior was born: what a joy for us, my beloved!  This is no season for sadness, this, the birthday of Life - the Life which annihilates the fear of death, and engenders joy, promising, as it does, immortality.

Nobody is an outsider to this happiness.  The same cause for joy is common to all, for as our Lord found nobody free from guilt when he came to bring an end to death and to sin, so he came with redemption for all.  Let the saint rejoice, for he hastens to his crown; let the sinner be filled with joy, for pardon is offered him; let the Gentile be emboldened, for he is called to life.

When the designated time had come, which God in his deep and impenetrable plan had fixed upon, God's Son took the nature of man upon himself in order to reconcile man to his Creator.  Thus would the devil, the father of death, be himself overcome by that self-same human nature which he had overcome.

The angels therefore exult at the birth of the Lord: they sing ‘Glory to God in high heaven'; they announce ‘Peace on earth for men on whom his favor rests'.  For they behold the heavenly Jerusalem being constructed from out of all the peoples on earth.  How greatly ought mere men rejoice at this mysterious undertaking of divine love, when the angels on high thrill so much at it!

My beloved, let us offer thanksgiving to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit.  In the great mercy with which he loved us, he had pity on us, and ‘in giving life to Christ, gave life to us too, when we were dead through sin', so that in him we might be a new creation, a new work of his hands.

Let us then be quit of the old self and the habits that went with it.  Sharers now in the birth of Christ, let us break with the deeds of the flesh.

O Christian, be aware of your nobility - it is God's own nature that you share: do not then, by an ignoble life, fall back into your former baseness.  Think of the Head, think of the Body of which you are a member.  Recall that you have been rescued from the power of darkness, and have been transferred to the light of God, the kingdom of God.

Through the sacrament of baptism you have been made a temple of the Holy Spirit; do not, by evil deeds, drive so great an indweller away from you, submitting yourself once more to the slavery of the devil.  For you were bought at the price of Christ's blood.

graphic from the film the Nativity

Incarnation (4)

God puts on a frame of Flesh: some modern voices chime in

The mystery of Christ, that He sunk Himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.
Martin Luther

Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If the holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too.
And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and re-create the human heart, because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.
– Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark

As far as the Incarnation is concerned, I believe firmly in it. I believe that God did lean down to become Man in order that we could reach up to Him, and that the drama which embodies that Incarnation, the drama described in the Creed, took place.
Malcolm Muggeridge

Our imitation of God in this life … must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions.
- C.S. Lewis, from his book The Four Loves

"There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation."
Madalene L'Engil

Nowhere is salvation conceived of as a flight from history as in Greek thought; it is always the coming of God to man in history. Man does not ascend to God; God descends to man.
George Eldon Ladd

graphic: the birth of christ by william blake

some of this material has been previously posted on living water from ancient well

The Incarnation (3)

Truth sprang from the earth and justice looked down from heaven

from a Sermon by St Augustine, 5th century

 Wake up, O man - it was for you that God was made man!  Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.  For you, I say, was God made man.  Eternal death would have awaited you had he not been born in time.  Never would you be freed from your sinful flesh, had he not taken to himself the likeness of sinful flesh.  Everlasting would be your misery, had he not performed this act of mercy.  You would not have come to life again, had he not come to die your death.  You would have broken down, had he not come to help.  You would have perished, had he not come.
Let us joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption.  Let us celebrate the hallowed day on which the great eternal day came from the great eternal day into this, our so short and temporal day.  He has become our justice, and our sanctification, and our redemption.  And so, as scripture says: ‘Let him who glories, glory in the Lord'.
Truth, then, is sprung out of the earth: Christ who said, ‘I am the truth', is born of a virgin.  And justice looked down from heaven: man, believing in him who has been born, has been justified not by himself, but by God.
Truth is sprung out of the earth, for the Word was made flesh.  And justice looked down from heaven, for every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above.
Truth is sprung out of the earth - flesh born of Mary.  And justice looked down from heaven, for a man cannot receive anything, unless it be given him from heaven.
Being justified by faith, let us have peace with God, for justice and peace have kissed each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ, for Truth is sprung out of the earth.  Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we glory in our hope of sharing the glory of God.  Saint Paul does not say, ‘our glory', but ‘the glory of God'; because justice does not proceed from us, but has looked down from heaven.  Let him who glories then, glory, not in himself, but in the Lord.  Because of this, when the Lord was born of the Virgin, the angels announced, ‘Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will'.
Whence is peace on earth, if not from the fact that Truth is sprung out of the earth, that is, Christ is born of flesh?  And he is our peace, who has made both one, that we might be men of good will, bound together by the sweet bonds of unity.
Let us, then, rejoice in this grace, that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience, and we may glory, not in ourselves, but in the Lord.  Obviously, it was because of this that it was said, ‘my glory, who lifts up my head'.
For what greater grace could have dawned upon us from God, than that he, who had only one Son, made him the son of man, and so in turn made the son of man a son of God.  Ask yourself whether this involved any merit, any motivation, any right on your part; and see whether you find anything but grace!

The Incarnation (2)

Wonder of the Incarnation

Gregory Nazianze

 The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal, the beginning of beginning, the light of light, the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the immovable seal, the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father: he it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like. He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin. He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit; his coming to birth had to be treated with honor, virginity had to receive new honor. He comes forth as God, in the human nature he has taken, one being, made of two contrary elements, flesh and spirit. Spirit gave divinity, flesh received it.

He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty; he is emptied for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness. What is this wealth of goodness? What is this mystery that surrounds me? I received the likeness of God, but failed to keep it. He takes on my flesh, to bring salvation to the image, immortality to the flesh. He enters into a second union with us, a union far more wonderful than the first.

Holiness had to be brought to man by the humanity assumed by one who was God, so that God might overcome the tyrant by force and so deliver us and lead us back to himself through the mediation of his Son. The Son arranged this for the honor of the Father, to whom the Son is clearly obedient in all things.

The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, came in search of the straying sheep to the mountains and hills on which you used to offer sacrifice. When he found it, he took it on the shoulders that bore the wood of the cross, and led it back to the life of heaven.

Christ, the light of all lights, follows John, the lamp that goes before him. The Word of God follows the voice in the wilderness; the bridegroom follows the bridegroom’s friend, who prepares a worthy people for the Lord by cleansing them by water in preparation for the Spirit.

We need God to take our flesh and die, that we might live. We have died with him, that we may be purified. We have risen again with him, because we have died with him. We have been glorified with him, because we have risen again with him.

Gregory of Nazianzen was archbishop of Constantinople (now Istanbul) at the time of the First Council of Constantinople which in 381 revised the Nicene Creed .  He is one of the great of the Early Church Fathers.  This excerpt from his writings (Oratio 45, 9, 22.26.28;  PG 36, 634-635. 654,658-659. 662)  is a beautiful tribute to the wonder of the mystery of the Incarnation

graphic: head of Christ painted by Manuil Panelinos, Mt. Athos, 14th century

The Incarnation ( 1 )

Ireneaus : Vision of the Incarnation

“…the Son of God being made the Son of man, that through Him we may receive the adoption—humanity sustaining, and receiving, and embracing the Son of God” (Against the Heresies, III.16.3).

“Now this is His Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, who in the last times was made a man among men, that He might join the end to the beginning, that is, man to God. Wherefore, the prophets, receiving the prophetic gift from the same Word, announced His advent according to the flesh, by which the blending and communion of God and man took place according to the good pleasure of the Father, the Word of God foretelling from the beginning that God should be seen by men, and hold converse with them upon the earth, should confer with them, and should be present with His own creation, saving it, and becoming capable of being perceived by it, and freeing us from the hands of all that hate us, that is, from every spirit of wickedness; and causing us to serve Him in holiness and righteousness all our days, in order that man, having embraced the Spirit of God, might pass into the glory of the Father” (Against the Heresies, IV.20.4)

“He might easily have come to us in His immortal glory, but in that case we could never have endured the greatness of the glory; and therefore it was that He, who was the perfect bread of the Father, offered Himself to us as milk, [because we were infants]. He did this when He appeared as a man, that we, being nourished, as it were, from the breast of His flesh, and having, by such a course of milk-nourishment, become accustomed to eat and drink the Word of God, may be able also to contain in ourselves the Bread of immortality, which is the Spirit of the Father” (Against the Heresies, IV.38.1).

“It was for this reason that the Son of God, although He was perfect, passed through the stage of infancy in common with the rest of mankind, partaking of it thus not for His own benefit, but for that of the infantile stage of man’s existence, in order that man might be able to receive Him” (Against the Heresies, IV.38.1).

Teachings of the early church (Intro)

For some time i have wanted to do a series on what the early followers of Christ taught and believed. The theology of the early church is what i guess it could be refered to.  This is always interesting because it is usually interpreted in light of what ever stream is doing the presenting. 

The thing i find extremely intriguing is that many things that we, particularly evangelicals hold dear are fairly new concepts that would have been forgien to the first followers of Christ. We have touched on some of these, for example early church practice when it came to war and the military, as well as  eluding to others, Theosis,  Imagio Dei, and Christus Victor.

This will be a project that will be interspersed among every thing else that gets posted here. So it will be on going.

Thought i would begin with the Incarnation being Advent and all,  though the main reason i thought i'd start here is that for early  Christ followers the  Incarnation was the lynch pin that held everything else together. Let us see. Emmanuel. God with us...

So...

graphic: early last supper or agape feast

We Beseech Thee

let our hearts be enlightened by the holy radiance of Thy Son's Incarnation; 

that we may escape the darkness of this world, 

and by His guidance attain to the country of everlasting clearness. 

fragment 

graphic: JV Harvey. Incarnation. 1994.

Epiphany (3)

 

 A Collect for the Epiphany

O God

Who on this day

through the guidance of a star

didst manifest

Thine Only-Begotten Son to the Gentiles;

mercifully grant

that we who know Thee now by faith,

may one day be brought

to the contemplation of the beauty of Thy majesty.

Through the same Christ our Lord. 

                                                                  Amen

from a Benidicitne  office for Epiphany

Epiphany is the 12th day of christmas and marks the adoration of the magi