The title of Father Edward Oakes’ new book, Infinity Dwindled to Infancy, nicely captures the imaginative challenge posed at Christmas: the mystery of the infinite God become finite man. In truth, however, the challenge to our imaginations has less to do with the how of what the Divine Office calls this admirabile commercium [marvelous exchange] than with the why.
Posit an all-powerful and infinite God, and most of us wouldn’t have too much trouble with the idea that such a God could do anything, including coming into the finite world he created. The real question is why such a God would want to do such a thing: to submit his divinity to the limits of our humanity, to dwindle into infancy and then to go farther—to die as a tortured criminal at the hands of his own creatures. Here is the “scandal” of Christianity. For the answer faith gives to the question of why is salvific love: a love so great that it required, not an argument, but a demonstration.
Eastern Christian theology helps us understand the full dimensions of the why of the Incarnation through its concept of theosis, or divinization: God becomes man so that we might become like God—so that we can live comfortably with God forever. Here, then, is the admirabile commercium: God “exchanges” his divinity for our humanity, thus enabling us to “exchange” our weakness for his divine glory—the glory of which the angels sing to the shepherds of Bethlehem. The years St. Paul spent in the desert, pondering just how the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, which had been revealed to him on the road to Damascus, fulfilled God’s election of Israel, led the Apostle to the Gentiles to be the first to formulate this “exchange:” “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” [2 Corinthians 8:9].
The Fathers of the Church took up the theme and developed the idea that, in the “exchange,” men and women were empowered to become godlike. Thus St. Gregory Nazianzen: “Let us seek to be like Christ, because Christ also became like us: to become gods through him since he himself, through us, became a man. He took the worst upon himself to make us a gift of the best.” If the language of “becoming gods” strikes our ears as odd, that may be because we have not quite plumbed the radical depths of the divine love: for in the Incarnation, “God so loved the world” [John 3:16] that he doubled-down on the divine humility, dwindling himself into infancy so that we could share, really and truly, in the divine life.
The indictment of Christianity that began in the 18th century and metastasized in the 19th was that the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus kept humanity infantile, such that only by throwing the God of the Bible over the side could humanity ever achieve maturity and liberation. This was, of course, a complete inversion of the truth: the Christian faith, proclaimed by the Second Letter of Peter, is that God, by the Incarnation, has made us “partakers of the divine nature” [2 Peter 1:4]. And in doing so, the divine humility, manifest as love, brings us into the fullness of human maturation and the fullness of true freedom. Thus Pope St. Leo the Great, in the Christmas homily the Church reads in the Office of Readings for Christmas Day, could admonish his Roman congregation in 440: “Realize, O Christian, your dignity. Once made a partaker in the divine nature, do not return to your former baseness by a life unworthy of that dignity.”
Christmas faith inspires righteous living, not by fear, but by love: the love that expresses itself in history in the humility of the Incarnation and the Holy Birth; the love that speaks of the glory of God, “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” [Luke 2:12].
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
RESOURCES
Edward Oakes, Infinity Dwindled to Infancy: A Catholic and Evangelical Christology
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Comments:
As a Roman Catholic I find Theosis a very beautiful doctrine, one that I have heard preached in semine in a number of Catholic homilies.
Best,
Richard
Still? Stuart notes the danger in all this: if man is become God, what's to prevent a human being today, from pronouncing himself, and or his all-too-human institutions, as God? What's to prevent the deification of even ... our human imperfections?
Here, humility is called for.
And perhaps? A certain distance from all institutions. Even religious institutions. Which are all, all-too-human, after all.
(by the way, you're STILL transparent--the style and fixations gives you away every time),
You don't seem to understand the doctrine of Theiosis and would do well not to treat of it.
Preaching humility to serious Christians is superfluous (because they know that before the Creator creatures always have been, are, and always will be nothing). But while we're at it, consistency would suggest that you practice what you preach.
And you have not stopped your attempt to edge the race away from (and eventually eliminate) Churches, even those illuminated by the Holy Spirit. It is because of the Churches (the communal memorialization and worship of Christ) that we have any Christianity at all. After all, Jesus said that the gates of Hell would not prevail against his ecclesia. Quite an endorsement.
Merry CHRISTmas.
Richard
O marvelous exchange! Man's Creator has become man, born of the Virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity.”
– Catechism of the Catholic Church #526
“By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”
– Liturgy of the Eucharist
Yet sin and death began with Man's desire to be like God:
“And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death. For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods ...”
– Genesis 3:4-5
Wanting to be like God is not a very original sin. There is a huge difference between God willingly sharing His divine life with us on His terms and our grasping for what we have no claim to on our own terms and in defiance of Him. It is the difference between heaven and hell.
Enlightenment on the point from an Eastern Christian would be welcome.
None too happily,
Richard
I'm Catholic (Western tradition) and my sense of the deification of man has its direct origin in Jesus' answer to the Scribe who asked him if he claimed to be God: "Scripture says 'Ye are gods', and Scripture will not be put aside."
Jesus, of course, was referencing the high priests who had the responsibility of abiding in and communicating what God revealed to the Jewish people, presiding over the ceremonies that sustained the memory of what was revealed. It was their direct participation in preaching and ceremonially sustaining what God revealed at the highest order that spoke of their divinization. But with Christians, we literally become the Body of Christ: we are literally incorporated into Christ: We are the Temple itself!, the Temple that Jesus said would be destroyed and be rebuilt in three days. But this divinization, being literally incorporated into the Body of Christ, does not put us on the same plane with God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). We are adopted sons and daughters who have been incorporated into the Godhead through Jesus' body and blood, what in essence is a direct participation in the life of God, but the distinction remains: we will never be Thee God. That's my understanding of it.
Nicely put, but it doesn't cover all the points of my concern.
Gil,
This gets down to the points that concern me. I have no difficulty accepting our being godlike in this way. We will participate in the divine life, and according to the language of the CCC enter into the life of the Trinity. But human beings are contingent finite beings and God is self-subsistent infinite being (or beyond being, if you are apophatic in your approach) and you can't get there from here. God will always have have been eternal and we will always have been created out of nothing, and the infinite gap between us, however far God's love lifts us up, will never be abolished.
Best,
Richard
Some Christians have tried to argue that the belief in theosis by the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (nicknamed "Mormons") removes us from the category of "Christians". Thank you for affirming that this doctrine is an ancient and authentic Christian belief, which some of our Protestant neighbors have abandoned and erroneously insist has no roots in the Bible.
In his sermon on “Christian Perfection,” John Wesley explained that Christians can and do experience moments or periods in which they walk perfectly with God: “It remains, then, that Christians are saved in this world from all sin, from all unrighteousness; that they are now in such a sense perfect, as not to commit sin, and to be freed from evil thoughts and evil tempers.”
Wesley divides his sermon into two halves. In the first, he explains in what senses Christians will never be perfect, which addresses some of the concerns you raise, Richard. In the second, he explains in what senses Christians are perfect.
The sermon ends with a hymn from his brother Charles that concludes with these lines: “Now let me gain perfection's height! Now let me into nothing fall! Be less than nothing in thy sight, And feel that Christ is all in all!”
I agree with everything you just wrote, and it answers all the questions concerned as far as I see it. Infinite closeness and infinite distance (God is beyond Being, explored by Jan luc Marion in his fine book, "God Without Being"). Your words do sum up for me the theological understanding of our deification.
Of this knowing and this loving there will be no end, and however far we move, we will still have infinity to go, but the progress is real, and the filling of our small vessels with as much divinity as they can hold is a real increase. While we move in the correct direction we already have heaven on earth, and an eternity of ever-greater knowing and loving is what makes me long for rather than fear eternity.
One pious reading of theosis, would indeed, honor the traditional Christian sense, of 1) trying to be like God. But always being aware that this is technically impossible. And pursing it with all due humility therefore.
But unfortunately? I think that many are actually using the second meaning. Specifically, 2) many are secretly using this theology, as an excuse for playing God, themselves. They feel that if God was made man, then man was made God. And therefore? Some of us should just go ahead with it, offering our own political opinions, as simply - the word of God.
Particularly? Both liberals, but also here, Humanist /postmodern conservatives say, who might not really believe in God at all, still might not mind putting on that prophetic "mantle." And presenting themselves as religious persons in various forums. Even becoming priests. But deeper down, they may be rather cynically using that mask, to further their various all-too-human political agendas. The "traditions of men." Which they now offer, as the commands of God.
If so? Then we are looking at a very, very evil situation indeed.
Merry Christmas Richard!
Good Lord in Heaven, you have no self knowledge or sense of irony at all!
I quote:
But unfortunately? I think that many are actually using the second meaning. Specifically, 2) many are secretly using this theology, as an excuse for playing God, themselves. They feel that if God was made man, then man was made God. And therefore? Some of us should just go ahead with it, offering our own political opinions, as simply - the word of God.
Particularly? Both liberals, but also here, Humanist /postmodern conservatives say, who might not really believe in God at all, still might not mind putting on that prophetic "mantle." And presenting themselves as religious persons in various forums. Even becoming priests. But deeper down, they may be rather cynically using that mask, to further their various all-too-human political agendas. The "traditions of men." Which they now offer, as the commands of God.
If so? Then we are looking at a very, very evil situation indeed.
++++++++++++++++++
Merry CHRISTmas, Imago.
And Christ be with you and turn your name from Image to
VERITAS. Your post, inadvertently, makes a good start.
Richard
The Incarnation, exlained in the light of Admirabili Commercium is indeed a way of bringing out God's definitive and progressive salvific action. By the incarnation of God, man is raised to a dignity higher than what he has at creation when God made him in his image and likeness. Mankind has a bit of God in him, perhaps thats what motivated the narration of the creation of man reflecting that man became a living being through the breath of God. This was not a perfect deification, but making human. Then when God took that human nature, bearing in mind that He can do what he desires, man became god, (not God). god, not a deity, but sharing in the divine life of God, who desired and indeed shared human life.
Have a wonderful celebration of this mystery of LOVE called Christmas.
Omodunbi Anthony
The answer draws a bright line between Latin and Eastern (though not necessarily Greek) Christianity. (Sorry, Fr. Z.)
There is a brittleness to Easter Orthodoxy's brilliant liturgical light that should not be ignored. Theosis in Eastern Orthodoxy is what Allah is to Islam, reckless in erasing boundaries and limits, totalitarian in its reach.
It is revealing that Weigel placed his stress on "likeness". Eastern Orthodoxy does not - or does, and then ascends upon that upper limit.
I guess I'm asking the ontological question, the one about Personhood. Eastern Orthodoxy pulls the rug of stability from under the human person. His realism anchored in creation and rooted in salvation can - in the way Eastern Orthodoxy reaches beyond the upper limit - is, at day's end, a cipher. There is, in Eastern Orthodoxy, a certain shame in the dirt and grit of creation. (Sorry, Fr. Z.)
Not so with the Father, when he ascended the particular, Jewish, woman's Flesh of his descended Son into the godhead itself. The Humanity of His Son sits there particular, Jewish, and from a woman.
That is the fullness of our humanity - of God making us like unto himself. There is no reason to go beyond that. Just ask the lost coin the strayed off lamb.
But what about First Things, and "Conservative" or "Postmodern" Catholicism? Some of the testimony here, holds to that limit. But it seems to some of us, that some of it does not.
Here, many seem to be issuing their liberal or conservative political opinions, under the name of God.
