God becomes a Man
by
Eberhard Heller
translated by Elisabeth Meurer
When thinking of Christmas, we see the picture of the Infant Jesus in the manger, to his left and
right Mary and Joseph against the background of a dark cave, with ox and donkey looking out, and
the shepherds hurrying over and bringing their gifts to the child. And perhaps there is also someone
who remembers whith what reverent amazement the children in the family approached the manger.
However, it is amazing that the miracle of God's incarnation mostly remains limited to this moving
scene of nativity.
One can also consider this event from another point of view, from the point of view of God's
revelation: God becomes a man … and He becomes am man who immediately submits to the
dependence and humility of his existence on earth: to the care of parents in a family, who are
destitute as well and cannot even offer a bed to the newborn child. Besides, God submits His
coming to the accepting will of a human being who needs to agree to His coming. When Mary
learnt that she was to give birth to a son who would be called the „son of the Highest“ (Luke 1, 31),
she replied to the angel: „How shall this happen, as I do not havve intercourse with a man?“ The
angel answered to her: „The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Highest shall
overshadow you. Therefore the holy one that shall be born shall be called the Son of God“. (Luke 1,
33-35) Mary's agreement: „I am the handmaid of the Lord, your word be done“ was one of the
conditions necessary for God to become a man. Then she certainly was not conscious of the Old
Testament idea of Gld was enlarged at that moment. God is to become a man, her son is to be the
Son of God. The God in heaven, in transcendence, Jahwe, who had until now only spoken to His
chosen people through the prophets, wants to come out of infinity and enter the finiteness of human
life on earth which, from the point of view of time, is limited by birth and death. And what was
Mary to understand by „the Holy Spirit“ who was to come upon her? The term of Trinity was
unknown in the Old Testament! Nevertheless, her „fiat“ was a co-condition for God to become a
man.
During the first centuries after its foundation, the Church has struggled for an answer to the
question of how one was to understand this being God while being a man: true God and true man at
the same time. For this the Church chose the term of „hypostatic union“ which means that the
divine and the human nature are united in the one divine person of the „Logos“ who became a man.
(John 1,1) 1)
But what does this coming of God announce to mankind? The absolute appears as absolutely holy
will. Thus his appearance becomes absolutely real, as that which appears ist the absolute itself.
There must be an inner union of the divine nature in the human one if one is to speak of an
appearance of the absolute. Theodoret, from 423 to 466 bishop of Cyrus, still writes: „that the
hypostasis of the God-Logos was perfectly existent before the times of the world (…) If only each
nature has its perfection but both have come together in one,... then it is pious to confess one person
and also one son and Christ.“ Cyrill of Alexandria opposes to this tearing the appearance of God in
431 when defending his 12 chapters against Theodoret of Cyrus quoting chap. 2: „The union takes
place by the hypostasis of the Logos, i. e. the Logos himself is truly united with his human nature,
without any change and mixing and … is thought of as – and is – one Christ, the same God and
man.“ 2) God wants to get into concrete contact with us, to act interpersonally. He does not want to
speak to us in obscurity (through prophets) any more, but wants to unite to us, unite to us in love.
He, who is love, the absolutely holy will, does not only want to influence us to do this will with his
principal claim, i. e. that love be in force. No, he gives himself to us as a loving one expecting
concrete recognition and reply from us. He litterally is the „dear God“, the epitome of the loving
one, who wants to unite with us in order to unite us in unity with himself. 3) His love even goes so
far that he wants to „decontaminate“ and heal the world by his hyper-love, the love of atonement.
God wants to make a covenant with us, a transpersonal, i. e. an interpersonal covenant. Christ
appears as God Who takes part in human nature, not as nature as a man taking part in divinity, but
Who incarnates as God: „Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine: et homo factus est“.
„He has incarnated through the Holy Spirit from Mary, the Virgin, and has become a man“. (the
Creed) 4)
God, Who is largely seen as the completely different one living far away (in heaven), searches for
the familiar, the concrete contact to us, to each of us. But how do we react? St. John describes it as
follows: „He came into his property, but his people did not receive him“. (John 1, 11) That was true
for the Jews at that time, that is furthermore true for the modern Christians who do not worship God
in the way He appeared.: as the Lord, as the incarnation of the truth. By the love He gave to us,
rejection, evil, hatred will become evident as such, i. e.: there is a criterion of judgment, there can
be justice. The succinct observation of St. John sounds exclusive. But let us continue reading: „But
to those who received him, he gave the power of becoming children of God as those believing in his
name“. (John 1, 12)
Just in a time which – from an interpersonal point of view – is unconsiderate, indifferent, this offer
of becoming children of God should be comfort to us. We should remember that we are indeed in
the New Testament and imagine God as a real person, as an absolute person, as he actually wants to
be our father. The conveying graces, the sacraments which were to connect us with God, which
allowed us to take part in his life, have largely been taken away from us because the priests do no
longer embrace the cause of Christ and His Church. So we should turn directly to Christ and see in
him the other person, the father. Although he has ascended to heaven after his life on earth and is
sitting at the right hand side of his father, thus kind of withdrawing from us as a real person,
dwelling hidden away, also hidden in the (consecrated) host, he really is there, and we can talk to
him in prayer. That is our chance: finding new power and confidence in knowing that God wants to
protect us as his children. A Russian monk hat once said to one of his disciples that he could also be
silent with God if he was with Him. The prayer is our answer to the failure of the clergy. For he, to
whom we turn, says of himself: „I am the way, the truth and the life.“ (John 14,6)
Notes:
1) The term of „hypostatic union“ goes back to Cyrill of Alexandria. The hypostatic union
contains the doctrine of the councils of Ephesos (431), Chalcedon (451) and of the 2nd
council of Constantinople (553) according to which the two perfect natures in Christ, the
divine and the human one, are united in one person (hypostasis). The council of Nicaea
(325) dealt with the question of whether Jesus was only a human being or if he was really
God. Faithful to what is said in the christian bible, the council held to the statement that
Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God. It established that he is not created but the Son
begotten by the father and thus really is God. So are there really several subjects in God?
For further clarification of the term, the I. Council of Constantinople named the divinity
equally attributed to all divine persons Ousia (essence, being) and the distinction between
the three persons hypostasis in 381. One Ousia in three hypostases was then the term chosen
half a century after the council of Nicaea. However, if Jesus is God, then the problem arises
how we can distinguish in Jesus the divinity/being God and humanity/being a man. Was the
humanity of Jesus only „appearance“ or was only the body of Jesus human and had the
divine hypostasis, namely the second divine person, taken the place of the human soul?“
(Eckhard Bieger, www.kath.de) In their answers to this question which the respective
theologians went through in all directions, among others Nestorius and Arius differred from
the doctrine of the Church. And the consequences of their christological errors can still be
noticed until today. E. g.: If Christ is not real God (Arius), then how is his foundation, the
Church, supposed to be the absolutaly valid institution of conveying salvation, a fact which
modernists are known to deny.
2) One can also approach the problem philosophically and consider it from the point of view of
interpersonality. How must a will be made which from itself and its realization requires and
rightly claims the involvement of at least a second person? As Hans Kopp says: The total
relation transferred into the time as a partial relation is nothing else but the confrontation of
two spiritual natures in the free synthetical union of one identical wanting and will.
Therefore I call this synthesis ´hypostatic union` following the theological term (Hans
Ulrich Kopp: Reasonable Interpersonality as Appearance of the Absolute, Munich, 1972, p.
89) [Translator's note: There are two wills Christ: a human and a divine one, which are not
mixed, though. When praying on the Mount of Olives, Christ said among others: Not my
will be done but your will.´ (Matthew 26, 39) So there must be two wills in Christ.]
3) Also comp. Kopp: „The synthetical principle of wanting is thus embedded in the synthetical
principle of will in the way that only the two together can make the appearance of the
absolute. Thus it is essentially a `hypostatic union´, it is the love appearing absolutely.“
(Kopp, ibid., p. 90)
4) Pope Leo the Great opposed to Eutyches' heresy of monophysitism the doctrine formulated
in philosophical terms in the Epistula dogmatica ad Flavianum of 449 and the council of
Chalcedon of 451: „One and the same Christ exists in two natures, unmixed, unchangeable,
undivided and inseparable. However, the difference of natures does not stop because of the
unification, but rather the peculiarity of each nature remains and comes tegether with the
other one to one person and subsistence; he (Christ) is not separated in two persons, but one
and the same is the only begotten Son, God, Logos, Lord, Jesus Christ“. (Denzinger 148) |
