For much of my youth I had an understanding of the Incarnation that I now consider badly flawed. This is not, of course, to say that I now consider my understanding to be perfect, but the epiphany I had helped me gain a much deeper appreciation for the Divine Saviour. Whether you, dear reader, personally believe in Jesus (or his divinity) or not, you might find this a useful or interesting explanation of what Catholic belief in Christ is about. If, indeed, you are an unbeliever, you will disagree with many of the prepositions upon which this argument is based, but I trust that you will understand that this article is not intended as an attempt to prove the existence of the Christian God, but merely as an explanation as to the essence and purpose of Christ in Catholic doctrine.
Part of the question of what Jesus Christ is revolves simply around His essence, which, while linked with His purpose, is nevertheless distinct from it. Most Christians, and certainly the most faintly well versed Catholic, will tell you that Jesus Christ is God and Man, or perhaps God made Man. This is entirely correct, but can be misinterpreted.
My original understanding of this duality was much like the understanding I had of, for example, Zeus, coming to the mortal plane “clothed in human flesh”. That is to say, I considered that Christ had all the appearances of being a man. He had a body of blood, flesh and bone, as we have, He was conceived in the womb of a woman, as are we, and His body suffered the separation from spirit that we call death, as we shall. Yet underneath that appearance of humanity, Christ was, in fact, God.
If you will permit me, dear reader, to show you another approach to my destination, which lies at a different angle, I will briefly discuss why the Incarnation seems so inexplicable to the unbeliever. It is generally understood that the passion and death of Christ was for the purpose of making amends for the sins committed against God by Man, and yet Christ himself is God. This prompts the atheist to query what possible sense it could make that God should sacrifice Himself to Himself (the question may first have been posed in that fashion, and rhetorically, by Richard Dawkins). Indeed, superficially it does seem a very unintuitive solution to the problem of sin and redemption, and it tempts the observer to imagine that the details surrounding the life and death of Jesus were perhaps shoe-horned into this over-arching conflict and resolution, because they do not seem to fit over-well.
If God’s solution of sacrificing Himself to Himself does seem unintuitive to you, allow me this assay to change your mind. If a man offends another man he has done wrong as most would readily agree (incidentally, I mean “offend” in the old-fashioned sense: “to do someone an ill”, not the modern sense: “what you said is offensive to me”). Now again, if a man offends his own father, a man to whom he ought to show respect, the wrong he does is greater. If he offends a figure of authority, such as the man who directs his labour, or his king, the effect is likewise magnified. And again, if he should offend someone who has shown him charity, or made sacrifices on his behalf, his sin is again exacerbated. It follows, then, that an offense against God, whose love for, and authority over, Man is infinite, would merit infinite condemnation.
Unlike God, Man is infinite in no dimension. Man cannot, therefore, make restitution for infinite offense; all the self-sacrifice of all the mortals of the earth cannot fulfil the most minuscule portion of the work of redemption. This appears to place God in a predicament. He loves Man infinitely, yet the gift of free-will threatens to separate them from Him for eternity, and nothing can repair the damage because no man can make the infinite redress necessitated by infinite offense. Yet, can God not do anything?
For God to allow Man to reunite with Him regardless of reparation would be a violation of free will, effectively denying free will. Cannot the Almighty do that anyway? God can do anything, but to consider Man redeemed without an act of reparation would not be a thing, but an unthing, so to speak. To ask if God could do this would be akin to asking: “cannot God both do something and not do it?
How, then, can God overcome this conundrum? The answer is the Jesus Christ, the Incarnation.
Quite unlike the concept I once had of Christ as described above, Christ does not simply share our human characteristics, as Zeus and other gods were said to have done in order to mingle undetected with the mortals. Rather, He is one of us. This is what is meant by “wholly God and wholly Man”. Athena might seem as a mortal and might walk among the mortals, but Athena is always a goddess, and never a mortal. Christ, on the other hand, is a part of the human family. He is our father, He is our brother, He has even been called the Son of David, and the Son of Man.
Adam, whose failure Christ was sent to correct, was our representative before God. Jesus is no less; He is Mankind’s envoy to Heaven, and he entreats God’s mercy on our behalf.
Perhaps the unintuitive idea of God sacrificing Himself to Himself now appears to you to be the logical solution to the redemptive dilemma. Perhaps the idea no longer seems to lack for a coherent genesis. The only way for Man to redeem himself is for Man to gain that which he has not: the capacity for infinite atonement. Only God can be infinite, so how can an infinite dimension be bestowed upon Man? The answer is eminently rational. Man and God must be one; the emissary dispatched to plead our case, the leader upon whose shoulders we must place the responsibility for all our sins must be none other than God Himself, for there is no other who can succeed. Jesus was not sent to us only, He was sent by us.
This is the realisation to which I came at some point in the latter half of my teenage years. To say that it strengthened my faith would be an understatement. It showed me clearly that the path, though narrow, was true. Jesus was no longer God coming to earth in Human guise to fulfil the work of redemption in an incomprehensible and mutually self-consummatory act. Rather he was our champion before God. The most worthy of all Mankind, our chosen delegate and Intermediary, sent to represent our case to the Lord. It gave me new appreciation for the gravity of His sacrifice, and of our betrayal…
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