Understanding the Incarnation

[Music] welcome back to the word on fire show I'm Brandon watt the host and I'm joined here on Christmas Eve with Bishop Robert Baer and Bishop Baron welcome Brandon always a great joy to be with you and happy Christmas you too now we're recording this a couple weeks before Christmas Eve this episode's going live on Christmas Eve and at the time that we're recording this you're about I think a week or two away from two really exciting interviews which I guess will have already been published by the time this show goes live but one of them is with Ben Shapiro tell us who he is and why you're excited to talk with him Ben Shapiro is a very sharp very bright kind of political cultural commentator that's been around for a little while now very vocal and a lot of the you know most controversial political issues of the time a sharp I'd say a conservatively minded person coming out of a fundamentally I think classical biblical view of things you know so someone I've watched for a long time I've not met him so looking forward to that and Ben is also a pretty devout Jew you don't see him in many of his interviews wearing a yarmulke but he's brought on his program many Christians dr. Edward fazer did a long interview of him you're gonna be on his Sunday special interview series which is like a long-form I think hour-long interview so we're very excited about that the second one is you're gonna be returning to talk with Dave Rubin that was a big hit the first time you went on that show it I think brought you to a whole new audience of especially young secularized internet viewers the twist for this one though is that it's gonna be you Dave Rubin and then Rabbi David Wolpe rabbi wall was named the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek magazine and one of the 50 most influential Jewish leaders in the world I I'm excited to see what happens although I feel like it's kind of a bad joke in waiting that an atheist a bishop and a Jewish rabbi walk into a u-tube set yeah well that's part of the fun of it though isn't it I like that about Dave Rubin show Dave represents you know as you say kind of a secular maybe humanistic perspective the rabbi again I've not met him but I'm presuming coming out of a you know fundamentally biblical view but not a Christian one so I'm very interested in that in that dialogue that as you know Brandon I especially like these sort of what we call odd extra you know going to the outside going outside the boundaries of the of the church that's where my kind of missionary evangelical spirit takes me so that's why I'm looking forward especially to that interview well then in the next episode we'll do a recap and we'll talk more about how those win but let's turn to the topic of today's episode again this is going live on Christmas Eve so we thought we'd devote the whole episode to that fundamental theological topic of the Incarnation and in the last episode we discussed the importance of clarifying our terms so maybe we'll start with that what do we mean when we say incarnations the incarnation of Jesus think of it as the end flesh meant so God becoming one of us God entering into our human condition entering into our flesh and that's why the word Incarnation there's something very gritty and and earthy and realistic about it which I like it's not an abstraction and it's not simply spiritual talk that God the creator of all things becomes a creature out of love now as we go through the conversation we'll try to clarify you know what those terms do and don't mean but it's the in Fleshman of God is is the key to Christianity you know Brandon so many people I think succumb to this I call it neo-kantian interpretation that religion gets down to ethics it's trying to make us good people so what's the essence of Christianity being as Flannery O'Connor put it a person with a heart of gold you know well that's derivative I hope people do have hearts of gold I hope they they do become good and upright people but the heart of the matter is not that it's not ethical matter is this strange claim that God became one of us everything else is a footnote in Christianity everything else is real to that it's like the center of the Rose window and I think we we've we've marginalized the doctrine of the Incarnation in favor of much more accessible things like ethics and that's a bit of the Christmas Revolution that we should keep reaching every year you admit it's it's not as accessible because it's admittedly a weird idea that God would take on human flesh here's a question I often hear from online and from my friends was the incarnation necessary did God have to do that and was it necessary for him to reconcile himself with us that he needed to take on human form can I give Thomas Aquinas his famous answer to that because Thomas said there are two types of necessity there was a strictness uh today and in that sense no it was not strictly necessary that God become one of us because God in His infinite power could have you know saved us some other way but then Thomas talks about a more kind of a looser sense of necessity is it necessary in his example to take a horse if you're traveling from Paris to to Rome and yeah in that sense that it's it's by far the most convenient or it's the it's the best way to travel you know by that second kind of necessity he said it was necessary because there was no more beautiful compelling powerful way for God to save us anybody could pick up only one of us so that's the the answer to the question about necessity and I'd say this branded the great patristic adage that acquaint is certainly accepts Deus Fit homo homo fear at Deus that's Latin for God became man that man might become God see I can't don't misunderstand that it's like we're turning into God what it means is God enters into our humanity so as to lift our humanity up he divin eise's our flesh so that our flesh our lives might become participants in the divine life that's the saving meaning of the Incarnation God becomes one of us and there's that language of incarnation God becomes a human now please don't misunderstand that as God turns into a human being you're saying as though he stops being God and now he turns in another no he hasn't turned into a creature rather God takes to himself a creaturely nature a human nature so is to use it as his iconic vehicle if I could put it that way God speaks himself now speaks and acts through the icon of the humanity of Jesus and in doing that in taking our flesh to himself he lifts up transfigures and divin eise's our flesh day news fit homo with homo fear at Dave's God becomes man that man might become God that's the salvific import of the Incarnation the early church wrestled a lot with this issue of who is Jesus what is his nature the Incarnation I'm thinking especially at the Council of Nicaea in the early 4th century but then right after that we get this bombshell groundbreaking text from Saint Athanasius titled on the Incarnation I know for a lot of people we're maybe book savvy or theologically minded when they hear incarnation that's sort of the foundational book that they think of why is saying Athanasius is text so important he's such an important figure isn't he Etha nation you're quite right in saying he was active at the council nice yeah he was a deacon under his bishop at the time so he was there kind of as an assistant to his bishop then shortly after and I see you at the bishop died and Anthony she's became the Bishop of Alexandria but it's a wonderful thing because as a young guy he got it his life project was injected into him see at the Council of Nicaea is he realized battling arianism and affirming the divinity of Jesus is the falling and rising point of Christianity it's he realized this is the bad of Gettysburg if I can use a civil war now she this is the turning point in the struggle and so Athanasius spends the rest of his long life enduring exile threats to his life all kinds of things defending the orthodoxy of Nicaea and he writes this great xt referencing in the midst of all that trying to lay out his view here's something I love about that text there's a lot in it that's great but here's the I think the main idea is if Jesus is not God then we're not saved so you guys we can't save ourselves you and I are both in the same mess we're both in this in this dysfunctional family of sinful humanity right it's like someone who's caught up in an addiction can't lift himself out of it therefore we need a higher power to break into our dysfunction and fix it see now by the same token if Jesus is not truly human then we're not saved he I mean is he puts the stress now on different words he's not divine we're not saved he's not human we're not saved because in his humanity he enters as it were into the inner workings of our of our humanity and and remakes it from the inside isn't it fact our friend CS Lewis has that image of of the broken you know a machine or the broken item and and it can't fix itself I got like a broken toaster can't fix this oh but the one that can parks and laws is the one who made the toaster right the one that knows it from the inside and who gets gets his hands dirty going inside the works of the toaster so as to remake it now it's a homely kind of analogy but it's a good one for the Incarnation we're like broken toasters we we sinners we're we're we're stuck in our sin we can't save ourselves and line up broken toasters all the way to the end of the world they're not gonna fix the broken toaster there are the same mess someone has got to come from the outside of that world and enter into the works of the toaster so as to remake it now line up line up philosophers and social activists and politicians and poets to the end of the world they can't solve our problem because they're in the same mess we are right we're all in the same boat we're all seasick as your friend Chesterton said they can't solve a problem line them up until the cows come home bring Aristotle and Plato and the Conte and the greatest figures Einstein they can't solve the problem only God can solve the problem no he also can't do it at least at least optimally to keep Thomas Klein's in mind by saying staying at an infinite reserve up in heaven and saying oh I pronounce you forgiven well okay but I'm still broken down here you know I know you pronounce me forgiven which is great but I'm still broken down here rather he comes down into the messiness of our humanity so as to rework it from the inside now think of Paul though he was in the form of God so there's Paul affirming the divinity of Jesus now that's an in Philippians and that's Paul probably adapting a hymn that predated that letter were really early Christianity don't listen to Bart Ehrman and those bozos who say that it's all a later development that's nonsense from the earliest text Christians are affirming the divinity of Jesus though he was in the form of God what no he did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped but rather emptied himself took the form of slave being born in the likeness of men he was known to be of human estate and thus it was that he humbled himself obediently accepting even death death on a cross now what is that that's the incarnation of logic becomes man entering into our dysfunction so as to remake it from the inside you know that's the logic that Athanasius grasped and and though he boy he was chased around the world for it they he was not a popular figure now he's you know the great Saint Athanasius but at the time he was a real controversial figure a lot of bishops had become Aryans and they were chasing that guy into exile they wanted to kill him at several points but he grasped the logic of Christianity and defended it to his dying breath and you know it's cool branded I think of Anthony's all the time because every Sunday we get up as Catholics and we recite the Creed don't we and at the heart of that first part of the Creed is a reminder of the great battle that ethany is fought God from God light from light true God from True God begotten not made consubstantial with the father through him all things were made that's the fight that ethany she's had with areas and we rehearse his victory every single Sunday because without that victory no Christianity help us understand the the counter-argument because I think many people who know athenais sheis know how much in the minority he was is that famous phrase Athanasius against the world it seemed like huge everyone standing for the view that you just described yeah what what did the Aryans think about the Incarnation or about Jesus's nature well you know areas who was a clever guy all the great her easier arcs are clever if they weren't they they wouldn't have founded these enduring perspectives and you know some very fine minds were pacaya by Arianism so i don't want to dismiss it as a just OA silly thing that you know we we got over arias was operating i would say out of a fundamentally mythological perspective which was very common in that part of the world at that time who was Jesus well he was a bit like Hercules or like Achilles what I mean is he was kind of quasi divine and quasi human so for areas what becomes incarnate is not God from God but rather the law gauze which he saw as the highest of creatures the first of God's creatures becomes not fully human but enters into a sort of human shell so that now you've got the law goes in the flesh and the two of them together form a kind of hybrid semi-divine semi-human so it makes sense now we might say what a bizarre perspective but you're in the ancient world and you've heard these stories of gods mixing with humans and producing hybrids yeah okay I get it he's like Hercules yeah good he's like a great mythological hero is it easier to believe yeah in a way because now you don't have God himself getting his hand so dirty you know it's God himself no no he remains it and remove you know from all that messiness but his first creature the Lagos kind of gets down into but also it it's not like a real human being that God takes on it's a sort of similar groom or quasi humanity he takes on see all that at the time was easier to believe it was it was it was more of a mythological framework Etha nation and Council of Nicaea are proposing something really new now go a couple generations later at the Council of Kelsi right what do you find there but a further articulation of the coming together of what they call two natures in one person divine and human but mind you without mixing mingling or confusion so in their integrity their fullness humanity divinity come together that was a fuller explanation of of what Nicaea and Athanasius saw one of the classical attributes of God is his immutability meaning he doesn't change he just yeah he was he is he will be forever as he is how do we square that with the Incarnation with all of this active language we're using about like the second person of the Trinity becoming a man and all that yeah and that's a good classic dilemma think of my becoming an uncle so when my sister had her first child my nephew I became an uncle did I change no not in myself but a new relation was now ascribable to me say I didn't sort of actively change into something else but a new relation was now ascribable to me that would be an analogy now with the incarnation not that again God is turning into something else or God is now changing into some new form rather a new relation to God has begun to obtain which didn't previously obtain but that wouldn't affect the very essence of God's nature which remains unchangeable see in fact if you really want to press the thing which is gets into kind of cool theological territory it's precisely the immutability of God that makes the Incarnation really possible it's precisely the unconditioned quality of God that enables got to be non-competitively in relationship to the world read Robert Sokolowski for all the details on that one how about this question how does the Incarnation affect matter or the material world we've talked about how it affects specifically our humanity in our salvation but what did Jesus becoming man have to do with the rest of the created world gosh read Saint Paul read Ephesians read Colossians especially read Romans you know what's cool Brandon is we've been very conditioned as Westerners by agustin and Aquinas and many others and there's a tendency in the West to read the thing very anthropologically so we tend to see salvation primarily in terms of how it affects us and nothing wrong with that it does indeed affect us profoundly go to the eastern side of the equation though keep in mind st. Paul was operating mostly in the east wasn't he and he dies in in Rome but that's where he ended up most of his life he was in the eastern side of the Empire well there's a form of Christianity and it develops in the east puts a far greater stress on the cosmological dimension Christ as the sort of the the new Adam who represents the renewal of all of creation here in Paul don't you all creation groans inwardly so it's not just oh yeah human beings get out of the fix of sin in a way all of matter now finds its proper orientation in this great figure so the Incarnation ultimately has to do with the divin izing of all of the material creation now mutata Smoot on just don't don't push that into some kind of pantheous direction what it means is all the material creation being lifted up to a participation in God's nature finding its proper finality in God so I think all that cosmic thing is is very strong in the Incarnation what would you say in your experience is the most common misunderstanding about the Incarnation and what do we get wrong about it yeah what I've said a couple times and I used to see it when I would teach this at the seminary because even these these kids come to the seminary you know who wanted to be priests and and really loved their Christianity but they had this this misunderstanding that it means God turns into a creature and to be fair to them we use the language of becoming your God becomes man God becomes a creature well in our normal experience you know something become something else it stops being this and becomes that and we don't mean that we mean God takes to himself a human nature to use for his iconic purposes so I'm using Paul's language there that Jesus now think here of the humanity of Jesus is the icon of the invisible God God remains invisible in his unconditioned nature God's not a visible condition thing but God uses a visible condition thing namely Jesus humanity to be his iconic representative so we say that the humanity of Jesus now is the visible form of the invisible God that's incarnation Alang guack you know that's getting it right don't fall into the sort of mythological trap of God turning into something that he's not he's no longer God now he's a creature no no it precisely as God he becomes a creature let's close with this bishop in the introduction to your book titled Catholicism a journey to the heart of the faith which is kind of a companion to your Catholicism series you say that what sets the Catholic faith apart from every other religion and every other Christian tradition is that Catholics are convinced that the Incarnation extends throughout space and time what do you mean by that yeah it's the church isn't it which is not an organization but an organism not a club or a living body just as the second person of the Trinity took to himself a human nature 2,000 years ago he takes to himself in an analogous way another body which is called the body of the church that means all of those who are grafted onto Christ through baptism across space and time and by extension the sacraments and sacramentals and art and architecture and all of the embodied nosov the church is now in space and time the iconic representation of the second person of the Trinity so the fathers talk a lot about that the extension of the Incarnation across space and time in the mystical body isn't it very interesting Brandon that in the Creed that I referenced already we believe in God the Father God the Son God the Holy Spirit and the church I believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church right you know how peculiar I mean of course you believe in three persons of God but why would you believe in a human institution well that's the point I wouldn't believe in a human I'm skeptical of human institutions but I believe in the church see which means I'm putting my faith in the divine element within the life of the church God knoweth there's a human mentioned to the church and it's like all human things flawed you know where the church is full of nothing but sinners right last time I checked but I'm not believing in that dimension I'm believing in the humanity in the divinity of the church say which participates in the in the second person of the Trinity so that's it's a very interesting and I think distinctively Catholic take on on the church that sound means it is time for our question from our listeners if you have a question just visit ask Bishop Baron comm it can be on any theological philosophical moral topic we'd love to hear from you so visit ask Bishop Baron comm and ask away today we have a question from Clarke asking about Buddha's famous Maxim so here's Clark's question [Music] hi bishop Aaron my name is Clark from Smallville my question is what do you think of Buddha's famous Maxim life is suffering thank you first time am I talking to Superman this is interesting I'd say this the Buddha's right about that life is suffering now he doesn't mean every moment is nothing but you know every moment is terrible no no what he means I think is that everything in this life will conduce ultimately to dissolution and to pain and disappointment we all die we all die as I record these words my sister's beloved dog just died and you know my niece and nephew were now in their late teens but they got that dog when they were little kids and he was a wonderful dog he really was a golden retriever nothing but joy and and fun and everyone loved him and he just died which has led to extraordinary a suffering you know in their family well let's face it that's life if everything eventually fades away you and I branded will fade away this program will fade away everyone listening to it will fade away the most beautiful sunset it lasts for a short time then it's gone that delicious meal that we had it's it's gone it's over you know I'm hungry again the Buddha is putting his finger as almost all the great religious figures do on this contingent even essent deeply unsatisfying quality of life life is suffering true true I think it's true in all the great religious traditions now what's different many things but one thing about Buddhism and Christianity the the Buddhist answer is well then put out desire that suffering is born of desire right so Nirvana means the snuffing out of a candle the snuffing out of the candle of egotistic desire we'll overcome the problem of suffering the Christian answer is the Incarnation right that God himself enters into all that frightens us and all that that Patel's us and all that produces suffering God takes on suffering and thereby tivan eise's it shows a path through it toward fullness of life now that it be I think a really cool conference to have with serious Buddhist scholars serious Christian scholars how do you handle the problem of suffering because in many ways see all the religions acknowledge it in one form or another life is suffering they all acknowledge that but what's the answer you know the Christian answer is precisely what we're celebrating at Christmas the Incarnation we want to wish you a Merry Christmas on behalf of Bishop barren and olive Ward on fire a happy solemnity of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ also I want to ask you as we near the end of this year if you could please make a donation to word on fire to help us continue our work in 2019 you can go to word on fire show.com slash giving you'll see a list of all the things we've done this past year thanks to your help and you can help us continue that as we move into the new year thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next week on the word on fire show

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 70,240

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: Bishop Barron, Incarnation, Jesus Christ, Church, Christmas

Id: AWKdmCXJPlw

Length: 29min 12sec (1752 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 24 2018