The greatest of mysteries: reflections on the incarnation of Christ (2024)

The Incarnation of Christ: What It Means To Be Human

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.-John 1:14

The Incarnation and the Church Mysteries, Thomas Beshara.pdf

The Church mysteries are the means of salvation that were instituted to continue the blessings of the Incarnation in order to be lived by the Church after the ascension of Christ into the heaven following His crucifixion, death and resurrection. The main goal of all mysteries is to continue the process of saving and healing the fallen human race until the second coming of Christ. This shows the relationship between the Incarnation and the mysteries of the Church since “in the Church, as in the Body of Christ, in its thean-thropic organism, the mystery of incarnation, the mystery of the "two natures," indissolubly united, is continually accomplished.” Therefore, the Church mysteries cannot be understood without clear understanding of the nature of our Lord Jesus i.e., His Christology. As the two natures of the Godhead and the manhood both exist in “One Enfleshed Person of God the Incarnate Logos,” similarly the Church mysteries bring together both the created and the uncreated in order to provide salvation to all believers who participate in them.

The Hermeneutics of the Incarnation

In the long history of Christian hermeneutics, the Incarnation is hardly ever addressed as embodiment. In part, this is because the early influence of Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy contributed to the tradition of Christian asceticism that emphasized the denial of the body. Yet to assert, as Christians do, that “the Word became flesh” is to claim that God himself became embodied. This implies that to understand the Incarnation, we have to understand embodiment. The centrality of the Incarnation, the fact that it distinguishes Christianity from Islam and Judaism, demands that we take embodiment as a central element guiding Christian hermeneutics. In this essay, I describe our embodiment in terms of its ontological structure as an intertwining. I then use this structure to interpret the Incarnation.

The concept of incarnation in philosophical and religious traditions juxtaposed the concept of incarnation in Christianity

2019

Incarnation, as per definition in its simplistic form, wherein God assumes a human nature, is central to the Christian doctrine of faith. The premise upon which the uniqueness of the Christian doctrine of incarnation, as opposed to other religious traditions, is embedded in and among other texts of the Christian Bible, and in the Gospel according to John 1:1-18. This article will articulate some of the philosophies in existence at that time which may allegedly have influenced and elicited a response from the writer of the Gospel according to John (GAJ). An attempt will be made to understand how some of these philosophies view incarnation in forms that may not necessarily reflect incarnation as is traditionally understood in Christianity which is primarily ‘God becoming flesh’. Central to the understanding of Christian incarnation is the philosophical concept of logos which emanated in Greek philosophy. Finally, it should become apparent, that the understanding of ‘incarnation’, in s...

Spirituality of the Incarnation

Studies in Spirituality, 2017

A spiritual reading of the motif of incarnation as it runs through the biblical Scriptures describes it as a divine-human communica- tion transforming the human self into a relationship. the human self has a passive bodily beginning: ‘me’ is the one who feels changes in his flesh, and who feels being seen and known. God’s self-revelation touches us in our flesh, the very spot where we are the most vulnerable, but also the spot where we share each other’s feelings and movements and where we become a self. Incarnation, therefore, is not about a word becoming matter, but about the sharing of God’s presence and the flesh feeling and realizing this presence. this means that the human flesh is not only a principle of individuation (Jean-luc Marion) but also a principle of communion. We are one flesh because in God’s presence we feel what the other feels. Although the motif of incarnation is fulfilled in Jesus, it is being developed in the figures of Adam, Mozes, the prophets, the Suffering Servant, and it is continued in the figure of peter. An investigation of this motif confirms that the human being, in his or her engagement with God and environment, becomes more and not less human. the salvation of the incarnation causes the new human self to be deeply related, or better: restored in this original communion.

Incarnation

Oxford Companion to Aquinas. ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2012

The Incarnation and the Problem of Evil

The Heythrop Journal, 2007

Human nature in light of the Incarnation

An exploration of human nature, sinfulness, and salvation viewed through the lens of the Incarnation.

"MORE SPLENDID THAN THE SUN": CHRIST'S FLESH AMONG THE REASONS FOR THE INCARNATION

Modern Theology, 2019

This article defends two arguments proposed by Robert Grosseteste for the view that the Incarnation is logically prior to the Fall. Each of them is motivated by the goodness of Christ as a creature who is nonetheless worthy of worship, though the first considers this fact as an intrinsic good, and the second considers it as instrumentally good, by virtue of its making possible fleshly communion between God and his creatures. I will then consider Bonaventure's reasons for rejecting these arguments, which turn on the worry that they posit a divine obligation to become Incarnate. I show that while Bonaventure's concern is reasonable, he addresses it at the unacceptable cost of denying important aspects of the Incarnation's purpose in the actual world. However, Bonaventure accepts that the Incarnation and Passion are "necessary" for human redemption in a way that is consistent with divine freedom, an intuition which Aquinas brings to particularly clear expression by analyzing the Incarnation as necessary in the sense of being the most fitting means of salvation. Applying this line of thought to Christ's flesh, considered as the fitting instrument by which God has elected to perfectly beatify humanity, allows us to reconcile Grosseteste's insistence on the Incarnation's priority to the Fall with Bonaventure's insistence on its absolute gratuity.

Jesus Christ, Incarnation and doctrine of Logos

2021

Copyright © Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science ISSN: 2037-2329 and the author. No part of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without the prior permission of the Editors. To refer to the content of this article, quote: INTERS – Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, edited by G. Tanzella-Nitti, I. Colagé and A. Strumia, www.inters.org Date: 2008 DOI: 10.17421/2037-2329-2008-GT-2 Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti [1]