On the Incarnation

This is a day late, but I think that philosophical reflection is in order for the Christmas season. I should say that most of my ideas in this reflection come from one video (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qneVp82UhHA&t=3812s). I should also say that I cannot possibly scratch the surface of the meaning of the Incarnation, but these are some of my thoughts, nevertheless.


In the Incarnation, God assumes a human nature so that He can experience what it is to be human and through this, what it is to be created. An essential part of this is that God experiences a particular human life and through this particularity he experiences a human life with which every other human being can find solidarity in. Specifically, in Christ, God experiences all the kinds of sufferings that humans experience and in this every other human being, across time and place, can look at Him and see themselves, their suffering, in Him. This means that the Incarnation is, in part, an act of Divine solidarity with humanity. This, however, would not be enough. In order for the Incarnation to be complete God would need to conquer human suffering and this is done through the Resurrection. In the Passion, Christ’s life culminates with him experiencing the extremes of physical, mental, and spiritual suffering and in the Resurrection He conquers it. This is a conquering not of suffering in the abstract, but a particular suffering which all people can relate to, which means that in the Resurrection, Christ conquers each individual’s suffering and, thereby, reconciles all people to Himself.

Comments

  1. JacobDecember 27, 2021 at 11:49 AM

    Given divine simplicity, the hypostasis consists in something extrinsic to the Divine nature and thus only something intrinsic to the human substance (Jesus bears a real relation to the divine nature but the divine nature does not bear a real relation to Jesus). This entails impassibility wrt Christ's suffering. So, if God is identical to the Divine Nature via simplicity, and simplicity entails impassibility (held by Aquinas) then it seems that it is just the man, Jesus, that suffers and not God per se. Do you think this has any theological problems? I think prima facie it does, but ultimately I don't think it's a worry.

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    1. The Engaged ThomistDecember 28, 2021 at 4:40 PM

      This is a good question. The video I link actually discusses this, but there is a scholastic principle where anything you can predicate of one of the natures of Christ you can predicate of the whole Christ so insofar as the human nature of Christ is part of Christ we can say that the whole Christ experiences what the human nature of Christ experiences so I don't think this is an issue. An analogy would be that when my arm is hot, even though it is just a part of me, we can still truthfully say that I am hot even though my arm is all that grounds the truth of this predication. The video goes more in-depth on this if you are interested.

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    2. JacobDecember 30, 2021 at 12:18 AM

      Thanks max

      Delete

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