The Baptism of Jesus

Daily Catechism: (CCC #464–469)

TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN

The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that He is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man. During the first centuries, the Church had to defend and clarify this truth of faith against the heresies that falsified it. The first heresies denied not so much Christ’s divinity as His true humanity (Gnostic Docetism). From apostolic times the Christian faith has insisted on the true incarnation of God’s Son “come in the flesh.” But already in the third century, the Church in a Council at Antioch had to affirm against Paul of Samosata that Jesus Christ is Son of God by nature and not by adoption. The First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed that the Son of God is “begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father,” and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that the Son of God “came to be from things that were not” and that he was “from another substance” than that of the Father.

The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human person joined to the divine person of God’s Son. Opposing this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431 confessed “that the Word, uniting to Himself in His person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man.” Christ’s humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it His own, from His conception.

For this reason the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb: “Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or His divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to Himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh.”

The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God’s Son assumed it. Faced with this heresy, the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451 confessed:

Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to His divinity and consubstantial with us as to His humanity; “like us in all things but sin.” He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to His divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to His humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God. We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis.

Fully Human and Fully Divine: Understanding the Incarnation

Father Ian Ker

Catholic Christianity believes that the identity of Jesus Christ is similar to the nature of God in the sense that both are mysteries that are beyond full human understanding. Just as God is one and yet three persons, so Jesus is both divine and human at the same time. And not partly divine and partly human, but fully and truly God and fully and truly human.

The mystery, however, will appear less impenetrable if we recall that humanity is made in the image or likeness of God, so that the more really human a person is, the closer he or she will resemble God. In other words, the most human of people will also be the most godlike of people. The more we are in harmony with our real human nature, the more we shall be like God. If, then, there ever existed a human being who was totally in accord with human nature as God intended it to be, that is, like to God, then that person will also presumably be the most nearly divine of human beings. As we have said, to place the human in opposition to the divine is not in accordance with God’s plan. The two are meant to be closely conjoined.

The orthodox Christian view is that Jesus is the only perfect human being who has ever existed. But if so, then He is also the nearest of all people who have ever existed to being God. When we think about it in that way, we begin to see that the idea of someone being both God and man is not, after all, quite so baffling. The Incarnation was not simply a matter of God coming down to join us on our level, but also of drawing us up to His level. The Fathers called this aspect of the Incarnation the deification or divinization of human nature. In the unique case of the Incarnation, God doesn’t just come down to our level in an external and momentary kind of way. It’s true He doesn’t cease to be God—if He did there would be no point in the exercise—but He does truly become human. He doesn’t dress up in a sort of disguise, pretending to be human while actually still staying God, as we do when we impersonate somebody. No, God truly comes down to us because He really takes on our human nature, but He also at the same time, by doing so, draws us up into His life, because He doesn’t cease to be God.

For it was not only that God underwent what we can only call an experience in taking our human nature, but that human nature could not have that happening to it without a radical effect on its makeup. This isn’t

something that is easy to explain or understand, but it would be as if we could get right into somebody else and experience exactly what it is like to be that person, to have his feelings and his thoughts. It’s not something, of course, that can ever literally happen, but it’s not impossible in a way to imagine it. In fact, we have an interesting expression to indicate our reaction to somebody intruding in an unwelcome way into our life when we say that so-and-so “is getting under my skin.” We don’t have such a concrete and graphic expression to mean the same thing when it is a pleasant, positive experience. We can only then use the much less physical idea of somebody “empathizing” with us, that is, to recall the Greek meaning of the word, “suffering” or “experiencing” what we suffer or experience. There is, though, the more vivid visual expression of “seeing” right into somebody.

Well, in the Incarnation God does indeed not only empathize with or see into us, but, in the most positive sense, gets under our very skin. He does that by not only literally putting on our human skin, but by putting on all that is part and parcel of being a human person. There is one exception to that, although, as we have already seen, it is not really an exception at all. I am referring, of course, to the fact that the one thing God doesn’t take to Himself, and can’t, unless He were to cease to be God, is sin. But since sin is inhuman rather than human, by sinning the Incarnate God would make Himself less not more human.

If indeed God got into our very skin at the Incarnation, then human nature could never be the same again. It had not only been brought close to divinity, but it had actually been penetrated and impregnated by God. In that case, human nature had now entered into an even more elevated state than the original condition of innocence of sin, since Adam and Eve are depicted as enjoying close friendship and intimacy with God, but with a God who still remains apart and distinct. Through God becoming human in Jesus Christ, human nature receives an extraordinary, radical injection of new, that is, divine life. Human nature, created to be like God, now finds itself invaded by its Creator. When people emigrate to another country and another culture they inevitably have an effect on that society; there is now a new element or ingredient which more or less alters the scene. When God decided to enter the human race, He could not but change the humanity He adopted. Of course, sin remained in the race, and so from that point of view there was still loss rather than gain compared with the original sinlessness of the first creatures. But there was a revolutionary gain, too. The old human nature remained, sinful and weak. But now there was new hope, altogether fresh possibilities. It was not that the damage that had been done was removed with a wave of a wand. That remained—nothing could change what had so tragically happened. And yet everything could change. Like the injured person carrying his disabilities for life but given a new life immensely better than anything he had ever known even before the terrible accident—so now the human race was renewed in a way that would have seemed inconceivable even in the original state of innocence. It was not just that disabled human nature was given hope that one day things would be all right. Now real possibilities opened up. Human nature suddenly found itself capable of things undreamed of before.

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Summary of Key Concepts

Jesus: Fully Human & Divine

Questions to Consider

1. In the Gospel passages of Matthew we hear God the Father telling us to listen to His Son. What are some ways that would help you listen to God’s voice so as to do His will?
2. Jesus, true God and true man, understands our temptations and struggles. Which of the devil’s favorite ploys (desire for comfort and pleasure, desire for recognition or desire for greatness) is the most difficult for you to overcome?
3. Are you willing to turn to Jesus for help so as to desire His will above all else?

JESUS THE DIVINE PHYSICIAN / MIRACLES