Fully God and Fully Human (midweek reflection)

Fully God and Fully Human

Mid-week Reflection for Trinity Church Ashland 

As we work through the season of Epiphany, when the Church focuses on who Jesus is, based on how he has been manifested, the issue of how to describe the divinity and humanity of Christ in modern terms often arises. The Creeds use ancient philosophical categories that are unfamiliar to most of us as habits of thinking, so the need to rephrase the faith in ways that are familiar to us is great.

D. M. Baillie, a distinguished Scottish theologian, argues that the Council of Chalcedon's doctrine that Jesus Christ was “fully God and fully human” is perhaps best explained by what he calls the "paradox of grace." We Christians since antiquity have been aware that we possess what appears to be a genuinely free will of our own, that we are "not marionettes but responsible persons." At the same time, we are equally sure that whatever good there is in our lives comes from God acting in us. And we feel that we are never more truly free, nor more truly human, than in those moments when we are most dependent on and most open to God.

"This is the deepest paradox of our Christian experience, and it runs right through it, woven into its very texture," says Dr. Baillie. "I suggest that it . . . points the way to an understanding of the perfect union of God and man in the Incarnation." In the New Testament, Jesus is seen "surpassing all other [people] in refusing to claim anything for himself independently, and ascribing all goodness to God." Yet his disciples felt that when they were with him, they were in the presence of God. And Jesus told them they were right in believing that. "If the paradox of Divine grace is a reality in our poor imperfect lives at all," asked Dr. Baillie, "does not the same or a similar paradox, taken at the perfect and absolute pitch, appear as the mystery of the Incarnation?" (Cf. Louis Cassels, Christian Primer: Adult Answers to Basic Questions about the Christian Faith [Doubleday: NYC, 1964; rpt. FMP 1981] 24-26.)

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, provides another modern model in his discussion of "miracles." He writes, God is an "almighty power ..., a steady swell of loving presence, always there at work in the centre of everything that is, opening the door to a future even when we can see no hope. ... God is always at work, but that work is not always visible. God is always at work, but sometimes the world’s processes go with the grain of his final purpose and sometimes they resist. But if certain things came together in the world at this or that moment, the ‘flow’ would be easier and more direct. Perhaps a really intense prayer or a really holy life can open the world up that bit more to God’s purpose so that unexpected things happen. ... We’re never going to have a complete picture on how that works, because we don’t have God’s perspective on it all. But we can say that there are some things we can think, say or do that seem to give God that extra ‘freedom of manoeuvre’ in our universe. And whether we fully understand what’s going on or not, we know that it’s incumbent on us to do what we can to let this happen. We pray, we act in ways that have some chance of shaping a situation so that God can come more directly in" (Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief [Louisville / London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007] 44-45.)

Jesus, as the One who perfectly submitted to God, who wholly aligned his will and his actions with God's ultimate purposes and love, was thus the supreme miracle-worker and the ultimate Miracle. In the words of Celtic spirituality, he was the thinnest of "thin places" between our world and the Ultimate. In "emptying himself" to God (Phil 2:1-13), and submitting fully to God, the Man Jesus is an exemplar for us.

Seeing such "emptying" of self as the heart of growth toward God, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) wrote the following prayer as part of his Spiritual Exercises:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. All I have and call my own, you have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me. Amen.