Mystery of the Incarnation of Christ
By Bishop Theophilos of Campania
1. The Mystery of the Incarnation. God who is All-Powerful could have liberated the human race from the hands of the Devil by a single command. Had he done that, however, we would have known only his All-Powerfulness, which we already knew. We would not have known his Compassion and Love in spite of the fact that we are hostile to him.
The Incarnation
(literally Ensarkosis = “En-flesh-ment”) of the Son of God is
called such because of his extreme condescension and because it was out of love
that He who is not separated from the Father came down to the lowest point,
i.e. to the “flesh,” although when we speak about “flesh” here we understand
the whole man who is denoted by the partial element of the “flesh.”
The Incarnation
of the Son of God is the supreme dogma of the Christian Faith, because it was
by these means that we were saved “by grace.” The whole Son of God became Man,
personally (literally hypostatically = existentially). In
other words, he was perfect God and perfect man, with two natures, Godhead and
manhood, and one person (hypostasis), the divine.
This mystery,
says Dionysios (the Areopagite) remains ineffable, although we denote it with
words. It is also unknowable, although we put it in our mind. God Himself said
to Moses: “Go down and solemnly charge the people, lest at any time they
draw nigh to God to gaze, and a multitude of them fall” (Ex. 19:21), i.e.,
those who try to investigate God’s nature and mysteries fall into perplexity.
This is why Gregory the Theologian says, “Before you grasp Him run away, and
before you put Him in your mind escape”. Indeed he goes on to call those who
try to investigate the mysteries babblers, imprudent, uncontrollable and
chatterers.
2. Why Did the
Incarnation Take Place at That Time? No one should
examine why the Incarnation took place then, and not earlier or later, because
only he knows it. He was incarnated “from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary”
because there was never before, nor will there appear again, such a Virgin in
the human race as immaculate as the Virgin Mary, sanctified in the flesh and
worthy to be united with the Godhead of the Son of God, the Son of God who assumed
the entire man from her pure and immaculate blood.
As she conceived
without a sperm, so Christ was born without corruption. In other words, the
Holy Mary and Theotokos, who was a Virgin before the birth, remained a Virgin
even after the birth. Thus Christ came out of her womb in an ineffable manner,
just as he entered into her in a manner, which involved no passion and cannot
be explained.
This is exactly
what Ezekiel’s prophesy stresses: “Son of Man, this Gate shall be shut; it
shall not be opened; and no one shall pass through it, for the Lord God of
Israel shall enter by it and come out of it and the Gate shall remain shut”
(Ezekiel 44:2).
3. This Mystery
of the Incarnation is inconceivable according
to the prophet Jeremiah who says: “And he is a man, and who shall know Him?”
(Jer. 17:9). The great Paul also declares the same: “And without doubt the
Mystery of our piety is Great: God appeared in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16).
Through communion with the Godhead the entire man was deified “in Christ.” The humanity
of Christ enjoyed all the charismas and benefits of the Godhead, since Christ
is perfect God and perfect man after the union. This is similar to the initial
light, which God created and which fell on the sun’s disk and the entire disk
became full of dazzling light.
This Mystery of
the Incarnation is inconceivable both to Angels and human beings. God Himself
revealed it to Moses, when he showed him through an opening his back parts,
namely His Incarnation. He did not show him his person, i.e. His Godhead, which
no man can ever see, not even an angel. At the Incarnation, then, God did not
change what he was, since he is unchangeable; rather he assumed what he was not
because he is a lover of man.
One may ask, how
did the humanity receive the Godhead without being burnt out? But is this not
also the case with the burning Bush, which was not burnt out? Where God is at
work whatever is impossible becomes possible. The burning iron receives the
entire nature of fire, and yet the iron remains iron and the fire, fire. It
burns like fire, and like iron it undergoes changes, which an iron undergoes
and has a cutting edge when it is used.
4. The Godhead
deified the Human Nature, which is now deified together with its soul, which is endowed with mind,
reason, will and energy. As a man, Christ was exposed to the so-called natural
but blameless passions. In others words, he felt pain, thirst, weariness, even
faintheartedness in a natural way. He did not display, however, any blameworthy
passions, i.e. those deriving from evil choice. This was the case because he
was united with God, who was the leader of his rational soul and preserved
Christ sinless.
Some of the
Fathers say that the babe was perfect already inside the belly of his mother.
Others, however, say that he grew gradually like all babes. This is a matter of
opinion and not a heresy that has an effect on the Mystery. The point is that
just as Adam was made from the soil, so Christ was made from the Holy Spirit
and the Virgin Mary. The Holy Spirit gave birth to the soul of Christ while his
flesh was made from the blood of the Virgin.
5. The Manner of
the Incarnation. Saint Maximus says that the Angels knew the impending Incarnation of the
Son of God for the salvation of human beings. What however, escaped their
perception were the unthinkable Conception and the manner of the Incarnation.
How he could be entirely in the Father and entirely inside all things which he
fulfilled, and also entirely inside the belly of the Virgin!
Nevertheless,
Christ’s becoming man differs from that of all other human beings. He is
substantially a perfect man, yet he differs because he is seedless, and because
he falls under a different law from that which pertains to the nature of
composite beings. The Word of God was conjoined with the flesh by means of
assuming it in an ineffable manner.
Thus, only when
Christ was born was the message heard, “Peace on earth and good will among
men” (Luke 2:14). God had granted his peace many times and had called many
human beings his sons. There was only one Person, however, in whom he “was
well-pleased” and only one Peace that was perfect and saving for all human
beings along with his perfect good-pleasure.
6. The Name
“Jesus” and the Greek Alphabet. The Name Jesus, which is “the Name above
every other name” (Phil. 2:9), means Savior for the Jews and healer
(iomenos) for the Greeks. And indeed, Christ is the Healer of our souls and of
the bodies of those who believe in him. The curious point here, however, is
that this great and divine Name was indicated before hand through the Greek
Alphabet, which consists of 24 letters!
As is known, the
first eight letters of this Alphabet from A to Θ specify 8 monads. The following eight letters from I to Πspecify 8
decades, and the following eight letters from P to Ω specify 8
hundreds. If we add them all up we form the number 888. The same applies,
however, if we add the numbers which are specified by the letters of the Name
JESUS: I(=10)+ Η(=8)+ Σ(=200)+ Ο(=70)+ Υ(=400)+ Σ(=200)=888. Τhis is exactly
what the following verse stresses: “For if eight monads are to be added to
eight decades and these to eight hundreds they will denote to the human
unbelievers the Name of their Savior” (Oracula Sibyllina).
7. Witnesses of
the Gentiles about the God-Man. Witnesses to Christ being God and Man are also
found among many Gentiles:
a) Josephus. The Jewish
historian Josephus says this about Christ: “Now there was about this time
Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of
wonderful works –a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He
drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the
Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had
condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake
him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets
had foretold these and other wonderful mysteries concerning him; and the tribe
of the Christians, so named from him are not extinct at this day” (Antiquitates
Judaicae, Book 18,64.2). In other words, Josephus wonders whether Jesus was
only a man, since he did so many incredible things and taught in such a way
that he made many Jews and Greeks believe in him. Also, when the leaders of the
Jews delivered him to Pilate to be crucified, his disciples did not reject him,
for he was resurrected on the third day and appeared to them according to the predictions
of the prophets who had spoken about this and many more mysteries concerning
his person. Indeed his followers took his name and came to be called Christians
and their race has not ceased to exist to this day.
B) The Roman
Emperor Augustus. Eusebius of Pamphilos (Metropolitan of Caesarea in Palestine) reports
that the Roman Caesar Augustus went to the Oracle of Delphi and offered
sacrifice there as a Greek in order to ask Pythia who gave the oracles to tell
him who would reign after him. Pythia gave him the following oracle: “A Hebrew
child, who will reign over the blessed gods, orders me to leave this altar and
return to Hades again. Depart, therefore, silent from my altars” (Oracula,
or Suda, Lexicon alpha). When Caesar Augustus heard these
things, he returned to Rome and erected an altar on which he inscribed: “An
Altar to the firstborn God” (Johannes Malalas, Chronographia or
Suda, Lexicon, alpha). It is truly amazing to think that the demon
was forced by the divine power to witness to the Gentiles the divine birth of
Christ the God-man!
C) Porphyry. The opponent
of the Christians Porphyry says the following: “But now [the Gentiles] marvel
how the disease has befallen the city for so many years and there has been no
intervention either from Asclepius (the god of health) or from any other gods.
Because the honor offered to Jesus did not leave room for any common help from
the gods” (Porphyrius, Contra Christianos 80.3, or Eusebius, Preparatio
Evangelica V.1.10).
Their oracles
ceased and their divinations from their false gods, the demons. What else did
the thoughtless and blind gentiles wish to see in order to understand that the
mighty power of the Lord and God Jesus Christ? But the sages of the Greeks had
proclaimed Christ even before his incarnation.
8. God Became
Man in order to Conquer the Devil as Man. Since he was
born in an ineffable manner, and received the homage of the Magi, and that
unusual star appeared in the sky, and he was fed with human milk, and grew up,
and went to the desert and fasted for forty days, the Devil thought that he was
only a man and could fall if tempted with hunger and so he started tempting him
hard. But Christ rebutted the enemy, putting forth the light of Scripture, not
using the power and authority of his Godhead, but following the natural
sequence of humanity. It was as a man, then, and not as God that Christ
conquered the Devil, because the Devil had conquered the first man at the
beginning not as God but as man. It was necessary, then, that the Devil should
be conquered by man. This is why the divine Dionysius the Areopagite and
Gregory the Theologian say, that “Christ conquered the Devil not by power but
by right judgment and righteousness” (Dionysius, De ecclesiasticae
Hierarchia). Luke the Evangelist says that Christ sustained all
temptations, because he scored victories over the three capital ones, gluttony,
vainglory and avarice, which give birth to all others. Thus He put the Devil to
shame.
9. The Public
Ministry of the God-Man and its Conclusion in the Resurrection. When Christ
came down from the desert and gathered together his disciples, he preached to
the world for three years and produced many miracles, having first completed
the thirtieth year of his age. After all these things his disciple Judas sold
him by treachery, and Christ accepted it, because he wanted to redeem us, human
beings, who had been sold to the Devil through sin. He deliberately handed Himself
over to those who pursued him, because he wanted to complete the divine economy
and redeem the human race. He was crucified, died and buried, and the Third Day
he rose and appeared to his disciples and to the women. Then, forty days later
he blessed his disciples, and having taught them about peace, he ascended into
heaven and sat at the right hand of the Father having fulfilled all things and
having deified man.
Before the
Resurrection of Christ took place, three human beings appear in the Old
Testament to have been risen from the dead. The first one is the son of the
widow from Zarephath or Sarepta (cf. Luke 4:26) who was raised by Elijah. The
second was the son of the Somanite woman who was raised by Elisha (cf. 4 Kings
4:32ff). And the third is the case of the soldier who was buried near the tomb
of Elisha and was raised from the dead (4 Kings 13:21). In the New Testament
there are four cases of human beings who were raised from the dead by Christ:
the daughter of the leader of the synagogue (Luke 8:49ff), the son of the widow
of Nain (Luke 7:11ff), Lazarus who had been buried for four days (John 11:43f)
and those who arose at the resurrection of Christ (cf. Matth. 27:52f). All of
these died again. Christ, however, who is the eighth case of a man that rose
from the dead, is the only one who does not die again because death has no
dominion over him. We too will rise again, on that Eighth Day, which has no
end, without dying again.
10. Epilogue
From the Words of Dionysius the Areopagite. We shall let
Dionysius the Areopagite to close this chapter. And first of all we shall
recall what he says about the darkness, which occurred when Christ was
crucified. There is, he says, the witness of the Greek astronomer Phlegon who
said: “In the second year of the 202nd Olympiad a major eclipse of the Sun
occurred, the like of which had not been seen earlier,” so that the stars
appeared in the sky” (Johannes Malalas, Chronographia). This is one
additional witness of the Greeks, which is connected with the Crucifixion of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
It is in this
way, then, that we should believe in and worship Jesus Christ, as God who
became man, because the Son and Word of God remains inseparable from his
humanity. As God He is other than the Flesh, but also as Flesh He is other than
the Word. Since, however, the Word of the Father, who is from God, Himself
became man as well, this is not the case of “an other and an other” because of
the indescribable union and summit. Thus, the Son is called: One and Only, both
before the summit of the Incarnation and after His union with the Flesh. It is
exactly for this reason that he said to the man who had been previously blind
and was healed by Him: “Do you believe in the Son of man?” (John
9:35). And he answered, “And who is he Lord, that I might believe in
Him” (John 9:36). And then, Christ said to Him, “And you have
seen Him and He who is speaking with you, He is the one” (John 9:38).
He speaks as man, He appears as man, and He is believed to be a God-Man, God’s Son
Himself!
Truly, how
incomprehensible and lofty is this Mystery of the Incarnation of Christ! Yet it
is an absolute confirmation and revelation of God’s infinite love for us human
beings.
Source: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2009/12/on-incarnation-of-son-of-god.html
-------------------------- [1] Bishop Theophilos of
Campania (1749-1795) was one of the brightest figures of the Church in the 18th
century; distinguished for his theological and canonical expertise. He was born
in Ioannina and became a Bishop in Campania, the area to the west of Thessaloniki
and opposite Chalkidiki. He was probably a sytudent of the famous teacher
Eugenios Voulgaris and is particularly known for his book Tameion Orthodoxias,
which run through eight editions from 1780 to 1939. [2] References to the texts
cited by the author were not included in the original edition and were provided
by the translator. Translated and
annotated[2] from the original Greek by Fr GEORGE DION DRAGAS PhD, DD
Protopresbyter
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