On the Doorstep of Advent, Part 1

Advent begins in less than two weeks, this year falling on December 2nd. During this time, the Church catholic celebrates the coming of Christ to this world (Latin adventus meaning "arrival" or "appearance"). This event is also known by the word "incarnation" which means "in-flesh-ment" of the divine Son in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Celebration of advent and confession of incarnation are universal and go hand-in-hand (lex orandi lex credendi est). But the implications of this arrival, this in-flesh-ment are not universally agreed upon. Yes, the Word became flesh (John 1:14), but what does this mean?

It means that many things, which I hope to further elucidate in the following posts. But of foremost importance is that the incarnation destroys even the possibility of dualism in Christianity. Dualism was a paradigm for arranging reality among the Greeks in which they saw two equal, but opposite powers at war in the world. One was good and the other was evil. Each had a essential representations in the world. The soul, for example, was good while the body was evil. This idea reappears all the time within the Christian church. We deem one type of activity as good (inherently) while the other is evil (inherently). We divide sacred and secular. We bifurcate body from soul. As a result, we detach from reality and inhabit some ethereal non-reality. And by so doing, we abandon the world (and the flesh) that Christ himself inhabited in order to redeem it. We cannot follow dualism and Jesus simultaneously.

Whether one recognizes it or not, dualism denies the reality of Advent and the incarnation. It denies that God could become a human, much less the flesh described in John 1:14, the thing which represents mortality and weakness. But God did become human; he did inhabit, live in, and die in flesh. This event signifies that flesh is not evil, even though Paul did use the term in a negative light. What John is saying (and Paul would agree) is that flesh was made by God and is the object of his love and plan of cosmic redemption. Without flesh (albeit resurrected flesh) there will be no consummation, there will be no Kingdom. The problem is not with flesh, but with sin. Jesus died and was raised in the former to irradicate the latter.

The human person is body and soul in one organic unity. He is incomplete if he is not in this form. That is why the arrival and resurrection of the Word was in flesh. That is why dualism is impossible in Christianity.

I'll leave you with a quote from Bonhoeffer's Ethics (pg. 196-197):

"The whole of medieval history is centered upon the theme of predominance of the spiritual sphere over the secular sphere, the predominance of the regnum gratiae over the regnum naturae; and the modern age is characterized by an ever increasing independence of the secular in its relations with the spiritual. So long as Christ and the world are conceived as two opposing and mutually repellent spheres, man will be left in the following dilemma: he abandons reality as a whole, and places himself in one or other of the two spheres. He seeks Christ without the world, or he seeks the world without Christ. In either case he is deceiving himself."