The Enfleshment of God

God became man in Jesus Christ for the eternal salvation of all men. How did this take place? What does it mean?

In recent years there has been some questioning of the New English translation of the Mass. Right here we run into one of the problems because the original Greek (sarkotheis) and Latin (incarnatus) do not say "he was born" but "he took flesh" of the Virgin Mary. So the English translation we use at Mass on Sunday is not precise. You may recall the words of the Apostles' Creed which are more exact in this matter, "He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary."

This article of the Creed touches the heart and soul of the mystery of Christ. Here are some of the truths it contains.

1) The Son of God, the eternal Word, took flesh or was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By these words the ancient Fathers who composed the Creed rejected the errors of those who taught that Jesus only appeared to be a man, but did not actually assume a real human nature (they are called Docetists).

2) Jesus Christ was conceived without the agency of a human father or male sperm. For the Creed says that he was enfleshed "of the Virgin Mary". This is intended to reject the error of Valentinus, a second century heretic, who said that Jesus had a celestial body. He is noted for having said that this body passed through the Virgin without receiving anything from her, just as water passed through a canal. The meaning of the Creed is that Mary supplied to Jesus everything that an ordinary human mother supplies to her child in the area of nutrition and gestation.

3) Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. There was no sexual intercourse involved in the conception of Jesus (see Lk 1:35). It was accomplished by the divine power properly disposing matter within the womb of the Virgin so that an ovum supplied by her was fertilized. We should not conclude from this that the Holy Spirit is the "father" of Jesus in the flesh. In his human nature Jesus did not have a father. To be a father means to generate in one's own likeness. The Holy Spirit, being God, does not generate Jesus' human nature in his own likeness, for he is infinitely above human nature. All activity of God outside the Trinity is common to all three Persons, but some actions are attributed to one Person rather than to another because of a special relationship to that Person. The Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son, who love each other and us in him. Since God decreed that his Son should become incarnate because "of the great love with which he loved us" (Eph 2:4), the formation of Christ's flesh is fittingly ascribed to the Holy Spirit.

4) The Words "and he became man" were added to exclude the error that the Son of God "dwelt" in Jesus in some way, but did not actually become man.

The article of the Creed on the Incarnation is based on the explicit words of Scripture. St. John says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (1:14). St. Paul writes to the Galatians, "When the time ha fully come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman (4:4).

In the above paragraphs I have tried to state as concisely as possible the truths contained in this article of the Creed. One could spend a lifetime profitably meditating on the meaning of the enfleshment of God and never exhaust it. In the following section I will go into the purpose and meaning of the Incarnation and try to shed some light on what is involved for us personally and for all mankind when we profess that God became man in Jesus Christ.

See the index of chapters from Fundamentals of Catholicism which have been reprinted to CERC here.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Kenneth Baker, S.J. "The Enfleshment of God." In Fundamentals of Catholicism Vol. 1 Chapter 17 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 57-58.

This article reprinted with permission from Father Kenneth Baker, S.J.

THE AUTHOR

Rev. Kenneth Baker, S.J., has served for the past thirty years as editor of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1947. In 1970 he served as president of Seattle University and in 1971 became editor of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review. In 1973 he published his translation of the Philosophical Dictionary and adapted it to American usage. In 1975 he became president of Catholic Views Broadcasts, Inc., which produces a weekly 15-minute radio program that airs on 50 stations across the United States. He has built and run three community television stations. In 1983 he published a three-volume explation of the faith called Fundamentals of Catholicism Vol. 1, Creed and Commandments; Vol. 2, God, Trinity, Creation, Christ, Mary; and Vol. 3, Grace, the Church, the Sacraments, Eschatology.

Copyright © 1995 Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J.