Posts
 |
| Photo: Peter Wehner |
 |
| Photo: New York Times |
BECAUSE
the Christmas story has been told so often for so long, it’s easy even
for Christians to forget how revolutionary Jesus’ birth was. The idea
that God would become human and dwell among us, in circumstances both
humble and humiliating, shattered previous assumptions. It was through
this story of divine enfleshment that much of our humanistic tradition
was born.
For
most Christians, the incarnation — the belief that God, in the person
of Jesus, walked in our midst — is history’s hinge point. The
incarnation’s most common theological take-away relates to the doctrine
of redemption: the belief that salvation is made possible by the sinless
life and atoning death of Jesus. But there are other, less familiar
aspects of Jesus’ earthly pilgrimage that are profoundly important.
One
of them was rejecting the Platonic belief that the material world was
evil. In Plato’s dualism, there was a dramatic disjuncture between ideal
forms and actual bodies, between the physical and the spiritual worlds.
According to Plato, what we perceive with our senses is illusory, a
distorted shadow of reality. Hence philosophy’s most famous imagery —
Plato’s shadow on the cave — where those in the cave mistook the shadows
for real people and named them.
This
Platonic view had considerable influence in the early church, but that
influence faded because it was in tension with Christianity’s deepest
teachings. In the Hebrew Bible, for example, God declares creation to be
good — and Jesus, having entered the world, ratified that judgment. The
incarnation attests to the existence of the physical, material world.
Our life experiences are real, not shadows. The incarnation affirms the
delight we take in earthly beauty and our obligation to care for God’s
creation. This was a dramatic overturning of ancient thought.
The
incarnation also reveals that the divine principle governing the
universe is a radical commitment to the dignity and worth of every
person, since we are created in the divine image.
But just as basic is the notion that we have value because God values us. Steve Hayner, a theologian who died earlier this year, illustrated this point to me when he observed that gold is valuable not because there is something about gold that is intrinsically of great worth but because someone values it. Similarly, human beings have worth because we are valued by God, who took on flesh, entered our world, and shared our experiences — love, joy, compassion and intimate friendships; anger, sorrow, suffering and tears. For Christians, God is not distant or detached; he is a God of wounds. All of this elevated the human experience and laid the groundwork for the ideas of individual dignity and inalienable rights.
But just as basic is the notion that we have value because God values us. Steve Hayner, a theologian who died earlier this year, illustrated this point to me when he observed that gold is valuable not because there is something about gold that is intrinsically of great worth but because someone values it. Similarly, human beings have worth because we are valued by God, who took on flesh, entered our world, and shared our experiences — love, joy, compassion and intimate friendships; anger, sorrow, suffering and tears. For Christians, God is not distant or detached; he is a God of wounds. All of this elevated the human experience and laid the groundwork for the ideas of individual dignity and inalienable rights.
 |
| A Brief History of Thought |
In his book “A Brief History of Thought,” the secular humanist and French philosopher Luc Ferry writes that in contrast with the Greek understanding of humanity, “Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity — an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.”
Source: New York Times
