5th of 5 & Lastly, I hope this helps, David and Dan: the Incarnation is everything

Surely we can try to get it right for the sake of our souls, our love.

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4. So, when I left off the Incarnation with Aquinas and the Scholastics, Aquinas had given us three ways of knowing in the Godman, Jesus Christ. 1. From conception having beatific knowledge: a completely divine, immediate vision of heavenly omniscience; 2. infused knowledge: God bequeathed knowledge of everything to the man, Jesus; 3. acquired knowledge: the man Jesus learned day-to-day reality - faced reality - as a human being. In this scheme, Aquinas showed how Jesus is both comprehensor - one who possesses visionary knowledge of all things - and viator - one who is "on the way", journeying toward his final end by experience, coming to know what life is like.

How, psychologically could it possible work for one person to have, that the same time, both complete and eternal comprehension AND partial, experiential driven knowledge? It would seem to us, with our understanding of the human psyche that the human nature of Jesus would be entirely overwhelmed by the divine nature. Contemporary objections to Aquinas' way of relating to the Incarnation posits two failures: either the human knower necessary prostrates itself utterly in worship of the divine nature, losing all agency and will, or the one mind with two irreparably contradictory knowers collapses in supreme schizophrenia.

This is the juncture where disregard for thinking through the implications of our beliefs would have zero ability to answer to the secular objection of the Incarnation - the central, vital, absolute center of our faith from which all else is generated. If Christ is not human, then we, in our being, are not redeemed as ourselves. God would have to change our existence to give us life everlasting. Christ did not win for us - as us - our victory over death. Or, if Christ is not divine, then no real gift can be won existentially. There is not power give to us by grace to live by a love that is stronger than death. All will die. Suffering is what it is. 

But that is not christian faith. That is modernism. And such blithe liberal apathy - as Dan shows - or it is escapism in the face of our times - in the way David, Jesse, and the other even less attentive neighborhood of radical protestants demonstrate - fail the establish the reason for our faith, and the intellectual passion that should be generated by our love for all people. Almost all of the early church Fathers and Mothers had classical education and used it to deliver to all those of late antiquity compositions of theology and spirituality that strengthen their faith upon which they built; who then delivered to those in the medieval period upon which they built stronger structures of reason serving devotion with rediscovered works by Aristotle and others; who then delivered to us of modernity, with our faith strengthened by the humanist values of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and quality-of-life advances by the scientific revolution, upon which we build renewed, freshened, electric grasp of faith and by ways of history, sociology, psychology, ecology, deepen and broaden immeasurably the vision of a God involved in the whole of creation and at the very consciousness and conscience of inner being.

If we disregard this, we disregard our neighbors who, in absolute unity with us, need the hope of healing and redemption.

So, what are we to do with OUR scholastic problem of two subjects, one divine knower and one human knower, in one body inferring either mental breakdown or erasure of the will of the human knower, thereby making a mockery of our belief, our need for an incarnate God who loves us so much that the Son chose to become a human being?

No surprise that in the 20th century, there have been many efforts. Especially in the late 20th century and still today there is a great deal of work going directing our attention to the vitality of thinking about and devotedly relating Jesus our savior as one person with two natures. 

There are two main bodies of intellectual pursuit: the conscious knowing of the Son operative as human nature and operative as his spirit. This is now a translation of Aquinas' metaphor of divine beatific knowledge as ocular, or vision, to one of conscious knowledge. In the one person, the one subject, the one "I", there are two natures of knowing. As God incarnate, the Son of God is living in space and time. The Son is directing his attention, his knowing to the needs of the day and the mission of his ministry.

At the moment, I am writing this, I am conscious of only the needs to compose, the needs of breakfast, the remainder of my wife's presence before she left the house, a sense of the coming tasks of the day and the next few days. What is not conscious is how to drive a car, how to take the train, how to book a flight to Italy, what Venice looks like, where my daughter is, what is going with our great mayor who just lauded the Irish in their resiliency and character formed by centuries of resisting English ("White") colonization which tried to erase their culture and religion, etc, etc, etc, etc. Or, at least I wasn't until I turned my attention to examples of that manifold of things I was not "thinking about", "aware of", "consciously knowing."

The Son of God emptied himself of divine eternity to live in space and time as a human being with a mission to fulfill. He *knew* the Father's plan. He chose to take on that plan. And he was utterly faithful to that plan. So much so, as a human being, that he faced the choices necessary each day to carry that plan forward. He lived with the needs to enact the project. 

In childhood he had divine knowledge of the Will of the Godhead to redeem humanity and divine knowledge of the sacrifice it would take. As a man, he also had the energy and commitment of the human will to work out that plan at every moment - and did so without fail. He concentrated, he focused his attention of all the needs of the day, week, months, years of his ministry. He had to coordinate food, which he did. He had to coordinate bedding, which he did. He had to coordinate a close community of followers, supporters, which he did. Sometimes he had to was cloths and body, which he did. He had to pray away from stimulus, which he did. He turned his attention to those individuals who came up to him, both his active divine knowing of these person and his active human coming-to-know these persons in real space and time, in the flesh. He treated them, in space and time, in the flesh, with complete love, engaged in the conversation and delivering teaching and healing, opening up for them in that time and space, in the flesh, opportunity to be born again the spirit. And then he moved on, turning his attention to the next thing. 

In those moments, he did not need to draw down the eternal omniscience of how the cosmos were created... UNLESS that was part of his teaching. In which case, he turned his attention to draw up from his knowledge what wanted to say. Just like we do with the storehouse of what we know.  In those moments he did not need to draw down the eternal omniscience that Lazarus was, months away, maybe years away, going to need resurrection. That need was relegated to another time and space which did not need to be held - though perhaps it came to mind in the quiet of his prayers. Just as matter extraneous-to-the-day/month/year come to our consciousness unbidden. He did not need to durably consciously remember his mother or brothers or family every second. The mind of the Son of God was set on accomplishing his Father's Will and he focused his attention on that work. Where he was. At that time of day. And planned on what was coming in the near term so that the Project's goal was kept viable and achievable. He made those decision in real time and space, in the flesh. He also grew to know certain people by seeing their human faces cry our weep or grow fearful or distrust him in real time and space, in the flesh. He grew to know certain people by their touching him in the flesh and his touching them in real time and space. He grew to know the ache of his real feet, his real hands, his hair in the wind, the rain, strength of his muscles and the upset of his digestion. By listening to certain human voices plead or interrogate; the birds with their different songs, the sheep with their bleating; little children with play or anger. And he grew as he worked with patience AND frustration with his disciples; learned how to keep them learning; and learned about their capacity to betray him. He did not need to keep all knowledge as foreground to relating to Peter or Judas or Mary Magdalene. 

Why would the Godman need to do that? His absolute love focused his attention as a human person. His Will tracked the needs of loving response in real time, real space, his real flesh. His absolute love limited his being to fullest presence in each moment, in a constant streaming of moments throughout his ministry. This is why he could not heal everyone of physical diseases. Or feed everyone and stave off hunger for everyone. Or dispossess everyone of demons. He had a mission to fulfill and would not be sidetracked. Everything served that mission. And that mission was eternal life, perfection of all being. 

But wasn't it that mission that brought him at times to despair? Didn't he despair at the stubbornness of human beings to be brutal with each other, ruthless? Didn't he despair at the burdens the puffed up religious leaders put on everyone else? Didn't he despair that all that would require his own sacrifice? Of course. His coming to know other people in his human experience culminated in love for every one of them he came to know. His divine nature is eternal love. His human nature came to be attached to a number of others. He loved them. He love John most of all. He loved Mary his mother. And they loved him. He could have given them complete joy and comfort. But his mission was to be choose sacrifice for everyone across all time and space. If we could give complete joy and comfort to those we love, we might well sacrifice ourselves. Is there a greater love? He suffered with us by faithfully choosing to suffer for all of us. Jesus, God endowed with human consciousness, chose to sacrifice himself to achieve eternal glory for all of us because of his love.

Jesus the Christ was the Godman, one person with both natures of knowing, unconfused, unconfusing, attentive and focused on his mission of love and all that that would require.

___

We believe that all suffering will be redeemed. It is hard to believe this. In fact, this is the hardest thing to believe. To be faithful to our belief, then, we must seek Jesus and ask of the Trinity how it is that all suffering will be redeemed. That all human persons will receive the grace to be in perfect communion with the Triune God and with each other. 

And so it is that if we cannot know Jesus, if we cannot relate to Jesus, if we cannot love Jesus as the Incarnation of God as a human being, as a subject, as an "I", then we cannot know God and so cannot love God. We will never feel loved by God, not even able to understand ourselves AS lovable. Nor will we love each other. Not even understand any other as created in the image and likeness of God. As creatures, if we fail to love Jesus then we will never know the love Jesus has for us in both his divine nature of knowing us - we are eternally loved by God - and in his human nature of coming to us - we are loved in real time and space and flesh. 

Either way. If all this is not true, then we are fools. If it is true and we cannot believe in the depths of our soul or across the vagaries of our lifetime, then we are lost as to how to love.

But also, if we say we believe, but we confine ourselves to knowing God by only or even principally knowing scripture, then the Incarnation means nothing. It is just words. Just words to use for salve. This is the protestant foundation - if not all true about protestants. And so, too often, in this default unconsciously protestant social culture., our love for ourselves and any one else fails because of its false devotion to written document. Such an obedience of conscience to social advertised law is both powerless and foolish. It is vain and transitory hope, with an abiding frustration spawning a reaction tendency to turn brutal. Toward both ourselves and each other.

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God desire love. God creates us with a desire for love; we feel it as hope. And love creates knowledge. No law, no word, no book can create love or hope. And so no book can create knowledge. The holy scriptures serve love and knowledge.

"For it is love that I desire, not sacrifice,

and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."

Who can give us such knowledge?

"I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you."

And how will he teach the church?

"But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him."

___

And love brings pain which hurts hope most of all. But there is an absolute answer, a cure, a hope: an absolute faithful one who is just like us and just like god.

"A soul rises up, restless with tremendous desire for God's honor and the salvation of souls. She has for some time exercised herself in virtue and has become accustomed to dwelling in the cell of self-knowledge in order to know better God's goodness toward her, since upon knowledge follows love. And loving, she seeks to pursue truth and clothe herself in it. and the salvation of souls. 

But there is no way she can so savor and be enlightened by this truth as in continual humble prayer, grounded in the knowledge of herself and of God. For by such prayer the soul is united with God, following in the footsteps of Christ crucified, and through desire and affection and the union of love he makes of her another himself. So Christ seems to have meant when he said, "If you will love me and keep my word, I will show myself to you, and you will be one thing with me and I with you."' And we find similar words in other places from which we can see it is the truth that by love's affection the soul becomes another himself.

To make this clearer still, I remember having heard from a certain servant of God? that, when she was at prayer, lifted high in spirit, God would not hide from her mind's eye his love for his servants. No, he he would reveal it, saying among other things, "Open your mind's eye and look within me, and you will see the dignity and beauty of my reasoning creature. But beyond the beauty I have given the soul by creating her in my image and likeness, look at those who are clothed in the wedding garment of charity, adorned with many true virtues: They are united with me through love. So I say, if you should ask me who they are, I would answer," said the gentle loving Word, "that they are another me; for they have lost and drowned their own will and have clothed themselves and united themselves and conformed themselves with mine."

It is true, then, that the soul is united to God through love's affection....

"And you ask for the will to know and love me, supreme Truth. Here is the way, if you would come to perfect knowledge and enjoyment of me, eternal Life: Never leave the knowledge of yourself. Then, put down as you are in the valley of humility you will know me in yourself, and from this knowledge you will draw all that you need.

No virtue can have life in it except from charity, and charity is nursed and mothered by humility. You will find humility in the knowledge of yourself when you see that even your own existence comes not from yourself but from me, for I loved you before you came into being. And in my unspeakable love for you I willed to create you anew in grace. So I washed you and made you a new creation in the blood that my only-begotten Son poured out with such burning love.

This blood gives you knowledge of the truth when knowledge of yourself leads you to shed the cloud of selfish love. There is no other way to know the truth. In so knowing me the soul catches fire with unspeakable love, which in turn brings continual pain…

Still, this is not a pain that troubles or shrivels up the soul. On the contrary, it makes her grow fat. For she suffers because she loves me, nor would she suffer if she did not love me."

The Dialogue

Catherine of Siena