He Makes Us by Simply Being Himself
God Glorifies Himself in the Human: A Christological Anthology
God Glorifies Himself in the Human: A Christological Anthology
God Glorifies Himself in the Human (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christology Lectures)
He is God, He is All Things (Melito of Sardis, On Pascha)
God Could Not Not Save Us (Athanasius, On the Incarnation)
What Happens with Jesus is How God is God (Jenson, Systematics Vol 1)
He Does Not Suffer the Fact That He Suffers (Cyril, On the Unity of Christ)
Christ is Not a Principle (Yannaras, Elements of Faith)
The Israelite Heals—That’s All You Need to Know (McCarthy, The Passenger)
Jesus is Not Christ Without Us (Symeon the New Theologian, First Ethical Discourse)
Empty Tomb, Empty Throne (Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology)
Holy Jesus, Gentle Friend (Broom of Devotion)
This selection is from John Scotus Eriugena’s Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of John 7, 9. For an introduction to him and his work, you might start here and/or here.
“All things were made through him.” All things were made through the God-Word, through the Word himself who is God. And what does “all things were made through him ” mean if not: At the moment the Word was born of the Father before all things, all things were made with him and through him. For the generation of the Word from the Father is the creation of all causes and is the effective production of all things which proceed from the causes as genus and kind. Indeed, all things were made through the generation of God the Word from God who is Principle and beginning. Hear the divine and ineffable paradox, the impenetrable secret, the unfathomable depths, the mystery which transcends understanding. Through him who was not made but begotten, all things were made but not begotten…
Meister Eckhart, in his Sermon 12, says the same:
“Truly, in that selfsame birth in which the Father bears His only-begotten Son and gives him the root and all His Godhead and all His bliss, holding nothing back, in that selfsame birth He calls us His friends.”
A few reflections:
How can the eternal generation of the uncreated Word be identical with the creation of all things? How can God’s love for us have the “selfsame birth” as the Father’s love for the Son? Because the Son who is begotten is none other than Jesus of Nazareth, Mary’s boy, David’s heir.
Is Eriugena not wrong to speak of a “moment” in which the Word is born form the Father? No, because time as we know it is created by the Lord of the Sabbath (Mt 12.1–8'; Mk 2:23–28; Lk 6.1–5 ). To ask when time is created is to ask a question that has no answer other than “God,” for God is God’s own time as God is God’s own place. The act of creating, therefore, is nothing other than God being God and with God for God in a way that makes room for us to be God with God for God too.
Is this not what Jesus said he wanted? In his “high priestly prayer” he refers to the glory which the Father had given him “before the foundation of the world” (!), saying he has given that selfsame glory, that very belovedness, to his friends, including you and me, so we might be one just as he and the Father are one (Jn 17.22-24). It is not merely that God so loved the world he gave his only-begotten Son to redeem it; it is that God’s love for the world is the selfsame love given to the Son, and it gives life to the creation just as surely as it is the life of the uncreated Word. The same love that makes God God makes the world God’s as God is God’s.
Is this not what St Paul says again and again? “There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (1 Cor. 8.6). “He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1.17). All things hold together, see, because of who it is that is before all things!
In the end, then, Eriugena and Eckhart say what they say because they see the truth of the gospel hidden and revealed in the Scriptures. The created and the uncreated co-occur and coinhere. They can and must do so because Jesus is God and is with God from everlasting to everlasting. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13.8). All things are what they are because Jesus is who he is as the Father’s Son without a mother and Mary’s son without a father. He makes us by simply being himself.
“How could it be otherwise?” This was Fr Kenneth Tanner’s response when I shared these passages with him, and it really is exactly the right question to ask.
Amen! Just read the homily on John’s prologue last week. Wonderful reflections
“The negation of the world is not a pathway which leads to God” - Eberhard Jüngel (God As The Mystery Of The World 10.3, pg136)
How can there ever be a ‘without Him’? Not ever