Universalism and the Incarnation

December 17, 1961
Rochester

Christmas is an adventure of faith as well as a many-splendored emotional experience. There is a cultural universality surrounding the mid-Winter festival. The human family has always known a sense of joyful release at the reprieve from lengthening dark as the world turns in its annual pattern [illegible] more light. People rejoiced in this experience ages before the Christians sought to sanctify the Winter Saturnalia by transforming the festival to the holy day of Jesus’ birth.

This reformation has never been wholly completed. The lusty ways of pagan joy still run their feverish course. The great feast, the flowing wine, the bacchanalian party are no less a part of the celebration than Christmas worship and the midnight mass. Too frequently however, the anxious details of package, party, card and hectic re-union get in the way of sufficient consideration of the theology of Christmas. The Christian Church has gathered the abundant mythologies of mid-Winter celebration and re-shaped them to a particular, unique, scheme of salvation: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” said Paul.

I would have you think with me about this theological doctrine of the Incarnation. There is little need to remind you that most Universalists believe that Jesus was human, not a deity. If Jesus embodied the divine spirit, the we too may share that spirit. Like you, like I, like all human beings, Jesus shared the experience of creatureliness. Or so most of us would believe.

This positive believe in the wholeness of the human Jesus should not deter us from a searching look at the idea or Incarnation. What was it? In what sense might it have confronted men and women with a spiritual experience that, paradoxically blended mystery and meaning?

The Christian faith conquered the ancient world because of the Incarnation, some historians believe. As has been cited recently, the belief that the supreme God could incarnate himself in human form was widespread in the early centuries following the time of Jesus. There were “Lords many and Gods many.” Caesar himself was deified, as well as the long procession of Egyptian, Asian and Greek dying-rising saviors. Tales of wonder and magic surround their birth, usually.

Because Christianity won over the others and persisted amid the swinging forces of changing times, it is more ingrained in our deep conditionings.

The idea of Incarnation in Christianity is inseparable from the idea of Redemption. Because man was unable to save himself, God assumed human form, came to Earth as a babe to begin three decades of life, uniquely human and divine, redeeming man from sin and death by Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb.

This salvation scheme sometimes referred to as Christology, had the beginnings in the theology of Paul. With more mystical emphasis, it is the central theme of the gospel of John and the letters of John. The impact of this theology is indicated by the transforming of the seasonal celebrations of winter, Spring, Summer to the particular and unique Christian year, Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.

To the convinced Christian, the Incarnation of God in Christ was not to be compared to the Lords many and the Gods many of ancient times. The Incarnation of God in Christ was unique, datable. The Incarnation was so radical historically, that all time was to be separated henceforth forever in the great historical divide, the time B.C. and A.D. after the year of our Lord.

More than four hundred years were to elapse before the Christian Church would settle the theological difficulties of the man who was God and the God who was man. Christian orthodoxy demanded that the Incarnation should be real, not mythical or ghostly. The X [Christ] was human flesh, born of human mother. God had become man. Yet as one theologian pointed out, there was a difficult paradox for the “only thing God cannot do is cease to become God.”

Theologically, this was not fixed by official dogma until the council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451, when the Christian bishops gathered from the far-flung parts of the Empire. These men were no longer refugees from the catacombs, but leaders of an established, powerful institution which had experienced centuries of accretion of myth and ritual, centuries of power struggle and the sorting out of hierarchical positions, centuries of debate and accommodation with the other religions of antiquity, and centuries of conflict and amalgamation with the entrenched state religion of the Roman Empire.

The Council of Chalcedon pronounced that Jesus was wholly God and wholly man, two natures, “unconfused and undivided.”

Out of the vessels of ancient myth, vast as the seas, there was distilled this particular Christian idea of Incarnation: To a virgin there was born in Bethlehem the baby Jesus on a natal night which was the veritable hinge of history. The babe in the manger was very God and very man incarnated to save this sin-choked world.

I doubt if many people think seriously of the Incarnation theology at Christmas-time. The practices seem as much in accord with the seasonal origins of light, fire, evergreen, gift, party feast, as with the awful solemnity with which the incarnate God came into this world. Certainly in our land, the 65 million people or so, who have no formal or serious church attachment must place very light theological meaning to the event.

We in the liberal faiths to not accept the Incarnation in any literal or orthodox sense. An unbiased look at the world discloses that the Incarnation is not only not unique, it is not even a biblical idea in its theological complexity. In our world of 1961, there lives a person millions believe to be the Incarnation. The devout Tibetans believe that the young man, the Dalai Lama, now living in exile in India as the incarnation of their God. In Indian religion, Vishnu, in his role as Supreme God, is both Creator and moral guardian of the world. When foes threaten the values Vishnu loves, he incarnates himself so that he may defend the moral order. (See Hastings Enc. R.&E.).

If the Incarnation just does not capture our allegiance in its orthodox Christian theological claim, do we have any intellectual justification for the idea of the Incarnation? I choose the words “intellectual justification” for the reason that whatever our theological convictions, or lack of them, we are going on anyway with the festival ceremonies of Christmas, whether or not they have validity for the mind, because age-old emotions are in command at the season of returning light.

And there is reason for celebrating the idea of incarnation, even when the unique supernaturalism of Christian Incarnation has to be left behind.

We celebrate the wonder of life in its loveliest realization – the new babe in the manger of the poor. The story of the baby Jesus shakes us deeply because his is the universal story of parents who experience the shattering and mysterious compound love, fear, wonder, hope, blended with the fact of pain, the astonishment of human sacrifice and the miracle of human growth. We celebrate the creation of new life. Do you remember Stephen Vincent Benet's poem, “Nightmare for future reference”:

"That was the Second Year of the Third World war
The one between Us and Them....”

The poet goes on with laconic but terrifying (in the framework of a father speaking to his son) forebodings to tell of the hints of disaster:

The lab chief who was no longer permitted
guinea pigs for experiments and the steep slide
of the statistical curve of the birth rate:
“I didn’t ask them,
Not even your mother – she was strange those days --
But, two weeks later, I was back in the lines
And somebody sent me a paper --
Encouragement for the troops and all of that --
All about the fall of Their birth rate on their side.

I guess you know, now. There was still a day when we fought
And the next day, the women knew. I don’t know how they knew,
But they smashed every government in the world
Like a heap of broken china within two days
And we’d stopped firing by then. And we looked at each other.

......

Well, I’ve told you know. They tell you know at
eighteen.
There’s no use to tell before.
Do you understand?
That’s why we have the Ritual of the Earth.
The Day of Sorrow, the other ceremonies.
Oh yes, at first people hated the animals
Because they still bred, but we’ve gotten over that.
Perhaps they can work it better, when it’s their turn.
If it’s their turn – I don’t know. I don’t know at all.
You can call it a virus, of course, if you like that word,
But we haven’t been able to find it. Not yet. No
It isn’t as if it had happened all at once.
There were a few children born in the last six months
Before the end of the war, so there's still some hope.
But they’re almost grown. That’s the trouble... they’re almost grown.
Well, we had a long run. That’s something. At first they thought
There might be a nation somewhere – a savage tribe.
But we were all in it, even the Eskimos.
And we keep the toys in the stores, and the colored books
And people marry and plan and the rest of it.
But you see, there aren’t any children. They aren’t born.”

We know that to define human beginnings as the fertilization of ovum by sperm is to define only, not explain. The emergence of form, breath, blood, the wonder of new birth, the growth of limb, mind, emotion – all these are too wonderful for diagnostic words. At Christmas the carol, candle, crèche and evergreen speak to our hearts and with gladness we know that still children are being born and marvelous is the privilege of protecting that creative loveful gift of new life. The incarnation is still an occasion for renewal of both the ecstatic mystery and sense of gratitude that creative life forces are with us still, “the light that lighteth every man coming into the world.” No particularized theology may restrain that gladness.

Then, consider the incarnation in the aspect discussed by the great church historian Hans Leitzmann (A HISTORY OF THE EARLY CHURCH, vol I, pp. 166-8)

The Roman poet, Virgil had predicted a time when a savior, coming into the world as a divine child, would erase sin and usher in a golden age. The Romans thought Caesar Augustus was that divine incarnation. (Indeed for centuries to follow all Caesars were deified,) The age of Augustus was extolled as one which brought better fortune and lessening misery as Pax Romana brought universal peace. Temples of Peace, dedicated to Rome and Augustus were built in city after city. Says Lietzmann: “A community of feeling passed over the boundaries of the provinces and the differences of race, and created the vitally necessary ideology of the Roman Empire.” So it is today, too, whatever view one may hold of the incarnation theologically. At Christmas, the celebration of the birth of the divine child creates a community of feeling which is all too brief. There are legends of soldiers climbing from trenches and meeting friends in a Christmas battlefield truce. Most personnel men tell me how hard it is to discharge persons at Christmas. We are generous not only with family, but with good causes and needy people. Christmas is an incarnation, briefly, of the dreams of all mankind of a world as it should be, when there will be peace on earth, good-will to all men. On the babe in the manger we have projected the deepest yearnings of love and hope. Who would have it otherwise?

One thing more, asserted as a testimony of faith, not demonstrable or provable. If this proposition could be demonstrated in formidable logic or verifiable experiment, it would not require faith. The Incarnation has this symbolic meaning also – the Creator of the Universe is not alone in the impersonal energy of the atomic structure, not alone in the giant strength that moves the tides and charts the planets’ endless rounds. A God worthy of our worship is found not only in these exhibitions of astounding, mysterious force, but also the Creator is found in the high values and lovely experiences of human relationships. Significantly, there is only [the] NT definition of God, “God is love.” Paul Tillich, “God is not merely a word to represent the infinite power of the world, but the good that is there too.” The divine is identified with the human. William Blake, mystic poet put it this way,

“for mercy has a human heart
And pity a human face
And love the human form divine
And peace the human dress.
For mercy, pity, love and peace
Are man his child and care.”

The ever-new, universal incarnation cherishes a dream: there comes a time when the long night ebbs and more light shines on the babes of the world. When that glow moves silently, transforming shadow to light, then something in our blood, in our bones, cries out that no matter how dismal the prospect for human redemption, now alarming the portents of disaster, how grievous the blows with which we have been struck, there is a spirit of creation abroad in the world which call us to protect the innocent, to warm our homes with light and love, and to look high, reverently, to the eternal heavens, whose mysterious vastness of jeweled order suggests that the power behind all things moves in our hearts also.

--
Euripides

Editor’s note:

The following is attached. The page numbering is contiguous with the prior pages, but the prose appears to be a fragment. In addition, portions of the pages are torn away – indicated by an ellipsis. So it is a fragment of a fragment.

Dec. 12 in our calendar. We say “the days get longer then.” the men who worshiped the sun as his chief deity could say “My God is with me for a longer time each day.” Mere Light: Do not overlook for one moment that the urge to inhabit the beaches, to winter in Florida, to become tanned, to be in the sun and air in summer, is stirred not only consciously but unconsciously from other levels of our being by that age-old response of worship and love for the sun.

Even though our culture is quite sophisticated now, or so we think, how much our thinking is still bound up with “more light.” We speak of the need to bring enlightenment morally; we think in terms of bringing mankind from the darkness of war, disease and poverty in to the light of reason, charity and love.

Do you know the old Arabian legend of two devout followers of the Prophet who made a pilgrimage to Mecca? Abouk journeyed on foot; Selim was mounted on a camel. At nightfall both the pilgrims had reached a spring of water in the desert, where grew a few palm trees. They prepared to spend the ... hter. “It is a long and tedious journey,” ... contrary it is a short and pleasant trip,” countered Selim, “I was cheered by a mirage on the horizon wherein I saw the Holy City and the spires of its mosques.” “There was no mirage to be seen,” angrily declared Abouk, “there were instead legions of venomous ants in the sane that bit and poisoned my flesh.”

“Not a single ant was on the desert,” rejoined Selim.

The two pilgrims quarreled fiercely when a Holy Man, also journeying toward Mecca, came up. He listened to them patiently. “Peace, my brethren,” he said at last, “Let us leave alone those questions until tomorrow night to decide. In the meantime let Selim go on foot and Abouk ride the camel.”

The consented to this change of plans. On the next night it was Abouk who had seen the glorious visions and Selim who had been bitten by the ants.

“My brothers,” said the Holy Man, “We are all going to Mecca whether we walk or ride, but Selim cannot see what Abouk sees unless he stands where Abouk stands.” Abouk’s point of vision was ... gher. He had been lifted above the stings and ... weariness of the desert. He beheld ... and glorious, and did not mind the ants, dust, and heat. Perhaps the mirage was an aid all along the difficult road of swirling sands. But only when they were lifted up could Selim or About see this vision.

The days after Christmas are sure to come. There will be some bitter conflicts to resolve, tragic burdens to bear; news may come in the world that may make the Christmas message of “peace on earth, good-will to men,” seem a mockery. Yet it will have been better that we have seen the vision, it will have been better to hear the carols and bells, smell the evergreen, taste the wassail, known the joy of giving and sharing. “There are single moments in life that are worth the weariness of a score of years.”