natural laws and the Nativity

...et incarnatus est

originally composed a few years ago, reposted for Christmas

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Christmas is the season of a miracle. The term “miracle” implies an event that the laws of nature cannot account for. It is often imagined that the laws of nature, as theoretically codified by scientific disciplines like physics, chemistry, astronomy, and biology, can account for everything. It is presumed that everything not already explained by the laws of nature is nevertheless potentially explicable by them, and will eventually be explained by them actually, through future scientific discoveries—“promissory explanation,” it might be termed.

And yet, the laws of nature themselves cannot be accounted for in this manner; the laws of nature cannot explain that nature should be orderly or lawful. Why should this be the case? Phenomena might just as well have proceeded in total randomness; nature might have been arbitrary. All of Creation is “good,” in that sense,¹ and why it need have existed to begin with, or why it need have been good is not axiomatic or self evident on its own basis. It is possible to inferentially trace the cascade of causes back to the first domino, but this method will never disclose who set the series in motion, who “breathes fire into the equations,” nor who aligns the evolutionary pathway such that one event could flower into the next one instead of expiring into non-being. Thus, the world we know is everywhere sustained by what is transcendent to that world. The cause of the natural world’s existence as well as its goodness is what we mean by “God.” Given that the mundane world depends on God, it is unreasonable to peremptorily discount the miracle of Christmas, which is the miracle of miracles.

The miracle of miracles is the Incarnation of the Creator himself into his creation. If we look for the Creator inside his creation, as a being amongst other beings, we will forever miss the mark. Then we will be akin to the Soviet Premier who mocks the simple faith of peasants, “Why are you clinging to God? Here [Yuri] Gagarin flew into space and didn’t see God.” If we look for J. R. R. Tolkien in Middle-earth, we will also not find him. Tolkien is not part of Middle-earth in the manner of Arwen, Aragorn, & Frodo. But neither is he apart from it; he is nowhere in Middle-earth and also everywhere. We are to understand that what is impossible for a sub-creator, the Creator accomplished through the Virgin Mary:

Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est.

The conjunction of the transcendent and the mundane into the immanence of Jesus the Christ finds expression in the cross. The Luke and Matthew Gospels present the genealogy of Jesus—the horizontal beam. The John Gospel presents the vertical rod—Incarnation of the Χριστός (Christós), the Λóγος (Lógos). A Gnostic Fragment also depicts the Incarnation:

Behold, O Father, how, distant from Thy Breath (Pneuma, Spiritus),
This poor creature upon Earth
Wanders, the victim of all ill,
Lost and perplexed it stumbles
In attempt to flee the bitter Chaos —
…
Therefore send me, O Father!
Descending I shall bear the seal of Heaven,
Traversing all the Æeons,
I shall impart to her all sacred knowledge
Thus, O Father, may Thine image be made manifest;
And ‘Gnosis’ it shall be for Man.

The Original Sin resulted in an exile or estrangement which it was the mission of the Incarnate Lógos to redeem. This is symbolised by the Feast Day of Adam & Eve on the 24th of December and the subsequent celebration of the Nativity of Jesus on the 25th: “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”² Between these two days, the history of creation is recapitulated in symbol, from the Alpha to the Omega, Α – Ω.

Genesis describes the Divine Fiat “In the beginning”:

Let there be Light.³

The John Gospel indicates mankind’s incapacity, to receive the light, as a consequence of the fall into darkness and sin, which is error or hamartia, “missing the mark”:

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.⁴

The human soul had withdrawn into itself and immured itself against the light.⁵ To draw all things back to him, therefore, God enters his own creation—“the Light of the World” enters the darkness—the Lógos incarnates:

And the   L ó g o s   was made flesh, and dwelt among us.⁶

The birth of this light, which we celebrate in the darkest season of the year, is the Gospel of Christmas: to wit, that God became Man so that men might become God.⁷ Theosis (θέωσις) is the Greek term that has traditionally been enlisted to designate the “divinization” of Creation through the spiritual evolution of Man, and theoria (θεωρία) represents the morning light of what theosis is the daybreak. When it is observed that “Man is the universe becoming self-aware,” we should recognize this as an expression of precisely the evolution here described. May we find together find the initiative to carry forward this cosmic task. Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.⁸

With blessings to all of my readers.

The Virgin of Vladimir, also known as Vladimir Mother of God, Our Lady of Vladimir[1] (Russian: Влади́мирская ико́на Бо́жией Ма́тери, Ukrainian: Вишгородська ікона Божої Матері), and the Theotokos of Vladimir (Greek: Θεοτόκος του Βλαντίμιρ), is a 12th-century Byzantine icon depicting the Virgin and Child and an early example of the Eleusa iconographic type.

1. Cf. Genesis 1.

2. 2 Corinthians 5:17.

3. Genesis 1:3.

4. John 1:5.

5. Homo incurvatus in se, is how Augustine first articulated this condition.

6. John 1:14.

7. Compare Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215):

“[T]he Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God.”

“For if one knows himself, he will know God; and knowing God, he will be made like God”

“[H]is is beauty, the true beauty, for it is God; and that man becomes God, since God so wills. Heraclitus, then, rightly said, “Men are gods, and gods are men.” For the Word Himself is the manifest mystery: God in man, and man God.”

“[H]e who listens to the Lord, and follows the prophecy given by Him, will be formed perfectly in the likeness of the teacher—made a god going about in flesh.”

8. Luke 2:14.