At Christmas, we celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. By its very nature, this theological doctrine is both philosophical and corporeal. Christians have spent the last 2,000 years debating its meaning, and yet this doctrine was seen in the very body of Jesus Christ, a baby crying in the manger who grew into a child and then a man. It is the essence of embodied theology.
It is also a surprising doctrine, especially to come out of Judaism, a faith widely known for its strict monotheism. It would seem to fit better with the Greeks and their tales of deities impregnating women. And yet there it was, the claim that the hope of Israel, the longings of the prophets, was and is a person who is both fully God and fully man, born of a virgin, with no genetic material supplied by a human father.
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 produced what still stands as the best human explanation of the doctrine, with its assignation to Mary of the title “Theotokos” or “God-bearer” and its explanation that Jesus was one person with two natures, human and divine, natures which are “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” And yet this creed did not end the debates, nor did it unify the church. We still struggle with the meaning of the Incarnation.
As the centuries between Jesus Christ’s sojourn on earth and today increase, one danger for us Christians is that we rely too much on our philosophical understanding of the doctrine because we cannot access its corporeal reality. Jesus’ disciples were the first to come to the startling realization that their rabbi was also God in flesh, as is evidenced by Thomas’s exclamation of “My Lord and my God!” in John 20:28.
In those mind-bending days and weeks after the Resurrection and before the Ascension, they did not work out all the philosophical implications. Rather, they saw Jesus in the flesh and knew that he was God. This was supported by his exposition of the Scriptures, such as on the road to Emmaus, but the intellectualization (to hazard a word) of the doctrine would come later. In the moment, they saw, touched, and worshiped, experiencing something corporeal, not now accessible to us, at least not beyond Christ’s sacramental presence.
Pilgrimage can give us a touchstone for this corporeality and gracing of the material creation, providing a glimpse that transforms our understanding of the philosophical. While on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in January 2022, my group was staying at a convent in Nazareth, and we had an archaeological tour of its basement scheduled one evening after a full day of visits.
The leaders of our group emphasized the importance of showing up for this event: “You don’t want to miss it,” they told us repeatedly. We had to rush back at the end of the day to arrive in time, and as we headed downstairs, I could see one of our leaders counting the pilgrims. Honestly, I was annoyed. Why did it matter if someone was tired and wanted to skip?
We went down a broad staircase into a cavernous excavation. I wondered if the convent was in danger of dropping into it like a sinkhole. The tour guide described the history of the site and showed us the first room, which held a skeleton with a bishop’s ring on a finger. The skeleton added a creepy vibe to the tour, but with all due respect to bishops, I still did not see the big deal. The tour continued to the basic outlines of a house, with a tomb next to it. Here the guide wove a story about a grave of a righteous man, who was given unusual permission to be buried inside the city next to his home. We started glancing at each other. Was this going where we thought it was? Because we all knew one man whom Scripture called righteous, who lived in Nazareth: Joseph.
The archaeological details are complicated, but in sum, the convent had reason to believe that it had been built over Joseph and Mary’s house. We were standing where Jesus lived and played as a boy. By this point, I was close to tears, and I am not generally a crier. The reality of the Incarnation, of Jesus’ childhood, struck me with a force I had never experienced before. This was where the Son of God had made friends, played games, ate his meals, and learned to read and write.
This experience showed me how deficient a simple intellectual understanding of the Incarnation was. Here I was, seeing the walls he had touched as a child, visualizing him running in and out of the door into the alleyway. I was having a deep emotional reaction that my seminary classes on Chalcedon had never produced in me. It is hard to put into words, but the Incarnation became corporeal to me then and there.
God gave us his Incarnate Son, gracing and sanctifying creaturely human life, because as humans we are embodied. His plan of salvation is not an abstraction but a vulnerable child, born in a manger and raised in first-century Judea. In his complete identification with us, he healed all that is broken in us, mind, spirit, and body. As the fourth-century theologian Athanasius put it: “Jesus became what we are so that we might become what he is.” This exchange is more than a philosophical concept; it is a bodily reality whereby he becomes incarnate so that we might become children of God, co-heirs with him of everything the Father offers.
None of this releases us from a prayerful study and discussion of the philosophical aspects of the Incarnation. Chalcedon, and all the attendant debates and writings that have piled up before and after, offers us an important understanding of what the Incarnation is. But its corporeal aspect is essential to a full grasp of the beauty and power of the Father’s gift to us: his Son, Jesus Christ, born in a manger in Bethlehem and raised as a child in Nazareth.
The Rev. Molly Jane (MJ) Layton is priest-in-charge of St. John's Episcopal Church, Lattingtown in Locust Valley, NY. Previous appointments include associate rector at the Parish of Calvary-St. George’s in Manhattan. Prior to ordination she taught classics and history.
