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St. John’s account of Christmas is austere in the excessive. It comes right down to one line: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.” Not one point out of creche, Mary and Joseph, shepherds, or Sensible Males.
Simply that easy and fairly summary assertion. However that line, and extra importantly, the occasion that it describes, has had huge civilizational impression.
What exactly is the “Phrase” that the evangelist is referencing? John tells us in the opening verse of his Gospel: “In the starting was the Phrase, and the Phrase was with God, and the Phrase was God.”
What turned flesh in the youngster of Bethlehem was the thoughts of the Creator, the Sample that gave rise to all the patterns discernible in the universe. (iStock)
What turned flesh in the youngster of Bethlehem was the thoughts of the Creator, the Sample that gave rise to all the patterns discernible in the universe. That the world is stamped, in each nook and cranny, by intelligibility is a perform of this metaphysical fact, that “in the starting” was not chaos or arbitrariness, however exactly phrase, logic, that means.
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Each science relies upon upon this mystical assumption of common intelligibility, which in flip is a perform of the very metaphysics that St. John describes. It’s, accordingly, no accident that the trendy bodily sciences developed in the context of Christian universities the place the doctrine of creation by the Phrase was persistently taught.
In 1960, the theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner wrote an article with the intriguing title, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Arithmetic in the Bodily Sciences.” He noticed that trendy physics had uncovered a world that may be described adequately solely by the utility of complicated arithmetic. However he puzzled why this must be the case. Why ought to nature be marked by exquisitely patterned intelligibility and not just by chaos?
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In the course of his transient article, he doesn’t present a definitive reply, however he makes use of the time period “miracle” quite a few instances to specific the unlikeliness of this state of affairs. Of course, these educated to see the world by biblical eyes wouldn’t be the least stunned, for they’d know that matter is marked by math as a result of the maker of matter is a mathematician: “In the starting was the Phrase.”
In his badly misunderstood and a lot maligned Regensburg Handle of 2006, Pope Benedict XVI insisted that the primacy the Gospel provides to Logos opens the door to a dialogue between religion and motive and certainly between Christianity and the different nice religions.
If Christ is the incarnation of the divine Logos, then a bridge could be constructed between Christ and another expression of logos, be it non secular, scientific, or cultural. If Phrase is the elementary actuality, then one thing like constructive argument between mental opponents is feasible. How essential it’s, subsequently, that “in the starting,” there was Phrase and not Will.
Pope Benedict XVI waves from a balcony on the White Home after being welcomed to the US by President George W. Bush and first girl Laura Bush, April 16, 2008. (Reuters/Larry Downing/File)
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At the coronary heart of Pope Benedict’s discourse is a criticism of voluntarism, the philosophy that certainly provides primacy to will over thoughts. When this view is embraced, arbitrariness reigns supreme and argument should give method to shows of energy and finally to violence. Can anybody doubt that this voluntaristic perspective is ascendant in our tradition at this time?
Goal fact, which would supply a foundation for shared conviction, surrenders to the all-conquering freedom of every particular person’s will, conducing inevitably to lastly unresolvable battle.
Now we should bear in mind the distinctive Christmas message conveyed by St. John. The Phrase is certainly with God from the starting, however this identical Phrase turned flesh, and it did so in a really explicit manner.
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The primal Logos, the thoughts of the Creator, the everlasting floor of intelligibility manifested itself as a child too weak to lift his personal head, an toddler wrapped in swaddling garments and mendacity in a manger. Because of this the Sample of patterns, that which shines by any and all expressions of rationality in the cosmos, is self-emptying love.
On a voluntaristic studying, the overarching sample of actuality is energy and self-assertion, however in line with the imaginative and prescient of actuality communicated by St. John’s Christmas Gospel, that’s harmful nonsense. In level of reality, the template in line with which the stars and planets and galaxies have been designed is a love that offers itself away.
I absolutely understand that many readers of these reflections may marvel how all of this squares with the brutal actuality of struggling that appears to encompass us on each aspect. How might Logos and love be the final realities in a world so darkened by wickedness?
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However evil is at all times a privation of the good, a scarcity of a perfection that should be there. Therefore, it’s parasitic upon the good, inevitably lower than the good that it has compromised – which is why its pretention to be a elementary precept of actuality ought to at all times be mocked.
It’s why St. Paul might say, “The place sin abounds, grace abounds the extra.” And additionally it is why St. John, who was by no means blind to the presence of evil, might embrace in his announcement of the Incarnation this assurance: “The gentle shines in the darkness, and the darkness didn’t overcome it.”
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