Corpus Christi
What is it that Christians worship? Can we say who? We say that we worship God. Also we say that we worship Christ. Who is Jesus? John said that Jesus is “the word made flesh”. John reveals to us that who we are worshipping is the person of the trinity who we come to know as the Son. Is Jesus God? Well not as commonly thought. Biblically we are called to make a decisive distinction between God and the world. Judaism is a religion of a absolutely transcendent God. This is seen in the opening lines of Genesis and also mirrored in the opening lines of John’s gospel. We are called right off the bat to recognize what Aristotle and Aquinas would later come to work out by means of philosophy. God is not material (possibly not of spirit either, to say that God is anything but pure potentiality then that is no longer God). Further along these lines, God cannot be material for matter is purely potential whereas God must be purely actual. Likewise God in essence must be purely simple, that is to say of absolute unity of substance of being. No composites.
Now we are left with the quandary. Is Jesus God? According to these lines of reasoning he cannot be. This is also in accord with the scriptures. But how far can the lines of reason be pressed before faith must absolutely break into the scene? Jesus was a man born of the Virgin Mary. But of what can we say about his divinity? According to Aristotelian philosophy, Jesus could not have been united in essence such is the union of soul and body in man. Jesus must have been united in a different way. Jesus could have been united in will to God as in having of essence one will. In some ways this is indeed the case, but metaphysically it seems to not be so given scenes such as the one in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus could be united to God by knowledge. He certainly knew scripture, the revelation of the person of God, well enough to revolutionize it. But then again, we have the scene in the Garden (ironic that the fall of man was from the garden into the world and Christ returns from the world to God making the key choice which remedies the fall in a garden). Along these same lines one can treat Jesus’ intellect writ large. So how is Jesus God if not by any substrate of human existence?
The key is once again in John; this time his letters. God is Love. Love is a substrate of existing. It seems safe to say that Jesus of Nazareth was united to the Son by love. Maintaining their distinctness as in a married couple, but yet entering into the intimate bounds of being governed by love. Thus Jesus is intimately united to the Son while remaining human. Without breaking any of the metaphysical boundaries which surround the Son’s existence in triune eternity or Jesus’ own existence in the embodied world. Thus scripture is justly ripe with proclaiming Christ as the Bridegroom. As Christians it is this person we worship and seek to become so that we too may enter into such a relationship of unity to God while maintaining our human dignity and God’s triune eternal transcendent existence.