Among the starker distinctions between Catholicism and most Protestant traditions are their respective theologies of the role of material, temporal objects in the economy of salvation. Many non-Catholic traditions either summarily reject the sacraments or reduce them to spiritual practices, disconnected from physical things. Keeping some of the terms (such as baptism and Eucharist), they deny that they are more than symbols of interior events. These signs may point us toward grace, but they do not communicate it. From this, it naturally follows that experiences of grace are disconnected from duration and physical sensation. This is expressed in the rejection of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, as well as the denial of any connection between nature and grace. Grace and nature are severed.
This severance is born of, and contributes to, a sort of Gnosticism present in much Protestant worship and theologies of worship. The separation of grace from nature serves, at least implicitly, to denigrate nature – to exile nature to the category of the profane, wholly outside the realm of salvific events. Nature is not only severed, but it must be overcome by grace; nature is not redeemed by grace, but rather annihilated by it.
Of course, none of these traditions (or at least the Evangelical sorts) would expressly deny the reality of the Incarnation of Christ. But their theology of (non)sacramentality cannot make the Incarnation intelligible. Nor, of course, are they able to understand the richness of Christmas, denying as they do the corporeal nature of the deliverance of grace.
Properly considered, the Incarnation teaches us, among other things, that our salvation has necessary spatial, temporal and sensual features. To deny (or even to diminish) any of these elements is to miss the deep and rich mystery of salvation, while implicitly denying the goodness of creation itself. And it deprives us of a deeper understanding of the physical meaning of Christmas.
We can imagine that God could have redeemed us in any of an unimaginable number of ways. But we only know the one way that He chose to do so. And it starts with a human being who takes up space in the world. That He takes up space tells us that the plan of salvation itself has a spatial component. Purely spiritual things do not take up space. If we eliminate the spatial element of our salvation, we must also dispense with the importance of the spatial nature of the Incarnation. But, of course, we cannot do any such thing. To believe that God became man is to believe that the space He occupied could not have been occupied by any other person or thing. And His very occupation of that space sanctified it; He made the space holy by the very presence of His body.
Thus, Christmas tells us that grace occupies space. Grace has been delivered in a physical form, which is extended through the spatial nature of the sacraments.
Moreover, the One who occupied space also endured time. After Christ was born, he grew from infancy into adulthood through all the typical stages of human development. His life and ministry comprised a process – a sequence of events that built upon one another until the work was finished. This temporal reality of the life of Christ informs our own understanding of the temporal nature of our salvation. As Christ came in time, he redeems us in time. Time necessarily entails duration. Thus, in the words of St Paul the Apostle, we are to to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling”. This “working out” happens in time, not outside it. While we have the hope of eternal life, the grace that delivers that hope came in a temporal Person. Likewise, the communication of grace in the sacraments occurs in time. Christ being born in time tells us that we are reborn in time. Salvation is not achieved by timeless fiat, but rather by temporal process.
Finally, the Incarnation tells us that grace is sensual and communicated through the physical. The One born in space and time was made of the same physiological and sensory stuff of which we are made. He was bone and blood, muscle and fat, tendon and sinew. He was, as the very term “incarnation” implies, made of flesh, indistinguishable in kind from those made of flesh whom he came to redeem. His own flesh was not incidental to his gracious presence, but rather the Father’s intentional plan of redemption. He did not come in flesh to deny the goodness of flesh, but rather to affirm its goodness and redeem its fallenness; ot to annihilate but rather to save and sanctify. This salvation and sanctification of the flesh is accomplished by God becoming man in the flesh. Thus, by his very birth in Bethlehem, Christ communicates his grace through all the physiological and sensual components of any other birth. It is the first sign that grace cannot be divorced from the nature that conveys it.
Or, as St Paul simply put it, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.” Merry Christmas.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.