I still have my “”A Child’s Bible” that our parish priest signed for me when I was about six. As shown in the photo above, the priest wrote on the inside cover, “To a beautiful child of God! God Bless you, Father John Smith.”
Years later, I experienced a profound re-conversion experience (that story is told here) that included an extended grace-filled period of God directly loving me.
Yet, I am also a person prone to over-thinking things. I can – and sometimes do – fixate on whatever topic comes across my mind’s ticker tape (when I was a child, I had a condition called synesthesia. From the time I started learning to read, I mentally and literally saw every word I thought scroll across a ticker-tape screen that continuously rolled across the inside my forehead. I would read the ticker-tape printed-words-on-a-screen as I thought. When I would think a word that I hadn’t yet learned to spell, I would literally stop whatever I was doing to think about how to spell the word so that I could ticker-tape the word. It was so habitually part of my experience that I took it for granted).
While my synesthesia wore off when I was about ten, I can still zero in on a topic until I have worn out every conceivable way of considering the topic or until I find a satisfactory-to-me answer to a perplexing or vexing topic. The good that sometimes results is that I will stick with something until I solve it (if there’s a problem at work, give the problem to me to solve so that everyone else can move on). On the flip-side, such stick-to-it-iveness can be sometimes be unnecessary and vexing. Let it go already!
So how does all of this tie together? It comes together in a textbook I am reading for my master’s program.
I’ve always been vexed by the conundrum of Jesus’ two-fold nature. How, oh how, could one person be both divine and human? Yes, I know, God can make happen whatever he wants. With that said – says my limited human reason – either you are human or your not. Either you are God or your not. I’ve discussed this with a number of people over the years and have struggled toward finding or making peace on the matter (not arriving – so far – at the point that “faith is above reason” within Pope John Paul’s encyclical titled Fides et Ratio – the mutually compatible topics of faith and reason). “What do you mean,” I would ask, “how could Jesus have not known until he was twelve [which I’ve heard proposed] that he was the son of God? How could you be a member of the Trinity and not know it?” I also understood when I heard someone ask if Jesus – as the son of a carpenter in first-century Palestine – was illiterate. How could there even be the potentiality that a member of the Trinity – even in human form – could be all-knowing and illiterate? PAUSE THE TICKER TAPE!!!!
So, in my current graduate program we are reading Frederick Bauerschmidt & James J. Buckley’s book Catholic Theology: An Introduction. Chapter four of this book rolls out descriptions of centuries-upon-centuries of heated debates among theologians trying to EXPLAIN how Jesus’ divine nature and human nature could co-exist in what we now call hypostatic union within one walking-and-breathing person. Bauerschmidt’s book calls some of these theological discussions “tortuous logic.” Discussion got so thick among theologians that the topic was “on the table” at the fourth ecumenical council – The Council of Chalcedon – in the year 451. If I would have been alive then (I’m glad I wasn’t – I like electric heating, hot showers, and air conditioning) – I would have wanted to be at the Council of Chalcedon. I do occasionally read science fiction or fantasy novels that include time travel……… If you’re like me and want to do a deep dive on the various over-the-centuries ideas to explain Jesus’s two-fold nature, Catholic Theology: An Introduction can be purchased online. As for me, I’m getting toward the end of chapter four of the above-mentioned book. I might – just might – also finally getting toward the end of my own personal ticker-tape on this topic. What text is currently scrolling across my ticker-tape at the moment? The ticker-tape is currently scrolling as follows:
- Relief and comradery – I’m not alone in having debated this topic (when I was graduating from high school, my high school had each of us take a 2 – 3 hour career aptitude test to provide any as-yet-undecided graduating students some ideas of career choices. The test results suggested I might be good as a lawyer, psychologist, or police officer. It didn’t suggest that I consider becoming a fifth-century theologian).
- The church discarded one group’s idea that “divine and human” meant “human, with divinity floating around within Jesus like a cloud.”
- The church has settled on the Council of Chalcedon’s explanation that Jesus had two inseparable but unmixed natures (“Hey, wait a minute,” says my ticker-tape…..”Do the arguments above still apply?”).
- …..We – as humans – can have both a physical nature and a soul as one united person. My soul and my physical body are unmixed, but inseparable. When my soul is vexed, so is my body. Medical science these days knows about psychosomatic illness – every aspect of our self-hood medically impacts every other aspect of our self-hood. If one part of us isn’t healthy, it impacts the rest of our self-hood. ……We are body and mind, Jesus was human and divine. Maybe this will start to make sense……..
Bottom line, God loves us. I know that God loves us. For God so loved the world…… How attached am I to the rational “mental gymnastics” – tortuous logic – in all of this when there are times – Fides et Fatio – that faith is above reason rather than replacing reason? A hypostatic union made possible the ultimate sacrificial love……..
Kim Burkhardt blogs about faith at The Hermitage Within. Thank you for reading this faith blog and for sharing it with your friends. While you are here, please feel welcome to provide support to sustain this blog ($$).
