Christmas: When Biology Meets Theology

It is Christmas, a time to remember the incarnation of Christ, when God came among us and demonstrated before our eyes to what good use these bodies we have could be put.

Pope John Paul II in his teaching on the theology of the body pointed out that it is in the incarnation of Christ that biology is taken up into theology, where the study of God includes the flesh. In our age, the current of popular opinion has been to continuously degrade the significance of our bodily existence. Our culture treats human existence as little more than an evolutionary accident, unborn children as little more than  'blob of flesh', and the body as a toy to play with for our own self-centered pleasure. It was this culture that the Pope hoped both to confront and to teach. On the first Christmas, as Christ entered a world dominated by a Roman empire both pagan and corrupt, it was not much different. His coming both confronted and taught the world, both in that time and ours, that He created these bodies of ours for better things, to reflect God's image in the world.

The apostle writes that He was 'the express image' of the Father. In his incarnation, we get to know God in a different way than in any other modes. The humility He expressed in taking on flesh to die on our behalf is in itself enormously humbling. The fact of the infinite taking on not just the finite but the form of a helpless babe is beyond my comprehension.

It is a somewhat academic question to ask, 'Which is the greatest miracle?' Yet to me the incarnation of Christ stands out. For the infinite Creator to take on flesh is as incomprehensible as the Trinity itself. It also makes possible the rest of his mission to redeem us, and confers upon our fleshly existence a dignity beyond what we could have imagined.

His Advent has shown us who He is, and also shown us who we are to be like.

Special before birth

The prelude to the Christmas story in Luke chronicles the birth of John the Baptist. John, like Jesus, was announced to his parents in advance of his conception by the archangel Gabriel, and was given his name at that time as well. This made him one of a very few in the Bible who would be named before birth.  Ishmael, Isaac, Solomon, Josiah, Maher-shalalhashbaz are agreed upon by most students of the Old Testament. Some say Moses, but that is not explicit in the text; some also say the emperor Cyrus, but that is a prophesy and not a naming event. Then in the New Testament we have John the Baptist and Jesus. Since name giving was a very important ceremony, a time in which the father essentially claimed the child as being his, this was a very special thing.

Even more special, though, was the fact that John is stated to have been filled with the Spirit before birth. (Luke 1:15). He also 'leaped for joy' in the womb when his mother heard the voice of Mary as she came to visit John's mother while carrying Jesus before his birth.

Several commentators have pointed out that this filling of the Spirit before birth is not something that happens to a 'blob of flesh', or an organ. It is a strong argument that the Scripture considers the unborn child a person, with the distinctive characteristics needed to be filled with the Spirit of God as a separate person from his mother. Our pastor brought this out in his sermon last week about John, and it does seem to me to support the dignity of the unborn child in a very unique way.

As we celebrate Christmas and the birth of the Christ child, it seems a good time to think about the dignity of every child, even before they are born.