The God-Man's Dilemma

Every Christmas, I find my thoughts returning to a passage from Hans Urs von Balthasar’s book Heart of the World. In this passage, Balthasar reflects on the dilemma that confronted the Son of God when he came into the world as one of us:

And now there he stood, at the edge of their land. How was he to go over the border? In which language would they be able to understand his message? In what translation and disguise would his language find access to their ear? How must he conceal the radiance of eternity upon his face in order to encounter them without frightening them? But if he were to disguise himself and appear among them as one of them, then everything would be still more difficult. How could he then be told apart? How could he make them understand that he was someone else? How could he, clothed in flesh, demand from them a divine faith? O dangerous adventure, impossible undertaking! They will have to take offense at him. They will turn everything around. They will understand his sayings and discourses as a new morality and a plan to improve the world, and in his example they will see nothing but a teacher of religion. And when he raises the cloak a little and a ray from his Heart strikes them, they will be horrified and cry out “Blasphemy!” and they will pick up stones until he again conceals himself behind his mask. And last of all, in the name of world order and the fear of God, they will exterminate him for being a scandal (he seduces the people . . .) and will set him up as an example for all times to come. Let him either be a man like them or—remain a God!

As Balthasar so eloquently describes, Jesus faced a daunting task in the incarnation: How could he present himself to the world in a way that would make it possible for people to believe that he was who he claimed to be—the divine Son of God sent by the Father to redeem the world, but also fully a human being, like the rest of us in all things but sin? And how could he do this in a way that would speak not only to the people of that time and place but also to all succeeding generations all around the world until the end of time?
No matter how carefully Jesus strove to balance the revelation of his divinity and humanity, we fallen human beings have tended to misunderstand, misinterpret, or outright reject his claims regarding his identity and mission. Some people have denied Jesus’s genuine humanity, such as the Docetae, a heretical sect that taught that Jesus only “appeared” or “seemed” to be human. Others have doubted Jesus’s divinity, such as the Arians, who taught that Jesus was not fully divine—that the Son of God “came to be from things that were not” and was “from another substance” than that of the Father.

Over the centuries since Jesus’s incarnation, there has, of course, been more debate about his divinity than his humanity. As a result, some people have asked, “Why didn’t Jesus just appear in such a striking way that his divinity could be more easily believed?” For one thing, some of those same people almost certainly would still have denied Jesus’s divinity even if he had appeared in a more dramatic fashion. No matter how astounding the signs and wonders Jesus performed—changing water into wine, feeding the multitude with only a few loaves and fish, healing numerous people (often by the sheer power of his word), raising the ruler’s daughter, raising the widow’s son, and raising Lazarus, just to name a few—the religious leaders of the time persisted in asking Jesus for signs, and many people still refused to believe in his divinity. Even his resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven were not enough to convince some people. Jesus gave us enough signs to warrant belief in his claims regarding his identity and mission (John 20:30–31), but nonetheless some people refused to believe back then, and some continue to refuse today.

But there is another, and more significant, answer to why Jesus did not simply overwhelm the people of ancient Palestine with an undeniable demonstration of the power and glory of his divinity. It’s the same as the answer to another—more general—question expressed down through the centuries regarding the Deus absconditus, the “hidden God” (see Isaiah 45:15): “If God exists, why doesn’t he make himself more visible? Why is he so hidden?”

Yes, God absolutely could blast us, so to speak, with his divinity in such a way that we would be so overwhelmed as to have no choice but to admit that divinity. But as many of the Church Fathers pointed out, the God of love works by persuasion rather than force. Blaise Pascal agreed, noting that “perfect clarity [in God’s self-revelation to the world] would please reason but harm the will.” God does not want to overpower the free will that he gave us, the free will that enables us to choose whether to acknowledge his divinity and whether to say yes or no to his offer of an eternal share in the divine life and love (2 Pet. 1:4).
Jesus took on human flesh in order to make the invisible God visible, so that we might know that God is love, and so that he might open the path to God for us. But he did not do so in such a way as to overpower our free will. God, out of the divine love, freely offers us a share in his life and love, and his desire is that we respond to his gift with a reciprocal love that is also freely given. Genuine love must be freely given and freely received. Love that is forced or coerced is not genuine love. God wants us to say yes to the divine love out of freedom, not because we’ve been completely overwhelmed by some divine epiphany or convinced of his existence and love beyond any possible doubt by some definitive rational proof. As Balthasar so concisely expressed this truth, “God, as love, wills to be found only by love.”
 
[This article was originally published at Word on Fire.]