To displace God, that is, not to believe He exists, is to deify human beings.  Criticism that Christians put humans at the center of the universe is mistaken.  For people of faith, God is at the center of the universe, not humans.  It is the nihilist/secularist who puts us at the center.  To “dethrone” God does not leave the center empty of content. But, as the poet William Butler Yeats writes, ” . . . the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, . . .” We would mount the throne to act as gods or God.  This scenario is being played out in our contemporary world.  As a result, the boundaries of what is permissible have widened.  Among the signs are abortion with few or any limits,  few ethical constraints regarding sexuality, a technology some aspects of which are morally questionable, the desire to extend life beyond 80 to 100 years through extraordinary means,  the coarsening of the public environment, toxic political ideologies, and our self-perception that humans have no limits.  It all sounds like the pagan Greek hubris, but more like original sin.

We are not gods but are created beings.  The definition of God includes immortality.  We live and die.  God has no beginning and no end.  Many of the Homeric gods have a beginning, but no end.  The true God is the Creator, not created.   Among His characteristics are omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.  There is a chasm between Him and us.  We cannot become omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.

God has become human in Christ who is fully human and fully divine.  As the Athanasian Creed states, “. . . we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man of the substance of his Mother, born in the world; Perfect God and Perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.:  And further, ” . . .although he be God and Man, yet he is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh but by taking of the Manhood into God; One altogether, not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person.  For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ;”  (From To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism)

Dedicated to this confession, we witness to Christ.  Our testimony makes clear that human beings are created and mortal, and  God is uncreated and immortal.

 

Michael G. Tavella

July 29, 2024

Beheading of Saint John the Baptist