IMMANUEL, "GOD WITH US"

The message of Christmas is extremely simple, and is encapsulated in the very name that was prophesied by the prophet Isaiah: Immanuel, “God with us” (Isa 7:14; Matt 1:23). The Name Immanuel has profound pedagogical implications, in that it summarizes the whole scope of theology in one simple Name. If theology is theo-logy—“the inquiry into the being, nature and work of God” simply put—with God as the primary Subject and Object, then theology cannot be summarized in a propositional sentence filled with abstract and complicated speculations, but is sufficiently articulated in this One Name: Immanuel. This Name drives home the fact that God’s Being and Nature is not abstract, or that the term “God” is not essentially ambiguous. Rather, the Name stresses that God’s Being is inherently relational, i.e. that God is a Person-in-relation or a Person-for-others. “God” can no longer be conceived as a metaphysical being, residing in isolation and aloofness in a dimension somewhere, as in the god of the philosophers, but should be seen as a relating God, a God who is dynamic and active.

Thus, Christmas is primarily about persons-in-relation. On the one hand, it is about God, the ultimate Person, becoming human and taking upon himself the very nature and limitations of finitude in order to relate with creation in the manner that creation is accustomed, i.e. physical interaction. On the other hand, it is about persons, us, humanity, whose very being and essence is personal. Our existence, because of the depersonalizing effects of sin, is completely fragmented, and its restoration depends upon the perfect human—the second Adam, as the Apostle referred to Jesus Christ. Concerning the relationship between these two persons—God as personalizing Person and humanity as personalized persons—Christmas shouts an important message: that whereas human logic dictates that “birds of the same feather flock together,” in the God-humanity relation, such is not true. God’s free and gracious self-relating presence abolishes human categories of worthiness and of moral status. Immanuel, “God with us” is not God-only-for-the-worthy, or those who, in one way or another, achieved or accomplished something that would make them qualified receivers of God’s presence. God in Christ came to the unredeemed world. To paraphrase the apostle Paul’s message: “while we were still sinners” (Rom 5:8) or “while we were God’s enemies” (Rom 5:10), He came in order to be with us and for us. Christmas, then, is a time of hope and joy, for it is the coming of God for everyone. No wonder the proclamation of the angels on Christmas day was “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests” (Luke 2:14).

In relation to the above, Christmas, therefore, is a miracle. It is not just one ordinary event that can just be placed alongside the many events that take place in history. It can be granted that like all other historical phenomena, the Christmas event happens within specific space and time coordinates, and as such is nothing special. We can say, on the other hand, that the characters in the event endow the Christmas event a special status. We categorize an event a “miracle” if it involves the supernatural, so that the specific involvement of the divine in the Christmas event makes the coming of the Immanuel a miracle. But Christmas is not a miracle primarily because of the divine involvement.

If a “miracle” is an occurrence of something extraordinary or extra-mundane, then the Christmas event is the best miracle involving God and humanity since creation itself. Its significance outweighs even that of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. Its significance can only be compared to the event of creation. If we interpret creation as the act of God in creating beings-other-than-himself for the sake of relationship, then Christmas is the re-creation of relationship between God and created reality. But this astonishing realization is not the miracle that I am speaking of. Could it be that the miracle lies in the meeting between the divine and the creaturely, or between Infinitude and finitude? Yes, but there is something else. Quite simply, Christmas is an event where the miracles of love, reconciliation, friendship, compassion, and forgiveness take place. It is God himself reaching out to humanity, making the compassionate and loving initiative to rescue humanity from its self-created and self-inflicted entropy. Christmas is Immanuel, God alongside us in our suffering—God as human in Christ experiencing the very experiences of fallen and suffering humanity—God condescending and emptying himself of his glory in order to be “God with us.” And God does this for us who are sinners, idolaters and enemies of God. This is the miracle—the unfathomable and logically impossible event—that God himself should become human, touching and becoming the very creature that He seeks to redeem, and experiencing human life with us while being one of us in the most literal sense.

Christmas, then, is a message of hope, comfort and love for everyone. It is the gospel, the good news, summarized in the Name Immanuel, “God with us!”

ON THE "SPIRIT" OF THE HUMAN PERSON

(1) Is the “spirit” a part of humanity among other parts? To be sure, the Bible seems to present it as such, but nothing is said as to how it is connected with the other human constituents, or how the parts interplay in a whole functioning human being. The Apostle Paul seemed to have taught a strong opposition between flesh and spirit, but of course the continuing disagreement among scholars today as to the real meaning of these ambiguous terms is itself an evidence of the difficulty of the problem.

(2) Does or can the “spirit” operate on its own without the other human parts? This is just a follow-up question to the first, but it is inevitable nevertheless. The answer to this question has many staggering implications. Just for starters, in relation to salvation, if YES, then soteriology becomes a Christianized Gnostic version of salvation, where the physical body is not relevant (thus: RC penitence for the sake of the spiritual; and escapist theology, where salvation consists in the escape of the soul/spirit from its imprisoning body). This, then, contradicts with Paul’s important teaching of the resurrection of the body, grounded upon the vicarious resurrection of Jesus Christ himself, the prototokos of creation (Col 1:18).

Thus, the theological answer is most probably “NO.” This means, then, that even though the Bible teaches dichotomy/trichotomy (depending on where you are looking), it does not teach autonomous regionalization of the parts, where one part is more important than the others, or that one part can connect with the divine while the others can’t. The relation of the parts to the whole human can be termed as “distinction-in-unity.” This is my view of the matter. When the spirit is in touch with the divine, the soul and body are as well; and vice versa.

(3) But if the parts operate interrelatedly, then why are there partitions in the first place? It seems to me that the Bible writers did not really intend to teach that there are several human parts/aspects. It is our “individualistic” and analytic mind that has highlighted the difference. 

Instead, their enumeration of parts/aspects was actually meant to teach about the importance of the whole human person. For instance, the command “love the Lord with all your heart, soul, body, mind” enumerates several aspects not in order to show that humanity has several aspects, but to show that the whole human person should be a worshipper. In fact the enumeration could be inexhaustive: it can go like “love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, spirit, body, strength, will, freedom, etc” to make the point that the whole human being should love the Lord. OR Paul was teaching the difference between living in the flesh and the Spirit in order to tell his hearers that some aspects of their lives still need to become worshippers (Rom 12:1-2). In short, he was not vindicating the bifurcation, but was actually advocating unity and integrity of the whole.