Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Steven Nemes on problems with traditional incarnational models and creation ex nihilo

  

Assume that the Son’s personal existence is equally constituted by the unity of the divine and human natures in a single person, i.e., that both natures are equally essential to the person of the Son. Then either there was no Son until his human nature came into existence or else he is “always ready” or timelessly incarnate. The former possibility is incompatible with the idea that the Son is eternally begotten by the Father insofar as it would imply that the Son did not always exist. This “Arian” option was condemned at the first Council of Nicaea. The latter possibility would mean that there is no λογος ασαρκος, i.e., no unincarnate Word. The Son or Word is rather essentially and necessarily incarnate. It also implies an “eternalist” conception of things according to which reality is a single “block” extended along four dimensions. Time does not truly pass and becoming is not a genuine dimension of reality. Things rather always, simply, and timelessly are. Only thus could not say that the human nature of the Son and thus the Son himself does not really come into being but simply always and timelessly belongs to him. This further means that the Son never becomes incarnate. It would not be true that the Word “became” flesh (John 1:13). He is rather timelessly incarnate.

 

Grant that the human nature of Christ is just as constitutive of his personal existence as his divine nature. One may also ask the question of whether the human nature of Christ exists necessarily or contingently. If it exists contingently, which is to say that it does not have to exist, then it follows that the Son also does not have to exist, since his personal existence ex hypothesi is constituted by and thus requires the reality of the human nature. This is incompatible with the Nicene idea that the Son is necessarily and eternally begotten from the ουσια of the Father. On the other hand, if the Son exists necessarily and thus also his human nature, then it follows that the created order with which the human nature is inextricably connected also exists necessarily as constitutive of God’s own existence in the person of the Son. There can be no human nature without a world in which it can exist. There is no human life, without a certain moment and place of birth, and so on. This is inconsistent with the catholic idea of creatio ex nihilo. God is supposed to have created the world ex nihilo. But if the Son is necessarily human, then the world would by extension be constitutive of God’s existence in the person of the Son, and God could hardly have created himself ex nihilo. (Steven Nemes, Trinity and Incarnation: A Post-Catholic Theology [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2023], 71-72)