The feast Of Human Dignity
National Post // Saturday, December 23, 2006
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Earlier this week, we criticized Time magazine's choice of "you," -- as in everyone -- for "Person of the Year." It struck us as a rather lame news judgment, but also a decision infected with the anodyne affirmation that leads to automatic advancement in elementary schools, or to giving trophies to both winners and losers in youth sports. Time's editors, marvelling at the skill with which ordinary people -- even children! -- use the Internet and its transformative power, patted everyone on the head and said, "Well done." It was condescending.
An older religious language used a similar vocabulary to describe the reality of Christmas -- the "condescension of God." Christians believe that God took to Himself a human nature, and dwelt among us as one of us; that the baby born in Bethlehem is true God and true man. That the omnipotent Creator would condescend to share the nature of His creatures is the astonishing novelty of Christian revelation. The celebration of that makes Christmas the greatest of all Christian festivals, save for the events of Holy Week, when a still further condescension is marked -- the condescension of a God who shares not only a cradle with us, but even a grave.
Condescension in others is an unflattering character trait precisely because it is premised upon a perceived superiority. The condescension of God, contrariwise, is a cause for wonder and gratitude, not because He seeks to elevate Himself, but because in lowering Himself He lifts us up. In the condescension of God lies the loftiest elevation of man.
Christians, Jews and Muslims all believe that man is made in the image of God, and therefore possesses an inalienable dignity. Philosophy has given us arguments for inherent human dignity rooted in claims of equality, or autonomy, or rights. Yet the Christian doctrine of the incarnation -- that God became man -- opens new horizons for human dignity. That human nature was made worthy enough to be intimately united to the divinity means something remarkable for every human person: We are of inestimable value, not only for who we are, but for who we are capable of becoming.
St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote that God became man so that we might become God -- a blasphemy, were it not true for Christians. The tradition of the Orthodox is bold enough to speak not of sanctification, but divinization, as the great human vocation. As Saint Paul put it in his Letter to the Galatians: "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."
The glad tidings of Christmas therefore are not only for Christians. Christians believe that every human being is in some way united to God by the mystery of what happened in Bethlehem. The whole human race has been ennobled, and each member of it entitled to an estimation of his human dignity beyond whatever merely human arguments can furnish. Christmas is the fundamental feast of human dignity.
The best gloss one can put on the Time magazine decision is that it was motivated by this intuition, namely that every human being has value, is endowed with creative potential and entitled to the liberty to exercise it. Time's decision to recognize the ordinary individual, rather than the mighty and magnificent, was woolly-headed journalism, but (unwittingly) clear-eyed theology.
Each person has value, each person matters. "The glory of God is man fully alive," wrote St. Irenaeus of Lyons. The glory of God in the flesh has opened the gates of glory to us all, without exception.
That is the world-changing good news of Christmas. So from all of us here at the National Post who write the news, we wish "you" -- all of you -- a very Merry Christmas indeed.
© National Post 2006