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The Opposite Of Love Is Not Hate

The Opposite of Love
is not Hate

Fr. Paul Stein

So often, we think that the opposite of love is hate. While hate is contrary to love, so too are many other things. That is because, ultimately, sin is the opposite of love; hate is just one kind of sin. Love is a total (self) gift, whereas sin is grasping.

In the Gospels, when Jesus is asked about which of the commandments is the greatest, he responds:

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matt 22:37-40).

The word in the original Greek text that Jesus uses for love is agape. In Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament, there are several words for love. The one Jesus uses means: to do good for/to someone else, for that person’s own sake, without expecting a return or repayment. That is why he goes on to say: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). We see that in the cross of Jesus, true love is a total gift of self for the other person.

Thus, the direct opposite of love is grasping, which is why original sin is a form of grasping: Adam and Eve grasped the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They grasped at being God, tempted as they were by the serpent: “God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil”(Genesis 3:5).

Every sin is a form of grasping. It can be a sin of commission, seeking to grasp or take something. For example, one can murder (take a life), steal, lust (desire to take sexually), and so on. It can be a sin of omission, maintaining something in one’s grasp and refusing to give it as a person should. For example, withholding the truth, failing to help the poor, or failing to take care of one’s children are all forms of grasping.

Ultimately, God himself is love; it is what God is (see the Behold article God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). We see in Jesus, especially on his cross, that God is the self-gift of Father to the Son, of the Son to the Father, that is their Holy Spirit. Thus, if God is self-gift, then sin is a refusal of God. God detests sin, not because he made up an abstract set of rules for humans, not because he is an egomaniac and can’t stand that humans don’t obey his rules; God detests sin because it is contrary to him and the good of his creation. That is why God’s response to sin is wrath; it must be wrath. 

if God
is self-gift,
then sin is the
refusal of God.

What This Means For Us

As disciples of Jesus, we must always seek holiness, living according to God’s design for us as humans. It is too easy to think that sin is not a big deal, that we are just violating some abstract rule that God made up, rather than truly acting contrary to God, who is love. The great saints abhorred every sin they committed, even the venial ones that most people think are no big deal. Let us remember that Jesus suffered and died to forgive what we think of as the smallest of sins.

For Further Reading On This Topic

Evil Doesn’t Have Being

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
It may seem odd to see a Catholic writer state that “evil doesn’t have being.” Does that mean that evil is not real or that evil does not exist? No,…

Sin: Original and Deadly

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
Today, so many people get the Book of Genesis wrong. They think that, because current scientific knowledge and theory explain our human origins in the Big Bang and evolution, the…

God Can’t Just Forgive and Forget

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
Have you ever wondered, why did Jesus have to suffer and die to save us from sin? Why didn’t God just forgive and forget? Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection were…

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God Can’t Just Forgive and Forget

God Can't Just
Forgive and Forget

Fr. Paul Stein

Have you ever wondered, why did Jesus have to suffer and die to save us from sin? Why didn’t God just forgive and forget? Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection were necessary to save us, not because God is petty and demands sacrifice as though he were a spoiled child. They were necessary because sin does real damage; that damage had to be undone. To put it another way: the wounds of sin and death had to be salved/healed [1].

Sometimes, people imagine that God’s laws are mere contrivance; meaning, that God simply made up some rules ad hoc, somewhat in the manner in which people make up rules for a new game. There is no absolute reason why there must be three outs to a team in an inning of baseball; there can just as easily be four or five. In the United States, we drive on the right-hand side of the road, whereas in England they drive on the left.

In contrast, the moral law is intrinsic to our human nature. When we sin, we harm our being. For example, when a person tells a lie, his conscience will boldly “yell,” that is wrong, and that he should not lie. If he lies again, and then again frequently, his consciences becomes more and more muted. At the extreme, a person who habitually lies has a significantly dulled conscience and can lie without thinking about it much if at all [2]. Lying has become, “second nature.”

In the Church, “human nature” means humanity as it can be defined. To be human means to be the unity of body and soul, created in the image and likeness of God. It means to be capable of rational thought and possessing free will, even if we don’t always use our free will, or even use it properly. It ultimately refers to God’s intent in how he created us, no matter how much we have been wounded by original sin. 

It is always important to remember that we are wounded by original sin, thus we don’t always act or desire things in accord with our human nature. Thus statements like, “lying is part of human nature” doesn’t mean that it is part of human nature. Lying may be common, but it is not part of our nature.

For that reason, the phrase “natural law” is different than the cultural phrase, “the law of nature.” The law of nature is simply how the world works as we currently find it; it can encompass the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, and anything else humans happen to do with their survival or betterment in mind.

Natural law is the interior structure of what it means to be human, according to the plan of our Creator; that law doesn’t change even when we behave contrary to it.

For example, if this author were to design and build a laptop from scratch, and give it to someone with the instruction: it is a gift; just don’t take it in the bathtub. Would such a “law” be an imposition? Would it be a mere rule written on paper? To the contrary, the very intention, design, and nature of a laptop means that it was never meant to be immersed in water. To do so would destroy the laptop and injure the user. (The amount of voltage would be insufficient to kill the user; however, taking a high-wattage lamp in the bathtub probably would.) 

Generally speaking, the moral law is the natural law; God didn’t make up rules ad hoc; he explains how to use the gift of our human lives, and is built into our very being. To violate the law is to harm ourselves. We may be tempted to think that our sins don’t do real harm, but have you ever tried to not gossip? Imagine if there was an LCD monitor magically floating above your head 24/7 broadcasting every thought you have: would you be rather embarrassed?

Original sin did damage to our human nature; so too do the personal sins we commit. We are wounded, and thus, to truly be made whole and ready to be united with God and one another forever in heaven, God needs to heal us. For that reason, the popular imagery of God is incorrect: he is not keeping a checklist of all our good and evil deeds in separate columns like a lawyer, only to compare the totals at the end of our life. That is not how we will be judged. God is more like the divine physician who sees every wound that needs healing.

The word salvation comes from the word salve; we need his healing ointment. For that reason, God cannot just “forgive and forget,” for we would still be deeply wounded.

God is more like the divine physician
who sees every wound that needs healing.

What This Means For Us

While we might prefer for God to “forgive and forget,” it is good news that he does not. Otherwise, if he did grant us everlasting life in heaven, we would be perpetually wounded and incapable of living in peace and harmony with him and one another forever. Rather, we can better appreciate the God who so loves us, that he would go to extremes, becoming human in Jesus Christ to suffer and die on a cross to salve us. We can also better appreciate Purgatory as a gift to those who are not going to hell, but are still in need of healing, even after death.

Footnotes

[1] Salve: to soothe
Definition from Oxford Languages

[2] Insert a joke here about such people entering politics…

For Further Reading On This Topic

Evil Doesn’t Have Being

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
It may seem odd to see a Catholic writer state that “evil doesn’t have being.” Does that mean that evil is not real or that evil does not exist? No,…

Sin: Original and Deadly

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
Today, so many people get the Book of Genesis wrong. They think that, because current scientific knowledge and theory explain our human origins in the Big Bang and evolution, the…

God Can’t Just Forgive and Forget

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
Have you ever wondered, why did Jesus have to suffer and die to save us from sin? Why didn’t God just forgive and forget? Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection were…

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and receive topics (like the one above)
on Catholicism straight to your inbox!

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Sin: Original and Deadly

Sin: Original and Deadly

Fr. Paul Stein

Today, so many people get the Book of Genesis wrong. They think that, because current scientific knowledge and theory explain our human origins in the Big Bang and evolution, the story of Adam and Eve is not true. The difficulty lies in a failure to appreciate that there are different literary ways to tell the truth. A newspaper should attempt to tell the truth not only in its “factual” stories, but also in its other sections. Advertisements should not tell lies. Even the comics tell the truth in their own way; that is why they are, or should be, humorous.[1]

Science as a field of study and as a methodology for learning about the universe is a much more recent phenomenon in human history. It is a wonderful way to come to know the truth. The story of Genesis tells the truth as well, but in a way understood long before science ever existed; Genesis was never intended to be a scientific account. It does, however, answer an urgent question: why is there evil?

Back when the book of Genesis was written, the Israelites were surrounded by nations and their attendant cultures that were pagan. Typically, these cultures had their own creation myths, such as the Enuma Elish of Babylon. In these myths, the creation of humanity was the result of a conflict or battle between the gods. Thus, humanity’s existence was not originally planned; it was, in effect, an afterthought and incidental. Conflict was already part of the cosmos. 

While the story of Genesis uses the mythopoetic language and structure common to Middle Eastern cultures at the time, it does so to communicate the truth. In contrast to pagan creation myths, the one God, purposefully and intentionally created humanity as the pinnacle of creation; wonderfully, he creates humanity in his own image and likeness. At each stage, creation is declared to be “good.”

If God created all things as good: from whence came evil? The story clearly tells us that it came from the misuse of the free will given by the Creator to his creatures. In the story, the serpent represents the tempter, who is nothing more than a creature himself. While the Hebrew text doesn’t use the word, ha satan would be transliterated into many languages, and can be translated as the “adversary.”

The temptation itself is a twisting of the truth, or a half-truth, which is often the most effective form of propaganda. The serpent asks: “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?” (Gen 3:1). The serpent knows the truth, that God only prohibited the man and woman from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Tragically, the woman in response begins to twist the truth herself: “God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, or else you will die’” (Gen 3:3). God only prohibited them from eating of the tree; he said nothing about touching it. The serpent continues: “You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5).

The first lie is that the man and woman will not die. The second is more insidious: telling them that they “will be like gods” implies both that they are not already like God and that God is holding back on them. Tragically, the first man and woman failed to believe that God created them in his image and likeness. The fact that they could eat anything from the garden with the sole exception of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil shows that he was giving them everything that is good.

There is great speculation as the why God prohibited them from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; after all, doesn’t God want humanity to know the truth? The question lies in what type of knowledge the tree represented in the story. The first man and woman know, in general, what is right and wrong. In contrast, the tree, in part, represents experiential knowledge of good and evil. For example, the next chapter of Genesis (chapter four) speaks of how “Adam knew his wife Eve;” that is how Cain and Abel were born (Gen 4:1). When the first man and woman sought knowledge of good and evil, they were rejecting God, seeking to be their own “gods” very much in the pagan sense. This was the original sin. While they did not drop dead on the spot, it is through original sin that death entered the world. The disorder of physical evil now affected humanity.

The results of Original Sin can be seen immediately in the story: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Gen 3:7). They were not physically blind before eating of the fruit; they had seen each other naked. However, it is how each of them beheld the other that changed. They no longer saw each other as persons, the image and likeness of God; they started to see each other as an object of lust. Original sin marks the loss of the supernatural gifts of God: Original Justice and Holiness. They lost the grace of God’s friendship and the right ordering of their passions. With Original Sin came concupiscence, the inclination to sin (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2515). With Original Sin, man’s intellect became clouded and his will was weakened.

They no longer
saw each other
as persons,
the image and likeness of God;
they started to see each other as an object

It is the stain of original sin and all its effects that now permeate the rest of the biblical narrative. For example, the same chapter of Genesis (four) that describes Cain and Abel’s birth describes Cain’s murder of Abel. What the story shows is that through human generations, original sin is passed on to the descendants of the first man and woman.

The story in chapter three does continue unusually, in comparison with the way pagan gods were portrayed in ancient societies: God doesn’t destroy the first man and woman for such an affront. While modern readers may think his reactions are harsh, in reality, they are merciful. He starts by arranging for proper loin clothes made of leather instead of the ones they had created out of leaves (Gen 3:21). He then banishes them from the garden. Here the punishment is also merciful because if were they to eat from the Tree of Life, they would live forever in the state of Original Sin. (Yes, up until the first sin, they were permitted to eat from that tree!) God would now have to do something far more radical to give humanity everlasting life…

What This Means For Us

While at first glance the story of Genesis may seem utterly bleak, it is extraordinarily hopeful; it should give us modern-day sinners hope for ourselves. Evil is not God’s punishment on us, but rather the consequences of our sin. Yet, he wants to save us and grant us everlasting life. God holds nothing back from us, that includes his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

Footnotes

[1] For example, I think the comic Dilbert is funny because it is so true. If you studied engineering, as this author has, and have worked or work for a large company.

For Further Reading On This Topic

Evil Doesn’t Have Being

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
It may seem odd to see a Catholic writer state that “evil doesn’t have being.” Does that mean that evil is not real or that evil does not exist? No,…

Sin: Original and Deadly

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
Today, so many people get the Book of Genesis wrong. They think that, because current scientific knowledge and theory explain our human origins in the Big Bang and evolution, the…

God Can’t Just Forgive and Forget

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
Have you ever wondered, why did Jesus have to suffer and die to save us from sin? Why didn’t God just forgive and forget? Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection were…

Join the Behold Newsletter

and receive topics (like the one above)
on Catholicism straight to your inbox!

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Evil Doesn’t Have Being

Evil Doesn’t Have Being

Fr. Paul Stein

It may seem odd to see a Catholic writer state that “evil doesn’t have being.” Does that mean that evil is not real or that evil does not exist? No, it does not. What it means is that God, as creator, did not create evil. It does not have to be. So often people think that evil is “something,” sort of like a substance. People think that it is good versus evil, as though you have two cosmic principals fighting it out. But just as it is incorrect to conceive of the existence of God and the existence of Satan as two equal, cosmic forces locked in battle, it is also incorrect to think of evil as somehow having a concrete existence.

God is the infinite creator who sustains all things in existence. If a thing exists – such as the universe, an angel, or even an ant – then it exists because God wills it to exist and sustains that thing in its existence. As God is Being itself (see the prior Behold article on this topic), any being or thing only exists by a type of participation in God’s own existence. All of creation is continually dependent on the creator to continue in existence.

In so far as something exists, or has being, it is good. This means, that in effect, Being = Good. Otherwise, it could not exist at all. There is no concrete metaphysically existing thing called “evil.” So what, exactly, is evil? It is the lack of being; it is the lack of a good that should be there. Satan exemplifies this: he is merely a creature. Specifically, he is an angel who freely chose to reject God. God did not create Satan or any demon as an “evil” creature. They are all angels, who were created good but used their free will to turn against God.

When we speak of Satan being evil, we are speaking about his will, about what he chooses. The good that Satan and the demons should have is a properly ordered will and desire to do good, to do God’s will. They should freely choose to do actions that are in accord with their existence as angels. That would be to glorify God and promote the well-being of all his creation. But since they have freely warped their own will to want and continue to want evil, we call them “evil.”

We can generally, distinguish between physical and moral evil. A physical evil as evil is still the lack of a good that should be there. An example would be human blindness: it is the lack of sight that should be there, according to the way God made humanity. A moral evil is when a person purposely thinks and acts in ways contrary to the way God made our human nature. Moral evil is the lack of proper order. For example, humans are made for the Truth, hence lying is evil.

Evil is always a deprivation of a good that should be there. In that way, we can say that evil doesn’t have being; evil is the lack of what should be there. In that way, death is the ultimate form of evil: deprivation of the life that should be there. It is the violence of separating the soul and the body. If physical death is the ultimate form of evil, then even more so is the “final” death: damnation. When one rejects God, one is separated from God forever, contrary to the purpose for which he made each person.

Evil is always a deprivation
of a good that should be there

What This Means For Us

Evil, especially moral evil, is an affront to our Creator; it is an embrace of destruction. Yet, since evil is not an equal and opposite to God, we can trust in him and his power to help us with the evil we encounter in our lives. In a sense, the greatest evil in our lives about which we have the opportunity to do something are the sins we commit…or rather should choose not to commit.

For Further Reading On This Topic

Evil Doesn’t Have Being

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
It may seem odd to see a Catholic writer state that “evil doesn’t have being.” Does that mean that evil is not real or that evil does not exist? No,…

Sin: Original and Deadly

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
Today, so many people get the Book of Genesis wrong. They think that, because current scientific knowledge and theory explain our human origins in the Big Bang and evolution, the…

God Can’t Just Forgive and Forget

| Behold-Sin | No Comments
Have you ever wondered, why did Jesus have to suffer and die to save us from sin? Why didn’t God just forgive and forget? Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection were…

Join the Behold Newsletter

and receive topics (like the one above)
on Catholicism straight to your inbox!

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In The World Not Of It

In the world not of it

Fr. Paul Barwikowski

Each of us has a desire for knowledge, truth, and love. Nothing in the world will make a man full of truth and love. And that is why St. Thomas Aquinas says that in man there is a rational soul, in which there is a reflection of the Son, who is logos and truth. And there is a reflection of the Holy Spirit, which is love. And these two reflections of this inner life of God Himself are in every man.

Whether a person believes or does not believe. A man is placed on the border of two worlds. On one hand, we are very much a part of this nature, our bodies are made up of various compounds and matter, and still, each one of us has something that is completely out of this world. This is our rational soul, which can find fulfillment only in its source. God sees himself in man and dreams of man.

When man was created, he found himself in paradise, then it is also said that man was in a state of original perfection, and justice and he/she lived in grace. This grace enabled man to look calmly at God and to accept the beauty of God within himself. He shone with the light of God himself, he had a brightness that happened through grace. Thanks to grace, man could look at God, be close to Him, and be in touch with Him, while maintaining God’s freedom and human freedom.

A man is placed on
the border of two worlds

What This Means For Us

One must realize that this is a great gift that man has received. God imprinted in us his own image of his inner Trinitarian life. At the same time, man will never find his perfection in this world, because he is not of this world. Therefore, in each one of us, as we are here on earth, this great desire will remain unfulfilled. And that’s what sets us apart.

For Further Reading On This Topic

In His Image

| Behold-Creation | No Comments
Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the…

Out Of The Dust

| Behold-Creation | No Comments
Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.…

In The World Not Of It

| Behold-Creation | No Comments
Each of us has a desire for knowledge, truth, and love. Nothing in the world will make a man full of truth and love. And that is why St. Thomas…

Out Of The Dust

Out Of The Dust

Fr. Paul Barwikowski

Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7).

The Yahwist tradition (derived from the name of God, Yahweh) differs slightly from the priestly version. First of all, it changes the order. According to priestly tradition, which I wrote about in the previous article, man was created last as the crown of all God’s work. God acted as the master of the house, who prepares delicious dishes and sets the table for his guests; he sits his guests at the table only when everything is ready. He wanted Adam to find the world wonderfully prepared for him. In turn, the Yahwist tradition begins the creative work with man. He is the first of the creatures to be formed. In this way, he emphasizes his greatness and dignity. Other creatures are subordinate to him, created for him, as servants.

The image of creation refers to pottery symbolism. God molds, and shapes man from the earth, just like a craftsman molds a clay vessel. The prophet Jeremiah is very suggestive in this image: This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD: Arise and go down to the potter’s house; there you will hear my word. I went down to the potter’s house and there he was, working at the wheel. Whenever the vessel of clay he was making turned out badly in his hand, he tried again, making another vessel of whatever sort he pleased. Then the word of the LORD came to me: Can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done?-oracle of the LORD. Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel. (Jeremiah 18:1-6).

In turn, Isaiah points to the complete dependence of the created work on its creator: Your perversity is as though the potter were taken to be the clay: As though what is made should say of its maker, “He did not make me!” Or the vessel should say of the potter, “He does not understand.” (Isaiah 29:16).

The earth (Hebrew “adama”), from which God creates man, means matter. Man is not outside matter, he was formed from it; therefore, it is fragile, weak, and mortal. The Creator will remind him of this after the first sin in paradise: For you are dust, and to dust you shall return! (Genesis 3:19). Despite its fragility, it has a divine breath, a divine spirit: then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7). 

The image of blowing life into the nostrils refers to the observation that living beings are characterized by breathing. For this reason, the Hebrew word “nefesh” first meant neck and throat, then breath and life, and finally soul and person, a living being.

Thanks to God’s breath, man is not only a living being, but he has self-awareness, the ability to know himself, to control himself, creative freedom, and the power of introspection and intuition. There is this common “breath” between God and man, which is called conscience, spirituality, and inner life in the highest sense of the word.

Man is not outside
matter, he was
formed
from it

What This Means For Us

Man is therefore a complex being, a mixture of poverty and wealth, nothing and everything. On one hand, it has an affinity with matter, with things. He is not an angel, he has a body and the ability to make choices, also sinful ones, far from God’s thought. Due to earthly gravity, people often follow base sensual instincts and succumb to the limitations of human corporeality. On the other hand, he has a great, almost divine indestructible dignity, inscribed in his interior thanks to the Creator’s given Spirit. Thanks to it, he can create timeless culture and works, a civilization of love and life, and strive for eternity. The Psalmist, noticing this contradiction in man, exclaims in astonishment: What is man that you are mindful of him, and a son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him little less than a god, crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him rule over the works of your hands, put all things at his feet (Psalm 8:5-7).

For Further Reading On This Topic

In His Image

| Behold-Creation | No Comments
Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the…

Out Of The Dust

| Behold-Creation | No Comments
Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.…

In The World Not Of It

| Behold-Creation | No Comments
Each of us has a desire for knowledge, truth, and love. Nothing in the world will make a man full of truth and love. And that is why St. Thomas…

In His Image

In His Image

Fr. Paul Barwikowski

Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)

The Spirit of God hovered over the original shape of the matter created by God. That Spirit was also given by the Creator to man. Two different accounts, one from the priestly tradition and the other from the Yahwist tradition (we’ll cover that one in the next article), convey two different but complementary images of the creation of human beings.

The priestly tradition begins God’s creative work very solemnly; it is the result of a deep, thoughtful decision: Let us make man in Our image, like Us (Genesis 1:26). It is more likely, that in this way the biblical author wanted to vividly present God’s solemn reflection in the face of a key creative work. And perhaps in the background, there is a delicate signal of the presence of the Three Divine Persons!

The very image of creation is passed over by the priestly tradition in silence. Instead, it emphasizes its effect: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27). 

God created man in his own image and likeness. In Middle Eastern culture, the king was a reflection of the deity and was given divine power. Other people were treated as slaves of the gods. Meanwhile (according to the Book of Genesis) the Creator endowed all people with a royal gift.

The language used here points to an image, a representation, such as a sculpture, and the latter to something similar in appearance but not the same. Thus, man is in no way divine, but in some respects he imitates God. Therefore, man is like God, but he is not God. The privileged way of knowing God leads through man because he is his most faithful image. Situated at the top of creation, as a summary of the entire creative work, man appears as God’s masterpiece; it is not merely a “good thing”, but a “very good thing”.

How is this spirit, image, and likeness of God expressed? Scholars have different ideas. In rabbinical messages, it is the spiritual element that is emphasized here what we call – the soul. The soul is the image of the Lord, and as He fills the world, so does the soul fill the human body. As God sees everything, but is not seen by anyone, so the soul sees but cannot be perceived; as the Lord governs the world, so the soul governs the body; as God in his holiness is pure, so is the soul pure. The soul resides in a place inaccessible to our sight.

man appears as God’s masterpiece;
it is not merely a
“good thing”,
but a “very good thing”.

The reflection of God’s perfection, wisdom, and beauty in man is his reason, free will, and spirituality. Man has been gifted by God with creativity, the ability to bond with the Creator, to have personal relationships, and above all to love! These qualities make him a representative of God on earth, he has power over the earth and the world; its mission is to procreate, to populate the earth, to educate, to search for science, to create culture, and to carry out administrative and technical tasks. God-given power to a man is not absolute but should be exercised responsibly and with love for God’s other creatures.

The priestly tradition emphasizes yet another moment of the creation of man. God created him male (Hebrew “zakhar”) and female (Hebrew “nekeva”). “Adam”, meaning man (but also humanity in a broader sense), is “zakhar” and “nekeva”; but we also know that “Adam” is the image of God. God has something in Him that, in great simplification, we could call the “male element” and “female element”. One and the other! Not one of them, not only Father, Warrior, Avenger, Son, King, Bridegroom. In the Holy Scriptures, we find fragments in which we encounter God with maternal attributes (Matthew 23:37).

What This Means For Us

Both a man and a woman are needed to understand God because both are His reflections. This is the splendor of the marital experience this is the theological beauty of a man and a woman. A world in which a woman is considered “something lesser” or is trivialized or reduced to a secondary role no longer reflects God’s will or the intimate profile of God’s face.

For Further Reading On This Topic

In His Image

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Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the…

Out Of The Dust

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Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.…

In The World Not Of It

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Each of us has a desire for knowledge, truth, and love. Nothing in the world will make a man full of truth and love. And that is why St. Thomas…

In Accordance With The Scriptures

In Accordance With The Scriptures

Fr. Ed Pelrine

How do we know that Jesus is the Messiah and not another prophet? Why do we follow him and not another? That is because the Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s coming had been fulfilled in Jesus. Let’s begin in the New Testament and work back from there.

In Matthew 16:13-17, Jesus questions Peter about who Jesus is:  When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”

In the Road to Emmaus account in Luke 24:27, we are told that in the encounter of the two disciples with Jesus, that beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”  Jesus would have referred to these following texts to show the fulfillment of the Old Testament:

Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets,
he explained to them what was said in
all the Scriptures concerning himself

Numbers: Numbers 21:9

“Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”

This is a symbolic “type” prefiguring the Cross, an instrument of death, which becomes the source of life as Jesus is nailed to it and transforms it into the instrument of our salvation.

The Old Testament goes on:

Psalm 2:7-9:
I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my son, today I have begotten you.  Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter, you will dash them to pieces like a petter’s vessel.”

Isaiah 7:14:
Therefore, the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

Isaiah 42:1,4:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations . . . He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth…

Isaiah 52:14-15
See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.

Isaiah 53:3-10
There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him.  He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.  Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins. Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.  We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all.
Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth.  Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away, and who would have thought any more of his destiny?  If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.

Daniel 7:13-14
As the visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; When he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him.  He received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.

Lastly, we find ourselves back in the New Testament in Luke 1:32-33. As the Old Covenant is being fulfilled in Jesus in the New Covenant which will be consummated on Calvary, there is the figure of Simeon in the Temple, meeting the Messiah as he is presented by Mary and Joseph.  Although this is a New Testament passage, it highlights the transition, the completion of the old and the inauguration of the new. Simeon prophesies to Mary: He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Though he was harshly treated,
he submitted and opened not his mouth;
Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before
the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth.

What This Means For Us

“The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.”   St. Augustine
God’s plan for our salvation is coherent and cohesive, and one.  Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, prophesied of old, revealed in time.

FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS TOPIC

Who Is Jesus

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The English writer C.S. Lewis famously presented his argument for the identity of Jesus as God. It’s a famous argument also presented by the philosopher Peter Kreeft of Boston College.…

Begotten Not Made

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One of the approaches to understanding who Jesus is to look at the Nicene Creed, which we recite at mass every Sunday. The Nicene Creed is the most widely accepted…

In Accordance With The Scriptures

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How do we know that Jesus is the Messiah and not another prophet? Why do we follow him and not another? That is because the Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s…

Begotten Not Made

Begotten Not Made

Fr. Ed Pelrine

One of the approaches to understanding who Jesus is to look at the Nicene Creed, which we recite at mass every Sunday.

The Nicene Creed is the most widely accepted and used brief statement of the Christian Faith. It is common ground to Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, and many other Christian groups. Many groups that do not have a tradition of using it in their services nevertheless are committed to the doctrines it teaches.

When the Nicene Creed was drawn up, the chief enemy was Arianism, which denied that Jesus was fully God. Arius was a priest in Alexandria in Egypt, in the early 300’s. He taught that the Father, in the beginning, created (or begot) the Son and that the Son, in conjunction with the Father, then proceeded to create the world. The result of this was to make the Son a created being, and hence not God in any meaningful sense.

It was also suspiciously like the theories of those Gnostics and pagans who held that God was too perfect to create something like a material world, and so introduced one or more intermediate beings between God and the world. God created A, who created B, who created C, . . . who created Z, who created the world. Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, sent for Arius and questioned him. Arius stuck to his position and was finally excommunicated by a council of Egyptian bishops. He went to Nicomedia in Asia, where he wrote letters defending his position to various bishops. Finally, Emperor Constantine summoned a council of Bishops in Nicea (across the straits from modern Istanbul), and there in 325 the Bishops of the Church, by a decided majority, repudiated Arius and produced the first draft of what is now called the Nicene Creed.

The Arian position has been revived in our own day by the Watchtower Society (the Jehovah’s Witnesses), who explicitly hail Arius as a great witness to the truth. So here we have “begotten of the Father before all times, before all ages.” Arius was fond of saying, “The Logos is not eternal. God begat him, and before he was begotten, he did not exist.”

A chief spokesman for the full deity of Christ was St. Athanasius, deacon and later Bishop of Alexandria. The Athanasians replied that the begetting of the Logos was not an event in time, but an eternal relationship.

 A favorite analogy of the Athanasians was the following: Light is continuously streaming forth from the sun. (In those days, it was generally assumed that light was instantaneous so that there was no delay at all between the time that a ray of light left the sun and the time it struck the earth.) The rays of light are derived from the sun, and not vice versa. But it is not the case that first the sun existed and afterward the Light. It is possible to imagine that the sun has always existed, and always emitted light. The Light, then, is derived from the sun, but the Light and the sun exist simultaneously throughout eternity. They are co-eternal. Just so, the Son exists because the Father exists, but there was never a time before the Father produced the Son. The analogy is further appropriate because we can know the sun only through the rays of light that it emits. To see the sunlight is to see the sun. Just so, Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

begetting of the Logos was not an event in time,
but an eternal relationship

God is not in time. Time, like distance, is a relation between physical events and has meaning only in the context of the physical universe. When we say that the Son is begotten of the Father, we do not refer to an event in the remote past, but to an eternal and timeless relation between the Persons of the Godhead.

What This Means For Us

Although we can have a real relationship with Jesus, we can also speak of who he is in theological terms. This Jesus, whom we worship and proclaim as God and Lord, is in eternal relationship as Son to the Father, in the Holy Spirit. He is also fully human through the Blessed Virgin Mary. This joining of divine and human natures is called the Hypostatic Union – one person with two natures. Because he is God, he has the power to save humanity. Because he is man, we humans can receive this salvation. And the reason for all of this is summed up in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS TOPIC

Who Is Jesus

| Behold-Jesus | No Comments
The English writer C.S. Lewis famously presented his argument for the identity of Jesus as God. It’s a famous argument also presented by the philosopher Peter Kreeft of Boston College.…

Begotten Not Made

| Behold-Jesus | No Comments
One of the approaches to understanding who Jesus is to look at the Nicene Creed, which we recite at mass every Sunday. The Nicene Creed is the most widely accepted…

In Accordance With The Scriptures

| Behold-Jesus | No Comments
How do we know that Jesus is the Messiah and not another prophet? Why do we follow him and not another? That is because the Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s…

Who Is Jesus

Who is Jesus

Fr. Ed Pelrine

The English writer C.S. Lewis famously presented his argument for the identity of Jesus as God. It’s a famous argument also presented by the philosopher Peter Kreeft of Boston College. Often referred to as “aut Deus aut homo malus:” either God or a bad man.  

In the fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel, as Jesus is preparing for his death, he makes this claim to his Apostles: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Lewis argues that only God could make this claim, and if a mere human being did, he would be evil or mad.

Lewis refers to what he says are Jesus’ claims:

  • to have authority to forgive sins — behaving as if he really was the person chiefly offended in all offenses.
  • to have always existed
  • to intend to come back to judge the world at the end of time.

What do we know about Jesus’ life? He was a first century Jew from Palestine, believed by Christians to be the son of Mary of Nazareth, a devout Jewish woman, and the stepson of Joseph the carpenter. Mary is said to descend on her father’s side from the tribe of Judah and on her mother’s from the tribe of Levi. Joseph was of the House of David as well. Born in Bethlehem in Judea, just a few miles from the capital of Jerusalem, Jesus grew up in Nazareth in Galilee, in the north of the country, which was under Roman occupation.

Jesus began a ministry when he was around thirty years old, and revealed God the Father to the people of Israel. He also revealed himself as the Son of God, as he fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah. Gathering a group of chosen Apostles around him, Jesus carried out a ministry of healing and teaching, culminating with his arrest and trial, crucifixion, and death. This was his High Priestly sacrifice, as he fulfilled the sacrifices of the Old Covenant by his sacrificial offering of his own life on the Cross.

On the third day after he offered the Passover sacrifice of the New Covenant, Jesus was raised from the dead in his glorified body, and shortly thereafter returned to Heaven after commissioning his Apostles to preach the Gospel to all nations.

After Jesus revealed himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he expressed his mission perhaps most beautifully to Philip the Apostle, when he said to him, Philip, “When you see me, you see the Father.” 

When you see me,
you see the Father

What This Means For Us

Jesus reveals the face of God the Father to us. He invites us into the relationship of dynamic love which is the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus desires an intimate friendship with us. He pours his life and love into us through his sacraments. He speaks to us through the Scriptures and through the apostolic witness in the teaching of his Church.

FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS TOPIC

Who Is Jesus

| Behold-Jesus | No Comments
The English writer C.S. Lewis famously presented his argument for the identity of Jesus as God. It’s a famous argument also presented by the philosopher Peter Kreeft of Boston College.…

Begotten Not Made

| Behold-Jesus | No Comments
One of the approaches to understanding who Jesus is to look at the Nicene Creed, which we recite at mass every Sunday. The Nicene Creed is the most widely accepted…

In Accordance With The Scriptures

| Behold-Jesus | No Comments
How do we know that Jesus is the Messiah and not another prophet? Why do we follow him and not another? That is because the Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s…
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