Christ

a) The Divinity of Christ

Our Lord Jesus Christ made definite claim to be true God as well as true man; and He proved His claim by works and prophecies.

1. The Claim of Christ.—In the twenty-sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, we read the claim of Christ before the Jewish High Priest: “And the high priest said to him: I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us if thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith to him: Thou hast said it.” In calling Himself the Son of God, Christ claimed to be God, and the Jews so understood Him. For, when He had said, “Thou hast said it” (that is, “I am”), “the High Priest rent his garments, saying: He hath blasphemed,” and the people cried, “He is worthy of death.” Only the claim to be divine, that is, to be God, could have aroused this rage against blasphemy and this cry of the populace for the blood of the claimant. The claim of Christ is thus seen to be a literal claim; it means precisely what the words indicate. To be the Son of God, the infinite and indivisible, is to be God Himself; and this it is what Christ claimed to be. Christ claimed to be equal with God the Father (John v, 19-21; xvii, 10) and so claimed to be God:

for God, being supreme and infinite, cannot have an equal other than Himself. (See also John x, 38; xiv, 9-IO). Christ claimed to be one with God the Father: “I and the Father are one” (John x, 30). The Jews were in no doubt about the meaning of this claim, for “they took up stones to throw at him.” Christ commended the Apostles for confessing Him to be God, thus making positive claim to be God. “Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answering said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar- Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew xvi, 16-17). Christ claimed to be the supreme lawgiver for mankind and all the world (Matthew v, 21-22; xii, §). He claimed to be the supreme judge of men (Matthew xxv, 31-32). He claimed and exercised the uncommunicated power of forgiving sins and supported His claim by miracles (Mark ii, 5; Luke vii, 48). Each of these claims is a claim to the prerogatives of God, a claim which none but one who is God could justly make.

2. The Proof of the Claim.—The personal character of Christ, His wondrous power as a teacher of men, and His marvellous virtues, proclaim Him as the most noble and perfect member of the human race that ever trod the earth. So He is admitted to be, even by those who deny His divinity. But consider: if His character is the admiration of all ages; if His teaching is the manifestation of matchless wisdom; if His virtues are the resplendent glory of the race, can we doubt His word and reduce Him to the status of a common faker and conscienceless deceiver? Yet that is what we must admit Him to be if He is not God. For He claimed to be God, and if that claim is false, then He has deceived countless minds and souls, and has taught millions to degrade themselves by following a false religion, turning away from the worship of the true God. It will not do to pay thin compliments to Christ as a notable teacher and leader and model for men, and then to deny His divinity. Human reason sees but two conclusions possible about Christ. Either take Him as God, or take Him as the worst and most abandoned villain that the world has ever known. If Christ is not God, Christ is not good. “Really,” says Mr. G. K. Chesterton, “if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ (that is, the Christ, the Messias, God), He must have been Antichrist.” Manifestly, no honest mind can regard Christ as evil and as an archdeceiver. The inescapable testimony of history, and the indubitably beautiful and ennobling influence of Christianity upon human lives, make such a conclusion impossible. Therefore, there is only one thing that can be admitted: Christ is true God. His claim is proved. Christ proved Himself to be God by wondrous works, which we call miracles. Now, a miracle is a marvellous event, outside the usual course of nature, and produced by Almighty God. That miracles are possible is manifest to the thinking mind. They involve no contradiction in themselves; they imply no imperfection in God; and they are wholly suitable as striking lessons calculated to make stupid man turn to God and the achievement of salvation. Miracles are not “corrections” of an imperfect plan and “exceptions” made to meet deficiencies in an imperfect law. Miraculous events are part and parcel of the eternal decrees of God (who is wholly outside time); they are as everlastingly foreknown and decreed as the law which they momentarily set aside.—The miracles of Christ were many: He healed the sick by a word; He raised the dead to life by a touch; He expelled evil spirits from afflicted men by a simple act of His will. Now, these events can be explained by no “hidden powers” in nature itself; for in much they cut directly across the course of nature; and nature is not a contradiction in itself. Even if the impossible theory of “hidden powers” were admissible, the miracles of Christ would still be miracles; for it would be a true miracle to make the “hidden powers” function at a word, and to apply them by a touch of the hand or by an act of the will.—The miracles of Christ are known with certainty as historical facts; the testimony which evidences them is not to be escaped, even by an unwilling mind. Further, these miracles are known with certainty as events outside the usual course of nature; the point is self-evident. Finally, these miracles are known to be the work of Almighty God; they are so proved by the character of Christ who performed them, the humble prayers to God offered by those for whose benefit they were performed, and the effect and influence which the miracles exercised upon the minds and lives of men. Thus the miracles of Christ meet the definition of true miracles at every point: they are marvellous events, outside the ordinary course of nature, and produced by the power of God. Now, a work which is truly a manifestation of God’s power sets the divine seal of approval upon the doctrine which such a work is performed to support. The miracles of Christ were performed to support His doctrine, the central point of which is the fact of His own divinity. Therefore, the divine seal of approval has been set upon the truth that Christ is God. His claim is proved. Christ proved Himself to be God by showing in His true prophecies that He possessed knowledge which God alone can have. Now, a prophecy is a certain foreknowledge and pronouncement of a future free event. It is certain foreknowledge and pronouncement, not a mere guess or conjecture; this characteristic of true prophecy is manifested by its exactness and its details, all of which are verified in the event predicted. It is a prediction of a future free event, that is, of an event which depends for realization upon the choice of free-will, and which, in consequence, cannot be forecast, even with probability, by any natural means.—Christ made many prophecies which are complete and detailed pronouncements of complex events. For example, He foretold the circumstances and details of His own Passion and Death. He told His disciples that, when they had completed a certain journey to Jerusalem, He would be betrayed, condemned to death, mocked, scourged, crucified (Matthew xx); He named His’ betrayer (Matthew xxvi, 25) and foretold the exact sum that Judas would receive for his treachery (John xiii, 21, 26); He foretold the threefold denial of Peter (Matthew xxvi, 34); He predicted that His Apostles would run away from Him and forsake Him in His hour of sorrow (Matthew xxvi, jz). These predictions of future free events were fulfilled to the very letter; hence the predictions were true prophecies. True prophecies manifest knowledge that only God, or one to whom God imparts it, can possess. Hence Christ is God or has had the knowledge of God imparted unto Him. But it is unthinkable that the knowledge of God should be imparted to an impostor who falsely claims that he himself is God. Christ’s claim must be true, else He were no true prophet. But He was a true prophet, and hence His claim to be God must be a true claim. His claim is proved. The Resurrection of Our Lord from the dead is at once His crowning miracle and the fulfillment of His most solemn prophecy. Miracles and prophecy are the seals of divine approval; they are the marks of absolute truth: and both these seals are set upon the Resurrection. The miracle of the Resurrection of Christ by His own power from the dead proves Him to be God for two reasons: first, it is a stupendous miracle, and stamps the seal of divine truth upon Christ’s doctrine that He is God; secondly, it proves Christ to be God by showing His mastery over life and death, justifying His claim that He had power to lay down His life and to take it up again.—The miracle of the Resurrection is a true miracle if Christ really died, and really rose again to life by His own power. Now, Christ really died. All the Evangelists record His death; the soldiers who came to break the legs of the crucified robbers saw that Our Lord was dead, and one of them opened His side with a spear, inflicting a wound which itself would cause death if He were not already dead. Our Lord had suffered a bloody agony, a night of cruel and inhuman torture involving great loss of blood, an exhausting journey under the heavy cross, and three terrible hours of crucifixion, during which the last drop of His life-blood was poured out. The Jews who had so long plotted and planned for this execution were not likely to allow it to fail in the event; they knew well that Christ was dead when they appeared before Pilate, bent upon taking precautions against a pretended resurrection. There can be no doubt that Christ really died. And Christ really rose again to life by His own power. The Apostles gave testimony of the fact, though they had nothing to expect from their declaration but persecution and death. Christ appeared to many: to the holy women; to the disciples at Emmaus; to the disciples gathered together when Thomas was absent, and again when Thomas was present and was permitted to touch Our Lord and make certain of His palpable reality. And Christ appeared to more than five hundred on one occasion (Z Corinthians xv, 6). Even the enemies of Our Lord knew that He was risen. They were in consternation because of the Resurrection, and they tried frantically to find grounds for a denial of what they knew was a fact. So great was their confusion that they did not see the absurdity of their attempt to hire sleeping witnesses to swear that the body of Our Lord had been stolen from its tomb. It is indubitably certain that Christ really rose from the dead.—Christ rose from the dead by His own power, thus proving Himself to be God, the only master of life and death. Nor will it change this conclusion to say that God in Heaven raised

Our Lord to life. For, if that be the case, then God manifests His approval of Christ and His doctrine: and the doctrine of Christ is that He Himself is God. Therefore, in any case, the result is the same. Christ is God. His claim is proved.—The Resurrection is the fulfillment of Our Lord’s solemn prophecy. After the Transfiguration, Our Lord had said to Peter and James and John: “Tell the vision to no man till the Son of man be risen from the dead” (Matthew xvii, p). And He had said to the Jews: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up… He spoke of the temple of his body” {John Hi> ip). And in St. Matthew’s Gospel (xx, 18-19) we have a detailed prophecy of the events of the Passion and a solemn prediction of the Resurrection: “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and the third day he shall rise again”—Thus the Resurrection, both as miracle and as prophecy, sets upon Our Lord’s claim to be God the divine and absolute seal of truth. Christ, therefore, is true God. His claim is proved.

b) The Humanity of Christ

It would seem to most Christians, and to every Catholic, that the humanity of Our Lord is such an obvious fact that any discussion of it is wholly needless. Yet the ancient heresy of the Docetae amounted to the assertion that the humanity of Christ was a phantom or merely apparent thing without reality; and the Apollinarians of the fourth and fifth centuries went to such extremes in their opposition to Arianism, which denied the divinity of Our Lord, that they came to deny His true humanity. And if these ancient errors seem of little importance to-day, one has but to consult the writings of recent converts—like Mr. Arnold Lunn, for example—to find that clear conviction of the true humanity of Christ is not a general and consistent mark of the nonCatholic mind. Of course, if one were only logical, it would be instantly apparent that the Redemption loses its character as an atonement in strict justice if the true humanity of Christ be doubted or denied. But most minds are not logical. It is, therefore, in order to offer here a brief discussion of the true human nature of Our Lord. Christ said He was true man. He called Himself “the Son of Man” as well as “the Son of God.” He acknowledged Our Lady as His true mother, and of her He was truly conceived and born according to God’s word, although this conception and birth were so miraculous as to preserve the mother’s virginity intact before, duririg, and after His birth. Further, Christ said He would suffer and die. Hence, on His own testimony, Christ is true man; for only true man can be the “son of Man,” can have a true human mother, can suffer and die. Now, the testimony of Christ is the infallible testimony of God. Christ, therefore, is true man. Christ had a human ancestry, clearly indicated in Scripture. He is a true descendant of David. He grew up like other children, advancing “in wisdom, and age, and grace, with God and men.” He acted as man, talking, eating, drinking, sleeping, hungering, thirsting. He was fatigued by travel. He was glad, was troubled, was sorrowful. He prayed as man to God, giving thanks, imploring graces for His followers, exercising acts of obedience and humility. He commended His human soul into the hands of His Heavenly Father when He performed the last great action which, of itself, proves Him to be man: His suffering and death upon the Cross. Christ, therefore, is true man. He is also true God. Yet He is not two persons. He is one person, and that person is the eternal Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Being eternally God the Son, He assumed to Himself a true human nature (true human body and true human soul with its human understanding and human free-will), uniting this nature to His Divine Nature in the unity of the Second Person of the Trinity. This is called the Hypostatic Union, and it was effected by the Incarnation, that is, by the joining of the eternal Divine Nature with human nature in the spotless bosom of the Immaculate Mother. The Incarnation took place in that instant when “the Word (r. e., the Son) was made flesh.” When Christ, true God and true man in One Person, was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the world beheld the marvel of the Virgin Birth. In passing, it may be well to say for the enlightenment of non-Catholics who, in spite of wide culture and education, persist in misunderstanding the term, that the Virgin Birth is not the same as the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception means that the Mother of Christ, from the first moment of her conception in the womb of St. Anne, her mother, was preserved free from the taint of original sin. On the other hand, the Virgin Birth means that Christ was born of Mary while she remained a virgin, and that He had no human father.

c) The Work of Christ

Christ came to redeem mankind, to teach men to take advantage of the Redemption, and to maintain for them in His Church the fruits of the Redemption. He came to redeem man, that is, to buy back, at the price of His sufferings and death, the opportunity for men to earn Heaven, an opportunity which the human race had lost through original sin. He came to teach mankind the infinite love of God for souls, the need of doing penance, avoiding sin, acquiring virtue. He came to teach men that He himself is God and also man, their Redeemer, their

Mediator, their only hope. He came to teach men to recognize His own power and authority in His priests and His Church. Christ came to establish His Church, with which and in which He is to remain with men, not “leaving them orphans” until the end of the world; and He came to commit His saving Sacraments to the care and ministration of His Church, that through their power, the fruits of Redemption might be carried to the faithful of every age while time endures. This, then, is the work of Christ: to die for men, to teach them, to establish His Church among them. In this present study we shall discuss the work of the Redemption, which was accomplished by the death of Christ for men. In another section we shall study the Church of Christ which He established to carry on His teaching and to preserve to men the fruits of the Redemption. We shall study the Redemption in its occasion, its accomplishment, and its effects.

I. The Occasion for the Redemption.—God made man in His own image and likeness, dowering him with understanding and free-will, and manifestly intending that man should use these great gifts to know and love and serve God, the all-Good and allTrue. But man abused the gifts; he chose to reject God; he disobeyed the direct command of the Almighty, thus refusing the service for which God had made him. In a word, man turned definitely away from God and Heaven, and in that instant Heaven was closed against mankind. Since all men are radically contained in the first father of the race, all men fell with Adam. This original sin with its terrible effects for the whole of humankind was the occasion of the Redemption. God willed to open Heaven anew to mankind, and to restore to all men the opportunity lost in the sin of Adam. But God also willed that the offence of Adam’s sin should be atoned for, completely, perfectly, so that redeemed men could, after receiving a gratuitous first grace, actually merit and earn further graces, and ultimately Heaven itself. Now, the sin of Adam was infinite in malice or badness, for it was an offence against the infinite God, and an offence is measured primarily by the dignity and perfection of the person offended. Man’s sin was infinite, and atonement for such offence must, in strict justice, be infinite also. But man could not make an infinite atonement, for all that man can do is finite, and atonement takes its measure and value from the one who atones. Here, then, was the situation: Man owed an infinite debt which he could not pay; only God could pay the infinite debt, but God did not owe it. This situation was the proximate occasion for the Atonement and Redemption. For God, willing to redeem man by accepting an atonement in the measure of strict justice, gave him a Redeemer who is both God and Man: He is God, and can pay man’s infinite debt; He is Man, of the race that must pay. The God-man, the Redeemer, is Jesus Christ Our Lord.

2. The Accomplishment of the Redemption,—Our Lord is God, and therefore, any act of His, offered in atonement for mankind, is of infinite redemptive value, and suffices to open Heaven anew to men. But if Christ had made any atonement short of the offering of His whole life and the enduring of death as the rejected of men, His work would have been futile. For fallen man not only requires that Heaven should be open for his achieving, but he needs all possible helps and urgings to enable him to take advantage of his opportunity of achieving it. Man needs to be taught the worth of his soul, the meaning of life, the necessity of virtue, the importance of salvation, above all, the dignity of poverty and suffering endured for God, the indispensable character of “the faith that looks through death.” And man, dull and stupid since the Fall, could never learn these lessons if Christ had not done all that God-made-Man could do to teach them to him. Thus, to make Redemption effective for man, Our Lord endured all hardship, rejection, and death. He poured out the last drop of His blood, He gave the last ounce of His strength, He breathed the last gasping word, that man might know how dear and precious is a soul to God, and how important is the work of our salvation. It was, therefore, upon the Cross that the work of Atonement was rounded out and effectively accomplished. And it was only in His final prayer that Our Blessed Savior, who had already foretold the approaching Passion and embraced it in His will, could say to His Eternal Father, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John xvii, 4). The Atonement became a final and complete Redemption with the Resurrection and Ascension of Our Lord and the vitalizing of His Church by the coming of the Holy Ghost. The death of the Redeemer made infinite atonement for man’s sin; the other glorious realities (the Resurrection, Ascension, Descent of the Holy Ghost) definitely opened Heaven to man, showed the clear way thither, and set the feet of the faithful directly in the way of salvation.

3. The Effects of the Redemption.—The fact that the Redemption made an atonement in strict justice for the primal sin which marred the race, put man in position to work out his salvation and to earn his way, granted that the first grace must be God’s free gift to him. Thus, given the first grace, and given the Redemption in strict justice, man may now use his wondrous gifts of intellect and will, and all his powers, to earn Heaven as God had meant him to do when he created him. The first effect of the Redemption was the rehabilitation of mankind. And this would never have been achieved had God merely forgiven the original sin by an act of divine mercy, or had He accepted anything short of an atonement in the measure of absolute justice.—All human works that have a value unto salvation, have that value in and through the boundless merits of Our Redeemer. He is in very deed the “Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”—The Redemption was a work of absolute perfection and superabundant merit. It was universal in scope, offering satisfaction to God for all men, so that all might be saved, if they willed to accept God’s grace, and work out salvation in the Church established by the Redeemer, using, to that great end, diligent prayer, the practice of virtue, and the saving Sacraments.

d) The Church of Christ

Jesus Christ, who is true God as well as true man, founded a Church to carry to all men of all ages the fruits of the Redemption. His Church is God’s own Church. All men are, therefore, under obligation to find this Church, to become loyal and worthy members of it, and to use the means which it affords. For, if they ignore God’s own institution for their salvation, how can they hope to be saved? Christ made St. Peter (and his lawful successors, each in turn) His vicar on earth, clothed not only with the honor of being “first bishop” in the Church, but with true jurisdiction over the whole Church, and dowered with the essential prerogative of infallibility in official pronouncements to the whole Church in matters of faith and morals. The true Church calls insistently for the attention of the sociologist. For, manifestly, it is futile to propound and disseminate doctrines looking to man’s welfare which ignore, or come in conflict with, God’s own institution for man’s welfare. Nor will it do to assume that man’s earthly well-being may be consulted without reference to the institution divinely established for his eternal salvation. Man runs a single course; his earthly existence is but the first stage of eternal existence, and the character of his future lot is changelessly determined by his life on earth. Therefore, every direction and influence which beats upon human existence—every “factor” of life, to use a term in fashion—has an eternal significance.

1. The Founding of Christ’s Church.—A church is a society, an organized body, of those who accept one doctrine and worship, and recognize a common religious authority. If Christ founded such a society, He founded a church. But, as a matter of fact, Christ did found such a society. For He formed a special group of His followers, calling them Apostles (Luke vi, 12—16’). He gave to this group the special task or ministry of baptizing men; of teaching and governing all men; of offering the Sacrifice of His Body and Blood for them; of forgiving their sins; of exercising over them the authority of Christ Himself (Matthew xxviii, 18—20; John xx, 21, and xxii, ip). Thus was established Christ’s teaching Church, and its ministry was to establish the Church taught; both elements being the single believing Church of Christ, which is to endure for all men until the end of the world (Matthew xxviii, 20). Thus, by command of Christ, all men are to be brought under a common religious authority, to be taught a common doctrine and joined in a common true worship. Christ, therefore, founded a Church, and He requires all men to belong to it.

2. The Authority and Infallibility of Christ’s Church.—Christ’s Apostles and their successors, the bishops, constitute the teaching Church, which all men are to hear as Christ Himself; for Christ said to them: “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations,… teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world” (Matthew xxviii, 20). Now, Christ is God, and Christ’s appointed teachers have authority for their mission. And if God is with them always, they will never be able to lead men astray—thus defeating the purpose of the ministry divinely established to save men—but will infallibly teach the truth. Thus, the Church of Christ has authority and infallibility.

3. The Identification of Christ’s Church.—There is in the world only one Church which claims to be the authoritative and infallible Church of Jesus Christ. This Church and this Church alone claims to have the attributes which God’s Church must have. This Church alone is one in doctrine and in worship, and has been one since the days of Christ and the Apostles. This Church alone knows no boundaries of race or class or nation; it is a world-figure. In a word, this Church alone is one, holy, catholic, apostolic, infallible, authoritative. But Christ’s Church must have all these characteristics, and therefore, this one Church is Christ’s Church: it is the Roman Catholic Church. The claims of the Roman Catholic Church are themselves an indication, unmistakable and sufficient, that it is Christ’s Church; for surely the Church of Christ will claim to be what it is; and no other church makes the claim. But the Roman Catholic Church also proves its claim by reason and history. The Roman Catholic Church alone is the one true Church of Christ.

4. The Head of Christ’s Church.—Christ is the Head of His Church, for He is with it “all days even to the consummation of the world.” But Christ made His Church a visible society, and it needs a visible head. Since Christ ascended into Heaven, He is no longer visible. But He has left a visible head of the

Church on earth to take His place, to be His vicar. He named St. Peter for this office, and the successor of St. Peter holds that office to-day. Christ singled out St. Peter as the rock of foundation for His Church (Matthew xwi, i§). Christ conferred upon St. Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven—His Church—giving him therewith the supreme power of ruling the followers of Christ, of loosing and binding with the power of Christ (Matthew xvi, ip). Christ made St. Peter, in most solemn manner, the chief shepherd of souls, commissioning him to feed the whole flock of Christ, the sheep and the lambs (John xxi, 15-17)- Now, the rock of foundation must not crumble; the holder of the keys has full authority; the chief shepherd of souls cannot lead them to the poisonous pasturage of error. In a word, the first authority and the first shepherdship conferred upon St. Peter dowered him and his office with authority and infallibility. History attests the fact that St. Peter, and each of his successors in turn, actually exercised the infallible teaching and governing office.—Authority and infallibility belong to the teaching Church (the bishops) and to the head of the Church, the Pope. Yet the authority and infallibility of Christ, bestowed on His Church, is one; hence there can be no conflict between the body of bishops and the Pope in point of authority and infallible teaching. The bishops constitute one moral unity with the Pope, and together with the Pope they are infallible; singly, however, the successors of the Apostles are not infallible. The bishops of the world, gathered in general council, are infallible only when summoned to meet by the Pope, when presided over in their sessions by the Pope in person or by his appointed representative, and when their decisions are officially approved by the Pope and promulgated by his authority. The Pope, either alone or in council with the bishops, has the prerogative of infallibility, which, in all cases, is exercised only when pronouncement is made for the entire Church, in matters of faith or morals. If the Pope could err in such pronouncements, the Church of Christ could be led into error, and the words of Christ, “I am with you all days,” and “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it [the Church],” would be falsified. But Christ’s word cannot be falsified, for it is the word of God Himself. Therefore, the Pope, the head of the Church on earth, the vicar of Christ, has the official prerogative of infallibility when, as teacher of the universal Church, he pronounces on matters of faith or morals.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have proved that Christ, Our Lord, is true God as well as true man. We have seen that Christ made claim to be God, and proved His claim by His personal character, His wondrous works, His prophecies, and by His Resurrection from the dead. We have seen that Christ came to redeem mankind, restoring to men the opportunity of achieving the end set for them in creation, but which had been lost to them by original sin. We have seen that Christ founded a Church to carry to all men of all ages the fruits of the Redemption. We have considered the obligation which rests upon all of finding this true Church and of becoming loyal and worthy members of it. We have identified this Church as the Roman Catholic Church alone, and have considered certain essential attributes of this Church and of its visible head on earth.