St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Incarnation and the Birth of Our Lord

"The grace that flows from the manifestation of the Only-Begotten Son in the flesh, proclaimed to the world by his birth from the Virgin, is not merely a holy festival but indeed a holy of holies and a festival of festivals."

-St Gregory of Nyssahttps://t.co/wCsnImqWvk

— The Pappas Patristic Institute (@PappasPatristic) January 2, 2023

Byzantine Soteriology

Rooted in Scripture...

And thus all who are in Him may become one with God, being healed of their sin and corruption, freed from demonic domination and granted eternal life in the resurrection. 6/

— Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick (@FrAndrewSDamick) March 25, 2021

Franciscan Simplicity

Just the other day he posted this:

This is the great meaning of #Christmas: God becomes man so that we can become children of God.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) January 10, 2021

It is striking that the Lord spent most of his time on Earth living an ordinary life, without standing out. It is a beautiful message that reveals the greatness of daily life, the importance in God's eyes of every gesture and moment of life, even the most simple.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) January 11, 2021

The "hidden life" or the daily life of Christ before His public ministry was nonetheless a manifestation of the glory of the Son of God. Daily life by itself is not "important to God"; what is important is that Christ redeemed it through His incarnation. It is not what we offer, but what God offers to us.

A Quote of St. Gregory Palamas

All divinely inspired Scripture was written because of the Virgin who brought forth God incarnate.
— Saint Gregory Palamas pic.twitter.com/jiSwBLfmeI

— Jacob Sherman (@Shermanicus) December 26, 2020

Thomas Joseph White, OP: Why did God become human?

The Byzantine View of the Incarnation

"We need to stop seeing the Incarnation as a reaction of God to the Fall, but see the Incarnation as the very purpose of Creation."
From the Clips channel. https://t.co/62n918Tdib

— Jonathan Pageau (@PageauJonathan) August 19, 2020

Icon of the Annunciation

Truly Speculative Theology

The Incarnation Doesn't End with the Resurrection by James P. Ware

However, David Bentley Hart, in a recent article in this journal (“The Spiritual Was More Substantial than the Material for the Ancients”), argues for a very different reading. For Hart finds in 1 Corinthians 15, and throughout much of the rest of the New Testament, a conception of resurrection—both of Christ and of the faithful—involving the replacement of the corruptible body of flesh with a new “spiritual” or “celestial” body composed of the imperishable substance of spirit (the nature possessed by angels and spirit beings). According to Hart, when Paul, John, and other New Testament authors speak of Jesus or the faithful being “raised” to life, this involves “the transformation of the psychical composite into the spiritual simplex—the metamorphosis of the mortal fleshly body that belongs to soul into the immortal fleshless body that belongs to spirit.” It was, Hart claims, in such a “spiritual” body, “purged of every element of flesh and blood and (perhaps) soul,” that Christ rose.

The Icon of the Nativity

A more Latin view of soteriology?

CWR: How Jesus became Jesus: A conversation with Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy by Carl E. Olson
“When he was conceived and born these saving acts were still in the future,” says the noted theologian and author of a new study of the Synoptic Gospels. “Thus, Jesus had to enact his name – he had to become truly Jesus, YHWH-Saves, not simply in name but in actuality.”

Lecture by Jonathan Pageau

On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius

Holy Saturday

God’s Concealment on Holy Saturday by Joseph Ratzinger

Sr. Vassa on the Incarnation

Fr. Florovsky on the Incarnation

Incarnation and Deification

The Incarnation
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
Probably none of you has experience of being in the street; I had it when I was a child and a youth, and it’s a very unpleasant feeling to know that you have nowhere to go and that you are totally unwanted in any of the places that shine with light, which obviously speak of warmth to you.

The Nativity of Christ in Chronology from the Creation of Man
Anatoly Vitvitsky
The goal of this article is to show the results of a calculation of the “5508 years” according to texts of the first translation of the lost original of ancient Hebrew Old Testament Books, made by the Israelite translators from the third to second centuries B.C. (the Septuagint) and preserved up to the twenty-first century in the Bible published by the Russian Bible Society in the Russian language.

The Incarnation