This week most of the Christian world will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Much of Christianity recognizes the physicality and mortality of Christ. However, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stands apart from traditional Christianity in proclaiming that Christ’s mortality and then immortality through resurrection was progression in God’s plan. It was not a brief interlude to commune with His creatures on earth so that He could get back to His timeless immateriality. During this Christmas season, can we stop and recognize the physicality of God.

God’s genuine reality as a physical being

Last week, I listened to Creator and Savior by Mark E. Petersen in the April 1983 conference. His comments lined up well with some thoughts in a new book that I have been reading - Space, Time & Incarnation by Thomas F. Torrance. I will also bring in a few quotes from a book I read about five years ago - Mormon Christianity by Stephen Webb.

I am not sure the quote will do justice to the actual voice of Mark E. Petersen. His intensity in speaking is legendary. I recommend that you listen from minute 3:55 to minute 5:25 (see video below) to hear his emphasis on the word ‘physical’.

Of necessity that earth must be physical in nature, for we who were to live on it would be physical beings, such as we now are. It had to be a physical earth also on which the Savior could live out His mortal life.

His existence in Palestine was to be physical, in a body of flesh and bones like our own. On this earth He would endure the physical suffering of crucifixion. He would die physically, and then - how glorious it was - He would bring about a physical resurrection.

Therefore, a physical earth was essential to His mission. There was nothing ethereal about His work here on earth. It was not to be accomplished in some intangible or mystical way.

His life on earth was real and physical. His death was real and physical, as was His resurrection, all taking place on this very real and physical planet. It fully demonstrated His genuine reality as a physical being.

Mark E. Petersen signals a deep and abiding belief by Latter-day Saints when he says, ‘It fully demonstrated His genuine reality as a physical being.’ Most Christians would say that God’s actual existence is immaterialness and that His physicalness was only to communicate with His lesser creations on earth.

In Space, Time & Incarnation, Thomas Torrance highlights how a belief in the ability of the physical and the infinite to dwell together (finitum capax infiniti) structures a theology to be very different from one that does not believe in the eternal perfection of matter. He shares,

… if we remember that the humanity which the Son of God assumed is our humanity, that in which we share, who can stop short at applying divine attributes to the humanity of Christ and not apply them to humanity in general? This is what did happen, for the natural capacity defined in the humanity of Christ was extended to human nature as such so that the finitum capax infiniti¹ of Christ Himself was regarded only as a special and exemplary instance of man’s own capacity for the divine. Thus it is difficult to dissociate the deification of man, which we find int he eighteenth- and nineteen-century German theology and philosophy from the Lutheran doctrine of finitum capax infiniti.

Pondering all of this reminds me of a book that I read with my Evangelical friend in Richland - Mormon Christianity by Stephen Webb². Stephen compared the Catholic views on the Eucharist to the LDS views on deification in physical bodies. The point that he makes is that LDS views on physicality line up with Luther’s and the Catholic church’s stance on finitum capax infiniti. In Mormon Christianity, Stephen spends a large portion of the book dealing with our faith’s materialism beliefs. On page 123 he says,

No other Christian has taken Hebrews 13:8 so literally: ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.’ The body of Jesus Christ is the eternal image of all bodies, spiritual and physical alike. Mormons do not use this exact same language, but I would say that they raise the possibility that the incarnation is a specification (or material intensification) of his premortal state, not the first (and only) time that God and matter unite. The material view of divinity has metaphysical implications that are counterintuitive to anyone immersed in classical theism.

He continues on the same page.

The Saints also believe that Got the Father progressed into this bodily form, as did Jesus Christ in his premortal state. To traditional Christians, these are disturbing thoughts, but is it a compliment or an insult to propose that Christ’s preexistent form is so perfect that it took countless billions of years to evolve? Mormons are committed to this dynamic view of divinity because they believe that there is no eternity outside of time. Everything is in time, and if so, then everything grows and changes, including God. From the perspective of traditional concepts of eternity, to say that Christ grew into his glorious identity is a slur. It implies that he was not fully divine. From the Mormon perspective, however, nothing exists without undergoing change. Indeed, the longer a being has been evolving, the more that being has changed, and thus the more perfect it is.

Christmas and the birth of Jesus

This Christmas, as we reenact the manger seen, can we all stop and recognize the beautiful testimony of physicality that His birth provided? Christ came to us and participated with us in our (Christ and us) physical now. He showed us through His life and resurrection the meaning of finitum capax infiniti. That we, like Him, can progress to the physical stature of our God.

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