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Office Of Readings | Christmas | 30th December | A Reading From The Treatise Of Saint Hippolytus On The Refutation Of All Heresies | The Word Made Flesh Deifies Us
‘The Word made flesh deifies us.’
In this reading, Saint Hippolytus explains the Christian faith as a response to God’s initiative, not to human speculation. Faith is grounded in God’s own word, spoken by the Word himself. God seeks to restore humanity not by force, but by appealing to freedom.
Hippolytus describes a movement from prophecy to fulfilment. God first spoke through the prophets, but their words were often difficult to grasp. In the last days, the Word came in person. What was once spoken indirectly is now made visible. Salvation comes through encounter, not compulsion.
A central concern of the treatise is the true humanity of Christ. Hippolytus insists that Christ shares the same human nature as those he teaches. If Christ were not truly human, his example would be impossible to follow. His commands would lack justice and goodness if they demanded what human nature could not bear.
Christ’s ordinary human experiences are therefore essential. His work, hunger, fatigue, suffering and death are not incidental details. They show that he stands within the same human condition. By enduring these things, Christ offers his humanity as the first fruits of the renewed human race.
Hippolytus then turns to the destiny of humanity. To know the true God is to be transformed. Both body and soul are promised immortality, not by escaping humanity, but by its restoration. Sharing Christ’s humanity leads to sharing his life.
The language of becoming ‘divine’ is not a claim to equality with God. It refers to participation in God’s life through grace. Humanity is healed, not replaced. The image of God, damaged by sin, is restored.
The call to ‘know yourself’ is therefore theological rather than philosophical. To know oneself rightly is to recognise oneself as created in God’s image and restored in Christ. This recognition leads to conversion of life. Obedience and imitation of Christ are presented as the fitting human response to God’s gift.
A Reading From The Treatise Of Saint Hippolytus On The Refutation Of All Heresies | The Word Made Flesh Deifies Us
Our faith is not founded upon empty words; nor are we carried away by mere caprice or beguiled by specious arguments. On the contrary, we put our faith in words spoken by the power of God, spoken by the Word himself at God’s command. God wished to win men back from disobedience, not by using force to reduce him to slavery but by addressing to his free will a call to liberty.
The Word spoke first of all through the prophets, but because the message was couched in such obscure language that it could be only dimly apprehended, in the last days the Father sent the Word in person, commanding him to show himself openly so that the world could see him and be saved.
We know that by taking a body from the Virgin he re-fashioned our fallen nature. We know that his manhood was of the same clay as our own; if this were not so, he would hardly have been a teacher who could expect to be imitated. If he were of a different substance from me, he would surely not have ordered me to do as he did, when by my very nature I am so weak. Such a demand could not be reconciled with his goodness and justice.
No. He wanted us to consider him as no different from ourselves, and so he worked, he was hungry and thirsty, he slept. Without protest he endured his passion, he submitted to death and revealed his resurrection. In all these ways he offered his own manhood as the first fruits of our race to keep us from losing heart when suffering comes our way, and to make us look forward to receiving the same reward as he did, since we know that we possess the same humanity.
When we have come to know the true God, both our bodies and our souls will be immortal and incorruptible. We shall enter the kingdom of heaven, because while we lived on earth we acknowledged heaven’s King. Friends of God and co-heirs with Christ, we shall be subject to no evil desires or inclinations, or to any affliction of body or soul, for we shall have become divine.
Whatever evil you may have suffered, being man, it is God that sent it to you, precisely because you are man; but equally, when you have been deified, God has promised you a share in every one of his own attributes. The saying Know yourself means therefore that we should recognise and acknowledge in ourselves the God who made us in his own image, for if we do this, we in turn will be recognised and acknowledged by our Maker.
So let us not be at enmity with ourselves, but change our way of life without delay. For Christ who is God, exalted above all creation, has taken away man’s sin and has re-fashioned our fallen nature. In the beginning God made man in his image and so gave proof of his love for us. If we obey his holy commands and learn to imitate his goodness, we shall be like him and he will honour us. God is not beggarly, and for the sake of his own glory he has given us a share in his divinity.
Christian Prayer With Jesus Christ
Lord Jesus Christ,
you shared fully in our humanity
so that we might share in your life.
Help us to trust your call to freedom
and to follow your example with patience.
Renew in us the image of God
and teach us to live as those restored by grace.
Amen
Glossary Of Christian Terms
The Word | The Son of God, through whom all things were made and who became flesh in Jesus Christ.
Prophets | Those sent by God to speak his word before the coming of Christ.
Incarnation | The coming of the Son of God in human flesh.
First fruits | The beginning of a greater harvest; here, Christ’s humanity as the beginning of renewed humanity.
Deification | Participation in God’s life by grace, not equality with God by nature.
Image of God | The dignity given to humanity at creation, restored in Christ.
Free will | The human capacity to respond freely to God’s call.
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