Retrieving the incarnation in Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes

Abstract

It was certainly a primary concern of the Second Vatican Council, facing the Third World in a post-colonial era, to show a maximum respect for humanity's invincible cultural pluralism (GS, 44, 58). Hence the emphasis on the primordial and unique missionary principle of incarnation, is derived directly from the scandalous belief that God became one of us in everything except sin (cf Heb. 2:14-18; 4:15). The Christian understanding of the relationship between God and humankind is dominated by this incarnationcd theme, which takes seriously the meaning of finitude, flesh and history. The incarnational self-donation, through which humanity is embraced from within, involved an incomprehensible self-emptying (cf. Phil 2:6-8). In giving himself to us in this intrinsic manner the divine Logos discounts his divinity and humbles himself that he might become truly one of us. Jesus of Nazareth is not a disguise used by God, not a human outer garment covering the divinity, not something foreign to what we are.