Hey folks! Our current unit in the kids curriculum is about the Apostle's Creed. We'll be in this unit until the beginning of Advent!
The Apostles Creed forms one of the three main catechetical tools of the Church from its earliest days. For hundreds of years, persons were taught the faith through the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. This Fall we’ll be walking through the articles of the Creed to get our kids oriented to the “faith once for all delivered to the saints”!
Traditionally, the Church has used the Apostle’s Creed as the bedrock of what ought to be believed about God, the story the Bible tells and our future hope.
The Gospel accounts of the life and ministry of Christ are at pains to present to the attentive reader that Jesus is no ordinary human being. He is the Christ—the long-awaited and anointed deliverer of the people of God—but not the human Christ many expected.
He is the divine Son of God: “God of God, light of light, very God of very God” as the Church would eventually put it. He is, as we pointed out last week, the personal union of divinity and humanity. This is theologically heavy phrase, so lets take it apart piece by piece.
Personal union:
Jesus is a person. One person, not two. The Greek word for this, which the Church adopted in its quest to describe what happened between 1-33 (or so) AD, is hypostasis. In the hands of the Church it means (or came to mean…it’s a long story) what we think of now when we think of a “person”: a unique, unrepeatable entity with thoughts, feelings, etc. This is how Jesus is presented in the Gospels. He’s not two persons—one divine, one human—he’s one person, acting as one person, and so on.
Nevertheless, he is not a normal person.
He’s divine, and fully so (see John:14:6-11; John 8:56-59; Col. 1:15-20).
But he is also human, and fully so:
he was born of a human woman (humans can’t give birth to non-humans), he grew, was a part of the created order, and died (defeating death’s final grip on humanity in his resurrection).
Notably, a hypostasis—a person—normally has only one nature (e.g., a human person). But it is clear in the Gospels that Jesus has two: one divine, one human.
This personal union (or "hypostatic union" as you might read in a theology book) of divinity and humanity is demonstrable throughout his life, but the Creed highlights how it is present from the very beginning: he was conceived by the Holy Spirit (and then born of the Virgin Mary).
The Incarnation, as the union of divinity and humanity, is (among other things) the basis of Christian salvation: it makes all the saving “acts” of Jesus throughout his life, death and resurrection meaningful and applicable to other human persons. It is the first move in God’s “perfection” of human nature and his elevation of humanity into a participation in divinity.
In the conception of the Second Person of the Trinity (Jesus) by the Holy Spirit in the human person of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we see where the story is going: the Ascension of Jesus, the God-Man, into heaven, where we will one day join as brothers/sisters, and co-heirs of God’s Kingdom.
Scripture to consider:
John 3:1-16
Mark 9:14-27
Luke 1:26-38
Questions for your kids
Why do you think it's important to think of Jesus as both God and man?
What's good about Jesus being God?
Do you think Jesus understands what it's like to be you? (hint: yes!)
Holy Imagination
Learning the faith isn't just about memorizing facts. It's about seeing the world as it really is: "charged with the grandeur of God."
It's pretty hard to explain something like the unity of divinity and humanity affected by the incarnation of God in Christ to your kids...or anybody for that matter (it took a few hundred years and councils to hammer out the best language for what we mean!).
Since something like "the hypostatic union of divine and human natures" isn't likely to land, try this this week: make some salt water. Talk about how the water and the salt become one--its one glass of water--but the salt and water are still distinguishable: you can taste the salt and the water, they're together but still distinct!
Peace,
Danny+