A Christmas Reflection
Aristotle famously argued that it is impossible for human beings to be friends with God, on account of the vast inequality between God and us. He is so utterly transcendent, so utterly beyond our grasp, that we cannot possibly enter into a relationship with him¹.
And yet, if Christianity is true, then Aristotle was monumentally wrong. For at the core of the Christian claim — namely, the Incarnation — is the contention that God, the ground of all existence, the ultimate source of all that is good, true, and beautiful, willingly entered into a world full of death, suffering, despair, poverty and unrequited love, to make himself known to us as one of us. The road to divine friendship has been paved in this unfathomable act of self-giving love.
If Christianity is true, then God has come down to us that we may know a love surpassing all understanding — that we may know that he is not indifferent to the sufferings of our humanity, having made his dwelling among us². Surely this is a God worthy of our worship.
You owe it to yourself to consider the possibility that, against Aristotle, the way to divine friendship is well within your reach.
Merry Christmas.
1. God exists
2. God cares for us and loves us³
3. If God cares for us and loves us, then God desires friendship with us⁴
4. But there can be no friendship between members that are radically unequal in status and nature (Aristotle)
5. So, if God desires friendship with us, the radical inequality between God and man must be overcome
6. There is one historical instance in which the radical inequality between God and man was overcome — the Incarnation
7. Hence, friendship between God and man is made possible through the Incarnation
[1]: See Nichomachean Ethics, Book 8, Chapter 7.
[2]: True love demands intimacy and solidarity with the beloved. Through the Incarnation God comes to share in our human predicament — the joys and sorrows of human experience.
[3]: Surely we have some non-theological reasons to think God cares for us and loves us. We live in a cosmos that has been finely structured to permit life such as ours. He wills the good of our existence and sustains the causality of our actions from moment to moment. He bestows us with consciousness, with which we can pursue relationships, add value to the world, perceive its rapturous beauty; and so on.
[4]: Premise 3 seems plausible in light of the antecedent. One can certainly love and care for non-rational beings without desiring friendship with them, but friendship just seems like the sort of thing one desires in the case of loving and caring for rational beings.
