Heresy as a Teaching Moment

Bright young ladies, both excellent students at their respective excellent schools, my seventh grade catechism students pay attention, ask good questions, and remember interesting little facts like “Hildegard of Bingen was a twelfth century mystic and writer.” But even I was surprised when they told me they completely understand the Incarnation.

Their textbook breaks the Apostles’ Creed into its twelve statements of faith. We got all the way to number seven, “There are two natures in Jesus: divine and human,” when one of my precocious pupils interrupted. “I totally get it,” she explained. “It’s easy.” I was skeptical, especially as point number eight notes that the Incarnation is a mystery. I asked her to explain.

She drew me a Venn diagram. The outermost circle represented divine nature and inside it she placed three circles to represent the three persons of the Trinity. She inscribed “human nature” inside the second person. “Manichean!” I thundered, slamming my fist on the table. “Let her be expelled who has the mad idea that the servant-form Christ took from us is of a heavenly or some other kind of being!”

Not really. But I did note that in her illustration, the “human” nature of Christ was in fact “divine nature.” And as the Manicheans noticed, if the “human” nature is really divine, what looked like a human nature in the gospel accounts of Jesus was just an appearance. Jesus walking, eating, weeping—it would all be just an illusion. This leaves a Manichean, St. Thomas notes, in a tough spot. For the gospel doesn’t say that Jesus appeared to walk, eat, or weep; it says he did those things. And if Scripture errs on this matter, how can we trust it on any other matter?