- Midhun J Francis Kochukallanvila, SJ
Introduction
The Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. has often been remembered for its bold affirmation on defining the divinity of the Son, as “consubstantial with the Father” (homoousios), “begotten, not created,” and “true God from true God.” The Council anathematised those who claimed, “There was a time when he was not.” But we forget that it was not divinity that scandalised the world. It was the flesh in which the world had “a great difficulty in admitting the full humanity of Christ,” including his experiences of fatigue, sadness, abandonment, and even anger, and his limited human knowledge.
The Christological Affirmation
Arius’s difficulty, for instance, extended to understanding how Christ’s divinity could be compatible with his suffering ‘the Passion and Death’. Early heresies like Gnosticism trivialised the realism of the Incarnation through Docetism, resisting the idea that God could “enter history, to unite himself with humanity to the very end, even to the point of becoming truly human and dying.” This affirmation of the early Church on the humanity of Jesus means Christ “assumed perfect human nature, soul and body and mind, and all whatever is human except sin.” Therefore, the eternal Logos entered history through the womb of a vulnerable human, crying in a manger, and bleeding on a cross. The Nicene Creed affirms both: God from God and became truly human. This assumption of flesh (sarx) is a chosen medium of divine self-annihilation-for-communion. As we mark 1700 years of the Council of Nicaea, it is time to let the humanity of Christ speak—not as theological decorum, but as theological revolution of “kenosis of the Incarnation” to reinforce the “fraternity of all human beings” and their calling to divine filiation, which enables us to be away from power to humility.
The Council of Nicaea gave us the grammar of divinity. But the grammar of flesh—of Christ’s radical humanity—remains the unfinished revolution of Christianity. On this 1700th anniversary, let us not merely celebrate doctrinal clarity but recover the Incarnation as event, scandal, and mission. We need a fleshly Catholicity. A Church that sees Christ not only in the Eucharist but in the street. A theology that does not defend God’s transcendence but proclaims God’s immanence in suffering flesh. A Christology not of exclusion but encounter. For in the end, the Creed is not a cage but a door. And through that door walks not a ghostly saviour but a man of Nazareth, who is also the face of the living God.
The Nicene faith affirms that God took on flesh, which is not sanitised or abstract flesh, but it is the same flesh that enjoys giving and receiving love (Jn 13:23; Jn 15:9-13) and hopes for peace (Lk 19:41-42), and suffers (Matt 26:37-38; Lk 22:44), ages (Lk 2:52), bleeds (Jn 19:34), has hunger (Matt 4:2), and hopes in future (Jn 14:2-3). Therefore, Christ’s humanity was real and complete, fully embracing the horror that suffering and death represented for His human nature—echoed today in the suffering of Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Nigeria, Manipur, and Myanmar. The Creator becomes creature, divinity hunger, thirst, bleeds, suffers and dies. Yet even in the shadow of death, His gaze never turned away from hope (Lk 23:46), love (Jn 19:26-27), peace (Jn 20:19), compassion (Lk 23:34), and the promise of resurrection (Lk 23:43).
In embracing our full humanity, Jesus did not elevate any religion but humanity. He abolished the false hierarchies that separate “divine” from “profane,” the clean from the impure, the saved from the damned. Henceforth, the Creator entered creation not as a sojourner, but as creature – finite, vulnerable, contingent. He is not a detached observer, but as one who emptied Himself and became part of humanity, He is not a pilgrim from afar, but as Emmanuel—God-with-us in flesh, He is not a divine apparition, but as fully human, fully present, therefore God became man is not theophany, but Incarnation. In this, Jesus becomes not merely the founder of a religion but the human face of the Creator for human beings, who are also semper major. Therefore, “The Son, semper major, truly becomes a minor.”
The Sanctification of the Human and Material World
By assuming human flesh, Christ forever sanctified human existence – body, soul, emotions, relationships, and material reality. Christ took up our humanity, not to destroy the humanity, but to heal it towards the original grace as Image and likeness of God, as St. Athanasius of Alexandria says, “God has become human so that human may become God.” Therefore, the mission of the Church is to see the human face of Jesus in every human person, irrespective of caste, race, culture and Creed or religion. The Church cannot close its eyes towards the vulnerable. After all, it is the mission God has undertaken through the mystery of Incarnation and given to her as she travels towards the eschatological reality of the new heaven and earth (Rev 21:1) because “the kingdom of God has come near.”
As we mark 1700 years of the Council of Nicaea, it is time to let the humanity of Christ speak—not as theological decorum, but as theological revolution of “kenosis of the Incarnation” to reinforce the “fraternity of all human beings” and their calling to divine filiation, which enables us to be away from power to humility.
The Nicaean Creed details his human birth, i.e., “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary”, his suffering, death, and bodily resurrection. There is nothing truly human that is foreign to God; all is redeemable and capable of bearing grace. It shatters dualistic views that denigrate the material or bodily. If Christ became fully human, then the human person, created in God’s image and likeness and redeemed by Christ, becomes a privileged locus for encountering God. Christ reveals the profound truth about humanity.
A Mission of Encounter and Service
The homoousios mandates a revolution in discipleship: if God is here, in the flesh, then “piety detached from solidarity is heresy.” This theological foundation underpins the vision and mission of saints like Mother Teresa of Calcutta. For her, the poor, the oppressed, the excluded are not theological concepts—they are the living icons of the God who became expendable in each human person. Her radical service to the “poorest of the poor” was not merely humanitarian social work; it was a Eucharistic encounter. She saw, loved, and served the dying, the outcast, the abandoned – irrespective of their religion, caste, or Creed – as “Christ in distressing disguise.” She recognised that the humanity Christ assumed was not abstract, but the humanity of every suffering, marginalised, or joyful individual.
The boundaries of religion or culture do not limit the image of God imprinted on every person or Christ’s identification with “the least of these” (Mt 25:40). Therefore, the Church cannot distance itself from any people. A Church that promotes piety but is detached from solidarity with humanity in its need gravely misrepresents the Gospel and fails in its mission of charity. Likewise, any Christian who does not recognise and serve Jesus in their neighbour—regardless of religion, caste, race, tribe, or culture—commits a grave sin and lives in contradiction to the very essence of the faith.
Universality and Dialogue
Incarnation is a universal calling in a particular context and of a culture. When God’s essence is poured into a specific Jewish body under Roman occupation, all cultural and religious monopolies on truth implode. Nicaea’s use of Greek philosophy (homoousios) alongside Hebrew Scripture reveals: Revelation cannot be owned. In India’s rich tapestry of diversity, Nicaea’s message is particularly potent in India, a country that speaks of “Unity in Diversity.” Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, is not the property of one culture, neither East of Syrian, Greek or Antiochean nor West of Roman, nor is the property of any particular religion, but for the entire humanity. He is the “Saviour of all human beings of all times.” The universality of his saving humanity transcends the boundaries of Christianity towards Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, or any other tradition. He stands as the revelation of God’s love for every human person.
The Mission: Not Conquest, but Communion
This vocation to be missionary, irrespective of religion and culture, offers the path to the Father through his shared humanity as a mission for the Church. The mission is not to impose a foreign culture, such as Western or Eastern, in any context, but to reveal the God who has already embraced humanity in Christ, a truth potentially resonant within the deepest longings of every human heart and reflected in fragments (Semina Verbi) within various cultural traditions in each context. The scandal of a universal God in a particular man forces the Church into humble encounter with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, indigenous wisdom or any other religions, and humanist struggles for dignity.
A Church that promotes piety but is detached from solidarity with humanity in its need gravely misrepresents the Gospel and fails in its mission of charity.
Therefore, the mission flowing from Nicaea’s celebration is twofold, which is deeply rooted in Christ’s humanity. The first is to announce that God, in boundless love, entered fully into the human condition – with its joys, sorrows, limitations, and death to transform humanity from within. He is not a distant deity, but Emmanuel, “God-with-us” in the flesh. The second is to witness that this same God is Creator and Father of all, and through Christ, offers filiation to every person. This mission involves concrete service: “To proclaim means here ‘to give food’, ‘to give drink’, ‘to welcome’, ‘to clothe’ and ‘to go and visit’… to radiate the humble glory of faith, hope and charity.” It means “entering into a relationship” with the marginalised, recognising them as teachers who understand the depths of Christ’s kenotic love.
Conclusion
The Council of Nicaea gave us the grammar of divinity. But the grammar of flesh—of Christ’s radical humanity—remains the unfinished revolution of Christianity. On this 1700th anniversary, let us not merely celebrate doctrinal clarity but recover the Incarnation as event, scandal, and mission. We need a fleshly Catholicity. A Church that sees Christ not only in the Eucharist but in the street. A theology that does not defend God’s transcendence but proclaims God’s immanence in suffering flesh. A Christology not of exclusion but encounter. For in the end, the Creed is not a cage but a door. And through that door walks not a ghostly saviour but a man of Nazareth, who is also the face of the living God.
