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Joined: Aug 2005
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The Son of God became "man," and not "a man."

And yet, when Christ stood before Pilate, a man and a God in fact stood before him. And Pilate spoke truly when he said, "Ecce homo", which is correctly translated, "Behold the Man."

Although some, in a false spirit of equality, may be tempted to translate the Creed, "for us humans...became human," this seems to be too abstract and far less incarnational--ie, Christ had real flesh and real bones--indeed he was a truly a man. And again, earlier in the Creed the believer professes his belief in the "Son of God." Man cannot ignore, therefore, that the Word became flesh as a male, as the son of Mary and the Son of God. He was a man and yet in Him he encompasses all mankind, just like the first man, from whom all mankind, including Eve, came forth.

It certainly cannot be said that the Fathers who drafted the Creed thought of Christ as if in some scifi movie observing a strange looking creature and exclaiming, "Look, it's human!" No doubt what is clear is that Christ was a real man, "the Son of Man," not the "Son of Human". As Liturgicam Authenticam reminds us,

Quote
When the original text, for example, employs a single term in expressing the interplay between the individual and the universality and unity of the human family or community (such as the Hebrew word �adam, the Greek anthropos, or the Latin homo), this property of the language of the original text should be maintained in the translation.

The word, "human," does not convey the same interplay between the individual and the universal, because it refers too abstractly to the universal without the concrete meaning conveyed by the term "man".


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Originally Posted by ajk
Asked another way: We say in the Creed that Jesus is ομοούσιον τώ Πατρί, homoousion tō Father; is it also correct to say Jesus is homoousion tō Adam or homoousion tō Man?

In reading another current thread related to this one, I referred back here and realized I neglected (forgot) to post the source that I had in mind but couldn't place. The language I recalled in part is found in the Symbol of Chalcedon, link [ccel.org]. Striking, in particular, is the parallel phrasing using homoousios (but see the interpretation in the note which, however, is not part of the text of the Symbol itself):
Quote
...consubstantial [coessential]{Ὁμοούσιος} with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial {Ὁμοούσιος} with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood;...


As the new thread shows ( link ) there can still be questions about what is conveyed in the English by "human being".

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