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{"id":1249,"date":"2006-12-04T10:06:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T10:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/orthodixie\/2006\/12\/whats-really-happening-in-the-nativity.html"},"modified":"2006-12-04T10:06:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-04T10:06:00","slug":"whats-really-happening-in-the-nativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/orthodixie\/2006\/12\/whats-really-happening-in-the-nativity.html","title":{"rendered":"What’s Really Happening in the Nativity?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a>
C<\/span>hrist was like a man \u201cwho perceived a weak person carried away by a raging current. He knows that he himself will be sucked up by the whirlpool, wounded and lacerated by the rocks, swept away by the water. But pity for this man in danger stimulates him. He does not hesitate to throw himself into the current.\u201d He enters, therefore, without reservations into the flow of duration. But in order to save the one who is drowning, he must \u201cjump\u201d from on high, that is to say, he must bring us the integrity of our own nature. It is very much a necessity that he not be born of a mortal man who is subject to the \u201cpassions\u201d but that he bring us that nature that is antecedent to the \u201cpassions\u201d (which, indeed, as we know, are linked in a mysterious way to sin). It is equally necessary that Mary should be a virgin, so that in this pure relationship the prodigy of the burning bush might be fulfilled: unity without blemish. It is a \u201cnew birth\u201d, a \u201cnew order of nature\u201d, finally a \u201cnew creation\u201d, the \u201cbeginning of the world\u201d. It is, in the final analysis, the \u201cday when the true man is created \u2026 he who is in the image and likeness of God\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Taken from Presence and Thought \u2013 An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa<\/em><\/strong> by Hans Urs von Balthasar, (pp.135-136).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"