The historical-salvational dimension of the kerygma on the human nature of Christ in the Letters of St. John

Abstract

In the face of contemporary threats of gnosis and Docetism, one ought to attentively take into account the problem of Christ's human nature which is presented in St. John's writings. Christ's human nature possesses a key significance in the history of salvation. Without the Incarnation there would not be salvation. A few other matters are linked to this subject. Most of all, the very fact of Christ's human nature - its authenticity and historicity. It is only on the base of the historicity of the incarnation that further considerations may be carried out which show the historical-saving dimension of the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth. In St. John's Letters, the Body of the Son of God did not possess its purely physical dimension. "The body is a mystery of mediality between the material world and the heavenly Father. The Incarnation is, paradoxically, the beginning of the work of salvation of the created world, in a way its adoration and the New Divine Love for the fallen human being. It is as though all God's gifts from heaven to earth were given at once. In plain words, in the person of the Son, the heavenly Father gives Himself to each human being as well as to the whole world". After a discerning reading of St. John's Letters, the corporality of Christ, His human nature, is thus comprehended as a neuralgic point in the whole of the history of salvation.