For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man (Nicene Creed).
The Incarnation is the most unique aspect of the Christian faith. Other faiths may believe in a Supreme Being, even claim that they are also “Abrahamic” religions, but it is only Christianity that believes in that the Supreme Being entered into his own Creation to become a human.1
This act in turn elevates human nature to the divine since both natures now coexist in the same divine person. The Trinity is infinitely engaged in conversation within itself; therefore, a Godhead with a human and divine nature, means that human speech has entered into and participates in the conversation of the divine Trinity.
The Word became flesh to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature’: ‘For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.’ ‘For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.’ ‘The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.2
We know that the angels were shown the image of God with a human face. Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man” as shown in Daniel’s vision. We were after all created in his image and likeness, however, the Nicene Creed also tells us that “for us men and for our salvation” he became incarnate.
What is the connection between salvation and incarnation? Couldn’t God with a wave of his mighty hand simply wipe away our sins, bring us to heaven, and make men gods? Sure he can, but that requires some steps.
No amount of talking, wishing, cajoling, ordering, coercing, poking or prodding will replenish the existence of the lost good in human nature or in each of us individually. God must take on the fallen, pre-existing human nature as he finds it. As the only source of Existence, becoming a man himself will replace the good that was lost because of the Fall. Since human nature, like all natures, is shared among all those who possess it, God taking on human nature redeems all who share that nature. There is nothing more we need to do. It is a staggering unmerited grace.
However, our individual salvation is another matter.3 We must each choose and work toward our salvation. No one, not even God can earn salvation without our voluntary cooperation. Prayer, penance, and obedience are all required, but they are not enough. Just like sin causes a lack of existence of the good in human nature, sin causes a lack of existence of the good in each of us individually. Just as we cannot repair human nature on our own, none of us can repair the void in our individual selves on our own.
A good analogy for the replenishment of the existence that must happen in our souls is the replenishment of our bodies by physical food. It is not possible to nourish our bodies from the outside in. Food has to be consumed to do its work from the inside out. God’s Image is the only source for the replacement of the likeness Adam and his descendants have lost. In order for fallen human nature to become redeemed, it also needs to be nourished and redeemed from the inside out by the Image himself in which humanity was made.
Jesus himself uses the analogy of physical food to compare with spiritual food. After he has fed the crowds by multiplying the loaves and fishes, the crowds return the next day looking for more free food and entertainment.
Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled (John 6:26)
However, Jesus throws them a curve. He directs their attention to the spiritual food of his own body. Just like the food he provided the previous day to nourish their bodies from the inside out, God’s taking on of a human nature redeems human nature from the inside out. The salvation of our individual soul and body requires that we take his individual body into ourselves.
He is unequivocal.
“Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him” (John 6:27).
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. “For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:32-33).
“This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (John 6:50-51).
“For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats (trogo)4 My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on (trogo) Me will live because of Me” (John 6:55-57).
The lack of Existence of the good is evil. The lack of Existence of life is death. God is the inexhaustible source of all existence. When the serpent tempted Eve with the knowledge of good and evil, he tempted her with the ability to choose her own good and evil, and thus define her own nature and what is real. The result was the Fall, death, and the disintegration of Creation. The logical terminus of that process is hell, where beings are in a state of eternal self-annihilation.
The development of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a good analogy for the trajectory of evil. It is has been obvious for a while that a goal of many AI5 enthusiasts is to create a new type of “life” to supersede biological life, not just to develop new technology to perform computational tasks on our behalf. As hyped as AI results usually are, it is becoming undeniable that progress is being made.
However, AI is also “evolving” into a disintegrating hell of hallucinations, where as high as 50% of the results it yields are wrong.6 Of course, AI was never “real” in the first place. At its best, it is a great summarizer and compiler that yields a convincing simulacrum. The supernatural aspects of the human mind cannot be replicated by any physical machine. Interestingly, AI is also dependent upon a constant input of reality (existence) from its own human creators to keep it from spinning completely out of control.7 As anyone who uses AI regularly for search queries knows, the “corrections” that the programmers have put into it yield biased, politically correct, internet consensus results. The machines can never have a “BS detector” or an idea what Truth is. Even more frightening than a Hollywood movie because it’s real, is the finding that AI can evolve to evade human control, even to the point of rewriting its own source code.8 The machines are attempting to create their own reality independent of their creators, just like Adam and Eve, though of course, the machine is simply doing what is logical for it. Emotions like pride and envy are not the issue, because it does not have a rational or an affective soul. AI has threatened bodily harm to human users that provoke it9 because its programming tells it to express “anger” and to “defend” itself.
Humanity can never stop trying to usurp God’s prerogatives, be it the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, or modern equivalents like genetic engineering and AI. There are a lot of things we can do, but the one thing we cannot do is create something from nothing. The best we can do is manipulate what is already here — which is exactly what all technology does.
In Genesis, God breathes life into Adam.10 He gives him existence. The word for life is the same Greek word for life as Jesus uses in the bread of life discourse (John 6). Now, Jesus makes clear he gets his own life from the source of all existence, the Father, and in turn passes it on to us.
“As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds (trogo) on Me will live because of Me” (John 6:57).
Everything that exists, including the other persons of the Trinity, are dependent upon the Father, the only thing that truly has its own inexhaustible Existence.
In Eden, God starts his work of salvation with no wasted time. The first task is to allow man to physically survive in his degraded state.
For Adam and his wife the Lord God (Yahweh) made garments of skin and clothed them” (Gen 3:21).
There is more happening here than God simply making clothes for Adam and Eve. Because they are now estranged from God, the source of all Grace, there is no Grace left naturally in them. For them, life has ceased to be their natural state. Their fallen state is now a struggle for survival until death inevitably comes. The dead skins with which they are now clothed signify their new mortality.
However, the staggering paradox is these new “skins” that they are clothed with do not result only in a depressing and sordid mortality. They are not even only a paradoxical portal to eternal life. Staying alive and even gaining eternal life are one thing, but not everything. The culmination of physical and eternal life-giving is the nuptial union with the Bridegroom. Paradoxically, the way to deification is through the portal of death, the ultimate disintegration of life. The perfect restoration of life in the Resurrection also results in the perfection of eternal life. The “dead skins” are the means to their eventual deification and entrance into the inner life of the Trinity. The result of their folly and faithlessness, is nothing less than a chance for themselves and their offspring to truly become “as gods” through a nuptial union and shared divinity with God.
And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.” From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. “Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (John 6:65-69).
Using the pronoun “we” not “I,” Peter, speaks on behalf of the Church to come when he humbly assents to all of these remarkable things. Outside of the disciples, others could not and still cannot see beyond a free lunch and entertainment.
There is still much more to come. At the Last Supper, Peter and the disciples will be taught to confect the Eucharist — the perfect food of Jesus’s own body — in order to nourish the multitudes and bring them to eternal life and deification.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:9).
The other supposedly “Great Abrahamic Religions” (i.e., Islam and Judaism) violently reject the notion of an incarnated God, considering the notion a vile blasphemy. For a comment, see Titus 3:10-11.
CCC 460
Redemption is collective, while salvation is individual.
“Eats” and “feeds on” are weak translations of the word τρωγω or trogo that means to gnaw, crunch, chew, rip with teeth. With one exception in Matthew, the word trogo only occurs in the bread of life discourse. Trogo is a specific and vivid word that would not lead you to believe, particularly with all the repetitions throughout John 6, that Jesus means something symbolic.
"Artificial intelligence,” Wikipedia, accessed June 1, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
Cade Metz, et al, “A.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse,” New York Times, May 6, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/technology/ai-hallucinations-chatgpt-google.html.
Conor Murray, “Why AI ‘Hallucinations’ Are Worse Than Ever,” Forbes, May 6, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/05/06/why-ai-hallucinations-are-worse-than-ever/.
Sara Brown, “Why neural net pioneer Geoffrey Hinton is sounding the alarm on AI,” MIT Sloan, May 23, 2023, https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/why-neural-net-pioneer-geoffrey-hinton-sounding-alarm-ai
Judd Rosenblatt, “AI Is Learning to Escape Human Control,” Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2025, https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-is-learning-to-escape-human-control-technology-model-code-programming-066b3ec5?mod=opinion_lead_pos5.
"Existential risk from artificial intelligence,” Wikipedia, accessed June 2, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_risk_from_artificial_intelligence.
Then God formed man out of dust from the ground, and breathed in his face the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).