The Revolutionary Christian Answer — Christ as the Model of Man Fully Alive

Mar 31
3 min read

From the Essay, “To Be a Man Fully Alive”

Gloria Dei Vivens Homo

By Fr. Bruce Wren

PART 2

The Revolutionary Christian Answer — Christ as the Model of Man Fully Alive

But there is also a second way of answering our question, “What is man fully alive?” and that way comes from Christ. The Christian answer is that Christ is the model of the man fully alive. But reflecting on the life of Christ, we see that the antique values seem to vanish; all that grandeur is gone. Jesus certainly was not great as a soldier or general—though the Jews thought the Messiah would be so. He didn’t write at all, or only once, and in the sand. He didn’t propose a new philosophy, nor did he seek to be a king or political leader. For Jesus, even his friends and apostles seem to be just ordinary people, the “small fry.” And even considering Jesus’ immense historical influence, seen from a natural point of view, Jesus was a failure. His teachings don’t take root (not even with the apostles, who couldn’t understand him); his friends and the people who once admired him abandon him except for maybe three or four (Mary, John, and a few women); he ends his life not in a great victory or even a glorious death, like Turnus, but in court, and he loses the case! Can you imagine what we would think of a Napoleon who ends his life in a court where some second-rate judge sentences him for things he didn’t even do? He would be ridiculous. No, Napoleon lost at Waterloo, but what a grandiose loss that was! But Jesus did end his public life in a petty, secret court, and even more, after it, he was subjected to the most humiliating abuse: being spat upon, having an uneducated soldier play gruesome pranks on him, and being tortured to death.

So what is the Christian answer to “What does a man fully alive look like?” The answer is revolutionary, to say the least. If there ever was a revolution in the values of mankind, this was it. We noted that the Christian answer is that the man who is fully alive looks like Christ, and Christ was fundamentally one who loves. That is what the entire New Testament tells us repeatedly. And not only the one who loves, but the humble one. The only times Jesus sets himself up as an object of imitation for his apostles are when he proposes himself as the example of love (or charity) and the paragon of humility. Among many other passages that attest to this, here are two classic examples: Jesus as the one who loves and that we must imitate: John 15:12 “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you”; and Jesus as the humble one, and that we must imitate: Matthew 11:29 “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.”

Whatever one might say about the ideal man, fully alive, in the pre-Christian world, or in the secular world that ignores Christ, and this includes both literary and historical figures, what is clear is that charity and humility were not their principal characteristics; in fact, usually they were not present at all. Achilles, the archetypal Greek hero, did show some mercy or compassion at the end of the Iliad (after slaughtering hundreds); Aeneas, the archetypal Roman hero, was given the appellation “pius,” pious, for his respect for his family, country, and duty, but in neither do we see selfless love or humility as an ideal. The same goes for figures like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, or even our contemporary political leaders. For the Christian and the Christian world, the man fully alive is he who most follows the spirit of Christ, and the spirit of Christ is charity and humility. As Jesus said in the Gospel of St. Matthew 20:26–28: “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” That is Christian greatness.

(End of Part 2. In the final post: resolving the paradox through Christian magnanimity.)