Why Did God Become a Human Being?
Fr. Brian Carpenter
Originally posted on 12/20/2009

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas this week, it seems appropriate to reflect on the incarnation of God. The Church has a long tradition of reflecting on the incarnation – one that cannot possibly be fully explored in a simple website article. As such, this article is meant to simply give an introduction to the importance of the incarnation, and its implication for Christians.

Perhaps the most famous reflection on the incarnation is that of St. Anselm in his work Curs Deus Homo (Why God Became Man). In this work St. Anselm asks the question why did God become a human being? The saint concludes that God did not become human out of necessity, but out of fittingness. That is to say, God did not have to become a human being. God is totally free to do as He pleases. Thus, when God acts, it is out of His own free will, and not out of some necessity. No creature (not even the devil) can force God into action. God is the sole motivation for any of His actions.

Yet there is a fittingness to God becoming a human being. It simply makes sense. St. Anselm notes that when God freely created human beings, He created them to be in relationship with Himself. Yet, God also gave them free will. When human beings sinned by disobeying God, they offended the Divine honor. While in our modern world honor is rarely respected (think of the number of schools that have honor codes, and the number of students who are all too willing to break these codes to get a few extra points on a test), but the Divine honor cannot be so easily scoffed. In offending the Divine honor, humanity created a type of debt. Under normal circumstances when a person offends another person, the offending party can make amends. But since the honor that was offended was God's honor, and since God's honor is infinite, human beings were left in a conundrum. The honor that they had offended is infinite. But since human beings are finite creatures, they could not possibly restore the divine honor.

Furthermore, God's justice is infinite. And because of this, it would seem that God must punish humanity if it could not properly restore what it had offended. Yet at the same time, God also created human beings to be in relationship with Himself. Despite humanity's sin, God still wished human beings to reach their fulfillment by entering into life with Him. In order to do this in a way that was fitting both with the nature of God and the nature of human beings, God opted to become a human being in the person of Jesus Christ.

In doing this, Jesus was fully God, and therefore was fully infinite. Yet, He was also fully a human being. This meant that there was now a human being who was infinite. As such, this infinite human being could do what finite human beings could not, namely restore the infinite honor that had been offended.

While this is a cursory glance at St. Anselm's reflection on why God became man, what comes to life from this argument is that the incarnation is truly about our salvation. It is about a God who is infinite in His love, entering into human history by becoming a human being. He does this not to punish or manipulate humanity, but to redeem humanity. In this way, God reveals to us that He is completely different from the pagan gods. These gods are always manipulating humanity. And when they appear, humanity is in trouble. But the one true God is one who is not in competition with is creation. He does not manipulate His creation for His own benefit. Rather, when Gd acts it is for the benefit of humanity. In the incarnation, God is revealed as a God who wants nothing more than to give His creation every possible attempt to achieve it proper end (i.e. the goal for which He created them – namely union with Him).

The incarnation reveals that God's only motivation for becoming a human being is love - a love that is so strong that He wants to bring salvation to a creation that turned against him. Thus, the answer the question "Why did God become man?" is nothing other than love. It was not based on necessity. God could have chosen to any number of ways to redeem humanity (or even to not redeem humanity at all), as His hands are not tied by human actions. But by becoming a human being He was able to show the extent of His love for humanity in a manner that human beings could understand.

So why did God become man? Perhaps the best expression of this is given by the evangelist John, God became a human being because He "so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life." (John 3:16).