Catholic Position
¶795 Christ and his Church thus together make up the “whole Christ”
(Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ. The saints are acutely
aware of this unity:
Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only
Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren,
God’s grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ.
For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the
whole man…. The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members.
But what does “head and members” mean? Christ and the Church.
Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he has taken to himself.
Head and members form as it were one and the same mystical person.
A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy
doctors and the good sense of the believer: “About Jesus Christ and the
Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t
complicate the matter.”
¶460 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.”
Scripture Says
Matthew 24:5, 23
5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.
Luke 21:8
8 And he said, Take heed that ye be not deceived: for many shall
come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near: go ye
not therefore after them.
Isaiah 46:9
9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
Commentary
- Not satisfied to make Mary, popes, wafers, saints, statues etc.
equal with God, the Catechism goes on to make every Catholic
communicant to be God. - Was not the serpent’s temptation of Eve based upon her desire to be God?