The Divinity of Jesus Christ and the sacredness of Christmas are condemned by some. The past Christmas season brought up this debate again.
The Divinity of Jesus is challenged by some. They will only accept that there is only One God and find as blasphemous and heresy, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
With our limited minds, and looking at things around us in this mortal life, the Holy Trinity is possible. The Holy Trinity says there are Three Persons in One God and some are saying “No, that is not possible!” It means such people are placing limitations on God. To them God is limited to what He can do and be.
In this mortal life, there are more than one personality in every human. For example, let us take a man called Kwabena. He is a husband, a father and an engineer. When he is with his wife, he performs the duties of a husband; when he is with his sons and daughters, he performs his fatherly duties. When he is at work, he is an engineer and not acknowledged as a husband or a father but a colleague at work.
Kwabena is Kwabena the husband, Kwabena the father and Kwabena the engineer. If this is possible with humans, how can it be impossible with God?
In the creation story, at one point God said, in Genesis 1:26. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Here, there is proof of more than One Personality of God at work during creation. John 1: 1-3, 14 reveals who was with God during creation. He was the Word and He was God.
God creates, and when He creates, He creates through Jesus, the Word, andby the power of the Holy Spirit. So, whatever God does, all His Three Personalities are involved. Jesus Christ made this known in Matthew 28:18-19 when He spoke about the involvement of the Trinity in cleansing of sins through baptism. Only God can cleanse sins.
The emphasis in Matthew 28, is on ALL POWER IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH. Meaning Jesus has the same power, God the Father has, so Jesus is God.
God has no peer and has No Name. Names are necessary for identification; God is only God because that is what He is and nothing else. Because the Second Person of the Godhead had to come and live among men, He needed an identity and took the Name, Jesus Christ.
When Moses asked God, His Name, should people enquire which God sent him, God only replied, “I AM who AM…. tell the Israelites I AM sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). And Jesus said “Before Abraham was born, I AM.” Jesus and God are One (John 10:30) and Jesus was acknowledged as God by Isaiah, Elizabeth and Thomas (Isaiah 9:6, Luke 1:43 and John 20:28). God said in Isaiah 44:6, that “I am the First and I am the Last…,” and Jesus also said in Rev. 1:8, that “I am the Alpha (First) and I am the Omega (Last).”
We believe in One God in Three Persons. And no one can take away our faith and beliefin the Holy Trinity.
Christmas is always attacked by unbelievers, as a pagan celebration of the sun god. In brief, before Christianity became the official religion in Europe, peoples celebrated the sun god during the winter when the days start getting longer, that is around December 21.
After they were converted, they still continued to celebrate this feast, just like a Christian from Bredi will not miss Krufie festival. The Church fathers decided to put the celebration of the birth of the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4), God who is Sun and Shield (Psalm 84:11) and the Light of the World (John 8:12) on December 25 and this changed the peoples’ attitude from celebrating the sun god to celebrating Jesus at Christmas.
The question is, if a pagan is converted to Christianity, is he still a pagan? If an event or place is consecrated to Christ and made holy, should it still be considered pagan?
People who go condemning Christmas as a pagan festival, must remember to talk about the seven days of the week and eight months of the year which are in honour of pagan gods, a pagan festival and two Roman emperors. That is what they must consider because the names of the days and months which honourdeities are still being celebrated but these people condemn Christmas, as paganic.
Sunday, is in honour of the sun god; Monday, the moon god. Here the French will say Lundi from luna, the Latin for moon; Tuesday for Tyr, the Nordic god of war; Wednesday, the Nordic god, Odin or Woden; Thursday, for Thor the god of thunder; Friday, for Frigg, Freya or Venus the goddess of love and Saturday for Saturn the god of time.
Now with the months, January (Janus, god of the gateway); February (festival of purification); March (Mars, god of war); April (Aprilis or Venus, goddess of love) May (Maia, goddess of spring and fertility); June (Juno, a Roman goddess). July and August for Julius and Augustus Caesar. We celebrate pagan deities, not so?
Christmas Day is hallowed even if it is not the day Christ was born.
Hon. Daniel Dugan
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.
