What's a Soul Worth?

St. Thomas, Apostle
21 December 2009

The Christmas carol, "O Holy Night," bugged me when I was a child. I heard it played over and over again on a scratchy LP record (ask your grandparents about "records" if you don't know what I am referring to). The recording was made by the Mormon Tabernacle choir and I suspected the words of the hymn just for that reason. My suspicion was piqued by the phrase in the first stanza: "Long lay the world In sin and error pining, 'Til He appear'd And the soul felt its worth." What is the soul worth? What is the value of the human being, to which this poetic phrase is really referring? I already had a visceral doubt of the value of humanity in my childhood, which I suppose, was attributable to good quality catechesis at my home church and backed up by a reflective nature. I knew and felt my own worth apart from Christ was pretty insignificant.

Now as an adult I understand that that was exactly the point of the carol. Everything gets completely changed by the incarnation of the Lord Christ, whose exaltation of our flesh in Him means the exaltation of our flesh. Our flesh is His flesh is our flesh. So what He takes we also partake. Look at what we are worth! The Lord took our flesh. What a gift we receive in that our flesh is exalted by the incarnation. What was decrepit and moribund in us because of the fall now gets life all over again. Everything is made new in Him.

Here is the true glory of God; that we have been raised from death to life, from spiritual weakness to true health, and from slavery to freedom. Here is what the soul is worth. It is not a self-appraisal, but the divine work and promise in Christ, who is the true reprise of Adam in the world. He became Adam that in Him we might have the merits of God: eternal life, heavenly home, and perfect fellowship with Him. Perhaps the problem is that our soul seldom feels its worth, so preoccupied are we in seeking our value in other things and people. We are easily misled into thinking that the value of the human life and soul is in the human life and soul. But the human soul has its value exclusively and perfectly in Christ. He took our flesh to turn us back to the creation which He originated in Adam. Then it is worth everything.

St. Athanasius

"The words 'bestowed on him the name that is above every name' (Phil 2:9), are not written because of the Word Himself; for even before He became man He was worshipped by the angels and the whole creation by virtue of being proper to the Father; but because of us and for us this too is written about Him. For as Christ died and was exalted as man, so, as man, is He said to take what, as God, He ever had, so that such a grant of grace might reach us. For the Word was not impaired in receiving a body, as though He should seek to receive a gift. Rather He deified what He put on, and more than that, 'bestowed' it graciously upon the race of man. Although He was always worshipped as the Word and existing in the form of God, and so being what He ever was, when He had become man and was called Jesus, He nonetheless has the whole creation under foot, and all creatures bend their knees to Him in this Name, and confess the Word's becoming flesh and that He underwent death in flesh. They confess this has happened, not against the glory of His Godhead, but 'to the glory of God the Father.'

"For it is the Father's glory that man, made and then lost, should be found again (Lk 15:32); and, when dead, that he should be made alive, and should become God's temple (1Co 6:19). For whereas the powers in heaven, both angels and archangels, were ever worshipping the Lord, as they are now worshipping Him in the Name of Jesus, this is our grace and high exaltation, that even when He became man, the Son of God is worshipped. The heavenly powers will not be astonished at seeing all of us, who are of one body with Him, introduced into their realms. And this would not have happened, unless He who existed in the form of God had taken a servant's form on Him, and had humbled Himself, yielding His body to come unto death."

St. Athanasius of Alexandria, Four Discourses Against the Arians, 1.42