Jesus does not come to take away the need for faith, but he does come to make the act of faith easier to make.

So think about it. Whenever we talk about faith, there's an act of trust you have to make in somebody else.

And Jesus, by becoming incarnate, makes it easier for his listeners to make an act of faith than him.

And so now that there is this established point in history where we know

Jesus lived, he taught, we have a really good sense, even from just history, even apart from

faith. You can compile a pretty decent amount of evidence that there really was a guy named

Jesus. He taught more or less this. And his followers believed he rose from the dead. All of that you can establish even before you get to the act of faith.

And that makes it so much easier to make the act of faith rather than just hearing something like

Moses says that he saw God in a burning bush.

Merry Christmas and welcome back to Shemis Popery.

I'm Joe Heschmire.

And today, I want to talk about a Christmas sort of isn't necessary because the incarnation

sort of wasn't necessary.

Now, that might sound heretical, might sound insane for a Christian to say.

But I think it's actually an important thing for us to get right.

And for support, I would point to the arguments

made by people like St. Augustine in St. Thomas Aquinas, who argue that Christmas was not,

strictly speaking, necessary, but it's really good that it happened anyway. But let's unpack

both halves of that. Why wasn't Christmas necessary in the strict sense? And why is it still

really good that this is the course of action God chose anyhow? As I say, I'm going to start with

St. Augustine and then we'll look at St. Thomas Aquinas. And I think you'll see as they

lay out their arguments that they're right. So St. Augustine, this is from a work

...