Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology

2009

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2019

Bridging the gap In the course of time, in the writings of Paul, the focus would very much come to be on the church as the body of Christ, and not on the body of the earthly Jesus (Gregersen 2012:234). This article, however, focusses primarily on the body of the historical Jesus as reflected mainly by the gospels and most specifically the gospel according to John. Consequently, with this focus in mind, it would be appropriate to describe Christianity as a 'religion of the body' (Creamer 2012:341) or faith of the body. An authentic Christian spirituality is embodied. God's identification with people-God's 'particular identification' with the world-goes beyond imagination, to a 'radical particularisation' (Bauckham 2015:32-33). God does not only identify with a 'worldly reality (Israel)', but identifies as a 'worldly reality (Jesus)'. God gives God's self the 'identity of the human Jesus' (Bauckham 2015:33). 'Speaking of Jesus as being simultaneously "human" and "divine," "true man" and "true God," is the appropriate dogmatic expression of our faith in "Jesus" as the "Christ"' (Nipkow 2001:38). Jesus of Nazareth made God human and understandable (Du Plessis 2003:133). In Jesus, God became a person, and simultaneously a person that became human (Küng 1987:1-2). Rather than considering incarnation as a 'one way event located in the past'-of God in the past, becoming flesh to dwell among us-Athanasius sees it as a 'purposive statement' emphasising the 'second transformative clause' (Behr 2015:80, 97). The Word becoming flesh is a 'transformation of all that to which the Word comes, bringing all things in heaven and on earth to the Father' (Behr 2015:97). God's intervention through the ages in the history of the world, and God's care and maintenance of the world, reaches a climax with this dramatic incarnation (Naudé 2004:188). This dramatic incarnation serves as an expression of God's love and the way in which God takes care of The research focussed on the embodiment of God and approached this theme through a discussion on the deep incarnation of God in Christ. This article provides an overview of the existing literature on incarnation. Jesus Christ made God human and understandable. Theology is placed in the sphere of humanity by the humanness of Jesus. This positioning of theology in the sphere of humanity attended to the humanness of Jesus as a biological and social being, on par with human nature, in direct contact with other human beings. Jesus' bodily existence makes his life and living inevitably fragile and vulnerable, but also one in solidarity with the ongoing misery of humans. Special attention was given to the Gospel of John and John 1:14 as an influential expression of the incarnation, and also to the concept of logos. The research attended to the implications of the embodiment of God and the way in which humans participate in the mystery of God's revelation in Jesus Christ. This mutual participation implies that the relationship with God and the call to reflect God is done as embodied beings and not apart from human bodies. The discussion of deep incarnation and God's radical presence in flesh motivated the conclusion that God is part and parcel of nature's vulnerability, pain and suffering. Jesus' powerlessness accentuated the dignity of all bodies, and that there are actually no marginal cases of being 'human'. The radical embodiment of God, the body of the earthly Jesus, reminds followers of Jesus of the significance of leading creative lives, resulting in authentic Christian spirituality that is embodied and vulnerable.

This paper explores the theological use of the term "incarnational." It concludes that the words "incarnation" and "incarnate" need to be reserved for the action of God. The word "incarnational," however, is analyzed through five theological models. The paper concludes that the adjective "incarnational" can be correctly described as the actions of believers seeking to live Christ-like because they are indwelt, in union with, and made in the image and likeness of Christ. This paper was presented at the April 2018 Far West Region Meeting of the ETS.

In the long history of Christian hermeneutics, the Incarnation is hardly ever addressed as embodiment. In part, this is because the early influence of Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy contributed to the tradition of Christian asceticism that emphasized the denial of the body. Yet to assert, as Christians do, that “the Word became flesh” is to claim that God himself became embodied. This implies that to understand the Incarnation, we have to understand embodiment. The centrality of the Incarnation, the fact that it distinguishes Christianity from Islam and Judaism, demands that we take embodiment as a central element guiding Christian hermeneutics. In this essay, I describe our embodiment in terms of its ontological structure as an intertwining. I then use this structure to interpret the Incarnation.

Studies in Spirituality, 2017

A spiritual reading of the motif of incarnation as it runs through the biblical Scriptures describes it as a divine-human communica- tion transforming the human self into a relationship. the human self has a passive bodily beginning: ‘me’ is the one who feels changes in his flesh, and who feels being seen and known. God’s self-revelation touches us in our flesh, the very spot where we are the most vulnerable, but also the spot where we share each other’s feelings and movements and where we become a self. Incarnation, therefore, is not about a word becoming matter, but about the sharing of God’s presence and the flesh feeling and realizing this presence. this means that the human flesh is not only a principle of individuation (Jean-luc Marion) but also a principle of communion. We are one flesh because in God’s presence we feel what the other feels. Although the motif of incarnation is fulfilled in Jesus, it is being developed in the figures of Adam, Mozes, the prophets, the Suffering Servant, and it is continued in the figure of peter. An investigation of this motif confirms that the human being, in his or her engagement with God and environment, becomes more and not less human. the salvation of the incarnation causes the new human self to be deeply related, or better: restored in this original communion.

Hight and Bohannon have recently argued that an immaterialist ontology is more consonant with the doctrine of the Incarnation. I argue that their proposal is insufficiently motivated, as their objections to a substance dualist account of the incarnation are not compelling. I defend a concrete-parts Christology, which allows for materiality and immateriality to be exemplified by Christ in two different respects. I show how immaterialist and materialist objections that dualism cannot adequately account for the unity of the incarnate Christ can be overcome.

2019

Incarnation, as per definition in its simplistic form, wherein God assumes a human nature, is central to the Christian doctrine of faith. The premise upon which the uniqueness of the Christian doctrine of incarnation, as opposed to other religious traditions, is embedded in and among other texts of the Christian Bible, and in the Gospel according to John 1:1-18. This article will articulate some of the philosophies in existence at that time which may allegedly have influenced and elicited a response from the writer of the Gospel according to John (GAJ). An attempt will be made to understand how some of these philosophies view incarnation in forms that may not necessarily reflect incarnation as is traditionally understood in Christianity which is primarily ‘God becoming flesh’. Central to the understanding of Christian incarnation is the philosophical concept of logos which emanated in Greek philosophy. Finally, it should become apparent, that the understanding of ‘incarnation’, in s...

Many skeptics throughout the centuries have accused the New Testament characterization of the incarnation as being incoherent. The reason is that it appears impossible that any person can exemplify human properties such as ignorance, fatigability, and spatial limitation, as the New Testament testifies of Jesus,while possessing divine properties such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence at the same time. This paper proposes a possiblemodel which asserts that at the incarnation, the Logo’s mind was divided into conscious and preconscious, and the divine properties were transferred from the conscious into the preconscious, which became part A of Jesus’ preconscious. Simultaneously, the conscious acquired newly created human properties, while a human preconscious which would become part B of Jesus’ preconscious and a human body were also created. It is demonstrated that this model does not suffer fromthe problems that beset other models such as Apollinarianism, two-consciousnessChristology, and ontological Kenoticism, and that based on this model the full attributes of divinity and humanity of Jesus as testified by the Scriptures could have simultaneously coexisted in one person without contradiction. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Die Beschreibung der Inkarnation im Neuen Testament wurde über die Jahrhunderte hinweg von vielen Skeptikern als inkohärent bezeichnet. Dieser Vorwurf wird mit damit begründet, dass es unmöglich sei, derselben Person zur selben Zeit sowohl menschliche Eigenschaften wie Unwissenheit, Erschöpfung oder räumliche Begrenzung zuzuschreiben – wie es das Neue Testament von Jesus bezeugt – als auch göttliche Eigenschaften wie Allwissenheit, Allmacht und Allgegenwart. Der vorliegende Artikel schlägt folgendes Lösungsmodell vor: Bei der Inkarnation wurde der Geist des Logos in einen bewussten und einen vorbewussten Teil aufgeteilt. Dabei fand eine Übertragung der göttlichen Eigenschaften vom Bewussten ins Vorbewusste statt, das zu Teil A von Jesu Vorbewusstsein wurde. Das Bewusste eignete sich die neu geschaffenen menschlichen Eigenschaften an, während gleichzeitig ein menschliches Vorbewusstes – Teil B von Jesu Vorbewusstem – und ein menschlicher Körper geschaffen wurden. Es wird ferner gezeigt, dass das vorgeschlagene Modell nicht unter denjenigen Problemen leidet, die die Alternativmodelle wie etwa der Apollinarismus, eine Christologie mit doppeltem Bewusstsein und ein ontologischer Kenotismus belasten. Die vollständigen Eigenschaften der Gottheit und des Menschen Jesu, wie sie von der Schrift bezeugt werden, hätten gleichzeitig in einer Person ohneWiderspruch bestehen können.

Body and Religion, 2017

Faith and Philosophy, 2020

Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol37/iss1/1 According to the doctrine of the Incarnation, one person, Christ, has both the attributes proper to a human being and the attributes proper to God. This claim has given rise to the coherence objection, i.e., the objection that it is impossible for one individual to have both sets of attributes. Several authors have offered responses which rely on the idea that Christ has the relevant human properties in virtue of having a concrete human nature which has those properties. I show why such responses should be rejected and, in light of that, propose an alternative response to the coherence objection.