PART I
CHAPTER 11
THE INCARNATION
HOME | contents | The Incarnation: what it means | scriptural proof | outside evidence | -dogma
I. Meaning of the Word Incarnation
Listen
to the choir of New College, Oxford sing "God is with us" by John Tavener. Music
details HERE.
The doctrine of the Incarnation is simply the belief that,
in the words of the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel,
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God . . .
and the Word became flesh,
and dwelt among us
(St. John 1.1, 14)
That is, that God the Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, took human
nature.
[Incarnation is "becoming flesh" (Latin carnis,
of flesh).]
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II. Nature of the Scriptural Proof of the Incarnation
We appeal to the books of the New Testament as the only evidence
for the belief of the first generation of Christians
to show that those earliest Christians believed that Jesus of Nazareth was
God
and accordingly paid to Him the worship that is due to God.
We do not, in this case, appeal to the books of the New Testament as inspired
Scripture
because our reason for regarding them as inspired is our belief in the Godhead
of Jesus of Nazareth,
so that to appeal to them as inspired Scripture would be to argue in a circle.
But we appeal to them as historical documents as we might appeal to any other
books describing contemporary beliefs and events.
If the books of the New Testament did not exist, we should still believe
that Jesus of Nazareth was God.
The evidence for it would be very much weaker,
but we should still have the writings of the Fathers and the experience of
Christians all down the ages.
Our faith is one thing, and the evidence for it is another,
though we should not believe it, and ought not to believe it,
without any evidence at all.
1. St. Paul's Epistles
We take first the evidence of the Epistles of St. Paul as the earliest books
in the New Testament.
St. Paul who wrote them, though he had not been one of the original disciples,
joined them a very short time after the Ascension and knew very well, as
he himself tells us,
many of those who had been original disciples such as St. Peter, and St.
James the Lord's brother (Gal.1.18-19).
He was a man of the very greatest intellectual ability.
He was a convert, so that he knew both sides of the case,
and he gave up high position (he seems to have been a member of the Sanhedrin,
or Great Council of the Jews, Acts 26.10) to devote his whole life to preaching
the new religion for which he finally suffered a martyr's death.
And the gospel that he preached was the same as that which was preached by
the other apostles.
The theory that he changed the nature of Christianity is a theory to which
the evidence gives no support (Gal.1.8; I Cor.15.1; etc.).
It is true that the preaching of the apostles as it is described in the
first chapters of the Acts proclaimed,
not that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God,
but that He was the promised Messiah,
and that He had risen from the dead as the prophets had foretold.
Their audience was not yet ready for the proclamation of His Godhead.
But already in the Epistle to the Galatians probably the earliest of St.
Paul's epistles,
and written while the question whether Christianity was to be a Jewish sect
or a universal religion was still undecided
the author speaks of Jesus of Nazareth as God's Son in a unique sense (Gal.4.4),
and brackets Him with the Father (Gal.1.2-3),
which no Hebrew could have done if he had not believed that He was more than
man.
In the later epistles St. Paul became much more explicit.
His regular practice was to greet his correspondents with the words,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
(Rom.; I Cor.; II Cor.; Gal.; Eph.; Phil.; II Thess.).
In Rom.9.5, Christ is "over all God blessed for ever";
in Rom.10.9, to confess Him as Lord (that is, as the God of Israel) is necessary
to salvation.
In I Cor.8.6, all things are through Him;
He is joined with the Father in creating the world.
In the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, His Divine nature is made
still clearer;
all things are summed up in Him (Eph.1.9; Col.1.16-20).
He is "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion" (Eph.1.20).
In I Cor.1.13 St. Paul indignantly denies that he himself is on a level with
his Master ("Was Paul crucified for you?"),
though he is not behind the very chiefest apostles (II Cor.11.5, 12.11).
In II Cor.13.14, "our Lord Jesus Christ" is bracketed not only
with the Father but also with the Holy Ghost.
It is not necessary to give further proofs from St. Paul.
His entire theology is based on the Godhead of Jesus of Nazareth.
2. The Synoptic Gospels
In the Synoptic Gospels [The first three Gospels.],
though the Godhead of Jesus Christ is not expressly stated, it is everywhere
implied.
He claims Divine authority, greater than that of the Law (which was regarded
as verbally inspired),
or of the Temple,
or of the Sabbath (St. Matt.5.24, 28, 39, 44; 12.6, 41-42; St. Luke 11.31-32).
It was precisely this claim to authority that most impressed His hearers.
Hence it is a mistake to suppose that the Sermon on the Mount is sufficient
without any doctrine about Him who delivered it (St. Matt. 7:29).
In St. Matt.11. 25-27 and St. Luke 10.21-22 a passage which has been finely
called "a thunderbolt from the Johannine heaven" because here we
find our Lord in the Synoptic Gospels using the style of the Fourth Gospel
He claims to be the only means by which men can know God.
No one knoweth who the Son is, but the Father;
neither knoweth anyone who the Father is, but the Son,
and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.
In St. Matt.11.29 He says: "I am meek and lowly of heart";
a claim which no man who was only man could make because he would by making
it show that it was not true.
In St. Matt.25.31-46, He claims to be the Judge of all nations (Gentiles
as well as Jews).
Even the Gospel according to St. Mark, which was at one time regarded by
some people as pure history without doctrinal implications,
is now generally seen to be a doctrinal treatise unintelligible unless the
Subject of it is a Divine being, the beloved Son of God (1.11, 9.7) who,
when He was brought before the High Priest and challenged in the most solemn
manner to say who He claimed to be, answered that He was the Christ, the
Son of God, who would come on the clouds of heaven.
3. The Fourth Gospel
It is unnecessary to give detailed proof that the Fourth Gospel teaches the Godhead of Jesus Christ.
The Word was God (1.1);
the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (1.14);
before Abraham was, I am (8.58).
These are the keynotes of the whole book, and yet it lays more emphasis
on the Manhood of the Son of God than the Synoptic Gospels do.
It is from the Fourth Gospel only that we learn that He was a guest at a
wedding (2:2),
that He was wearied with His journey (4.6),
that He wept over the grave of Lazarus (11.35),
that His heart was pierced with a spear (19.34).
4. The Epistle to the Hebrews
The Epistle to the Hebrews
(which was not written by St. Paul but by an author whose name was unknown
even to Origen in the third century)
begins with an argument to show that the Son of God is far above the angels.
He is the true High Priest who has sat down on the right hand of the Majesty
on high (8.1).
He is the Son, whereas Moses was but a faithful servant (3.6):
Moses who, according to the Law, was above all the prophets (Deut.34.10).
5. Acts of the Apostles
The other books of the New Testament bear the same testimony.
Acts, according to the better reading, speaks of God purchasing the Church
with His own blood (20.28).
6. The Catholic Epistles
The First Epistle of St. Peter uses a form which unites the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit (1.2), and says that Jesus is on the right hand
of God, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him (3.22).
In the Epistle of St. James, the most Jewish and least doctrinal book of
the New Testament, the writer calls himself
a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ (1:1).
The Epistle of St. Jude calls Him
our only Master and Lord (verse 4).
7. The Revelation of St. John
The Revelation is as explicit as the Fourth Gospel.
Jesus Christ is bracketed with the Father.
He is the Alpha and Omega, the Lamb in the midst of the throne.
The court of heaven worships him, while worship addressed to any creature
is again and again forbidden (5.13; 19.10; 22.9).
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III. Outside Evidence
But even the evidence of the New Testament is not all that we have.
It is certain that the Christian Church from its earliest days offered Divine
worship to its Founder.
The earliest non-Christian evidence for Christian practice that we have,
the letter of Pliny to the Emperor Trajan,
says that the Christians sang hymns to Christ as to a God.
What makes this the more remarkable
is that these people in a polytheistic world had the Old Testament with its
strict monotheism for their sacred book.
When they said that Jesus was God, they meant "God" in the strict
Old Testament sense.
They had as great a horror of worshiping anyone less than God as any Hebrew
prophet.
It was because all Christians worshiped Jesus Christ as God,
and always had done so,
that the subtle arguments of Arius, with the influence of the imperial court
behind them, failed.
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IV. The Dogmatic Definitions
As the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was worked out in technical definitions,
so was the doctrine of the Incarnation.
These definitions may be stated briefly in six sentences:
- The eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, took human nature upon Himself.
- He did this at a particular time and place by being conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
- He is perfectly divine and perfectly human.
- His two Natures, the Divine and the human, are united without confusion, change, division, or severance in one Divine Person.
- He has one Ego, or Subject, which is Divine.
- His human nature had a beginning but will have no end: He is and always will be Man.
If Jesus Christ is not God, what is He?
A created being?
Then we must not worship Him, and He could not have saved us.
A man, and no more?
Then the New Testament is false from beginning to end.
Jesus is God: let sorrow come,
And pain, and every ill:
All are worth while, for all are means
His glory to fulfill.
Worth while a thousand years of woe
To speak one little word,
If by that "I believe" we own
The Godhead of our Lord,
F. W. Faber: Hymns Ancient and Modern, 170.