Category Archives: Incarnation

Incarnation and the tabernacle

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James K. Bruckner writes:

‘The tabernacle provided, for the first time since Eden, a place for the visible presence of God in the midst of the people.’

He adds: ‘the Gospel of John provides a window that helps Christians interpret the significance of the tabernacle in relation to the incarnation.’

Consider John 1:14-15a – ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory.’

  1. ‘The Word became flesh’ ‘matches the detailed descriptions of the tent of meeting as a location of God’s presence (Exod.
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Christ’s humiliation in his incarnation

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Extracts from The Fountain of Life, by John Flavel.  Ch. 18, Christ’s Humiliation – In His Incarnation.

“And being found in fashion as man, he humbled himself, and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.” Phil. 2:8.

Here is the sun almost under total eclipse. He that was beautiful and glorious, Isa. 4:2, yea, glorious as the only begotten of the Father, John 1:14, yea, the glory, James 2:1, yea, the splendor and brightness of the Father’s glory,” Heb.…

Virgin Birth – scriptural attestation

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The Virgin Birth (more precisely, the virginal conception) is attested in a number of ways in Matthew and Luke:-

(1) The sharp contrast between the long series of verses that use “begot” and the statement that Joseph was “the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born” (Mt. 1:16) clearly implies that a man was not involved in the procreation of Jesus.

(2) Mt. 1:18 states, “Before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.”…

The incarnate Christ did not cease to be divine

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It is one thing to affirm that Christ was (and is) both human and divine.  It is another to seek to understand how these truths relate to one another.

Peter Lewis has some helpful comments on our belief that the incarnate Christ did not cease to be divine.

According to John 1:14, ‘the Word became flesh’.  ‘However,’ writes Lewis, ‘we are not to think of the Son as leaving a sort of gap in the Godhead, a vacancy in the Trinity, at his coming down to earth as a man.  …

Why did Christ become a human being?

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Grudem (Systematic Theology, p541f) outlines a number of reasons.  What follows is based on his discussion.

  1. To be our representative.  Jesus obeyed where Adam had failed to obey.  This is seen in the parallels between the time of testing in the garden, Gen 2:15-3:7, and Jesus’ time of temptation in the wilderness.  It is seen also in Paul’s comparison of Adam and Christ in Rom 5:18f; cf. 1 Cor 15:45,47.
  2. To be our substitute.  
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Christ had a human mind

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Apollinarianism

Whereas the Christian doctrine of the incarnation first came under threat from docetism, which denied that Christ had a real human body, Apollinarianism soon followed, with its denial that that he had a real human psychology.

Apollinaris was, by all accounts, a deeply spiritual man whose theology was in many respects perfectly orthodox.  But he was condemned as a heretic by the Council of Constantinople in 381.  He taught that although Christ took on a human body, he did not take on a human mind.  …

Christ had a human body

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The term ‘docetism’ (from the Greek dokeo, meaning ‘to seem’) covers a range of speculations concerning the person of Christ.  The common feature of the Docetists was an insistence that God could not become man.

At the time of the early church, its main representatives were Cerinthus, Ebion, Marcion and Valentinus.  Their teachings were examined and rebutted by men such as Irenaeus (Against Heresies) and Tertullian (On the Flesh of Christ; Against Marcion).…

The Virgin Birth

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‘The first and most indisputable fact about the birth of Jesus is that it occurred out of wedlock. The one option for which there is no evidence is that Jesus was the lawful son of Joseph and Mary. The only choice open to us is between a virgin birth and an illegitimate birth.’ (J. A. T. Robinson, Twelve More New Testament Studies (SCM, 1984), 3–4.)

Scriptural attestation

The virgin birth, or, more accurately, the virgin conception, is attested in many ways in Matthew and Luke.…

Jesus – pre-existent or exalted divinity?

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Bart Ehrman is one of those scholars who impresses with his extensive knowledge (to say nothing of his personal charm and communication ability), but who makes glaring errors of judgement on too regular a basis.  Perhaps it is his own loss of Christian faith that makes him so certain that he has no axe to grind that he cannot see the axes lying all around him – some on have already been ground, others are waiting to be ground, still others are in the process of being ground.  …

Five truths about the incarnation

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Based on this post by Joseph Scheumann:-

1.  The incarnation was not the divine Son’s beginning.

Our Lord did not begin to exist with the virginal conception or with his birth in Bethlehem.  No: the incarnation means that he who had no beginning began to be what he eternally was not – a human being.

2.  The incarnation shows Jesus’ humility.

No ordinary king, Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve (Mk 10:45).  …