Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

INCARNATION

The Christian belief that God has disclosed the divine self in human reality in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth (Lat. incarnatio, lit., “take on flesh”).

The Johannine emphasis on “the word became flesh” (John 1:14) and that of the Synoptic writers on the birth of a child to Mary both serve to protect the doctrine of incarnation from a docetic interpretation or an adoptionist Christology (cf. Rom. 8:3; Col. 1:19; 1 Tim. 3:16; 1 John 4:2; 2 John 7). In the early centuries, the believing community struggled over how to articulate belief in the Incarnation in response to outright denials and heretical revisions (Docetism, Adoptionism, Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Monothelitism). This struggle is reflected in Nicaea’s affirmation in 325 c.e. and in the reaffirmation of Chalcedon in 451.

Traditionally, the doctrine of incarnation has sought to articulate three central christological truths: (1) Jesus Christ was a divine person. (2) Jesus Christ was an authentic human being. (3) The divine nature and the human nature existed in hypostatic union in the person of Jesus Christ. It could be argued that these three truths are set forth in the affirmation of the prologue of the Gospel of John (John 1:14). The affirmation that it is the divine Logos who is incarnate emphasizes the preexistence and divine personhood of the One who is born of Mary. Gk. sárx here refers to the tangible, material, corporeal substance that comprises the human body. When this is seen in relation to the anti-docetic affirmation of 1 John 1:1, it is clear that the Johannine writer(s) understood Jesus as a fully human person in the same way that all others were understood to be human. Finally, Gk. egéneto (“became”) focuses upon the dynamic union of divine and human natures in one person. The term suggests the free volitional activity of the pre-existent Logos who becomes flesh without any diminution of the divine person. Further, it emphasizes that this flesh is the product of no divine subterfuge but, rather, is consistent with the corporeal nature of all human flesh.

Since the Enlightenment, the doctrine of incarnation has experienced various attempts at modification, revision, and outright rejection. Rejection is seen most clearly in the Unitarianism in some strains of post-Reformation thought and in later Deism. Revision is seen in the philosophical reformulation of the doctrine found in the thought of G. W. F. Hegel. Finally, 20th-century thought has often sought to modify the doctrine. On the one hand, some have seen the Christian doctrine of incarnation to be simply one of the various mythic manifestations of incarnational thought in generic human religious experience. On the other, the scandal of particularity within the Christian understanding of incarnation has been seen as a barrier to dialogue within a pluralistic contemporary religious environment. Such assertions remind one that the Incarnation remains at the core of Christian belief.

D. Larry Gregg

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

INCARNATION

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)