In completing the choirs of angels, Thou dist not take on the angelic nature, but being the Eternal God, for my sake Thou becamest man, and Thou didst restore to life men who were dead through sin with Thy Life-giving Body and Blood. Therefore, in gratitude for Thine amazing love, we humbly cry to Thee:

Jesus, God, Eternal Love, Who was pleased to save us who are born of earth!
Jesus, Infinite Mercy, Who didst come down here to us fallen creatures!
Jesus, Who was clothed in our flesh and didst destroy the dominion of death by Thy death!
Jesus, Who dost deify us with Thy Divine Mysteries!
Jesus, Who hast redeemed the whole world by Thy Cross and Passion!
Jesus, Son of God, remember us when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom!

An incarnational view of the Cross, here.

"My starting position (as someone involved in training people to preach, among other things) is that there a widespread lack of confidence and content in our preaching on the Incarnation..."

Gathering the several scriptural comments of DavidR, Phil, Kevin, Mark and George to review over the weekend, I found myself feeling grateful to have such collaborators. Since David and Phil have explained their interest in the thread, I feel that I should do the same.

I have heard critiques similar to DavidR's nearly all my life, and this is not the first discussion of them that I have joined. From that experience, I have noted that those who look into the Incarnation do seem changed by their inquiries in that the emotion of wonder becomes a more intentional part of their affective theology. Some in this thread have already alluded to this.

It may be that we should take the induction of this wonder as part of the meaning of these texts. Certainly, there are thoughts we are meant to have that are beyond our ken without the more open cognition induced by the wonder of shepherds seeing a new star. (Perhaps the place of affect in scriptural hermeneutics is a topic for another thread. If there really is a scriptural affect in a passage, how can a preacher ignore it?)

Still, the leap from a personal sense of wonder to the homiletics of Christmas (and Easter? and funerals?) is a wide one. And many of the discussions that I have seen hitherto just stop where DavidR (1 January) and Roger (8 January) have recently begun-- with the recognition that consideration of the Incarnation should lead us to consideration of our own "embodiment" in the Lord. In other words, discussions of the Incarnation have often stopped just where our own lives become involved, which is disappointing. What is the invisible barrier?

My own sense is that these conversations have been like pouring a precious liquid into a bottle with no funnel. The incarnational perspective is just so big and so transformative that imaginations unprepared for it can wonder at it all, but cannot take it in. For those who read, the preparation may come from the Eastern sources that a DavidR and I somewhat know, and also from some contemporary scholars, of whom Tom Wright is best known here. But the Church is not a university religion department.

Ideally, catechists open the teachings about Christ to the imagination, whilst preachers explain to the baptised what it is to live in the world the teachings describe. The great feasts (and fasts?), the pastoral rites, and our habitual prayers confirm our imaginations in this new way of being. Thus, when the the struggle of life, the cure of souls, or an open Bible requires it, the Christian can hear the Lord's voice with recognition and can progress along the Way.

Now this ideal meets many obstacles in practice, as several of you know better than I, but it reminds us here that getting the difference between a non-incarnational sort of faith and the scriptures is not enough, and neither is a more rounded understanding of the mere doctrine of the Incarnation, essential as those both are. One really needs to learn to see our world, as well as the tapestry of the scriptures, and also the life of the Body of Christ in an incarnational way. Past conversations I have heard, though ever so learned, have not gotten that far. Perhaps this one will? Today, I am hopeful.

Phil,

This is a familar pattern. A discussion opens up on a thread. You join in but very soon insist on stopping the debate while you summarise everyone's viewpoint in your own words using a set of narrowly factual either/or  agree/disagree  questions that the rest of us are expected to give our response to. You therefore require the discussion to proceed on your own terms and by your own method. It does feel  a very limiting way of exploring complex issues of any kind but certainly biblical theology.

If you recall I urged you not to respond to me by asking for chapter and verse and have several times invited you to respond my own list of reflective questions. You have yet to do so. I have invited you several times to enter this discussion through my approach rather than yours - with questions of my own that I would very much like to hear your response to and that I think are deeply theological and blblical but that don't easily find explicit texts. But actually a great deal of theological truth is implicit because it has to do with God who is beyond human imaginating and language.  So I  think the ball is in your court actually. Please - give it a try.

DavidR

I never try to wind people up. As I see it the ball is in your court to respond to my January 5 2012 post where I try to show that the verses you gave as supporting a non-Fall Incarnation do not do so. I think you have either to try to refute my refutation or acknowledge that these verses do not give such support. Have you other passages to offer in support - I consider that the Yancy article does not give any exegetical support - it is not detailed enough?

Bowman

Thank you for your latest post which does help me to understand what you are getting at. But I put the same challenge to you: are you able to put forward an exegesis of some Bible passages which do offer such support? Or do you consider that your comments on Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians have done this already?

Phil Almond

Esteemed readers:

If someone among us actually does post a scriptural case for the claim that the Incarnation would have happened if the Fall had not, then we will all be fascinated to see whether or how that particular argument comports with the written Word. Without such a case, however, there is no grist for the mill. We cannot prejudge arguments about the scriptures that that have not been made.

Meanwhile, my last substantive post suggested a more direct and rewarding path into David's query-- the study of scriptural texts known to have shaped the Church's understanding of the Incarnation. The Greek fathers that David has found (e.g. in Clement) were among the first and most influential readers of those texts. Alongside their readings, we might well consider Tom Wright's work. This exploratory reading of the Word seems to me to be more likely to contribute to "renewing the evangelical centre."

And that is the touchstone for my posts here. Lest offense be unnecessarily taken, readers should know that, with few exceptions, I generally post to the thread as a whole, and ignore argumentative challenges, etc. from individuals. This is not intended as a slight to anyone. We make our best contributions in a cooperative and exploratory atmosphere, which I do my best to support. Conversely, the most confrontational posts in the Forum have been below the grade of their authors' best  work. Apart from that, we have much to do and little time. I encourage what works and discourage what doesn't.

Please accept my thanks for the worthwhile comments already posted. Let them continue.

Hi Phil - it's  yes and no

Yes - these three aspects of the debate are present on this helpful discussion thread

No - I believe precisely the opposite of this as you well know. I have suggested starting places from scriptures and some theological sources (as have others). Read my threads. In fact I actually launched this thread in the first place to discuss this further. So are you trying to wind me up or what?

Bowman and David

Broadly speaking, as I see it, this thread is now dealing with 3 topics:

1                    Would there have been an Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity if the Fall of man had not happened?

2                    The significance of the Incarnation in God’s redemptive plan, and as manifesting the character of God, compared with the significance of the Cross and Resurrection.

3                    The vital differences between the Western and Eastern views on Original Sin, Death, Redemption.

Before continuing to debate and disagree about 2 and 3 are you both willing to agree that the Bible says nothing in support of answering 'Yes' to the question posed in 1?

Phil Almond

Romans 5:12

1 Corinthians 15:22

These links should take readers to the Greek texts mentioned in my last post.

Romans 5:12. Ideas that can seem merely lyrical in DavidR's posts on this fascinating thread, are in fact taken as seriously among the Orthodox as "justification" is here. However, the question of the Fall's counterfactuals, although not unreasonable, is not the best way into this perspective. If readers here find the incarnational thought in his posts suggestive enough to want to make sense of the dogmatic theology behind them, then they might start with the very tiniest of baby steps-- what does eph’ hõ mean in Romans 5:12? Check it out at the link.

Had they known of it, the Greek fathers would have rejected the famous couplet of the New England Primer-- "In Adam's Fall/ We sinned all"-- as an obvious misreading of the syntax of the Greek text to which it alludes. In their reading, eph’ hõ -- epi contracted with the relative pronoun hõ -- means "because," is here masculine, and refers to the masculine thanatos or "death" just before it. In this reading of the text, we share Adam's death, but not his sin. And reading the text that way, St Augustine's use of it against the Pelagians is unintelligible, with large consequences for the differences between theologians of the West and those of the East.

Taken in isolation from the rest of St Paul's writing, the sentence shows that we sinners are similar to Adam  in that we die and death is the normal retribution for sin. However, most of the Greek fathers read the text in a wider Pauline context that paired it closely with 1 Corinthians 15:22, so that the solidarity in death of sinners with Adam is paired with the solidarity in life of the baptized with the risen Lord. The meaning of Romans 5:12 that results is just as unintelligible to most thinkers steeped in Western interpretation-- "As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men; and because of death, all men have sinned..." I alluded to this reading of the Fall in an earlier post on this thread.

A few further considerations drawing on the fullness of the scriptures link this tiny relative pronoun to the cosmic and incarnational meditations of Eastern provenance that interest DavidR and others on this thread. First, the victory of Life over death becomes the emphasis in soteriology and eschatology. Not only does the cross not displace the manger, which acquires its own saving significance as the entry of Life into human nature, but it also does not displace the Resurrection either, since that is human nature emerging victorious over death. Second, recalling Jesus's ministry of healing, sin is seen primarily medically as the corruption of human nature that is manifested in sin and death, rather than primarily judicially as transgression of law. This is a matter of emphasis, but it has important consequences, especially for ethics, pastoral care, and ecclesiology. Third, because the Greek fathers see Adam as a microcosm of the Creation, the Fall is the entrance of corruption, not simply into "a man," nor even into all his human descendents, but into all of the world that A dam and his descendents were to have tended. Both the Fall and the Redemption are ecological events, which should have obvious consequences for the way Christians view environmental degradation, but which also has more traditional implications for sacramentology and ecclesiology. Finally, just as St Augustine sensitized the West to the hazards of Pelagianism, so such Greek fathers as St Gregory of Nyssa and St Maximus the Confessor contended for the personalism and dynamism of the God that they found in the scriptures against the static and depersonalizing categories of successive waves of Platonist speculation. For the Chistian, divine life in Christ is personal change or it is neither divine nor life. 

This is not to say that the baby step above is the whole journey, nor is it to say that the end of the journey lies in Constantinople. But if the churches of evangelical churches are about as unlike those of the Greek fathers as churches can get, it is also true that evangelical Christians are surely the ones who most share the patristic zeal for the written Word. A learned guide for further inquiries can be found here.

I think part of the discussion amounts to this - instead of embracing salvation in the world as it is by the means God has chosen, we want to imagine what salvation might look like in a world which doesn't exist, which God didn't make, but which we imagine might possibly have come into being.

Aslan says in the Narnia books (so it is CS Lewis really) that it is not given to us to know what might have been.

Because salvation comes through the life, death, resurrection and return of Jesus there is no future in reductionist atomisation. We cannot reduce salvation to the cross, because that is not how God has given us salvation.

One of my daughters asked me on Friday what was the most significant day of my life so far. Tricky. I said the day that I was born. OK so leave that out. Various came to mind including the day I made my adult profession of faith in public, when I was baptised and confirmed. But that can't be separated from my birth, because if I had not been born, it wouldn't have happened. "No manger without the cross" is just one way of looking at things. How often, on Good Friday, do we ever reflect on "No cross without the manger"? If we take "kenosis" (self-emptying - Philippians 2) seriously, which is the most profoundly kenotic event? That's not really a proper question because there are not really degrees of kenosis - but it does reveal that God's work of kenosis cannot be reduced to a single moment or event - just as an example of why a reductionist reading fails.

DavidR, many thanks for starting this intriguing thread.  Like you, I have often been disappointed in preaching material over Christmas, where the wonder and worship engendered by the first Christmas is waylaid by sleight of hand to switch the theme to the Cross and its challenge to personal commitment.  I feel in doing this that much valuable reflection on the mystery and implications of the Incarnation are neglected.

Not least is the neglect of the bodily, the profound endorsement of the flesh and blood of our humanity as God's image-bearers.  It is a mystery and wonder that God himself chose to become enfleshed as a newborn baby to declare the specialness and redeemability of being human.

James Nelson, in his book Embodiment, writes, '...the Word did become flesh.  Logos, Cosmic Meaning, was embodied, and our own embodiment has been given definition and vindication in Jesus Christ.. What is at stake...is whether or not it is possible, however partially we may experience it, that there be a genuine and deeply personal union of God and our embodied selves.  If we deny the radicality of God's incarnation in Jesus, we may well persist in a vain attempt to be more spiritual that God...  In those central symbols of incarnation and resurrection Christian faith affirms that God embraces fleshly, bodily life.  God invites us to do so' (p.77).

Bowman

Sorry, I am not understanding your point. Could you please kindly elucidate?

Phil Almond