Excursus: the pre-incarnate Christ, theophany and the Old Testament debate
Chapter Four
The great mystery
In this chapter we begin our discussion of the epicentre of the divine project to restore to its rights the created order. To do so, first we explore how Jesus, as delineated in the Gospels, saw himself in the light of the testimony of the Old Testament, and then examine how the New Testament writers in retrospect saw in Jesus the fulfilment of Old Testament promise and prediction. With regard to the latter we shall examine some key claims in Matthew, Mark, Paul, Hebrews and John. Even so, I shall contend the Old Testament Scriptures per se did not offer the prospect of an incarnation as part of the hope of Israel. It was a mystery in the sense of ‘revelation that is in some sense “there” in the [Old Testament] Scriptures but hidden until the time of God-appointed disclosure’. No surprise then that 1 Timothy 3:16 can state, ‘Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great: He appeared in the flesh.’ (This text will play a pivotal role in this chapter.) Importantly there is another way that the Old Testament may have prepared the way for the incarnation. Drawing on Nicholas Wolterstorff ’s theory of theories, a suggestion of how this is so will be offered. Regarding this back story preparation, the anthropomorphisms, anthropopathisms and anthropopraxisms of the Old Testament take on particular relevance.
In retrospect
There is nothing like looking in retrospect to see connections, implications and entailments that otherwise would be hard to discern. The Monday-morning quarterback can see it all: the play that should have been made or completed, the tactic that should have been employed, the tackle that turned the game. The New Testament writers had a source of epistemological aid that no Monday-morning quarterback can know. The Holy Spirit has come. In the upper room before the crucifixion Jesus said, ‘But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you [the apostles] into all the truth’ (John 16:13). I shall canvas only five examples of what was discerned when the time had fully come (hote de ēlthen to plērōma tou chronou), to borrow the Pauline phrase from Galatians 4:4.
According to Jesus
In dialogue and debate with others Jesus often grounded his self-understanding on the testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures. Craig L. Blomberg sums up the New Testament witness in an admirable way:
When it comes to the inspiration, truthfulness, authority and relevance of the Bible of his world, Jesus could scarcely have held to higher views. The central theological and moral truths of Scripture – monotheism, the double love-commandment, the frequent rebellion of humanity (including God’s own people), the promises of eschatological judgment and blessing beginning with a Messianic age of God’s beneficent reign on earth through that Messiah – all proved central to Jesus’ own thinking as well. He acknowledged Scripture’s divine origin as God’s word and words. He quoted from the Bible extensively and intensively. He affirmed the inviolability of its contents down to the smallest details. To whatever degree the contents of the Hebrew canon had solidified by his day, Jesus affirmed their unity but also their tripartite division. He interpreted the historical narratives in ways that suggest he believed that at least most (and probably all) of the events narrated really happened. He saw the collection of scriptural writings as open-ended, however, pointing forward to a time when God would fulfill his complete salvation-historical purposes for the ages. He believed that such an era had been inaugurated with his ministry. As a result, he mined the Scriptures for predictions and patterns that so closely paralleled events in and surrounding his life that the faithful Jew should have been able to see God’s providential hand of guidance in them, fulfilling or filling full his word of old.
Blomberg rightly sees that Jesus is presented in the Gospels as the supreme hermeneutist or interpreter of the sacred writings.
Luke’s Gospel in particular gives insight into Jesus as the hermeneutist. Luke 24 is especially instructive. In Luke 24:25–27 the risen Christ appears on the road to Emmaus teaching Cleopas and one other disciple that the Old Testament’s leitmotiv (main idea) was Jesus himself. First he chides them, ‘He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” ’ Then he instructs them, ‘And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained [diermēneuein, ‘to translate’, ‘to interpret’, ‘to explain’] to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself ’ (Luke 24:27). Later in the same chapter the scene shifts to Jerusalem. Cleopas and the other disciple bring the news of their encounter with Jesus to the Eleven (Luke 24:33). Jesus appears once more and the disciples are frightened (Luke 24:37). He reassures them in Luke 24:44, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ Being so informed is necessary but not sufficient. Next we read, ‘Then he opened [dianoichein, ‘to open’] their minds so they could understand the Scriptures’ (v. 45). In systematic categories this is a classic instance of the revelatory word and the illuminated mind.
Luke 24 has further significance for our purposes. According to David W. Pao and Eckhardt J. Schnabel with reference to Luke 24:25, ‘Later Christians understood Jesus’ statement as a model for the “global reading of the OT as praeparatio evangelica” [preparation for the gospel].’ As C. J. H. Wright explains, ‘But for those with eyes and ears and memories, the Hebrew scriptures had already provided the patterns and models by which he [Jesus] could be understood, and by which he could understand and explain himself and his goals to others.’ In that light we now turn our attention to examples of such readings of the Old Testament from Matthew, Mark, Hebrews and John that appear to have the incarnation in view.
According to Matthew
It is unsurprising that the early church made Matthew’s Gospel the beginning of the New Testament canon. As Craig L. Blomberg argues, ‘Why then was Matthew put first when the canonical sequence of the four Gospels, and eventually of the entire New Testament, was crystallized? Doubtless one answer is because of Matthew’s clearest and most frequent links to the Old Testament.’ Those clear links begin in Mathew’s first chapter. In that chapter as we shall see, not only is its Jewishness patent, but the genealogy that begins it explicitly takes the reader back in the history of God’s dealings to Abraham, the father of the faithful.
The Matthean genealogy provides a natural bridge to the Old Testament testimony. According to Matthew 1:1, ‘This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham.’ The three names in reverse order – Abraham, David and Jesus – become the structural key to what follows. In a highly stylized and selective way in three series of fourteen names each Matthew covers salvation history from Abraham to Jesus. The first series canvasses Abraham to David (Matt. 1:2–6a), the second one David to the Babylonian exile (Matt. 1:6b–11), and the last one from the exile to the birth of Jesus (Matt. 1:12–16). Matthew 1:17 sums it up: ‘Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.’ At this juncture in the Matthean account there is no hint that Jesus is God incarnate. The Christology in view is from below.
What follows next in the account (Matt. 1:18–23) adds another dimension to this picture.
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: his mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’
All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’).
This is no ordinary birth. The Holy Spirit is involved in a way without precedent in the canonical presentation. The surprising reference to the four women in the genealogy anticipates this to a degree. Tamar (v. 3), Rahab (v. 5), Ruth (v. 5) and Bathsheba (v. 5) were not Israelites and their pregnancies were atypical, each in their own way. (Theologically these women also point to the fact that the Abrahamic promise is for the Gentiles and not just the Jews, as the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18–20 with its reference to ‘all nations’ underlines.) Mary’s pregnancy was likewise atypical but in an even more extraordinary fashion.
In fact, according to Matthew this child fulfils Old Testament Scripture (v. 22). Isaiah 7:14 has come to pass. For some the prediction of Isaiah 7:14, quoted in Matthew 1:23, is now realized: ‘God with us.’ For others Matthew has misunderstood the Old Testament text, which most probably in its original context referred to the birth of Isaiah’s own son Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (cf. Isa. 7:14; 8:8, 10). Craig L. Blomberg illuminatingly suggests that a double fulfilment is quite possible. The birth of Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz did not exhaust the fulfilment. In the light of descriptors that come after in Isaiah, ‘Almighty God’, ‘Eternal Father’ and ‘Prince of Peace’, Blomberg argues that these are ‘prophecies that scarcely could have been fulfilled in a mere earthly king’. The worship of this child by the Magi in the very next chapter (Matt. 2:8, 11) and the quotation from Micah 5:2 (Matt. 2:5–6) reinforce the view that here is king who transcends the merely human.
Matthew’s Gospel does not say in so many words that this Jesus is God incarnate – unlike John’s Gospel, which is quite explicit on the matter, as we shall soon see – but that idea appears to be implicit in the account.
According to Mark
Compared to Matthew’s Gospel Mark’s account of Jesus makes fewer explicit references to the Old Testament Scriptures, but where it does it orients the entire narrative and does so from the start.
Mark’s Gospel begins on a new exodus note. According to Thorsten Moritz, and he acknowledges the seminal work of Rikki E. Watts here, Mark 1:1–3 is an important hermeneutical key to understanding the Marcan narrative. The text reads as follows:
The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
‘I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way’ –
‘a voice of one calling in the wilderness,
“Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.”’
Mark creatively brings Isaiah 40:3, Malachi 3:1 and Exodus 23:20 together to make at least three points. God is coming to Zion to restore his people (Isa. 40). The Lord’s coming to his temple will mean judgment (Mal. 3). God will ensure that the way is prepared (Exod. 23:20).
John the Baptist is the promised Elijah, and Jesus is – as Rikki E. Watts suggests – ‘identified not merely as Yahweh’s agent, but in some mysterious way with Yahweh’s very presence’. Mortiz is more explicit: ‘Mark consciously sets the appearance and ministry of Jesus in the context of the NE [New Exodus]. For him, this is the story of the beginning of the renewal of God’s people, and Jesus is revealed not just as a protagonist in the NE story, but as Israel’s returning God.’
The next chapter in Mark provides a story that illustrates Moritz’s claim (Mark 2:1–12). The setting is Capernaum. Jesus is teaching in a home. Teachers of the law are present. Four friends carrying a paralysed friend cannot access the home because of the crowd. Famously they make an opening in the roof and lower their friend down. Jesus, impressed with their faith, in verse 5 pronounces to the paralysed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ The teachers of the law are alarmed (vv. 6–7): ‘Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”’ They rightly understand that forgiving sins is not a human prerogative. It belongs to God alone. To them Jesus appears to have slandered the God of Israel and usurped his place. Jesus, however, is unfazed at their thinking (Mark 2:8–11):
Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, ‘Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralysed man, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Get up, take your mat and walk”? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.’ So he said to the man, ‘I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.’
The formerly paralysed man did just that and those there were amazed (v. 12). God is on his way to Zion in Mark’s account and yet this Jesus is clearly human. The self-referencing title ‘the Son of Man’ has enough ambiguity to cover both the human and the divine.
Mortiz is right to speak of Mark’s ‘implied Jesus incarnational theology’. As in Matthew’s account, incarnational theology is present but not explicit. There is no attempt in either Gospel to prove in some sense that this Jesus is both God and human, and that the Old Testament predicted as much. The interests of both Gospels lie elsewhere.
According to Hebrews
In Hebrews the implied incarnational theology of Matthew and Mark gives way to an explicit one. In fact, by the time the reader has completed the reading or hearing of Hebrews 1:5 – 2:18 he or she has learnt that this Jesus is truly God and truly human. Further, the reader learns that with regard to his humanity the Son became human. It was not always the case. An event has taken place that has made it so. The Old Testament testimonies and the fact of the Christ’s coming are creatively brought together in a way that no Old Testament writer appears to have imagined. Harold W. Attridge rightly describes Hebrews as ‘a masterpiece of early Christian homiletics, weaving creative scriptural exegesis with effective exhortation’. To these opening chapters we now turn.
Hebrews opens on a revelatory note in Hebrews 1:1–2: ‘In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.’ The nature of this Son is next thematized in verse 3: ‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.’ This Son is divine. What follows surprises (v. 4): ‘After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior [kreittōn, ‘better’ or ‘higher ranked’] to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.’ Creation (v. 3) and redemption (v. 4) have been conjoined in the person of this Son whose superiority has been made patent.
No angel can match this Son, as the catena (ḥārûz, ‘string of pearls’) of Old Testament quotations makes plain: Psalm 2:7 (v. 5); 2 Samuel 7:14 (v. 5); Deuteronomy 32:43 (v. 6); Psalm 104:4 (v. 7); Psalm 45:6–7 (vv. 8–9); Psalm 102:25–27 (vv. 10–12); Psalm 110:1 (v. 13). Angels are divine beings but are not God. This Son is both a divine being and God. Angels worship the Son (v. 6). The Son does not worship angels. The very next chapter of Hebrews makes it clear that this Son is also truly human. He fulfils the divine expectations of humanity as Psalm 8:6–8 portrays it (Heb. 2:6–8). But who is this remarkable person to whom the world to come is subject (v. 5)? Hebrews 2:9 gives his human name: ‘Jesus’. There is purpose at work here (Heb. 2:9–10):
But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.
Once more ‘salvation’ (sōtēria) is the key term (cf. Heb. 1:14; 2:3; 2:10).
Jesus the Son is the agent of this salvation. He provided purification for sins (Heb. 1:3) and tasted death for everyone (Heb. 2:9). But there is even more to the story and the more is incarnation (Heb. 2:14–18):
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in [kekoinōnēken, ‘shared’, ‘partook of ’] their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
This passage makes explicit what was implicit in Hebrews 1:3. Jesus the Son has assumed a role – ‘a merciful and faithful high priest’ – that presupposes a genuine human nature and he carried out that role definitively as the reference in Hebrews 1:3 to sitting down (ekathisen) at the right hand of God suggests.
By the time the first-century hearer or reader of this exhortation (tou logou tēs paraklēseōs, ‘the word of exhortation’) had been exposed to the first two chapters, the idea of both the deity and humanity of Jesus the Son would have been encountered in the context of concerned pastoral exhortation (Heb. 2:1, ‘so that we do not drift away’). The idea of incarnation is firmly grounded in such New Testament testimonies.
According to John
Richard Elliot Friedman makes this general statement concerning the presentation of Christ in the Christian Gospels:
Against the backdrop of the Hebrew Bible, one reads in the first four books of the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four Gospels – a narrative in which, after centuries of hiddenness, the deity once again manifests His presence visibly in human form. There had been nothing like this since the Genesis accounts of Eden and Jacob’s struggle with god. Over a millennium had passed since, according to the Hebrew Bible, the creator told Moses, ‘I shall hide My face from them,’ and then in one moment, there is the most immediate expression of the divine presence on earth since Sinai.
Although Friedman’s academic discipline is in Hebrew and comparative literature, he is aware that
[t]here is scholarly controversy over when the doctrine that Jesus was an incarnation of God took hold. Whatever doubt there is of incarnation in Matthew, Mark, and Luke – known as the Synoptic Gospels – it appears to be explicit in the Gospel of John, both in the passages that identify Jesus as ‘Lord and “God”’ (John 20:18, 28) and in the famous opening of the book…
To that opening we now give attention.
The Prologue to John’s Gospel is magisterial (John 1:1–18). Indeed David Brown and Ann Loades claim, ‘it is arguable that this is John’s most revolutionary contribution to Christian theology. The Word has ceased to be the medium that keeps God and the world apart; instead, it has become that which binds world and God together.’ The Prologue appears to work recursively. If you read the rest of the Fourth Gospel in its light you get oriented to its themes (e.g. light versus darkness, life versus death). Then upon rereading the Prologue more of its depth can be seen and so even more may be gained by rereading the rest of the narrative. John 1:1 begins in eternity with the Word, and climaxes with this Word’s becoming flesh (sarx egeneto) in time in verse 14. The opening verse runs, ‘In the beginning was the Word [logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ Identity and yet distinction. Here is a puzzle to which a trinitarian theology brings light. This Word is the agent through whom creation happened (v. 3). In this Word is found life and light for humanity (v. 4). John the Baptist bore witness to this light (vv. 6–9). However, in words that are programmatic for the main narrative (vv. 10–13):
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. [Broadly speaking, chs. 1–12.] Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. [Broadly speaking, chs. 13–20.]
John 1:14 adds a further descriptor to this picture. The Word become flesh is the Father’s unique Son in whom the great covenant values (Hebr. ḥesed, ‘grace’, ‘loving kindness’, and ’ĕmet, ‘truth’) announced in the revealing of the divine name at Sinai (Exod. 34:6–7) have their embodiment: ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only [monogenous, ‘unique’] Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’ As Andreas J. Köstenberger comments, ‘The reference in 1:14 to Jesus taking up residence among God’s people resulting in the revelation of God’s glory (the first occurrence of doxa in this Gospel) also harks back to OT references to the manifestation of the presence and glory (kābôd) of God, be it in theophanies, the tabernacle, or the temple.’ James D. G. Dunn adds to the picture when he contends that the Fourth Gospel makes an epochal claim in verse 14 concerning this manifestation of the divine presence: ‘something quite new is being claimed here. Not simply a dwelling among, an appearance to, a temporary visitation, but “became” – incarnation’. The Prologue does not stop there though. We read in John 1:17 that the Word who is the Son has a human name that anchors him securely in human history. The Word become flesh is Jesus Christ. As such he stands in contrast to Moses in this respect: ‘For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.’ Thus by John 1:17 we have learned that the abstract Logos now bears a personal name. The implication is staggering and well articulated by R. T. France: ‘Now Jesus, as the Word made flesh, is a thoroughly concrete embodiment of the very nature of God. He is a living anthropo-morphism, God expressed in human form.’
An incident related in the next chapter of John’s Gospel throws more light on the nature of the divine presence now enfleshed. Jesus clears the temple – the place where the divine presence is supposed to be found – of those selling animals and birds for sacrifice as well as the money changers (John 2:13–22). When challenged, he replies in verse 19, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ His hearers are astonished (v. 20): ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ In retrospect the evangelist knows the true import of Jesus’ words (vv. 21–22): ‘But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.’
This is no Jesus ‘meek and mild’. Understandably he is challenged by the vested interests. The Jews demand a sign. By what authority is Jesus permitted to behave so outrageously? In the light of the resurrection the disciples could fathom what Jesus was saying so puzzlingly on this dramatic occasion. Köstenberger sums up John’s thesis – and the temple cleansing is some of the evidence for it – in the following illuminating way:
In essence, the thrust of John’s presentation of Jesus as the new temple is the conviction that instead of the old sanctuary, it is now Jesus who has become the proper place of worship for God’s people. This marks all previous places of worship, and all manifestations of God’s presence and glory with his people, as preliminary anticipations of his final and definitive revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus, as the new Israel, is the vine and his followers the branches, he is to be the center of all God’s activity and of all worship directed to God. It is readily apparent, then, that John presents Jesus as divine, for worship is to be rendered to no one but God alone.
Jesus is the temple presence of the God of Israel. John 1:14, which speaks of the Word’s having tented or tabernacled (eskēnōsen) among us, with all its resonances of the tabernacle as the place of the divine presence in the wilderness, is now amplified in John 2 in concrete action within the precincts of the Jerusalem temple. G. K. Beale draws John 1:14 and John 2 together and rightly concludes, ‘The special revelatory presence of God, formerly contained in the holy of holies of the tabernacle and temple, has now burst forth into the world in the form of the incarnate God, Jesus Christ.’
The unfolding Johannine narrative also makes plain the real humanity of this Word incarnate. A journey makes him weary by the time he reaches Jacob’s well at Sychar in Samaria (John 4:6). At Bethany in Judea the death of his friend Lazarus makes him weep, and moves and troubles him (John 11:33–35). In the Johannine account this Jesus is no phantom but the God who wept human tears.
But incarnation?
Nothing reviewed thus far suggests that the New Testament believed that their Old Testament forebears were expecting an incarnation. Even John’s Gospel, which has the most explicit incarnational theology, has no suggestion of such an expectation. With reference to the testimony of the Fourth Gospel Richard Bauckham rightly says, ‘Thus God’s gracious love, central to the identity of the God of Israel, now takes the radically new form of a human life in which the divine self-giving happens. This could not have been expected, but nor was it uncharacteristic. It is novel but appropriate to the identity of the God of Israel.’ There is a very good reason for this. The incarnation was a mystery, as noted in the opening paragraph of this chapter. Speaking generally, David Hill captures the relevant sense of New Testament mystery well: ‘In the New Testament, therefore, mystērion signifies a divine secret that is being (or has been) revealed in God’s good time, an open secret in some sense.’ H. H. D. Williams III amplifies the content of the mystery: ‘In the New Testament a revealed mystery involves Jesus Christ and his place within God’s plan of salvation.’
The key text for exploring the mystery for our purposes is found in 1 Timothy 3:14–16. However, it is not the only text in 1 Timothy that thematizes ‘mystery’. In 1 Timothy 3:9 we read in the ESV, ‘They must hold the mystery [mystērion] of the faith with a clear conscience.’ The NIV is more an interpretation at this point but a defensible one: ‘They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.’ ‘Mystery’ has been rendered ‘the deep truths of the faith’. P. T. O’Brien concurs when he comments, ‘it is best to understand the phrase as referring to the corpus of Christian teaching’. Our key text needs to be read with the earlier reference in mind.
According to Philip H. Towner, the term ‘mystery’ in these verses (which are hymnic in form) ‘denotes the appearance of Christ in history as the hidden salvation plan of God’. Paul writes to Timothy (1 Tim. 3:14–16):
Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great:
He appeared [ephanerōthē, ‘was manifested’] in the flesh,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world,
was taken up in glory.
As far as the structure of the hymn is concerned, there are three main views among scholars.
Significantly for our purpose, whichever view is embraced, the first line of the hymn is seen to refer to the incarnation and that the incarnation is a part of the divine mystery. As I. H. Marshall argues, ‘Although no subject is expressed… The language is based on that used elsewhere to describe how the Son of God was incarnate. The thought is of an epiphany in human form, and that a divine or heavenly subject is intended. The reference is certainly to the earthly life of Jesus and not his resurrection appearances.’ In other words the incarnation is a datum of salvation history (Heilsgeschichte) that hither to had not been made known. Vladimir Lossky captures the sense of mystery well: ‘The work of Christ is a “dispensation of the mystery which from all ages has been hidden in God”, as St. Paul said, an “eternal purpose which was realized in Jesus Christ”. However, there is no necessity of nature in the incarnation…. It is the work of the will, the mystery of divine love.’
Given the mystery referred to in 1 Timothy 3:16 it is no surprise then that the Old Testament contains no explicit presentation of an incarnation as part of the hope of Israel. A returning Elijah? Yes! A coming Son of Man? Yes! A coming Davidic messiah? Yes! A God-man? No! If this is so, how could the Old Testament text and story have prepared the way, as this study is arguing? Is the incarnation one theme that arises de novo once the New Testament era has arrived? Thus a biblical theology of incarnation can start only with the New Testament text, unlike other themes such as convent, election and sacrifice, to name just a few. To answer these questions, help can be found in a surprising place, namely in a theory about theory.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, the eminent Christian philosopher, offers a fascinating account of the nature of theorizing. In every theory some pattern is present. To determine whether the pattern is truly present, theories need to be weighed. Weighing theories requires beliefs. Some beliefs have to do with the data. He writes, ‘At the center of all weighing of theory with respect to the presence or absence of the pattern claimed is a decision to take certain of one’s beliefs about the entities within the theory’s scope as data for one’s weighing of the theory.’ However, what is acceptable data is in turn contingent upon other beliefs that Wolterstorff calls ‘data-background beliefs’. He gives an example. He takes as a datum that the desk is brown because he believes that his sense of sight is working properly and that the light in the room is not distorting the colour. Importantly data-background beliefs are ‘a condition of one’s accepting as data that which one does’.
How is Wolterstorff ’s theory about theorizing relevant to the question of incarnation? In my view, without the Old Testament accounts of theophany – especially the ’îš ones – and depictions of God in anthropomorphic (e.g. depicted with ears, eyes, arms, hands, fingers), anthropopathic (depicted as angry, afflicted, grieving) and anthropopraxic ways (depicted as standing, sitting, ruling, fighting, walking) there would not have been the possibility of data-background beliefs that were crucial for the intelligibility of an actual incarnation – for example, the belief that God was coming to Zion and the belief that a Davidic king, who by definition was human, was also coming. And the idea that implicit in certain key Davidic texts the figure in view resists being reduced to the merely human adds to the picture. Without these data-background beliefs who would have been able to combine the biblical ideas of God and humanity into the notion of God incarnate? Or again data-background beliefs about the Logos, the tabernacling presence of God, and creaturely flesh make the claim that ‘The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us’ plausible in a first-century setting.
An older writer, H. P. Liddon, captures something of the significance of such data-background belief preparation in the following way. Of course, Wolterstorff ’s language was unavailable to him at his time of writing in the nineteenth century:
Whether in them [Old Testament theophanies] the Word or Son actually appeared, or whether God made a created angel the absolutely perfect exponent of His Thought and Will, do they not point in either case to a purpose in the Divine Mind which could only be realized when man had been admitted to a nearer and more palpable contact with God than was possible under the Patriarchal or Jewish dispensations? Do they not suggest, as their natural climax and explanation, some Personal Self-unveiling of God before the eyes of His creatures? Would not God appear to have been training His people, by this long and mysterious series of communications, at length to recognize and to worship Him when hidden under, and indissolubly one with a created nature? Apart from the specific circumstances which may seem to explain each Theophany at the time of its taking place, and considering them as a series of phenomena, is there any other account of them so much in harmony with the general scope of Holy Scripture, as that they were successive lessons addressed to the eye and to the ear of ancient piety, in anticipation of a coming Incarnation of God?
He describes the role of theophanies as ‘This preparatory service’. My argument is that anthropomorphisms, anthropopathisms and anthropopraxisms similarly prepare the way for what Friedman describes as the ‘ultimate anthropomorphism… God in the form of a man, yet still the one and only God. Cosmic yet personal. The logos yet flesh. People could walk and talk with an incarnation of an infinite being beyond the universe.’
Conclusion
Biblical theology as a discipline traces the great themes of Scripture from their first appearance in the canon to the last, whether the key term (or terms) appears or the idea does. Key ideas such as covenant, election, sacrifice, kingdom, the land, inheritance and presence, among many others, become the lens through which the unfolding biblical story is viewed. Old Testament believers would have found foregoing terms in Hebrew (or Aramaic) and the ideas instantiated by them familiar. ‘Covenant’ (bĕrît) and the idea of it, for example, would have been familiar to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Malachi and the psalmist, but incarnation? Not even the notion of the divine presence, whether resident in tabernacle or temple, would necessarily have implied incarnation. It is true that the trajectory of key texts relating to David and his house were suggestive of a more than merely human figure in view. But that trajectory was subtle, not easily perceived before the actual coming of Christ.
With the incarnation comes a newness in God’s dealings with humankind that early church fathers appreciated. Anthony Tyrell Hanson captures the newness well:
The newness came through the incarnation, not through the revelation of the Son as such. What was new was not grace, or faith, or rejection, or love, or Son, or Word, but God the Word incarnate, God the Son incarnate…. It was the taking of flesh as such, the act, the event in history, culminating of course in death and resurrection, that was unique, supreme, new.
Paul made the same point: ‘Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great: He appeared in the flesh’ (1 Tim. 3:16). And for Paul the one who appeared in the flesh is he in whom the fullness of deity dwells, as his letter to the Colossians makes plain: ‘For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity [theotēs, ‘deity’] lives in bodily form’ (Col. 2:9).
But why incarnation per se and not some other way? What was the rationale for the incarnation? To that question we shall soon turn but next is an excursus dealing with a contemporary debate.
Excursus: the pre-incarnate Christ, theophany and the Old Testament debate
As we saw in previous chapters, the early church fathers (e.g. Clement of Alexandria) and some modern commentators (e.g. Walter Kaiser, Jr.) see in the Old Testament anthropomorphic theophanies appearances of the pre-incarnate Logos or Son. A robust trinitarian faith would make the suggestion all the more plausible. For the trinitarian Christian, following Augustine, omnia opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt (the works of the Trinity outward are undivided), the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in every divine action but not necessarily in exactly the same way. And therefore any anthropomorphic theophany in the OT ex hypothesi involved the second Person of the triune Godhead. Furthermore, if there is merit in Fretheim’s distinction between ‘Theophanies of God as Warrior’ and ‘Theophanies of God as Bearer of the Word’ – and I believe there is – then the idea that it is the Word who is the actor in these Old Testament anthropomorphic theophanies is strengthened. This proposition is further buttressed if the doctrine of appropriation is brought into play. This doctrine assigned a particular work especially to one of the triune Godhead: creation to the Father, revelation and redemption to the Son, and sanctification to the Holy Spirit, although the Trinity is involved in every divine action in some way.
I have argued that once Christ came, in retrospect the New Testament writers and early church fathers could see in the Old Testament connections, implications and entailments hither to hidden from view. However, recently a different view has been championed. In this view those who experienced such anthropomorphic theophanies in Old Testament times knew they were seeing Christ. Controversially Paul Blackham argues so. According to Blackham not only are there Christophanies in the Old Testament, but that testament also teaches the doctrine of the Trinity. He rejects conservative scholarship that has notions of progressive revelation that deny that Old Testament saints such as Abraham explicitly put their trust in Christ. He also rejects critical scholarship that attempts to see some kind of Christian development of the Hebrew understanding of God. Margaret Barker illustrates his point:
The Trinitarian faith of the Church had grown from the older Hebrew belief in a pluriform deity, and so the earliest Christian exegetes had not been innovators when they understood the Lord of the Hebrew Scriptures as the second God, the Son of El Elyon. The One whom they recognized in Jesus had been the Lord, and so they declared ‘Jesus is Lord’.
Blackham draws attention to that Old Testament strand of evidence that affirms that God cannot be seen, and yet some do see God (e.g. cf. Exod. 24:9–11; 33:18–23 inter alia). Next he examines the use of such scriptural evidence by second-century fathers. In particular he explores how Justin Martyr and Irenaeus drew a trinitarian understanding of God from Old Testament evidence, with the Father as the hidden One and the Son as the appearing One, especially in the guise of the angel of the Lord. He maintains that, theologically speaking, God is not known without a mediator and that mediator is the Son. He further argues, following Colin E. Gunton, it was Augustine who decisively broke from this tradition of the theological interpretation of Old Testament Scripture. In other treatments of Christophany he appeals to some of the luminaries in the Christian past such as Luther, Calvin, John Owen and Jonathan Edwards.
There is little doubt that New Testament characters and writers saw Christ at work in the Old Testament. In John’s Gospel we find these words on the lips of Jesus himself:
Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.
‘You are not yet fifty years old,’ they said to him, ‘and you have seen Abraham!’ (John 8:56–57)
Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. This was to fulfil the word of Isaiah the prophet:
‘Lord, who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’
For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:
‘He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their hearts,
so they can neither see with their eyes,
nor understand with their hearts,
nor turn – and I would heal them.’
Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him. Likewise Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 10:1–4 that Christ was active in the time of Moses:
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
Peter adds to the Pauline picture by referring to the prophets. 1 Peter 1:10–12 states:
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
However, the question is not whether Christ was at work in the Old Testament but whether Old Testament saints consciously believed in him. On this latter issue Blackham is less convincing. It is one thing to say that the Old Testament saints were saved by Christ. It is quite another to say that they knew Christ was their saviour.
As Graeme Goldsworthy contends, Blackham appears to be interpreting the New Testament primarily through the lens of the Old Testament, whereas primarily the Old Testament should be interpreted through the lens of the New. Justice needs to be done to the incarnation as ‘the final revelation of God’. Or, put another way, there is more merit in a more traditional understanding of progressive revelation than Blackham allows. Moreover Blackham does not appear to feel the weight of opposing arguments and alternative exegeses. This attitude Goldsworthy labels ‘exegetical authoritarianism’, and not without some justification.
Despite the arguments above, a caveat is in order. I have argued that the idea that these Old Testament anthropomorphic theophanies are appearances of the pre-incarnate Christ needs to be weighed carefully. Calvin has wisdom to offer on this point:
I willingly accept what the old writers teach, that when Christ appeared in those early times in the form of a man, it was a prelude of the mystery which was revealed when God manifested in the flesh. But we must beware of imaging, that Christ then was incarnate; for we do not read that Christ was incarnate; for we do not read that God sent his Son in the flesh before the fullness of time.
The suggestion that the anthropomorphic theophanies were actually appearances of the pre-incarnate Son of God is plausible and the idea is defensible. However, it must be observed that even though this proposition is consistent with the biblical testimony it is not demanded by it.
What an extraordinary person Jesus was to have caused such a searching for Old Testament language, personages, events and institutions in the attempt to construe his identity and significance. His own reading of the Old Testament as the back story to his own identity and mission led the way to reading those Scriptures in a way that may have eluded – and in the case of the incarnation I have contended did – even the Old Testament writers and readers. Some contemporary proposals for Jesus’ identity hardly begin to explain this phenomenon of so reading the ancient Scriptures, whether that of Jesus as the cynic sage or as the wandering Jewish charismatic healer, to name just two. These proposals concerning Jesus are just too small. There is an explanation large enough, however, and it is the classic one articulated at Chalcedon in AD 451. This Jesus is one Person who is truly God and truly human. The Word became incarnate. The secret is out. Now it is an open secret or a ‘mystery’, in the Pauline sense of the term.