Excursus: Did the divine Son assume fallen or unfallen human nature?
Chapter Five
Cur Deus homo
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) was a Christian genius, albeit an eccentric one. He is widely regarded as ‘the father of existentialism’. This nineteenth-century Danish thinker saw his role as one of reintroducing Christ to Christendom. He believed, for example, that the clergy in Denmark were ‘little more than a branch of the civil service’. He knew how to write in a way that would startle his readers. For him the incarnation represented an absolute paradox that posited the Eternal’s entering time. He famously and provocatively wrote of the incarnation in the following way:
If the contemporary generation had left nothing behind them but these words: ‘We have believed that in such and such a year the God appeared among us in the humble figure of a servant, that he lived and taught in our community, and finally died,’ it would be more than enough. The contemporary generation would have done all that was necessary; for this little advertisement, this nota bene on a page of universal history, would be sufficient to afford an occasion for a successor [future believers], and the most voluminous account can in all eternity do nothing.
Kierkegaard captures the wonder of an incarnation in these words but such minimalism leaves the believer in an epistemological vacuum. ‘More than enough’? Hardly! Happily the New Testament writers did not think so. So then why, according to the New Testament writers, did God become human, or, to use the famous title of Anselm’s classic work, cur Deus homo?
New Testament answers
In general terms the incarnation qualified Jesus to be what Adam failed to be and what Israel failed to be: the true image of God walking the earth and exercising dominion. He proved to be the faithful son in contrast to Adam and Israel. Thomas Oden finely sums up the rationale of the incarnation as found in the biblical testimony. He offers five biblically defensible reasons for the incarnation:
To reveal God to humanity (John 1:18; 14:7–11)
To provide a high priest interceding for us able to sympathize with human weaknesses (Heb. 4:14–16)
To offer a pattern of the fullness of human life (1 Pet. 2:21; 1 John 2:6)
To provide a substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of all humanity (Heb. 10:1–10)
To bind up the demonic powers (1 John 3:8)
I would add a sixth: to redeem those under law (Gal. 4:4). Let’s now examine these, although not necessarily in Oden’s order.
To reveal the Father to us
The revelatory importance of the incarnation is in view in John’s Gospel to a degree that no other New Testament document can rival. From the Prologue (John 1:18) we learn that the Word who became flesh without ceasing to be the Word is the exegete of the invisible Father: ‘No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side [kolpos, lit. ‘bosom’, ‘breast’, ‘chest’], he has made him known [exēgēsato]’ (ESV). René Kieffer comments insightfully, ‘The prologue now makes it explicit that the Word is identical with Jesus, the Messiah, v. 18, in contrast to Moses who could not see God without dying (Ex 33:20), Jesus is said to be in the Father’s bosom and is himself “God” (probably the original reading, attested already in P 66 and P 75).’ Kieffer points out, ‘The “bosom” expresses the intimacy Jesus shares with his Father (see 13:25 on the beloved disciple), in his pre-existence, his mission on earth, and his return to the Father (cf. 17:5). He is therefore the proper revealer of God.’ John 1:18 appears to follow the ancient epistemological principle of connaturality (like knows like).
The encounter between Jesus and Nathaniel at the end of the first chapter of John throws further light on the revelation Jesus brings. Nathaniel is astonished at Jesus’ knowledge of him, as related in John 1:47–48:
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, ‘Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’
‘How do you know me?’ Nathanael asked.
Jesus answered, ‘I saw you while you were still under the fig-tree before Philip called you.’
This revelation elicits a confession of faith from Nathanael in verse 49: ‘Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”’ Jesus’ response is profound (John 1:50–51): ‘Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig-tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.” ’ Hans Urs von Balthasar rightly draws out the significance of this claim: ‘In the Son, therefore, heaven is open to the world. He has opened the way from the one to the other and made exchange between the two possible, first and foremost through his Incarnation (Jn 1:51).’ The temporary stairway between earth and heaven that Jacob witnessed in Old Testament times (Gen. 28:12) has given way to the permanence of the Word enfleshed as the link between the human and the divine. There is a bridge between heaven and earth that was not there before. In Pauline language the mediator (mesitēs) has come (1 Tim. 2:5).
A. M. Ramsey maintained, ‘God is Christlike and in him there is no unChristlikeness at all.’ The famous scene set in the upper room in John’s Gospel in which Jesus prepares his disciples for his return to the Father provides evidence for Jesus’ contention (John 14:1–9). Jesus detects their alarm at the thought of his departure and in the light of their anxiety promises them a future with him (John 14:1–4):
Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.
Thomas is puzzled: ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ (v. 5). Jesus responds with another one of the famous emphatic ‘I am’ statements found in this Gospel: ‘I am [egō eimi] the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him’ (vv. 6–7). This time it is Philip asking the questions: ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us’ (v. 8). Jesus’ answer is striking. To see him at work is to see the Father at work: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”?’ (v. 9). Indeed shortly after this, in the narrative flow of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is presented in prayer to the Father in a garden setting. In that prayer he sums up his mission in revelatory terms (John 17:6 ESV): ‘I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.’ According to Andreas J. Köstenberger, ‘The notion that Jesus reveals the Father in his whole Person, both works and words, is foundational to John’s Gospel (e.g., 1:18; 8:19, 27; 10:38; 12:45; 14:9–11).’ Put another way, Jesus has made the divine nature known. D. A. Carson rightly suggests:
Do you want to know what the character of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the holiness of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the wrath of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the forgiveness of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the glory of God is like? Study Jesus all the way to that wretched cross. Study Jesus.
Jesus has truly exegeted the Father by word and deed.
To redeem us
Paul’s letter to the Galatians contains deep Christology. In it Paul skilfully places his Christology in an eschatological framework of how the promises to Abraham are realized in Jesus Christ: ‘If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (Gal. 3:29). He explains further by drawing attention to the problematic in Galatians 4:1–3, ‘What I am saying is that as long as an heir is under age, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were under age, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world.’ However, there is a divine timetable. According to that timetable, ‘when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law [hina tous hypo nomon exagorasē], that we might receive adoption to sonship’ (Gal. 4:5, my emphasis). The idea of ‘redemption’ in this context may have a double background: Yahweh’s redemption of his ‘firstborn son’ Israel in the Old Testament and the Greco-Roman slave market where slaves were purchased. Both ideas would have resonated with Galatian congregations that would have had a mixture of Jewish and Gentile believers in their membership. John Stott comments:
What is emphasized in these verses is that the one whom God sent to accomplish our redemption was perfectly qualified to do so. He was God’s Son. He was also born of a human mother, so that He was human as well as divine, the one and only God-man. And He was born ‘under the law’, that is, of a Jewish mother, into the Jewish nation, subject to the Jewish law. Throughout His life He submitted to all the requirements of the law. He succeeded where all others before and since have failed: He perfectly fulfilled the righteousness of the law.
Stott then draws out the theological implications of the Pauline text:
So the divinity of Christ, the humanity of Christ and the righteousness of Christ uniquely qualified Him to be man’s redeemer. If He had not been man, He could not have redeemed men. If He had not been a righteous man, He could not have redeemed unrighteous men. And if He had not been God’s Son, He could not have redeemed men for God or made them the sons of God.
The divine largesse does not stop with the sending of the Son. The Spirit is also sent. Paul argues (Gal. 4:6–7), ‘Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.’ The sending of the Son secures our status of sonship. The sending of the Spirit of the Son secures our Jesus-like experience of sonship. We too pray ‘abba Father like he did’.
To represent us as great high priest
The priest in Israel played a mediatorial role in representing the worshipper to God and God to the worshipper. None was more important in this role than Israel’s high priest. The letter to the Hebrews with its Jewish orientation makes much of this role in presenting Jesus Christ as the High Priest. The letter contends in Hebrews 2:16–18:
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 text contains the first explicit reference in Hebrews of Jesus in the high priestly office, which is to play such an important role in subsequent chapters, especially 7–10.
Jesus in this role is the intercessor par excellence according to Hebrews 4:14–15: ‘Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin.’ The reason why Jesus is able to so sympathize is because he is truly human. Thus the writer can confidently exhort the readership, ‘Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need’ (Heb. 4:16). His priesthood is not subject to the limitations death brings, where priest after priest is removed by it: ‘Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives for ever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them’ (Heb. 7:23–25). His priesthood is Melchizedekian (Heb. 7:11–19). Moreover in this high priestly role he is credentialled to offer the definitive sacrifice for sins. Unlike the Levitical priesthood he is without sin, and therefore as both offerer and offering he has a purity the old order could never provide (Heb. 10:1–14). A point we shall return to shortly.
Jesus’ humanity is a necessary condition for his carrying out not only his high priestly role as intercessor in Hebrews 2:16–18, as we have seen, but also for his being the liturgical leader, as in Hebrews 8:1–2: ‘Now the main point of what we are saying is this: we do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle [tōn hagiōn leitourgos kai tēs skēnēs, lit. ‘of the holy things servant and of the tent/ tabernacle’] set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being.’ If there had been no incarnation, there would have been no one qualified to so serve humankind. As Leon Morris says, ‘The nature of the work Jesus came to accomplish [as high priest] demanded the Incarnation.’
To substitute sacrificially for us
Both the letter to the Hebrews and the Pauline letters make clear the importance of Christ’s righteous humanity as a prerequisite for his saving work. He could not have stood in our place as our substitute without it. Moreover without his righteousness we could not stand before a holy God as righteous unless in union with him. His righteousness becomes our own.
We begin with Hebrews and return to the theme of Jesus as our high priest. Hebrews 7:26–28 is of special relevance as it summarizes so much of Hebrews’ presentation of Jesus’ high priestly ministry:
Such a high priest truly meets our need [eprepen, ‘fitting’] – one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints as high priests men in all their weakness; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect for ever.
As our high priest he perfectly represents us before God. Unlike the old Levitical order he does not have to offer a sacrifice for his own sins – he had none: ‘one who is holy [hosios], blameless [akakos], pure [amiantos], set apart from sinners’. William L. Lane comments, ‘The three terms are not descriptive of static moral qualities but of dispositions demonstrated by the incarnate Son in spite of his complete involvement in the life of common humanity.’ This high priest now exalted to the heavens is ‘the high priest appropriate to the Christian community… qualified by spiritual and moral perfection’. And as the sacrifice itself he provides a perfection no bull or goat could give. Hebrews 9:14 draws out the latter point in a classic a fortiori argument: ‘How much more [in comparison to bulls and goats], then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!’ (my emphasis).
The accent of the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice to those under the old order reaches its apogee in Hebrews 10:1–18. That superiority is articulated in three ways. Under the old order animal sacrifices were offered; under the new order Christ’s own body was the offering. Under the old order an earthly setting was the location for sacrifice. Under the new it is the heavens. Under the old order sacrifices were daily affairs. Under the new only one affair – that of Christ offered once for all time. What is of striking interest is the writer’s use of Psalm 40:6–8a in Hebrews 10:5–7:
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
Then I said, “Here I am – it is written about me in the scroll –
I have come to do your will, my God.”’
As Guthrie rightly argues, ‘The use of kosmos (“world”), along with the context, suggests here that the incarnation is in mind.’ The writer of Hebrews then draws out the theological implications of Christ’s coming into the created order. Christ came into the world to do away with the old order and to bring in a new one. A new covenant has come (Heb. 10:15–16). It took the sacrifice of himself to do so and what he did was definitive and final (v. 12, eis to diēnekes, ‘for ever’, ‘uninterrupted’). Hence, having offered himself, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God’ (v. 12) and as per verse 13 fulfilled Psalm 110:1: ‘waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet’ (ESV).
Paul too draws attention to the substitutionary nature of Christ’s saving work. Two texts for 2 Corinthians are of special importance here. We shall treat them in reverse order to their appearance in the letter and bring them into conversation with one another. The first is 2 Corinthians 8:9, ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.’ This wonderful Christology is posited by Paul for a very practical reason. He wants to motivate the Corinthians to give to the Jerusalem project: a collection from the Pauline churches to be taken to Jerusalem. The Macedonians have given generously to provide for the needs of the Jerusalem saints, but what of the Corinthians? Will they be generous too? If they act with Christlike generosity, they will be indeed.
In 2 Corinthians 8:9 Paul presents the great stooping as an ‘incarnational event’. Colin G. Kruse captures it well: ‘It is most likely that what Paul had in mind was the whole drama of redemption, especially the incarnation.’ Grace does what it does not have to do: give up the riches of heaven for our sakes. This is the nature of the divine largesse. But grace does not end the story there. The coming and cross of Christ – both incarnation and atonement are in view most probably – enrich us. This is one of the purposes of Christ’s incarnation. What are these riches? To quote an earlier phrase from St Paul, they are ‘an eternal weight of glory’ (2 Cor. 4:17 ESV).
If both Jesus’ coming and the cross are in view in 2 Corinthians 8:9, then Paul’s powerful claim in 2 Corinthians 5:21, our second text, provides a lens through which to view just how ‘poor’ Christ was willing to become for our sakes: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ According to A. M. Hunter, in 2 Corinthians 5:21 ‘Paul declares that the crucified Christ, on our behalf, took the whole reality of sin upon himself, like the scapegoat: “For our sake [hyper hēmōn, ‘on behalf of us’] he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ ” Our sin was exchanged for his righteousness. Hunter goes on to say, ‘We are not fond nowadays of calling Christ’s suffering “penal” or of styling him our “substitute”; but can we avoid using some such words as these to express Paul’s view of the atonement?’
To defeat the evil one
As we saw in an earlier chapter, in the biblical story of origins evil enters the human sphere through the serpent later identified in the canon of Scripture as the devil, the evil one (cf. Gen. 3:1 and Rev. 20:2). We also read of a promise made that the serpent will be overcome by the male seed of a woman:
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.
However, for many Westerners to speak of the evil one is to enter the realm of fantasy. Modern materialism has banished the world of spirits. So much for the biblical view of what is real. Surprisingly spirits are fine for entertainment. Horror films and supernaturalistic television series have large followings. Significantly many Christians in the West are not immune from this Zeitgeist. Notional belief in the devil and his demons remains, but for all practical purposes life is lived as though there are only two realms of persons: God and us. One important contribution of the Pentecostal movement is to take the kingdom of darkness and spiritual warfare seriously. Here is an area where Western Christians can learn from other believers in the majority world.
Christian anthropologist and missiologist Paul Hiebert especially drew attention to the need for the West to learn from other parts of the world. He describes his own experience in India in these terms:
The reason for my uneasiness with the biblical and Indian worldviews should be clear: I had excluded the middle level of supernatural this-worldly beings and forces from my own worldview. As a scientist I had been trained to deal with the empirical world in naturalistic terms. As a theologian I was taught to answer ultimate questions in theistic terms. For me the middle zone did not really exist. Unlike Indian villagers, I had given little thought to spirits of this world, to local ancestors and ghosts, or to the souls of animals. For me these belonged to the realm of fairies, trolls, and other mythical beings.
Hiebert describes the truncated universe that many a Western Christian lives in as ‘the flaw of the excluded middle’. The middle level of unseen spirits has been excluded.
Jesus did not embrace the flaw of the excluded middle. He had no difficulty in recognizing that evil cannot be reduced to the bad behavior of humankind. There is an enemy of God and humanity. In the parable of the weeds in Matthew 13:24–30 he speaks of an enemy who sows weeds among the wheat, and in his explanation in verses 36–43 identifies the enemy as ‘the evil one’, ‘the devil’ (esp. Matt. 13:38–39). In Mark’s Gospel in response to a criticism that his power came from the dark side Jesus argued in classic reductio ad absurdum terms (Mark 3:23–27):
So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: ‘How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.’
Thus he compared the devil to a strong man. Before a strong man can be despoiled he needs to be bound. Jesus saw his work in exorcism in those terms. He was despoiling the strong man by liberating those possessed from Satan’s grip.
The question though is whether any of the New Testament writers saw this combat against the devil as a rationale for the incarnation. Two important passages from two different New Testament writers come into view in answer to the question. The first is found in Hebrews 2:14–15: ‘Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that [with this purpose in mind: hina of purpose] by his death he might break the power [katargeō, ‘to render inoperative or ineffective’] 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.’ The devil’s power lies in the very human fear of death. But to quote the title of John Owen’s famous Puritan work, the cross represents ‘The Death of Death in the Death of Christ’. How the devil exercises his power is not explained but simply stated. What is clear though is that in sharing our humanity Christ enters the sphere of the devil’s rule and through his own death deprives the devil of his power. George H. Guthrie comments, ‘Since death was the prescription for victory in this case, the only way the Son could accomplish the needed task was to die, and the only way to die was to become human. This is, for our author, the logic of the Incarnation.’ Jesus thus comes before the reader in Hebrews 2:14–15 as humanity’s champion who does battle on our behalf.
The second text is found in the Johannine literature. There were those in the orbit of the first readers who were denying that a real incarnation had taken place. John would have none of it. In 1 John 3:7–8 we read, ‘Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.’ Stephen S. Smalley has it right when he comments:
The aorist passive ephanerōthē (literally, ‘he was manifested’) indicates that… John is referring here to the Incarnation of Jesus in time and space. It was a real appearing, in history, with a specific and salvific purpose in mind (in saying this, John is perhaps mindful of those heretics who were ready to claim that the Incarnation was merely an illusion).
As for purpose, again Smalley’s comments are helpful: ‘John is thus saying here that the coming of Jesus, in flesh and blood, was concerned with unpicking the net of evil in which the devil has always attempted to trap human beings.’
Given the testimonies of Hebrews 2:14–15 and 1 John 3:7–8 Calvin rightly sums up the nexus between the incarnation, the atonement and the Christus Victor theme in his famous Institutes:
In short, since neither as God alone could he feel death, nor as man alone could he overcome it, he coupled human nature with divine that to atone for sin he might submit the weakness of the one to death; and that, wrestling with death by the power of the other nature, he might win victory for us…. But we should especially espouse what I have just explained: our common nature with Christ is the pledge of our fellowship with the Son of God; and clothed with our flesh he vanquished death and sin together that the victory and triumph might be ours.
No incarnation, no atonement; but also no atonement, no victory over the evil one.
To model true humanity
In the New Testament the Old Testament concept of walking in the ways of Yahweh becomes walking in the ways of the Christ. As 1 John 2:6 says, ‘Whoever claims to live in him must live as [opheilei kathōs ekeinos periepatēsen, ‘ought to walk as that one’] Jesus did.’ In other words the imitatio Dei of the older revelation becomes overwhelmingly the imitatio Christi of the new one. Not that the imitatio Dei is missing from the New Testament, but generally the accent falls elsewhere. For example, 1 Peter has both ideas. In 1 Peter 1:15–16 the readers are exhorted to be holy as God is holy (cf. Lev. 19:2). Even so, when Peter addresses the matter of Christian slaves abused by their masters he appeals to the model Christ provided. Indeed in 1 Peter 2:21 the idea of walking in Christ’s footsteps is made quite explicit: ‘To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.’
The question though is not whether the New Testament writers exhort readers to be like Christ. They do. The issue is whether the New Testament explicitly states that a rationale for the incarnation was to provide an ethical model. Thomas Oden certainly thinks so in arguing that one of the purposes of the incarnation was ‘To offer a pattern of the fullness of human life.’ He brackets 1 Peter 2:21 and 1 John 2:6 as proof texts for his contention. Perhaps it would be more accurate to argue that both 1 Peter and 1 John draw a moral application out of the facts of the incarnate Son’s life.
There is, however, a famous Pauline text that brings the incarnation to the fore and applies it to Christian behaviour. In Philippians 2:5–11 we find one of the richest Christological passages in all the New Testament and worth quoting in full:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something
to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing [ekenōsen, lit. ‘emptied’],
by taking the very nature of a servant [doulos, lit. ‘slave’],
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death –
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
In this magnificent hymnic passage (vv. 6–11) Paul articulates the journey of Christ on our behalf from eternity into time and back to eternity. In classic terms here are the two states of Christ: the state of humiliation (vv. 6–8, esp. the descent) and the state of glory (vv. 9–11, esp. the ascent).
Paul’s point is a pastoral one. There are problems at Philippi: ‘Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind’ (Phil. 2:1–2). Unity is needed. Perhaps Philippians 4:2–3 illustrates the problem: ‘I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.’ Understandably then Paul seeks a change in the Philippians’ attitudes: ‘Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others’ (Phil. 2:3–4). Informed by Christ’s great stooping, both in incarnation and atonement, the believer is to be like-minded: that is to say, humble and other-person centred (Phil. 2:5). Paul illustrates what he means by way of a reference to his associate in ministry, Timothy. In Philippians 2:20–21 he refers to his co-worker Timothy, who exhibits the very Christlike mindset and practice that he is commending to the Philippians. He writes of Timothy, ‘I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.’ Paul contrasts Timothy as someone ‘who will genuinely care for the things concerning you [ta peri hymōn]’ with those who ‘seek the things of themselves’ [ta heautōn]’ (my tr.). Paul appears to be picking up the language of verse 4. Timothy is a true servant shaped by the example of Christ.
The timing of the incarnation: insight from Thomas Aquinas
For some Protestants the very mention of Thomas Aquinas creates anxiety. However, this medieval theologian beloved by so many Roman Catholic thinkers is one of the pre-eminent minds of the Christian tradition along with Augustine, Calvin and Barth. To say this is not to say that our critical faculties are to be suspended at the mere mention of the name. Rather it is to be open to learn as well as to critique. As the saying goes, ‘Have many teachers [Aquinas would be one, Calvin another] but only one master [Christ].’
Aquinas turned his considerable intelligence to the matter of the timing of the incarnation. Paul A. Glenn accurately captures Aquinas’s reasoning in this paraphrase:
The time of the Incarnation was most suitable. Had God become man to redeem us immediately after the first sin was committed, human pride would not have been humbled in consequence of that sin; man would not have realized, through an impressive stretch of time, the greatness of the treasure he had lost. And it was good for man to prepare, by prayerful longing, for the redemption; thus he would gain a keen awareness of the value of redemption; and of his need for it, so that, when it came, he would ardently take advantage of it. On the other hand, it would not do to have the Incarnation delayed, lest human longing turn to hopelessness and despairing disappointment. Therefore at exactly the right time, in the ‘fullness of time,’ as St. Paul says (Gal. 4:4), God became man.
Aquinas’s three reasons are clearly in view in this part of the Summa Theologica. If the incarnation had taken place too soon, then human pride would not have been challenged sufficiently. We would not have appreciated what was lost by the Fall. Additionally, to use Augustine’s famous words, ‘You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You’. Without the elapse of time would our hearts have grown sufficiently restless? Would we have appreciated redemption’s cost and therefore its worth? On the other hand, however, if the incarnation were too long in coming, then despair would have triumphed. The divine timing then was exquisite.
Another question needed addressing in Aquinas’s time: Why not delay the incarnation until the end of human history? Aquinas had an answer to that question too:
The perfection of glory to which human nature will finally be raised by the Word Incarnate will appear when souls and bodies are united again at the end of the world in the time of the general judgment. Yet it could not be fitting to have the Incarnation deferred to that moment. For man needed a remedy for sin, knowledge of God, reverence, good morals. And the Incarnation gave man these needed things: first, by hope and anticipation in those who lovingly awaited it, and then, by faith and devotion in those who actually experienced it in fact and in its fruits. None of these things would have come to man had the Incarnation been delayed to the end of the world. Hope and longing would have disappeared; the hearts of men would have grown cold.
Once more the divine timing of the incarnation was just right, or, to use a term favoured by Aquinas, ‘fitting’. Belief in a sovereign God would expect no less.
Conclusion
As I write this conclusion the USA is in the grip of the presidential race. All over the country there are surrogates for the incumbent president and for the rival speaking on behalf of their respective leaders. Surrogates abound as do television ads. Some of the surrogates are former or presently serving politicians, some are business successes, some are entertainers. None by definition is the leader. The wonderful news of the gospel is that God did not send a mere revelatory spirit nor a mere prophetic surrogate but the Son himself (Mark 12:1–12). No other could reveal the Father as the Son could. No other could redeem alienated humanity as the Son could. No other could both represent and substitute for us as the Son could. No other could defeat the evil one as the Son could. No other could model all that Adam and Israel should have been as the sinless, ever obedient, ever trusting Son could. And he did!
Excursus: Did the divine Son assume fallen or unfallen human nature?
In classic Chalcedonian terms Jesus Christ is one Person who is truly God and truly human. With reference to Christ’s humanity, Chalcedon affirms that he is ‘of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin’. But what sort of humanity did he assume in this post-Fall world? Did he assume a fallen human nature as Karl Barth maintained or did he assume an unfallen human nature as Oliver Crisp argues? And what is the dogmatic rank of the answer?
Crisp usefully distinguishes two kinds of temptation and two possible subjects of temptation when it comes to men and women. One kind of temptation is external. The serpent comes from outside Eden. The other kind is internal. This temptation comes from the appetites of fallen flesh. One kind of subject of temptation is an innocent human being (e.g. Adam in Gen. 2). Another kind of subject is a sinful human being (e.g. the wretched person of Rom. 7).
What then of Christ? Certainly Jesus experienced external temptation. In Matthew 4:1 we read, ‘Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.’ The tempter clearly comes from the outside in an attempt to tempt Jesus into deviating from the Father’s will. However, there is no evidence in the Gospels that Jesus faced internal temptation. Internal turmoil, yes! The agony in Gethsemane makes that plain. In Luke 22:44 we find, ‘And being in anguish [agōnia, lit. ‘agony’], he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.’ Even so, internal turmoil is not necessarily the product of temptation, as the Gethsemane account shows. Paul does ascribe to Christ ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Rom. 8:3). Does this Pauline phrase suggest that Christ possessed a fallen human nature? N. T. Wright argues that such a question is beside the point:
To debate whether Jesus’ humanity was therefore ‘sinful humanity’ or ‘sinless humanity,’ whether ‘fallen’ or ‘unfallen,’ seems to me beside the point. What matters is that it was genuine humanity, not a sham (cf. Phil 2:7), where… [en homoiōmati anthrōpōn, ‘in the likeness of humans’] does not mean ‘like a human being, but not actually one,’ but rather ‘a true human being, bearing the true likeness.’ Jesus could and did suffer and die, truly and really; he was in principle capable of sinning, but unlike all other humans did not. It was God’s design that, in his truly human death, sentence would be meted out on sin once for all.
J. D. G. Dunn adds, ‘Hence whatever the precise force of the homoiōmati [likeness] it must include the thought of Jesus’ complete identification with “sinful flesh” (cf. njb: “the same human nature as any sinner”).’ Calvin understands the phrase differently: ‘But he says, that he came in the likeness of the flesh of sin; for though the flesh of Christ was polluted by no stains, yet it seemed apparently to be sinful, inasmuch as it sustained the punishment due to our sins, and doubtless death exercised all its power over it as though it was subject to itself.’ Calvin seems in no doubt that Christ’s human flesh was unfallen. In no doubt also is W. J. Dumbrell who comments, ‘Greek homoiōma (likeness) is chosen to further understand that, though Jesus shared fully with humanity, he did not share sinful humanity.’ Dumbrell makes the important point that ‘“Flesh” here is not a physical term but the this-worldly orientation shared by all as a result of the Fall, hence its character as a force.’ If so, then Wright is correct to maintain that to argue from this verse (Rom. 8:3) whether Christ’s human nature was fallen or unfallen is beside the point. A different approach is needed that takes into account wider considerations.
Given the way Paul in his letter to the Romans appeals to Adam as a type of the one to come and Christ as the antitype that corresponds to Adam, it is important to reflect theologically on the features of the correspondence between them. Regarding human nature, both came to be in this world without a human father. In T. V. Morris’s categories Adam and Christ are essentially human but not commonly human. Commonly human beings are the result of a union of a male and female. Both Adam and Christ are in their own ways the first of a race of creatures. Adam comes before us as the head of the old creation of humankind. Christ in contrast is the head of the new creation of humankind. Furthermore, both Adam and Christ were innocent when facing the tempter. (Adam fell. Christ did not.) Christ was therefore tempted not internally but externally like Adam. Given these correspondences it seems more likely that Christ assumed unfallen human nature. In other words, as Crisp rightly contends Christ was impeccable (not liable to sin) and not merely sinless. Even so, Barth is right to maintain, ‘True, the Word assumes our human existence, assumes flesh, i.e., He exists in the state and position, amid the conditions, under the curse and punishment of sinful man.’ Christ did not become incarnate in some unreal unfallen creation, but in this actual fallen one. Even so, it does not follow that the human nature he assumed was a fallen one.
What I argued in an earlier excursus, on the question whether Christ would have come if there had been no Fall, applies here as well. In terms of dogmatic rank both the question and my answer are speculative. However, Gunton is worth quoting once more, ‘Hypothetical questions are dangerous in theology, because it [theology] is concerned with what God has done, not what he might have done instead. But in this case the question enables us to bring out the point of what has happened.’