Dr. Graham Cole speaks on The Incarnation – How can God become flesh? Why is this important?
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Let me introduce our speaker tonight, doctor Graham Cole, and, he is a professor at Beeson Divinity School. He's also, he lives in the neighborhood of Crestwood. His wife, Jules, is here somewhere. Jules, it's her birthday tomorrow or today in Australia because they're both from Australia. And, they are fantastic additions to the neighborhood of Crestwood.
Joel Brooks:Wonderful people. And, Graham, tonight, is going to talk to us about the incarnation, something he has recently written about. This will also be available online. The podcast will. And if you want, previous podcasts from our TalkBack series, they're also available online.
Joel Brooks:And doctor Cole spoke 2 years ago, I think on the Trinity, and it was absolutely fantastic. This is one of the reasons we invited him back. And so we're gonna have about an hour of talk and then about an hour of talk back. And so if you would, just help me welcome doctor Graham
Speaker 2:Cole. Well, thank you, Joel. I'm delighted to be with you on another one of these occasions. As Joel said last time I spoke on the doctrine of the Trinity, and the talk tonight about the incarnation really presupposes the doctrine of the trinity. The one god who is father, son and holy spirit.
Speaker 2:You've got a hand out there and so, that will cover the material, although I'll be adding a lot more on the way through. I wonder if you've ever tried to contact someone by phone, especially say down at the county office. It can be a tad frustrating. And sometimes you may ring someone and the phone just rings and rings and rings. There's no voice mail.
Speaker 2:They're uncontactable. Well, the novelist, Arthur Koestler, thought, that's what god is like. God is like someone who has left the telephone receiver off the hook uncontactable Or these days we'd say, the divine cell phone is switched off. God is inaccessible. I wonder how many moderns feel like that if they think about God at all.
Speaker 2:They think that God is inaccessible, God is uncontactable. The doctrine of the Trinity says an emphatic no to that idea of the uncontactable, inaccessible god. In the words of JB Phillips now some of you may use Eugene Peterson's The Message. Well, JB Phillips wrote a paraphrase of the New Testament which was like the message of his day. But he also wrote Christian books.
Speaker 2:And he says in one of them that we live on a visited planet. God is there and God is not silent. As the Nicene Creed says of the 4th century, for us and for our salvation he, that is Jesus, came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man. That's a creed that's confessed by the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, the Anglican Church, and numerous other church bodies.
Speaker 2:And it says an emphatic yes. We live on a visited planet. He came down from heaven. As I say, God is really there and he has not been silent. Now why do I say that?
Speaker 2:Here I turn to the testimony of scripture as definitive the definitive resource by which we exercise quality control over our religious ideas. And so the Bibles get to figure prominently in what I say tonight. So when you're all looking at your phones, I know what you're doing. You're reading the Bible on your phones, aren't you? Or you may have brought the Bible with you.
Speaker 2:But if not, I'll read out the relevant passages so that we can come to grips with the testimony of the new testament itself here. Because is the idea of the incarnation that we live on a visited planet something that's found in our new testament itself? Indeed, it is. And that brings us to the fact of the incarnation. It's something that we find in the biblical testimony.
Speaker 2:Now there are many key texts of the scriptures that I could turn to tonight, but the classic one, beloved in the early church, is from John's gospel chapter 1 verses 1 through to 18. So if you are going to turn to your Bible, that's where we're going to start. And this is how what is called the prologue of John's gospel by the scholars, this is how it starts. And the language is just so simple. The language of John's gospel is so, as it were, ordinary.
Speaker 2:But as the great John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople in the late 4th, early 5th century said, this is a gospel that a child could wade in and an elephant could swim in because it's got layers upon layers despite the simple language. In the beginning was the word, And the word was with god. And the word was god. He was in the beginning with god. This mysterious word that is God, and yet there is distinction within God.
Speaker 2:And ultimately the doctrine of the trinity is needed to make sense of that. This word we read in verse 14 now became flesh and dwelt tented, took up habitation among us, visited us. This word, who is god and was with god, became flesh. In Latin, this is obviously an English version of the original Greek, but in Latin, incarnae. In flesh.
Speaker 2:Hence, incarnation. The idea that god became one of us. The second person of the trinity, the son, became one of us and pitched his tent among us. And then we read this particular passage that goes right up to verse 18 as a prologue to this gospel climaxes in this way. Verse 17.
Speaker 2:For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. The word who became flesh and dwelt among us, whose glory was seen the glory as the only son from the father he has made.
Speaker 2:The very character and nature of god known. It's so cleverly written. It starts with something that's fairly abstract. This idea of the word that was with god and was god. And then we find that this word becomes flesh.
Speaker 2:And then we find that this word is the only son of a father. And that by the time we get to the very end of this prologue, we are so clearly on the plane of human history because this word that became flesh bears a human name. Jesus, the Christ, the messiah of Israel's hope and expectation. We move, if you like, from eternity, god time, to our time. We indeed live on a visited planet as far as John's gospel is concerned.
Speaker 2:God is there and he has not been silent. But at this point, I want to say that it's important to realise that scripture is non postulational. What do I mean by that? It's an idea I take from a theologian, Bernard Ramm, that I've always found helpful. The bible writers don't offer theories as to the nature of things.
Speaker 2:The bible writers make affirmations and they make denials about what they see as the facts of a matter. But they don't offer a theory as to how it is so. So we don't read in John's gospel any theory of the biology of incarnation, of how the word can become truly human. It's simply not an interest of the bible. The bible is interested in the relational.
Speaker 2:It's interested in giving us enough information about god and his ways and his plans that we may be rightly related to him. Rather than to simply speculate about the very nature of god. So no theories are offered as to how this is so, but in John chapter 1, the facticity of it is clearly affirmed. But why such an incarnation? Why did this take place?
Speaker 2:There was an Archbishop of Canterbury that lived way back when, he died in 1109 AD, by the name of Anselm. And he wrote a book that is still in print. Kydeus homo, Why God Human? It's a book about the incarnation and its logic. But he's raising such a good question, isn't he?
Speaker 2:Why did this happen? Well, the bible has a number of answers to that, the new testament writers. But I'm just going to share with you 4 of their answers tonight. And the first answer is to reveal. To reveal.
Speaker 2:Remember what John's gospel said again. It tells us by the time we get to the very end of that prologue that sets up this gospel discussion, he says no one has ever seen god. The only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. And the force of it is definitively made god known. The invisible god, if you like, becoming visible in the face of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:Jesus Christ as the exegete of the father. Because the word is exegete, which means to lead out, to show the meaning of. Today, when someone faithfully tells you what the meaning of the bible is, they are doing exegesis faithfully. They're leading out its meaning. Here that idea and word is used of this person who was the word with god, the word that became flesh dwelt among us, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:I love what another archbishop of Canterbury had to say in the but this time in 20th century, a New Testament scholar in his own right by the name of AM Ramsey, he says, in god, there is no unchristlikeness at all. In god, there is no unchristlikeness at all. Philip, in chapter 14 of John, asked to see the father. Jesus says, Philip, if you've seen me, seen me in action, seen my character, you have seen the father. And so one of the rationales of the incarnation is to make god the father known in the face of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:But that's not the only reason. Paul gives us another reason in Galatians chapter 4 verses 4 to 7. That other reason is to redeem. He came to redeem. So let me read to you from Galatians chapter 4 this time verses 4 to 7.
Speaker 2:Again such deep textured theology. This is what, St Paul says. But when the fullness of time had come, and the idea here is of not just something that was a happenstance, but something that came as part of divine timing. But when the fullness of time had come, god sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, god has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, Abba Father.
Speaker 2:The very prayer language of Jesus. So that you are no longer a slave but a son and of a son, then an heir through god. The idea of son here is the idea of sonship. It's an idea that the, Greeks and the Romans would have understood immediately. It has to do with being adopted into a very rich family and becoming heir to all that that family represents.
Speaker 2:And what, Saint Paul is saying is that god sent forth his son to redeem us that we may be caught up in the very communion that this son has with the father, so that the very prayer language of this son can become our own prayer language, such is the intimacy with which we can enter into relationship to god through what god has done for us, which we could not do for ourselves in the sending of this son to redeem us. Now these Galatian Christians were a mix of Jewish Christians and non Jewish or gentile Christians. And probably when Paul uses this language of to redeem, he has a couple of possible back stories in mind. For those who were Jewish Christians, they would think of Israel in Egypt, slaves to pharaoh. And how god, through a mighty act, set his people free.
Speaker 2:If you were not a Jew, you may have thought of the marketplace and how a price could be paid to set a slave free. But it's more here than just setting a slave free because what, Paul is saying is that this son came into the world not just to set us free from something, but to set us free for something. That we may be the children of God, the sons and daughters of God, Jesus the liberator. He came from the outside to become an insider with us because, friends, unfortunately, we all sit or stand here today compromised, Caught up in the web of alienation from god, of defection from god. And so that bridge had to be built from the divine side as well as from the human side.
Speaker 2:And that took nothing less than the incarnation, the god who became one of us. The very point that Ansel made back in the 11th century. To reveal, to redeem and to defeat. In Hebrews chapter 2 verses 14 to 18, we have these striking words. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood our humanity, He, that is Jesus himself, likewise, partook of the same things that through death he might destroy.
Speaker 2:The idea is nullify, render ineffective, make nuggetory. I'll try and find some other big words if I can because I'm a professor and I'm paid to use big words. The one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. He went into all that death represents for humanity, experienced it to the full, absorbed the horror of it, That if we are connected to him, we may not experience that kind of death, which Saint John in the book of Revelation calls the second death. He is the death taster, And he does so to defeat the devil.
Speaker 2:The biblical view of the world is that, human beings and god aren't the only intelligences. The biblical view of the world is that there are other created intelligences apart from us, and I'm not just talking about Lucy the chimp, intelligent though she was. I'm talking about angels and demons and the like. The developing world has much greater sense of this than we western people, perhaps. Although I had an interesting experience in Australia some years ago while I was speaking, and I was talking to a young, lady after the service was over.
Speaker 2:And she had started life as an atheist until she and some friends, as a joke, started playing with Ouija boards. And this woman had such a horrific experience in that that she came to believe in the devil before she came to believe in God. And I'm happy to say that she became a believer in Jesus that night. To reveal, to redeem, to defeat, and to model to model what truly human looks like. And truly human looks like an other person centred existence, Where the human person is not locked in the dungeon of their own egocentricity but have been set free or are free to love God and their neighbour and even their enemy.
Speaker 2:And so at the heart of a Christian ethic is the the imitation of Christ. Because having become incarnate, we see what a truly human life now looks like. Saint Paul appealed to that truly human life when in his second letter to the Corinthians, he seeks to motivate these Corinthians to join in a collection that he was getting together to help the poor Christians in Jerusalem. And in order to motivate them, he tells them about the Christ of 2 Corinthians 8 and verse 9. Really, one of my favorite statements in the entire bible.
Speaker 2:Though he were rich, for our sakes he became poor. That through his poverty, we might become rich. As Athanasius said in the 4th century, he became what we are that we might become what he is. Truly human. He is the great exemplar of what it is to be truly human.
Speaker 2:And to be able to do that, it took an incarnation. So note, however, that in the end the human predicament is such that it took more than just the coming of the word who became flesh. It ultimately took his cross as well. That's important to say because there are some versions of Christianity that make the incarnation the center of everything. But that actually is not the emphasis in the new testament.
Speaker 2:It can be seen in two practices of the early church that we do to this day. We baptize people, don't we, in the name of the father, son and holy spirit that they, as it were, may enter into the death of Jesus and rise with him as well, symbolically. And when we have the lord's supper, Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 26, we are showing forth, we are proclaiming, we are preaching. Not Christ's coming, but his cross. His death until he comes again.
Speaker 2:So it's important to talk about the incarnation, but it will be important sometime in this particular series, one particular year, to also talk about the cross as well as the coming. Although that may have already been a subject that's been addressed, I don't know. Now at this point, I'd like to introduce some key distinctions. It's rough to do this after a beer and it's rough to do this on a Wednesday night in the middle of the work week work week, but you sat through my talking about the trinity, so here we go. And I take these distinctions, which I find really vital for thinking about Jesus and who he is, from a very fine philosopher and Christian thinker by the name of T.
Speaker 2:V. Morris. He makes a distinction between being essentially human and being commonly human. Now it's commonly human to be a female, but it's not essential to being human. Although maybe some of the ladies would like a second opinion about us guys, but it's commonly human to be female or male, but not essentially human.
Speaker 2:Jesus was essentially human. But he wasn't commonly human. In the incarnation, didn't require a human father. But when you think of the biblical story going right back to the beginning, the story of Adam and Eve, the story of 2 individuals without a human father. And probably the the point of Jesus coming into the world without a human father is to signal the fact that now begins a new opportunity for the human race To undo what happened at the beginning.
Speaker 2:No wonder Saint Paul can talk about Jesus as the last Adam. He was essentially human but not commonly human. And he was fully human but not merely human. If you think Jesus is merely human, you have what is technically called a low Christology doctrine of Christ. And a number of, folk do have a very low Christology, even though they may have a high estimate of Jesus as a religious teacher.
Speaker 2:But they don't have what's called a high Christology as high as we saw in John 1 where it is the word who became flesh, who is the son, who is Jesus Christ, who is truly god and truly human. Incarnation. Islam has a low Christology. Jesus is Esar, the 2nd greatest prophet after Mohammed, but merely human. Jesus is fully human, but not merely human.
Speaker 2:He is God incarnate. Now what are we to make of all this tonight? I think one of the things we realize is that the depth of our need is such that, as I alluded to earlier, we can't build the bridge to god from this side. As Saint Paul says in his, letter to the Romans in chapter 3, talking about where the pagans were before god and the Jews were before god, he says all of us have sinned, fallen short of the mark, fallen short of God's glorious design for humanity. All of us are in that particular boat.
Speaker 2:We can't build a ladder to heaven starting from us. So God did it. And there's a wonderful way that Jesus puts this again in John chapter 1, when in dialogue with 1 Nathaniel, he says, truly, truly, I say to you this is in John chapter 1 and verse 51. And truly, truly translates amen, amen. It's it's something really you're supposed to hear.
Speaker 2:It's got that solemnity to it. It's an important statement. I say to you, Nathaniel, you will see heaven opened, which in biblical idiom is that revelation is going to take place, and the angels of god ascending and descending on the son of man, which is Jesus himself. And that is an illusion going back to to Genesis 28 of a vision that, Jacob of Israel fame saw. A vision of a ladder between heaven and earth.
Speaker 2:Heaven and earth bridged. Jesus is saying, he is that bridge. It came from the divine side but it involved someone taking up our humanity. But this incarnation is also significant because it tells us something about the depths of the divine love. Because in the end, God didn't send a surrogate.
Speaker 2:It's interesting living in America because when there is a presidential election, you start to hear the language of surrogates, don't you? So and so is a surrogate for the president. So and so is a surrogate for the would be candidate to displace the president. They are people who are the spokespeople, going out into the media, into the wider world with the party line. Jesus was no surrogate.
Speaker 2:He was not merely king, although he is that. He's not merely prophet, although he is that. He's not merely a sage or wise person, although he is that. The word became flesh, dwelt among us, glory of the only son. This is the depth of the divine love.
Speaker 2:God came to us in the most personal of ways by taking up our humanity and experiencing what human existence is truly like. Joel alludes to the fact that I've written a book on the incarnation that I think is going to be on sale on Sunday at your church. But originally, it's got a pretty lame title. The god who became human, a biblical theology of incarnation, which is you know, very true and very bland. I I've never been able to persuade publishers to give titles that I like.
Speaker 2:The title that they rejected was this, the god who wept a human tear. And that's what Jesus did at the graveside of his friend Lazarus before he raised him from the dead. Saw how sin spoiled human existence, how sin was a barrier and death to human flourishing. And the shortest verse in the bible is in John 11. He wept.
Speaker 2:Jesus wept. The god who wept a human tear. That's the depth of the divine love. So friends, when it comes to Arthur Koestler's idea that the cell phone, if you like, is switched off, we need to know where indeed to look because we live on a visited planet. And this takes me to my favorite philosopher, Blaise Pascal of 17th century.
Speaker 2:I started reading philosophy when I was 16 and this was the first philosophy book I ever read. And Blaise Pascal was, he was really an all around genius, a pioneer in certain geometrical theory, inventor of the Paris underground. I could just go on and on. But he became a profoundly Christian person. And he had an experience.
Speaker 2:It was so unforgettable that he wrote it up like a poem. It's known in history as Pascal's Memorial. It's dated to November 23rd 16/54. And this account of what happened to him, the night he became truly a Christian, He put on a piece of, parchment and sewed it into his cloak so it was over his heart. And it was only found after his death.
Speaker 2:You can Google it and find it. It's just so famous now. And amongst other things, he says this, the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, the god of Jacob, not of the philosophers and of the learned, god of Jesus Christ. He is only found by the ways taught in the gospel. Pascal found out where to look on that night.
Speaker 2:Where to get good reception. To see the face of God in the face of Jesus Christ as he comes to us in the gospel. And, friends, so may each one of us So may each one of us. And on that note, we'll have our break, and then come back for q and a.
Joel Brooks:Alright. First off, I didn't even introduce myself to those of you who aren't at Redeemer. I'm the pastor at Redeemer Community Church. My name is Joel. We'd always love to have you.
Joel Brooks:We meet Sunday nights, 4:30 over. Right? You can actually see the church building from right here. So we'd love to have you. We just started a new series last week going through 1st Peter.
Joel Brooks:It's a great time to come. Also, for our, well, I guess, let let me just kinda lay out some ground rules for q and a. Since it's not me up here. It it can be stump the teacher. You're allowed to do that.
Joel Brooks:You're allowed to just ask the most difficult questions you could think of. Doctor Cole can handle it. Next month, when I'm teaching, I won't be able to. Next month, June 11th, is we're gonna be back here, and the topics topic is gonna be the person of the Holy Spirit. And so I'll be talking through a doctrine of the person of the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:Same format, Teach for about an hour. Questions for an hour. Hope you can make it. So right now, if you wanna ask a question, just raise your hand. Doctor Cole will call on you.
Joel Brooks:If you would just repeat the question just to make sure, we got it right and also for the podcast. And, and then we'll just go until y'all run out of questions. And we've got the place till 9, so y'all can hang out till then. Alright. Doctor Cole, ready?
Speaker 2:Well, it's over to you. Is there a question? There's one over here. I feel like an evangelist. Yes, young man.
Speaker 2:I see that hand. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So Is there another question?
Speaker 2:The question is, looking at the old testament, are there old testament personages like Melchizedek or the mysterious figure appearing with Daniel in the book of Daniel when Daniel was delivered, as pre figurements of the incarnation, anticipations of the incarnation. I think that's your question. It's a really good question and the book I wrote is really addressing that question. Because when I did the research on the old testament, I found 2 strands of, testimony. One was that god was going to send an agent in the future to deliver his people.
Speaker 2:A prophet like Moses, a suffering servant like the one the book of Isaiah talks about, a king like David, Again that the prophet Isaiah talks about. And the other strand was that god was going to come to deliver his people. What I didn't find was anything that really looked like incarnation on close inspection. And that really puzzled me because I wondered, since I had this book contract that was supposed to trace things from the Old Testament to the New Testament, whether I would be writing a booklet. And then I came across what Saint Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16.
Speaker 2:Great is the mystery of our religion. He was manifested in the flesh. And if you understand what Paul means by the word he means something in the plan of God that up until this point has not been made known. And then I understood it. Paul is saying that this has always been God's plan, But it's only when the Christ has come that those pieces of the jigsaw puzzle can be truly put together.
Speaker 2:Now not everyone would agree with me but I argue in the book that we must take what Paul says there seriously. That the stupendous thing is that these two strands of evidence coalesce in the figure of Jesus. God indeed has come to deliver his people and he's all these agents of which the Old Testament spoke but the old testament writers didn't put that together. And I think the reason is that what God was doing in the old testament was like a vast educational program. Through word and deed, through raising up particular agents to speak on his behalf or deliver his people, he was providing the metaphors, similes, concepts, the conceptual framework such that when god incarnate does happen, there are indeed the titles, the metaphors, the similes etc.
Speaker 2:That can be used to actually make it intelligible. That's all in that book, so I refer you to the book. Another question? Thank you. Okay.
Speaker 2:Good question. There are several dimensions to the question. That is, is Jesus still truly human? Or was that only as it were a phase? And how do I relate to him now and what it'll be like to relating him in the world to come?
Speaker 2:Given that he's still truly human or he's not, depending on how you answer the first part of the question. I believe he is truly human. I believe that he is what is known as the theanthropos, the god human. And I'd also argue, and this is speculative, and it's something that theologians I was going to say bat and bowl, but that's a cricketing metaphor. Pitch and slug at, I guess.
Speaker 2:And have done so for almost 2 millennium. And that is, would that incarnation have taken place irrespective of human sin? Because if the answer to that is yes then he is going to be obviously truly human in the world to come because that was always the divine design. I argue in the book that that's what I think is the divine design. Because I think what you have in the book of Genesis, the first chapter, is God building a temple out of the universe for his dwelling place.
Speaker 2:And it gets, as it were, deflected by human rebellion. But the end point is still the same. If you read Revelation 21 and 22 everything becomes like a cosmic temple for the dwelling place of god. And the most intimate way that god can dwell amongst us is through incarnation. So I'm of that, you know, tradition that would see the incarnation as always in the divine view.
Speaker 2:But it's speculative. And so I expect his humanity to continue in the world to come. What about relating to him now? And this is a really important question. A really good topic sometime is the doctrine of the ascension.
Speaker 2:Because the new testament perspective is that Christ is at the right hand of the father. Which means that, we relate to him by faith. Trusting his promises not by sight. Sight is the great Christian hope. In 1 John 3, when we see him as he is, we'll be transformed to be like him.
Speaker 2:Now there's a reason for this, which is how many beers did I have? Just one. Metaphysical. That is the same. If we're going to really see god, we can't be as we are now.
Speaker 2:Our ontology, our very being biblically needs to change so we become glorified beings like his glorified humanity. And that's when we'll be able to see him face to face. Now we live by faith, which means quite frankly friends, that a lot of our rhetoric about what it is to have a personal relationship with Jesus is sheer bunk. Because when you read the word in the morning and you say he talks to me, fair enough. But when people start saying that then he talks back to them in prayer, Whenever I probe people, they're talking in terms of impressions and, you know, they're talking metaphorically.
Speaker 2:The reason very simply is the doctrine of the Ascension. He's at the right hand of the father. So Paul says to the Colossians, set your mind on things above where Christ is at the right hand of the father. We don't relate to Jesus like we relate to our spouse or our best friend where we're continually reading their body language. And so that analogy has to be rethought and very carefully handled because the great Christian hope is to see him and to hear him, as it were, with our own ears.
Speaker 2:That is our great hope. But to be able to realize that hope, you and I have to change. And 1 Corinthians 15 is all about that kind of change that will have to take place. It's based on the ancient epistemological principle, principle of knowing, that like knows like. So if we're going to really know God, we have to be transformed to become more like God than we are, as much as a creature can become without ceasing to be a creature, which is Paul's doctrine of glorification, Romans chapter 8.
Speaker 2:I hope that's something of an answer to your question. Thank you. The probability of further incarnation after the appearance of Jesus Christ? The question is the probability of other incarnations after Jesus Christ. I don't think it's very probable at all because the biblical record has this idea of a once for allness.
Speaker 2:Epifax hapax is the language. The book of Hebrews is particularly important here. That there is something sufficient, unique and final about the coming of Christ and of his cross, his death on our behalf, are once for allness. So I think that particular book of the New Testament has an argument that's particularly relevant in the world of many religions because it's making the claim, as does John's gospel, that Jesus really is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but by him. There's a uniqueness there.
Speaker 2:These are very good questions. But just one follow-up. The question is what about would there possibly have been incarnations on other planets, presuming they were habitable planets, etcetera, etcetera? This is a very interesting question and here we've got to employ the notion of dogmatic rank. There are some things Christians believe that are convictions.
Speaker 2:That is, without which you're not a Christian. If you don't believe that Jesus is truly God and truly human there's something very defective about your understanding of Christianity. But there are some beliefs that Christians have that may be more opinion, where Christians divide and they argue the toss. I come from the Anglican world. We baptize infants.
Speaker 2:Baptists not so much. And so that moves us into another area, but we would both affirm that Jesus is truly God and truly human. And then there is a third level which is speculative. Something is speculative when you have no bible text to work with. And what you do is to try and come up with a theory consistent with everything we find in the bible.
Speaker 2:Your question is a speculative question. Someone who has tried to answer that question was CS Lewis in one of his science fiction novels called Pelarandra. And so I'd refer you to his speculation as to what it might look like, but I have actually no biblical evidence that there is such. Again, this is a very good question. It's about, whether in becoming incarnate, Jesus gave up some of the omnis that would ordinarily be definitional of god like omniscience, knowing everything, omnipotence, being able to do everything that's logically possible to do and omnipresence being everywhere.
Speaker 2:It's a question that's really exercised, the minds of theologians, especially over the last, 200 years, because there's a verse in Philippians chapter 2 verse, 5 through to 11 verses 5 through to 11, a great hymn about though he was equal with god, didn't count a robbery to to be equal with God, but he humbled himself. He became empty, as it were, and took on the form of a servant. So what did Jesus empty himself of becomes the question. And some theologians have argued, I don't follow this line myself, but for that time he gave up his omnis, as it were. Hence, he asked questions that suggested he was ignorant of the answer.
Speaker 2:I think that's going too far. What I do know from the biblical testimony from John chapter 17, he gave up his glory to become one of us. Remember that verse from 2 Corinthians 8 and verse 9? Though he were rich, yet for our sakes, he became poor. So I know that he gave up his glory.
Speaker 2:He gave up the worship of heaven directed to himself etcetera etcetera. Now what did that mean in terms of, his knowledge? As I've puzzled over this, I've been very helped by something that's found in Athanasius in the 4th century and Saint Augustine in the 5th century. I'll use Saint Augustine as the way forward. He says that when we read the gospels, we need to make a distinction when the gospel is talking about Jesus, as it were, in the form of god, and Jesus, as it were, in the form of the servant who lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of god, to demonstrate what true humanity is like.
Speaker 2:And I think that's a helpful rule for interpretation or hermeneutical rule. And applied to this particular question, I think when Jesus, asks those questions or make those statements, he is speaking out of his role as the servant. I don't know if I can say much more than that without coming up with a more sophisticated theory about the metaphysics of that, which I'm a bit reluctant to do, although many people have tried it because I simply run out of regulatory data. But I think that distinction between the form of god and the form of the servant is a helpful one. In the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god, clearly the form of god.
Speaker 2:But then when Jesus, weeps at Lazarus' graveside, when he gets tired in John 4 at the well with the wound of Samaria, clearly we're dealing with Jesus the servant and his true humanity is coming to the fore and the other is in the background. It's about the best I can do at this time of night. Thank you. So the question is, you know, Saint Matthew 4, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness by the devil. Was he incapable of sinning or was he capable of sinning but didn't.
Speaker 2:Again, this has exercised the minds of theologians for a a couple of millennia almost now, and I'd have to give you the the particular theories. One theory is that he had the ability to sin but did not. Otherwise, it would not have been a real temptation. A theologian of last century by the name of Karl Barth would have argued along those lines. The other view, the more traditional view, is that, he was sinless so he was not capable of sinning, but to be sinless doesn't mean that you are unable to experience temptation and the force of temptation.
Speaker 2:Going back to the garden story, you're dealing with, a sinless being who fell to temptation. I, at the moment, it's Wednesday night so I incline more to the traditional view. Ask me on Friday and I might switch a bit. There are fancy Latin words that go with each of these positions. Pakere non passe, but I don't think we want Latin at this time of night.
Speaker 2:They're good really good questions. Thank you. Yes. We we're told in Luke's gospel that he grew in wisdom and stature and favor with god and, with humanity. This is a question it's another good question about the development of Jesus and the psychology of it.
Speaker 2:Again, the Bible writers have no interest in this. In fact, the Bible has very little interest in children as such. And I think partly because whoever reads the bible is not in that category usually. It does say very important things about children, how they're to be looked after, what they're to be taught, and so on. And in Ephesians chapter 6, Paul can even address children as part of the congregation.
Speaker 2:Children, obey your parents. But the great, emphasis is not on childhood. It's on adults and the discipling of adults. So in other words, here's another area where I would need to be somewhat theoretical and work with the little bit of biblical evidence that I've got. The little bit of evidence that we've got, which is very slim, is, suggesting that whatever is true of human development was true of him.
Speaker 2:We do know by the age of 12, according to Luke chapter 2, he was aware that he was about his father's business in the temple even though his, Joseph and Mary wanted him to get on board the Odyssey onto the nice SUV and get home. We know that, he clearly had an awareness then of a special relationship to the father. But then it jumps to when he's an adult, getting baptized by John in the Jordan. So at the most I can do is say that, what I've just said that I think whatever's true of human development was true of him. The awareness of, being the son of God, was it right from the beginning as a fetus in the womb?
Speaker 2:I have no theory to offer at this particular point. But if I were going to offer a theory, it would involve Maximus of Tyre and Leontienus of Byzantium and a notion known as enhypestasia. But I don't think I wanna go there tonight. There are people who have turned their minds to it, but it seems to me they run out of biblical evidence pretty quickly, to do so. Thank you.
Speaker 3:When Peter denied Christ after the crucifixion, was he consciously denying God the father? And then what was the progression of the disciples getting together to decide whether he was,
Speaker 2:the question is, when Peter denied Jesus, he was around the fire if you recall and Jesus predicted he would deny identification with him and he denied Jesus 3 times and the cock crowed, etcetera. When was it that these disciples came to understand that he was truly God incarnate? That's a good question. It's an empirical question. It's an historical question.
Speaker 2:And all I can say to you is that there is enough evidence in the New Testament that by the time John wrote John or Paul wrote Philippians chapter 2 verses 5 to 11 or the writer of the Hebrews wrote Hebrews chapters 12, they understood that this Jesus was indeed god as well as truly human. In terms of their own, awareness of that, we just don't have the, any new testament evidence. So there just doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in it. We do know that around 112 AD, Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, had a problem with Christians. They had really made a muck of the idol trade and therefore the trades people weren't happy with Christians in that area because it affected the sale of images and so on.
Speaker 2:And so Pliny the governor had captured a number of them. A couple of them were were church workers. They were deaconesses. A couple of women, he tortured them. They wouldn't deny being Christians And in writing to them, and this you can Google, it's, you know, readily available, He describes what their meeting was like.
Speaker 2:They met a long time before day to hold their meeting because remember or maybe not remember, but it wasn't until Constantine the great became some sort of Christian in the 4th century that you actually had Sunday off. So you had to work 7 days a week, usually. So they had to meet before daylight on the Sunday. And he caught them singing hymns to Christ as God. So that's all of a piece of what we read in John chapter 1 and Philippians 2 and Hebrews 12 and the fact that the New Testament describes people worshiping Jesus.
Speaker 2:Now Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, who claims to have done great research, argues that this idea was invented in the 4th century. That Jesus was God invented by church leaders as a means of control. And there you are, you've got Pliny, the Roman governor, writing to Trajan in 112, contradicting Dan Brown. 100 of years before, but I don't think facts have ever worried Dan Brown. So it happened very early.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying. Is that addressing your question? Thank you. What a good question. Jesus is at the right hand of the father, which is, in the ancient world, a way of saying he's in the place of executive authority because that's where the grand vizier would sit next to the emperor and king.
Speaker 2:As CS Lewis and I have a lot of metaphor in the bible, but don't misunderstand me, the most important things we ever say to each other tend to be metaphorical. If I stand if I sit here and say tonight I can't go on, I've done my best, but I've got a broken heart I'll tell you why. You know, the dog died or something like that. You don't expect me to squelch when I walk to the door. You understand literally it's not the case, but metaphorically I'm saying something incredibly profound.
Speaker 2:Christ is at the right hand of the father. He is the lord. He's the king. He's the place of executive authority at that, right hand of the father. What was the rest of the question?
Speaker 3:Just when we pray.
Speaker 2:Yes. Thank you. I'm glad you remembered. Generally, the new testament is prayer to the father in the name of Jesus, which is a way of saying, in terms that are consistent with Jesus' character and agenda, We're not talking about a magical formula here. There are evidences in the New Testament of prayer to Jesus but they're pretty rare.
Speaker 2:In Acts chapter 7, Stephen prays to Jesus as he's being stoned to death. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse, 2, it talks about churches that call on the name of the Lord and that's probably the Lord Jesus in prayer. And 1 Corinthians 16, there's the prayer maranatha in Aramaic, which is our lord come, which is probably Jesus. So there are examples of prayer to Jesus. And the book of Hebrews says he's our great high priest that we can go to in times of trouble with our, needs and so on.
Speaker 2:But remember, Jesus taught disciples to pray to the father. There are no examples in the whole bible of prayer to the Holy Spirit. Not that that's wrong but that because the spirit is God. But if we became fixated on praying to the spirit we'd end up being Numbians or Spiritians rather than Christians. So why is that so?
Speaker 2:Here is my theory. I've written a book on the Holy Spirit, 2 actually. 'He Who Gives Life, the Doctor of the Holy Spirit'. I address this question in that book and engaging with the Holy Spirit, Real answers, real questions. Practical answers, real questions.
Speaker 2:And I have a chapter on praying to the spirit which has to deal with why we have this evidence mainly to the father, some to the son, none to the spirit, which is getting to your question. It seems to me that when we pray to the father through Jesus, we are in our prayers embodying the gospel. At the heart of the gospel is Jesus is our mediator. The one who bridges the gap between the Father and ourselves. So going to the Father through the Son in the spirit actually is the structure of the gospel, and it's a trinitarian structure.
Speaker 2:There's an old saying, lex arandi lex credendi, the way of praying is the way of believing. Your prayer practices will tell you what your real theology is. So if you are someone who sits here who just prays, dear god, amen, you're actually a Unitarian in practice rather than a Trinitarian Christian. But if you pray to the father in the name of the Son relying on the spirit, your prayer life embodies the gospel. Does that address your question?
Speaker 2:Thank you. Okay. Well, this metaphysical god becomes physical, does healing, which means bodies being put together. Does that mean that the physical really matters? That's a great question.
Speaker 2:A great question. God is creator before God is redeemer. We are creatures before we're Christians. John Calvin knew that. He structured his classic book, The Institutes, along those lines.
Speaker 2:Knowledge of god the creator, knowledge of god the redeemer in the 16th century. Unfortunately, Christians are more like the ancient sect of gnostics as though we have this, sort of spirit side of us that has to get has to escape from bodily existence which can cash out in terms of it's more important to save souls than to actually address real issues of hunger and whatever. It's not an either or. It's a both and. God loves matter.
Speaker 2:He made so much of it when you think about it. And according to Saint Paul in Romans 8 18 to 25, and he's using metaphorical language, He pictures creation like a woman in in childbirth waiting to be delivered of a child so the joy can come or and groaning until creation is set free when the the glorious liberty of the children of god is made known in some future point. In other words, matter has a future, biblically speaking. As N. T.
Speaker 2:Wright points out, if you know that name, we Christians have done ourselves a great disservice in so many of our songs and hymns because we make heaven ultimate. Whereas in biblical terms, heaven is penultimate. A new heavens and a new earth in a transfigured material order is the ultimate. That's what 2 Peter 3 says. That's what Revelation 21/22 says.
Speaker 2:God has a project. The project is nothing less than the reclamation of creation. The bible is a comedy in a literary sense, not in the Family Guy sense, but in a literary sense. A comedy has a u shape. It starts with a harmony.
Speaker 2:It moves through a disharmony until the harmony is recovered. Genesis 1 and 2 is the harmony. Genesis 3 to Revelation 19 is the disharmony. Revelation 21 and 22 is the higher harmony of a new heavens and a new earth, where we've moved from a garden existence to a city of God. And everything is sacred space.
Speaker 2:That is the biblical plot line. Heavenly existence is penultimate, not ultimate. It's interesting that Jesus' miracles are miracles of restoration that anticipate that world to come. So what does Jesus do with a disordered nature? He stills the storm in Mark 4.
Speaker 2:What does he do with a disordered body, a woman with a hemorrhage? He makes a hole in Mark 4. What does he do with that ultimate disorder of a dead child? He raises her to life. What does he do with that disorder in a man's mind, demonically possessed?
Speaker 2:He restores him to his right mind. The logic of biblical miracle is restorative. That is nature restored to order, bodies restored to order, minds restored to order. And in so doing, Jesus returns people to community. The woman with the hemorrhage was cut off from community.
Speaker 2:She was unclean. The demonically possessed man was cut off from community. Jesus restores people to community, and it anticipates the the ultimate restoration of a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness or right relationships are at home, which is the vision of 2 Peter chapter 3. Is that addressing your question? I might just add one further point.
Speaker 2:What integrates, if you like, evangelism and mercy ministry. Mark is our guide here. Mark's gospel. In in Mark chapter 6, Jesus saw all these people. There were 5,000 of them.
Speaker 2:They were like sheep without a shepherd. Their need was to be taught about the kingdom so he taught them. He taught them because he had compassion on them. In Mark 8 he's got 4,000 hungry men and women and he feeds them because what they needed was physical food. He had compassion on them.
Speaker 2:That's what it says. He was moved. Splachnizomai is to be moved in your bowels. It is really a deeply felt thing. What integrated the ministry of Jesus in discipling people, proclaiming the kingdom, and healing, and discipling people, proclaiming the kingdom and healing and mercy ministry was compassion.
Speaker 2:And what is on view in the first instance is contextually decided. But neither is ever to be lost sight of. That's a very good question. What does it mean to be in the image of god, I think, is really the question. Is it not?
Speaker 2:I could only speculate because it it goes beyond imagination at this point as to what it would, look like. We do know from Revelation 21 and 22 that, we will be worshipers and we will be kings and queens in the world to come. CS Lewis puts it brilliantly in Mere Christianity chapter 1, God is in the business of making little Christs. So we'll be little Christs as it were. And that is people who exercise who are royal and who are priestly.
Speaker 2:In Genesis 1 you see, humanity is depicted in royal terms. So man, woman, male, female, are to exercise dominion like kings and queens. But in Genesis 2 humanity is depicted as priests who are there to serve in what looks like a sacred zone. That garden has all the features of a sacred zone because so many of its features reappear in the tabernacle and temple in the wall reliefs, which is suggestive that it's a sacred zone that joins heaven and earth. In the world to come, those roles are, as it were, regained in all their fullness as far as being in the image of God is concerned.
Speaker 2:So we dynamically image god by being priestly worshipers and kings and queens as it were, but it doesn't go much beyond that because the accent in the bible is always on here and now in the light of that great hope because to misunderstand that hope like some did at Thesalonica and stopped working meant they didn't eat because they've got things out of proportion. That's what Saint Paul says. If you don't work, don't eat. They're not gonna feed you. Now is that addressing your question?
Speaker 2:The other thing I'd point out about this image language, it's very important. We now know from the ancient near east that the emperors and kings used to put images of themselves around their their empires. So people knew that it all belonged to the king and the emperor. Let me suggest to you that what god does is, put a living image of himself in the garden because only a living image can actually image a living god. So I think there's that ancient near eastern background the language of Genesis 12, which is, I think, very illuminating and exciting.
Speaker 2:That too is in the book on the incarnation, by the way. Thank you. Would I give the same answer about the past as the future? If he's truly human for eternity, if you'd like, was he also in some sense human in eternity past? I think that's the question you're asking.
Speaker 2:Some have tried to argue that and they talk about Jesus as the heavenly man who came down to earth. They're generally been judged as heretical, because it seems to lessen the stupendous nature of the event of incarnation. What I think the best way to think is, in trinitarian terms, is that with the incarnation, god as trinity now relates to, I'll just use the language of himself, in a new way through the humanity of Christ. So it's no it's not trinity minus, it's trinity plus this new way of relating through the humanity of Christ that will never end. And that really, I think, does justice to the mystery idea of Saint Paul and to the, as I say, the stupendous nature of incarnation and what it represents.
Speaker 2:And let me just suggest this to you to think about. It brings in the doctrine of the spirit. St Paul describes us as the body of Christ and members of Christ and I think the New Testament perspective is this that the same spirit of god that animated his humanity animates your humanity and mine as Christians. They can be described as temples of the spirit such that what happens to him becomes our destiny too as far as his humanity is concerned. That's captured in the early church by this idea: the head has gone into the world to come.
Speaker 2:His body will follow. So if you are members of Christ, that will be your future too and it's the doctrine of the spirit that binds all this together. I'm sure Joel will talk all about this. But is that, helping anyway? You are a well taught bunch.
Speaker 2:These are these aren't amateurish questions. Absolutely. It's in a book called He Who Became Human, a biblical actually, seriously, because a biblical theology understood this way as part of this series seeks to follow a theme from the book of Genesis through the book of Revelation. And therefore treat all the key passages relevant to the concept. And so I have to deal with those key passages in the book.
Speaker 2:And so I just encourage you, just skim the back and write them down, you know, You wanna buy the book. Is there a final question or 2?
Joel Brooks:Thank you, doctor Cole.