On the Incarnation (Pt 1)
Nothing puts me in the holiday spirit like the Vince Guaraldi Trio playing the theme to the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Music creates a Christmas mood. When I studied music in college, I quickly learned that certain chord structures “sound” Christmassy. How cool it is to catch Christmas and put it in a song.
If there is one thing that sets apart Christmas from every other holiday, it is the music. Yes, Easter has great hymns and New Year’s Eve has Auld Lang Syne. I have been known to listen to a variety of songs on the 4th of July that put me in the mood for fireworks, but Christmas has its own genre. Its own feeling. Its own mood.
I have decided through December to publish a weekly blog to attempt to describe the miracle of Christmas. The magic of Christmas is not contained in its music, but in its manger.
Let’s be honest, there is nothing too special about a baby. In fact, being a baby is one of the few things that all people everywhere have in common. Yes, a baby is prized by its mother and father above all other relationships, but people have babies every day. And people have babies in strange locations very regularly. I know of people who had babies that were born in cars, born in kitchens, and born in other unique places. What’s the big deal about the baby in the manger in Bethlehem?
Theology Matters
The baby is not a big deal if the baby is not divine. That is the point. The magic of Christmas is that there is rich theology undergirding all of our Christmas carols. Silent Night is not about a baby sleeping through the night. It is about the creation holding its breath as the Maker of the universe entered the creation to redeem it. The angels in heaven stopped singing about God’s holiness for a long enough period of time to tell the shepherds that God’s holiness had come to earth in the form of a baby boy named Jesus.
Christians have wondered about the Incarnation for millennia, and we will wonder about it for all of eternity. A great primer on the topic is an old book, entitled On The Incarnation by St. Athanasius of Alexandria. He begins speaking about the incarnation by first speaking about the doctrine of creation.
No Doctrine of Creation? No Christmas.
Atheism cannot give us Christmas. Neither can the gods of the Greeks who claim God created from previously created substances. It is only the God who creates ex nihilo, out of nothing, who is worthy of worship. Many might balk at the notion, but as Athanasius explains, the glory of the Incarnation depends upon a robust doctrine of Creation.
1) If God created from pre-existing matter, he is weak.
Without the doctrine of Creation, you can take down all the garland and turn out the Christmas lights. If the God of Christmas is not the God of Creation in Genesis 1:1, we have lost any reason to celebrate. Why? Athanasius points out that the carpenter who makes something out of wood might be skilled, but he is weak. He is limited to shape, form, or fashion something out of what already exists. He cannot make the wood to be any more than what it already is. He can simply mold, shape, or fashion. He cannot create.
Is this true of God? No. Our God is not weak. He is able to create worlds and galaxies by a simple word. John tells us this much in John 1
John 1:3–4 (ESV)
3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Everything that ever has been made has been made through the divine Son, who is God almighty. The second person of the Trinity is not a lesser person. He is equal in power, authority, honor, and glory. The Father is first in name and in order, but we must not consider that the Son is lesser in glory or divinity. He is, as the song and the Creed say, “God of God, light of light.”
We do not behold a weak God in Genesis 1:1. We do not behold a weak God in John 1:1. When the Son became incarnate, it was not a junior divinity that the angels proclaimed. It was the Creator God come in the flesh as a baby boy.
2) If human beings are not made in God’s image, then humanity is no different from the rest of creation.
As it is important for Jesus to be truly divine, it is also essential that he be truly human, While I referenced the song “Silent Night” earlier, I don’t think that baby Jesus slept through the night. I think it is safe to assume that baby Jesus cried when he was hungry and that he cried until he was fed. He needed to be changed and burped. Baby Jesus was, after all, a baby.
If Jesus is not divine, then he is a liar, for he claimed to be divine (Matt. 16:13-20). If Jesus is not a human being, then he cannot serve as our substitute. Gregory of Naziansus has said, “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed.” For Jesus to heal humanity, he must be truly human. That means that He who made man in His image has now taken on an image after which He made man.
We must confess that Jesus was made man and man was created in God’s image. Jesus did not come to serve as a representative to save dogs, toads, or fruit-bearing trees. He became like us so that he might save us. Human beings are the crown jewel of God’s creation, made in God’s image, to display God’s glory all over the earth. Human beings are first and foremost created beings. But humans are not merely created beings. Human beings are the only created things created in the image of God, bearing His likeness.
The startling wonder of the incarnation is that the God who never knew any need or insufficiency became a man. Mankind was made in God’s image. Now, the second person of the Trinity has come in the likeness of man. The humility is unspeakable, really. These are depths no human being would ever willingly descend. Moreover, this is a humility that only the divine could ever attain, as the Word is made flesh.
The Son is incorruptible light. Perfect beauty. Holy, Holy, Holy in power, love, and majesty.
Yet the first thing the baby Jesus smells is likely the scent of manure. The first action of love He receives is from a new mother learning how to care for a firstborn child. There is blood, filth, and chaos in the stable. And it is not angels who attend the birth crying “Holy, Holy Holy,” but lowly shepherds, men who cared for other people’s sheep. Men who acted like it and smelled like it.
Yet the manger is filled with something entirely human and entirely divine at the same time.
3) If Jesus is not the Creator, the manger is emptied of divinity.
Two things must be true for the manger to be worth bowing before. First, the baby who fills the manger, as CS Lewis has said, must be bigger than our whole world. Second, the baby who fills the manger must be human, intimately involved as a part of this created world. The one who is by nature God has now also been created in the image of God. The union of the created and the uncreated is what makes the angels burst forth in praise.
If we do not have a robust, Trinitarian doctrine of Creation, we are only left with Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman.
Frosty the Snowman is a story of incarnation. Yet the peril of the story is that Frosty will be consumed by the warm temperature of the rising sun. This is hardly an incarnation worth singing about.
But the incarnation of the Son of God will end with him gladly laying down his life to save His creation. The theology undergirding the manger is better than any other story we could imagine.
Do you want a robust Christmas season? You are surely free to listen to Vince Guaraldi. While you are at it, enjoy the Christmas lights. But more than that, consider the Creator who came to His creation, humbling himself to identify with sinners like you and me, to save sinners like you and me.
This Christmas, consider anew the wonder of the Christmas story by considering the power of God in Creation.