The God Who Became Human

A Biblical Theology of Incarnation

Graham Cole, D. A. Carson

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780830895557
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología sistemática y ética

Preaching's Preacher's Guide to the Best Bible ReferenceSeeking an answer to Anselm's timeless question, "Why did God become man?" Graham Cole follows Old Testament themes of preparation, theophany and messianic hope through to the New Testament witness to the divinely foretold event. This New Studies in Biblical Theology volume concludes with a consideration of the theological and existential implications of the incarnation of God.Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.

Chapter One

God prepares the way from the beginning

Origins are fascinating. At present I am doing some research on my Jewish grandfather on my mother’s side of the family. He was known to the press as a flamboyant character who had emigrated from the Crimea after the First World War. He called himself a professor and ran a dance studio in Sydney, Australia, in the first half of the twentieth century. Some of the dances he invented and put into print are in the National Library of Australia and are also listed in a Stanford University catalogue that begins with Domenico da Piacenza in 1425 and concludes with Elizabeth Gibbons in 2007. I learned that one of the dancing teachers he employed, Nellie Cameron, was a notorious character in the underworld of Sydney. He died when I was two so I have no memory of him, only a photo or two.

Origins matter to individuals and indeed to an entire people. They mattered to Israel. Genesis as the name implies is about origins. The most basic of questions are addressed in the text: Where does humanity in general come from and where does Israel in particular come from? Why is the world so broken and we with it? Do we have a future?

In this chapter we consider how from the beginning the Creator prepared a way to be present among his creatures. As Thomas F. Torrance rightly says, ‘The incarnation of the Son of God has a prehistory, a background or hinterland of preparation and significance which we must not overlook.’1 In addition an excursus will address a venerable question: Would the incarnation have occurred irrespective of the Fall? But first, who is this God who prepares the way and who not only has his own glory but has humanity’s best interests at heart?

God and God’s image

The God who comes into majestic relief in Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 is the creator of all things who acts with purpose and not caprice. The language is simple, the thought profound.2 God is pictured in terms any Israelite would understand. He is the great worker who does six days on the job and then comes rest. The first three days see the creation of environments: day one, the heavens (Gen. 1:3–5); day two, the waters (Gen. 1:6–8); and day three, the earth (Gen. 1:9–13). Each day is pronounced as good and the presentation of each day’s creative work has an evening-and-morning formula attached to it. If the first three days represent the forming of three different environments, the next three days articulate their filling with different kinds of creatures suitable for them. And so on the fourth day the heavens are populated with sun, moon and stars (Gen. 1:14–18). The fourth day is pronounced good and God applies the evening-and-morning formula. The fifth day sees the waters populated with all sorts of sea creatures and the air with winged creatures. Both the populating of the sea and earth are thematized. It too is good and once again the evening-and-morning phrase is in evidence (Gen. 1:20–23). On the sixth day God focuses on the earth and the creatures suitable for inhabiting it. It is on this day that a unique creature appears, humankind (more anon). The creation of various earth creatures is good, according to the text, but there is a qualitative leap in relation to the creature uniquely in the image of God. Now we read that the creation is very good (Gen. 1:24–31). And once more the evening-and-morning formula is in view. The seventh day moves the reader onto a different plane. Here is the climax of all the events that have gone before. The language of holiness is used in the Bible for the first time, as this time ‘frame’ itself is hallowed. Significantly the evening-and-morning phrase drops from view. There is something very different about this end point. Chaos has thus given way to cosmos. The process has been an orderly one.

The nature of those days is controversial still. Richard Dawkins is not the first person to raise questions. Aquinas (1225–74) in his era was faced with multiple ways of understanding those days, as can be seen in Paul J. Glenn’s paraphrase of part of the Summa Theologica:

There are different interpretations of the term day as used in the scriptural account of creation. Some say the six days of active creation are not periods of time but a listing of the order in which creatures were made. Others think these days have time significance, but hardly in the sense of our twenty-four hour day, for that is measured by the sun, and the sun was not created until the fourth day. In any case the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest give an adequate account of the works of creation and their sanctification. St. Augustine makes the days of creation into one period in which God manifests worldly creatures to the angels in seven ways. It must be acknowledged that Scripture uses suitable words to express the works of creation, and to suggest or imply the operation of the three persons of the divine Trinity in these works.3

So what we have seen is how Aquinas explores the options: six days of revelation to the angels (Augustine), an orderly listing (others) and special days (still others). He concludes that, whichever it was, God created in an appropriate manner. Wise words.

On the way to the Sabbath God created creatures to image his ways (Gen. 1:27):

So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

The divine intent is stated in the previous verse (Gen. 1:26): ‘Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”’ God exercises dominion. They exercise dominion. He subdues. They subdue. The notion of humankind in the image of God (imago Dei) is also an essentially contested concept to this day. Are human beings images of God like the image of President Lincoln stamped on an American coin? Is the image ontological or substantival? Or are human beings images of God like the image we see of ourselves in a mirror? What we do, so the image does. So is the image functional?4 Or is it neither but rather a relational idea? Just as male and female are the image of God, so there is something relational about God on the inside (ad intra). Ultimately the doctrine of the Trinity lies behind our being the images of God in this view. C. John Collins wisely suggests, ‘Scholars will advocate one of these three over the others, but we will note that they need not be mutually exclusive. Perhaps none is right, or some combination is right, or maybe we simply cannot come to a firm conclusion.’5 Following Aquinas here one could say whatever ‘image’ means, it is an appropriate way to describe who we are as creatures, vis-à-vis God. What is clear is that on this sixth day the creature is to act in Godlike ways in the created order. Furthermore Genesis 2 and 3 make plain that this creature can be God’s speech partner. These three foundational chapters merit closer attention from this angle of vision. What portrayal of God is found in them? How is God rendered?

The portrayal of God in the beginning

The word to sum up the God of Genesis 1 is ‘transcendent’. This God has no rivals. He stands on the other side of the ontological ledger to creatures. He is beyond creatures. Creation is spoken into being by God. God’s repeated speech acts are causative. As we observed previously, over the first three days various environments are formed: sky, next the waters and finally earth (Gen. 1:2–13). Over the remaining three they are filled: sun, moon and stars, next come the sea creatures and lastly the animals and humankind (Gen. 1:14–31). God is like a great emperor. His word works and is enough. Divine action is speech action. His words do things. And with that speech the Spirit also is at work. Indeed spirit or breath is the vehicle for the spoken word with us and with God.

In Genesis 2 God not only speaks but he fashions. Like a potter with clay Adam is formed from the earth: ‘Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being’ (Gen. 2:7).6 God commands Adam regarding the task to control and care for the garden sanctuary: ‘The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it’ (Gen. 2:15). If Genesis 1 presents humankind in royal terms as rulers, Genesis 2 renders Adam as a priest who is to relate to the garden zone like the later Levites are to relate to the tabernacle and temple. Gordon J. Wenham comments:

Similarly, [šmr] ‘to guard, to keep’, has the simple profane sense of ‘guard’ (4:9; 30:31), but it is even more commonly used in legal texts of observing religious commands and duties (17:9; Lev 18:5) and particularly of the Levitical responsibility for guarding the tabernacle from intruders (Num 1:53; 3:7–8). It is striking that here and in the priestly law these two terms are juxtaposed (Num 3:7–8; 8:26; 18:5–6), another pointer to the interplay of tabernacle and Eden symbolism already noted (cf. Ber. Rab. 16:5).7

Significantly the garden sanctuary does not appear to constitute the geographical limits for the Adamic task. Following the logic of the narrative that begins in the previous chapter, humankind is to exercise dominion over the fish of the sea. This is hardly satisfied by a horticultural existence. In other words, the garden sanctuary is best seen as a staging post for the task of Edenizing the entire world. William J. Dumbrell makes the point well: ‘As a paradigm of the end, Genesis 2 thus displays the harmony that humankind’s dominion was to secure the world at large. Adam’s role in Eden was to extend the contours of the garden to the whole world.’8

Clearly in Genesis 2 God is portrayed as transcendent once more. What the human experience of being so commanded by God sounded or felt like is not explored. The text has little interest in human psychology per se. Moreover this chapter presents God as a farmer who planted the garden that became the Adamic responsibility: ‘Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed’ (Gen. 2:8).

As literary scholar Leland Ryken suggests, the scriptural story is a comedy in literary terms. He writes regarding comedy that it is ‘a work of literature in which the plot structure is U-shaped, with the action beginning in prosperity, descending into potentially tragic events, and ending happily’.9 The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery amplifies his point in relation to the Bible per se:

The overall plot of the Bible is a U-shaped comic plot. The action begins with a perfect world inhabited by perfect people. It descends into the misery of fallen history and ends with a new world of total happiness and the conquest of evil. The book of Revelation is the story of the happy ending par excellence, as a conquering hero defeats evil, marries a bride and lives happily ever after in a palace glittering with jewels. From Genesis to Revelation we see the U-shaped structure working itself out: from the harmony of Genesis 1 – 2 through the disharmony of Genesis 3 – Revelation 20 to harmony again and albeit of a higher kind in Revelation 21 – 22.10

This is a refreshing way to view the biblical accounts. Clearly Scripture seen in these terms is no scientific monograph.11 Its interests lie elsewhere.

In Genesis 3 the comedy takes its dark turn in what Augustine famously termed ‘the Fall’ and more recently Jacques Ellul ‘the Rupture’. Importantly for our purposes in this section the transcendent God of Genesis 1 and 2 is also now to be understood as concomitant as well. God comes alongside his creature made in his im...