The Incarnation

John 1:1-3 establishes what is being said before describing what happened: "In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with (pros, toward, face-to-face with) God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made."

The Logos Christology draws on multiple backgrounds:

(1) The Hebrew dabar (word), the creative, revelatory word of YHWH in the Old Testament; "And God said" (Genesis 1); "The word of the LORD came to..." (the prophets); "He sent out his word and healed them" (Psalm 107:20).

(2) The Greek philosophical concept of Logos, the rational principle governing the cosmos (Heraclitus); the divine reason immanent in matter (Stoicism); the intermediary principle between God and creation (Philo of Alexandria). John writes into this intellectual milieu but transforms the concept: the Logos is not an impersonal principle but a person who is himself God.

(3) Wisdom (sophia/chokmah), Proverbs 8:22-31 personified wisdom present at creation; Sirach 24 wisdom tabernacling in Israel. John's Logos takes up the wisdom tradition and intensifies it.

John 1:14: eskenosen (ἐσκήνωσεν, dwelt, tabernacled, pitched his tent), the Logos set up his tent among human beings, evoking the wilderness tabernacle (skene, tent, dwelling). As the Shekinah filled the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34-35), so YHWH's glory is now seen in the enfleshed Logos: "we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father."

Monogenes (μονογενής, only-begotten, unique, one-of-a-kind), not a numerical claim about reproduction but a qualitative claim about uniqueness: the Logos holds a singular relationship to the Father that no one else holds.

Philippians 2:5-11 is one of the oldest Christological hymns in the New Testament, and the center of New Testament kenotic theology:

"who, though he was in the form of God (morphe theou, μορφῇ θεοῦ, the essential nature, the full reality of deity), did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped (harpagmon, to be exploited for his own advantage), but emptied himself (ekenosen, ἐκένωσεν, kenosis, from kenos, empty), by taking the form of a servant (morphe doulou), being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

The key term is ekenosen, "he emptied himself." Of what did the Son empty himself?

(1) Not of deity: the text says he was in morphe theou (the form of God) and made himself nothing. Emptying of deity would mean the one who became flesh was not God, contradicting the whole point.

(2) The text specifies: "by taking the form of a servant", the kenosis is a positive assumption of human limitation, not a subtraction from divine nature. The Son added humanity; he did not subtract divinity.

(3) The traditional answer (kenoticism as self-limitation): in taking on human nature, the Son voluntarily limited the use of his divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) while incarnate, not their possession. This explains why Jesus could say "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28) and "of that day and hour no one knows, not even the Son" (Matthew 24:36) without ceasing to be divine.

The downward arc (emptied / humbled / death / cross) leads to the upward vindication: "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (2:9-11, the name kyrios/Lord echoing the LXX of Yahweh in Isaiah 45:23).

Hebrews 2:14-17 gives the most direct explanation of why the Son had to become human:

"Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy 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. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people."

Four reasons for the incarnation emerge from this text:

(1) To participate in death: the Son had to share in mortality in order to undergo death. A purely divine being cannot die, and only through death could death be destroyed from the inside (1 Corinthians 15:55-57).

(2) To destroy the devil: through death and resurrection, the one who held the power of death was overcome (Revelation 12:10-11; Colossians 2:15).

(3) To help humanity, not angels: the scope of redemption is the offspring of Abraham. "He helps" (epilambano, takes hold of, grabs hold of) the human offspring. The atonement required a human mediator for a human problem.

(4) To serve as high priest: to make propitiation for human sins, the mediator must represent both parties. He must be fully human to represent humans before God; he must be fully God for his sacrifice to be of infinite worth. Hebrews 4:15, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."

The incarnation is the irreversible hinge of all history. Before it: creation groaning toward its redemption; the long shadow of figures and types pointing forward. After it: the light that entered the darkness cannot be un-entered; the Word that became flesh cannot un-become flesh; the resurrection body that left the tomb is still embodied at the right hand of the Father. The incarnation is not a temporary divine visitation but the permanent union of the eternal Son with human nature, the basis of the Sanctum's confidence that humanity has been taken up into the divine life.