CONTENTS
Incarnation, belongs to this genre. However, the result of the study may surprise. Did Isaiah expect the incarnation of Yahweh or did Jeremiah or Malachi? I think not. Instead we find two lines of expectation: the coming of God and the coming of a divine agent (e.g. a king like David, a prophet like Moses). So then how was this most stupendous divine act providentially prepared for? How could an incarnation be possibly understood truly but, of course, not exhaustively? Reflecting on these questions led me to explore the way God is self-revealed from the very beginning of the biblical narrative, next the former and latter prophets, then in Israel’s hope. What struck me is how God comes before us as though embodied, as though incarnate. We read of the divine heart, arm, face, grief, and anger. We find the God who speaks, stands, acts and performs in ways analogous to human roles as a shepherd or king or warrior or nurse. This led me to posit three categories of such materials: anthropomorphism (human like shaped, e.g. arm), anthropopathism (human like emotion, e.g. grief) and athropopraxisms (human like roles, e.g. king). Indeed, in some of the biblical testimonies the appearance of God can best be described as “anthropomorphic theophany” (e.g. Jacob’s wrestling match
in Genesis 32), to borrow from James Barr.
GOD WITH US I also found that a third term besides the traditional ones of transcendence and immanence was needful to do justice to the biblical revelation. Transcendence refers to how God as creator is not caught up in creation. Immanence balances transcendence by referring to how the Creator as sustainer is at work within the created order. Here I was aided by a term from Norman Pittenger, “concomitance.” God is the one who comes alongside us as presence. That presence is seen in the garden (Gen. 2), the tabernacle (Exod. 40), the temple (1 Kings 8) and in Israel’s hope that God himself would come to Zion (Ezek. 48). Philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff’s theory about theories provided yet another tool to help understand how, when the incarnation took place, it could be intelligible. The anthropomorphisms, anthropathisms and anthropraxisms of the Old Testament together with the theme of the divine presence and the hope of Yahweh’s coming provided the conceptual preparation for the wonder of the incarnation. These various elements constituted what in Wolterstorff’s
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