ABSTRACT
The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation is, at bottom, the claim that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. As traditionally understood, this does not mean that Jesus was a specially appointed prophet or that he was adopted by God or even that he was pre-existent and existentially unique. No, the doctrine of the Incarnation is more radical that any of that. Its claim is that the human being Jesus of Nazareth was and is God. Not surprisingly, Jesus’ identity claims assumed divine prerogatives (i.e., having the ability to forgive sin; being the Lord of the Sabbath; being God’s unique Son and the Son of Man of Daniel 7; asserting authority over the Torah). Such assertions implying that he stood in the place of God didn’t go over well with either the Jewish community in which Jesus had lived or in the larger Hellenistic and Greek worlds. How could God be born? How could the divine being literally walk the earth as a human who ate, drank, and slept? The very idea was, to borrow a phrase used in a similar context by the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians, ‘a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’ (1: 23 NRSV). Nevertheless, that is the doctrine that became the received view in the traditional Christian Church. This essay will consider the nature of this essential Christian doctrine, examine a particularly thorny philosophical problem to which it gives rise, and discuss three potential responses proposed by its defenders.
