The Word Made Flesh: A Theology of the Incarnation

by Ian A. McFarland

Most theologians believe that in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth, we encounter God. Yet how the divine and human come together in the life of Jesus still remains a question needing exploring. The Council of Chalcedon sought to answer the question by speaking of “one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in divinity and also perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly a human being.” But ever since Chalcedon, the theological conversation on Christology has implicitly put Christ’s divinity and humanity in competition. While ancient (and not-so-ancient) Christologies “from above” focus on Christ’s divinity at the expense of his humanity, modern Christologies “from below” subsume his divinity into his humanity. What is needed, says Ian A. McFarland, is a “Chalcedonianism without reserve,” which not only affirms the humanity and divinity of Christ but also treats them as equal in theological significance. To do so, he draws on the ancient christological language that points to Christ’s nature, on the one hand, and his hypostasis, or personhood, on the other. And with this, McFarland begins one of the most creative and groundbreaking theological explorations into the mystery of the incarnation undertaken in recent memory.

Genres: Theology

261 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 3, 2019

Reviews

[Corey]

Excellent Christology book, might be my go-to if I end up teaching a course on it some day.

[David Giesbrecht]

McFarland greift die Aussage aus dem Bekenntnis von Chalcedon auf, dass Jesus "zugleich wahrhaft Gott und wahrhaft Mensch" ist und stellt dieses Bekenntnis in die aktuelle christlologische Diskussion. Dabei hält er an der klassischen Zwei-Naturen-Lehre fest, führt die Konsequenzen davon aus und zeigt die Probleme der Kenosis-Lehre auf.
Anknüpfend an Luther ("NICHT DER WIRD MIT RECHT EIN THEOLOGE GENANNT, DER DAS UNSICHTBARE [WESEN] GOTTES ERBLICKT, DAS DURCH DAS ERKANNT WIRD, WAS GEMACHT IST. SONDERN WER DAS SICHTBARE UND DIE DEM MENSCHEN ZUGEWANDTE RÜCKSEITE GOTTES ERKENNT, DIE DURCH LEIDEN UND KREUZ ERBLICKT WIRD. Heidelberger Disputation §§19-20") begründet und führt er die christliche Überzeugung aus, dass in Jesus Christus "die ganze Fülle der Gottheit leibhaftig" (Kol 2,9) wohnt. D.h., wenn ich Jesus sehe, dann sehe ich Gott in seiner gesamten Füllen. Dies hat zwei Betonungen bei ihm zur Folge:
Erstens, wenn es stimmt, dass ich in Jesus Gott sehe, muss die Diskussion vom "Deus absconditus" überdacht werden. Zweitens, muss der Riss und die Wiederherstellung der Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Gott nicht nur Sühnetheologisch, sondern vorallem ontologisch begründet werden. Weil Gott in Jesus Mensch wurde, schaffte er eine Möglichkeit für eine ewige Gemeinschaft mit Gott, ohne dass der Mensch von Gottes Fülle ausgelöscht wird.
Wer auf dem ersten Blick eine Christologie erwartet, wird beim Lesen merken, dass der Autor sowohl die Gotteslehre, Ekklesiologie, Anthropologie und Soteriologie verarbeitet. Auffallend ist dabei, dass er in einem guten Gespräch mit den Bibelwissenschaften und der historischen Theologie steht und diese in seine Argumentation einbindet. Die Argumentation ist sehr strikt und logisch gestaltet, sodass einiges an Arbeit zum Verstehen investiert werden muss, jedoch hilt der Autor dem Leser durch immer wiederkehrende Zusammenfassungen und Anknüpfungen an vorherige Gedanken.
Zu kurz kommt leider die Diskussion, was mit Jesus bei/in seinem Tod passierte (150ff). Hier bleibt der Autor zurückhaltend.
Ein empfehlenswertes Buch, um in die christologische Diskussion einzusteigen und Grundkonturen, anknüpfend an Chalcedon, zu legen.

[Johnny]

Those familiar with Christology will immediately recognize the thesis of Ian McFarland’s The Word Made Flesh: A Theology of the Incarnation when they read his intention to present a “Chalcedonianism without reserve” in this reconsideration of historical and modern positions on the human-divine question in the life of Jesus (p. 3). Of course, those familiar with the Council of Chalcedon in 451 would know that the emphasis is upon Jesus being “wholly God and wholly human.” The problem, of course, is conceptualizing how that is possible. McFarland, a theology professor at Cambridge University’s Selwyn College, zeroes in on the Chalcedonian distinction between nature and hypostatic union (p. 7). As McFarland clarifies, Jesus’ nature is divine and eternal, but within that nature, the Triune God willed a union where Jesus would be enfleshed with humanity while never ceasing to participate in the Trinitarian nature.

“The distinction between hypostasis and nature in Chalcedonian Christology makes it possible to affirm that the divine nature never becomes human or in anyway subject to physical or conceptual circumscription, the person of the Word can, without ceasing to be divine, also assume a human nature.” (p. 97) In this way, there is no question as in a thorough-going kenotic theory (the divine emptying) of asking Who is governing the world while the Word is flesh without destroying the idea of the eternal Trinity. But even as McFarland uses this dogma from a fresh perspective, he admits that it is incomplete (p. 98). Personally, I believe his discussion could have benefited from the analogy of quantum entanglement. Indeed, he might even have understood the potential of kenosis better with that analogical consideration.

A footnote on page 36 offers two analogies which attempt to maintain the transcendence of God’s nature with God’s participation within God’s creation. The analogies come from Aquinas and are quoted such in footnote 24: “Now since it is God’s nature to exist (Cum autem Deus sit ipsum esse), he it must be who properly causes existence in creatures, just as it is fire itself (that) that sets other things on fire. And God is causing this effect in things not just when they begin to exist, but all the time they are maintained in existence, just as the sun is lighting up the atmosphere all the time the atmosphere remains lit.” This is what McFarland’s argument will eventually turn upon when he says that to say that Jesus is the complete human does not mean that he has to be exclusively human (p. 129, n. 4). In a sense, all humans participate in the divine in that God sustains them and God has given them an in-built longing for communion with God, but the human Jesus still participates via his nature with the divine in Trinitarian fullness. Again, entanglement would assist this conceptually, but it is an important idea even as McFarland presents it.

Alas, it seemed to me that McFarland had a rather weak idea of how Jesus was tempted. He seemed to think that there was no real struggle since his analogy was that just as he himself had no desire to commit murder or abuse a child, he could be tempted in the sense of being urged without having the desire to do so (p. 133). Yet, we know that Jesus must have had the desire to ease his hunger pains when tempted in the wilderness and we know that he seemed to have a desire to continue living when struggling in the Garden of Gethsemane, but he sublimated his will to that of his participation in the Trinity. Without experiencing and denying the desire, it is hard to agree that he was tempted in every way just as we are (Hebrews 4:15). It seems to me that the author’s perspective makes Jesus less authentically human like Tolstoy’s idea of the prince in disguise in the famous story.

By far the most valuable insights in the book came from the way McFarland dealt with the humanness of the Word in the post-ascension and pre-parousia situation. “The resurrection is not more of this life, but precisely the vindication of this life in its completeness.” (p. 165) In the light of the Christ event, the resurrection should be considered not to be an extension of human life, but a transformation of it (p. 167) to which McFarland applies the example of Jesus to believers as in consideration of 1 Corinthians 15. He observes that because: “…the character of God has been definitely revealed in the life story that ends on Calvary, the confession of Jesus’ resurrection, ascension, and session at God’s right hand should not be understood as further episodes in that story, but simply the vindication of that story as God’s own. And just because that life is God’s life, its completeness does not mean its end.” (p. 179)

As a result, McFarland is able to say: “And yet Jesus’ absence is integral to the good news, and this in two respects, period. First, it confirms the Word’s relationship to the flesh and blood of Jesus was not illusory, accidental, or temporary; the Word did not float above this human existence; rather, this human being was the Word, … the good news of the embodiment of God in Jesus is not that it should be repeated, but that it should be inverted; not that God should live in other human beings as God did in Jesus only, but that human beings should live in God, …” (pp. 211-212).

Although one does not find oneself agreeing with McFarland’s distinctions across the board, his succinct presentation of historical theological perspectives, careful consideration of modern theologians, and introduction of various Christological problems would make this an ideal textbook for a course in Christology. Of course, as I discovered, it is useful for the thinking pastor as well.

[Zach Byrd]

This book has some wonderful qualities, particularly when discussing Christ’s Incarnation and His state of humiliation. Minus a few quibbles, it was theological and doxological. However, he lost me when addressing Christ’s state of exaltation. At this point, Chalcedon wasn’t “without reserve;” it was “without a place” in his theological construction.

[Randell Toews]

A very challenging book for me, or, as one friend from seminary (IBA) would say: "much arena para mi camioncito."

[Jenny Webb]

Plenty to chew on here. An example of Chalcedion fidelity.

[Nathan Porter]

The book’s rather heavy-handed thesis is that Christ is known to us only in his human nature, because the immediate presence of divinity would compromise the reality of his creatureliness. We encounter the Word as hypostasis, while his divine nature remains wholly excluded from our experience (76).

In Ch. 3, ‘One and the Same,’ M.’s discussion of Christology commences. There is a brief discussion of the distinction between nature and hypostasis, the former being defined as the ‘what’ of Christ and the latter as the ‘who.’ This distinction allows M. to advance the proposal that divine and human properties are predicated of Christ’s person without any true, i.e. realistic, communication of attributes, a view that returns to the so-called Strict Chalcedonianism of Leontius of Byzantium (though Leontius’ presence in the work remains, for the most part, only implicit). M. aims to avoid the suggestion that ‘the divine nature is more present in Jesus than anywhere else in the created realm’–a statement that, ironically, echoes the language of the so-called ‘deep incarnation’ Christologies from which M. is ostensibly at several removes–even as he argues that ‘God is present in him in a distinctly different way.’ For while God causes all events in the created order, ‘only in the case of Jesus is it true that whatever Jesus does, God does’ (80-1).

The coherence of this distinction is questionable, but it is further complicated by M.’s surprising appeal to Maximus the Confessor’s highly unitive understanding of the communicatio idiomatum, according to which Christ ‘performed divine things humanly and human things divinely’ (Amb. 5). M. takes these theandric operations to include both miracles and more ordinary behavior, such as ‘living unselfishly, bearing witness to the gospel in the face of persecution, or forgiving others’ offenses’ (92) – fully human actions ‘performed in a divine mode’ (94).

It is not clear to me that this Maximian interpretation of the communicatio can be cogently maintained alongside M.’s insistence that in Christ’s humanity we see nothing of his divinity. For although M. asserts that Christ’s divinized human nature ultimately expresses his divinity only analogically, we must also consider the metaphysical source of Christ’s ‘new theandric energy.’ M. attributes it to the participation of Christ’s humanity in the divine energies, which are not the divine nature even as they are its ‘characteristic modes of operation’ (91). However, the origin of those energies can be nowhere else but the divine nature, which means that Christ’s divinized humanity is ultimately the work of the Word as God within and upon his humanity. It must, then, be possible for the divine nature to act immediately on the humanity of Christ without compromising its finitude or creatureliness. In other words, the nature/hypostasis distinction is not able to do the work that M. would like: a real communication of attributes between the natures (and not simply a predicative relationship via their shared connection to Christ’s hypostasis) is required for truly theandric operations.

The book’s most complex and imaginative proposals have to do with the events of Holy Week (ch. 6, ‘Christus Victor’). Jesus’ death, M. writes, is the end of his life, the termination of his story. For after Jesus’ death, there are no further events in his life at all. The resurrection is itself not an event in the ordinary sense, and his risen body ‘is no longer situated in the realm of space and time.’ The ascended Christ ‘reigns precisely as the one whose story ended on the cross’ (168). M. stunningly claims that Paul’s language of a ‘spiritual body… should not be understood as describing any particular properties of Jesus’ glorified body.’ Rather, it means that ‘Jesus no longer lives by virtue of any properties of his human nature, however modified or augmented, but by God’s power only’ (178-9). It is not clear to me that this ‘spiritual body’ is interestingly different from a corpse. For how can the claim that Jesus no longer lives by anything belonging to his human nature be meaningfully distinguished from saying that Jesus’ body is simply not alive?

M. continues: the acts of the risen Christ do not consist in ‘doing particular things… but in doing all things,’ that is, in carrying out the acts of providence (179-80). This is a result of the timelessness and consequent lack of episodicity of Christ’s resurrected existence. Christ’s second coming is also not ‘the inauguration of a new earthly-historical epoch’ (183), not ‘an event in time,’ but ‘the end of time’ (181). The parousia will bring about a new mode of Christ’s presence in his humanity. Precisely because his resurrected body is heavenly and so without spatio-temporal boundaries, Christ’s humanity will ‘be visible to all simultaneously’ (181) – apparently an eschatological version of the classical Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s humanity. At the second coming, God will no longer be present to the world only by his providence, but ‘by virtue of the humanity of the incarnate Word’ (181). This is a perplexing reconfiguration of the standard dogmatic timetables. Should not the incarnation itself be regarded as the moment when God ceased to be present to the world only in the mode of providential action?

Ch. 7, ‘Jesus Presence Now,’ discusses ecclesiology and sacramental theology. Christ is confessed to be present in the church’s sacraments and members, yet in none of these is Jesus himself encountered. In what looks to be a reversal of his earlier insistence that lack of spatio-temporal locality enables the ubiquity of Christ’s humanity, M. contends that the presence of Jesus’ humanity in heaven rather than in space and time requires that he himself not be directly present to us. Honoring the completeness of the story of Jesus’ human life requires that nothing more be added to it, as would be the case if he were to perform discrete actions in the life of the church (199-201). Thus, it is not Jesus himself but the Spirit who acts directly within the church. The only sense in which Jesus is present before the second coming is that the Spirit who activated his humanity with grace now renews and transforms our own: “We, as human beings, can share in the life of God only in and through the same Spirit by which God has lived the life of a human being” (207-9). It is not obvious, however, why the Spirit, as a divine hypostasis with no human nature capable of episodic action, should be capable of immediate presence to and action within the church in the place of Christ in his humanity. This reflects an odd (though often only implicit) tendency in contemporary theology to regard the Spirit as the person of the Trinity in whom God is capable of being present to the world as divine, while the Son’s presence is enabled by his flesh and the Father’s presence is mediated by Son and Spirit (think of Congar, Bulgakov, Williams, etc.).

A final question about M.’s Christology. If Jesus’ hypostasis is encountered in and through his human nature without the perception of anything strictly divine (apart from the analogical expression of divine attributes in his operations), then it would seem that Jesus’ hypostasis is not of a distinctively divine sort, even given the qualification that it also eternally supposits the Son’s divinity. That is, ‘hypostasis,’ as a piece of metaphysical vocabulary, appears to be predicated univocally of human and divine being in M.’s schema. It is noteworthy that the theologian who resembles M. more than any other, Leontius of Byzantium, makes this very claim explicit (Epileseis 1921B-1924B). Yet, such univocal predication is completely at odds with M.’s insistence on God as non aliud, not simply because it applies the same category to creator and creature, but more importantly because hypostases are, among other things, principles of individuation. A univocal interpretation of hypostasis therefore implies that a Trinitarian person is this rather than that thing in the same way that a creature is (notwithstanding its eternal suppositing of the divine nature). Conversely, upholding a strict non aliud means that Jesus’ hypostasis is not an individuating principle of the same sort that we find among creatures. Thus, if nothing but the purely finite and creaturely can be present in creation without disrupting it, then the Word’s hypostasis cannot be encountered in the incarnation any more than his divine nature. His earlier assertion that ‘God does not ‘have’ or ‘instantiate’ a nature, because there is no distinction between what God is and how or who God is’ (38), is simply incompatible with the robust distinction between nature and hypostasis in which most of his argumentation is grounded (e.g. 72-80).

M. has pushed the Strict Chalcedonian agenda to its limits. The book’s achievement lies in its lucid account of the full implications of the non-competitive metaphysics that have gained a foothold in recent systematics (especially in the work of Torrance, Williams, Tanner, and others). We must ask, however, whether the attempt to extricate the world of God’s divine (i.e., not simply hypostatic) presence, for fear of creation’s collapse in the face of the infinite, has any real foundation in scripture. Can it make sense of the ignis devorans that is Israel’s God and of the decidedly competitive action carried out by Christ for the world’s redemption? Does it adequately account for the gifting to creaturely being of a share in what is properly divine, and not simply of communion with the purely human aspect of a hypostasis who is also divine? Although he evidently wishes to do so, it is not clear that M. can affirm these foundational commitments of the Christian faith while inexorably contending that ‘the presence of God can only mean the annihilation of the creature’ (72n3).

(Edited from a review I wrote for Irish Theological Quarterly)

[Jonas Opmeer]

The first half was really helpful. The second felt long-winded and lacking clear purpose comparatively. I lost the big picture many times while reading this. Tough read, but generally worth it in value.

All that aside, God became man! Worth being excited about, worth getting a tad confused thinking through.

[Chris]

Excellent work on the incarnation. Clear in its arguments and articulation but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Quite challenge in that his argument is to affirm classic chalcedonian christology without reserve. In other words, the divine and human natures are not mixed or confused or joined in Christ. What was especially helpful and challenging was how much we overlook the importance of Christ’s humanity in revealing who God is. We are so quick to stress Jesus is divine his humanity is lost and we are sloppy in the ways we speak of how God was revealed in Christ and why his humanity matters. Despite this being academic book there were touches of important things for our life of devotion and for ministry.

[Richard Woodhouse]

This is top of the line Theology. One of the best books on the incarnation I have ever read! His writing flows and He makes great arguments and thinks out this very deep subject with great insight. His best book to date. I found his "Creation from Nothing" to be a very good study on that subject. But this book tops that one. This should be in every thinking Christians library of go to books. Excellent book.

[James W. Hoppers Jr.]

Must be read in the Spirit

Not a casual read or for nominal Christians. Thought provoking. Must read footnotes as you go to fully grasp. Not to be rushed through.