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CHAPTER 4

INCARNATION

We have seen in the previous chapters that God, as absolutely absolute reality, is an absolute “giving of itself” because all reality is active in and of itself. And this giving of itself is what in an active way, although analogously conceived, must be called and is called procession. This procession in God has different aspects. There is a procession in God himself, and by God himself, namely, the double aspect of generation and spiration. But in addition there is also a procession that freely initiates something that is outside God or is not God himself, this is what we call the initiating procession. Nevertheless, this initiating procession is in itself identical to the processions of generation and spiration, except for one difference, that its terminus is free. On the other hand, the other terminus is absolutely necessary. Precisely because of this, while giving of himself to himself in His internal reality is really and definitely a procession ad intra, a constitution of the very Trinitarian reality of God, this giving of himself, when it refers to an initiating procession, is just what we call donation.

Hence, this donation can have different degrees and aspects. We have seen one, which is a donation that consists in molding the very Trinitarian life outside of God. That is the formal reason for creation. Creation, from a concrete point of view, {234} and not from what it might have been de potentia Dei absoluta (it is useless to talk about this), is really and effectively the molding ad extra of the Trinitarian life of God. But there is a second degree in which donation and the giving of itself can refer not to molding the Trinitarian life of God ad extra, but to give creation the very personal reality of God, which He gives to himself as reality. However, in this case that initiating procession, free by reason of its terminus, makes that in this terminus the Trinitarian processions be identified with the terminus of the initiating procession. And this identity is just the personal reality of Christ. This is what we have to consider in this chapter.

To begin with, let us remember that as every operation ad extra (and the Incarnation, undoubtedly is an operation ad extra, since God does not incarnate inside himself) is an operation performed by the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, here the terminus of the procession (of the Incarnation) is the Word as such. And consequently, here it is the Father who in the Holy Spirit and by the Holy Spirit gives the reality of his own Word to creation. Of course, for this he needs to give it (at least in fact it has been done that way) to a reality Trinitarially structured. In the concrete case we are studying, in a man. It follows that this man will be eo ipso the Word of God, and therefore his Son. This is the fact of Incarnation.

§ 1. In the first place, it will be necessary to make an exposition of this fact. What is it that really and effectively the revealed text tells us about what we call the incarnation?
§ 2. In the second place, what is the precision this exposition needs and has had in the course of time, so that we do not get lost among matters alien to the revealed text?
§ 3. And in third place, we must understand this fact theologically through concepts.


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§ 1

THE EXPOSITION OF THE FACT IN THE
NEW TESTAMENT

Undoubtedly, as point of departure, in all the New Testament texts, implicitly in some, explicitly in others (for example in the oldest of the Gospels), we are first told, “...Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God” (Mk 1:1). In other words, that the reality of Jesus Christ, in one form or another (we shall have to see in what form) is Son of God. Nevertheless, the expression “Son of God” is a common expression in the Old and the New Testament outside the fact of Incarnation. It is precisely because of this that it has such a central place in the whole New Testament text. I had indicated this in another place and now we need to repeat it¹. For example, in the Epistle to the Galatians all the just are called “son of God” (cf. Gal 4:6-7). In the Gospel of St. Mathew Christ is called “son of God”, clearly meaning Messiah (cf. Mt 16:16; 26:63). In the Old Testament itself the whole people of Israel is called “son of God” (cf. Ex 4:22-23), especially in the central text for this point, the book of Jeremiah (cf. Jer 31:9). The Messianic king is also called “son of God”, for example in the second book of Samuel (cf. 2 Sm 7:14; cf. 1 Chr 17:13; Ps 2:7). Deuteronomy calls “son of God” to the whole of the Israelites together (cf. Dt 1:31; 8:5), etc.

The New Testament does not abolish this use. On the contrary, it even uses it as a thematic support. That {236} is the issue. The fact is that supporting itself on it and realizing it in the actual life of Christ it wants to take us towards something deeper and more profound in which the divine filiation acquires an exclusive sense in the facts and life of Christ. It takes us, in the first place, slowly. And in second place, indiscernibly. It would be chimerical to think that if I had St. Peter in front of me and I could present the problem to him he would answer me immediately. Definitely not. Probably St. Peter would answer that he does not understand what I am asking him. This is obvious, how is he supposed to have an explicit knowledge of everything theology and the entire history of dogma itself is going to develop in the course of time? That is absolutely chimerical. The only thing we can be absolutely sure is that if he had the patience to listen to the explanation, and I the capacity of explaining what I wanted to ask, then yes, the answer of St. Peter would be, for example, the same the Council of Ephesus gave. That is a different matter.

But this is an entirely imaginary experience. Primitive faith did not deny aspects that for us are essential in the dogma, but also did not discern them explicitly. It was an authentic and real faith, but undiscerning, about the filiation of Christ. The discernment has been the actual work, in the first place, of the New Testament itself, and in second place, of the precisions that have appeared after the Apostolic era. This is a process that, therefore, should be called a theological testimony. The revealed text is neither a biography nor a theological treatise; it is a theological witness of Christ where primarily three factors are involved.

In the first place, the experience of the Holy Spirit. We discussed above what the Holy Spirit is concretely, at least in a radical and general way; it is the Spirit of Truth lived in intimacy, and therefore, the lived experience, {237} the lived tradition of the Apostles and the primitive community surrounding Christ.

In the second place, the faith in the Paschal mystery. Christ resurrected. The Apostles had the faith in the Paschal mystery. And this is going to be projected, I shall immediately indicate how, in the type of redaction of the Gospel text.

And in the third place, there is the hope that Christ will return in one form or another. One of the oldest liturgical texts closes the Eucharistic assembly with the expression marána thá. Depending how the cut is made it may mean two things, “our Lord comes” (from the Aramean marán áthá), or “come, Lord of ours” (in Aramean marána thá). Probably the second is the most obvious. However, in either case it is an explicit and thematic allusion to the Parousia. Of course, something lived in the community of the first Christians, in their liturgy and in the personal life of each.

Consequently, this idea of the divine filiation, lived under the intimate experience of the Holy Spirit, in the Paschal faith, and with faith in the Parousía is going to be molded into the entire New Testament text. Obviously, since the New Testament texts are several it means that each one of them has a lógos, i.e., a different way of presenting and characterizing what we call, and is, the divine filiation of Christ. Therefore, strictly speaking, these different writings involve as many Christologies because each one gives a different lógos (although not incompatible to each other, that is the point) of what the person of Jesus is as Son of God. The problem is to search for a unity in that diversity, which will never be found through the dialectic of some abstract concepts, but precisely the opposite, by finding a greater depth in their point of departure, namely, in the actual life of Christ.

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A) In this New Testament deployment (not all writings belong to the same period) there surely is a primitive and archaic form of this we call the Christology, of the lógos of Christ. I will only quote two passages that must be kept in mind.

1) The first is the one that gives us an account, in the Acts of the Apostles, of the preaching of St. Peter to the gentiles. The text tells us that St. Peter, addressing the Jews, said, “Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and prodigies and signs, which God did by him, in the midst of you as you also know, this same, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you by the hands of wicked men have crucified and slain... Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the sorrows of hell... This Jesus God hath raised again, whereof all we are witnesses. Being exalted therefore by the right hand of God and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit... Therefore let all the house of Israel know most certainly that God hath made both Lord (kýrios) and Christ (christós), this same Jesus, whom you have crucified”(Acts 2:22-36).

2) The other text, the beginning to the Epistle to the Romans is much briefer. I put aside the chronology with respect to the first text because that and its literary composition, which is also important, would take us away from the subject, and is not essential to our problem. The text of St. Paul tells us, referring to the Gospel of his Son, “of the seed of David, according to the flesh, horisthéntos Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of Sanctification, by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:3-4).

What does the term horisthéntos mean here? The term could mean “declared”, “manifested”. If it refers only to “Son of God”, insofar as eternal Word, the {239} term horisthéntos can only mean just that, “declared”, “manifested”. But that is not the Greek sense of the term. Actually, horisthéntos means “constituted”, “defined as such”. Therefore, this clearly indicates that here the expression “Son of God” does not refer formally, expressly, and exclusively to the Word of God, but to everything that in the point of departure we have called “son of God”, and involves the messianic dimension, the sanctity dimension, etc. And, of course, with respect to this we can say He is constituted. Because only after the resurrection did God constitute Him in the fullness of intercessory power and rector of history. This is what we commonly mean by the expression “seated at the right hand of the Father”. Obviously, in that case, to be constituted Son of God is not merely His messianic constitution, that would not be enough. Also, it is not just to be formally constituted as Son of God, which would not be a true constitution. The fact is that this messianic figure precisely acquires the actual fullness of the prerogatives that pertain to him as Incarnate Word. And precisely this ascending motion present in the horisthéntos, in the “constituted”, is the essential point that concerns us here.

These texts represent a primitive Christology, because it is the only text where St. Paul refers to Christ as “Son of David”. In other words, he is addressing some community where this is appreciated, something that would not happen in a Roman community itself unless it incorporated some Jews in it. In these two texts there appears a series of connected motives: 1) the man descendant of David; 2) who lives testifying in his life; 3) crucified; 4) resurrected; 5) elevated to the right hand of the Father; 6) constituted as kýrios, as Lord, or at least manifested as such; 7) who is going to return (marán áthá). Therefore, all of the most complicated Christology on Earth is nothing but the exposition, the precision, and the conceptiveness of these simple {240} New Testament passages. The rest are just subtleties for the use of metaphysicians and historians.


B) The unfolding of this Christology now with a certain amount of chronology in it has manifested itself precisely in the Gospels. Each one provides its own Christology, its lógos of Christ.

1) In the first place, we have the earliest Gospel, from St. Mark. The Gospel of St. Mark aims to present the revelation of God in the passion and the resurrection. It is really the Gospel par excellence; the earthly life of Christ is seen and interpreted under the light of the Paschal faith. This is the basis for that literary style (perhaps more than just a literary style) quite abundant in St. Mark, the “messianic secret” that Christ is always requesting from his disciples. Actually he wants to reach the paschal faith, but after having projected the paschal sense in the life of Christ. That is why he starts by calling Jesus “Son of God” (cf. Mk 1:1). But he is interested in demonstrating that throughout his life, that life has a sense of passing through passion and resurrection towards glorification.

2) St. Matthew depends on the Gospel of St. Mark literarily and in addition on the wide collection of writings and sayings, and multiple independent liturgical texts that existed before the literal redaction of the Gospels. In the Gospel of St. Matthew, of which we probably preserve an abbreviated version of the Aramean original, the aim is to present the lógos of Christ in a different way. He is the person that has the absolute authority on the Law, and therefore, is above the Toráh, and consequently in one form or another is next to Yahweh. What the evangelist intends is to take us to the reality of Yahweh. Of course, that is why in this Gospel there are numerous teachings usually sealed with the expression “hína plerothé to hrethén”, “in order to {241} fulfill Scripture” (cf. Mt 1:22; 2:23, etc.). Evidently, St. Matthew addresses an audience that in one form or another lives by the Law. And he wants to make the lógos, the reason for the being of Christ, something analogous to what the Law was as terminus of the Covenant (Hb. berit), of the will of Yahweh over the people of Israel. This man now, who disposes by simply one word (“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors... But I say to you...”, cf. Mt 5:21-48), with that “I” expresses in an unequivocal way what we call the divinity. Clearly, that this man is at the very level of Yahweh. It is also, at the same time, the Gospel that most profusely employs the term kýrios, Lord, which exactly translates the Hebrew Adonai, the circumlocution with which the Hebrews expressed the name of Yahweh.

3) The lógos of Christ that St. Luke presents to us is different. For St. Luke it is not the question of a somewhat atemporal life, like the one in St. Matthew, where Christ is placed confronting the Law. St. Luke, who writes quite later (and perhaps accompanied St. Paul in his travels through Asia Minor and Greece) is in a different situation. Resurrection is further back, and so are the communities more or less attached to the life of Jerusalem. Accordingly, St. Luke has to take account of time seriously, the triple time. The first is the time of the Old Testament as it actually took place. Second, the time of the Church, of the primitive community living the Parousía. And between both of these, we have the third one, the time of the real life of Christ. For St. Luke the lógos of Christ as Son of God, is precisely to be the Lord of time and the rector of history. It is not by chance that he has written the Gospel as a “prologue” to the Acts of the Apostles.

4) Finally we have the Gospel of St. John, which is founded on the testimony of the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 15:26), certainly {242} belonging to the end of the first century. More time has elapsed and St. John, who is together with St. Paul the great theologian of the New Testament, has lived intimately the experience of the Holy Spirit with an intensity that the Gospel allows us to think has actually been exceptional, and in addition unique. St. John wishes to affirm not only that Jesus Christ is the lógos, the eternal Word of God, but also that he is made of flesh and bone. That is the essential point. That is the real sense of the human life of Christ ready to be lost, through certain speculations and certain ways of living the religion, in a lógos completely impersonal and ethereal, despite all his indications of divinity.


C) Since we are prescinding here of the chronology, let us see how is the lógos of Christ presented in St. Paul². He is presented in a different form, in that initial form, which the primitive Christology reproduces, as I indicated. But in addition, in the great Pauline Epistles (Romans, Corinthians, and even in the Deuteropauline Epistles), there is a theme that appears constantly. That the reason for the being of Christ is precisely to be pléroma, to be fullness (cf. Rom 15:29; 1 Co 10:26; Eph 1:23; 3:19; 4:13; Col 1:19; 2:9). To be fullness of what? The term pléroma is not from St. Paul; it comes from the Stoic philosophy. Here St. Paul refers on the one hand to the divinity of Christ, but on the other to what pléroma meant in the Stoic philosophy, namely, the totality of the universe immersed precisely in the lógos, in the universal reason. The pléroma consists in saying that in Jesus Christ resides the fullness of the Word of God, and also the fullness of creation itself. We are told four things about this pléroma.

1) In the first place, that He has a divine existence. Definitely, we are told that through him God made all the centuries of time {243} (cf. Hb 1:2). Here is mentioned what in the Old Testament had already appeared when it was said that in the beginning God created the world, the transcendence of God that appears as that beginning of time (cf. Gn 1:1). At this point we are taken to a more radical dimension, that Christ is the beginning of all time, because in the first place he is huiós, Son. In the second place he is apaúgasma, effulgence of the Father. And in third place charaktér, express imprint of the Father (cf. Hb 1:2-3). In the Epistle to the Philippians St. Paul adds a further characteristic, saying he is morphé, form (cf. Phil 2:6) of God, carefully distinguishing between morphé and eikón, image. The eikón is a personal property of the Son as such. And for St. Paul there is no doubt, the one and par excellence image of God is precisely Christ (cf. 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). This is the divine preexistence of Christ because through Him God made all the time of creation.

2) In the second place, his historical existence. He took the form of a slave, morphé doúlou (cf. Phil 2:7).

3) In the third place, he has a glorious existence. He is the heir to everything (cf. Hb 1:2).

4) In the fourth place, St. Paul gives us the precise position of Christ with respect to creation. He is a lógos who completes the divine lógos. He is, in the first place, the beginning of everything, everything was created through Him (cf. 1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:16). He is, in the second place, the terminus of everything, everything was created for Him (cf. Col 1:16). And He is, in the third place, the fundament of everything, everything finds support in Him, everything acquires its consistency in Him (cf. Col 1:17). Because of this St. Paul reduces to one expression the position of Christ as Son of God in creation, He is “the firstborn of all creation” (cf. Col 1:15).

Of course, the exegesis here has had to stop because when we say that everything has been created through Him, who is the firstborn of all creation, which one is the subject of those verbs? That is the question. Is it the eternal Word? Almost always (and I say “almost” {244} out of prudence) that has been the way it has been understood in theology. In all truthfulness the literal text indicates the subject is Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ is not the eternal Word, but the incarnated Word. In that case, what does the divine presence of Christ mean? Is it the case that he was created before coming down to this world, insofar as man? The Church firmly rejected the understanding of Origen according to which Christ, before coming to this world, in the bosom of the Father, had a human body and soul. No, Christ took the human body and soul purely and simply in the bosom of Mary.

However, the exegesis of recent years thinks that actually there is a divine preexistence of the man-God, who would be a creature, but anterior to the whole creation. What does this mean? It is speculated that there is a time different from the historical, and the pure eternity of God. But the real problem is not in what does this intermediate time consist, but what is the reality Christ has in it. That is the question, and we are told nothing about it, it is left completely in suspense. At any rate, those who say this are not just subtle exegetes, but some of the great masters of the modern New Testament exegesis³. This would undoubtedly put a different perspective on the problem of Arius who thought that the Word has been created before all created time. This is what I called, when referring to the Trinity, a level of transcendence that was not co-eternal with God. Clearly, this was the error of Arius, to say that He was not co-eternal and consubstantial with God. But if Arius had come across someone that said the incarnate Word had become such in this intermediate time of the divine order before coming down to the world, his position perhaps might have been different. At any rate, these exegetes state it {245} very clearly; the incarnation in the bosom of Mary does not mean a step from the divinity to the incarnate Word, but a change of condition. From what the condition of Christ was before creation to what the condition of Christ is in the bosom of Mary. I have indicated what the problem is for those who may wish to rack their brains trying to solve it in this fashion.


D) Be that as it may, the divinity of Christ is expressed in a certain dynamic way in all these logoi, in all these Christologies of the New Testament. It is expressed in a dynamic form, but is undeniable. We are told, for example, that Christ is kýrios, Lord. This is just a way of saying he is Yahweh, that he is a revealer of God, that he is the lógos that really lives in an intimate, exceptional, and unique way with the Father (being his Son), of whom he is an image. However, the Synoptic Gospels never call Christ Theós. The divinity is expressed here with that more apprehensible and accessible characteristic within the history of Israel. It is an elevation by transcendence of what the entire religion of Israel has been, and its conceptiveness of the Son of God.

Elevation by transcendence. Yes, but that is the question, because this elevation by transcendence never stops moving in the dark. Certainly, Christ never mentioned in what his divine filiation consisted. When he has said he is Son of God, and that so are the rest of us (cf. Jn 10:34), he has always made a distinction. He has taught all of us to pray by saying, “This is how you are to pray: Our Father...” (cf. Mt 6:9). He never places himself inside that “our”. His relationship with the Father, his intimacy with him is different. The Father is only known by the Son, and the Son is only known by the Father (cf. Mt 11:27). Also, he told Philip during the Last Supper, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever {246} has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). In the end, this is to indicate precisely that his divine filiation is something essentially different from what divine filiation was within the entire history of Israel, and even within the messianic conception of this history. But it leaves in suspense the necessity of stating with precision what this divine filiation is.

In chapter two I had indicated it. We may think (and we definitely have to think it) that this personal intimacy, which Christ lives with the Father, is elevated in a certain way to the infinite. Then, this identity, which in the rest of us will be no more (for example in St. John) than an intimate and mystical experience of the Holy Spirit with a great depth and supernatural richness, does not reach, however, the level it reached in Christ. Because as the two poles approach in intimacy it is clear they do converge precisely in the identity. And this identity is the divine filiation of Christ. It is usually said that in the New Testament Christ only appears as revealer. I would prefer to say that in the New Testament Christ appears as Truth of the Father, which is a different matter. We shall see that this observation is not a marginal one through what I will say further on.

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¹ Cf. X. Zubiri, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions, op. cit., p. 249.
² Zubiri refers to the whole Corpus Paulinum.
³ Zubiri probably refers here to the work, already quoted, of P. Benoit, “Pre-existence et incarnation”, op. cit., pp. 5-29.