Taking the Incarnation Seriously

March 11, 2014 · Robert Arakaki

Coptic Icon of the Nativity

In a recent blog posting Pastor John Armstrong wrote about

his paradigm shift on the Incarnation. I found his article very helpful
for illustrating the different ways Protestants and Orthodox approach
the Incarnation. Armstrong wrote:

For now I have been thinking about how the Orthodox Church
has a doctrine of salvation that includes the whole world, or
the teaching of cosmology. Simply put the Orthodox do not
treat the incarnation, the cross, and resurrection as separate
events when explaining our salvation. I have concluded that
this approach has to be correct because it fills in some
holes in our Western way of thinking that is too
individualistic. It also challenges the tendency in the West to
center on legal categories when it seeks to explain the cross
and God’s love. (Emphasis added.)

The Incarnation is one area where Reformed and Orthodox Christians

frequently talk past each other not being fully aware of the differences
separating them. When I became Orthodox I criticized some of my
friends for not taking the Incarnation seriously, and some felt
insulted by this. As bible believing Evangelicals they strongly
believed in the Incarnation, so how could I accuse them of not taking
the Incarnation seriously? I felt frustrated because I did know quite
how to explain the reasons for my criticism. Over time I became
aware that the differences were paradigmatic, that is, the
role/function of the Incarnation in the Protestant theological system
is quite different from its place in Orthodoxy.

Evangelicals do believe in the historicity of the Incarnation, but

theologically they view it as a preliminary step, secondary to the big
event of Christ’s atoning death on the Cross. For many Protestants all
salvation is assumed in Christ’s death. Humanity’s chief problem was
solved; the sinless Son of God took on our guilt on the Cross and if we
believe in Christ our sins will be forgiven — our legal standing before
God will be restored (righteousness) thereby entitling us to certain
benefits in the kingdom of God, e.g., eternal life, resurrected bodies, a
place in heaven, the right to ask God for things (intercessory prayer)
etc.

But for Orthodoxy the Incarnation is just as significant for our

salvation as Christ’s dying on the Cross, as well as his third day
resurrection. We are saved by the person of Jesus Christ, not just by
that one thing he did on the Cross. In baptism we are united to
Christ’s death and his resurrection, we receive the Holy Spirit and are
incorporated into his Body (the Church). We cease to be autonomous
beings and now live in the context of the liturgical and sacramental
life of the Church. In the course of the liturgical cycle of the major
feast days of the Orthodox Church we participate in the mysteries of
Christ’s Incarnation, his Nativity, his presentation in the Temple, his
Baptism in the River Jordan, his Transfiguration, his ascent to
Jerusalem, his entry into Jerusalem, his death on the Cross, his
Resurrection, and his Ascension. In the Incarnation the Eternal
entered into history. The life of Christ recounted in the Gospels is not
a sequence of events but transcends the limitations of chronological
time. Through the Church’s liturgical life we participate in the
baptism at the River Jordan or Christ’s Transfiguration on Mount
Tabor as if we were there. The Orthodox Holy Week services are
more than Sunday School lessons. In these services we participate in
Christ’s last week on earth. This is ontologically possible because of
the Incarnation. We are no longer separated by two thousand years
of time, because we are in the Body of Christ, the Church.

Despite the differences in theological paradigms it appears the lines

of communication are becoming clearer between Reformed and
Orthodox Christians. We are no longer talking past each
other. Below is an excerpt from a recent Facebook thread that I
participated in (emphasis added). I wrote:

Charles, In Protestantism the focus is on an event – Christ’s

dying on the cross for our sins. In Orthodoxy the focus is on
a Person and the life He lived — the arc of Christ’s life
beginning with his taking on human nature, his birth, his
growing up, his ministry and teachings, his death on the
Cross, his third day resurrection, his ascension into heaven,
his sending the Holy Spirit, and his glorious Second Coming.
Jesus is the Second Adam who recapitulated our life. When I
was a Protestant I couldn’t quite figure out how all the events
fit together. It seemed that the Cross was the essential thing
for our salvation but all the other things weren’t as important.
With Orthodoxy’s emphasis on the Incarnation — the God-
Man entering into human history — all the pieces fit together
into one coherent picture. –Robert

Charles replied:

Robert, I agree that Protestantism in general can focus on the

cross a little too much. That is why I am glad that I am
Reformed =D. I agree that the cross isn’t the only component
to the gospel–it is crucial to also take into account the estates
(humiliation and exaltation) and offices (prophet, priest, and
king) of Christ. The period between the Incarnation and the
Crucifixion would signify the estate of humiliation, and the
period between Resurrection, Ascension, Intercession, and
the 2nd Coming would be the estate of exaltation. So in
essence, I guess we would disagree about the role of the
Incarnation–to the Eastern Orthodox, it seems that it is the
 core. For me (and Reformed theology), it seems that the
Incarnation is merely a step in the process for
eschatological inauguration, fulfillment, and realization. -
Charles

So while Charles and I agreed to disagree, a genuine dialogue did take

place between the Reformed and Orthodox traditions. This is a small
but important first step in Reformed-Orthodox dialogue.

Paradigm Shifting

My paradigm shift began when I did some reflecting on the Nicene

Creed. I noticed that the particular location of the word “salvation” in
the Creed. The Nicene Creed states: “For us and for our salvation he
came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the
Virgin Mary and was made man. . . .” The Creed then proceeds to
recount Christ’s suffering, his death on the Cross, his third day
resurrection, his ascension to heaven, and his future return in glory. I
thought to myself that if a Protestant were to write the Nicene Creed
they would state that Christ came down from heaven, took on human
flesh, then died on the Cross for our salvation etc. As I followed the
grammatical structure of the Nicene Creed I began to see that our
salvation stems from a whole series of things that Jesus Christ did as
the God-Man. Reciting the Nicene Creed Sunday after Sunday had a
powerful influence on my thinking. It shook me out of my more
narrow Protestant thinking and reoriented me to the holistic thinking
of the early Church.

Pastor Armstrong’s “it fills in some holes in our Western way of

thinking” describes well what happens when one encounters a better
paradigm. One does not reject the earlier data as one experience a
better and more comprehensive understanding of how the data
relates to other data. I found in the Nicene Creed a theological
paradigm at odds with an often exclusive Protestant penal
substitutionary model of salvation. Salvation history is more than
just the singular event of the crucifixion; salvation encompasses God’s
 sovereign mercy in the flow of human history culminating in the
coming of the God-Man Jesus Christ who through the Incarnation
entered into the flow of human history.

Holy Thursday Service at St. Mary

Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA.

Doing Theology Through Worship

One thing that struck me on my journey to Orthodoxy was how much

of its theology is done through worship. In the West much of theology
is done through books and sermons; in Orthodoxy much of its
theology is articulated in its liturgical services. Much of what I
learned about the Orthodox understanding of the Incarnation came,
not from a book, as from Orthodox hymnography. Liturgical worship
in Orthodoxy has a theological function unparalleled to that in the
Reformed tradition. There seems to be nothing similar to it in the
Reformed tradition. I learned much of my Reformed theology from
books, not hymns. It is as if “Reformed hymnography” is an
oxymoron.

This is why inquiring Protestants will be invited to attend the

Orthodox services. This is not about a “warming of the heart”
experience that “confirms” a religion as some cults would claim. We
invite people to the services because one simply cannot grasp the
fullness of the Orthodox Faith by just reading theological books. One
or two visits will not suffice; it takes several months of faithful
attendance before one begins to grasp how Orthodoxy does
theology. One does not become an expert on Orthodoxy after
attending a few services. It takes time to absorb all that’s goes on
during an Orthodox service. So, you will be asked, “Come and See.” It
is in the Liturgy that one sees Orthodox theology in action.

In the liturgical hymns and prayers of the Church we learn about the
significance of the Incarnation. One frequent theme is the paradox of
the Incarnation, e.g., the Infinite God becoming a finite human being
or the unapproachable Judge approaching sinful humanity in humble
mercy. We find this paradox in the prayer below sung during the fifth
week of Lent:

The angelic nature was wholly surprised at the great act of

thine Incarnation; at beholding the Unapproachable (in that
he is God) becoming Man approachable by all, walking among
us, and hearing from all, Alleluia. (Triodion, Saturday of the
Fifth Week, Nassar p. 11; underscore added)

Christmas is a natural occasion for celebrating Christ’s two-fold

nature. In the example below we see the paradox of the invisible God
becoming visible for our salvation, and the infinite Son becoming
confined to the womb of a Virgin.

Today the invisible Nature doth unite with mankind from the
Virgin. Today the boundless Essence is wrapped in swaddling
clothes in Bethlehem. Today God doth guide the Magi by the
star to worship, indicating beforehand his three-day Burial by
the offerings of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Wherefore, we
sing to him saying, O Christ God, who wast incarnate of the
Virgin, save our souls. (Menaion – Sunday after
Christmas, Nassar, p. 412; underscore added)

Another example of the Incarnation’s importance to Orthodoxy can

be seen in the service for Christ’s circumcision. Here the Incarnation
is linked to Christ as the perfect Jew who fulfilled the Law and in so
doing paved the way for the New Covenant.

O most compassionate Lord, while yet God after thine

essence, thou didst take human likenesswithout
 transubstantiation; and having fulfilled the law thou didst
accept willingly circumcision in the flesh, that thou mightest
annul the shadowy signs and remove the veil of our
passions. Glory to thy goodness, glory to thy compassion,
glory to thine ineffable condescension, O Word. (Menaion –
The Circumcision, Nassar p. 423; underscore added).

Orthodox hymnography interweaves the Incarnation into Palm

Sunday in an absolutely stunning way I never imagined when I was a
Protestant. In the Palm Sunday hymn the Incarnation is subtly
introduced by means of comparing the exalted heavenly throne with
the lowly earthly throne. There is nothing in Protestant theology that
would disallow this blending but it is striking that the theme of the
Incarnation is not usually heard when Protestants celebrate Palm
Sunday.

The Word of God the Father, the Son who is coeternal with
him, whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth,
hath today humbled himself, coming to Bethany on a dumb
ass. (Menaion – Palm Sunday, Nassar pp. 733-734)

Orthodoxy’s liturgical cycle can have a tremendous formative

influence on one’s theological thinking. Pastors frequently lament
how hardly anyone remembers their sermons. This is not so much
the pastor’s fault as the inherent limitations of didactic
teaching. We are not brains on a stick but embodied souls; as
creatures made in God’s image we need to be engaged with our whole
being in our worship. This is the advantage of liturgical
worship. After hearing the hymns about the Incarnation sung
repeatedly the theology gets engraved both consciously and
subconsciously on our souls. All this is complemented by icons,
incense, prostrations, and Scripture readings which interweave with
each other to form the fabric of Orthodox worship.

Conclusion
Both Protestants and Orthodox affirm the historicity of the
Incarnation. (Protestant Liberals who reject the historicity of the
Incarnation have left the historic Christian Faith.) This has resulted
in two quite different understandings of the Christian faith. First,
with respect to God’s saving grace in Christ Protestants tend to view
salvation as a point in time, an event — Christ’s death on the Cross;
Orthodoxy on the other hand views salvation as an arc – Christ’s
descent from heaven, his life and death, and his ascent to
heaven. Second, with respect to salvation Protestants tend to define it
as accepting a message about what Christ has done for us on the
Cross. Among Evangelicals it has been reduced to “making a
decision” to accept Christ. Orthodoxy views salvation as union with
Christ. In Orthodoxy accepting Christ as Lord and Savior means
undergoing baptism. Life in union with Christ means life in the
Church, the body of Christ. The Incarnation means the embodiment
of divine grace: in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Church, the
sacraments, the Eucharist, etc. There is a certain subjectivity in the
Protestant understanding of the sacraments as an outward sign of an
inward grace. But the fact is even in the presence of an unbeliever the
sacraments of the Orthodox Church are vehicles of divine grace in a
very real sense. The efficacy of the sacraments is the result of the
Church being the body of Christ.

Pastor Armstrong’s recent

paradigm shift on the Incarnation is significant. It will likely have a
ripple effect on his Reformed theology. He noted taking the
Incarnation seriously opens the way to understanding salvation as
union with Christ and in turn to the real presence in the
Eucharist. These two themes are prominent in Mercersburg
 theology. While not as prominent as other theological
schools, Mercersburg Theology probably represents the strongest
point of contact between Reformed Protestantism and the early
Church. I anticipate that Pastor Armstrong’s paradigm shift will
stimulate further Reformed-Orthodox dialogue. Paradigm shifts can
have unexpected cascading effects. In my case and other Reformed
Christians Mercersburg theology became a bridge that took us to the
early Church then eventually into the Orthodox Church. It will be
interesting to see how Pastor Armstrong’s theological paradigm shift
will unfold over time.

Robert Arakaki

See also my earlier article: “Do Protestants Take the Incarnation

Seriously?”

References

Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. 2002. Festal Menaion. St.

Tikhon’s Seminary Press.

Seraphim Nassar. 1993. Divine Prayers and Services of the Catholic

Orthodox Church of Christ. Antiochian Orthodox Christian
Archdiocese. Englewood, New Jersey.
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