The following is the slightly modified second half of an article that I wrote. The first half was just published in the Journal of Asian Mission, Volume 8, Numbers 1-2 (March-September 2006), p. 103-122, entitled “Christianity in the Face of Pluralism” — they are about two years behind in publishing. So the second half of that article is below:
Introduction
Augustine said that before his conversion “he had read and studied the great pagan philosophers and had read many things, but he had never read that the word became flesh.”[1] The concept of the Incarnation is so startling that in the Adi Samaj teaching, “God has never become incarnate.”[2] Mahatma Gandhi rejected “the Christian doctrine of one Incarnation,” opting for belief in the “unhistorical, the perfect beings of his own thought” and the idea that God “dwells within every human being.”[3] It is surely most remarkable to claim that God actually became a man, but can we claim with Augustine that the Incarnation is unique to Christianity?
“If God is unknowable there can be no Incarnation; but if he can be incarnate then he is known as never before.”
- Geoffrey Parrinder
The importance of the Incarnation is summarized by Parrinder: “If God is unknowable there can be no Incarnation; but if he can be incarnate then he is known as never before.”[4] Job longed for a mediator between him and God: “If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:33).[5] The Christian concept of the Incarnation responds to this need for mediation in the God-man, the God who has become man without ceasing to be God.
Parrinder traces the appearance of avatars and incarnations in Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. The strongest evidence for incarnation is to be found in Hinduism and Christianity, but aspirations for a mediator, an incarnation or an avatar of some kind are not wholly lacking in Islam and Buddhism. The Qur’an itself makes no mention of the Incarnation,[6] and the famous Persian mystic Rumi (d. 1273) specifically denied the Incarnation of Christ: Jesus was an emanation of God, a “sort of angel,” but not a real incarnation. Such thinking would be too materialistic.[7] Caesar E. Farah maintains that even Sufism is incompatible with the concept of an incarnate God. Man partakes of the essence of God, but there is no “savior principle” or concept of mediation.[8] However, the Druzes believe that God descended to earth in the form of a man. Al-Hakim was held to be a ruler with universal intelligence, and was empowered by God to write the sacred texts of the Druze. He was the first cause, and will return on judgment day to judge all. Although, he was an intolerant caliph, notorious for his persecutions of Jews, Christians and orthodox Muslims, he represented the last in a series of incarnations.[9] This is, notwithstanding, peripheral to mainstream Islam.
Likewise, Buddhism finds it difficult to accommodate the concept of incarnation. Parrinder points out, “The Buddha is not an Avatar, in the sense of a theophany or incarnation of a deity upon the earth.”[10] The concept of reincarnation may not be far from incarnation, but there is no God to incarnate himself.
In spite of their official doctrinal positions which leave no room for incarnation, one finds evidence in both Islam and Buddhism of a veneration of their founders that invests them with something more than sainthood, not to say divinity. Muhammad is considered to have been sinless, “the great intercessor,” “the supreme example of mystical life and an object of devotion” and nearly of praise. “[M]ore than Logos, he is a personal Lord and friend, the mediator between God and man, in most Islamic faith.”[11] Notwithstanding the great differences between Islam and Buddhism, Parrinder finds similarity between them in what their adherents have done to their founders (p. 256, emphasis mine):
Islam and Buddhism have both started with human figures who had no pretensions to divinity… They would both have rejected the notions of Avatars or Incarnation. Yet in the end both Gautama and Muhammad arrived not far from what is implied in those names, testifying to the human need for the Incarnation.
Similar processes of glorification may be observed in many religions, indeed perhaps this is an ingredient of all religion, expressing the need for a personification of the deity.
This human “need for a personification of the deity” finds its fulfillment in the explicit biblical doctrine of the Incarnation. Three things must be demonstrated: (1) that Jesus was truly God, (2) that Jesus was truly man, and (3) that his Incarnation was unique.
The human “need for a personification of the deity” finds its fulfillment in the explicit biblical doctrine of the Incarnation.
Parrinder comes just short of seeing the uniqueness of Christ’s Incarnation, arriving at a pluralistic conclusion,[12] but seems to do so on the basis of an inadequate view of the historicity of John’s Gospel and the failure to recognize the significance of the entire New Testament testimony to the full divinity of Christ.[13] Similar to Knitter who contends that Jesus never called himself the Christ or the Son of God, Parrinder states that “many people would now dispute whether the Bible ever baldly calls Jesus God.”[14] They do so only by ignoring a strong New Testament motif. Apart from much New Testament teaching which simply does not make sense if Jesus Christ be not God, Wayne Grudem lists seven passages which do, in fact, specifically call Jesus God (John 1:1, 18; 20:28; Romans 9:5; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:8; and 2 Peter 1:1).[15] For example, in speaking of the Jews, Paul states: “…from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen” (Romans 9:5, NIV). Many other passages affirm the full divinity of Jesus Christ, such as Colossians 2:8 (NIV): “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” If it be objected that many of the passages concerning the divinity of Christ are drawn from the epistles rather than the Gospels, and that the epistles represent a highly developed Christology rather than the less theologized stories of Christ’s life and teaching, it should be noted that most scholars, liberal and conservative, agree that most of the epistles predate the Gospels, sometimes by decades. Thus, the epistles do not represent embellishments of the Gospels or the end result of many decades of theologizing; they are in many cases the most primitive documents of the early Church and represent the teaching of the apostles concerning Christ from the Church’s inception.
Concerning the assertion that the Bible never “baldly calls Jesus God,” the brief consideration of one more passage will be sufficient to prove otherwise. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews wants to convince his readers not to turn back to Judaism,[17] and endeavors to do so by appealing to the superiority of Christ. To the Jews, there was no greater human instrument than the prophets, but the writer introduces a paradigm shift by pointing to a “category” which surpasses the means, methods and times of the prophets, that of Sonship: “God… has spoken to us in these last days by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). He states that the Son is the heir of all things, the one through whom the worlds were made, the effulgence of the glory of God and the very image of God’s substance. He upholds all things through the word of his power, accomplished the purification for our sins and is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high (1:3-4). No prophet nor any angel could ever compare, for the Son is of the same substance as the Father: he is in fact God. In 1:8, the author quotes Psalm 45:6, stating that God the Father addresses his Son as God: “But about the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom…’” (emphasis mine). This is but another example which demonstrates that the divinity of Christ is not depend on John’s Gospel. Scriptural testimony is uniform in its declaration that Jesus Christ was truly God.
Hebrews makes further reference to the Incarnation by recording a conversation between the Father and the Son which took place before the Incarnation. In Hebrews 10:5-10, the Son speaks of the body which God has prepared for him that he might do the will of God in presenting that body as a sacrifice for sin:
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; 6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. 7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, O God.’” 8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them’ (although the law required them to be made). 9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (NIV, emphasis mine).
Hebrews also tells us that Christ was made like his brethren in every respect, partaking of flesh and blood, being tempted in every respect like us yet without sin, and even tasting death for us that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest, making propitiation for us, and that he might help us (2:14-18; 4:14-16; 5:2).[19]
The humanity of Christ was real. Unlike the Greek gods who would use their divine powers whenever they found themselves in a difficult situation, Jesus experienced a full and real humanity. He resisted temptations to turn the stones into bread (Luke 4:3-4) or to ask his Father to put twelve legions of angels at his disposal (Matthew 26:53).[20] The Greek gods “were never human beings who were hungry and tired like Jesus, weeping at the death of his friends, sweating in Gethsemane, bleeding on the Cross and buried in a grave.”[21] Parrinder further states: “Compared with Avatar beliefs, Christian faith in the Incarnation is not simply guaranteed by birth but by death, but the whole of human life, and this makes for its distinctiveness.”[22] Krishna was never, like Christ, a “temporary victim to demon powers.”[23] He had human traits but this is mitigated by the fact that even then he had four arms! Any suffering that he underwent was “with supernatural detachment,” and he “could not really divest himself of divine power.”[24] So real was Christ’s humanity that it culminated in his death. Islam will not admit that God would permit his prophet to suffer the humiliation of the cross. Newbigin remarks that Islam means submission but refuses to believe that Christ submitted himself to the cross: It “is the mightiest of all the post-Christian movements which claim to offer the kingdom of God without the cross. The denial of the crucifixion is and must always be central to Islamic teaching.”[25] Despite Islam’s denial, the Scriptures are clear: “They crucified him” (Mark 15:24). “He humbled himself and became obedient to death—even the death on the cross” (Philippians 2:8). The evidence demonstrates that he was truly man.
The New Testament “insists on the historicity, the true birth, life and death of Jesus.”[26] We refer here, not to the reality of Christ’s humanity, but to the historicity of his coming. Hinduism also claims the appearance of avatars. In describing the twelve characteristics of avatar doctrines, Parrinder states that in “Hindu belief the Avatar is real… [I]t is a visible and fleshly descent of the divine to the animal or human plane. It is an incarnation or at least a theophany.”[27] He admits, however, that it is difficult to ascribe historicity to the avatars or to assign dates to their earthly appearances, though Rama may have been a historical figure. Concerning the birth of avatars, there are no clear parallels to the infancy stories of the canonical or even apocryphal Gospels.[28] In other words, their entry into the sphere of human history is not clearly demonstrated.
It would be difficult to overemphasize how different our knowledge is concerning Jesus Christ. We know his human ancestry, the place of his birth, the rulers at the time of his birth, the cultural and religious context in which he grew up, the various political and religious parties that vied for power, the subjugation of the Jewish people to the Roman Empire, and the rulers that acted in collusion to put him to death. Not only did Christ embrace a full and real humanity, he did so in the sphere of real human history.
Morally, there is no comparison between Christ and Krishna. Krishna was a prankster and a playboy.[29] Christ can challenge even his enemies to convict him of sin (John 8:46). Pilate states three times that he could find Christ guilt of no crime (John 18:38; 19:4, 6). The Scriptures are unanimously clear that he “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), was “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), and “holy, blameless, unstained, separated from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26); “He committed no sin” (1 Peter 2:22). He always pleased his Father and kept his Father’s commandments (John 8:29; 15:10). He is called “Jesus Christ the righteous” in whom “there is no sin” (1 John 2:1; 3:5). He was “a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:19). He died “the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Christ’s supremacy is demonstrated in his moral character.
Parrinder points out that it is the element of propitiation that “is the profoundest meaning of [Christ’s] coming.”[30] While many religions, historical and unhistorical, have the concept of mediation, Christianity points to Christ as the one who has born our sins and become our propitiator. He took on himself full humanity that he might experience death for us. He became a sin offering for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). He “suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone… [H]e shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:9, 14-15, NIV). He is the propitiation for our sins and for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:1-2). The consideration of this fact makes Parrinder sound like a Christian apologist:
In Christian faith God so loved the world that he sent his Son to save us. God was in Christ, and while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. It is the death of Christ that is the final act, the revelation that is more than a principle but is a unique event, the reconciliation that is the act of God himself… The human life of Christ not only ended on the Cross,[31] but it is in the light of the Crucifixion that all the life before it takes on new meaning.[32]
The Incarnation of Christ was validated in his resurrection: He was “declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4). Was Christ’s resurrection any different from that of other avatars? In an advanced French class that I was taking in Brussels, Belgium, I had the opportunity to give a 15-minute presentation on the uniqueness of Christianity as demonstrated in the resurrection of Christ. My professor had even suggested that I speak on religion. Some in the class were noticeably moved and told me that they had not heard this message since their childhood, but the professor caught me off guard. He was Jewish by birth, had been raised Catholic, but had embraced Buddhism in his adulthood. He told me that he totally agreed that Jesus had been raised from the dead for he was but one of many avatars. Once again, we must insist, as did the early church, upon the historicity of the resurrection: “God raised this Jesus from the dead” (Acts 2:32, emphasis mine). The resurrection of Jesus took place in the same dimension as his death (1 Corinthians 15). In fact, a resurrection into some other realm or dimension would have been totally meaningless to first century Jews. Newbigin notes:[33]
In many cultures stories are told about dying and rising gods, stories which are clearly rooted in the universal human experience of death and birth, but these stories make no claim to be actual history. They have no dates and places attached to them. They illustrate the unchanging human condition but make no claim to change it irreversibly. The Biblical story is unique.
“Christian incarnational beliefs are distinctive not only in affirming the coming of Christ as a man, and his true death on the Cross, but also in declaring faith in his Resurrection.”
– Geoffrey Parrinder
Parrinder rightly notes that “Christian incarnational beliefs are distinctive not only in affirming the coming of Christ as a man, and his true death on the Cross, but also in declaring faith in his Resurrection.”[34] This resurrection was real; it was physical, corporal, bodily, material. Thus, it is incorrect to say that Christ’s human life ended at the cross.[35] Grudem points out that after his resurrection, Christ still bore the scars from his crucifixion (John 20:25-27); he had “flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39); he ate food (Luke 24:41-42); and he will return to earth in the same way in which he was taken up into heaven (Acts 1:11). He was seen by Stephen as “the Son of man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). His appearance to Saul as “Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5) was of the same order or character as Jesus’ other resurrection appearances (1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:8). Jesus is “one like a son of man” in John’s vision in Revelation, and John falls at his feet (1:13-17), and one day Jesus will drink wine with his disciples (Matthew 26:29).[36] At the right hand of the Father, even now, he intercedes for his disciples. Grudem concludes:
All of these texts indicate that Jesus did not temporarily become man, but that his divine nature was permanently united to his human nature, and he lives forever not just as the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, but also as Jesus, the man who was born of Mary, and as Christ, the Messiah and Savior of his people. Jesus will remain fully God and fully man, yet one person, forever.[37]
“Jesus will remain fully God and fully man, yet one person, forever.”
– Wayne Grudem
Parrinder has wonderful insights, but seems to have failed to grasp the eternal dimension of the Incarnation. The human life of Christ did not end on the Cross; his human life continued by virtue of his resurrection from the dead. His terrestrial life would but last another forty days; but his human life – his Incarnation – is eternal. “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Jesus thus remains the once and for all Incarnation of God. He is not the second Adam, but the “last Adam;” he was the “second man” and the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45, 47). Adam was the first man; Christ was the second man. The first Adam stands at the head of the human race; Christ, the last Adam, stands at the head of the race of those who are born of God.[38] There were no incarnations before the second man; there will be no incarnations after the last Adam. He is the first and the last Incarnation of God.
The supremacy of Jesus Christ is seen in his full divinity and his full humanity; his Incarnation is incomparable for it took place in time and space; it was characterized by Christ’s unblemished moral quality; its purpose was that he might become our propitiator; it was validated by his resurrection, and Christ remains eternally fully God and fully man.
Bassin, F., F. Horton and A. Kuen. Évangiles et Actes. Saint-Légier: Éditions Emmaüs, 1990.
Carson, D. A. The Gospel According to John. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991.
Clendenin, Daniel B. Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994.
Farah, Caesar E. Islam, sixth edition. Hauppauge: Barron’s Educational Series, 2000.
Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction of Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994.
Knitter, Paul F. No Other Name: A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985.
Kreeft, Peter J. Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001.
Machen, J. Gresham. Christianity and Liberalism. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1923.
McDermott, Gerald R. Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions? Jesus, Revelation and Religious Traditions. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Morgan, G. Campbell. Crises of the Christ. Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell, 1936.
Newbigin, Leslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989.
Parrinder, Geoffrey. Avatar and Incarnation: The Divine in Human Form in the World’s Religions. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1997.
William Barclay, The Gospel of John, vol. 1, in The Daily Study Bible Series, rev. ed.. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975.
[1] William Barclay, The Gospel of John, vol. 1, in The Daily Study Bible Series, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975), p. 64.
[2] Parrinder, p. 100.
[3] Parrinder, pp. 103-105.
[4] Parrinder, p. 196.
[5] Compare “Oh, that one might plead for a man with God, As a man pleads for his neighbor!” (Job 16:21, nkjv). Unless otherwise noted, all references will be quoted from the New International Version.
[6] Parrinder, p. 192.
[7] Parrinder, p. 202.
[8] Caesar E. Farah, Islam, sixth edition (Hauppauge: Barron’s Educational Series, 2000), p. 213.
[9] Farah, pp. 179-181.
[10] Parrinder, pp. 246-247.
[11] Parrinder, pp. 254-256.
[12] Parrinder, p. 276.
[13] Parrinder, p. 229, 270. See footnote 43.
[14] Parrinder, p. 229.
[15] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction of Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), p. 543.
[16] This footnote was removed as it referred to a page in the first half of the original article.
[17] While this immediate goal is debatable, the overarching purpose of showing the superiority of Christ is clear. The Epistle to the Hebrews was probably written ca. 80 a.d., but some of the same accents concerning the offering of the body of Christ are found in 1 and 2 Corinthians, written in the early 50’s a.d.
[18] This footnote was removed as it referred to a page in the first half of the original article.
[19] These same themes are found in the Gospels and other epistles (see, for example, Matthew 8:17; Philippians 2:6-8; 2 Corinthians 5:18-21; Colossians 1:19-22; 1 John 3:5).
[20] Does not this latter example underline his full humanity? He speaks not of exercising his prerogatives as God, but of invoking his Father for help.
[21] Parrinder, pp. 210-211.
[22] Parrinder, p. 213.
[23] Parrinder, p. 226.
[24] Parrinder, p. 227.
[25] Newbigin, p. 122.
[26] Parrinder, p. 213.
[27] Parrinder, p. 120.
[28] Parrinder, pp. 121-122.
[29] Parrinder, p. 227, for examples see pp. 74-77.
[30] Parrinder, pp. 118 and 238, quoting Rudolf Otto, India’s Religion of Grace and Christianity Compared and Contrasted, 1930, p. 105.
[31] This point will be discussed below.
[32] Parrinder, p. 239.
[33] Newbigin, p. 97.
[34] Parrinder, p. 216.
[35] Parrinder, p. 239.
[36] Grudem, p. 542-543.
[37] Grudem, p. 543.
[38] G. Campbell Morgan, Crises of the Christ (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell, 1936), p. 156.
