INCARNATION, THE (ante). The coming of the Son of God in human flesh is the great fact which gives unity to the Scriptures and reveals God to men. Before it was accomplished it was prefigured in a series of preliminary manifestations of the Deity in human form, to whom the Scriptures ascribe the names Angel Jehovah, Jehovah, and God. See JEHOVAlt. The incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, fully denied by some, indeterminately held by many more, but by the great majority of thinkers in Christen domaccepted in various forms of philosophic statement, may be briefly outlined from the ScriptUres on whose testimony it rests. A permanent and perfect union of the Divine being and the human nature has. been constituted in human history in the person of Jesus the Christ, and this not as creating a unity previously non-existent, but as restoring and historically developing is perfectly natural union. 1. That this would .be done was fore told by prophecy. (1) It promised that the Messiah of God would be a man. The first announcement of a deliverer was made after the fall of man, in the Lord's declaration to Satan under the guise of the serpent: "I will put enmity between thy seed and the seed of the woman; he shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel." The promise to Abraham was that in him and his seed (whence, according to the flesh, Christ came) all the families of the earth should be blessed. Jacob's prophecy implied that the Shiloh, the giver of peace, would be a descendant of Judah. The Lord's covenant with David was that, in the distant future, his exalted son should sit on his throne. David describes the mortal suffering of a man whose soul should not be given up to the dead, nor his body to the corruption tf the grave. Isaiah foretold that a child would be born who should exercise government on the throne of David; that a man would be as a covert from the tempest; and that the anointed servant of the Lord would be a man of sorrows, rejected of men, bearing the sins of many, and that he would die and be buried. Jeremiah prophesied that there would be raised up to David a righteous branch and prosperous king. Daniel was instructed by the angel that, at the time appointed, the Messiah would be cut off, but not for himself. Zechariah proclaimed the man whose name is "the Branch ;" who would be a king and priest on his throne; would be lowly, riding on the foal of an ass; and be smitten as the shepherd of the flock. Micah announced that the promised ruler of Israel would be born at Bethlehem. (2) Prophecy declared that the Messiah would be a divinely human personality. David called him who in the future would sit on his throne, his lord; saying, Jehovah said to my lord, sit thou on my right hand. Therefore, since in his human nature he was to be David's son, he must possess also the divine personality in order to be David's lord. Isaiah foretold that the name of the child to be born and to rule over the kingdom of David would be Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the father of eternity—that is, according to the Hebrew idiom, the Eternal. Jeremiah prophesied that the name of the future righteous son of David would be Jehovah our righteousness. Zechariah said that the man who would be smitten as the shepherd is the "fellow" of Jehovah; and that be whose feet would stand on the Mount of Olives is Jehovah. Micah declared that the going forth to rule of him who would be born in Bethlehem was only one of those goings forth which have been from of old, even from everlasting. Malachi gives the
closing assurance that the angel of the covenant, the Messiah, who would suddenly come to his temple, is the Lord. 2. The New Testament declares that the union of the divine being and the human nature has been historically constituted in the person of Jesus Christ. (1) It speaks of him as a man of the house and lineage of David: nar rating his birth, childhpod, youth, manhood, words, works, sufferings, and death; re cording more than 60 times his own application to himself of the title, the Son of Man; and saying that he ate, spake, heard, slept, walked, wept, and became weary; ascribing to him the emotions. affections, and sentiments of a true humanity. (2) It ascribes to him a personality properly divine: recording more than 100 times the appli cation to him of the title Son of God in a sense in which it is not given to any other being; appropriating to him hundreds of times the title Lord, which corresponds to Jehovah in the Old Testament; affirming that he was "the Word" which was in the beginning with God, was God, and is the true God; assigning to him the attributes of God: prescribing for him the worship and honor due to God, and attributing to him the works of God. (8) l'Iffirthing his pre-existence in the-bosom of the Father—and his even then continuing with his historical assumption of the human nature, the New Testament teaches that he unites the true divine being and the true humanity in one person. It declares that the Son to whom it was said, " Thy throne, 0 God, is forever and ever," was brought into this world; that the Word who was with God and was God became flesh and dwelt among men, sonic of whom saw his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father; that he who was in the form of God took on himself the form of it servant, and was made in the likeness of men; that that which was from the beginning, the word of life, the eternal life which was with the • Father, manifested in the world, was heard, seen, gazed on, and touched by men; that God was manifested in the flesh; and that he who is a descendant from the whole scriptural line of the fathers, is also over all, God blessed forever.
The view, not widely spread but ably advocated, that Christ was in no strict and proper sense the incarnation of God, does not base itself on the Scriptures, though seeking incidental confirmations in them. On the point under consideration, it stands in either a philosophical or a historical denial, usually in both; and this denial involves at least one of three modes of dealing with the Bible: (1) a refining of its language into a sense far from the ordinary use of words; (2) a doubt of the correctness of the scriptural documents as documents, in view of their liability to accidental changes in their transmission from antiquity; (3) a denial of the original authority of the Scriptures as a declaration of truth—this denial extending beyond the question of their infalli bility, beyond that of their divine inspiration, to that of their truthfulness as mere human history or of their truthfulness as the testimony of men who claimed to be eye-witnesses of the facts which they record.
Philosophically, the incarnation of God touches the deepest problems: and histori cally its principle is traceable through many distortions in the great religions of the world.