Sunday, September 05, 2010

Incarnate Word

It seems to me perfectly acceptable and potentially very useful to compare the inacrnation of the Lord Jesus Christ in two natures (human and divine) with the inscriptuartion of the Word of God, which is both a human and a divine book.

Now, no doubt this is an analogy. We must avoid an illegitimate totality transfer. We need not think there is a hypostatic union between God and Man in the Bible to make use of it. All analogies break down - they are not totalities! They make points about relevant similarity. They invite us to compare and contrast and run thought experiments. They say something in a maybe new or interesting way. They need not say A is B or even the relationship between A and C is identical to the relationship between D and E in all respects. They might just say: hey, have you thought about this: is this a pattern? The incarnation seems to me to be one of the deep structures or paradigms of relatity. Of course it is unique and special in all sorts of ways, but it is also fundamental not accidental or incidental to everything else.

Further, it is no objection to the analogy as such to say that some people abuse it. For example, some people may want to assign stuff they don't get or like to the humanity of the Bible so as to be able to dismiss it. But here the true analogy can help us: Jesus and the Bible both have a perfect sinless humanity. There is no problem with the analogy here - the fault would be with the theology of the incarnation of those who argue thus.

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