The Incarnational Arc of Creation
Therefore, even in the midst of judging the old creation and its mangled narrative, God begins anew. He speaks forth a new narrative of creation through his gospel promise (Gen. 3:15). God’s promise is effective speech; creation gains its identity from its story. Thus, in order to redeem creation, God had to speak forth a new story. The historical narrative of redemption culminated in Christ’s recapitulation of the old creation (Rom. 5, 1 Cor. 15) and its transcendence in the resurrection.
Every act of human rebellion within the biblical narrative meets with both an act of judgment and an act of grace. God’s possibilities are not exhausted by those of his established protological order and law. These are hardwired into creation as an expression of the eternal divine will, but they do not exhaust the divine will. God is not merely the necessary being of the philosophers, but as Eberhart Jüngel puts it, God is the “more than necessary being.”1
The new creation does not negate the old creation, but envelops it, and incorporate it into itself. The incorporation of the old creation into the new creation is analogous to the eternal Son’s incorporation (enhypostasis) of an impersonal human nature into his center of identity (anhypostasis). In this way, the tragic narrative of the Fall becomes a subplot in the comic story of redemption.
The Incarnation in The protoevangelium
The first human rebellion led to exile, pain, and death But the tragedy of the Fall also came with the promise of a Savior in the protoevangelium: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). Indeed, as seen from the perspective of the New Testament witness, the protoevangelium contains a promise of the whole person of Christ.
First, the promise of the “seed” of the woman is odd. Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) people did not think women had “seed.” As a result, this passaged suggests the Virgin Birth.2 Secondly, the woman’s promised seed is clearly human since he is the offspring of the woman. Nevertheless, the seed also has divine power to crush the chaos serpent in the eschatological Chaoskampf.3 Adam and Eve had failed to maintain the original creation. Prior to the Fall, stewarding paradise entailed a communicatio idiomatum through a faithful doxological response to God’s gracious visible and auditory words. Hence, in Genesis 3, God himself, manifest in Christ, must heal human disobedience through an even greater communicatio idiomatum: the great exchange of the Incarnation and atonement.
God’s promise to humanity in the protoevangelium begins the process of the Incarnation. As Horace Hummel memorably put it, the whole Old Testament witness is the description of “the Word becoming flesh.4 Throughout salvation history, the speech-act of promise is always an act of self-donation. The person who gives an unconditional promise to another person places himself at the disposal of the other person. In other words, the promiser donates himself to the person who receive promise. This is reflected in the fact that one possible meaning of the Hebrew word for covenant (berit) is chain or shackle.5 Through his promises, God has chained his identity to that of his people and their fate.
The Abrahamic Covenant and God’s Self-Donation
Throughout the Old Testament, God first binds himself to humanity through the giving of the protoevangelium. Then he binds himself through electing Israel in the Abrahamic covenant of grace. The Lord utilizes a common ANE vassal treaty form in a surprising way when making his covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. God instructs Abraham to cut the carcasses of a series of animals in two. In the typical ANE rendition of the ceremony, the greater party would ask the lesser party to walk through the animals and pronounce the curse upon themselves that they would be split in two like the animals if they were unfaithful to the greater party.6
Yet, in Genesis 15, the greater party, God himself, walked through the carcasses. He thereby pronounces judgment on himself if he fails to bless Abraham. Hence, God promises his very self to guarantee the covenant. He calls down death and a curse upon himself if he fails in his own faithfulness.7 As Hebrews notes, God must swear by himself (Gen. 22:16, Isa. 45:23) in that there is nothing greater than God that could guarantee his promises (Heb. 6:13).
The next element of God’s redemptive story is election. Election is the natural corollary of self-donating promise. A promise must be given to a specific person and received by that person. The most radical kind of unconditional promise is given to Abraham and received in faith. God will be the God he had elected to be, namely, the God of “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exod. 3:15). He will identify his reality with the history of a specific people by donating himself to them through a promise.
The Scandalous Particularity of the Incarnation
In a sense, already in the Old Testament era, God was incarnating through his identification with the history of a specific people. As Balthasar observes, the Incarnation makes sense as the culmination of this historical processes of covenant and election.8 The Incarnation is God’s total hypostatic unity with Israel. It is the climax of the radical particularity found in God’s binding of himself to the history of Israel through election and covenant. Ultimately, God donates himself so radically to Israel through the promise that he himself becomes an actual Israelite.
The scandal of particularity found in the election of Israelites is radicalized in the election of the individual Israelite Jesus. This radical self-donating solidarity of God with Israel in Jesus makes Christianity the most radical form of monotheism. Post-biblical rabbinic Jews and Muslims claim God has spoken through Moses or Mohammed. However, there is no logical reason in either Judaism or Islam that explains why God could, theoretically, not speak through other religions or prophets (even if this is denied by the mainstream of both traditions). In Christianity, God has radically and exclusively defined himself with Jesus so that no one comes to know God’s grace except through Christ (Jn. 14:6). As a result, Christianity is the most radical and exclusive of all monotheisms….
- Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 24. ↩︎
- David P. Scaer, Christology (St. Louis: Luther Academy, 1989), 34-35. ↩︎
- Johann Gerhard, On Christ, trans Richard Dinda (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2009), 35. Gerhard agrees that the two natures are spoken of in the protevangelium: “Wherever the sacred writings of the Old Testament discuss the Messiah, they almost always explain the duality of the two natures and the unity of the person in the same place, lest people deny the duality of natures because of the unity of the person or claim that there are plural persons in Christ because of the duality of His natures. In the protevangelium (Gen. 3:15), the promised Messiah is called “the seed of the woman,” because, as true man, He was going to be born of the Virgin. To Him is attributed the bruising of the serpent’s head, because, as true God, He was going to destroy with His divine power the kingdom of Satan and restore the good things that had been lost in the fall.” ↩︎
- Horace Hummel, The Word becoming Flesh: An Introduction to the Origin, Purpose, and Meaning of the Old Testament (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1979). ↩︎
- Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 174. ↩︎
- Robert Davidson, Genesis 12-50 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 45; Victor Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990), 429-38; G. F. Hasel, “The Meaning of the Animal Rite in Gen. 15,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 19 (1980): 61-78; von Rad, Genesis, 181; Claus Westermann, Genesis 12-36: A Commentary, trans. John Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1995), 228. ↩︎
- See argument in Davidson, Genesis 12-50, 45; Herbert Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958-1959), 1:488-489. ↩︎
- Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1963), 42-43. ↩︎
From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).
Cover image by Pastor Christopher, “Colossians 1:19-20a,” Full of Eyes, October 3, 2023, accessed December 24, 2024, https://www.fullofeyes.com/colossians-119-20a/. Other images from John Schuetze, “Victorious,” Forward in Christ: A Lutheran Voice, April 2023, accessed December 23, 2024, https://forwardinchrist.net/victorious/; and Brandon, “What is the Covenant of Abraham? A Deep Dive into Genesis Chapter 15,” Christ Focused Living: Daily Wisdom for Spiritual Growth, January 11, 2024, accessed December 23, 2024, https://christfocusedliving.com/what-is-the-covenant-of-abraham-genesis-15/; and Jonathan T. Krenz, “Luther on the Incarnation,” Lutheran Reformation, December 20, 2017, accessed December 24, 2024, https://lutheranreformation.org/theology/luther-on-the-incarnation/.