(Part one can be viewed by clicking here)
The Incarnate Son
The stupendous fact of the Gospel is that the one and only Son is Jesus of Nazareth, the real human being in human history. As Antiochene theologian Theodoret says in Epistle 151, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the eternal, only-begotten Son of God, is the same one who lay in swaddling clothes in a manger, had to escape into Egypt to avoid the fury of Herod, was circumcised, kept the law and offered offerings, was baptized by John, hungered, thirsted and asked for water, fell asleep in the boat, was weary as he walked, feared death, and was crucified.
The doctrinal decree of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 twice contains the expression, “one and the same.” This expression is a way of declaring that the Son of God is the same person as the Son of Man, that the one who is “truly God” is the same person as the one who is “truly man.” In The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), Jaroslav Pelikan observes, “Presumably, the references to ‘one and the same’ near the beginning and the end [of the decree of Chalcedon] would indicate that he [“our Lord Jesus Christ”], in the concreteness of his total person both divine and human, was the subject, but this was not specified.”
The purpose of the doctrine of the church is to guard the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ. To speak of him as being “one and the same” as the eternal Son of God and as the true human being is to acknowledge the mysterious paradox that Jesus is the authentic human being who is the true image of God because he is the incarnation of the eternal Image of God himself (Colossians 1:15-20; Romans 8:29).
The Son’s Revelation of God
The prologue to the Gospel of John moves from the Word to the Son. The Word (logos) that was with God and was God, the Word by which all things came into being, became flesh or assumed the totality of human existence for our sakes. Because of the incarnation, from now on we speak of the incarnate Word as the Son. By his incarnation, Jesus Christ discloses the personal identity of the Word of God and the relations of Persons within the triune God.
The purpose of the incarnation is God’s revelation of himself to the world. This revelation occurs through the Son, that is, through the incarnate Word as a human being. By the incarnation, the Son is still the same person, but he knows himself as the Son and he performs as the Son as a particular human person living under all the conditions of real human existence.
“No one has ever seen God,” says John, echoing one of the great themes of the scriptures and truths of the human race (Exodus 33:20). God is other than the creation, and God’s being cannot be apprehended directly through creaturely senses. Moreover, there is also the gulf between God and us that is opened by sin. Even the incarnate Son does not see God directly by his senses, but he learns to know God by faith with the power of the Holy Spirit. His mission is to make God known to a world that has not, and cannot, see God with human eyes or with the aid of human technology.
How, then, does the Son reveal God? He does so through his human communion with his Father and by his human obedience to his Father which are manifest by his human words and his human works.
In John’s description in the prologue of the Son’s closeness to the Father, the word translated in the NRSV as “heart” is literally “bosom.” Rather than indicating a child at his or her mother’s breast, the biblical usage denotes intimate communion between two persons at a meal as in John 13:23, which in the Greek also includes “bosom” to refer to the Beloved Disciple’s intimate communion with Jesus at the last supper.
In the life of Jesus Christ there is the highest communion that can exist between a human person and God the Father in the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). This is an affirmation of the communion between Jesus and God the Father. Such a communion between the incarnate Son and the Father intimates the ineffable communion between the Father and the Son in the eternal Trinity. At the same time, this communion between Jesus and the Father also marks the beginning of a new communion between God and all human beings through Jesus Christ. Jesus prayed, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21).
The one and only Son’s accomplishment is that he has made the Father known. The Greek translated by the NRSV as “made him known” literally means that Jesus Christ “declared” the Father– issued a declaration of the Father’s character and purposes. One might say that the work of the Son is to exegete the Father. The Son does not merely hint at or indicate who God is and what God does, but he embodies a definitive declaration of God’s identity and mission toward all persons, the whole of humankind, and the world.
There is no other person who has “declared” God the Father except Jesus Christ, which is why he is “the one and only Son.” There are other leaders and prophets in the history of Israel by whom God has revealed himself, in particular Moses, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, but even they did not, and could not, give a definitive declaration of the Father in its fullness. There are inspired poets, philosophers, and wise teachers among other peoples of the world, and they should be respected and appreciated, but they have not made God known as the Son has made him known.
But how does Jesus Christ declare God to the world? As the Gospel of John describes it, Jesus Christ declares God by his words and his works (John 14: 8-11). The “works” of Jesus are not only the “signs” that he performs, the stupendous deeds that were accomplished by him as disclosures of his Father’s actions and of his identity as the Son of the Father, but supremely his death on the cross. Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). By the death of Jesus the Messiah of Israel, God inaugurates a new day in God’s relationship to the world whereby the sins of all peoples may be forgiven (John 20: 21-23) and all persons may come to know the one, true God and have life (John 20:30-31). Through his words and his works, culminating in his free offering of himself on the cross, Jesus Christ has brought salvation to the world by his perfect obedience to God the Father.
The Coda of the Prologue
John 1:18 is a perfect coda to the symphony that is the prologue of the Gospel according to John. It aptly sums up the nature and purpose of the mystery of the incarnation as it states that the Son who is close to the Father’s heart is the one who has made him known. Even its textual variations remind us that the Son whom we know as the real human being Jesus Christ is also God who is the only-begotten of the Father.
In the eloquent words of John Marsh, in his Pelikan Commentary Saint John, “So to Jew and Greek, the evangelist would say, the incarnate Word brings from the very heart of God a full revelation of what is in his heart and mind for man and for his world. God remains invisible; the incarnation is not a chance to see God. But he is no longer unknown or unknowable; the mystery of his will and purpose has been made known in the Word who is the Son of God incarnate.”
Timothy W. Whitaker is a Retired United Methodist Church bishop who served the Florida Area.
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