notice the man does not say “struggled with a man” but “with men”—meaning more than one. What did the man mean by
this? Perhaps he meant mankind in general.
Did Jacob see God face to face as he said? It does not seem likely. If
God did appear on earth as a man, the face Jacob would have seen would have been a man’s face, not God’s. Remember, God is invisible. Did God actually come down to earth as man? If he did, then this is a true case of otherworldly docetic incarnation. Further,
it is also a true case of incarnational Docetism, the concept that God only appeared to be a man; God took on flesh, the appearance of
a man, but remained a 100 percent God and zero percent man.
By common definition, an incarnation is an invasion of earth from outer
space by an alien supernatural being; a superman. It is the taking on of flesh by an otherworldly being. It is the embodiment
of a deity or a spirit in some earthly form.
Notice: To incarn is to become covered with flesh, to cause to heal over, as in a skin
wound. Incarnate means to be made flesh, Latin from in and caro or carnis; even to grow flesh. A carnivore eats flesh. Incarnate also means to provide with flesh or a body; to embody. The word incarnation means the endowment of a human body; appearance
in human flesh; the taking on of human form and nature (Jesus); any person or animal serving as the embodiment of a god or spirit (Webster’s
New Universal Unabridged Dictionary).
RCC: The Incarnation is the mystery and the dogma of the Word made Flesh. In this technical
sense the word incarnation was adopted, during the twelfth century, from the Norman-French, which in turn had taken the word over
from the Latin incarnation (New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia).
The concept of an incarnation of a god is not a new thing:
The
notion of a man-god, or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that earlier period of
religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable
gulf which, to later thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human
form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the same supernatural powers
which he arrogates in perfect good faith to himself. … And as the gods are commonly believed to exhibit themselves in
the likeness of men to their worshipers, it is easy for the magician, with his supposed miraculous powers, to acquire the reputation
of being an incarnate deity. … That rudimentary notion represents in all probability the germ out of which the civilized
peoples have gradually evolved their own high conceptions of deity; and if we could trace the whole course of religious development,
we might find that the chain which links our idea of the Godhead with that of the savage is unbroken.[1]
A man of God, as a man endowed
with superhuman or extraordinary powers, is possible; I am sure it has even occurred a number of times. There have been god-like
persons, but the current view of orthodoxy is that Jesus Christ was a “God/man,” or a being that is both God and man, as ridiculous
as it seems, and is. One might reasonably think that a “God/man” would be a God with human attributes, but not so! Reasonableness
has nothing to do with some religious doctrines.
It is absolutely true that the common Christian notion of the “Godhead” is steeped
in fabrication and deception. A simple reading of the relevant biblical passages in context along with a definition of the term
will afford all the proof needed to clear up the issue. At most, the English word “Godhead” appears 4 times in the English New
Testament (NT), depending upon your Bible version:
The idea that the term “Godhead” represents two or three Gods isdeceitful. Those who teach it as such, therefore, are teaching lies.
The sad commentary is simply that dishonesty is not a stranger
to the Christian religion—both intellectual dishonesty and doctrinal dishonesty. Supporters of this or that view can and do
make honest mistakes in exegesis, but when a person teaches others a doctrine that is palpably false as in the “Godhead” (or that
Jesus “claimed” to be God), when common definitions of basic religious terms are deliberately changed to suit a particular and false
view, or when passages like Gen.1:26 are deliberately taken out of context and used deceitfully to prove a point, Jesus himself gets
a black eye, not to mention that Yahweh, God the father, is made subject to contempt.
Does Christianity without
an incarnation work?
Indeed,
it does. No biblical theology exists that suggests or implies, much less states openly, that for any salvation to take place,
Jesus must be a preexistent God and that this God must have come down from heaven to become a man. This scheme was dreamed up
by dishonest men. Salvation is not based on such an incarnation whatsoever. On the other hand, church doctrines and false
teachers can be found that imply, suggest, and state that such an incarnation must have happened for salvation to be available to
mankind.
Some say that only the death of a God could atone for all the sins of the world and then they tell us that Jesus was that God who died and was resurrected. This idea is foolish, narrow-minded, and false in the extreme—it takes the prerogative of any prerequisite for salvation out of God’s hands and places it into the hands of cultic religious zealots. Dr. David Jeremiah[2] preached on TV one Sunday that Jesus incarnated himself. He said that “Jesus was born in the womb of Mary but he did not begin there” and further, that he was “God walking around in the flesh.” And this is essentially what most Armstrong Movement Church of God people teach. They are in agreement with orthodoxy on this. The fact of the business is that God accepted Jesus the man as his sacrificial lamb. It was God’s prerogative to do so and he did it! Further, it was this acceptance and only this acceptance that established the New Testament concept of salvation, not the status of the lamb. By denying this point and suggesting it was Jesus’ decision to come down to earth and save people, both the Father and Jesus are being denied (cf. 1Jn.2:22-23). And isn’t the denial that Jesus was a flesh and blood man (1Jn.4:2-3) the essence of the antichrist concept? FPH
