jQuery Slider

You are here

Creation and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ

Creation and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ

The following paper was delivered by Alice Linsley to the Forward in Faith-North America 2016 General Assembly at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, in Belleville, IL (near St. Louis).

By Alice Linsley
www.virtuelonline.org
July 29, 2016

For over 30 years I have labored to gain a better understanding of Creation through empirical studies of natural phenomena, through prayerful investigation of the Scriptures, and through regular reflection on the writings of the Church Fathers.

The doctrine of Creation and the doctrine of the Incarnation are so intricately intertwined that it is impossible to address the one without also addressing the other. Indeed, the greatest minds of the Church have spoken of this interconnection in the most satisfactory fashion. Therefore, I would be remiss were I not to set before you what they have said.

Blessed Anselm of Canterbury, in his treatise on Why God Became Man (Cur Deus Homo), recognized that "what ought to be sufficient has been said by the holy fathers and their successors..." and "...it is moreover shown by plain reasoning and fact that human nature was ordained for this purpose, viz., that every man should enjoy a happy immortality, both in body and in soul; and that it was necessary that this design for which man was made should be fulfilled; but that it could not be fulfilled unless God became man..."

By taking flesh and the limitations of created substance, yet being uncreated God, our Lord Jesus Christ has, in Anselm's words, "restored us from so great and deserved ills in which we were, to so great and unmerited blessings which we had forfeited..."

St. Athanasius of Alexandria, who stood contra mundum in his defense of the doctrine of the Trinity "whole and undefiled" demonstrated that our creation and God's Incarnation are closely allied, for the loss of innocence and the curse of sin and death necessitated the Incarnation. In his brilliant work on the Incarnation of the Word of God (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei), Athanasius wrote:

When God the Almighty was making mankind through His own Word, He perceived that they, owing to the limitation of their nature, could not of themselves have any knowledge of their Artificer, the Incorporeal and Uncreated. He took pity on them, therefore, and did not leave them destitute of the knowledge of Himself, lest their very existence should prove purposeless. For of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? How could men be reasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and Reason of the Father, through Whom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had they no knowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they may be able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life.

Without the coming of Christ in the flesh, we would be beasts without the knowledge of God and His purpose in Creation. Yet as Athanasius explains:

The Word called us into being, but we turn away from the Creator and demonstrating little regard for the grace we have received, we defile our being by the invention of other gods and we have lost apprehension of God as it is experienced in innocence.

The human race was wasting; God's image was being effaced, the Maker's work was spiraling into ruin and death reigned supreme. Mortal flesh, the nature of which is dust turning to dust, was unable to escape the curse of sin and death.

St. Gregory of Palamas wrote: "The incarnation of the Word of God was the method of deliverance most in keeping with our nature and weakness, and most appropriate for Him Who carried it out, for this method had justice on its side, and God does not act without justice."

Aristides, in a second-century letter to Emperor Antonius Pius wrote this remarkable explanation of the Gospel: "He Himself is called the Son of God; and they teach of Him that He as God came down from heaven and took and put on Flesh of a Hebrew virgin."

In his Gospel, Blessed John gives this testimony: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

It is the consensus of the Church Fathers and the whole of Sacred Writ that divine grace is extended to Mankind in substance. The Word became flesh, true flesh. The bread and the wine are true Body and true Blood of Christ, as John Donne expressed so poetically:

"He took the bread and brake it;
And what that Word did make it,
I do believe and take it."

There would be no sacramental grace extended to the sinner in the Eucharist were it not that the Word became flesh. Likewise, as T. F. Torrance noted, "there would be no judgement in the Supper if the Body and Blood were not extended to or partaken of by the unbelieving recipient."

The Incarnation of our Lord is a mysterious and central doctrine upon which the Cross and the empty Tomb rely. The sequence is expressed in the Church calendar: Advent and the Feast of the Nativity before Lent, Holy Week and Easter.

God becoming flesh restores the dignity of flesh. The Incarnation of our Lord renews all things in the Creation. When God in the flesh stepped into the Jordan waters, all the waters were renewed. Water is no longer ordinary water. Wine no longer ordinary wine. Bread no longer ordinary bread.

In His resurrection the corruption of death is overcome. No dust and ashes were found in the tomb. He is living Flesh and the guarantee of immortality for those who trust in Him.
God used substantial things to perform the divine will because that is what matter was created for in the beginning. The Holy One loves matter.

Jesus mixed dirt with His saliva and put it on the man's eyes that he might see. He used stone jars at Cana. A stone door rolled away in Bethany. An empty stone tomb.

He used servants to fill the stone jars. Mortal servants to roll away the stone. Servants to hear the angelic declaration: "He is risen. Go tell his disciples..."

As the pre-incarnate Immortal One He molded clay into a man and breathed life into that creature. The Creator plays with humble clay to make Man for His pleasure. Plays in the mud, molding the human. The very word "human" is related to the word for dirt, humus. This is divine play, ever joyful, resplendent, generative, and energizing.

The Holy One deemed to take on true humanity, to be born as one of us. The nativity of our Lord Jesus is not a nursery tale, though children of all ages thrill to hear it. Even pagans and secularists are compelled to join in the Christmas festivities! It is a season of rejoicing, of feasting and song; of "peace on Earth and good will toward Men." Christmas day, especially, is a time to put away fear and to play.

Johan Huizinga, the Dutch cultural historian, was a man of deep Christian faith with a scientific devotion to facts in the pursuit of truth. In his book Homo Ludens, he asserts that play creates order, and that play is order. He observed that in the work-play antithesis the two terms are not of equal value. Work is negative, depleting energy. Play is positive, energizing, and refreshing. Any parent who has watched children lost in play know that it is often difficult to get them calmed down and ready for bed. They are full of life; energized by play!

Huizinga writes, "Play is a thing in itself. The play-concept as such is of a higher order than is seriousness. For seriousness seeks to exclude play, whereas play can very well include seriousness."

In the account of her brother's death, the Martyr Perpetua tells of how she prayed for him day and night that he might be restored to her. Then, the Lord showed her in a dream that her brother was in a place of light, with a clean body and well clad. In Perpetua's words: "He was finding refreshment. And he went away from the water to play joyously, after the manner of children" and when she awoke she understood that her brother had been "translated" from suffering to eternal refreshment. (The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity 2:3--4 [A.D. 202])

Huisinga noted something about the relationship between the spheres of play and work. He wrote, "Myth and poetry both come from the play-sphere... living myth knows no distinction between play and seriousness." Such is true of the worship of the Living Incarnate Lord Jesus.

In a recent issue of The Anglican Way, the Rev. Elijah B. White wrote this: "Yes, the language of the authentic Prayer Book is elaborate, dense, profound, because its authors were trying to convey truths that are complex, subtle, difficult to convey in words at all. We worship with beautiful language because we are talking about God, and speaking about God is like trying to draw a circle with only straight lines."

We cannot approach knowing the Triune God through mental processes. Anselm understood this and took as his epistemological motto: "I believe that I may understand." If we rely principally on reason, and attempt to proceed with straight logic, we are trying to draw a circle with straight lines. However, when we approach worship as an invitation to come as a child into the Lord's presence, we experience the Incarnate Word as serious divine play. It is certain that children found our Lord Jesus immensely attractive because the disciples felt the need to hold them back.

Children make discoveries through play. My granddaughter, Juliette, loves to play with blocks. I have watched her arrange long rectangular blocks into a circle. I would be wasting my breath were I to tell her it can't be done.

In his extraordinary sermon The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis writes, "Those who have attained everlasting life in the vision of God doubtless know very well that it is no mere bribe, but the very consummation of their earthly discipleship, but we who have not yet attained it cannot know this in the same way, and cannot even begin to know it at all except by continuing to obey... But probably this will not, for most of us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship."

What Lewis calls "the far-off country" -- what others have called "the beatific vision" -- must be approached with the shyness of a child. Lewis wrote, "We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind ... which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously..." As mortals on Earth we catch glimpses, sudden brief flashes of the glory of Divine Love. We pray that it will apprehend us because we cannot apprehend it.

The Fathers of the Church affirmed that the Creator provided for the humble seeker a tangible means of inquiry, a sort of play which observes patterns and structures evident to acute observers in Creation. The Apostle Paul speaks of this in Romans1:20: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

This passage from Romans is one of the most abused and misunderstood verses of the New Testament. Paul is not saying that we can apprehend the divine plan of salvation by observing what God created. This come only through revelation and through the mouths of the holy Prophets whose words have been transmitted to us in the sacred canon of Scripture. Paul is speaking of the fixed order of creation which Man's sin is not able to taint, corrupt or distort. This is part of the Hebrew priestly tradition that Paul understood very well. The ancient priests were royal astronomers. They noted the pattern of the solar arc from east to west. Though sin often reigns in the human heart, the Sun continues to rise in the East and set in the West. Indeed the Sun is so faithful in making its daily circuit, and as the source of light that makes life on Earth possible, that the Sun stood as the Creator's emblem among Abraham's Hebrew ancestors. The rulers of the archaic world were often shown wearing the Sun upon their heads as a sign of divine appointment.

St. Athanasius wrote: "God knew the limitation of mankind, you see; and though the grace of being made in His Image was sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word and through Him of the Father, as a safeguard against their neglect of this grace, He provided the works of creation also as means by which the Maker might be known."

There is order and pattern to the Creator's work. Consider the fixed stars, the clock-like motion of planets and constellations which make it possible for astronomers to predict celestial events such as eclipses. Indeed, being aware of the fixed order in the heavens, the Hebrew sages of old recognized the singularity known today as "the Star of Bethlehem."

The Fall did not turn dogs into bears or cause humans to reproduce apple trees. Cosmic patterns and the nature of entities were fixed by the Creator in the beginning and recognition of these fixed patterns points us to the Creator's eternal power and divine nature.

This Creator, who we both fear and desire, is still very far away from us unless He comes down. The Apostle Paul explains: "But the righteousness that is by faith says: 'Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?' (that is, to bring Christ down) or, 'Who will descend into the abyss?' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)." But what does it say? 'The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,' that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming that if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved..." (Romans 10:6-9)

By the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, Man is recreated in the Divine Image. Just as all things were created out of love through Him, now all things are redeemed and restored out of love through Him. Love took on flesh, and through Love Incarnate we who were sinking in the mire of sin and death are being lifted to the heights of glory.

The Christmas narrative is at the heart of the Gospel. Christians are Christ-mass people. We are a peculiar bunch who are gathered by the priest at the invitation of the Lord Jesus Christ to partake of eternal life, the medicine of immorality.

Just as the priest has a unique calling and appointment, so each Christian is divinely appointed to serve the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. "For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

Divine appointment finds expression in the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ. The Angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary: "the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35).

This is first prophesied in Genesis 3:15 concerning the Woman who would bring forth the Seed of God who would crush the serpent's head. This does not directly refer to Eve as Eve is not named until verse 20, 5 verses later.

+The solar symbolism of the ancient Hebrew priests must be considered when tracing Messianic expectation to Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors. Divine appointment was symbolized by the overshadowing of the Sun, the Creator's emblem.

+ God earthly represent was the ruler whose divine appointment was indicated by a solar crown. This usually took the form of bull horns in which the solar orb rests. This divine appointment is noted in the Bible by the initial Nilo-Canaanite Y in the names of the Horite Hebrew rulers: Yaqtan, Yitzak, Yacob, Yishmael, Yosef, Yetro, Yeshai, Yoachim and Yeshua. This Y appears to us as a letter, but it was originally a pictograph.

One of the oldest sites of Hebrew worship was Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, called Onn in Genesis 41. Jacob's son Joseph married a daughter of the high priest of Onn. This arranged marriage is consistent with the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Horite ruler-priests. Marriage preceded the new ruler's ascension and coronation. This explains Abraham's urgency to fetch a wife for Isaac before his death. Isaac married Rebecca shortly before his ascension to rule over Abraham's territory.

+Joseph's marriage to Asenath, the daughter of Putifar, was an essential part of Joseph's elevation to "ruler over all the land of Egypt." Note this: the name Putifar is composed of the words pu and tifra. In ancient Egyptian pu-tifra means "this order" and refers to a specific order of priests. They are called Horite Habiru in ancient Akkadian and Sumerian texts. They were devotees of the Creator and the Creator's Son. This is confirmed by the stela of Putifar which speaks of Putifar as the "son of Horus, may He live forever." A similar usage is found in Proverbs 8:33, where the phrase al-tifra-u means "don't change the order."

As Anglicans who hold to catholicity we should take this to heart. We are called to preserve the sacred order of the all-male priesthood and to pass the Tradition to the next generation "whole and undefiled." This is the Tradition delivered to the Church from the priests of old, the very ancestors of Christ our God, to whom the Spirit spoke "by the mouth of his Holy Prophets which have been since the world began."

Let us consider what is known about this unique ruler-priest caste. DNA studies have confirmed that they dispersed widely across Africa, southern Europe, into northern India and southwestern China. They served the great kingdom builders, like Nimrod - the mighty men of old -- who ruled the ancient world.

Many years of anthropological investigation using Biblical data has convinced me that Messianic expectation is one of the earliest religious beliefs. It is expressed in the burial practices of Abraham's archaic ancestors who believed in bodily resurrection and anticipated the coming of a Righteous Ruler who would overcome death and lead His people to immortality.

The priests who served the Creator and his mythological Son were called Horites. Jews refer to these ancestors as their "Horim." In the ancient world the Horite priests were known for their purity, sobriety and devotion to the High God whose emblem was the Sun. Plutarch wrote that the "priests of the Sun at Heliopolis never carry wine into their temples, for they regard it as indecent for those who are devoted to the service of any god to indulge in the drinking of wine whilst they are under the immediate inspection of their Lord and King. The priests of the other deities are not so scrupulous in this respect..."

The Horite priests worshiped the Creator when other peoples were worshiping lesser deities. They anticipated the coming of the Seed of God (Gen. 3:15) and believed that He would be born of their ruler-priest bloodlines. That is why the lines of priests intermarried exclusively and why unchaste daughters of priests were burned alive (Lev. 21:9). Sexual impurity was not tolerated.

Horite Hebrew priests were dispersed throughout Palestine. Settlements took their names from the priestly division that resided there. For example, Nazareth was the home of the eighteenth priestly division, Hapi-tsets (a word of Nilotic origin), so Nazareth is called Happizzez in 1 Chronicles 24:15.

Nazareth was the home of Joseph who was betrothed to Mary. As the Horite Hebrew clans practiced endogamy, both Joseph and Mary were of the "house of David." Mary was from Bethlehem, a Horite settlement according to I Chronicles 4:4 which names Hur (HR) as the "father of Bethlehem." Rahab of Jericho was the wife of Salmon, the son of Hur. Salmon is called the "father of Bethlehem" in 1 Chronicles 2:54.

Mary's full name would have been "Miriam daughter of Joachim, Son of Pntjr, Priest of Nathan of Bethlehem." Among the Horites ruler-priests the term ntjr designated God or the ruler-priest. Pntjr (Pa-Netjer) is the name of Joachim's mother. The Horite priests traced descent through both the mother and the father. A limestone stela (1539-1291 B.C.) bearing the names of Pekhty-nisu and his wife Pa-netjer is on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. The Ancient Egyptian word nisu (ruler) became nasi in Hebrew and applied to the High Priest who presided over the Sanhedrin.

From the earliest times, the office of priest and ruler were connected. The ruler-priest stood at the altar as one who intercedes for his people, offering sacrifice according to divinely inspired law. This anticipation of the Ruler-Priest who would overcome death and crush the serpent's head under His feet, was fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah, born of the Virgin Mary who conceived by divine "overshadowing" as the Angel Gabriel proclaimed. The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." Luke 1:35

The Christian priest represents the continuation of the oldest order of priests, established by divine ordinance. He is to be like Jesus Christ, exemplifying Christ in purity of life and in masculine form. When Anglicans contemplate reception of Christ's Body and Blood in the Eucharist, it is appropriate to see before us a masculine form.

Likewise, in contemplation of the Annunciation and Incarnation we would have before us an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, not a masculine form. Gender matters when it comes to understanding the plan of salvation. God created men to protect the weak, especially the women and children. God created women to bring forth the young and to nurture them. The natures of male and female are antithetical, though complementary. Women standing at the altar are a symptom of the gender confusion of our time. A woman at the altar unravels the fabric of the Messianic Tradition which the Church has received from our Lord Jesus Christ and from the Apostles.

To place a female at the altar tells this story: The one who saves is the daughter of God. The divine council agrees to the scourging and bloody sacrifice of a woman whose body is designed to bring forth life and therefore should be protected. Here, instead of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we have a pagan tragedy!

But I digress...

The Horite expectation was that the Righteous Son would not remain in the grave, but rise on the third day. Psalm 16:10 declares: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

This expectation was expressed one thousand years before Psalm 16 in the Pyramid Texts: "Oh Horus, this hour of the morning, of this third day is come, when thou surely passeth on to heaven, together with the stars, the imperishable stars." (Utterance 667)

Consider how Horus, the archetype of Christ, is described in the Coffin texts (passage 148):

"I am Horus, the great Falcon upon the ramparts of the house of him of the hidden name... My flight has reached the horizon...I have removed my place beyond the powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am unique in my flight. My wrath will be turned against the enemy of my father [Osiris] and I will put him beneath my feet..."

About 800 years later, Psalm 110:1 draws on this Tradition: "The Lord says to my Lord: 'Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.'"

The Ra-Horus-Hathor narrative is a form of the Proto-Gospel. Jesus' Horite ancestry has been demonstrated through scientific analysis of the Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern foud in the Bible. We are not speaking of trifling resemblances between the mythic Horus and the historic Jesus. Scripture itself which indicates that Abraham and his people were a caste of ruler-priest devotees of Horus. Genesis 36 lists the Horite rulers related to Abraham. Here we find the lines descending from Seir the Horite.

Contrary to the disclaimers of those who seek to discredit the Gospel, Christianity is not an invented religion based on the Horus myth. It is a tradition that emerges organically from the faith of Abraham and his Horite Hebrew ancestors to whom God first delivered the promise of a Righteous Ruler who would come to save what was lost. That Righteous Ruler is Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, in fulfillment of the oldest prophecy of Scripture: Genesis 3:15 -- the promise made in Eden.

Our Lord Jesus came into the world to recover and save what was lost. To those who put their trust in Him, he gives the power to become the children of God. He who overcame death and the grave, leads his people to abundant life in this finite world and in the world to come.

In the ancient Liturgy of St. Basil in hear this declaration: "He gave Himself as a ransom to death in which we were held captive, sold under sin. Descending into Hades through the Cross ... He loosed the bonds of death."

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Christians in Ephesus, says, "Now to each one of us grace has been given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. This is why it says: 'When He ascended on high, He led captives away, and gave gifts to men.' What does 'He ascended' mean, except that He also descended to the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the very one who ascended above all the heavens, in order to fill all things." (Ephesians 4:7-10)

Jesus Christ is the firstborn from the grave and by his mighty resurrection He delivers to the Father a "peculiar people." He leads us in the ascent to the Father where we receive heavenly recognition because we belong to Him.

All that Our Lord Jesus accomplishes, He accomplishes through mortal flesh which He took from his mother Mary. Through Eve's disobedience corruption entered the world, but through Mary's obedience the blessedness of the original design is being restored in our Savior, the Incarnate Word of God.

Alice Linsley is a Christian Apologist. She has been pioneering the field of Biblical Anthropology for over 30 years. She teaches Philosophy and Ethics and is a member of the American Scientific Affiliation. She is a contributor to Virtueonline

Subscribe
Get a bi-weekly summary of Anglican news from around the world.
comments powered by Disqus
Trinity School for Ministry
Go To Top