Incarnation

Abstract

Of the many traditional doctrines, for which the exposition set out above might serve as a groundwork for interpretation, the Christian dogma of the incarnation may seem most difficult, if at all possible, to accommodate. Yet if we are to find that teaching intelligible, and to regard it as more than a survival and adaptation of similar beliefs (of which there are many) among pagan religions, it should be capable of rational interpretation. To me this seems eminently possible, and without it religion is immeasurably the poorer and less adequate to human needs. Not only is such interpretation feasible, but it follows naturally and directly from the position so far stated.

‘Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he should also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Tor the right faith is, that we believe and confess: that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man;

‘God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man, of the substance of his Mother, born in the world;

‘Perfect God, and perfect man: of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting;

‘Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead, and inferior to the Father, as touching his manhood.

‘Who although he be God and man yet he is not two, but one Christ;

‘One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh but by taking of the manhood into God . . .’