Tag: Humanity

Christians don’t believe in a chain of being between God and the world. Christians believe that God in-breaks into the world with irruption that this world could never produce. Without God’s gracious and free election to invade this world, this humanity, we would have no access into God’s inner life; which is eternal life. The Christian believes in a life that was first set for them in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ; indeed, a life, a Deus incarnandus (‘God to be incarnate’), that was there ever before this world was this world. Deus incarnatus (‘God incarnate’) is humanity’s only…

What is man, O LORD? Since man has Him, the Spirit is certainly in man—in his soul and through his soul in his body too. It is the nearest, most intimate and most indispensable factor for an understanding of his being and existence. But while He is in man, He is not identical with him. We have seen already that this would imply a transformation of man into God, which is excluded by the fact that Spirit is a conception of activity. The Spirit is not transformed into the soul of man, although He first and supremely creates the soul…

Eberhard Juengal on the humanity of God in Christ: . . . The event of God’s justifying the ungodly teaches us to recognize his divinity in the act of selfless self-commitment by God. The New Testament calls this selfless commitment by God love – and in particular – love directed towards people. In this selfless commitment, that is, in his love to people, God is righteous, he is ‘OK’, he is consistent with himself. God’s humanity is the clearest expression of his divinity, not a contradiction of it (otherwise, talking of God’s humanity would be a paradox). God does not…

The incarnation (homoousion) implies that all of humanity is re-created in the image of God, insofar that Christ is the second and greater Adam. In other words, the incarnation works from the reality that Jesus is the image of God (Col. 1:15) for us, and as such as He assumes our humanity as His own, He re-creates and exalts humanity in His humanity for us; just as His humanity is archetypal humanity, such that what it means to be genuinely human before God, is who Jesus is for us in His vicarious humanity. This presents us with what might be…