The Eternally Incarnate Word

Theology is the church speaking Jesus Christ to itself.

Before I risk heresy in nuancing a fundamental doctrine, it is helpful to remind myself that the economy of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ as the crucified and resurrected Lord, along with the Bible’s perfect witness to that revelation, serve as our perfect guide regarding theological method. If we want to do right theology, we look to Jesus; orthodoxy happens when we believe in Jesus Christ and speak about the God revealed in him. There simply is no other God than the one revealed by and in Jesus.

Preexistence is that doctrine that the divine Word (John 1:1, a metaphysical entity) preexisted Jesus Christ and was not united with humanity until the incarnation. My contention is that in aiming to speak about God, preexistence speaks about a God behind God who acts and wills apart from the Word proper, Jesus Christ. We must ask ourselves the question, “Is the Word (logos) of God Jesus Christ?” If we answer yes, then there is no coherent way to speak of the logos asarkos (unincarnate Word). The Word is always forever in some way in a dialectical relation to the incarnation; i.e., the metaphysical Word is eternally Jesus Christ, incarnate or not. The God-man Jesus does not simply begin to exist at the incarnation but is identical with the Word of God.

The doctrine of the preexistence of the Son is closer to neo-Platonism than Christian Theology.

A preexistent, metaphysical divine nature of Jesus, which is realized in the incarnation, seems to stem from neo-Platonistic readings of the Johannine prologue (John 1:1-18). Plato’s Timaeus and Republic discuss the immortality of the soul in terms of a) sharing in the incorruptibility of the world of Ideas (Forms) and b) sluffing off the physical body and its desires that hold you back from sharing in that eternal incorruptibility. His Phaedo is perhaps the where the most in-depth treatment of the soul lies: here he argues for the immortality of the soul and its eternal persistence and preexistence as a metaphysical unit dislocated from the physical. In Phaedrus, Plato describes a “great circuit” where souls follow the gods, and if they control their winged horses, they can pop their heads up into the world of Forms. If they cannot, then they will be cast down into this world and become incarnate.

Given this, the idea that a divine person existed before the incarnation apart from being Jesus Christ aligns oddly well with Plato’s conception of the soul and its incarnation. The inclination to rid the Word of all physicality and therefore all humanity is a Platonic impulse. Now, of course I would not suggest that God is physical. However, this preoccupation with anti-physicality is odd; it prevents theologians from saying, “God is eternally interwoven with humanity.” Regardless of his relationship to the physical, God the Son is eternally related to humanity in his own determination to be God for us. To throw that doctrine away in fear of a physical God or a divine creation demonstrates a kind of anxiety about fully reckoning with the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

A theology from the viewpoint of the cross would not profess that the Son existed as logos asarkos and at some point in our history became Jesus Christ. Rather, it would profess that there is no logos asarkos, only a logos incarnandus (a Word that will be incarnated). To affirm a preexistent Son who had no humanity is to affirm a God behind God in Christ. To affirm a logos incarnandus is to affirm the God in Christ as the only God.

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who we preached among you–Silvanus and Timothy and I–did not become “Yes and no”; on the contrary, a final “Yes” has come in Him. (2 Corinthians 1:19)

The hypostatic union relies on the presupposition of the eternal election of Jesus Christ.

According to preexistence, the pre-incarnate Jesus’ two natures are so split as to render his divinity entirely apart from humanity from the foundation of the world. This allows theologians to say that Jesus was speaking about his divine nature specifically apart from his human nature when he claimed to exist before the incarnation. This is a philosophically coherent view, yet it establishes a definitively non-Christological view of the Son. The pre-incarnate Son is reduced to being a divine, metaphysical entity and not Jesus Christ.

However, if we want to maintain that Jesus Christ is coeternal with the father, that his divinity is not altogether distinct from humanity (since God willed, before the foundation of the world, to be God not-apart-from humanity), but that his divinity is inseparable from humanity, then we must nuance preexistence as a doctrine. For without an eternally elect Jesus Christ, Jesus’ human form is ad hoc; it is assumed in our history in order to accomplish a purpose and not because it is essential to his identity as the eternally elect God-man. A Christian substitute for the doctrine of preexistence is a richer theology of the election and incarnation of the will-be-incarnated Word of God, Jesus Christ.

Potential Pitfalls

We want to avoid the pitfall into which Jurgen Moltmann fell regarding the Creator/creature distinction. When we maintain that God is distinct from his creation, we also proclaim that He willed to be God not-apart-from his creation. The act of creation has its theological precedent in the eternal generation of the Son by the Father. Likewise, the incarnation has its precedent in the electing will of God to be God with us. In God’s electing will to be God with us, he undergoes a humiliation that serves as the theological precedent for his condescension in the incarnation event. It is this very humiliation that the logos asarkos precludes, and one that the logos incarnandus necessitates. 

The classic doctrine of divine simplicity is another potential snag for this view. If everything in God is God, as the church rightly proclaims, and humanity is in God, then how is humanity not divine? The short answer is that it is too simplistic to say that humanity is in God; God has no parts, after all. Rather, God has set his face toward humanity in his subsistent relationship of his eternal generation by the Father, which is also the Father’s election of Jesus Christ. It is that election that allows us to say that the Word is eternally Jesus Christ.If we want to say that the Word of God is Jesus Christ, then we must abandon preexistence as it currently stands. Instead, we would say that God elected himself to be Jesus.

If we want to say that the Word of God is Jesus Christ, then we must abandon preexistence as it currently stands. Instead, we would say that God elected himself to be Jesus and this is revealed in the incarnation. At the incarnation, God truly makes himself known. Let’s rejoice in his eternal refusal to be God apart from humanity.