The Eclipse of Divine Transcendence: A Historical Concern for the Christmas Season

The Incarnation of the Son of God is the centerpiece of our celebration during the Christmas season. The eternal Son of God took on flesh and manifested in visible form the image of the (ordinarily) invisible God (Col 1:15) such that in him all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form (Col 2:9).

In so doing, Jesus Christ met the ancient need expressed so poignantly in Job 9:32–35: 

God is not a man like me that I might answer him,

      that we might confront each other in court.

If only there were someone to arbitrate between us,

      to lay his hand upon us both,

someone to remove God’s rod from me,

      so that his terror would frighten me no more.

Then I would speak up without fear of him,

      but as it now stands with me, I cannot.

In Christ Jesus, this deep-seated longing of Job, shared by all in every age who fear God, is thoroughly satisfied. Our relief is complete. As the incarnate God, the man Christ Jesus can  

• Provide for sensory creatures a visible image of the immaterial God with whom we can interact on a sensory level (John 1:14, 18). 
• Live a vicarious, sinless life of human obedience and share it with his sheep (John 10:10–11).
• Die a vicarious, penal, human death and absorb in himself the whole wrath of God that abides on his disobedient brothers with whom he shares fleshly solidarity (Heb 2:14–17).
• Stand forever as the only suitable mediator between God and men (1 Tim 2:5; Heb 2:17–18).
• Judge the world in his unique role as God and also “son of man” (John 5:22, 27).
• Exercise proper dominion over the world both as Second Adam and Son of David.
• Experience, in his humanity, what it means to suffer, have needs, know temptation, and ultimately to die, giving us a pattern that we might “walk in his steps” (1 Pet 2:21).

The good news of Christ drawing near via the Incarnation is one of the very most satisfying and essential truths of the Christian faith. One cannot deny the doctrine and call himself a Christian in any credible sense (1 John 4:2–3). The importance of the doctrine can scarcely be overstated.  

But there is a sense in which the Incarnation can be overstated (or perhaps better, can be misstated), and regularly iswhenever one’s conception of divine immanence (especially as manifested in Christ’s Incarnation) eclipses divine transcendence. It is quite possible, in fact, to trace the whole tragedy that we call Modernist or Liberal “Christianity” to this single, seminal error. Theological Liberalism was, in a nutshell, the domestication of God by stripping him of all his supernatural qualities and reducing the Gospel of redemption to one merely of social ethics. Theological Liberalism was the triumph of immanence over transcendence, and its legacy has been devastating.

It is often thought that Theological Liberalism is no longer a threat. It was broken apart by two very different theological constructs—Fundamentalism and Barthianism. But like all major historical movements, liberalism did not simply disappear in a moment. It instead fragmented and synthesized itself dialectically into these newer movements. And we are fools to imagine that this did not happen:

• Liberalism’s realized eschatology (kingdom now) dialogued with futurist eschatology (kingdom then) and settled dialectically on inaugurated eschatology.
• Liberalism’s social gospel dialogued with more transcendent themes to produce a dialectical montage of “incarnational” gospels.
• Liberalism’s immanent atonement (e.g., moral influence) dialogued with transcendent approaches (e.g., penal substitution), resulting in dialectical/hybrid views of atonement. 
• Nietzsche’s “God is dead” softened into Moltmann’s “crucified God.”

The list can be extended almost indefinitely (and rather controversially, too, as we each find ourselves variously situated in the dialectic struggle). We might at points legitimately conclude, even, that one dialectical form or another is actually correct; what we cannot do it pretend that liberalism no longer wields any influence. 

And it is at moments that we most celebrate the immanence of God (i.e., Christmas and the miracle of Christ’s incarnation) that we are perhaps most vulnerable to extinguishing Christ’s transcendence. We must at all points exercise caution that we do not humanize the divine. This is a complex concern in view of the hypostatic union of two natures in the one person of Christ. But in no case may we ever divide the person of Christ or conflate his natures. And so…

• We may rightly, and with proper qualification, say that Mary is the mother of God, but all the while we must take note of the Bible’s own failure to use such language, lest the uninformed imagine that Mary is the mother of Christ as God. Christ as God is eternal.

• We may rightly marvel that God drank from Mary’s breast so long as we emphasize that it was only with respect to his humanity that Christ was so nourished. Christ as God received no nourishment because Christ as God is a se.

• We may rightly, and with proper qualification, say that God “became” man, but all the while we must observe the Bible’s own reticence to use such language (I believe this language appears only in John 1; in nearly every other case, the Scripture writers prefer language like “taking on flesh,” receiving “a body prepared for him,” “taking the form/likeness/fashion of a man,” etc.), lest the uninformed imagine that God as God was transmuted into a man. He was not. Christ as God is immutable.

• We may rightly, and with proper qualification, say that God died, but only while recognizing the Bible’s own reticence to use such language (only 1 Cor 2:8 and Acts 20:28 make such a claim and both of these less than clearly), lest the uninformed imagine that Christ died with respect to his deity. He did not. Christ as God is immortal.

• We may rightly, and with proper qualification, say that God in Christ suffered greatly, but not as God. Christ as God is impassible.

• Christ with respect to his humanity was localized; with respect to his deity he remained omnipresent.

• Christ with respect to his humanity experienced weakness; with respect to his deity he remained omnipotent.

• Christ with respect to his humanity expressed ignorance; with respect to his deity he remained omniscient. 

My point is not to mute the miracle of incarnation or throw cold water on the glorious mystery of divine condescension and immanence in Christ. But there is a danger, in this season of celebration of the Incarnation of God, of eclipsing transcendence in our celebration of immanence. And history tells us clearly that this is a grave danger indeed.