I’m reading through Jesus Ascended; The Meaning of Christ’s Continuing Incarnation by Gerrit Scott Dawson. For quite awhile, Jesus’ continuing incarnation has puzzled me; I didn’t understand its necessity, I didn’t see it in Scripture, and it just seems… ridiculous. How am I to believe that Christ will wear humanity for eternity?
Dawson is doing a wonderful job answering my tensions – but beyond that, leading to worship. In short, it is ridiculous – absurd! that Christ would choose humanity for eternity, but it is in that choice that redemption is truly possible. And not just redemption, but glorification as well. He writes, “The Godhead is not stripped of humanity, but adorned with it. The incarnation was not a lightning strike that is brilliant one moment but gone the next. No – though he is in heaven, he remains one of us, wearing the clothes of flesh he acquired on earth, even unto eternity.”
While there’s more that will be said on the continuing incarnation and this book in particular, it’s the question, “But how can Jesus be both there and everywhere; incarnate and infinite?” that interests me at this moment. Dawson has given two answers that I hope he weaves together. The first is that through the work of the Holy Spirit, Jesus remains really, physically in heaven (which is slightly beyond comprehension, but faithfully revealed) but relationally present with us. The contention is that metaphysically speaking, relational presence is the same as real presence.
The second answer is found in pointing to Jesus’ Simultaneous Presence, a doctrine developed in the patristic period which speaks to Jesus’ divine action operating alongside his human nature. These extended quotes from ancient writers have just left me floored:
He departed not from the Father, and came to us. He sucked the breasts, and He contained the world. He lay in the manger, and He fed the Angels. God and Man, the same God who is Man, the same Man who is God. But not God in that wherein He is Man, God in that He is the Word; Man in that the Word was made Flesh; by at once continuing to be God, and by assuming man’s Flesh; by adding what He was not, not losing what He was.
Augustine
Moreso, another writer praised Jesus, saying:
Mary bare the silent babe, while in Him were hidden all tongues! Joseph bare Him, and in Him was hidden a nature mor ancient than aught that is old! The High One became a a little child, and in Him was hidden a treasure of wisdom sufficing for all! Though Most High, yet He sucked the milk of Mary, and of His goodness all creatures suck! He is the Breast of Life, and the Breath of Life; the dead suck from His life and revive. Without the breath of the air no man lives, without the Might of the Son no man subsists. On His living breath that quickened all, depend the spirits that are above and that are beneath. When He sucked the milk of Mary, He was suckling all with Life. While He was lying on His Mother’s bosom, in His bosom were all creatures lying. He was silent as a Babe, and yet He was making His creatures execute all His commands. For without the First-born no man can approach unto the Essence, to which He is equal. The thirty years He was in the earth, Who was ordering all creatures, Who was receiving all the offerings of praise from those above and those below. He was wholly in the depths and wholly in the highest! He was wholly with all things and wholly with each. While His body was forming within the womb, His power was fashioning all members! While the conception of the Son was fashioning in the womb, He Himself was fashioning babes in the womb. Yet not as His body was weak in the womb, was His power weak in the womb! So too not as His body was feeble by the Cross, was His might also feeble by the Cross. For when on the Cross He quickened the dead, His body quickened them, yea, rather His will; just as when He was dwelling wholly in the womb, His hidden Will was visiting all! For see how, when He was wholly hanging upon the Cross, His Power was yet making all creatures move! For He darkened the sun and made the earth quake; He rent the graves and brought forth the dead! See how when He was wholly on the Cross, yet again He was wholly everywhere! Thus was He entirely in the womb, while He was again in everything! While on the Cross He quickened the dead, so while a Babe He was fasioning babes. While He was slain, He opened the graves; while He was in the womb, he opened wombs. Come hearken, my bretheren, concerning the Son of the Secret One that was revealed in His Body, while His power was concealed!
Ephraim (d. 373)
I think there are likely some underdeveloped Trinitarian realities in that quote, but the concept is yet astounding and stunning. Christ’s simultaneous work in His being the Word of God and His actions as the human man Jesus; which are, miraculously, one and the same, seems humanly incomprehensible. “While His body was forming within the womb, His power was fashioning all members.”
There’s only one right response, as the truth of these things settle on the heart: worship.