[Vision2020] Metzler and the Incarnation

[Nick Gier]

Hi Michael,

I don't think you have read my chapter "The Myth of God Incarnate" very 
carefully. (See www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/gre3.htm.) The first section 
discusses what I call the "Hebraic" principle. This is the major 
achievement of ancient Hebrew thinkers.

In contrast to other Near Eastern views in which the human and divine were 
mixed and confused (most egregiously by the idea of a human mother giving 
birth to a god), the ancient Hebrews affirmed the transcendence of God, a 
clear separation of the Creator and the created.

The Hebrews did not believe that the Messiah was a divine being.  Even 
Martin Luther knew Hebrew well enough to translate Isaiah 9:6 
correctly.  The Messiah was a "powerful" like God not "the mighty God" of 
King James.  The Hebrew 'el gibbor is grammatically parallel to 
harere'el  (towering [not divine] mountains) and 'arze'el (towering [not 
divine] cedars of Lebanon).  Do I even need to mention that Isaiah 7:14 is 
also mistranslated as predicting a virgin birth?

The Synoptic Gospels do not support the deity of Jesus.  Indeed, in Mark 
Jesus explicitly denies it in the famous saying "Why do you call me good? 
No one is good but God alone" (10:18). Jesus knows full well what the 
Hebraic principle means. Even the author(s) of John, who appears to 
identify Jesus and God as the same being in the first verse, still 
preserves a difference between God and Jesus. At the end of the famous 
first chapter, the author states that "no man has ever seen God," an 
expression of the Hebraic principle that is repeated frequently (5:37, 
6:46; 1 Jn. 4:12; 1 Tim. 6:16). The clear implication here is that Jesus is 
not identical in substance (homoousia) with God as the creeds state that he is.

Here is the biblical language that you asked for and it is not the same, as 
you imply, as the language of the creeds, which is thoroughly corrupted by 
the horrible Hellenism that you learned to loathe from your association 
with Christ Church.  As I argue in my chapter, the Incarnation is a clear 
violation of the Hebraic principle and returns Christianity to 
paganism.  The language of the creeds, for example, the Son being of the 
same substance (homoousia) as the Father or being an equal person of a 
trinity (trinitas), are not words from the Greek New Testament and are, 
therefore, not biblical language.

I congratulate you in the one way in which you have broken from a 
Hellenized Christianity.  You embrace process theology when you say that 
the divine nature is dynamic and not the static immutability of Greek ideas 
of deity.  While process theology makes divine immanence intelligible--as 
least for some of us--I know of no process theologian who supports a 
literal man-God.  They are without exceptions heretics with regard to the 
orthodox proposition that Christ is fully human and fully God.  For more on 
process theology see www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/ngier/process.htm.

Thanks for the dialogue, Michael, but let's take the rest of this debate 
off-line, as we all join in celebrating, in our own ways and far less 
intellectually, the Myth of God Incarnate.

Happy Holidays,

Nick Gier
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