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Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Theological Query

Could God have become incarnate in a less-than-morally-perfect human being, or even a wicked one? It's not sufficient to say that God's perfect holiness would make this logically impossible, since such contradictions are inherent in the very idea of incarnation: God has no beginning but Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, God is omnipresent but Jesus is (or was, at least*) finite; etc. On the other hand, if God were to become incarnate in a vicious person, then we would be bound to worship him or her; but the idea of worshiping a depraved being is repugnant. Maybe we should say that God's becoming incarnate in a wicked person is morally, though not logically or metaphysically, impossible. A holy God could humble himself to adopt finitude, but would not take on evil?

*I don't want to step on any Lutheran toes by denying the communicatio idiomatum.

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