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Although “Incarnation” is assumed to be a basic tenet of Christianity, it is not used in Scripture. This is even admitted by Trinitarian scholars: “Incarnation, in its full and proper sense, is not something directly presented in Scripture.” [1] The doctrine of the Incarnation was formulated during the next several centuries. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church verifies this fact: “The doctrine, which took classical shape under the influence of the controversies of the 4th-5th centuries, was formally defined at the Council of Chalcedon of 451. It was largely molded by the diversity of tradition in the schools of Antioch and Alexandria…further refinements were added in the later Patristic and Medieval periods.” [2]
“Incarnation, in its full and proper sense, is not something directly presented in Scripture.”
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The reason the councils and synods took hundreds of years to develop the doctrine of Incarnation is that it is not stated in Scripture, and the verses used to support it can be explained without resorting to a doctrine that bears more similarity to pagan mythology than biblical truth. Teaching the Jews that Yahuwah came down in the form of a man would have offended entirely those living at the time of Christ and the Apostles and greatly contradicted their understanding of the Messianic Scriptures. This doctrine is derived most prominently from the gospel of John, and in particular from the phrase in John 1:14 (KJV): “And the Word was made flesh….” But was “the Word” synonymous with “the Messiah” in Jewish understanding? Hardly. The Jews would have understood it to mean “plan” or “purpose,” that which was clearly and specifically declared in Genesis 3:15—a “seed” of a woman who would destroy the works of the Devil. This Yahuwah plan for man's salvation finally “became flesh” in Yahushua Christ. This verse does not establish a doctrine of Incarnation contrary to all prophetic expectations nor a teaching of pre-existence. It is a teaching of Yahuwah’s great love in bringing into existence His plan to save mankind from their sin.
Before proceeding, we must define what is traditionally understood by the “incarnation” of Christ. Keep in mind that we strongly affirm the reality and necessity of the virgin birth of Christ as the only way he could have been born without the inherent sin of mankind that would have disqualified him from becoming the Lamb of Yahuwah. But the traditional “formula which enshrines the Incarnation …is that in some sense Yahuwah, without ceasing to be God, was made man.” [3] We will quote the New Bible Dictionary, a Trinitarian source, for a working definition and explanation of this doctrine: “It appears to mean that the divine Maker became one of His own creatures, which is a prima facie contradiction in theological terms.” [4]
When the Word “became flesh,” His deity was not abandoned or reduced or contracted, nor did He cease to exercise the divine functions which had been His before…The Incarnation of the Son of Yahuwah, then, was not a diminishing of deity but an acquiring of manhood. [5]
One wonders how a pre-existent “God the Son” can become a man without any “diminishing of deity” or that he could live a “fully human” life without ceasing to exercise the divine functions he had been exercising since eternity began. Trinitarians say this is part of the “mystery” of the Incarnation. The New Bible Dictionary admits that the concept is not developed or discussed in the New Testament:
“The only sense in which the New Testament writers ever attempt to explain the incarnation is by showing how it fits into Yahuwah’s overall plan for redeeming mankind…This evangelical interest throws light on the otherwise puzzling fact that the New Testament nowhere reflects on the virgin birth of Yahushua as witnessing to the conjunction of deity and manhood in His person—a line of thought much canvassed by later theology.” [6]
“If the deity of Yahushua was not at first clearly stated in words (and Acts gives no hint that it was), it was nevertheless part of the faith by which the first Christians lived and prayed…The theological formulation of belief in the Incarnation came later, but the belief itself, however incoherently expressed, was there in the Church from the beginning.” [7]
We disagree with the assertion that the doctrine of the Incarnation was “in the Church from the beginning.” Since the doctrine is not in Scripture, how can it be considered a part of “the Apostles’ Doctrine”? Because scholars admit that this doctrine is biblically tenuous, we must examine why Christian theologians of the third century later became so preoccupied with establishing it as the cornerstone of a Trinitarian Christian faith. In doing so, we will see some of the changing assumptions and beliefs that led to the development of this doctrine. We must first establish that the Apostle Paul prophesied the process of turning from historical truth to mythology at the end of his life. This is amazing but not surprising, in light of the many times in Scripture that Yahuwah has warned His people about being influenced by pagan culture.
“Incarnation,” in the most common Christian conception, is the belief that Yahushua is not a created being but the invisible God “clothed” in human flesh. To quote a recent book on the identity of Yahushua by a famous author, Yahushua “thought of Himself as God in human flesh.” [8] Thus, in our view, the biblical account of the creation of the Last Adam is exchanged for a myth. The concept of Yahuwah, or any spirit being, becoming a baby is utterly inconsistent with biblical truth.
We recognize that the doctrine of the Incarnation is not the direct result of the incursion of pagan mythology, as if some Church leaders of the second century made up a story they knew would sound like mythology. However, we think that Church leaders of the third and fourth centuries after Christ were not diligent in allowing the whole of Scripture to determine Christian doctrine. In the absence of a complete commitment to the whole Bible, they misconstrued the language of the gospel of John. They used it to establish a doctrine that does not harmonize with Old Testament prophecy, the Synoptic Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament. The result has shifted the center of the Christian message from the historically documented resurrection to the Incarnation, a mystical, mythological, and mysterious idea. As Maurice Wiles admits, “The Church has always recognized the highly mysterious nature of incarnational belief.” [9] —We would argue that this doctrine has done more to weaken the foundation of the rational core of the Christian faith than have all the assaults of so-called heretics” put together.
The idea that Yahuwah Himself came and lived among us in the form of a man echoes pagan mythology and, at the very least, has left the Christian message open to unnecessary ridicule. A pre-existent divine being taking on human flesh and being raised by regular human parents sounds so mythological that critics, especially Jews and Muslims, have often derided it. Our Trinitarian source admits this: “Such an assertion, abstracted against the background of Old Testament monotheism, might seem blasphemous or nonsensical— as indeed, orthodox Judaism has always held it to be.” [10]
Robinson discusses the mythological character of the traditional and popular understanding of the Incarnation, or “the Christmas story”: “Traditional Christology has worked with a frankly supranaturalist scheme. Popular religion has expressed this mythologically, professional theology metaphysically. For this way of thinking, the Incarnation means that God the Son came down to earth and was born, lived, and died within this world as a man. From “out there,” there graciously entered into the human scene one who was not “of it” yet lived genuinely and entirely within it. As the God-man, he united in his person the supernatural and the natural, and the problem of Christology is how Yahushua can be fully God and fully man and yet genuinely one person. The traditional supranaturalistic way of describing the Incarnation almost inevitably suggests that Yahushua was really God Almighty walking about on earth, dressed up as a man. Yahushua was not a man born and bred—he was God for a limited period, taking part in a charade. He looked like a man, he talked like a man, he felt like a man, but underneath, he was God dressed up—like Father Christmas…Indeed, the very word “incarnation” (which, of course, is not a Biblical term) almost inevitably suggests it. It conjures up the idea of a divine substance being plunged in flesh and coated with it like chocolate or silver plating…The supranaturalist view of the Incarnation can never really rid itself of the idea of the prince who appears in the guise of a beggar. However genuinely destitute the beggar may be, he is a prince, and that, in the end, is what matters.” [11]
Some in the “History of Religions school” have even suggested that the doctrine of the Incarnation was derived from Gnostic redeemer myths. [12] Though the specific Gnostic redeemer myth is now thought to have been developed after the theory of “God became a man” was already established, the mythological character of the doctrine of the Incarnation is a derivative and influenced by pagan God-man beliefs of the first few centuries after Christ. The doctrine sounds so similar to many other myths concerning divine beings who came and lived among men that it is hard not to conclude that Christian thinkers employed the language of pagan religions instead of adhering diligently to biblical language (Scripture).
The idea that God or the gods could come down in the form of men was a common view in New Testament times. We see an obvious example of this in the book of Acts, following the healing of a crippled man:
Acts 14:11-13
(11) When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!”
(12) Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker.
(13) The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them.
It is worth noting that Paul and Barnabas did not take this opportunity to explain that they were not gods who came in human form but Yahushua (supposedly “god-made man”). Instead, they argued against the mythological basis of such pagan beliefs and practices:
Acts 14:14 and 15
(14) But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting:
(15) “Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living Yahuwah, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.”
As this section of Scripture implies, most people influenced by Greek and Roman religion and culture believed in various myths involving the intermingling of gods, men, women, and even animals. For example, the Romans believed that Romulus and Remus were twins born of a mortal mother and Mars, the war god. The story was told that they were set afloat in a basket on the Tiber River. A she-wolf found the babies and raised them. A shepherd found the twins and brought them up to adulthood. The twins decided to build a city where the wolf found them, but Romulus killed Remus and supposedly founded Rome in 753 B.C.
The Roman mythological pantheon included a triad, meaning a group of three gods composed of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus. Jupiter was the god of the heavens and Mars the god of war, while Quirinus represented the common people (the Greeks had no similar god). By the late 500’s B.C., the Romans replaced the archaic triad with another triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Juno was associated with Hera [the wife of Zeus], and Minerva with Athena, who sprang fully grown from Zeus’ head.
The chief god in the Greek pantheon, Zeus, visited the human woman Danae in the form of golden rain and fathered Perseus, a “god-man.” Hercules (Herakles) was the son of Zeus, who fooled Alcmena by impersonating her husband, the general Amphitryon. In his descent into the realms of death, Hercules had become the Saviour of his people.
Another pagan myth particularly closely akin to the idea of the Incarnation is that of Dionysus. A. N. Wilson cites this myth as an example of what he believes is Christian mythologizing by the Apostle Paul:
“Dionysus discards his divine nature and walks in the human world disguised…Dionysus, the god disguised in human form, tells him that his efforts to resist the new movement will be completely worthless; he is not contending against flesh and blood but against a god. ‘You are mortal; he is a god. If I were you, I would control my rage and sacrifice to him, rather than kick against the pricks’” [From Euripides, The Bacchae]. [13]
Critics of Christianity like Wilson have a field day with the likeness of the Incarnation to these pagan mythologies and scoff at the notion that Yahushua is “God” made manifest. There are enough things that the critics will find objectionable in the genuine Christian message. Why distort Scripture and thus give them legitimate ammunition?
Believing myths are endemic to the human race. One of the advantages of myths, legends, and stories compared to historical truth is that the former can be changed at any time, and few will mind as long as it makes a better story. Because myths frequently form the core of a people’s identity and sense of value in the cosmos, they are prone to believe stories that elevate their status by intermingling the divine with their history. Mythology was integral to the average person's life in the first century, and many rulers tried to associate their birth with a god. Because of this mythological backdrop of the pagan religions of his day, the Apostle Paul went to great lengths to communicate the historical and scriptural basis for belief in Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection according to prophecies spoken generations before. Instead of myths invented by man and bereft of the possibility of authentication, Paul and the believers of the early Church declared their faith in a Messiah who was a vivid and specifically prophesied historical figure. Only the true God could declare His intentions well in advance and then perform them perfectly in a way that eye-witnesses and later students of the Bible could verify.
Instead of myths invented by man and bereft of the possibility of authentication, Paul and the believers of the early Church declared their faith in a Messiah who was a vivid and specifically prophesied historical figure. Only the true God could declare His intentions well in advance and then perform them perfectly in a way that eye-witnesses and later students of the Bible could verify.
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No one was ever an eye-witness to the fables of mythology, which were kept alive by the naïve credulity of devotees of pagan religions. Nor was the coming of any mythological figure accurately prophesied centuries before in a coherent body of prophetic literature. The Christian faith, therefore, stands alone among all the world’s belief systems, which, except Judaism, are based on unverifiable mythologies. Even the secular “religion” of Evolutionism is based upon a grandiose myth—that the minutely ordered cosmos arose spontaneously by chance from chaos, gradually increased in complexity by a series of small, random mutations, and eventually produced the minds of Charles Darwin and Carl Sagan, who were “smart” enough to conceive of and rationalize such a preposterous fable. In contrast, Christians are expected to ground their faith on a rational, scriptural, and historically verifiable foundation so that later discoveries cannot discredit their testimony.
J. A. T. Robinson articulately sums up the sense in which Yahushua embodies or “incarnates” Yahuwah, not as a mythological figure, but as the one whom Yahuwah sent to represent Him and do His will perfectly: “Yahushua is a man who incarnates in everything he is and does the Logos who is Yahuwah. He is the Son, the mirror image of Yahuwah, who is God for man and in man. The “I” of Yahushua speaks Yahuwah, acts Yahuwah. He utters the things of Yahuwah; he does the works of Yahuwah. He is his plenipotentiary, totally commissioned to represent him—as a human being. He speaks and acts with the “I” that is one with Yahuwah, utterly identified and yet not identical, his representative but not his replacement—and indeed not his replica, as if he were Yahuwah dressed up as a human being. He is not a divine being who came to earth, in the manner of Ovid’s metamorphoses, [14] in the form of a man, but the uniquely normal human being in whom Yahuwah's logos or self-expressive activity was totally embodied. [15]
Yahushua makes no claims for himself in his own right and, at the same time, makes the most tremendous claims about what Yahuwah is doing through him and uniquely through him. Yahushua never claims to be Yahuwah personally, yet he always claims to bring Yahuwah ultimately. [16]
A strong argument against the idea that Yahuwah became man to redeem us is that no single prophecy supports the idea. Nowhere in the body of Prophetic Literature does it say that Yahuwah ever intended to make Himself into a man to redeem mankind. All the prophecies foretold of a human being uniquely qualified and empowered to rule, reign, and establish righteousness on the earth. For this reason, Satan was continually attempting to destroy the Christ line whenever he was able to determine its course. When Abraham was singled out, Satan escalated the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah. When Jacob was identified as the one through whom Christ would come, he and his children became the object of Satanic attack.
This was the consistent story throughout the Old Testament and is also seen in the New Testament. As soon as Herod knew that the baby had been born, Satan inspired him to have the child killed. Would Satan have been so determined to destroy the child if he had known that it was Yahuwah Himself who had made Himself into a baby? Did he think that by killing the baby, he could destroy Yahuwah? Such a notion is utterly foreign to Prophetic Literature, which is radically trivialized by the idea that Yahuwah meant all along that He would come Himself. We never read that a voice thundered down from Mt. Sinai or anywhere else: “Don’t make me come down there!”
The Messianic hope was, at its root, an anticipation of a human being who could represent Yahuwah on earth. That is why the prophecy so clearly spoke, “The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him.…” (Isa. 11:2). This human being would certainly have some divine attributes to carry out his job, but it is going too far to say, as the new Bible Dictionary does, that:
“The ascription by the Old Testament of various titles, functions, and relationships to the Yahuwah head prepared the Jewish mind for the Christian doctrine of a triune Deity, which is necessarily connected with that of the Incarnation. [17]
The fact is, nothing prepared the Jewish mind for the idea of a triune Godhead, as is evidenced by the millions of monotheistic Jews who still think the idea is nonsensical.
As the subtle influence of Gnostic doctrine infiltrated the Church, early Church leaders and teachers began to accept that for Christ to have been the Redeemer, he needed to transcend creation, that is, be an uncreated being, part of an eternal Godhead. [18] They reasoned that a creature could not redeem creation, but only by Yahuwah Himself. We will now seek to prove that neither of these assumptions is supported by biblical evidence and that each has led to an unscriptural conclusion that Yahushua Christ is Yahuwah “incarnate.” We will further show that this reasoning still prevails in the Christian Church today despite the biblical evidence to the contrary.
We must consider this assumption that Christ had to be “uncreated,” “eternal,” and “fully God.” We believe this idea was not derived from the Bible but was introduced under the influence of the Church of the belief in a transcendent Yahuwah who was completely detached from the process of creation. [19] Indeed, one of the main earmarks of Gnostic thought was that Yahuwah was not the Creator of this present creation, which was evil, but that this present cosmos was the work of a lesser, evil deity called a “demiurge.” This concept was complete speculation and mythology, but it influenced the direction of the Church’s teaching. The acceptance of myths into the core of the Christian Gospel sowed the seeds of a disastrous diminishment of the power of the Gospel message. Indeed, the historical validity of Yahushua of Nazareth being the promised Messiah is the core of the Gospel and a necessary element for salvation because we must believe that Yahuwah has raised him from the dead. That is, we are asked to believe in the validity of a historical event because that event, like no other, demonstrated and proved that Yahushua of Nazareth was who he said he was: the Son of the living Yahuwah, Christ the Lord.
Romans 10:9
That if you confess with your mouth, “Yahushua is Lord,” and believe in your heart that Yahuwah raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
We are not expected to “have faith” in the resurrection without evidence as if we were children believing in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. We see from Acts 1:3 that Christ provided the disciples with many convincing proofs of his resurrection:
Acts 1:3
After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of Yahuwah.
This issue of the historical validity of the Christian Gospel, especially the Resurrection, is forcefully advanced in the New Testament as a part of “the Apostles’ Doctrine.” The Apostle Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 that unless Yahushua was raised from the dead, our faith and preaching are vain (useless and worthless), and we are still in our sins. Any doctrine that compromises this historical bedrock of the Christian faith ought to be held in the greatest suspicion. The resurrection of Christ is the lynchpin of the Gospel and the affirmation of his Sonship and Messiahship. It is the fact of the Resurrection as the proof of the Messiahship of one Yahushua of Nazareth that the early Church propounded. This is the historical truth upon which the Christian Gospel is built.
However, even today, it is common to hear respected Bible teachers and commentators say that the essence of the Gospel is that “Yahuwah became a man and died for our sins.” One modern defender of incarnational theology argues that if one does not believe that Yahushua is Yahuwah incarnate, that person will die in his sins. The verse he uses to substantiate this position is found in (surprise!) the gospel of John. We will quote the verse exactly as it appears in his newsletter with his inserted bracket: [20]
John 8:24b (KJV)
…for if ye believe not that I am he [Yahuwah], ye shall die in your sins.
We strongly disagree with this interpretation and assert that the real meaning of the verse is clear in light of the stated purpose of the gospel of John: to prove that Yahushua is the Christ, the Son of the living Yahuwah (20:31; cp. Matt. 16:16). In other words if one chooses to not believe in the atoning sacrifice of Yahushua Christ as the Redeemer to mankind, he will die in his sins. To go beyond this simple and easily understandable verse and assert, as orthodox Christianity has, that one must believe that Yahushua is Yahuwah incarnate or he will die in his sins is, in our view, completely reprehensible. If only one person were discouraged from accepting Christ’s sacrifice on his behalf because of this teaching, that would be too many. But, no doubt, some people have thought they were lost in their sins simply because they could not believe in the Trinitarian view that Yahuwah became a man.
The apologist mentioned above for orthodoxy further comments about the necessity for the Redeemer to be Yahuwah Himself. His reasoning is essentially the same as the thinking of the Christians under the influence of Gnosticism in the centuries after Christ: “Throughout the Old Testament, Yahuwah says that He is the only Savior. This must be true because salvation is an infinite work, including, as it must, the full payment of the infinite penalty for sin required by Yahuwah’s infinite justice—something which only Yahuwah could accomplish. Consequently, for Yahushua to be our Savior, He must be Yahuwah. Paul called him “Yahuwah our Savior” (1 Tim. 1:1, 2:3; Titus 1:3 and 4, 2:10 and 13, 3:4) as did Peter (2 Pet. 1:1) and Jude (v. 25)…Thus, Yahuwah in His infinite love and grace became a man through the virgin birth so that He, as a man, could take the judgment we deserved and make it possible for us to be forgiven.”
The logic of this argument begins with the premise that only Yahuwah can save. Besides the influence of pagan thought, this idea comes from the fact that Yahuwah is called “Savior” in Scripture. For example:
Isaiah 43:11
I, even I, am Yahuwah, and apart from me there is no savior.
Because the above verse seems to say that Yahuwah is the only savior, the argument is that Yahushua has to be Yahuwah in order to save us, and if he is not Yahuwah, then he did not save us, and we will die in our sins. But this is a fallacious argument because it fails on several counts. First, it fails to recognize the distinction between Yahuwah as the Author of salvation and Christ as the Agent. [21] Yahuwah, Christ and others are all referred to as “savior,” but that clearly does not make them identical. The term “savior” is used of many people in the Bible. This is hard to see in the English versions because, when it is used of men, the translators almost always translated it as “deliverer.” For example:
Nehemiah 9:27
So you handed them over to their enemies, who oppressed them. But when they were oppressed they cried out to you. From heaven you heard them, and in your great compassion you gave them deliverers [“saviors”], who rescued them from the hand of their enemies.
This shows that modern translators have a Trinitarian bias that was not in the original languages. The only reason to translate the same word as “Savior” when it applies to Yahuwah or Christ but as “deliverer” when it applies to men is to make the term seem unique to Yahuwah and Yahushua when, in fact, it is not. This is a good example of how the actual meaning of Scripture can be obscured if the translators are not careful or are theologically biased.
Yahuwah’s gracious provision of “saviors” is not recognized when the same word is translated “savior” for Yahuwah and Christ but “deliverer” for others. Also lost is the testimony in Scripture that Yahuwah works through people to bring His power to bear. Of course, the fact that there are other “saviors” does not take away from Yahushua Christ, who is the only one who could and did save us from our sins and eternal death.
Second, the term “savior” must be understood in relationship to what people were being “saved” from. Yahuwah's" saving “before His Son came was rescuing His people from their various bondages and captivities, not the ultimate salvation of saving His people from their sins. That job had to wait until the birth of the man who was the Lamb of (from) Yahuwah, not the GOD who became a Lamb.
The third problem with this argument is that it fails to consider a common idiom employed in prophetic utterances, namely that actions are often attributed directly to Yahuwah when, in fact, they will be carried out by His agents. Matthew 1:21 says that the name “Yahushua” means “Yahuwah saves,” and proceeds to give a prophetic utterance based on the name: “…for he will save his people from their sins.” His name means “Yahuwah saves,” and yet it says that “he [Yahushua] will save.” This language has a rich biblical background that must be understood clearly to avoid confusion.
Yahushua is the same name as the “Joshua” of Old Testament fame. By studying the relevant biblical records, we learn that Yahuwah did not “save” Israel by doing the job Himself, or by becoming Joshua. Joshua “saved” Israel by obeying Yahuwah and leading the children of Israel out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land. The salvation was wrought by Yahuwah, empowering both Joshua and the people who went forth in faith to claim the victory that Yahuwah guaranteed for them if they would get it. Yet leading up to this victorious accomplishment of Joshua’s were several prophetic utterances spoken by Yahuwah Himself, strongly stating that He would do the job. For example:
Exodus 23:23, 27, and 28
(23) My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.
(27 I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run.
(28 I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.
It seems very clear in verse 23 that Yahuwah said that He Himself would do the delivering. But, in this same context, a few verses later, He says that the Israelites will drive His enemies out:
Exodus 23:31
“I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River. I will hand over to you the people who live in the land and you will drive them out before you.
What is going on? Is Yahuwah the “savior” here or not? The fact is, this is typical of prophetic language. [22] The principle we see over and over in Scripture is this: Yahuwah says that “He will do” something that He will empower His servants to do with His help. More specifically, when Yahuwah says that He will do something, He means that He will send someone with whom He will work to bring His will to pass. In the above case, it was Joshua, but also Moses, Gideon, the other judges, David, and many others who were the active agents of the salvation that Yahuwah “wrought.” In the case of sending someone to die for our sins, He sent Yahushua, the namesake of Joshua. Only rarely in Scripture does Yahuwah act sovereignly (i.e., without a human agent), and in the case of Yahushua, He did not take matters into His own hands. Still, he entrusted His will into the loving and obedient hands of His beloved Son. As His manner has always been, Yahuwah sent the perfect person into the battle and worked with him until the job was done. So, in a genuine sense, both Yahuwah and Yahushua “saved” us, as Old Testament heroes, saved Israel, and therefore, it is appropriate that each should be called “savior.”
We agree that Man, in his fallen condition, could never produce a qualified candidate for the job of Messiah nor initiate anything resulting in the redemption of mankind. Because sin is inherent in mankind, and because the wages of sin is death, the death of a sacrifice was required to atone for it (Heb. 9:22). Animal blood, though provisionally adequate before Christ by the grace of Yahuwah, failed to meet the requirements of a complete atonement satisfactorily. Being a spirit, Yahuwah has no blood; furthermore, Yahuwah, who is immortal and eternal, cannot die. Therefore, the only solution was that a man with perfect blood (that is, a sinless man) had to die. But because all men have been tainted by sin, there would be no possibility for a sinless human to exist without some direct, divine intervention. However, we must reject the proposition that Yahuwah could only satisfy the requirements of redemption by becoming a man Himself.
Contrary to the assumption that Christ must be Yahuwah for redemption to be accomplished, we find, upon closer scrutiny, that the opposite must be true—that unless he was a man, Yahushua could not have redeemed mankind. Yahuwah’s “infinite” nature precluded Him from being our redeemer because Yahuwah cannot die. He, therefore, sent a man equipped for the task, one who could die for our sins and then be raised from the dead to conquer death forever. This is the clear testimony of Scripture.
Romans 5:15
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man [Adam], how much more did Yahuwah’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Yahushua Christ, overflow to the many!
If it were a central tenet of Christianity that redemption had to be accomplished by Yahuwah Himself, then this section of Romans would have been the perfect place to say it. But just when Scripture could settle the argument once and for all, it says that redemption had to be accomplished by a man. The theological imaginings of “learned men” that only Yahuwah could redeem mankind are rendered null and void by the unmistakable voice of Yahuwah Himself speaking through Scripture: a man had to do the job. Not just any man, but a sinless man, a man born of a virgin—THE MAN, Yahushua, now The Man exalted to the position of “Lord” at Yahuwah’s right hand.
The crux of the Christian faith is not a mythical and mystical “incarnation” by which Yahuwah supposedly became a man, but the historical event of a purely righteous man’s death on a tree and then his being raised from the dead by Yahuwah to everlasting life. This simple but powerful truth began to be exchanged for a “mystery.” [23]
Yahushua makes clear reference to two distinct categories in John 3:6 when he says that the “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” Yahushua clearly declared Yahuwah to be “spirit” (John 4:24). Note that he did not say, “I am spirit,” or “Yahuwah is flesh” or even “The Father is spirit.” By thus placing “Yahuwah” in the category of “spirit,” when he himself is clearly a man of flesh and blood, Yahushua effectively excluded any possibility that he was Yahuwah. If Yahuwah, being spirit, can incarnate Himself as a man, then the clear scriptural distinction between flesh and spirit disintegrates. But Yahuwah the Creator, who is spirit, can create flesh, as He did in Genesis 1. His spirit brooded upon the face of the water, speaking into being things that had not existed before. These things were in “the flesh” but were not He. They were His creation, but He stood apart from them and judged them to be very good.
Creation is how Yahuwah has brought things to pass outside of what would occur naturally. He caused a human life to begin in the womb of Mary by an act of supernatural creation, not mystical incarnation (Matt. 1:18; Luke 1:35). He waited for a willing woman to bear this child, a woman whose confession and testimony were befitting the honor bestowed upon her. In this way, He brought a human being who fulfilled the conditions for becoming the Messiah into the world. That was only the first hurdle. Then He had to work with the growing child to help him maintain his sinless condition until the time he could be anointed with the holy spirit and thus be empowered to do the work to which he was called (Acts 10:38). Yes, Yahuwah had to provide (by creation) the body that could be sacrificed. Still, Yahushua had to obey Him flawlessly for his body to finally be the perfect sacrifice it needed. Thus, Yahuwah and Yahushua each had a responsibility that the other could not perform and upon which our redemption depended.
Creation is how Yahuwah has brought things to pass outside of what would occur naturally. He caused a human life to begin in the womb of Mary by an act of supernatural creation, not mystical incarnation (Matt. 1:18; Luke 1:35).
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Let us reiterate that the concept of ‘Yahushua was Yahuwah in human flesh’ nullifies the absolute necessity of Christ’s obedience because, as Yahuwah, no temptation he faced would have been genuine. Yahuwah cannot be tempted because Yahuwah cannot sin (James 1:13). It is also axiomatic that Yahuwah can neither “obey” nor “disobey” Himself. Nor does He need to command Himself to do anything, for as Yahuwah, the perfect moral being, He always acts in a timely and perfectly righteous manner.
Another unsolvable problem caused by the “incarnation” is that it destroys the plan that Yahuwah established of a first Adam and a last Adam. Romans 5:12-19 clearly defines a critical, logical parallel between Adam and Yahushua Christ in the context of the redemption of mankind. A significant consequence of the doctrine that Yahuwah became man is that it destroys this key parallel, for Adam is hardly comparable to an eternally pre-existent being. Instead, he was a created being made in the image of the One who created him, Yahuwah. Adam was not “fully man and fully Yahuwah,” “100 percent man and 100 percent Yahuwah,” “coequal with Yahuwah the Father,” or “of the same substance as the Father.” Adam was a created, empowered being who disobeyed a direct command of Yahuwah, with dire consequences to himself and all mankind.
On the other hand, Yahushua Christ was also a created being, made a man the same way that Adam was initially made, a masterpiece of Yahuwah’s creation, given dominion over Paradise and every creature He had made. Yahushua could have no intrinsic advantage over Adam, or his qualification as Redeemer would be legally nullified. He was the Last Adam, not the first God-man. The differences between Adam and Yahushua were circumstantial, not essential: Adam started tall with no navel; Yahushua started short with a navel. Adam was created fully formed and fully able to comprehend the voice of Yahuwah. Yahushua had to learn from his parents. Adam did not have to suffer the indignity of humble birth and be considered illegitimate, the son of ordinary folk. Adam had only to dress, keep the garden, and care for his wife. He had to keep from eating the fruit or die and bring death to all his descendants. Yahushua had to drink the cup of suffering and die so he could be raised to conquer death and make it possible for others to eat the “fruit” of eternal life.
In a head-to-head” comparison, Adam had every advantage, yet Yahushua overcame where Adam fell. He chose to obey Yahuwah’s will, which was that he presented himself as a perfect sacrifice for sin. For the legal requirements of redemption to be satisfied, Yahushua Christ had to be whatever Adam was. Scripture declares that Yahushua was a created human being like Adam. They were both the result of Yahuwah’s direct creative activity.
As stated, the Bible is simply the story of two Adams. Except for the initial genetic perfection that they shared in common, the contrast between them is stark. Here is perhaps another way to summarize Romans 5:12-21:
Aside from its mythological character, what are other problems with the idea of Yahuwah becoming a man? First, it is illogical and self-contradictory when we are true to the accurate biblical usages of words. The Bible explicitly states that “Yahuwah is not a man…” (Num. 23:19), which defines two distinct categories, Yahuwah and man. In terms of symbolic logic, it could be stated this way: If Yahuwah is not a man, then if someone is a “man,” he cannot be “Yahuwah.”
Yahuwah’s holiness precludes Him from becoming anything other than what He is. Rubenstein points out the illogic of the assertion that “Yahuwah can do anything.”
Athanasius [a bishop of Alexandria who spearheaded the orthodox Trinitarian position] says that Yahuwah can do anything He chooses to do and that He decided to turn Himself into a man for our salvation. Yahushua Christ is not one of Yahuwah’s creatures, he insists, but Yahuwah Himself, incarnated in human form. These sound like clear statements, but actually, they are hopelessly confusing. Can Yahuwah do anything He chooses to do? Of course—except those things that are inconsistent with being Yahuwah. Can He choose to be evil or ignorant? Could He be the Devil—or nothing at all? [24]
Perfection cannot be improved upon or changed. He is not a pantheistic “god” who dwells in everything. He is holy, meaning He stands apart from and above His creation yet intimately involved in it. Therefore, Yahuwah cannot alter His essential nature, which by definition is perfect, and perfection cannot be improved upon. But even if He could, in doing so, He would, by definition, no longer be “Yahuwah.”
If Yahushua Christ is “Yahuwah in human flesh,” there are other scriptural casualties. First, it renders the pathos of Gethsemane virtually meaningless, as Yahushua prayed three times for them. this cup to be removed from me (Luke 22:42). If he is “of the same substance” as the Father and an eternally integral part of a “Godhead,” then his will is of necessity the same as “Yahuwah’s.” If he struggled only in his “human side,” as Trinitarians argue, while accepting the assignment in his “divine side,” we are indeed left unimpressed by the difficulty he faced, compared to the way we face temptation without the benefit of a “divine” side that is sure to dominate.
If it were “Yahuwah’s” will, Yahushua should die, and Yahushua is “Yahuwah” in human flesh, it was also his will to die. Why did Yahushua wrestle so intensely with the assignment to sacrifice himself, finally surrendering and saying, “…nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done”? If this struggle were between his divine and human natures, then why invoke Yahuwah, his Father, in prayer in what was an internal, almost schizophrenic, struggle? [25]
In our opinion, he is attempting to artificially exalt Christ via theological manipulation, resulting in the complete negation of the heroic character of this free act of his will. Unless he was a man, “…in all points tempted like as we are…” (Heb. 4:15 – KJV), with absolute freedom to turn his back on the assignment, the value of his act as a generous sacrifice (an emptying of his own will and desire) is virtually eliminated. If he were Yahuwah, he could hardly deny himself or disobey his own directive. Seeing Yahushua as an empowered human being who had to obey Yahuwah as we do is the proper context and backdrop for appreciating his heroism. Seeing him as essentially Yahuwah, endowed with a divine perspective of human events, shows that he was only going through the prearranged motions. In that case, his heroic commitment and example collide with his supposed “deity” and sink into a gray, uninspiring sea of inevitability.
Along with the demise of Christ’s heroism is the destruction of the logic of Philippians 2:8-11, and a diminishing of his exaltation based upon the merits of his obedience. Scripture here reveals that Yahuwah highly exalted Yahushua Christ in response to his humbling himself to be obedient unto death, even death as humiliating and painful as crucifixion. If Christ were “coeternal” and “pre-existent” with “Yahuwah the Father,” and if he already occupied the highest position in glory before the “incarnation,” then what is the significance of this extraordinary exaltation relative to his obedience unto death? Was he not simply returning to his former elevated station, one that could hardly be denied since he willingly gave it up with the understanding that he would be able to return to it? Suppose we are truly concerned about giving Christ his proper due and honoring him appropriately. Does it not make more sense to place his accomplishments in a theological framework in which his heroism is more apparent rather than less? [26] Consider the power of James Moffatt’s translation of Isaiah 9:6 in this regard:
Isaiah 9:6
For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us; the royal dignity he wears, and this the title that he bears—“A wonder of a counselor, a divine hero, a father for all time, a peaceful prince!”
Yet another casualty of the “Incarnation” is the significance of his Lordship. Acts 2:36 says that Yahuwah made Yahushua of Nazareth “both Lord and Christ.” If Yahushua Christ were already “Yahuwah,” then one cannot comprehend the granting of the title “Lord” to him as anything particularly notable because he already had every right to the title and had already been exercising it in the Old Testament. Again, manmade theological attempts to exalt Christ beyond what is revealed explicitly in Scripture result in a radical demeaning of the value of his obedience and accomplishments on our behalf. Man, however sincerely, cannot add to Yahushua’s greatness by making him something that Scripture does not. Any attempt to do so significantly subtracts from the greatness of the biblical message. When we let the Word of Yahuwah speak for itself and allow every piece of the puzzle to fit together without squeezing it to fit our traditions or preconceived notions, both Yahuwah and His Son are glorified, reason is satisfied, and the Christian Church is blessed as it builds upon a sound cornerstone.
As Paul prophesied, myths replaced the clear and straightforward assertions of Scripture. One of the myths that arose was that Yahushua Christ existed before his birth. This idea led to the necessity of the doctrine of the Incarnation, which attempts to explain how Yahuwah became a human. In his thorough examination of the doctrine of the Incarnation, James D. G. Dunn recognizes that the concept arose late in the first century through a mistakenly literal interpretation of the gospel of John. Dunn devotes many hundreds of pages to documenting that the doctrine of pre-existence can be substantiated only from John:
Only in the Fourth Gospel does the understanding of a personal pre-existence fully emerge, of Yahushua as the divine Son of Yahuwah before the world began sent into the world by the Father…at the end of the first century a clear concept of pre-existent divine sonship has emerged, to become the dominant (and often the only) emphasis in subsequent centuries. [27]
Other verses in the New Testament have been used occasionally to attempt to establish the doctrine of pre-existence. Still, many scholars have concluded that neither Paul, Peter, James, or the Synoptics portray Yahushua as a pre-existent being. Without the idea of Christ existing in some form before his birth, there would be no need for the doctrine of an “incarnation.” Many non-Trinitarians through the ages have openly stood against the Trinity but have believed that Yahushua was the first of all of Yahuwah’s creation and was the being through whom Yahuwah created the world. Arius, the bishop who debated with Athanasius at the Counsel of Nicaea in 325 A.D., held this position. In examining the gospel of John, Chapter 6, we freely admit that there are verses in Scripture that seem to say that Yahushua existed before his birth. However, there is a greater weight of evidence against such an incongruous notion (can one exist before he exists?), and the verses that seem to say he did “pre-exist” can be understood in a way that does not support such a counterintuitive notion. Furthermore, the few “pre-existence” verses are outnumbered by many clear verses that teach that Yahushua began his life as a seed in the womb of Mary.
The first place the Messiah is mentioned is in the Old Testament, and there is no statement that Yahushua was already alive in any form. On the contrary, countless references to the Messiah speak of him in the literal future tense. For example, “I will raise up for them a prophet…” (Deut. 18:18), is typical in speaking of the Messiah in a future tense. Another example is in Samuel: “…I will raise up your offspring…I will be his father, and he will be my son…” (2 Sam. 7:12 and 14). Trinitarians say that the Messiah was “God the Son,” the second person of the Trinity, who was “co-eternal” (i.e., never created). In that case, he would “already” have been the Son, and using the future tense is misleading, even inaccurate. Another example is: “…His name will be called Wonderful Counselor…” (Isa. 9:6) The phrase “will be called” shows clearly that the people did not think the Messiah was already around. He would have already had a name if the Messiah were alive. Some theologians believe that Yahushua appeared in the Old Testament, but there is no place where the text says that “Yahushua” appeared. Yahuwah and angels concurred for people, but never Yahushua, for he did not yet exist. [28]
If Yahushua did “pre-exist,” then the only way he could become a baby would be to “incarnate.” Thus, the fact that the Scripture does not mention any such “incarnation” is a good argument that it never actually occurred. This is made even more apparent when the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke are read because they indicate that Yahushua’s life began when Yahuwah impregnated Mary. For example, the wording of Matthew 1:18 is specific. Most translations read something like: “This is how the birth of Yahushua came to be….” The Greek word translated as “birth” is genesis, which technically means “beginning” and is translated as “birth” only when the context demands it. It was apparent that the early copyists were unhappy that the Bible said “the beginning of Yahushua Christ,” so in many Greek texts, they changed “genesis,” “beginning,” to the closely related word, “genesis,” which means “birth.” [29] Thankfully, honest people are doing textual work today, and it is openly admitted, even by Trinitarians, that the original word used in Matthew was genesis (“beginning”).
As Peter declared by revelation, “For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you” (1 Pet. 1:20). Christ was in Yahuwah’s foreknowledge before the world began, but was not yet a reality. Christians are spoken of in precisely the same way. Romans 8:29 says Christians were foreknown. Ephesians 1:4 says Christians were chosen before the foundation of the world. 2 Thessalonians 2:13 says Christians were chosen from the “beginning.” 2 Timothy 1:9 says the grace of Yahuwah was granted us from all eternity. Yet no theologians say that Christians “pre-existed,” so it is inconsistent of them to take the same wording about both Christ and Christians and arrive at two different conclusions—that Christ “pre-existed,” but Christians were only “foreknown.”
Many Trinitarian theologians elevate the “high Christology” of John's gospel and read into the writings of the Apostle Paul that he understood Christ to be some form of pre-existent, angelic being. But even before Yahushua was born, some Jewish rabbis and authors identified Yahuwah’s Messiah as an angelic being. For example, the Jewish scholars who translated the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, identified Christ as an angelic being in Isaiah 9:6. [30]
The widely held and deeply rooted belief that Christ was a created being was a major obstacle that had to be overcome for the Trinity to be accepted by most Christians. In the first place, it is a clear tenet of Scripture that, born as a baby, Yahushua became the glorified Christ with a new body and acquired the position of “Lord” that the Word says he earned by his obedience to Yahuwah. It was quite inconceivable to the Jews and early Christians that Yahuwah Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, could undergo growth and change because the Bible testifies that He is perfect and does not change (Mal. 3:6; James 1:17). Thus, the fact that Christ did grow and change presupposed that he was not Yahuwah, but a creation of Yahuwah (Luke 2:52). No wonder centuries of theological debate were required before the Trinity was accepted in the Church! Not only was it non-scriptural, but it flew in the face of another ancient myth we have been discussing—Jewish Angel-Christology. The doctrine of the Trinity was not accepted immediately but had to gain ascendancy by replacing existing beliefs.
The battle for the ascendancy of Trinitarian doctrine was fought on many fronts, and the weapons included excommunication and the sword. Doctrinally, the battle raged fiercely. Trinitarians had to either answer or sidestep many questions, and the path was a winding one with many detours. It is not within the scope of this article to cover the whole matter in depth to show all that was going on theologically in the early centuries in the Church. Still, these facts can be learned from many objective historical sources.
The essence of the Gospel, that Yahuwah “made” the man Yahushua “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), had to be downplayed, even done away with. If Christ were Yahuwah in eternity past, and if he were Yahuwah in the flesh, then it was hardly a “promotion” or “honor” for him to be “made Lord.” He was returning to the position he had occupied previously, his earthly “incarnation,” after his guest's appearance here on earth.
To change from the original biblical understanding that Yahushua became “both Lord and Christ,” to the new doctrine of what is actually “Yahuwah regaining His rightful position as Yahuwah,” another new doctrine had to be developed. This was the doctrine of the “two natures in Christ,” commonly understood as Christ being both “100 percent man and 100 percent God.” This new idea of the two natures in Christ also had to overcome obstacles, and it did. Martin Werner writes: “But the notion of a transformation [that Yahushua went from a baby to “Lord”] had been too clearly set forth by Paul and the Synoptics to allow its being completely disregarded. Accordingly, the Church conceded the transformation scheme in its theology when the Angel Christology had been definitively repudiated. This took the form of the notion that the “human nature,” with which divine nature had united itself in Yahushua, had become deified through the Resurrection and Exaltation.
As mentioned above, the Church began to accept and teach that only Yahuwah Himself could redeem mankind. If so, it follows that an angelic being or a creation of Yahuwah could not do so. Let us again state emphatically and categorically that the teaching that the redemption of mankind had to be accomplished by Yahuwah and not by a man is grossly unbiblical. The Bible teaches that the Redeemer had to be a true man and not a hybrid “Yahuwah-Man.”
Several verses refer to Yahushua coming “from heaven,” “from above,” “sent from Yahuwah,” etc., and these are all found in the gospel of John. We explored some of the reasons for this language in the Fourth Gospel in Chapter 8. Still, we will now address the issue further because of the way Trinitarians use the gospel of John to establish the doctrines of Pre-existence and Incarnation:
These verses may seem impressive proof that Yahushua did “pre-exist” in heaven before his birth. However, how would the people to whom Yahushua was speaking understand his words? The Jews were not even expecting Yahuwah to impregnate a virgin to bring forth their Messiah, much less that Yahuwah Himself would mystically transform Himself into the Messiah. The concept of Yahuwah having such a direct relationship with a mortal woman was foreign to Jewish thinking. Mary, upon being told she would bear “the Son of the Most High,” said to the angel, “How will this be”…“since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34).
A quick study of Jewish commentaries on the Old Testament verses that Christians use to show the virgin birth in prophecy will demonstrate that the Jews did not then, and do not now, interpret them to mean a virgin birth. That is one reason Christ was accused of being “illegitimate” (John 8:41). James Dunn, himself a believer in the doctrine of pre-existence, wrote in Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation: “We have examples of men who are said to be the offspring of a union between some god and mortal woman (Dionysus, Heracles, Alexander the Great), but this was foreign to Jewish thought, and Jewish writers seem to have avoided the conception completely.” [31] Thus, the Jews would not have understood Christ saying that he “came from above” to mean that he was “incarnated.” How would they have understood him?
If studied in the language and culture in which they were spoken, words or phrases that seem to communicate one truth often communicate something else entirely. This is a common occurrence in verbal intercourse. James Dunn’s exhaustive study devoted to the origin of the doctrine of the “Incarnation” was motivated by a desire to understand the words of the New Testament in their original context. He writes: “My concern has been all the time, so far as it is possible, to let the New Testament writers speak for themselves, to understand their words as they would have intended, to hear them as their first readers would have heard them…” Unfortunately, Dunn is not sensitive to idiomatic language and falls into the same trap many Trinitarian New Testament scholars do, that of taking figurative language literally, and literal language figuratively. Once again, we see that the proper acknowledgment of figures of speech is crucial for sound biblical exegesis.
There is a standard Hebrew and Aramaic idiom that when Yahuwah is the author of something, the Jews spoke of it as “coming from Yahuwah,” “coming from heaven,” “coming down from heaven,” etc. For example, the very prologue of John, most often used to substantiate the doctrine of Incarnation, says in John 1:6 (KJV): “There was a man sent from Yahuwah, whose name was John.” Does this mean that John, too, was a pre-existent divine being sent from heaven and became a human by an “incarnation”? Clearly not, but he was “sent from Yahuwah” in the sense that Yahuwah commissioned him to perform an important function.
There are many other examples of this idiom. Yahuwah said in Malachi that He would “open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing,” and today, we still use the word “Godsend” for a blessing that comes at just the right time. The Bible speaks of the “bread from heaven,” referring to manna, but the manna did not float down like snow. Instead, it appeared like frost on the ground. It was said to “come down from heaven” because Yahuwah was its source. Being the source, Yahuwah is the best explanation for Christ’s statements that Yahuwah sent him, came from above, etc. The Jews would naturally have understood Christ’s statements that way, and there is no evidence at all that they would have expected Christ to be speaking of a literal descent from heaven or an “incarnation.”
Concerning the example of John the Baptist as a man “sent from Yahuwah,” consider the following verse:
Matthew 21:25
[Yahushua asked the Jews:] John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven [i.e., was Yahuwah its source?], or from men?” They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’
John’s baptism was “from heaven” because Yahuwah was the source of the inspiration. Yahushua “came from heaven” because Yahuwah was the source of the seed created in Mary. It would be an intrusion on the language and the culture of the times to insist that the Bible teaches an incarnation when there is evidence that the words used to “prove” it have an entirely different meaning. We will quote one final example that should suffice to make the point. James 1:17 says that good and perfect gifts are “from above” and “come down” from the Father. This verse says that Yahuwah is the source of the beautiful things spoken of. No one believes that it is not from Yahuwah unless something drops from the sky.
There is yet another Jewish idiomatic expression we must be aware of when studying the verses about Yahushua Christ. When something is going to happen in the future, it is often spoken of as occurring in the past or as already in existence. This is very well known to Hebrew scholars, and it is called by different names, including: “the prophetic perfect,” “the historical sense of prophecy,” and “the preterite of prophetic vision.” The distinguished scholar and author of Young’s Concordance wrote: “The past is frequently used to express the certainty of a future action.” Before Abraham had any descendants, Yahuwah said to him: “…To your descendants I have given this land…” (Gen. 15:18 – ). Jude 14 speaks of Enoch’s prophecy, which literally reads “…the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones.” Of course, the Lord has not yet come, but the event is so certain that it is placed in the past tense. There are many more examples of this in the Bible.
In his magnificent work, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible, E. W. Bullinger states:
“The past tense is used instead of the future when the speaker views the action as being as good as done. This is very common in the Divine prophetic utterances where, though the sense is literally future, it is regarded and spoken of as though it were already accomplished in the Divine purpose and determination. The figure is to show the absolute certainly of the things spoken of. [32]
Some of the examples of the Hebrew text speaking of a future event in the past are:
The idioms of the Hebrew culture come over into the New Testament text as well. Bullinger explains that the Hebrew language and cultural idioms are reflected in the Greek text. He writes: “The fact must ever be remembered that, while the language of the New Testament is Greek, the agents and instruments employed by the Holy Spirit were Hebrews. Yahuwah spake ‘by the mouth of his holy prophets.’ Hence, while the ‘mouth,’ throat, vocal chord, and breath were human, the words were Divine. No one can understand the phenomenon or explain how it comes to pass, for Inspiration is a fact to be believed and received and not a matter to be reasoned about. Therefore, the words are Greek, and the thoughts and idioms are Hebrew. On this account, some have condemned the Greek of the New Testament because it is not classical, while others, in their anxiety to defend it, have endeavored to find parallel usages in classical Greek authors. Both might have spared their pains by recognizing that the New Testament Greek abounds with Hebraisms, i.e., expressions conveying Hebrew usages and thoughts in Greek words.” [34]
Another clear example of the prophetic perfect in the New Testament occurs in the book of Jude. Jude 14 speaks of Enoch’s prophecy, which literally reads, “…the Lord came with ten thousand of His holy ones.” Of course, the Lord has not come yet, but his coming is so confident that it is placed in the past tense. It can easily be seen how idioms of the language, like the “prophetic perfect,” put translators in a challenging position. If they translate the text literally, many Christians will be perplexed. However, if they do not, then the powerful way that Yahuwah communicates what will absolutely occur in the future is lost.
We need to understand the prophetic perfect. For example, if we are studying Scripture and we come across an obviously future reference to the Messiah (Isaiah 53:5, which speaks of the Messiah already having been pierced more than 700 years before he was born), we are not confused but understand that Yahuwah is using the idiom to communicate the certainty of his being pierced.
There are many important examples of the “prophetic perfect” in the Bible, and an exhaustive list would be formidable to compile. However, the examples listed above should be enough to show that a future event may be spoken of in the past tense to show that it will come to pass. The fact that the past tense is used for a future event all through Scripture should prove that it was commonly understood.
How sad that the vast majority of Christians believe the fable that Yahuwah became a baby. The truth is nearly just the opposite—a baby became the Lord!
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It should now be clear that the doctrine of the Incarnation is not biblical and was developed by man, particularly in the third through fifth centuries, in conjunction with the doctrines of the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ. Based upon this evidence, we propose that the idea of incarnation gives way to a simpler and more biblical explanation of Yahushua’s origin—that Yahuwah was his source by the same process of unique creation that brought the heavens and the earth into being. We agree that it is essential for Christians to believe in the virgin birth of Yahushua because, without that teaching, Yahushua is merely the offspring of Joseph and Mary and tainted by the sin of mankind. If so, he would be incapable of being our Redeemer because he could never present himself as the perfect sacrifice for sins. In that case, Christianity would indeed fall apart. But nothing is lost if a shift is made in Christian thinking from Yahushua being the “incarnation” of Yahuwah to Yahushua being the creation of Yahuwah, his Father. How sad that the vast majority of Christians believe the fable that Yahuwah became a baby. The truth is nearly just the opposite—a baby became the Lord!
Endnotes:
1. Dunn, op. cit., Christology in the Making, p. 4, quoting M. Wiles.
2. F. L. Cross, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford University Press, N.Y., 1983), p. 696.
3. New Bible Dictionary, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub., Grand Rapids, MI, 1975), p. 558.
4. Ibid., p. 558.
5. Ibid., p. 560.
6. Ibid., p. 559.
7. Ibid., p. 558.
8. Tim LaHaye, Yahushua: Who Is He? (Multnomah Books, Sisters, OR, 1996), p. 80.
9. Maurice Wiles, The Remaking of Christian Doctrine (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1978), p. 44.
10. Op. cit., New Bible Dictionary, p. 558.
11. Robinson, op. cit., Honest to Yahuwah, pp. 65 and 66.
12. John Hick stirred controversy in the 1970s and 80s with the publishing of his book, The Myth of God Incarnate (SCM Press, 1977), p. 161. He regarded the doctrine of the Incarnation as something entirely foreign to the whole of New Testament thought, calling it “a dogma that Yahushua himself would probably have regarded as blasphemous.” Rudolf Bultmann sees so much influence of mythology on the doctrine that he called for a “demythologizing” of Christianity, even including the resurrection, which he also questioned the historicity of. Modern critic A. N. Wilson is particularly demeaning of what he views as apostolic borrowing from pagan mythology to establish the Christian faith as a sufficiently grandiose story that could be competitive with the Greek and Roman fables. See A. N. Wilson, Paul: The Mind of the Apostle (W. W. Norton, N.Y., 1997).
13. A. N. Wilson, Paul: The Mind of the Apostle (W. W. Norton & Co., N.Y., 1997), pp. 75 and 76.
14. Ovid was a great Latin poet famous for his narrative poem called Metamorphoses (Transformations), which included more than 200 tales taken from the favorite legends and myths of the ancient world. Interestingly, Ovid considered the stories sheer nonsense, and not to be believed. He wrote: “I prate of ancient poets’ monstrous lies, Ne’er seen now or then by human eyes.” Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (Penguin Books, NY, 1940) p. 21.
15. Robinson, Priority, pp. 393 and 394.
16. Robinson, op. cit., Honest to Yahuwah, p. 65.
17. New Bible Dictionary, p. 558.
18. Dart cites Bultmann’s research to support this connection between his idea of “Christianity” (orthodox tradition) and Gnosticism:
Christianity asserts that humanity cannot redeem itself, that is “save” itself from the world and the powers that hold sway in it. In this concept, primitive Christianity was greatly influenced by Gnostic ideas, said Bultmann. “Man’s redemption,” he wrote, “can only come from the divine world as an event, according to both the Gnostics and the Christians.”
Rudolf Bultmann, Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting (The World Publishing, Cleveland, 1956), pp. 162-171. John Dart, op. cit., The Jesus of Heresy and History, p. 39.
19. Ibid., p. 57. The following quote from Dart exemplifies the scholarly belief that the Yahuwah of the Bible was unknowable: “In the wisdom genre, Yahuwah tended to be more inscrutable for humans.‘ He is removed into the distance and placed high above earthly concerns so that His acts in history and His acts of creation become veiled,’” writes Kurt Rudolph, citing Job 28 and Proverbs 30:1-4.
20. Dave Hunt, The Berean Call, April, 1999.
21. Yahuwah is both the Author of the plan of salvation and an active player in our salvation. For example, Yahuwah, the Father, is called “savior” in 1 Tim. 1:1, 2:3, 4:10; Titus 3:4; Jude 25. Yahushua Christ is called “savior” because he is the agent who carried out Yahuwah’s plan, and without whom it could not have come to pass. See Appendix A (Luke 1:47).
22. Perhaps the clearest example of this is in Exodus 17:14b, where Yahuwah clearly says, “I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” But He did not mean that He would do so Himself without human agency, as is revealed in Deuteronomy 25:19, when Moses says: “When the Lord your Yahuwah gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!” 1 Samuel 15 also verifies that the Israelites were to accomplish the blotting out of the Amalekites with Yahuwah’s help. They could not sit back and let Yahuwah do it, even though His utterance in Exodus 17:14 could have been interpreted that way.
23. One particularly enthusiastic supporter of incarnational theology strongly affirms that the Incarnation is the foundation of the faith: “He did not become less Yahuwah because of the incarnation, Yahuwah manifest in the flesh is the foundation of Christianity. That one should be the God-man is the great mystery of our faith.” W. E. Best, Christ Could Not Be Tempted (W. E. Best Book Missionary Trust, Houston, TX, 1985), p. 8.
24. Rubenstein, op. cit., When Yahushua Became Yahuwah, p. 118.
25. It is interesting that even the devotees of the doctrine of the Incarnation see a problem with the “dual nature” theory of his being. W. E. Best writes: “To say that Christ could have sinned as to his human nature but not as to his divine nature forces me to conclude that there was a conflict between his two natures. This was impossible because his human nature was united to his Divine Person. Thus, there was never any conflict in Christ as there is in the Christian (Rom. 7:15-25).” Best, op. cit., Christ Could Not Be Tempted, p. 15.
26. The reader can decide for himself which of the following sounds more logical and scriptural:
a) Yahuwah Himself became a man, coming down to earth from heaven to do a job. He is treated poorly while trying to do the job and is killed. He then raises Himself from the dead and goes back to where He came from, declaring Himself victorious.
b) Yahuwah created a human being, whom Yahuwah prepared and commissioned to do a job. The man comes from a humble, earthly origin, is treated poorly and killed. Because he did such a good job, however, Yahuwah raised him from the dead and promoted him to an exalted position in heaven.
27. James Dunn, op. cit., Christology in the Making, p. 61.
28. Daniel 3:25 is often cited in this connection as evidence that Yahushua did make a few cameo appearances in the Old Testament. When Nebuchadnezzar threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace, they were not only kept alive; they were joined by a fourth man, whom Nebuchadnezzar described as “a son of the gods.” The NIV Study Bible, despite the translators’ belief that Yahushua was the Lord in the Old Testament, says the following regarding this verse: “Nebuchadnezzar was speaking as a pagan polytheist and was content to conceive of the fourth figure as a lesser heavenly being sent by the all-powerful God of the Israelites.” The one that Yahuwah sent was clearly an angel, as Daniel 3:28 makes plain.
29. For an examination of this and other changes that copyists made to make the text more Trinitarian, see Bart Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (Oxford University Press, N.Y., 1993).
30. Werner, op. cit., pp. 132-139. According to Werner, some of the early references to Christ being an angel are: The Ascencio Jesaiae, the Ebionites who recognized Christ as an archangel; Theodotus, who wrote that Christ was “an angel of the [Gnostic] pleroma; Apelles the Marcionite, the book of Jeu [probably Jehu]; the writing Pistis Sophia; the writing Sophia Yahushua Christi, which identifies Yahushua as “the angel of Light”; the Epistula Apostolorum has Christ as the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary; the widely known Shepherd Of Hermas portrays Christ as the angel Michael; Of Threefold Fruits; Justin wrote that Christ was the highest angel prince; Clement wrote that Christ appeared as an angel in the Old Testament; Origen wrote that Christ was the angel who guarded Paradise; Methodius of Olympus wrote that Christ was first of the Archangels; the book of Enoch has “the son of man” as an angel; and Novatian and Lactonius referred to Christ as an angel.
31. Dunn, op. cit., Christology, p. 20.
32. E. W. Bullinger, op. cit., Figures of Speech, p. 518.
33. Edward J. Young, The Book of Isaiah (William B. Eerdmans Pub., Grand Rapids. 1996), Vol. 1, p. 329.
34. Bullinger, op. cit. Figures of Speech, pp. 819 and 820.
This is a non-WLC article. Source: https://www.biblicalunitarian.com/articles/jesus-christ-incarnated-or-created
We have replaced the English titles and names of the Father and the Son with those employed by the apostles. In the scriptural quotations provided, we have restored their original names as used by the inspired writers. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the historical development by which the name Yahushua came to be rendered as “Jesus.” Additionally, we recognize that the English term “God” has been commonly employed as an equivalent for the Hebrew Eloah or Elohim. -WLC Team
