Preincarnate

Definition of pre-incarnate - Existing before the Incarnation; specifically designating Christ in his divine pre-existence.
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Of course, this is only a perception by some, not reality. In fact, many Jews of that day, watching the signs of the times, were expecting the Messiah at any time.


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First-century AD Judea was awash in Messianic expectation and fervor. Every few years, a new Messianic candidate would arise, gather a following, revolt against the Romans, and be executed see, for instance, Acts 5: In the midst of this period, the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 3: In this context, it implies that the Old Testament is full of references, allusions, prophecies, and instructions concerning the true Christ.

In other words, far from being mostly silent about Jesus, the Old Testament is a vital source of revelation about Him! Jesus verifies this Himself in Luke Most people realize that the Old Testament contains many prophecies of Christ, and in fact, Jesus fulfilled about individual prophetic details. More broadly, however, the Old Testament chronicles, not just prophecies of His coming, but also the historical activities of the One who became Jesus Christ.

Unlike other humans, Jesus was not a created Being but God the Word who "became flesh and dwelt among us" John 1: In short, He pre-existed as God—with all that entails—before His physical life and ministry.

pre-incarnate | Definition of pre-incarnate in English by Oxford Dictionaries

In the famous passage in Philippians 2: And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Clearly, Paul believes that Jesus had existed as a divine Being before His birth, and that He volunteered to divest Himself of much of His glory, power, and prerogatives to become a lowly human being and to die to redeem humanity from its sins. Moreover, the apostle asserts in other places that the pre-incarnate Christ was Creator of all things I Corinthians 8: The Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—contain many claims of divinity and pre-existence, though few of them are explicit.

In lamenting over Jerusalem, He grieves over how He wanted to comfort and protect the people "often" throughout history, but they resisted Matthew After the scribes argue, "Who can forgive sins but God alone? No attempt will be made to follow the traditional limitation of Christology to the Person of Christ only. The importance of His work in the total revelation of Christ justifies the extended discussion. Messianic prophecies will be included in the later discussion of Christ incarnate. Christianity by its very name has always had Christ as its historical and logical center.

The doctrine of Christ is vitally related to every important doctrine of theology. The important matter of bibliology—the place of the Bible and divine revelation in theology—is logically inseparable from the doctrine of Christ.

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It is a matter of history that those who have interpreted literally the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the infallible and inspired Word of God have almost always accepted the deity of Christ. It is normal also for those who accept the unique deity of Christ to also accept the Scriptures.


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This subjective approach finally had its reductio ad absurdum in the liberalism of a decade ago which was unblushing humanism. The ultimate in the destruction of the Biblical doctrine of Christ was reached early in the twentieth century when the charge of certain liberal theologians that Jesus was only a myth began to be taken seriously in the theological world. Liberal theology in some quarters had accepted as already proved that Jesus was not essential to Christianity, but it remained for Arthur Drews in his The Christian Myth to state it blatantly and win a group of followers.

It is taken for granted that the destruction of grounds for implicit faith in the infallibility of Scripture has been achieved and that the Jesus of history was after all only a man with at best a deeper God-consciousness than others.

The Pre-Incarnate Christ

Douglas Clyde Macintosh, Professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion in Yale University, has perhaps stated what may be accepted as the norm of present liberal attitude toward Jesus in the following statement:. In our sketch of the life and thought of the Reverend John Cotton we noted the theory advanced by Sir Henry Vane the younger, Governor of the Colony in , that the Holy Spirit is united to the believer in the same manner as the divine nature was united with the human Jesus. This rather startling Christological suggestion, which seems to have been rejected as heretical by the theological builders of that day, bids fair to be made, after some slight reshaping, the headstone of the corner in the reconstructed temple of Christian evangelicalism.

Conversely, Jesus strengthened the emphasis on progressive revelations substitution of present religious experience as a norm of doctrine for the infallible Scriptures. We are told today, then, that the real question is not whether the Scriptures are infallible, whether Christ was uniquely divine, but rather what Christ speaks to our hearts today through our religious experiences. Barthianism, like other forms of modernism, is utterly bankrupt as far as providing a basis for Christology. It is, in fact, a revival in new terminology of ancient Gnostic ideas which were utterly destructive to Christian faith.

The charge that Barthianism is a new form of liberalism rather than a new form of Reformed theology can be sustained on both theological and philosophical grounds. While, therefore, the history of Christology in the past and present will serve as a guide in the present study, the time-honored path of dependence upon the Scriptures will be followed instead of the present modern spirit.

Christology has a more extensive field of literature than any other aspect of theology. It is an impossibility for any one man to embrace the entire field of Christology in an ordinary lifetime, but it is necessary to define the Scriptural doctrine in reasonable limits without cumbrance of historical data.

If this study is used to this end, the purpose of the author will be achieved. The definition of the preincarnate Person of the Son of God is to all practical purposes the statement and proof of the eternal deity of the Second Person of the Trinity. In view of the ancient and modern attempts to reduce in one way or another the deity of Christ to a level below that of the First Person, the Father, it is necessary to emphasize certain aspects of the preincarnate Person of Christ. Crucial in this argument is the proof that Christ is eternal.

Supporting this evidence is the full-orbed revelation that Christ possessed all the attributes of God, and that His works, titles, majesty, and promises are all those of God Himself. The theophanies of the Old Testament provide historical evidence of His pre-existence. In denouncing the Arian heresy that Christ was the first of created spirits and therefore not eternal, the church has, since , maintained the eternity and deity of the Son of God in its historic creeds.

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The purpose of this discussion is to restate in brief form the Scriptural evidence in support of this doctrine. For the sake of brevity in statement, the expression preincarnate Christ will be used as equivalent to the term preincarnate Person of the Son of God , which is more accurate. The doctrine of the eternity of the Son of God is most important to the doctrine of Christology as a whole. If Christ is not eternal, then He came into existence in time and is a created being and vastly different in being and attributes from God Himself. If Christ is eternal, it is affirming that He has no dependence upon another for His existence, that He is in fact self-existent.

Was Melchizedek the Preincarnate Christ?

It is saying more than that He was pre-existent. This would affirm only that He existed before the incarnation. Arius, for instance, believed in the pre-existence of Christ but not in His eternity. To affirm that Christ existed from all eternity past is to attribute to Him all that self-sufficiency and independence which is true of God. The Scriptures bear a clear witness to the fact of the eternity of Christ, sometimes directly, often indirectly.

He is the eternal I AM cf.

Barrier - Preincarnate

The New Testament is, if anything, more explicit than the Old Testament. The incarnate Christ is an unexplainable character apart from His eternal deity.

The introduction to the Gospel of John has no other justifiable explanation than a statement of His eternity: