Can God Become a Man?

That's impossible. How is that impossible? How can I be a man? No one knows who is God. It doesn't suit his majesty to become a man, that's what I believe. I mean God chose prophets to send his message and for him to be a man, it doesn't suit his majesty.

The God is not a man or a woman in our belief as a Muslim. We believe as God unknown is a God we have to follow and we will find what's going on and what he is will be in the judgment day.

The Incarnation and the Possibility of God Becoming Man

Welcome to Midnight Cry, a program that is committed to speaking the truth in love. I'm your host, Romuald Gossain and today we have with us Dr. James White who will be discussing with us the very controversial subject of can God become a man.

First of all, welcome to the show James. Great to be with you. Now, if God is pure, then by virtue of becoming a man, doesn't he become impure?

Only if the human nature that he joins to himself can be considered to be impure. And of course that takes us back to asking the real question, can God create a perfect human nature? And I believe he certainly can and in fact he did once in the person of Adam.

When Adam was created, what is the biblical testimony? That what he had created was very good. There was no imperfection, there was no impurity in Adam until the fall itself. And so when we talk about God becoming man, we're not talking about God ceasing to be God, we're not talking about a change in a human nature, we're talking about God's freedom and ability to join to specifically the second person of the Trinity, the Son, a human nature so that you have a perfect divine nature and you have the perfect human nature.

They're joined together, not intermixed, nothing in the human is taken out so that the divine takes its place, but that there is a perfect union between the two that does not confuse them, does not confound them, does not intermingle them.

We're not talking about a demigod where God's nature has become less and man's nature has been elevated so you've got sort of an intermediate type being, no. There is a perfect relationship so that Jesus is the God-man, not 50 God and 50 man, but 100 God and 100 man because anything less than that would not be either one, it would not be divine or human.

And so the idea of impurity or imperfection in the human nature would require you to believe that God could not create a perfect human nature and we know from Scripture that He already did in Adam, there's no reason why He could not a second time in the human nature to which the Son is joined to make the person of Jesus Christ.

The Word Became Flesh and the Trinity in the Qur'an

So then when did this come about, I mean when we talk about God becoming a man, we're really talking about what happened 2 ,000 years ago. Can you please explain that because I think sometimes the Muslim mindset is that they imagine that God, this great transcendent God, somehow had a physical relationship with Mary.

Right, well there's two things there. From the biblical perspective, John 1 .14 says, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And it's important to realize that Word was the Word that had been described in John 1 .1 as having eternally existed, having been in relationship with the Father, and being as to His nature, deity.

That Word became flesh at a point in time. The Word has not always been flesh. The God-man did not exist prior to His birth in Bethlehem. The Son did exist prior to His birth in Bethlehem because He has eternally existed as a divine person.

But the God-man came into existence at a point in time, and history, and location. Now the problem that we have here is, up to this point I have been giving you biblical references and a biblical framework and Christian theology.

When the Koran was written, and of course from the Islamic perspective it was written in an eternity past, but in history itself, the Koran does not come into existence until the middle of the 7th century.

And if even from the Islamic perspective you say that the Koran is the result of revelations given by the angel Jibril to Muhammad, coming directly from heaven itself. In the middle of the 7th century, there was no question as to what the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was, and there was no question as to what Christians meant when they said that Jesus was the Son of God.

And so, even if the Trinity was wrong, in the middle of the 7th century, God knew what the doctrine was, and He could have accurately addressed it and refuted it if it was in error. The problem is, the author of the Koran seems to have the amazing idea that the Sonship of Jesus is one that involves a wife.

That Allah has taken a wife and had a son, and that to say this turns the universe upside down and causes the mountains to crumble and all these things. And even in Surah 5, verse 116, Allah asks Jesus, did you tell men to worship you and your mother as gods in derogation of Allah?

That is not what Christians have ever believed. There is one group that the world calls Christian that believes that today, and that's called Mormonism, but I've never met a Mormon who's ever said that the Koran was preemptively refuting Mormonism.

So that is not what Christians believe, and has never been what Christians believe. The relationship of father and son is not one of temporal extension. What I mean by that is that the father has always been the father, and the son has always been the son, because it's a relationship that's being described, not a concept of there being a time when one divine person decided he was lonely, and hence brought about a second divine person.

However, the scriptures do say that he is the only begotten son, and often Muslims will take that word begotten, and they'll say, well, when you look at the ancestry of Jesus, it'll say so-and-so begets so-and-so, and so-and-so begets so-and-so.

How can there be a difference? What we're talking about here is the incarnation. Can you please explain that?

The Unique Sonship of Christ and the Eternal Covenant of Redemption

Well, the term only begotten in the original language is the Greek term monogamous, and it is a compound word, monos, we know what mono means, one. But then the problem is that the second word many people have assumed is genao, to beget or to give birth.

It isn't. It's genos, which means kind or type. And so what you have literally in monogamous is unique or one and only. Now it can be applied to an only begotten child in the sense that that is a unique child, but that is not the sense, the meaning when it's applied to Christ.

It is his unique relationship with the Father that is in view in monogamous. And so we're not talking about a time in history where the Son came into existence. The Son has eternally existed as a divine person, but he has always existed in this relationship to the Father of Father, Son, and then, of course, we have a third person, the Spirit.

And what we're really describing is the ways in which the divine persons have revealed themselves so that we can distinguish them. They didn't have to do that. There was no compulsion upon them to give us this information, but the Scriptures have done that for us so that we might see the role that each one has taken in bringing about our justification and our salvation.

And these are things that they freely chose to do in what we call the eternal covenant of redemption, where in eternity past, the triune God chose to glorify himself through creation and the redemption of a people, and each of the divine persons took a particular role in accomplishing that.

The Father is the fountainhead of salvation. The Son is the one who comes and accomplishes salvation through his self-sacrifice. The Spirit then is the one who comes and is the one in whom and by whom the other two persons dwell within us.

He draws us to Christ. He raises us to spiritual life. He gives us guidance. So these are different roles that each of the divine persons have taken in bringing about salvation. Only the Son, the second person in the Trinity, becomes incarnate.

The Father has not been incarnate. The Spirit has not been incarnate. Only the Son takes on that perfect human nature and hence becomes the God-man and hence becomes one who can give his life as a ransom for many.

The Virgin Birth, the Theotokos, and Christ's Sinlessness

But how did that happen?

I mean, that's the key question. Was it a physical interaction or was this something that was supernatural? Was it a miracle?

Well, the irony is that even the Muslims agree that Jesus' birth was a supernatural birth. The Koran says that Allah said, Be, and he was. And that's not untrue. The biblical description is just fuller and describes the specific role of the Spirit as being the one who overshadows Mary and brings about this supernatural conception.

Now, only if you again think of fatherhood and sonhood only in physical terms does that cause confusion for some Muslims because they will say, Well, how can the Spirit have overshadowed Mary if the Father is the father of the baby?

As if father in that sense literally means the one with paternity or something like that, which obviously is not the case. Jesus' birth is supernatural. The God who created the woman's womb certainly knows how to place life within the woman's womb.

And the child who is born is truly human. He is born of Mary. He is nurtured by Mary. Even the prophetic language that had been used 700 years before the birth of Christ. And Isaiah says that a child will be born, a son will be given.

The child will be born, standard terminology for a baby and standard terminology for normal human birth. Mary went through the birth pangs. She gave birth to a child. That child grew and that child, you know, Jesus didn't just beam out of Mary and there was a full-grown child.

There was growth. He had to be like us to be our faithful high priest. He had to be like us to be the true sacrifice that would give us peace with the Father. And so that human nature that he took on is a true human nature.

And that is why Mary historically in the fourth century, the term that was developed to safeguard this truth that Jesus was fully God, was Theotokos, the God-bearer. Now in years later, that became a title that exalted Mary rather than actually speaking to the fact that the one who was born of her was truly God.

That first use of that title was extremely important. Yes.

Now, Mary is impure, right? She is a sinner. So how is it that Jesus can be sinless or God can be manifest in flesh through the Son and yet remain impure?

And yet remain, be born of a woman who is impure. Well, again, if he's going to be born as a human being and he's going to redeem Adam's fallen race, then he has to be truly, truly man. And if we're talking about how impurity is passed down, obviously it is not, from the biblical perspective, passed down through the woman, but through the Father's line.

And he has no human father at that point. The impurity would be not something that is attached to simply human birth. If that were the case, then there would be no redemption of humanity at all, because you'd have to start a new line of humanity to bring someone in who was pure, but now you can't redeem the old line.

So there has to be, the virgin birth connects Jesus intimately to our humanity. But because the human nature that is taken on is perfect and pure, likewise provides the means for his taking our sins upon himself and giving his life in our place.

The Kenosis, Philippians 2, and Christ's Voluntary Humiliation

Sure.

I mean, if God is transcendent, and we do believe he is, yet we do believe he is a personal God and he is a God who has stepped into time, yet we do read in the Old Testament that he is a God who even the heaven of heavens cannot contain.

He uses the earth as his footstool. So how is it that this great God, who we believe is omnipresent, can restrict himself to a man? How is it that when Mary held baby Jesus, he at the same time held the world together?

Well, remember, the divine essence, the very being of God, cannot be limited. And so it wasn't the Father who became flesh, it wasn't the Spirit who became flesh. Many times Muslims will argue, well, when Jesus died, are you saying that God was dead for three days?

Well, only if you think that means he ceased to exist would that actually be a relevant assertion. The reality is that the second person, the Trinity, according to Philippians chapter two, made himself of no reputation.

The literal Greek term there, kenosis, kenao, means to empty, and Paul never uses that term literally. He never uses it like of emptying a bottle or a cup or something like that. He always uses it metaphorically in the sense of, I do not wish my labor amongst you to be empty or to become vain or to not have reputation or meaning.

And that's what the Son did. Even though, according to Philippians chapter two, he had equality with the Father. He did not consider that equality something to be held onto, but he made himself of no reputation by taking on human form, by being found in human likeness.

And so by taking on that human form, he voluntarily limits himself. Jesus, when he walked down the road, did not glow. He didn't have a halo. The only once that we know of during his incarnation, during the period of his incarnation, did his true glory become visible to men, that's on the Mount of Transfiguration.

So there is a veiling of that power, there is a veiling of that glory, and even a voluntary veiling on the part of the Son of God to the point where he becomes dependent upon the Spirit of God so that he can be our example.

He's not just going around doing things on his own power and authority, but he is dependent upon the Spirit of God just as we are to be dependent upon the Spirit of God. As the writer of Hebrews says, it was necessary that the author of our salvation be made like the children in all things and to partake of our nature apart from sin.

So it is not that God ceased to be eternal, it is not that God ceased to be omnipresent. It is that the second person of the Trinity humbled himself, and the condescension is truly an amazing thing to ponder, but humbled himself by taking on human form so that he could become obedient even to the point of death on a cross.

And as a result, the Father is highly exalted and has given him the name which is above every name.

The Uniqueness of the Incarnation and the Limits of Analogy

Now, is there a difference between the theology being confused and it being not fully comprehensible? I mean, the way you're describing it, I understand what you're saying, but because there is nothing other than God in being able to explain what we're talking about here, it seems almost illogical.

So, I mean, it seems unique because there is no analogy that can be made. I can't say, well, it's like this, because there are two completely unique categories within Christian theology.

But we've used that before. I mean, with the three states of water, that's been used in history, but it's not a very good illustration, is it?

No, it's not. There's two things in Christian theology that are absolutely unique. The existence of God is triune. Every analogy breaks down. Water breaks down. The three-leaf clover or four-leaf clover, whatever, breaks down.

All that breaks down because God's existence is absolutely unique. When we come to Jesus, He is absolutely unique as well. There has never been and never will be a true incarnation as you have in Jesus Christ.

And so there is no one to whom we can liken Him. There's no categories in which we can place Him. If we could, then the incarnation would no longer be unique. So what we're saying is not illogical in the sense that I don't think that anything I have said has violated any of the categories that I was placing those terms within and the context I was using them within.

But that feeling comes from the fact that we have no categories to apply because Jesus is absolutely unique, and we've never experienced anything else that is absolutely unique other than the existence of God Himself in the triune fashion.

So that's where that feeling comes from, is the uniqueness of what we're saying.

The Transcendent and Immanent God Versus Allah

And I think why it is such a thing that it's quite unfathomable to a certain extent is that when we do look at this triune God that took on human nature, when we think about that, I mean, it was God who was revealing Himself to us.

It was God who was manifesting Himself to us. The alternate view is a God who no one has seen, a God who cannot be seen, a God who is far beyond us. Is that right? I mean, that's the impression that I get with the Muslim perspective, is that God is an unknowable God.

How we know Allah and how we know His attributes and how we relate to Him is a fundamental area of discussion and has been for a long time in Islamic theology as well. But one of the fundamental differences between us is that while we confess the transcendent nature of God, we also believe that there is an imminent aspect of God's relationship to His creation that is significantly more, I believe, real and personal than anything that you have in the concept of the transcendent Allah.

And so there is a sense in which Allah is far removed and unknowable and unapproachable, whereas in biblical Christianity you have a God who, while He is exalted above the heavens, while He is one who holds the world in His hand, and all men are considered like grasshoppers before Him, as Isaiah puts it, while all of that is true, He has absolutely, amazingly humbled Himself and condescended to enter into not just an unhappy relationship with us, but it's something He desires to do.

And in fact, it is not a surface-level relationship, it is an intimate relationship, so much so that in the Incarnation, not only does the Son take on a human nature, but you also have in the economy of God.

The fact that an entire people are united with Christ so that there is a union between God and His people that is marked by intimacy, love, adoption as sons and daughters of God, categories that have no way of being expressed within the Islamic perspective at all.

They just can't be, especially the category of adoption, which, thanks to what happened between Muhammad and Zaynab bin Jash, isn't even a category that can be really expressed within Islamic theology any longer.

Why the Incarnation Was Necessary for Atonement and Salvation

Yes. I mean, that is really a central belief. This is a mystery of godliness, that God was manifest in the flesh. We often spend so much time on being able to dialogue with our Muslim counterpart, whether it is possible.

And as I can see, is that you've shown that. It is more than possible. It has actually happened. It's well established. For centuries before, the Muslims were refuting that. So what I would like to get to is that rather than spending any more time on whether it is possible, can we ask the why question?

I know you did touch on some aspects of it. Why was it necessary for God to become a man?

Why did that have to happen? Well, let me first just ask one question to our Muslim viewers, and then get to that one. I have a question for them. I would like any Muslim in the audience to consider this question.

Does God as the creator have the power and ability, capacity, to join a perfect human nature to himself if he pleases to do so? Yes. Most Muslims say to me, he would never do so. But my question is, could he do so if it pleased him?

Don't reject the incarnation as a presupposition. If you're going to reject it, then at least know what it is and ask yourself the question, could God have done this had he so chosen to do so? Then you have to deal with the fact that the Christian scripture said he did so, and he did so for a specific purpose.

Which in answer to your question is, without a true incarnation, you cannot have a true sacrifice. You cannot have a truly divine savior. You cannot have this glorious gospel that says that men and women, boys and girls from all over the world, no matter what their ethnic background, no matter what their politics or their language, and no matter when they live.

It's been 2 ,000 years that this message has been going forth. That anyone who is willing to repent of their sins and turn in faith to Jesus Christ, bow the knee before him, will find him to be a perfect savior.

And by being united with him, you can have his righteousness. Why? Because he was the God-man, and he who knew no sin was made to be sin on our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Only the God-man could do that. A mere man could not have the rest of humanity joined to him. There had to be that divine aspect, that unlimited aspect, and yet he had to be truly man for his death to be actually sacrificial.

And so the incarnation has to take place if we are going to have a true sacrifice and a true mediator.

The First and Second Covenant in Christ

That's right. And we're able to see the covenant, the two fundamental covenants of God, the harmony of Scripture coming together. In the first covenant, he was God who gave laws to man. And he said to them, if you do this, you won't die.

You'll be in perfect harmony with me. But man failed. Man sinned. He was unable to stand up and ring the bell, as it were, and keep God happy by living a perfect and righteous life. And God, knowing that that would fail, he sent forth a second person, a second man.

That was Jesus Christ. And that is the second covenant. The relationship that we have now with God is not based between God and sinful humanity, but it is based between God and the perfect man, Jesus Christ.

And it's exactly how you described it. The reason why we have atonement, the reason why we have salvation, the reason why our sins can be truly forgiven is because of that second covenant. Isn't that a wonderful thing?

It is. It is. Very much so. James, thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you for being able to listen to this wonderful topic of, can God become a man? He certainly can. He is a powerful God, and he's certainly able to do that.

Please stay in tune for the very next episode of Midnight Cry, as we will be discussing the Trinity, the triune God.