Wednesday, June 2, 2010

God’s incorporeality and the Christian Incarnation: A Contradiction?


Some definitions:


Incorporeal: God (the Trinity) is Spirit. That is to say, God is a living, immaterial substance. Thus, if God is Spirit, then this entails God is not physically embodied (i.e., incorporeal). Each Person in the Trinity is divine (and essentially so). By extension, each Person of the Trinity is incorporeal. The divine nature also includes the Omni-properties (e.g. omnipotence, omniscience, etc.). A divine being would have these properties essentially, not contingently. For example, the Second Person (SP) could not fail to be omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent. That is, there is no possible world W that the SP is not omniscient, omnipotent, or omnibenevolent.


Christian incarnation: The Second Person of the Trinity entered into human history, took on a human nature (including a corporeal human body). However, this did not exclude the divine nature. The Second Person added the human nature (but did not mix the two). Therefore, the human nature of the SP is contingent while the divine nature is essential to Him. Additionally, the SP did not merely have a “puppet” body that He used as a sort-of proxy. Christ was thoroughly human, and “took on human flesh”.


The question: Is immaterially (and thus incorporeality) an essential property (like the Omni-properties) of God?


The dilemma: If the answer is affirmative, then it is hard to see how the SP could become incarnate since this would contradict the notion of Him being essentially incorporeal. If the answer is negative, then there is a possible world, which the SP is embodied. If the SP could be embodied, then there is no reason to think that the Trinity as a whole (or each individually) could not be embodied. If it is possible for any of the Persons, or the Trinity as a whole, to be embodied, then you get either finite godism or process theology (i.e. the Universe is God’s body). Both of which are contra to Christian orthodoxy.


This leads to further perplexing questions (and troubling dilemmas).


If Christ in His incarnate (though glorified) body, exited this space-time Universe (during His Ascension), is Christ still embodied? If He is embodied, then He is physical, which means Christ is located in space-time. However, Christ is not located anywhere in this Universe. How is it that Christ remains embodied but is not located anywhere in space-time? If Christ in not in this Universe, does this mean Christ exists in some other space-time Universe?


Note: I take incarnation to entail incorporeality (embodied physically). Conceptually, to be physical means to be located in space-time (I may be wrong about this).


Are there ways out of these dilemmas? In the next post, I will "try" to answer these questions!

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