Scripture and God in Christianity

The same Cappadocian Father, St. Gregory of Nyssa, whom he quotes saying that "every concept
our minds can form relative to God is a simulacrum, a false likeness, an idol. There is only
one name by which the divine nature can be expressed; the wonder which seizes the soul when it
thinks of God". 830 Same is the Father who also uses such an anthropomorphic and corporeal language
as that of saying that "Yet we have no doubt, from the recorded miracles, that God underwent
birth in human nature. But how this happened we decline to investigate as a matter beyond
the scope of reason." 831 He also writes, "...since God infused Himself into perishable humanity
for this purpose, namely, that by this communion with Deity mankind might at the same be deified,
for this end it is that, by dispensation of His grace, He disseminated Himself in every believer
through that flesh whose substance comes from bread and wine, blending Himself with the
bodies of believers, to secure that, by this union with the immortal, man, too, may be a sharer in
incorruption." 832 The Cappadocians and others whom Badham quotes, in my opinion, seem not
to deny the literal meanings of the incarnation. They perhaps are just recognizing and expressing
the impossibility of knowing the essence of God the Father and also recognizing the difficulty of
putting what they believe vis-a-vis incarnation in a logical and intelligible way by observing: "if
explanation be sought let us acknowledge that it is a marvel...what God can do let us own we
cannot probe." 833 Gregory of Nazianzus, in one of his sermons, observed that "the very incomprehensibility
of the dogma of the Trinity brings us up against the absolute mystery of God; it
reminds us that we must not hope to understand him." 834
Therefore, it seems plausible to argue that the doctrine of incarnation is not meaningless because
the Fathers did not mean it literally but because of what Badham himself observes, "that the doctrine
of the incarnation cannot be presented as a factual hypothesis because all efforts at spelling
it out do violence either to the notion of humanity or divinity." 835
Finally, rejecting the terms like 'myth', 'story', 'poetry', because of their negative implications,
Badham chooses the concept of 'metaphor and symbol' to envisage the meanings of incarnation.
Thus he arrives at the same conclusion as John Hick when he argues, "if I say "I am on fire with
love," I am using the metaphor of fire to indicate the intensity of my emotions. Likewise, to call
Jesus divine is to say that in him we see the personality of God insofar as that can be expressed in
a human life....Jesus can stand as a symbol for God because, Christians believe, his life exemplifies
God-like behavior." 836
Here Badham is committing the same mistake that he makes Hick responsible for. The mistake
of putting his views forward "in conscious opposition to the mainstream of Christian orthodoxy."
837 He, like Hick, does not believe that Christ is from the ousia (substance) of God; that he
enjoys divine nature, proper Godhead that of equal to God in power and majesty. Badham further
maintains the human person of Jesus before and even after the so-called incarnation. He should
reflect upon the fate of Paul of Samosata and Nestorius to know how much in line he is with the
orthodox view point. I see in this "ideal example" or "model" Christology an echo of the old Antiochian
theology which, in spite of its scientific treatment of the issue, was condemned as heretical.
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