Scripture and God in Christianity

even combined together do not give us "access to Jesus himself, but only to several different portraits
of him." 750 One has no choice but to conclude with R.H. Lightfoot that "the form of the
earthly no less than of the heavenly Christ is for the most part hidden from us." 751
This perhaps is the reason that Christians throughout their history could not universally agree
upon one single, logical and uniform doctrine about the person of Christ and have always been
perplexed in this regard. M. F. Wiles observes, that "Christology has never ceased to puzzle and
to perplex the minds of Christians from earliest times." 752 Almost all New Testament books and
the subsequent history of dogma witness to this fact. This, too, is exactly the situation with the
contemporary Christian thought. On the other hand, a great majority of Christians, while differing
over the ideas of Christ's person and his relationship with God, seem to agree upon his cross
and the significance of his redemptive work. 753 In other words, the concept of `Incarnation' is so
pervasive in most of the Christian circles and in its tradition as a whole, that Christianity is often
described as incarnational faith. R. Swinburne observes that "The central doctrine of Christianity
is that God intervened in human history in the person of Jesus Christ in a unique way; and that
quickly became understood as the doctrine that in Jesus Christ God became man." 754 If there is
any difference, and there are many as mentioned earlier, that is because of different understandings
of `incarnation'.
The Traditional Orthodox standpoint:
The orthodox understanding of the doctrine of incarnation is that God's incarnation took place in
the particular individual Jesus of Nazareth. They follow the Church Father's theology culminating
in the Creeds of Nicea and Chalcedon, fully recognizing Christ's proper divinity/Godhead,
co-existentiality and equality with the Father, two natures one Person and redemption. They believe
as Brunner observes that "The way to the knowledge of Jesus leads from the human Jesus to
the Son of God and to Godhead." 755
D. M. Baillie, for instance, writes: "it was the eternal Word, the eternal Son, very God of very
God, that was incarnate in Jesus." 756 He also observes that "while the life lived by Jesus was
wholly human, that which was incarnate in Him was of the essence of God, the very Son of the
Father, very God of Very God." 757 The traditional doctrine of Trinity, to Baillie, is "an indispensable
summing-up of the Christian Gospel for the life of worship...unless we have a Christology
our whole conception of God is impoverished or even perverted, and now I might say the same
thing about the doctrine of Trinity. To those who know and accept the whole Christian story, this
doctrine is a symbolical epitome of the truth about God, and its constant use in our worship helps
to secure that we are drawing near to God as He really is- the God who was incarnate in Jesus
Christ." 758 He explains the doctrine of Trinity in the following words: " What the doctrine of the
Trinity really asserts is that it is God's very nature not only to create finite persons whom He
could love, and reveal and impart Himself to them, even to the point of incarnation (through His
eternal Word) but also to extend this indwelling to those men who fail to obey Him, doing in
them what they could not do themselves, supplying to them the obedience which He requires
them to render (through His Holy Spirit). All of this, says the dogma of the Trinity, is of the eternal
nature and essence of God. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the Son and the Spirit are
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