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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012
about divinity be related to the godhead of Christ Or, more specifically,
was it this sort of concept that led to the Nicene doctrine of
the Word being “of one substance” with the Father, as authors like
Pagels and Baignet have suggested
2 The Theology Of Christ’s Incarnation
Against Pagels and other like-minded thinkers, I argue that the
theology of God Incarnate goes far beyond the idea of an “incarnated
god”. In biblical thought, the key concept is related to salvation
and redemption, i.e. its main purpose is redeeming and saving humanity.
This theological theme is seen in the Old Testament and
the Jewish rabbinic writings. It completely and fundamentally differs
from the idea of gods’ incarnations in mystery cults and the
Greco-Roman thought. This Biblical presentation, which implies a
soteriological dimension, contrasts with the idea of Christ being
deified in the sense that Greek and Roman humans could be deified;
indeed a doctrine of the “deification of Christ” could not serve the
Christian doctrine of salvation presented by the New Testament
and as understood in the Orthodox Tradition.
Christianity is considered a compound philosophy in the shape of
coordinated systems of dogma and liturgical rituals that communicate
the Word of God and his death on the cross as recorded in the
Holy Bible. The rituals are nothing without these dogmatic bases.
On the contrary, the bases of the Greco-roman cults are totally the
opposite. Their rituals do not express written texts or even oral
ones, or dogmas or any philosophical justifications 2 . In fact the
Greco-Roman religions are related to rites more than faith. This is
totally different from Christianity, which identifies a communal, ecclesiastical
relationship with God in Christ, made known graciously
by God and appropriated by faith in this message. The dogmas are
lived out and experienced in the rituals of the Church, which in Orthodoxy
are called mysteries (Arabic, asraar).
2Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford Classical Monographs),
Oxford University Press 2002, p. 3
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