Certainly, we can never exhaust the mystery of the incarnation - the full humanity and deity of Jesus Christ. However, if we lose it, we lose everything distinct and unique about the Christian tradition: “I do not think that, if we remain Christian, we can ever escape the fundamental paradox, that Jesus Christ is both human and divine. There are no devices that would eliminate it, short of the destruction of Christianity itself. It will not do, for instance, to say that Jesus Christ is indeed human, but not divine. Many people have believed that, and many still do. Some of them would go further, and say he was a very great man, a very good man, even the most sublime human being that has ever lived. But they stop short at the idea that he was the Word of God incarnate, as the Christian church has claimed. But if that claim is denied, then Christianity collapses. Jesus Christ might remain as an inspiring moral teacher, to be set alongside Socrates and Confucius, but he could not be a Saviour or Redeemer, he could not be preached as the Lord who demands the ultimate allegiance of the believer, and it would be nonsensical to baptize people into his name or to celebrate the eucharist" (17).
The person of Jesus is significant to all people: "Even people who say they are not interested in the question of God, or that they can attach no meaning to language about God, are surely interested in the question of humanity and the welfare of humanity, if they are serious at all" (20).
This is a powerful and succinct introduction to the incarnation.

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