The central event of the incarnation is both a revelation of God and humanity. God is made “known in and through a real human life at each stage of human growth and knowledge.”[1]

It is impossible to overstate the significance of this. Because of the incarnation, we can never look at God or ourselves – or, for that matter, all of creation – in the same way again!

Two profound movements have occurred in the incarnation: the humanification of God and the divinization of humanity. In the words of Raimon Pannikar: “Christ is the revelation of God (in Man) as much as the revelation of Man (in God). The abyss between the divine and the human is reduced to zero in Christ.”[2] In this complete union of God and a human being, Jesus not only reveals the true God to us; Jesus also reveals true humanity.

Through Christ, humanity is made the habitation of God. The glory of God makes its home in human flesh. In Christ, our bodies are made temples – dwelling places – of the living God. Human flesh becomes the receptacle of the divine. We possess the treasure of God’s glory in earthen vessels (see 2 Corinthians 4:7).

Consequently, Christian spirituality is fully embodied – fully human. We are not spirits having a human experience, nor are we mere matter having a spiritual experience. We are humans caught up in the divine experience through the mediation of Christ’s humanity: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

It is for this reason that the early church wholeheartedly rejected Gnostic dualism. Unlike Gnosticism, the Christian tradition refused to set the spiritual over against the material. Instead, it taught that authentic spirituality is fully human, fully embodied. Edith M. Humphrey puts it well:

Christian spirituality is the study and experience of what happens when the Holy Spirit meets the human spirit. This definition is not meant to exclude God’s contact with the entire person, including the body. Indeed, Christian spirituality is profoundly incarnational, since that meeting-place between spirit and Spirit, that holy tryst, finds its example par excellence — indeed, its prototype and its cause — in Jesus, the God-Man.[3]

Christian spirituality is a fully robust incarnational spirituality. It is no less than the experience of humanity fully alive in, with, and for God!

What Does It Mean to be Human?

So, what does it mean to be human? At the very least, being human involves possessing a body, being someone in particular, being a person shaped by relationships.[4] Sadly, these human limitations are often perceived as obstacles to unhindered union with God. On the contrary, it is precisely in and through our humanity that we experience God. Christian spirituality is not an attempt to escape our humanity but to embrace God in and through it.

Possessing a body. Christianity builds on the Jewish sacred scriptures which repeatedly proclaim the goodness of creation. The scriptures open with God creating the entire universe and repeatedly declaring it is good, indeed, very good![5] This includes all human beings, both male and female, who, as image-bearers, are made to reflect God’s goodness, mercy, and love. Clearly, there is nothing shameful about our bodies.

Possessing a body is foundational to human experience and expression. We know of no other means to exist in this world. It is for this reason that we are creeped out by ghosts (spirits without bodies) and zombies (bodies without souls). Unfortunately, some Christians throughout history – and even into our modern day – have understood human embodiment to be an obstacle to their spiritual good. “But the incarnation stands as [God’s] enduring witness against everything that defiles the body, showing it to be the place the divine image has chosen to dwell.”[6]

From its beginning, the Christian tradition has rejected any traces of Gnostic dualism in its understanding of humanity. The human body is not set over against the human spirit. The body is not the problem; sin is. The flesh is not a “cocoon” or a “prison” of the spirit. The flesh is the place where God’s spirit meets our spirit. The goal of spirituality is not to be set free from the human body, but to live fully alive in God as embodied image-bearers. In the Christian tradition, the opposite of spiritual is not material; the opposite of spiritual is dead. To be spiritual is to be alive in God.

Through the incarnation, God embraces the whole world of creation – flesh and all. God even embraces the boundaries of human experience – birth and death!

James Hawes’ reflection on Jesus’ birth states it well, wrapping Jesus in all the actions of a normal child:

It was the first Christmas and…

God giggled
God farted
God burped
God gurgled
God needed a cuddle
God was a baby…

Christmas reminds us:

That we don’t have to find God – he finds us in our humanity –
We don’t have to go up – he came down
We find God in the physical, in our bodies, in material, in humanity.
God became one of us…[7]

An incarnational spirituality is nothing less than an embodied spirituality. It is a spirituality that embraces creation – including our own creatureliness.[8] We are not pure spirit; we are not pure matter. We are creatures ordered toward our Creator. In our spiritual experience, we should not be surprised to find we are creatures. Willimon writes, “there is something about us, as we are going about our so spiritual endeavors, that genuinely surprises us to find that we are, despite our noble intellectual or spiritual virtues, creatures.”[9]

As embodied creatures, we should not be surprised that our spiritual formation occurs in and through embodied practices: organized rituals and ancient traditions that connect us to a real historical past; the use of the senses through water, bread, wine, sounds, and smells; bodily movements including the sign of the cross, kneeling, upraised hands. We are not Gnostics, forever suspicious of anything embodied. We must not devalue the sensible world, visible organization, the flesh and matter. We must also recognize that we have inherited from the Protestant Reformation a fear that all bodily acts may become “works righteousness,” so that faith is often reduced to a matter of reason or intellect – a state of mind rather than a way of being.

Indeed, our culture’s prominent slogan, “I’m spiritual but not religious” is, in many ways, simply an accommodation to Gnosticism. Religion is embodied spirituality, and thus demands something from its practitioners. It calls us to commit to corporate beliefs and practices that unite us with others. It calls us to meet at certain times at certain places. Its rituals, traditions, symbols, settings, structures, and organization are outgrowths of its rugged incarnationality, its earthy embodiment, its texture and shape. What many are really saying when they proclaim, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” is not that they possess some higher state of mind, but rather, that they are disinterested in a real commitment to real people in a real setting with real practices that may make a real difference in the real world.[10]

“Spiritual, but not religious” demands no commitment, obligation, or responsibility. Incarnational spirituality calls us to engage completely – body, mind, and spirit – in the beliefs and practices of something bigger than our own preferences, style, and taste. Incarnate spirituality will not allow us to completely and inwardly withdraw from the world. Instead, it forces us out of our cocoons to engage with all the messy, complex challenges and opportunities that await us in real world.

Contrary to our culture, we must not relegate “spirituality” to private, inner experiences. True spirituality engages with the external world rather than retreating within. It does not resent the world, but accepts and seeks to improve it.

The danger of Gnosticism always lurks, diminishing true spirituality, reducing it to a shell of its potential by setting the material over against the spiritual. But this is not the way of Jesus.

Being someone in particular. Embodiment lends itself to countless limitations and boundaries. No one of us is a true “everyman” or “everywoman.” No one of us experiences “generic humanity.” Indeed, generic humanity is a contradiction. To be human is to know and experience particularity. William Placher writes,

Human beings are born into a particular culture, which shapes the way they think and behave. They grow up, developing over time intellectually as well as physically. If we were to imagine a being with a human body who was unaffected by being Chinese or French, by being born in the first century or the twenty-first, or who understood everything from the moment of birth, we would not be imagining someone truly human.[11]

One cannot be human without being a particular human being – existing in a particular time, place, culture, sex, language, and so on. These limitations are not oppressive, but liberating. They define who we are. They allow us to live.

This aspect of humanity is behind what some call “the scandal of particularity” when it comes to the life of Jesus. In order for God to truly experience humanity, God must be a particular human being. Christ was not a “vague spiritualized being” but a particular human being. When we reject particularity then we lose a truly human Christ and we are left with nothing but a Gnostic substitute.[12] This particularity, by necessity, includes the fact that Jesus was male – a fact that creates problems for some people.  

Theologican William Placher provides helpful reflections in this regard. First, he argues that “[i]f we try to deny the maleness of this person who shows us what it is to be truly human, we end up implying that sexuality is an evil thing that isn’t part of true humanity.”[13] He then makes it clear that we must accept the full particularity of Jesus, including the full spectrum of what it both affirms and denies: “Jesus was a particular human being in all sorts of ways: a man rather than a woman, a Middle Eastemer rather than a northern European or an East Asian, the son of a young girl rather than of an older woman, and so on.”[14] He continues,

It’s tempting to say that he was simply human, and none of the particularities of his humanity make any theological difference. But some of the ways in which he was particular do seem to matter. If he had been born a prince in the royal palace, his story would give us a very different picture of how he is the Lord who is a servant. If he had not been born a Jew, could we have understood him as the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes concerning God’s promises? Maybe—but in a very different way. So what about the fact that he was male?

One very old Christian answer is that Christ’s maleness precisely encompasses all of humanity in the incarnation, since Mary, a woman, gave birth to Jesus, a boy. If Mary had given birth to a daughter savior, then men would have been left out of the story altogether…

A more challenging interpretation comes from another perspective. What we learn in the life of Jesus, after all, is that true power must manifest itself in servanthood. Given the way men’s power has dominated history, having a man illustrate that point makes it all the clearer…

That he was male raises one set of problems, but another set would have emerged had he been female. His being male risks reinforcing ideas of male superiority, but his being female might have reinforced stereotypes of feminine suffering servanthood. Perhaps it is best to leave it at that. What matters is that the loving and mysterious God became a human one among us.[15]

Those who assume that the particularity of Jesus makes it impossible for all people to relate to him make two fundamental errors. First, they forget that it is impossible to be fully human without human particulars. Second, they undermine the common humanity we all share – no matter what our sexuality, cultural location, language, or class. If we take their argument to the extreme, then none of us can “relate” to Jesus. For example: He was a first-century Jew. I am not. He spoke Aramaic. I do not. He was a peasant. I am not. He was unmarried. I am married. His world is ancient. Mine is modern. The list could go on indefinitely.

God came in Christ, not to divide us, but to unite all humanity. We have more in common than not. John Macquarrie puts it well when he argues that refusing to relate to Jesus because of his Jewishness or maleness is “tantamount to denying that there is a common humanity that we share with people of all cultures, past and present, and would rule out hopes for any genuine peace and understanding among the races and nations of humankind.”[16]

It is our unique qualities – including our limitations – that define us. Far from undermining our shared humanity, our unique experiences allow us to identify and contribute to the human experience. For a fascinating study of our how limitations do not have to be oppressive, but rather liberating, read Donald McCullough’s outstanding book, The Consolations of Imperfection: Learning to Appreciate Life’s Limitations.

God affirms our unique experience in Christ. Though we are all different, we are one in Christ. We have more in common than not. Out of our diversity, the Spirit of God creates unity. Indeed, it is precisely our unique differences that allow us to shape and be shaped by one another. We should not feel guilty that we are of a particular race, sex, culture, or class. Nor should we assume that we cannot relate to anyone who does not share our race, sex, culture or class. Both deny our essential humanity and undermine God’s desire to unite all humanity – in all its diversity – together as one in Christ.

Shaped by relationships. A study of feral children proves beyond a shadow of doubt the central importance of personal relationships in shaping our core identity. Remove personal, human contact, and our capacity for personhood is significantly reduced. Our sense of self is shaped by others.

From the moment we awaken to this world, we are surrounded by human persons. It is our interaction with other humans that allows us to become our “own person.” We define ourselves in relation to and in distinction from other people. In short, personal relationships are key to the shaping of persons.[17]

Like all humans, Jesus was shaped by his web of relationships – both human and divine. His mother, father, extended family, friends, and community had a significant role in shaping his life. But as important as all these relationships were, Jesus experienced a core relationship with the Father that shaped and defined his life more than any other relationship. Indeed, one can say that this relationship was so profound and preeminent that Jesus never engaged in the selfish withdrawal we all experience – engaging with ourselves above all other relationships – but instead, always found himself in relation to someone else, namely God. For Jesus, his emphasis was not on self alone, but on self-in-relationship to God.

If we desire to reflect Jesus’ spirituality, we will make our relationship with God of utmost importance. The gospels invite us to share Jesus’ Abba-spirituality, that is, to view God with the same intimacy, fidelity, and love that Jesus did. Our goal is to find our identity in and through our relationship with God, and to allow that sense of identity to define our lives. Our foundational identity is that of child of God, beloved of God. We are God’s and God is ours! When this relationship defines us, we are empowered to live as beloved children of God, seeking to do God’s will.

We do not “find ourselves” by withdrawing into ourselves, but in our relationship with others. Because we are relational creatures, our sense of self is shaped by others. We discover the ultimate truth about ourselves in relationship to God.[18]

Christian spirituality must never descend to selfish absorption. It is completely relational – finding its source in God and extending and reflecting God to others. Repeatedly in the New Testament we are called to deny ourselves in order to find ourselves in community – first, in the communion of God: Father, Son, and Spirit – and in the communion of saints – those brothers and sisters God has placed in our lives.

Humanity Matters

Incarnational spirituality loudly proclaims that humanity matters. The message is not that of liberation from our humanity, but full affirmation and celebration of what it means to be human. It calls us to a human and humane moral code.

In many ways, a robust incarnational Christian spirituality has something to offer even casual seekers and non-believers: “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.”[19]

Incarnational Christianity is the basis for a robust humanism. Humans matter to God. Humans should be treated humanely, with respect and love. Sadly, many Christians rail against humanism, not realizing that it is not human welfare and flourishing that we should oppose, but rather, the perspective of secularism – for secularism removes the sacred from human experience. And when the sacred is removed, the loss of human dignity is not far away.

For this reason, I can agree with Andre Comte-Sponville, an avowed atheist who writes in The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, who calls us to “fidelity to humanity and to our own duty to be human. ... Our primary duty, the one which all the others follow, is that of living and behaving humanly.”[20]

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© Richard J. Vincent, 2008