CHRISTIANITY through the lens of CHRISTIAN & MUSLIM SCHOLARS Part One

3.12 Jesus “God That Became Man” (al-Hulul wa al -Ittihad) [1]

“If Christ was God in the form of a man, then He, as no other human being in history, is to be listened to, revered and even worshipped. It would mean that the God who created the galaxies…who cast billions of suns into the heavens, that God became a man, lived and walked on this earth, and died in submission to His own creation.”

Josh McDowell & Bart Larson, Jesus: A Biblical Defense Of His Deity [2]

Other than believing that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit combined together are “One God” with the same essence or nature (al-Dzat) Christians also believe that Jesus, God the Son (the attribute of Word) the second person of the Holy Trinity choose to appear in a human body, born of virgin Mary, becoming thereby “Perfect God and Perfect Man”[3] - a concept known as THE INCARNATION OF GOD. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that:

“The unique and altogether singular event of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor that it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God.”[4]

The doctrine of Incarnation appears first in the New Testament book of John.[5] The author of this book refers to the beginning of Jesus Christ in the following words:

“In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and He word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2, NLT)

And further on in verse 14 he writes:

“So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us.” (NLT)

We have already stated that the “Word” in Christianity refers to the ‘person’ of God the Son-who himself is an attribute (al-Sifat) of God The Almighty. Accordingly, the meaning of John’s statement is that the word of God—that is, the Person of the Son—became Incarnate and appeared in the form of Jesus.[6] In a personal letter to Timothy, Paul says:

“Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.” (1 Timothy 3:16)

In explaining this doctrine, Professor Maurice Relton who is among the of-quoted and popular Christian theologians in “Studies in Christian Doctrine” writes:

“The Catholic Doctrine maintains that he who was God, without ceasing to be what he was, became man, i.e, entered into the condition of our finite existence in time and space and dwelt among us.”[7]

By referring to Professor Maurice Delton, according to Christians, it must be borne in mind that the incarnation of the Son or Jesus Christ does not mean that the Son gave up Divinity and became man. But the meaning here is that he was previously only God, and now also became man. Hence, in accordance with this doctrine, Jesus was simultaneously both man and God. St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 C.E), the great Latin Theologian and ‘One of the Doctor of the Church’ expresses this in the following words:

“For he did not so take the form of a servant (man) as that he should lose the form of God, in which he was equal to the Father…”[8]

So it was indeed God Almighty that Virgin Mary conceived and gave birth to. Christians believed that The Virgin Mary conceived and delivered Jesus, their God in the manner of other women. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, one of the “Fathers of the Church” (d.386 C.E) elaborates this by saying:

“Believe too, that …His Incarnation taking place, not in appearance or fantasy but in truth. He did not pass through the virgin as through a channel, but was truly made flesh from her, and truly nourished with her milk. For if the incarnation was a fantasy salvation is also a fantasy...”[9]

[1] Al-Hulul: The indwelling of God in a human person. Al-Ittihad: Union of God with creation or a created being. Unfortunately, nowhere, not even one sentence in the Bible has Jesus stated that he was God that was incarnated in human form.

[2] Jesus: A Biblical defense Of His Deity, 14

[3] Jesus: A Biblical Defense of His Deity, 18

[4] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 129

[5] Concerning the authenticity of the book of John, In the Introduction of his book “What Christian Believe”, David Craig, a respected theologian and broadcaster, head of the Multi-Faith Bureau at the BBC World Service until 1998 and now a visiting Professor at Middlesex University and Director at Communication at USPG confess that: “Obviously John is a later gospel written not by an eye-witness but a commentator who includes material from other sources for his story-line and goes on to illuminate them with his own Christological understanding and interpretations.” (pg5)

[6] What is Christianity, 11

[7] What is Christianity, 11

[8] What is Christianity, 12

[9] Mc Cauley, Leo P, Stephenson, Anthony A, The Works of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Volume One (The Catholic University of American Press, Washington), 1970, 123, in Muhammad Abu Layla, 184