Kenosis and Incarnation

 In his letter to the believers at Philippi, Paul is quoting a hymn to remind them of how they believe in the deity of Christ. This comes in the midst of a discourse on how believers should behave toward one another as humble servants. It can be translated into Aramaic, and it reads as a poem of 5 stanzas with 3 lines each, with meter. It is probably one of the first teachings of the Apostles in Jerusalem. 

"Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped. Rather, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the Name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:6-11)

And in that "emptying" of Himself, (kenosis), Jesus relinquished those aspects of the Nature of God, by which the divine Christ now far surpasses our Humanity, (And yet even so He retains his earthly experiences and his ability to intimately and compassionately relate with us.) as follows:

   Divine:                   Human:

   1. infinite              - limited 

   2. creative            - artistic 

   3. immutable       - changeable 

   4. immortal          - mortal 

   5. insusceptible   - temptable 

   6. omnipresent    - localized 

   7. omniscient       - teachable 

   8. sovereign         - humble 

The Son of God, in order to become as one incarnate, emptied Himself and set aside the immeasurable extremity of some of the aspects of his Divine Nature. He did not set aside his Divinity itself, but only intentionally limited its potentials. He retained only the nominal vestiges of the powers which would otherwise have kept him from an intimate understanding and sharing compassion with ordinary human beings. 

Jesus limited Himself in such a way that He could, with the accord of the Father and the Holy Spirit, pick up his full divinity again and recover its usefulness, when He began his mission for the Kingdom of God. Later, He once again accepted his limitations, when he was arrested and put to trial, so that as both God and Man He could experience the agony and tragedy of crucifixion and death. 

This emptying was necessary for the union of incarnation which was then accomplished with the help of the Holy Spirit. As a result, the hypostatic union was effected between the Person of the Son of God and the rational Soul of the son of Mary, and by intention they aligned the two natures, human and divine. In this way, both God and Man, joined in one person, fully God and fully Man, lived a human life, brought a divine message and its grace, and died a tragic human death. God the Father then raised Him from the dead, having thus shared our experience through his Son, who paid the penalty we deserved as a consequence of sin, yet having never once sinned Himself. 

Consequently, Jesus has forgiven our sins, and offers us the grace to heal our original sinful nature. If we believe in Him, as the Way and the Truth and the Life, then we are saved. And by whatever measure of his grace that we may receive and accept, and by the obedience with which we follow his lead, we are brought ever closer to becoming holy as a saint and a Child of God. 

And what is the first foundation of our faith, that which we must confess in order to be Christians? Again, the apostle Paul gives us the answer in his letters, to the Romans (10:9) and to the Corinthians (I Cor.15:3-8). This is known to be strictly in accord with the teachings of the Apostles, because they summoned him to come and explain what he was teaching to the churches. 

1. Jesus is Lord, the divine Son of God. 

        - He has the wisdom to teach, the power to heal, and the authority to cast out demons and to forgive sins. 

2. Jesus died on a Roman cross. 

        - He gave his own life to pay our penalty for sin. It was a sacrifice of love so that judgement would pass us by, and a ransom to free us from slavery to evil. 

3. Jesus arose again from the grave. 

        - This affirmed that his divinity and identity as the Son was acknowledged by God the Father, and it defeated Satan's gambit to claim sinners and destroy us with death. 

And where are these shown in the Bible?

They are to be found in: I Corinthians 15:3-8, Philippians 2:6-11, Mark's Gospel in the Passion narrative (15:22-39) and in John's Gospel story of how Jesus appeared to his disciples (20:19-29). These are extremely early, and based on first person testimony. 

Muslims will claim to believe in Jesus, as a great prophet to the Christians. Indeed, the Qur'an barely tries to argue with the Gospels' portrait of Jesus, although it gets many details wrong. Muslims are mostly willing to concede his teachings and his miracles, right up until his execution. But they deny his death to atone for our sins, his resurrection from the grave, and his identity as the Son of God, which the resurrection proves. These three essential elements are the ones they will vehemently deny. This is what they refuse to believe. Yet without these, you cannot claim to know Jesus, nor can you have any kind of relationship with Him. Your sins will not be forgiven, and you will not be saved. 

To defend their denial, many Muslims will insist that you must try to answer a single question. They phrase the query somwhat disingenuously, however, because they have been taught to insist on the "proper words," but no one can put words into God's mouth. 

"Where does Jesus say, I am God?" they ask. There are at least a half dozen places where Jesus claims to be God, but among the most obvious is, Mark 14:62.

Here Jesus is being interrogated by the High Priest, and He agrees that he is the Christ, the Son of God. "I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of Heaven." These are three clear references to God and divinity. The High Priest clearly understood, as he tore his garment and declared "blasphemy!" Jesus was referring to Exodus 3:14, Psalm 110:1, and Daniel 7:13,14. 

Judaism had a long history of struggling with a conceptual dilemma, trying to understand how a singular, unique God could abide in Heaven while He sends his "messenger" or his "presence" to communicate with us, and yet this person will be saying "I am" just like God does. Of course, they never saw two at the same time, and occasionally He might pray, or reference God as another, like Jesus did. But it looked a lot like there were two powers in Heaven, even though they know that God is One. Pure monotheism cannot comprehend that, and the concept of a Trinity, a Three-in-One Godhead, is just too strange to conceive, unless you are told about it, or see something that demands it. But the conundrum of God sending Himself was recognized as a thought problem to be wrestled with. 

Jesus was clearly giving a definitive answer to this question, one that the High Priest was not willing to concede, as it conflicted with his idea of One God. He thought, a man cannot claim to be the Omnipotent God; it's not possible. But he had failed to give God enough credit. It was possible, for God really is omnipotent. 

For a thousand years, God had been trying to get his people Israel to accept Him as their leader, the way He had led them through the wilderness. Instead, they wanted a king, like the other nations. God allowed that, and found a special relationship with King David,  and promised him an eternal dynasty. That promise was fulfilled when God sent his Son to be born as a human child, with all of the normal human limitations, so that He would experience what it's like to be one of us ... until it was time to become the Teacher, Priest and King that He was sent to be. 

When Jesus's mission was done, to die on a cross and rise from the dead, He revealed how now we will need the third person of God's Trinity dwelling with us, in our hearts, so that He can abide with us. So, when He ascended back to Heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to stay with us, and continue to teach us all that we need to know. With that done, now God is clearly the Leader of his people, as He intended, and we must have the Holy Spirit in our hearts in order to follow Him and be saved.

The Bible Answers the Fermi Paradox

 Part 1.

From a certain point of view, we can surmise that we are living in a quarantined solar system, hedged within a simulated view of the Cosmos, supervised by a transcendant Empire. This Empire is ruled by a unique God-King, a Triune Being, who is omniscient, omnipotent, ubiquitous, loving, intimately compassionate, and totally self-sufficient. His Authoring Word created everything, including both the material Cosmos, and a vast host of lesser spiritual beings who have their homes in the Heavens. 

From all appeances, we were uplifted from proto-chimps (which was not a unanimous decision) via the slow path of direct genetic modification and self-adaptive drift. We were declared a protected species, and placed inside a heavenly sphere a bit larger than our heliosphere. Thus, it should be no surprise if our probes cease to send data home.

The quarantine was imposed, primarily to protect us from too early observations of the Empire. Seeing that would have intimidated us and crushed our will to make independent progress toward faithful allegiance and mature moral conscience, and precluded our desire for spiritual transcendence. Even now, the "Kingdom  of Heaven" is just beyond our capacity to fully comprehend. No wonder we were given such minimal descriptions, as that was all our mythologies could grasp.

The "prime directive" said we were to be left alone, but an anti-uplift faction broke the blockade, intermingling with us, and trying to influence us to kill ourselves off. Then the pro-uplifters began trying to teach us laws and morality, so we would resist such perverse impulses. The result is the messy battlefield that the Earth has become. But the reason we don't see the aliens is that they are spirits, transcendent beings. Compared to us, they are the minor gods, and when they wish to be seen they can appear identical to us.

The ways we are protected are as follows:
1. A heliosphere sized "crystal sphere" to limit our view outward, hiding the Empire from us, and showing only a simulation,
2. A localized lightspeed velocity limitation, created by a damping field that distorts our physical observations, so the math won't reveal its interference,
3. A camouflage shield technology, used to hide any ships that pass through to observe us (or they will get blasted beyond possible recognition, like Oamuamua), and
4. Certain promising specimens, who have chosen allegiance to God, have their own assigned "guardian angel." These ward off direct attacks from the enemy, but they don't stop us from choosing risky behavior.

This speculation serves to explain all of our observations, and matches what we should expect from mythological sources and theological revelations. And it does explain why we don't see any evidence of aliens in our galaxy, or even beyond it in the Cosmos at large. After all, "what we call Truth often depends upon our point of view." Right? And how much we should reveal of it must be conformed to our moral sensibilities and our concern for the wellbeing of others.

Part 2. 

Ever since Zarathustra, we've been hearing about a war in Heaven. Even today, when we have the power to destroy civilization and devastate our planet, we are faced with this conflict on an ideological level. Some of us want to build machines that could be made to think like humans, while others believe that would be a very bad idea. Politics and Religion are the proxy battlefields where the lines are drawn between good and evil. But how shall we determine which flag and faction we are serving?

That answer depends upon how we know what is the best, most correct morality, and we have only our own internal moral sense for a compass. But the Most High God is not an arbitrary autocrat, unfathomable and unreasonable. Instead, He has given us a map and fair orientation. He told us that we should love Him first with our whole selves, and each other next, equal to ourselves, then the Decalogue to preserve civil society, and for simplicity, the Golden Rule, followed by our core ideal principles of Love, Truth, Freedom and Wisdom, all this in the service of Life, so we would know what to judge by. Those central foundational principles, plus the Revelations we have preserved from ancient days, which teach us to revere them as good, give us the standard (in hoc signo vincit) that we must follow. They are supported by God's promises of personal salvation and an inevitable final victory over the adversary who desires our demise. Together, those will always point and guide our moral compass.

And then, one day when we have passed the tests, or progressed to the point where we can no longer be conscientiously contained, everything will be openly revealed, showing just how much has been hidden from us. Hopefully by then, humans will have matured enough as a species to be able to step smoothly into the role of Citizens of the Empire, and accept the privileges thereof without abusing their potentials. We will be welcomed to our true home, where we will be privileged to represent the One True God as his image and likeness. Then we will know how protected we have been. We will know the final answer to the Fermi Paradox, and the mystery will have been solved.

Part 3.

According to Genesis, God stood before the Heavenly Council and announced that He was going to make Humans in the likeness of spiritual beings, so that they could represent and follow His purposes, to be His image, on the Earth. For this unique proposal, it seems that unanimous consent was lacking. So God told the dissenters to watch how Humanity would be faithful, and stay out of trouble.

But the Watchers rebelled. Satan entered the protected area, and caused Adam and Eve to sin. They led people to behave in ungodly ways, with violence, unruliness, idolatry, and mating between angels and the daughters of men. This provoked God to condemn the Watchers and send the Great Flood, to destroy the cities that they had built. And still, the survivors, instead of spreading out and tending the land as God said they should, rebuilt a great city, Babel, with a Temple Tower. They meant to tempt God to come down where they could influence His plans, and show how depraved people would be. But God destroyed the Tower, and scattered the people, and gave the Watchers, (now "fallen angels") a last chance. They were told to care for the "nations" and teach them to be civilized. But instead, they taught the people how to build the world in their own image, and to worship them as gods, false gods.

The "fallen angels" will neither relent nor repent because it's an ideological conflict. They disagree on the very idea of "uplifting" the animals that evolve in creation to become like elohim, spirits with souls. Animals are basically nasty creatures, unclean, and just because they can evolve some rudimentary intelligence doesn't make them spiritual. They have to be improved and gifted. And this takes millions of years, and lots of interference. 

God is trying to prove a point. Since He is a unique Being whose essential character is loving, He wants to be as inclusive of his creatures as possible, and to reach out as far and to as many persons/beings as He can. To do this, He is giving us a mission to learn to be like Him, to represent his Presence in the world. The "fallen angels" don't believe that we can do it, because we are too easily distracted and corrupted by self-interest. They don't want to be compared to beings with animal bodies, who "evolved" (nasty word) on a planet. In their view, we are beneath them.

So the battle rages on, while we are trying to learn how to live by faith. We are trusting God to make everything work out right, forgiving our failures, and leading us to become all that we can be. The stakes are perhaps even higher than we know. If we succeed, there may be other creatures on other planets that could be raised to Heaven after us, and we might be given a part in that. We might actually be the firstborn among God's creatures who can be both elohim and embodied.