Why was the Son incarnate in Israel?

[David Dietrich]

Why did God incarnate in Israel? This question seems particularly important to me as it is directly related to the general ecumenical movement because if God incarnated in one place for one reason then there must be only one correct faith. The inverse of this question would be, how does the Church view other prophets? Was Buddha a demon? Will Confucius go to Hell? Will Aristotle converse with St. Gregory of Palamas in the bridal supper of the Lamb?

[Adrian Martin]

Why did God incarnate in Israel? This question seems particularly important to me as it is directly related to the general ecumenical movement because if God incarnated in one place for one reason then there must be only one correct faith. The inverse of this question would be, how does the Church view other prophets? Was Buddha a demon? Will Confucius go to Hell? Will Aristotle converse with St. Gregory of Palamas in the bridal supper of the Lamb?

Why concern yourself with those outside the Church? Follow Christ.

[Herman Blaydoe]

Why did God incarnate in Israel? This question seems particularly important to me as it is directly related to the general ecumenical movement because if God incarnated in one place for one reason then there must be only one correct faith. The inverse of this question would be, how does the Church view other prophets? Was Buddha a demon? Will Confucius go to Hell? Will Aristotle converse with St. Gregory of Palamas in the bridal supper of the Lamb?


Only Want to Know from Jesus Christ, Superstar (sung by Judas Iscariot)
Every time I look at you
I don't understand
Why you let the things you did
Get so out of hand
You'd have managed better
If you'd had it planned
Now why'd you choose such a backward time
And such a strange land?

If you'd come today
You could have reached the whole nation
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication

. . .

Tell me what you think
About your friends at the top
Now who d'you think besides yourself
Was the pick of the crop?
Buddah was he where it's at?
Is he where you are?
Could Muhammmed move a mountain
Or was that just PR?

God chose Abraham, who was found "righteous" and from that single individual produced the nation of Israel. He gave "Israel" the earthly city of Jerusalem as a TYPE of the Heavenly Jerusalem.

You have a lot of questions. I really recommend you get a copy of The Message of the Bible by Fr. George Cronk. It is a great place to start. I would follow it up with Fr. John Breck's The Power of the Word in the Worshipping Church. I think these books will help you start putting some of the puzzle pieces in place.

[Kris]

Why did God incarnate in Israel?

Because it was from the Jews that the blessed Virgin would be born. Had she been born to a Ugandan couple, our Old Testament would have been written in Luanda and thousands of pilgrims would flock to Kampala every year to see the Holy Light in the Holy Sepulcher.

[David Dietrich]

Was Abraham the only righteous man of his day? Were there no others? And again I ask the implicit question: did not God's truth come to other places as well? If so, how much? Why did God leave the Ugandans in darkness? Or did He? etc. The ecumenist argument that much be combated here is the idea that the writers of the Old and New Testaments had no knowledge of the other major religions or philosophies outside their narrow sphere thus opening the loophole for other Christs.

[Herman Blaydoe]

Other Christs? How many "Christ"s do you think there are? How many do there have to be?

[Antonios]

Was Abraham the only righteous man of his day?

No, David. Not the only one. But the one whose faith in God was the greatest.

When God promised him true life (as it was understood to be in those ancient of days) by promising him to be the father of nations, a gift to reward his charity, faithfulness and fairness, "Abraham believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness". (Genesis 15:6)

Abraham's faith in God through his life and works is what enabled him to be the chosen vessel of the Holy Spirit at that time. (And what history has confirmed to be true). A foreshadow of the Virgin Mother, a receptacle of the Word of God before the Incarnation.


Were there no others? And again I ask the implicit question: did not God's truth come to other places as well? If so, how much?
...how does the Church view other prophets? Was Buddha a demon? Will Confucius go to Hell? Will Aristotle converse with St. Gregory of Palamas in the bridal supper of the Lamb? David, Adrian speaks correctly. Your concern should be whether you will go to hell, whether you will converse with St. Gregory Palamas in the bridal supper of the Lamb. Let God be God and His Son be Judge. He will be far more merciful and compassionate than anyone else who has ever walked this earth.

Allow the Holy Scriptures to prove themselves in your heart. Believe in the Lord as did Abraham, and the Truth will guide you.

In Christ,
Antonios

[Nicolaj]

...how does the Church view other prophets? Was Buddha a demon? Will Confucius go to Hell? Will Aristotle converse with St. Gregory of Palamas in the bridal supper of the Lamb?

Well, I guess you are familiar with the fact that Jesus after he died, he went to Scheol to preach those who died before Easter and preach them the gospel. As a consequence of sin all people who died before this very day entered here and awaited the Coming of the Son.

And here the same as on Earth, those who believed the Son were saved and those who rejected, stayed there! We don't know if Confucius and the others accepted the preaching, so we will find out first we die here.

And there will be no disputes at the Supper of the Lamb, because we all will worship the Lamb!

And God decided to make this History with the people of Israel, the elected ones.

And David, read and know the Scriptures, all is there!

In Christ, Nicolaj

[Owen Jones]

"Your concern should be whether you will go to hell, whether you will converse with St. Gregory Palamas in the bridal supper of the Lamb."


This strikes me as Protestant theology. Orthodoxy has always taught that we have equal or more consideration of the spiritual fate of others than ourselves.

Christ represents God to all humanity, and the Church represents all humanity to God, and is a rational sacrifice on the part of all humanity to God. The liturgy is on behalf of all for all, not just the believer. God came to save the world. So we should be aware of and concerned about non-Christians. When Orthodoxy is only for the Orthodox, it is nothing but a dead religion. Others can be sanctified by our prayers and our sacrifice. If a non-believing spouse can be sanctified by a pious, believing spouse, then the whole world can be sanctified by the Church. This, it seems to me, is our theology.

[Herman Blaydoe]

that He gave is one and only Son, that whoever shall believe in Him shall have everlasting life. (John 3:16). God became Man. It is the singular most important event in human history. He came, not to teach (even though He taught), He came not to heal (even though He healed). He came to reclaim His own, to save all of His Creation, through His birth, death, and resurrection.

He acted for all mankind, even those who have not heard of Him. His is not Prince Siddhartha, He is not Vishnu, He is not Mohammed, He is not Joseph Smith, He is not Maharishi Yogi, and they are not Him. All the real prophets were and are witnesses to Him. Those that aren't are simply the false prophets and teachers that the Apostle Paul warned us about, who bring "other" gospels. There is only ONE Christ, there is only ONE Truth, there is only ONE Church. Everything else is something less.

[David Dietrich]

The point of this ecumenist perspective is that the scriptures of Christianity and Judaism were written by Jews and Christians who had no experience outside of the Roman/Near Eastern world, and so they can neither confirm no deny the validity of traditions outide of their sphere of knowledge. In this scenario it is altogether possible that these other prophets, because they had never heard of Christ, were actually preaching the exact same thing simply put in their own cultural terminology. If that is true then it is perfectly acceptible for Christianity and these other religions to coalesce because they were really all the same doctrine preached in different languages to different people. This argument, though false, is difficult, if not impossible, to diprove using any of the texts unique to their religious culture because they all developed in isolation from one another. The nearest thing to an argument that can be made is that the descendants in these traditions have rejected on another's faiths as wrong, but even this can be bypassed by saying that they forgot the original message of their religions.

[Antonios]

"Your concern should be whether you will go to hell, whether you will converse with St. Gregory Palamas in the bridal supper of the Lamb."


This strikes me as Protestant theology. Orthodoxy has always taught that we have equal or more consideration of the spiritual fate of others than ourselves. Thank you Owen for clarifying this. I did not mean to imply that our sole concern should be on ourselves, but our main concern is for our salvation, and the way to salvation is clearly explained in the Gospel as being through our love and acts of love for God and our neighbor.

In Christ,
Antonios

[Herman Blaydoe]

The point of this ecumenist perspective is that the scriptures of Christianity and Judaism were written by Jews and Christians who had no experience outside of the Roman/Near Eastern world, and so they can neither confirm no deny the validity of traditions outide of their sphere of knowledge.

Except that this is simply not true. Many of the early Christians were well-read and well-travelled and certainly the Roman Empire was as eclectic a mixing of religious perspectives and teachings as exists today.


In this scenario it is altogether possible that these other prophets, because they had never heard of Christ, were actually preaching the exact same thing simply put in their own cultural terminology.

This idea is the essence of the teachings of Bahai and corporate speaker Deepak Chopra, who goes so far as to claim that our Lord traveled the world and "learned from the masters" of other faiths before beginning His ministry. While teachings may be similar they are in nowise "the same thing put into their own cultural terminology". Many faiths are happy to acknowledge Christ as a "great teacher" but totally fail to understand or realize His pivotal role in the reclamation of creation to its original purpose. Indeed, other religions are indeed shadows of that which was revealed in its fullness in Christ. That others guessed at or derived portions of the Truth should certainly come as no surprise, but no deduced religion can take the place of the REVEALED TRUTH of Christ Himself, as preserved, practiced, and preached by the Holy Orthodox Church. That is why I continue to say that anything else is something less. The testament to this is the fact that Orthodoxy is consistent across culture, race, geography, and time.

[Andrew]

Was Abraham the only righteous man of his day? Were there no others? And again I ask the implicit question: did not God's truth come to other places as well? If so, how much? Why did God leave the Ugandans in darkness? Or did He? etc. The ecumenist argument that much be combated here is the idea that the writers of the Old and New Testaments had no knowledge of the other major religions or philosophies outside their narrow sphere thus opening the loophole for other Christs.

Abraham was not the only righteous man of his day. He was chosen by God, and had sought God all his life. What ever is best for the salvation of man is what God does. It doesn't matter if we can understand it with our logical faculties or not... he chose Abraham, and from Abraham choosing God Christ was born into the world. Glory be to God!

God's truth is God himself. God is everywhere. He has never left anyone. He takes care of all. He leaves noone in darkness. And if they were in darkness in their life on earth, they were shown the glorious Light when He descended into Hades to save fallen man.

There are no other Christs. There are aspects of human nobility in all religions, because their virtuous teachers descended within and found the light of man created in the image of God (especially Buddha). But this is not enough. Their attempts to "transcend" the personal sphere and unite with the Impersonal Absolute is the opposite of God's plan, which is for all Persons to be one as the Holy Trinity is one, and for all of man to be united with God, in a dynamic, Personal way. God did not want Siddharta to fuse with some impersonal primordial nothingness - He wants Siddharta to be His son, alight with the glory of uncreated divinity, seated at the right hand of the Father.

[David Dietrich]

"That others guessed at or derived portions of the Truth should certainly come as no surprise, but no deduced religion can take the place of the REVEALED TRUTH of Christ Himself..."

Why did God not reveal His perfect Truth to all people at once? Why was Christ not born in India, China, the Americas, and Africa at the same time he was being revealed to the Jews? Is it not true that by revealing himself to the Jews he deprived the rest of the world of the direct and immediate revelation He gave them?

[Andrew]

"That others guessed at or derived portions of the Truth should certainly come as no surprise, but no deduced religion can take the place of the REVEALED TRUTH of Christ Himself..."

Why did God not reveal His perfect Truth to all people at once? Why was Christ not born in India, China, the Americas, and Africa at the same time he was being revealed to the Jews? Is it not true that by revealing himself to the Jews he deprived the rest of the world of the direct and immediate revelation He gave them?

I'm not God, so I can't answer for Him. If we become we can talk to Him face to face, and then maybe you can ask Him this question. Also, His being born of Israel is not so important as Him being born, incarnate, assuming the totality of human nature and Humanity. He revealed Himself to the entire cosmos. Not just to the Jews. He was baptized in the Jordan. All waters touched the Godman. He walked on the ground. He breathed air. He has touched the entire creation. So, one cannot say that He deprived the world of direct and immediate revelation. Also, anyone anywhere can meet Him even now, as the saints testify to. Also, He revealed Himself in Hades, so everyone will meet Him at some point. We cannot look at things from limited human rationality, or psychological logic.

[Antonios]

Is it not true that by revealing himself to the Jews he deprived the rest of the world of the direct and immediate revelation He gave them?

Getting crucified once was probably enough.

[Robert Hegwood]

I think the point has been made that God's plan of redemption is realized in the Incarnation. That means at a minimum He had to become incarnate at a particular time and place within a particular people and unto a particular mother. So if He were born in subsaharan Africa the question would still remain well why not Scandinavia, Central America, Kamchatcha, the Philippines, India, or Australia...or the Middle East, the very crossroads of three continents? If He is going to be born in one place to one mother it cannot at the same time be in another place to another mother. God prepared a specific lineage for Himself and took a few thousand years to get it all in place including the appropriate cultural milieux into which Christ was born. Mary was not just a roll of the heavenly dice that day. There is a reason that the Gospel was given at a time in history so as to be written and transmitted in Greek and not Hittite or Anatolian or Hottentot.

Israel is the offering of all the other nations of the earth, and Judah the offering of Israel, and Mary the offering Judah so to speak. Was God unjust to Benjamin or Napthtali because Judah was chosen to be Christ's tribe? If not then neither were the other nations of the earth deprived because God chose when where to whom and through whom He would be born.

Your ancestors and mine were busy worshiping sticks, and meteorites with gruesome rites as late as 7 or 8 centuries after Christ even came. Was God unfair then to our ancestors by it taking so long for the Gospel to get to them? And what of them? Are they doomed to perish in their ignorance? Why should they perish if you exist and are able to pray for them? Why not prove the Gospel now as it shines in you...one whose lineage was also prepared in the foreknowledge of God. Will you justify your lineage, your ancestors by your life, by your prayers, by your engagement in love of the whole Adam?

As for the world when Christ came it was in darkness already. But God set a fire upon the earth. The light had to and has to be chosen as it comes.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I think the most important point is how Israel is a small people and of little consequence in the eyes of the world. Notice how their roots are from Abraham who is sent by God from his own comfortable existence in his homeland to an already populated land. Here he must rely totally on God's help rather than worldly power and numbers.

These themes which the OT continually refers to are then played out in how Israel is to be a people set apart, a chosen people. Even without going into how all of these themes foreshadow the Church we can see that in the OT, Israel's choseness by God ties together the two elements of obedience to God with a description of Israel's smallness & fragility in worldly terms.

From here of course it is easier to see how the Church saw faith as the central element at work in the OT dispensation. What astounded the Old Israel however was how this faith was played out in the displacement of the Old Law for the New.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[David Dietrich]

Why could God not incarnate in multiple places, if not at the same time, then at different times? How do we know that the Buddhists did not find the same truth we did? How are we to establish that we know who the One God is as nobody else does?

The point that God must prepare a special lineage to incarnate is a good one and goes far to thwart religious relativism. It does not seem to preclude the possibility of multiple lineages and, in short, multiple manifestations of the truth. Why would God proclaim a universal truth from the perspective of a local people? Would he not proclaim universal truths in every place? Why from the Jewish perspective?

[Kris]

Why could God not incarnate in multiple places, if not at the same time, then at different times?

The incarnation of God is inseparably connected with the restoration of mankind and our union with God.

The notion of multiple incarnations blasphemes God by denying His saving work, and trivialises our faith to the point of rendering it absolutely meaningless.

[Herman Blaydoe]

God chose a rather small, relatively unimportant people from which to be physically manifest. Nonetheless it was a people that He spent centuries preparing. Why did He have to be born at all? Why not simply manifest in Power and Glory to all people at the same time as it is taught He will do in His second coming? Why pick a "stiff-necked" people who continually turned away and had to be sometimes forcibly brought back?

It is an awesome mystery. He chose to come in humility rather than in Glory to a nondescript people in a nondescript place. It might have been any people, it might have been any place, but He chose this people and He chose this place. He put on our humanity in this way. He reclaims Creation in this way. His one time and yet eternal Birth, Life, Death and Resurrection is for all times, all places, all people. He didn't come to create Buddhists, or Shintoists, or animists, or Hindus or Confucians or Zoroastrians or other worshippers of other gods. He came to proclaim that there is ONE God, not many gods. One Truth, not many truths. One People, not many peoples. He came to throw down the false idols, not build them. Buddha taught that there is NO God. Hindus teach many gods. How can these teachings be compatible? How can these "truths" be reconciled? Some interesting combinations have arisen over the centuries, many religions have been invented, but only one was REVEALED. It defies our ability to justify or explain, it is what it is because He is who He is, the great I AM. We don't have to justify it, we don't have to reconcile it, we simply have to accept it.

Or so it seems to this bear of little brain.

Herman the Pooh

[Olga]

Bear of little brain, Herman? This short post of yours is the finest exposition of the Christian faith and repudiation of religious relativism I've ever seen. Brilliant!! Well done!!

[Kosta]

Jesus said, "You search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life, but they are which testify of me."

Christians were those people which determined that Jesus was the Messiah prophecied in the old testament, but not limited to it. Scripture is latin for "to write", many things were written and these also speak of Christ.

Whether it is the greek myth of Promytheos who came down from heaven (mt olympus) bearing the Light to man (fire) and was punished by being chained against a mountain rock (cross) woth an eagle came down to eat his liver daily (Christ pierced at hs side by a roman soldier bearing the roman eagle as a breastplate), there all forshadowing and prophecies of Christ.

This is nothing new, the magi followed the star because their prophetic writings told them to. Fr Seraphim Rose extracts the Christ prophecies in Taoism his book the "Christ the Eternal Tao".

All lead to Christ and His Church. Now not all religions teach the same. You cant say they can be synchronized. Christianity speaks of a ressurection of the dead, which was brought upon by Ancestral sin. Bhuddism teaches an indefinate amount of reincarnations till you reach nirvana. Nirvana being a state of "nothingness"; literally the extinguishing of the flame of life, the cessation of the cycles rebirth and death, hence the disolution of the soul. Obvious these two positions are contradictory

[Robert Hegwood]

Why didn't Christ incarnate multiple times to different peoples. I suppose that would be related to why He incarnated at all and didn't just publicly dispatch angels to all nations to give them a heads up.

First God's incarnation presupposes His crucifixion. He was slain before the foundations of the world according to the Scriptures. So does it take multiple incarnations and multiple gruesome execution, and multiple resurrections in order to achieve the purpose of the Incarnation? How many times does death have to be defeated? How many times must humanity be united to God in order for the divinization of humanity in the God-Man to be accomplished?

Now if one believes that Christ's primary purpose in the Incarnation was didactic then multiple Incarnations might make some kind of sense, after all God sent many prophets, why not many Sons? Then every nation could have its own personal Jesus as it were. If Christianity were primarily a body of propositional truths, a saving intellectual philosophy of some kind, then multiple divine teachers of it might make sense? So I guess you have to ask yourself do you understand the faith primarily in terms of propositional truth or in terms of communion and healing transformation through union with the God-Man?

[M.C. Steenberg]

Christ is a person, rather than an idea. Ideas tend to incarnate everywhere. Persons tend to set their feet on the ground.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

Why Israel? I thought it was because from Abraham, the Jews were the only people who would accept monotheism, 'stiffnecked' and rebellious though they were. (In Egypt, Akhenaten's monotheism was soon wiped out.) Tragic, then, that having accepted the initial revelation, they rejected the most important one.

[Rick H.]

Tragic, then, that having accepted the initial revelation, they rejected the most important one.



However, the Good News is that as we read the End of the story, we see that this is not a permanent condition for 'them.' In the End, the 'they' in this story will be the "WE."

[Nina]

Tragic, then, that having accepted the initial revelation, they rejected the most important one.

No tragedy at all - because many Jewish people will convert before the Second Coming of Christ. Actually that's the mission of Prophet Ilias.

And as St. Theophan emphasizes:


It is not yet a decisive sign of true life in Christ if one calls himself a Christian and belongs to the Church of Christ. Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 7:21). And they are not all Israel, which are of Israel (Rom. 9:6). One can be counted as a Christian and not be a Christian. This everyone knows. Link (http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/salvation_theofan.htm#_Toc13899742).

[Andreas Moran]

I'm all for a happy ending.

[M.C. Steenberg]

What's all this about the book of Revelation?

[Andreas Moran]

Well . . . a happy ending for Jews who turn to Christ. I wish no one were to suffer for all eternity but it seems it will be so for many.

[Nina]

Well . . . a happy ending for Jews who turn to Christ. I wish no one were to suffer for all eternity but it seems it will be so for many.

Yes, it will. But there will be Christians suffering also, not only Jewish, or people from other religions. And as we know from Fathers there will be laity along with clergy suffering also. Because we are given the Truth, but betray Him, just as we say the Jewish people did. Being a Jew (or person from other religion) is not a ticket for suffering in the next life; and being a nominal Christian is not a guarantee for entering Heaven.

[Effie Ganatsios]

"Your concern should be whether you will go to hell, whether you will converse with St. Gregory Palamas in the bridal supper of the Lamb."


This strikes me as Protestant theology. Orthodoxy has always taught that we have equal or more consideration of the spiritual fate of others than ourselves.

Christ represents God to all humanity, and the Church represents all humanity to God, and is a rational sacrifice on the part of all humanity to God. The liturgy is on behalf of all for all, not just the believer. God came to save the world. So we should be aware of and concerned about non-Christians. When Orthodoxy is only for the Orthodox, it is nothing but a dead religion. Others can be sanctified by our prayers and our sacrifice. If a non-believing spouse can be sanctified by a pious, believing spouse, then the whole world can be sanctified by the Church. This, it seems to me, is our theology.

A terrific post, Owen.

Effie

[David Dietrich]

I think the concept of the didactic and re-creative aspects of the Incarnation cuts to the heart of the issue. I think it is easy to establish that the conquest of death is done only once/eternally, so it is meaningless to speak of multiple resurrections, or if u do you can only be talking about the infinite number that spring from The Resurrection. But is not the didactic aspect of this death and resurrection inseparable from it? Yes Christ resurrected all of humanity, but are we not taught that this new life does not become effectual unless humanity accepts it? Is this not the inseparable, didactic aspect of this recreation?