When Jesus came to earth over 2000 years ago God chose to live through our perspective -- the crown jewel of evolutionary processes -- to share His perspective. It is not insignificant that the Apostle Paul had the clearest ideas of what the Incarnation actually meant. 2000 years later, and countless heresies later, we are still fumbling the meaning of God's Word in text (Scripture), in flesh (Jesus) and in Fellowship (what we call the Trinity):
1) Scripture. Peter Enns, who stresses the Incarnational view of Scripture, writes, "In fact, the very nature of “inspiration” means that God’s word must be fully clothed in the human speech of the time. Any other sort of Bible is actually inconceivable. When God speaks, he necessarily and willingly condescends to the human level. He did this with Jesus, and we should not be surprised if the Bible reflects the same divine pattern of communication."
This, to me, is the most reasonable light to view Scripture in. Many over the years have held this view, and it is one that beautifully pulls Paul's understanding of the human Jesus (especially outlined in Philippians) and the meaning of the Christmas and Easter miracles.
2) Incarnation and 3)Trinity. From the Oparadox http://theoparadox.blogspot.com/, Here is a reprint of pages 134 and 135 of A.A. Hodge's "Evangelical Theology: Lectures on Doctrine", grasping what the incarnation and the Trinity mean:
"There is one obvious respect in which the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ agree, and one in which they no less obviously differ. They agree in that both alike utterly transcend all experience, all analogy, and all adequate grasp of human reason. But they differ in that, while the mystery of the Trinity is that one Spirit should exist eternally as three distinct Persons, the mystery of the person of Christ is that two distinct spirits should for evermore constitute but one Person. If you give due attention to the difficulties involved in each of these divinely revealed doctrines, you would be able a priori to anticipate all possible heresies which have been evolved in the course of history. All truth is catholic [i.e. universal or comprehensive]; it embraces many elements, wide horizons, and therefore involves endless difficulties and apparent inconsistencies. The mind of man seeks for unity, and tends prematurely to force a unity in the sphere of his imperfect knowledge by sacrificing one element of the truth or other to the rest. This is eminently true of all rationalists. They are clear and logical at the expense of being superficial and half-orbed. Heresy . . . means an act of choice, and hence division, the picking and choosing a part, instead of comprehensively embracing the whole of the truth. Almost all heresies are partial truths - true in what they affirm, but false in what they deny." (pp. 190-191).
I hold a high view of Scripture, believe that the facts of Christmas and Easter are absolutely historically secure (the last 100 years of archaeology has sealed the deal, so to speak), believe in the reality of Hell and eternal existence of what we call "souls", and hold to the Doctrine of the Trinity (our daughter is named Trinity, after all). I feel like I take God at His Word, although I feel like we have been gifted more historical evidence that Christians in the past (again, because of revelations modern sciences have afforded us). Lastly, I feel that the most faithful understanding of God's communications to us (Father, Son and Spirit) is by having the reality of our smallness and our finiteness transcend our understanding of His Word, His World, His Spirit, and our Savior. This isn't liberalism -- this is rational humility. This isn't pluralism -- God calls all to His table.
But beyond these Spiritual things, a greater understanding of the way God has and does communicate and relate to us should change our understanding and perspective of how we view everything in our life experiences. For instance, If our understanding of Him speaking the universe into existence and breathing life into humans and other animals continues to change, then we should not only be okay with that, we should both expect it and embrace it. If our understanding of what Jesus' limited atonement means to others whom have lived since the first human with God's Imago Dei, then we should embrace it. If our understanding of the possibility or likelihood of life on other planets (or in other universes) continues to change, then we need to embrace this. If our understanding of Jesus' limited atonement changes for us as we live in our generation of post-modernism, and our understanding on how God is speaking to us -- and others -- changes, we need to embrace it. In other words, if we don't continuously keep our ears to the ground, we will never understand how God is speaking to us in our special time on Earth. Jesus insisted those whom put their hand on the plow could not look back. Why are we always looking back to be informed, instead of looking around?
We can never be faithful to Scripture, the Incarnation and God's Essence if we are not faithful to our minds , body and spirit. Allowing God's communication to us as humans in our past is both relevant and critical to informing us on how He is communicating with us now. It wasn't just folks around Egypt and Mesopotamia that were exercising their calls to God through creation myths, flood myths and Savior myths. It was people all over the globe, people from the start of man to now that could not, and can not, scratch the itch of a Creator and a Law that is etched into their hearts. God was calling man to Christ before us. We can always know that God is calling us through Christ, to Christ. And we should know that He will continue to call men to Christ when we are long gone from this planet. Jesus was unrecognizable to some Jews whom had the words of the Prophets at their fingertips. Why?
Well, we know self-pride and rebellion, which have kept most from God through history, is a reason. But the other reason was Christ was not whom many Jews expected, because Christ spoke to the Jews differently then the God who Created them and led them on their sojourn had. But it is of course God and Christ that is immutable. Of course, the Jews that did understand this started a revolution -- led by Peter and Paul -- that has served as the ultimate vessel back to God -- Christianity.
As we make our proverbial sojourn in this vessel back to God, we must not miss how God is talking to us differently today. When we reflect on our smallness, and allow echoes of God speak to us, inform us, and lead us, we will find the message of God may be the same since the story of the garden of Eden was passed on to the Jews, but we are in dire straits of missing it if we don't understand the language is much, much different.
