Icons: Publication Essay
Incarnate Inspiration
Making reference to the divine in creative practice is not a new concept. Historically, world religions have represented divinity in many guises. The unique contribution of Christian theology is the offering of a divine deity fully ‘humanized’ through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Although there are infinite contestations around the significance of this event, the historical certainty of a Palestinian Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth alive during the early ‘Christian era’, is widely agreed among sceptics and scholars. Therefore, assuming that a man called Jesus walked upon the earth over two thousand years ago, what difference does it make if he was in fact ‘The Son of God’ incarnate? And what tenuous significance does the humanity/divinity of this Jesus have for creative practice.
Eminent theologian Thomas F. Torrance summarises a definition of the Incarnation as follows:
By the Incarnation Christian theology means that at a definite point in space and time the Son of God became man, born at Bethlehem of Mary, a virgin espoused to a man called Joseph, a Jew of the tribe and lineage of David, and towards the end of the reign of Herod the Great in Judea. Given the name of Jesus, He fulfilled His mission from [God] the Father, living out the span of earthly life allotted to Him until He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, but when after three days He rose again from the dead the eyes of Jesus’ disciples were opened to what it all meant: they knew Him to be God’s Son, declared with power and installed in Messianic Office, and so they went out to proclaim Him to all nations as the Lord and Saviour of the world.[1]
At best, this sounds like an excellent story. But, ifthis Jesus of Nazareth was in fact ‘the Son of God’ what does this mean for our humanity? The miracle of the story is not that a man might declare himself to be ‘God’, but rather that God assumed the limitations of a man. In other words, the Creator, became the created, whilst maintaining exquisite ontological integrity to both His human and divine natures. Therefore, in order to accept the reality of the incarnation we must rely on some propositions. Gerald O’Collins writes:
Before we can investigate the incarnation, we need to justify or at least presuppose both the existence of God and the possibility of our knowing that in particular historical contexts God has acted in special ways and communicated some special truth over and above what might be gleaned from God’s normal activity in conserving and guiding the created universe.[2]
Therefore, to discuss the possibilities of the Incarnation as a conduit for creative practice, a few (rather major) assumptions need be made. Firstly, that Jesus was a man. Secondly, that Jesus was the Son of God, and thirdly, that Jesus walked upon the earth as the Son of God incarnate, a.k.a God made flesh. As a man, Jesus made Himself perfectly relatable in his embodied personhood. The singularity of Jesus in time and place was integral to his Messianic message. The body of Jesus, and everything attending to his flesh, attended to His knowing and communicating with God the Father. More than that, Jesus’ existence as a creative, enfleshed person, re-invigorated material processes with divine significance. Regarding the significance of Jesus incarnational presence in time and place, Baxter Kruger explains:
For at least a moment in history, human laughter, human sharing, human compassion, human love, human fellowship and camaraderie and togetherness were all more than human. For at least a moment in history, carpentry and the delight of making things and helping others, human excellence and the pride and joy of creativity and design and moving from design to completed product, were all more than merely human. They were the living expression of the humanity of God, the living expression of the incarnate Son living out his divine sonship, the living expression of a man utterly baptized in the Holy Spirit.[3]
Therefore, there is mystery wrapped in embodiment as a platform for divine encounter, but more specifically as a context for reckoning with the human condition. And so, it is in the place of our humanity that we are, arguably, most adept to meet with the divine. O’Collins articulates the paradoxical power of this particularity:
By assuming a particular, and in many ways, very ordinary, human existence, the eternal Word sheds light on the significance and lasting importance of the particular and often unspectacular lives that we live. We receive our eternal salvation not by escaping from the specifics of our embodied and everyday existence but by working through them.[4]
The Incarnation then, can be considered as a touchstone, or a portal, an entry point to the divine, whose right-of-passage is contingent upon the embodiment of human persons. This becomes simultaneously an entrapment and a grace; entrapment to the limitations of man, and grace to the generosity of God. This offering of poetry and imagery is an attempt to metabolize the wonder of a creative God, who in his generous benevolence, enables and inspires us to create ‘in-kind’, as it were, reflecting his image as Creator.
- E. N. Brookbanks
[1]Thomas Forsyth Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation(London; New York; Toronto: Oxford University Press ;, 1969), 52.
[2]Stephen T Davis, Kendall SJ Daniel, and O’Collins SJ Gerald, The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God.(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 23.
[3]Baxter Kruger. The Great Dance: The Christian Vision Revisited. (Jackson, MI: Perichoresis Press, 2000), 62.
[4]Ibid., 26.