What does Incarnation mean to Christians and non Christians today?

English History Answer

Incarnation means "out of flesh born."

Answer

Incarnation literally means "the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form," or "a concrete or actual form of a quality or concept."

The Incarnation, to most Christians, refers to God coming down to Earth as a man, Jesus, also called the Christ. The Bible indicates that Jesus claimed to be God Incarnate, or in the flesh, on several occasions, although some segments debate this interpretation. The only way Jesus' death could be the once-for-all atonement for our sins is for Him to have been sinless, which would be impossible had he been a mere man. Only by being both God *and* man could His death on the cross substitute for our own.

I would presume that incarnation for a non-Christian would refer to the second definition above, or perhaps to the possession of a body or object by a ghost or spirit, depending on one's view of things spiritual.

new answer

Possible answer for non-Christians:

We are all incarnate using the definition of the previous answer. God is the father of us all. Jesus claimed to be the son of God, not the only one.

Correction of the above:

Jesus never claimed to be the 'Son of God' - that title was given to him by others. He claimed much more. He claimed to be 'God the Son' - something very very different. By forgiving sins (only God could do that), by his miracles (only God could heal), by his teaching with authority (rather than second hand from the law) and by his claim to be 'I AM' (ja-whe, jehovah) - 'My father and I are one', Jesus claimed to be God incarnate. That is one of the reasons why Christians follow him.

This is a critical question. How do we modern Christians, post-Christians or non-Christians understand the Incarnation today and still be true to ourselves and our God? I think it comes down to the recognition in the prayer or meditation experience that we are part of the all, that we are not really separate from the dynamic flow of matter and energy that constitutes the Universe, but that we are a part of it, sharing in the dynamic transformations of energy and matter at a given time in phase space. In this way we are incarnations of God, the very Ground of Being. People who value Jesus see in Him that he recognized the incarnation in himself, and early on especially in St. Paul's writings the thought was that we all had the power to become sons of God. The early community believed that when they looked at Jesus, his life, his death and his resurrection, that they could see the saving power of God. At some point this got distorted and frozen in a somewhat lifeless formula that highlighting Jesus' breakthrough to God, forgot that the rest of us could also recognize that we too are a part of the divine mystery. Thank God that at least some of this was retained for us mere humans in the doctrine of the eucharist where the mystery of the incarnation is seen in the fact that the bread and wine are identical with Jesus and this becomes for us a portal where we can discover our own communion with God. This may be getting a bit fuzzy but what I'm trying to get across is that our connection to god is the true mystery, Jesus saw it and we honor that in him, and we can find it in ourselves too.

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