Appendix M

The Incarnation as Precedent for the Encounter

Christmas, Easter, and What Happens at Every Deathbed

Full-Length Edition

The Word Became Flesh

Five words change everything. "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14). Before Bethlehem, the eternal Son existed with the Father in unbroken glory. After Bethlehem, the Son wore a body. He ate bread and drank water. He walked dirt roads and slept in boats. He wept at a friend's grave. The one who made time stepped into it.

That sentence is the foundation of this entire book. If the Son of God entered creaturely time once, he can enter it again. If he met humanity in a manger, he can meet a dying soul at the bedside. The moment-of-death encounter we have been building toward is not a new idea. It is a christological extension of the oldest Christian claim: God came to us.

This appendix asks a simple question. Does the Incarnation give us reason to believe that the risen Christ can meet each dying soul in that soul's own time? The answer is yes. The Incarnation provides the precedent. The resurrection confirms it. Together they build the christological bridge between Christmas morning and the moment of death.

The Incarnation and Time

Consider what the Incarnation requires. The Son existed in one state. Then he existed in another. He was not joined to human nature. Then he was. Scripture uses the language of process and sequence to describe what happened. The Nicene Creed says the Son "came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." The Chalcedonian Definition adds that he was "begotten in the latter days, in his humanity, of Mary the virgin bearer of God."¹ The language is temporal at every turn. Before. Then. After. These are not accidents of grammar. They describe what actually happened in the life of God the Son.

This matters for a specific reason. If God is strictly timeless, as the classical tradition holds, then there is no "before" or "after" in God's life. There is no sequence, no succession, no movement from one state to another. Boethius defined eternity as "the simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life."² Aquinas drew the consequence plainly: "There is no before and after in Him ... nor can any succession be found in His being."³ On that picture, the Incarnation cannot be an event in God's experience. It just is, timelessly.

But is that right? Can an event that Scripture describes with verbs of becoming and change really be timeless?

Richard A. Holland Jr. devotes a full book to arguing that it cannot. In God, Time, and the Incarnation, Holland identifies three indicators that the Incarnation places temporal sequence in the divine life.⁴ First, the Incarnation event itself marks a division between two states. God the Son existed un-joined to human nature. Then, at a specific moment, he took human nature to himself. That is a sequence: a before and an after in the life of the second person of the Trinity.⁵ Second, the earthly life of Christ demonstrates temporal sequence in the life of God the Son. If the life of Jesus is the life of God the Son, as Chalcedonian Christology insists, then the successive events of that life are successive events in God's experience.⁶ Third, the saving work of Christ indicates sequence. The atonement was accomplished, finished, completed. Those are temporal predicates.⁷

Holland also makes a claim borrowed from Alan Padgett: the classical atemporal model stands or falls with the stasis (B-theory) view of time. On the stasis view, all moments exist equally. Past, present, and future are just positions along a static block. Only on that picture can God's life be "simultaneously whole." But if time is dynamic, as the A-theory holds, then only the present exists. The whole road of time is not spread out for a timeless observer to see at once.⁹ Padgett concluded, "The main objection I have to the timeless model is simply stated: it is true only if the stasis theory of time is true."¹⁰ Holland agrees. If the stasis theory fails, timelessness falls with it.¹¹

Holland does not stand alone. R. T. Mullins arrives at the same conclusion through independent analytic argument in The End of the Timeless God. Mullins's chapter on "The Incarnation of the Timeless God" lays out the problem with formal precision.¹² Thomas Senor's version of the argument runs like this: Jesus Christ bore temporal properties. No bearer of temporal properties is atemporal. Jesus Christ is God the Son. Therefore God the Son is not atemporal. Brian Leftow strengthened the argument by adding the element of change. Jesus began to be human. Whatever begins to be human changes. Whatever changes exists in time.¹³ Garrett DeWeese concurs. His "Argument from the Incarnation" in God and the Nature of Time notes that this line of reasoning raises "a serious problem for the atemporalist, and the available responses to it are beset with significant difficulties."¹⁴

The case is cumulative. Three independent scholars, working from different philosophical traditions, reach the same verdict. The Incarnation indicates temporal sequence in the divine life. (For the broader case for divine temporality, including the arguments from creation, omniscience, and relational engagement, see Appendix F.)

The Reply from Timelessness

Defenders of divine timelessness have responses. They deserve a fair hearing.

The most common reply distinguishes the two natures in Christ. The divine nature remained timeless. The human nature was temporal. The Incarnation did not introduce change into the divine nature itself. It only introduced a so-called "Cambridge change," a change in how something is related rather than a change in the thing itself.¹⁵

Paul Helm defends this approach. In his Eternal God and in his chapter "Divine Timeless Eternity" in God and Time: Four Views, Helm argues that the scriptural data underdetermine the question of God's temporality. The issue must be settled by theological and philosophical reasoning, not by proof-texts.¹⁶ Brian Leftow develops a related approach, arguing that the timeless Son can be "incarnate" through a special metaphysical relation to the human nature of Jesus without entering time himself.¹⁷ Holland surveys these defenses carefully in his analysis of contemporary positions, giving each its due.¹⁸

This book finds the Holland-Mullins case more persuasive. But the dispute is genuine, and the reader committed to classical timelessness should consult Appendix G, which shows how the moment-of-death thesis can be salvaged even on a timeless view of God.

The Son Humbled Himself

The apostle Paul put it in the plainest terms. Christ Jesus, "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (Phil 2:6-7). The Greek word is ekenōsen, from kenoō, "to empty." The theological tradition calls this the kenōsis, the self-emptying.²¹

We do not need to commit to a strong kenotic Christology here. What matters is the simple biblical insistence: the Son did not pretend to be human. He became human. He humbled himself. He took the form of a servant. He was born. He grew. Luke even tells us that "Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man" (Luke 2:52). Increase is a temporal word. It has no meaning outside of time.

Nicholas Wolterstorff pressed this point with characteristic directness. The actions of Jesus, Wolterstorff argued, were not simply human actions brought about by God. They were God's actions. "In the life and deeds of Jesus it was God who dwelt among us. The narrative of the history of Jesus is not just a narrative concerning events in the history of the relationship of a human being to God; it's a narrative about God. God does have a history; the doctrine of the incarnation implies that the history of Jesus is the history of God."²² The Incarnation does not leave God untouched. God has a story now. He has a before and an after.

Wolfhart Pannenberg drew a similar conclusion. In Jesus, God and Man, he argued that the person and destiny of Jesus are the fullest revelation of who God is. If Jesus lived a life of temporal sequence, that life tells us something about God's own relation to time.²³

The Risen Christ Remains Human

The Incarnation was not temporary. This is a point that the God-and-time debate often overlooks. Christ did not shed his humanity at the resurrection. He did not leave his body behind at the ascension. The risen Christ is still the God-man, glorified but not de-humanized.

Gregory of Nazianzus issued the warning centuries ago: "If any assert that He has now put off His holy flesh, and that His Godhead is stripped of the body, and deny that He is now with His body and will come again with it, let him not see the glory of His Coming." The Incarnation brought about a permanent state of affairs in the life of God the Son.²⁴

The letter to the Hebrews drives this home. "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Heb 4:15). The verb is present tense. We have a high priest. He sympathizes. Right now. The writer adds that Christ "learned obedience through what he suffered" (Heb 5:8). He "tasted death for everyone" (Heb 2:9). He knows what it is to die. His knowledge is not theoretical. It is experiential. He has been to the place your loved one is going.²⁵

Apply this to the encounter. If the risen Christ remains human, then he is still a temporal being in the sense that matters for this book. He can attend to a dying soul. He can listen, speak, respond, wait. These are not metaphors projected onto a timeless abstraction. They are the acts of a person who entered time and never left it.

Stephen's Vision and the Resurrection Appearances

Scripture gives us concrete examples of the risen Christ meeting people in their time. The most striking is Acts 7:55-56. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was being stoned to death. In that moment he cried out, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."²⁶

Think about what this scene implies. Christ was not frozen in a timeless posture. He responded to Stephen's crisis. He rose. He stood. He met the dying man at the moment of death. That verb, "standing," is a verb of motion. It describes someone who has shifted from one posture to another. It is a responsive act, not a static eternal feature.²⁷

The resurrection appearances tell the same story. The risen Christ ate broiled fish (Luke 24:42-43). He invited Thomas to touch the wounds in his hands and side (John 20:27). He walked with two disciples on the road to Emmaus, talked with them, broke bread with them (Luke 24:13-35). He appeared to Paul on the Damascus road in a blinding light and spoke to him by name (Acts 9:3-6). He dictated letters to seven churches through John on Patmos (Rev 1-3).²⁸

These are not the acts of an abstraction. They are the acts of a human-divine person in continued temporal existence. He ate. He spoke. He walked. He appeared. Every verb is temporal. The risen Christ is a person who acts in time.

From Emmaus to the Deathbed

Now we can draw the line from the Incarnation to the moment-of-death encounter. The argument is simple, and it runs through four steps.

First, the Incarnation establishes that the eternal Son entered creaturely time. The Word became flesh. The one who made time stepped into it.²⁹

Second, the resurrection establishes that the Son remains incarnate. His humanity is permanent. He is still human, still embodied, still temporally engaged.³⁰

Third, the post-resurrection appearances establish that the risen Christ can meet individuals in their own time. He met Mary in the garden. He met the disciples in the upper room. He met Paul on the road. He met Stephen at the moment of death. The pattern is clear: the risen Christ is accessible to human beings in their temporal experience.³¹

Fourth, the moment-of-death encounter extends this pattern to every dying person. The same Christ who walked to Emmaus walks with the dying soul through the moment of death. The encounter is not a metaphysical novelty. It is a christological extension.³²

The only element that is new is the universality. Christ met Paul, Stephen, and the Emmaus disciples. The book's thesis says he meets every dying soul. That universality does not require a new Christology. It requires only the universal saving will of God (1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9). Christ "gave himself as a ransom for all" (1 Tim 2:6). He "tasted death for everyone" (Heb 2:9). His work is for the world (John 3:16). The moment-of-death encounter is the application of this universally intended work to each individual soul.³³

The Uniqueness Objection

Some will object that the Incarnation is unique and cannot be generalized. They are half right. The assumption of human nature was unique. It happened once. The eternal Son took humanity to himself at a specific point in history, in a specific woman's womb, in a specific town. That will never be repeated.

But the capacity of the incarnate Christ to meet people in their time is not unique. It is the continued operation of the same Christology. Christ met Paul years after the ascension. He met Stephen at the moment of death. He met John on Patmos decades later still. Every one of those meetings happened after the unique event of Bethlehem. The pattern is biblical, not novel.³⁴

Personal Presence, Not Abstract Omnipresence

Christian theology distinguishes between two kinds of divine presence. There is the omnipresence of God by his essence. God is everywhere. There is nowhere you can go where God is not (Ps 139:7-10). But there is also the personal, attentive, dialogical presence of Christ. This is a special mode of presence. The risen Christ is personally present at the Eucharist, in the gathered church, at the final judgment. These are not the same as general omnipresence. They are modes of Christ's personal attention.³⁵

The moment-of-death encounter belongs to this second category. It is not merely that God's essence is present when someone dies. It is that the risen Christ, the God-man, meets the dying soul personally. He attends. He speaks. He listens. He offers. He waits. This is personal presence in the richest sense. (See the full development in Chapter 18.)

The Bible does not give us a mechanism for how this works. But it does not need to. The doctrine of the omnipresence of the divine nature, combined with the personal accessibility of the risen Christ, accounts for it. Just as Christ appeared to Paul on the Damascus road (Acts 9), to Stephen at the moment of stoning (Acts 7), and to the seven churches through John on Patmos (Rev 1-3), so he appears to each dying soul. The mechanism is not different in kind from these biblical precedents. Only the scope is wider.³⁶

The Qualitative Character of the Meeting

Because the encounter is with the God-man, it is not an abstract experience. The dying soul does not encounter a principle, a force, or a generalized divine presence. The soul meets a person. This person has hands and feet. He bears wounds. He knows by personal experience what it is to die. "Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death" (Heb 2:14).³⁷

This matters pastorally. The dying soul meets someone who has been there. Christ did not observe dying from heaven. He died. He was buried. He descended (see Chapter 20 and Chapter 21). He came out the other side. The one who meets your loved one at the moment of death is not a stranger to death. He is its conqueror, and he conquered it from the inside. (For the full development of Christ at the threshold, see Chapter 18.)

The Trinity in the Encounter

The encounter is not the work of one divine person acting alone. The Father sends the Son. The Son enters time and meets the soul. The Spirit applies the Son's work inwardly. The whole Trinity is active in the moment of death, just as the whole Trinity was active at the Incarnation.³⁸

The Father's universal saving will (1 Tim 2:4) is the motive behind the encounter. The Son's incarnate, risen presence is the medium of the encounter. The Spirit's interior witness (Rom 8:16) is the means by which the soul recognizes and responds to Christ. The Trinitarian structure of salvation holds at the deathbed just as it holds everywhere else in the economy of grace. No person of the Trinity acts alone. The Father does not merely decide. The Son does not merely appear. The Spirit does not merely convict. Together the three persons compose an encounter fitted to each soul.

Christmas, Easter, and Every Deathbed

We can now see the full picture. The Incarnation is not just doctrinal background for the moment-of-death thesis. It is the doctrinal foundation. Christmas and Easter are the precedents for what happens to every dying soul.

At Christmas, the Son entered creaturely time. At Easter, he rose and confirmed that his humanity is permanent. At every deathbed since, the same risen Christ is present and accessible to the dying soul. The moment-of-death encounter is not a speculative novelty dreamed up by philosophers. It is the natural extension of what the church has always confessed about who Christ is and what the Incarnation means.³⁹

The God who came to us in Bethlehem is the God who comes to us at the threshold of death. The God who rose for us at Easter is the God who meets us as we cross that threshold. Your loved one's deathbed is her personal Christmas and Easter. The same hands that were wrapped in swaddling clothes, and later nailed to a cross, and later raised in a garden, reach for her now.⁴⁰