John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelled among us, (and we beheld his glory… The Greek popular incarnations were, in the main, personifications of natural phenomena. When the court of Olympus was constituted, the conviction — universal among the Indo-European peoples — that the gods could not be strangers to men, made it natural to believe that they came down to earth from time to time. Aristotle's and Plato's triads, again were simply psychological. These philosophers resolved the unity of the human personality into a triad of principles. The Hindu Trimurtti is a classification for religious purposes of the great natural processes of creation, preservation, and destruction; and the thought of incarnation is easily linked to the idea of Vishnu, as the Preserver uses the agency of heroes or great men to deliver the race from evils by which it would otherwise be overwhelmed. The Scripture Trinity, on the other hand, is a special revelation concerning the constitution of the Divine nature. The Incarnation is based upon the ultimate fact that God is love. If we regard Christianity as a philosophy, the doctrine of the Incarnation is its essence. If we regard Christianity, practically, as salvation for fallen man, the Incarnation is the secret of its exhaustless Divine power. (Principal Grant.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. |
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