7.4 Danger No 4: God’s Incarnation Becomes Incidental

The incarnation of God through His Son Jesus Christ is one of the basic teachings of the Bible. The apostle John testifies: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). Although He was God, He “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man . . .” (Phil. 2:7–8). He became a human being to bring salvation to us. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5, KJV). The idea of evolution undermines this foundation of our salvation. Hoimar von Ditfurth discusses the incompatibility of Jesus’ incarnation with evolutionary thought [D3, p. 21–22]:

Consideration of evolution inevitably forces us to a critical review . . . of Christian formulations. This clearly holds for the central Christian concept of the “incarnation” of God. . . . The absoluteness with which the event in Bethlehem has up to now been regarded in Christian philosophy, is contrary to the identification of this man who personifies this event (= Jesus), with man having the nature of Homo sapiens. . . . The only way that I see of resolving the contradiction (between evolution and the incarnation of Jesus) is to ascribe a basic historical relativity to the person Jesus Christ.

Von Ditfurth continues by saying that Jesus could not be a universal mediator between God and man, because neither the Neanderthal people (regarded as our probable ancestors), nor our potential descendants could or will understand Jesus. It now becomes clear that theistic evolution has allowed a profound loss of meaning and substance to enter.

The Bible commands us to test the spirits to determine whether they come from God. The criterion given in 1 John 4:2–3 helps us to size up theistic evolution: “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”