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Our God comes, he keeps silence no longer.

Psalm 50:3. Grail translation

In this chapter, we are going to look at the central doctrine of the Christian faith, the doctrine of the Incarnation. The essential idea is that Jesus Christ was both truly God and truly Man. As we approach this doctrine we are faced with a number of difficulties. One is the seeming contradiction in saying that the same person can be omnipotent (divine) and hungry (human). Another has arisen more recently but is just as acute – that Jesus was (or should I say ‘is’; that’s another problem!) a man and not a woman. The Incarnation seems to feed into Christian chauvinism, the devaluing of women, and, historically, probably has done so.

Once again, I ask you to take it on trust that these issues have resolutions, and suggest that the way forward is not to keep banging our heads on intractables or waving a number of political flags in either direction. Let’s try to get to the heart of the matter, and then see. Having put down any weapons, let’s listen to a story from the Mass, slightly edited.

You formed us in your own likeness, and set us over the whole world, to serve you, our Creator, and to rule over all creatures. Even when we disobeyed you and lost your friendship, you did not abandon us to the power of death, but helped us all to seek and find you. Again and again, you offered us a covenant, and through the prophets taught us to hope for salvation.

Roman Missal, n. 118, Eucharistic Prayer IV

We can read this in a number of ways. One approach is to take it personally. We all have in us a sense of being and of reason and love, which is the likeness to God. We also have a sense of difference from plants and other animals, a sense of understanding and control. We also have the sad knowledge of what we have done with that sense and the power that comes with it. You also know in yourself, if you are honest, ways and examples of lost love and friendship, instances in which you are not what you could be, best intentions frustrated.

But there is also hope, which gets you up in the morning, makes you try again; possibilities of reform, of forgiveness. Either of these senses, of sin and of grace, can be to the fore or fade out of sight from time to time, but recognizing the idea of them is enough for now. A very good way of praying is to take that text above, put it in the first person singular, ‘I’, and the present tense: you do not abandon me to the power of death.

The story is also a history. It is told, mostly, in the documents that make up the Old Testament, the first, and longer, half of the Christian Bible. On the face of it, some may think that there’s little point in having the Old Testament. If you open it at random, there is a fair chance you will find something incomprehensible or irrelevant. Some of it is downright irreligious, or even shocking; for example, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the name of God, described in the books of Joshua and Judges. There were quite influential movements in the first years of Christianity which said the Old Testament should be ditched. Not only was it disedifying and even scandalous in parts, but with the coming of Christ it had become, literally, history, to be replaced by the New. The main group were called Marcionites, after their leader, and they failed because they were discredited by a far bigger mistake, of which more in a moment.

But there is something reassuring about the realism of the Old Testament. It has three main sections: the history and law books, such as I Kings or Exodus; the Prophets, such as Isaiah or Jeremiah; and the ‘writings’, a miscellaneous collection including the Psalms, Proverbs and the Song of Songs. There is virtually no human aspiration, hope, virtue, failure, betrayal, emotion or drama that cannot be found in there somewhere. Early monks used to make the same claim of the Psalms alone. Once noticed, this fact is significant. There would be something odd about a religion that addressed only what is true and noble in us. Not just odd, but totally abstract, even useless. Think back to Peter, and his raw need for God. That need comes from sin, from weakness, from a damaging history. The Old Testament tells your story and mine in the form of the story and prayers of Israel.

That is as far as we have got up to now; the realization of doubt and emptiness, and the instinct that there is an alternative. Plus the not altogether comfortable hypothesis that we are loved by a God who is about to do something about all three. Here we have the full and richer purpose of the Old Testament in Christian scripture and life, expressed in the continuation of the prayer with which we began:

Father, you so loved the world that in the fullness of time you sent your only Son to be our Saviour. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary, a man like us in all things but sin. To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation, to prisoners freedom, and to those in sorrow, joy.

Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer IV

The Old Testament tells the story of the preparation in history for this event, in the calling of Israel to be the people within which a saviour for the world could be born and reared. We can read of the slow formation and revelation of religious and other traditions from which the ‘good news of salvation’ could be derived. For, if one stops to think about it, the message of salvation could not be proclaimed without actions and words. Further, words and actions need a context, a time and a place, and an audience rooted in that context to become comprehensible. They also need a context within which to become compelling.

It is vital to recall the kind of context that is meant here. It is not simply a matter of an agreed set of words, and a grammar for what they mean in combination. Here is an example to try to indicate what the ‘extra’ element is. It is from a prayer spoken by a prophet eight centuries before Christ:

With shepherd’s crook lead your people to pasture, the flock that is your heritage, living confined in a forest with meadow land all around. Let them pasture in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old. As in the days when you came out of Egypt grant us to see wonders … Once more have pity on us, tread down our faults, to the bottom of the sea throw all our sins.

Micah 7:14–15, 19

I defy anyone with insight into themselves not to empathize with the hope of that prayer. This is the context I mean, the gradual forming of human history to expect and receive God’s response to our plight. Jesus had a simple proclamation, that in his life the time was fulfilled, and the response had begun. ‘Today these words are being fulfilled, even as you listen’ (Luke 4:21).