Enarchay says, "God’s son, who is in effect God in the flesh, suffered on the cross." If God suffered in the flesh, did God also die in the flesh? In Christianity God is triune, so even if God died in his incarnate form He wouldn’t have died altogether — the Father and Spirit would have carried on. And Christ was resurrected, so he didn’t stay dead.

As Shiert says, "I assert that the thinking provoked has been mostly already been done by others." I’d warrant that this statement would apply to most of the topics addressed on OST, but that doesn’t seem to stop us from doing our own thinking as well. Here I’m looking only tangentially at certain implications of the New Testament placing Christ at the scene of the creation. The historical incarnation presents its own complications. The "Ave Maria" prayer, which I memorized as a small child, contains the line "Holy Mary, Mother of God…" Is that right? Did the incarnate Christ have both a divine and a human will? Does the resurrection body of Christ participate in the divine nature, such that it can in effect be omnipresent in the Eucharist (Luther thought so)? And so on. I’m a psychologist by training and inclination, so these kinds of ideas fascinate me. In light of postmodernism’s "decentered self" as explored by Lacan, Foucault, Derrida and others, I’d think maybe an emerging theology might find it worthwhile to revisit some of these premodern controversies about the nature and selfhood of Christ.

"I venture to guess that there is no question raised that can be answered on any other basis than faith," Shiert continues. I wonder: without the long theological tradition attempting to understand the rather sketchy New Testament passages, and without the creeds that formalized certain majority (though not consensual) positions of the early church fathers, what would a Christian by faith believe about the nature of Christ?

The New Testament augments the creation story in another way that’s worth noting at least in passing. The Old Testament offers no knowledge about what God was doing prior to the creation. But in passages like Mat. 25:34 and Eph. 1:4 God is already preparing his kingdom for the elect in Christ "before the foundations of the earth." Genesis 1 starts right off with the creation event; John 1 starts with 2 verses showing God and the Word together before the creation begins. In John 17:24 Christ prays to the Father: for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world.

So the New Testament implicitly answers a couple of questions: (1) Did God exist before the creation? Answer: yes, and Christ did too. (2) Was redemption through Christ a new plan tacked onto Judaism? Answer: no; Christianity in effect preceded Judaism in the foreknowledge of God.