I evacuated a previous post because I decided it was not my calling to defend someone who will get through life fine without my defense, nor to criticize someone who has better men than me to talk to and who will undoubtedly contribute much to the kingdom (though not necessarily in a planned book project).

Instead, I want to express agreement some of the words written about the incarnation here and here by Michael Spencer and co.

I think the speaker in question is, of course, absolutely right to see the danger in truncated views of Jesus resulting in truncated believers and/or truncated churches that ought to appeal (in the best Gospel sense of the word) to a broader segment of humanity (i.e. all of it).

But I don’t think talking about “emphasizing the incarnation” as the source of the problem was at all the right way to go about it. As a tool of analysis there are way too many problems that will result from using it in my opinion. For what its worth, I think Jeff Meyers offers some help here. Especially this:

the submission/obedience/service of the covenant is not external to God, but expressive of his true life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this is not myth, but history. God’s history.

And if it is true deity, it is also true masculinity.

The fact is, as much as it is true that Jesus was not meek and mild, he did come preaching submission to tyrants and turning the other cheek. The mob of (I would guess) mostly males thought that Barabbas was a better pattern of godly manhood than the guy preaching repentance from violent insurrection and the embrace of the cross. But Jesus warned that the pattern, if followed, would lead to death, not as heroic martyrdom, but on a false form of godliness that was under the wrath of the real God.

Finally, when you look at Pauline ethics in the epistles, he is quite firmly and repeatedly cruciform in his exhortations. The epistles are quite clearly in line with the Gospels.

For the onlooker at the cross, pagan and pharisee alike, a real man would be able to free himself from the cross, not submit to it.

Again, I absolutely agree that truncated views of Jesus do lead to problems. I just think we need to express the nature of the truncation differently.

Also, please keep in mind this is really about abstract ideas that I believe are floating around, not about what a particular person said, since all we have is second-hand summaries.