Time and Incarnation

The following is a Christological speculation, not a Christological affirmation.

My student, Brad Littlejohn, has suggested, based on a study of the theology of “life” in the gospel, that the divine-human relation in Christ changes after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The humanity participates in God’s life from the moment of incarnation, but that participation becomes fuller in the resurrection.

That seems confirmed by Paul’s discussion of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. Prior to the resurrection, it was not true that Jesus had a Spiritual body, nor that He was life-giving Spirit. He was psychical, like the first Adam; by His resurrection, His humanity is fully infused with the Spirit and not only shares in the life of the Trinity but is a dispenser of that life.

This makes me wonder: Was patristic Christology was sufficiently sensitive to temporal movement and progress? All the classic Christological questions, at least as we usually discuss them, are fairly static and timeless – natures, persons, hypostatic unions. But what if the relation of divine and human in Christ doesn’t stay the same?

Once the point is made, it seems obvious that it cannot stay the same: How could it, if the humanity is true, changeable humanity. So maybe the divine-human relation is not quite the same at the moment of conception as it is when Jesus has grown some in wisdom and stature, and different again when Jesus has learned obedience through suffering, and supremely different yet again when Jesus dies and rises again.