Tag: incarnation

God’s Promise To Be Incarnated and Sacrificed

By Ken Hamrick

And He said to him, “I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” And he said, “O Lord Yahweh, how may I know that I will possess it?” So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” Then he brought all these to Him and split them into parts down the middle and laid each part opposite the other; but he did not split apart the birds. Then the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. Now it happened that when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. Then God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your seed will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. “But I will also judge the nation to whom they are enslaved, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. “As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. “Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” Now it happened that the sun had set, and it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day Yahweh cut a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your seed I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.”

Gen 15:7-21 (LSB)

God chose Abraham to be the father of His special covenant people. God instructed Abraham to sacrifice certain animals, cut them in half lengthwise, and lay them out with space to walk between them, as was the custom of the nations of that day when making solemn commitments.* God then made covenant promises to Abraham. Ordinarily, both parties to a covenant would walk together through the bloody path between the pieces, swearing to be faithful to that covenant on pain of being made like the animals through which they walked. However, on this occasion, God made a deep sleep fall on Abraham while God alone walked between the pieces.

Continue reading “God’s Promise To Be Incarnated and Sacrificed” →

Origin of the Soul: A Defense of Paternal Traducianism

Also posted at SBC Open Forum.

By Ken Hamrick

Was your soul newly created for you by God, or was it passed down to you from the previous generations, much like your DNA was, and originally came from Adam? This may seem an obscure question, but it is actually foundational to most of theology. Whether or not you have ever considered the question before, the theology that you hold has built much of its doctrinal understanding upon an assumed answer to this question—and most have assumed that the soul is newly created by God in every case. The paper that follows is an excerpt of the current draft of a much larger work in progress, entitled, Mechanics of Atonement: Restoring Reality to Imputation. There is heavy emphasis on Turretin, since I have not found a more thorough argument than his. [Note: Although early theologians, such as Turretin, refer to the “soul,” it is in a dichotomistic way that is interchangeable with “spirit.” Early tradition used the term, “soul,” almost exclusively to refer to the immaterial component of a man, reserving the term, “spirit,” for the Holy Spirit. Perhaps this was to avoid confusion between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit. The Bible does use “spirit” as well as “soul” when referring to man’s immaterial component or nature (the inner man as opposed to the outer man). Both words are used interchangeably throughout this paper, except where otherwise specified.]

[20,000 words] The spirit is what make us most like God, and makes us everlasting beings. Continue reading “Origin of the Soul: A Defense of Paternal Traducianism” →