Isaiah 9:6–7
For to us a child is born, to us a son
is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and
peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his
kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that
time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
The
Christians are not claiming that simply ‘God’ was incarnate in Jesus. They are
claiming that the one true God is He whom the Jews worshipped as Yahweh, and
that it is He who has descended. Now the double character of Yahweh is this. On
the one hand He is the God of Nature, her glad Creator. It is He who sends rain
into the furrows till the valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and
sing. The trees of the wood rejoice before Him and His voice causes the wild deer
to bring forth their young. He is the God of wheat and wine and oil. In that
respect He is constantly doing all the things that Nature-Gods do: He is
Bacchus, Venus, Ceres all rolled into one. . . . . On the other hand, Yahweh is
clearly not a Nature-God. He does not die and come to life each year as a true
Corn-king should. . . . .He is not the soul of Nature nor of any part of
Nature. He inhabits eternity: He dwells in the high and holy place: heaven is
His throne, not His vehicle, earth is His footstool, not His vesture. One day
He will dismantle both and make a new heaven and earth. He is not to be
identified even with the ‘divine spark’ in man. He is ‘God and not man’. . . .
. Yahweh is neither the soul of Nature nor her enemy. . . . . She is His
creature. He is not a nature-God, but the God of Nature—her inventor, maker,
owner, and controller. To everyone who reads this book the conception has been
familiar from childhood; we therefore easily think it is the most ordinary
conception in the world. ‘If people are going to believe in a God at all,’ we
ask, ‘what other kind would they believe in?’ But the answer of history is,
‘Almost any other kind’.
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