Pathways for Addressing Jewish Theological and Philosophical Objections to the Incarnation

Abstract

This project investigates challenges to the New Testament’s presentation of the Incarnation of the Son of God which derive from the theological and philosophical worldviews of Orthodox Judaism, namely those promoted by Maimonides and Kabbalah. Maimonides’s worldview entailed that the interaction of the God of Israel with his creation in any concrete form is impossible, thereby negating any possibility for Jesus to be divine. Kabbalah teaches that the entire cosmos is an emanation of God that is ontologically a part of God, which entails that everything is divine. This worldview makes the Incarnation redundant. After surveying these worldviews, this project provides cosmological, revelatory, theological, rational, and hermeneutical foundations for why the Incarnation ought to be believed over the previously mentioned options. A seminar was devised to determine how familiar the Messianic movement is with the concepts involved, and to see how much progress in comprehension could be made. Analysis of the seminar data shows that the Messianic movement may benefit from increased interaction with Jewish theological and philosophical discourse.