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3. "Incarnation" is one way, although not the only way, of saying thisof this: of saying, in effect, that Jesus is the explicit primal source (more, exactly, the explicit primal ontic source) of the peculiar certainty constituting Christian existence (immediate experience of Jesus as such being the explicit primal noetic source of this certainty). Insofar as the myth of incarnation involves distinctions between the Father who sends the Son and the Son who is obedient to the Father's sending, and so on, it represents the explicit primal source of Christian authority as though it were itself but one Christian authority among others, even if the highest. At the same time, the purpose of the doctrine of the incarnation (specifically, of the homoousion) is to remove this implication of the myth by making clear the difference in principle between all who are sons (= children) of God by adoption and him who alone is the Son of God by nature. This becomes intelligible as and when one reflects on the interdependence of the explicit and implicit primal sources of authority, or of decisive and original revelation. For it is only in the light of the explicit source of authority, or decisive revelation, that the content of the implicit source of authority, or of original revelation, is made known (as true as it is and must be that, in the orders both of being and of experiencing, the direction is reversed). Thus, as certain as it is that God as God ever was, is, and will be the gift and demand of existence in and for freedom, of faith working through love; and as certain as it is that this gift and demand are the gift and demand of human existence as such, at least implicitly present in all human experience whatsoever, to be certain of this as Christians are certain of it presupposes specifically Christian experience of Jesus as the explicit primal ontic source of all religious authority or the decisive revelation of God. One way, although, again, not the only wayf way of making the assertion about Jesus that such experience of him at least implies is to speak of "incarnation."

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