The God-Man

I came across this in preparation for tonight's Bible study on the incarnation:

If salvation were simply a matter of correcting some mistaken ideas that humans held, then Jesus need be no more than a good teacher sent by God in the manner of Moses. If salvation were simply a question of rectifying social structures that were oppressing the people, then Jesus need be no more than a faithful prophet sent by God in the manner of Amos or Isaiah. If salvation, in short, were simply a human matter, then Jesus needed to be only a human being.

But what if the New Testament speaks about salvation in terms quite other than didactic or political? What if the witness of the New Testament - and the life and practice of the church from the beginning - regarded salvation as something far more than the adjustment of thought or of social structures? Then the agent of salvation must fit the nature of salvation. If the salvation witnessed by the Scripture and experienced by the
church could come only from God, then the agent of that salvation, Jesus Christ,
must be considered fully divine (because we have received from him what only God
could give) just as he is fully human (because we have seen and heard him as a human like us). And this is exactly what the earliest witnesses to the experience of Jesus tell us.

from The Creed, by Luke Timothy Johnson