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The Quantum Incarnation
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 1:18
A profound mystery gripped me recently as I considered the miracle of God the Son coming to us in the incarnation. I hope you stick with me here. The journey is a bit technical but I pray it leaves you with a magnified view of the miracle of Christ in human form.
When we think of how the Holy Spirit of God interacts with man, we may rightly be drawn to the multiple statements of Scripture that describe His direct injection of the word or the will of God into His people. For example, the Holy Spirit is described as influencing the heart (Ps. 51:10), inspiring prophecy and preaching (1 Sam. 19:23, 2 Chr. 24:20, John 3:34, Acts 4:31), being the means of salvific faith (Rom. 2:29, Rom. 8:9, 2 Thes. 2:13), and providing instruction in the things of God (1 Cor 2:10-16). These types of interactions of the Holy Spirit with the spirit of man seem to fit nicely into the category of the types of interactions that spirits should have. God the Spirit should, of course, be able to interact with the spirit of man. After all, these two entities (the spirit and the Spirit) are of the same type. That is, when the Spirit of God somehow communicates with our spirit through a personal interaction it would seem to be a type of non-physical interaction between two immaterial beings—a spirit-to-spirit interaction in the form of a non-material information transfer.
However, I find it even more fascinating that spirit does not just interact with spirit but that spirit somehow also interacts with the material world—the immaterial meeting the material. We have physical bodies that respond to our inner spirit, such as our will, intentions, and thoughts, and so there must exist a spirit-to-matter interaction within each of us. Additionally, Scripture reveals that the Holy Spirit himself also had direct interaction with the material world at creation of all material things (e.g., Gen. 1:2, Ps. 104:30) as well as a direct interaction in the conception of Jesus. As quoted in Matthew 1:18 the Holy Spirit is credited as being the means of conception of Mary to begin the formation of Jesus’ physical body in Mary’s womb.
What I find so fascinating about this spirit-matter interaction is that, according to physics, it could also have been a pure information transfer. Without going into way too much crazy detail, according to our best-known physics today, the most fundamental interactions in the universe run according to rules that we can describe (via quantum mechanics) but not explain causally. For example, every “simple” decision of an atom to, say, collide with a particle of light instead of ignoring it, from what scientists can discern, is purely random. Which decision will “nature” make in these cases? Physicists are forbidden from knowing. It is not that we just don’t know, it is that quantum mechanics prohibits this knowledge. The causal link is invisible to those inside the universe. However, the collective action of trillions upon trillions of such invisible decisions every second is what we call “nature obeying the laws of physics.”
This is highly speculative, but, as far as I can tell right now, is neither heretical nor in violation of the laws of physics to consider that all fundamental, underlying basic causal actions could be under the direct control, right now, of the Holy Spirit. God could be upholding truly all things with the word of His power (Heb. 1:3) using the powerful, effective, causal action of the Spirit. Underlying Matthew 1:18, the Holy Spirit, by God’s creative intent, could arrange pure, information-containing DNA, and all other required cellular material, from the raw materials available in Mary’s body to form the seed of the body of Jesus.1 This “matter rearrangement” would be able to occur through pure miraculous information transfer because every invisible quantum decision is being made by the guiding hand of God according to His purpose.
I believe that this view of the conception of Jesus is no less miraculous than a more conventional view of a direct and spontaneous creation of matter (also, of course, possible and within the power of God). Remember, according to the best science, nothing in the universe has the ability to direct a single one of the “random” outcomes of nature in any way at all, and yet every outcome is being directed such that all conspire together to behave according to the guiding “laws of physics.” The ability for any entity to direct all the quantum decisions in the universe would require an omnipresent, supernatural, omnipotent, and rational entity to uphold the fabric of space and time continuously and guide the decisions according to
foreordained law. Truly mind-blowing!
So, even if your head is spinning a bit here, I pray that you can be enraptured by the majesty, complexity, wisdom, and power of God as He actively works to shape all events and all history according to His sovereign will. Whether the above speculation is right or wrong, we are fully assured by God’s word that His full plan for all of time (past, present, and future) has been, and will be, fulfilled to perfection. At this Christmastime we can revel in the glory of Christ as we remember His miraculous incarnation—how Jesus was conceived in perfection without the seed of Adam, fully human with a human mother, fully God, being filled with the perfect Holy Spirit of God from conception, living the perfect life in total fulfillment of the Law of God, and given as the only acceptable atoning sacrifice to redeem us out of slavery into the family of God.
Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Merry Christmas, my dear brothers and sisters.
Pastor Aaron
As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
Ecclesiastes 11:5
1 Note that I am in no way attempting to “explain away,” minimize, or subjugate to natural “law” the work of God at the incarnation. For example, I have not addressed the additional miracle and mystery of how a spirit indwells physical matter at the conception of a new human (and in the case of Jesus, the indwelling of the baby with God’s Holy Spirit).
