Definition (house style)
Incarnation (Latin: in carne, “in the flesh”) refers to the becoming-human of the eternal Son: the second Person of the Trinity assumed a human nature and was born as Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14; Phil. 2:7-8). The classical formulation (Council of Chalcedon, 451 AD) holds that Christ is truly God and truly man in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.
On apokatastasis.wiki, the incarnation is a crucial christological datum with strongly divergent emphases across authors: juridical-typological (Jones: humanity as prerequisite for the go’el right), revelatory (Warnock: the incarnation discloses God’s true character), kenotic-processual (Noordzij: ongoing self-emptying), and participatory with Chalcedonian tension (Nee/Lee: “mingling” of divine and human natures).
Usage per author
Jones
Jones emphasises the juridical necessity of the incarnation: Christ had to be truly human to qualify as go’el (kinsman-redeemer) for humanity in accordance with the law of Moses:
“We know from the genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew that Jesus was born from the tribe of Judah and specifically from the house of David. He came the first time from this special lineage in order to qualify for the sceptre to reign over the earth.”
[Jones, The Laws of the Second Coming, ch. 11]
Warnock
Warnock reads the incarnation as God’s ontological self-revelation — the becoming-human discloses who God essentially is:
“That is why the great and mighty God of the universe who created all things could not for ever remain high and lifted up in the heavens… He must come down and show Himself as He really is: for God the Father, living in His own Son in all His fulness, truly revealed Himself as He really is: meek, and lowly, and compassionate.”
[Warnock, The Hyssop that Springeth Out of the Wall, hyssop2.html]
Noordzij
Noordzij describes the incarnation as the beginning of an ongoing kenosis characterising Jesus’ entire earthly life:
“Jesus was ‘the only-begotten Son’ (John 3:16), in whom all the fullness of God dwelt bodily (Col. 2:9). ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14).”
[Noordzij, Moses and the Way to Sonship, §21 — translated from Dutch]
“Was it not enough for God to become man and to be ‘wrapped in swaddling cloths’ (Luke 2:12) of ‘flesh in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Rom. 8:3)? No, even on earth Jesus would continue to empty and humble Himself.”
[Noordzij, Moses and the Way to Sonship, §48 — translated from Dutch]
Nee/Lee
Lee describes the incarnation as a mingling of the divine and human natures — a formulation that stands in tension with the Chalcedonian “without confusion”:
“The second component is His incarnation, the mingling of His divine nature with the human nature. Through His incarnation He brought God into man and mingled the divine essence of God with humanity. As blue was added to the handkerchief, so the human nature was added to the divine nature, and the once-separated natures became one.”
[Lee, The Economy of God, ch. 1]
Bullinger
Bullinger connects the incarnation to the jubilee inauguration: Christ opened his ministry with the jubilee text of Luke 4:18-19, which for Bullinger means that thirty jubilee years (1,500 years) led to this moment as the “acceptable year of the Lord.”
[Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part I, ch. I]