Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The doctrine of the incarnation is an attempt at conceptual expansion of the church's confession that Jesus Christ is Lord. It is humble, delighted, repentant, and joyful repetition at the level of theological concepts, of the primary affirmation of the church: that the church's Lord, Jesus, is the incomparably comprehensive context of all creaturely being, knowing and acting, because in and as him God is with humankind in free, creative, and saving love. Theological talk of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is thus the orderly intellectual exposition of the divine self-exposition; it is a constructive (and therefore critical) attempt to trace the movement of the being and act of God the Son who takes flesh.To write in such terms is to invite the reproach that confession and critical inquiry have been fatally confused. But theology would be wise not to rise too swiftly or with too much determination to protest against the reproach. Partly this is because the charge of “foolishness” is a permanent accompaniment for any authentically Christian theology which is serious about struggling against sin in the intellectual realm: the reproach identifies that the question of the regeneration of the mind can never be laid aside in the way in which theology responds to its critics. Partly, again, theology's reluctance to make a response of the kind for which its critics might hope is ... log in or subscribe to read full text