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The Incarnation: God's Giving and Man's Receiving

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Donald P. Gray
Donald P. Gray*
Affiliation:
Manhattan College
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Abstract

The classical christology employed the categories of nature and person in its attempt to elucidate the meaning of the incarnation. Today actional categories seem preferable and are used here in an experimental and exploratory way. The incarnation is, as a result, described as the conjunction of God's giving and man's receiving, a conjunction which in turn gives rise to man's giving in imitation of the divine activity. The analysis of the divine giving focuses particularly on the actional or “economic” meaning of the trinitarian doctrine while the analysis of the human receiving concerns itself principally with the question of human freedom and sinlessness and its implications for a processive understanding of incarnational communion. These christological reflections give rise, in conclusion, to some brief soteriological considerations on Jesus' catalytic influence in the process of human growth or salvation.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , Fall 1974 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1974

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References

1 Theological Investigations (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), IV, 120Google Scholar; V, 175-176, 183; Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Rahner, Karlet al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), III, 204, 205, 207Google Scholar.

2 In using Rahner's language here, and similar language of my own, I do not intend to suggest that he would subscribe to the conclusions which I draw from it in the body of the article. The article is not an exposition of Rahner's christology.

3 The Christology of the New Testament, trans. Guthrie, Shirley C. and Hall, Charles A. M. (London: SCM, 1959)Google Scholar.

4 The Humanity and Divinity of Christ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

5 Christology Reconsidered (London: SCM, 1970), p. 131Google Scholar.

6 Principles of Christian Theology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966), pp. 183–184Google Scholar.

7 Credo (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), p. 32Google Scholar.

8 On this point, see Baum, Gregory, Faith and Doctrine (Paramus: Newman Press, 1969), pp. 15–29Google Scholar, and Man Becoming: God in Secular Language (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), pp. 41–60Google Scholar; and Macquarrie, pp. 182-185.

9 Macquarrie, p. 277.

10 See Macquarrie's Criticism of Rahner on this score in Studies in Christian Existentialism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), p. 205Google Scholar.

11 See, for example, Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Jesus: God and Man (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), pp. 354–364Google Scholar; Macquarrie, John, Principles of Christian Theology, pp. 277-278, 292Google Scholar; Pittenger, pp. 45-65; Knox, pp. 31-33, 50-52, 68-70; Sloyan, Gerard S., “Some Problems in Modern Christology,” A World More Human, A Church More Christian, ed. Devine, George (Staten Island: Alba House, 1973), p. 50Google Scholar.

12 The Christ (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), p. 142Google Scholar.

13 See Fromm, Erich, The Heart of Man (New York: Harper and Harper Colophon Books, 1968), p. 132Google Scholar.

14 Macquarrie, , Principles of Christian Theology, p. 276Google Scholar.

15 The expression is Pittenger's, W. Norman in The Word Incarnate (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), p. 183Google Scholar, and is commented upon approvingly by Knox, pp. 110ff.

16 It has not been customary to speak of the faith of Jesus, but the expression is beginning to appear in the writings of some Catholic theologians. See especially Schoonenberg, pp. 146-152, and Moran, Gabriel, Theology of Revelation (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), pp. 63–71Google Scholar. The hope of Jesus, an equally untraditional but necessary formulation, has recently been discussed by Duquoc, Christian, “The Hope of Jesus,” Dimensions of Spirituality, New Concilium, 59, ed. Duquoc, Christian (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), pp. 21–30Google Scholar, and is briefly alluded to by Schoonenberg, p. 173).

17 The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948), p. 162Google Scholar.

18 This insistence on what Jesus received from God is not intended to ignore or to obscure what Jesus received from men. Certainly he received from his tradition, his family, his disciples and, in a particularly significant way, from John the Baptist, as Dunne, John, A Search for God in Time and Memory (New York: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 8–14Google Scholar, has recently suggested. Undoubtedly much, if not most, of what Jesus received from God he received from the giving of these human intermediaries. As Dunne, , The Way of All the Earth (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 181Google Scholar, has further noted, however, “willingness to receive from others, to be sure, is not a very evident trait” in the life of Jesus as we know him, “although willingness to give is quite evident. Perhaps this is inevitably the way the master appears to his disciples. They are conscious of receiving from him, not of giving to him; in their eyes, consequently, he is one who gives, not one who receives.”

19 Dunne, , The Way of All the Earth, pp. 84–93Google Scholar.

20 On this point, see especially Schillebeeckx, Edward, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), pp. 13–45Google Scholar.

21 Macquarrie, , Principles of Christian Theology, pp. 249–250Google Scholar.

22 Temple, William, Nature, Man and God (London: Macmillan, 1934), pp. 473–495Google Scholar.

23 On this expression, see Macquarrie, , Principles of Christian Theology, 230-231, 249Google Scholar, who is following Pittenger, The Word Incarnate at this point.

24 For this distinction, see Creasey, Maurice, “The Nature of Our Religious Fellowship,” Then and Now. Quaker Essays: Historical and Contemporary, ed. Brinton, Anna (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960), pp. 327–328Google Scholar.

25 Gregory Baum's Man Becoming represents a particularly illuminating discussion of this thesis.

26 See, for example, Pittenger, , Christology Reconsidered, pp. 111–133Google Scholar; Beggiani, Seely, “A Case for Logocentric Theology,” Theological Studies 32 (September, 1971), p. 392CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamilton, Peter, The Living God and the Modern World (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1967), pp. 208–210Google Scholar.

27 Pittenger, , Christology Reconsidered, p. 112Google Scholar.

28 Dunne, , The Way of All the Earth, p. 86Google Scholar.