Agape-justice conflicts provide unique opportunities for growth in supernatural excellence. There are “no tidy answers” in sorting through competing duties of justice and agape. However, justice’s obligees who hold strong legal and moral claims can voluntarily and generously choose to forego their claim-rights in favor of those who have none—agape’s beneficiaries. If we can give of ourselves with alacrity, then, even the most intractable agape-justice conflicts can be resolved with the adjudication of last resort—to love as Christ loves. Doing so leads to growth in Christified agape, that is, caritas. Such self-giving dissolves the competing claims of agape and justice.

Addressing the problem of Chekhov as a religious artist, Denis Zhernokleyev looks beyond Chekhov’s own ambivalent statements on this topic towards the culture of Eastern Christianity itself, exploring Chekhov’s creative engagement with the stories, symbols, and values of the Judeo-Christian tradition that were an ineradicable part of his upbringing and inheritance.

This chapter develops a Reformed version of kenotic Christology. In the place of two discreet (substantially conceived) “natures” subsisting in one and the same “person,” this chapter posits the existence of a single composite hypostasis, constituted in time by means of what it calls the “ontological receptivity” of the eternal Son to the “act of being” proper to the human Jesus as human. It is the Son’s “ontological receptivity” that makes an eternal act of “identification” on the part of the Logos with the human Jesus to be constitutive of his identity as the second “person” of the Trinity even before the actual uniting occurs. What emerges is in the spirit of Chalcedon even if it is not according to the letter. This chapter develops this Christology, shows how it follows the spirit of Chalcedon, and defends it against possible objections.

This chapter explores Christian theology’s relationship to the literary and the rhetorical to demonstrate the shifts that theology and biblical studies have made in light of David Jasper’s lament that they have “never really accepted the need” to come to terms with postmodern reflections on textuality.It does so through examining an underlying rhythm, vibration or attunement that Christian theology, literature and rhetoric share, one characterized as kenotic. The appeal to the primordiality of rhythm is well documented in postmodern philosophy, following in the wake of Nietzsche. It has surfaced as a theological category in the work of Erich Pryzwara, and the publication of Raimon Panikkar’s Gifford Lectures. The analysis begins with remarks from Roberto Calasso on rhythm and form in, and as, defining literature. It then explores the ‘kenotic’ nature of the operation of imagination. Some of the most important Christian theologians of the past were trained in rhetoric, and so in examining the imagination in both theological and the literary production, the chapter turns to why rhetoric is important for theological discourse, despite the dangers of ideological persuasion.

Taking its cue from Barth, who suggested that the human humility and obedience of Jesus Christ are grounded in God’s being as God, this introduction outlines the argument of the book as a whole. The book attempts to reestablish the credibility of Chalcedonian logic on the soil of Barth’s theology through developing a “Reformed kenotic Christology.” Through the ontological receptivity of the eternal Son, the humility and obedience of Jesus are made to be his “own” in a sense that makes it clear that the subject of that human attitude and activity is also the eternal Son. The result is a pneumatologically driven two-“natures” Christology. This introduction outlines the explanation of this argument as it unfolds through the entire book and discusses the methodology used in the following chapters.

Each of the three theologians treated in this chapter – Karl Barth, Sergei Bulgakov, and Hans Urs von Balthasar – had a deep interest in Christological issues touching upon the divine kenosis. In thinking through the involved issues, they understood themselves to be guided by the “spirit” of Chalcedon. They share the conviction that God and the human should be understood to have been joined together in Christ in a union that is no mere externally realized juxtaposition. But they did not feel themselves bound to retain Chalcedon’s categories. Even more significant is the fact that all three twentieth-century theologians attempt in their differing ways to reconcile divine passibility with a more nearly biblical account of divine immutability.

Both this chapter and the next try to find a biblically funded picture of the self-humiliating God in an effort to repair Chalcedon. This chapter focuses on Paul’s theology of kenosis, particularly found in the “Christ hymn” of Philippians 2:6–11. In assessing the dogmatic uses authorized by scripture, this chapter asks, first, what are we required to say as dogmatic theologians? Second, does it rule anything out? And, third, what does it permit us to say? In addition to the “Christ hymn,” this chapter makes use of material found in Paul’s wider corpus of writings. It also examines the relevance of the Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews for elaborating a dogmatic construction of divine kenosis.

In the third section of the book, a range of topics from doctrinal or systematic theology are considered, building on the survey of the first part of the book, which had dealt mainly with the doctrines of God and of creation. This chapter turns to Christology: to the doctrine of the Person of Christ and of the Incarnation, where participatory language and thinking have also been important. This is worked through in terms of a number of central contentions in traditional Christology. It also brings some less-often-considered aspects of the doctrine of Christ to the surface, such as Christ's participation in God through growth in virtues. A participatory account of Christology can bear witness to the full revelation and presence of God in, and as, Christ. This is contrasted with kenotic Christology.

In the third section of the book, a range of topics from doctrinal or systematic theology are considered, building on the survey of the first part of the book, which had dealt mainly with the doctrines of God and of creation. This chapter turns to Christology: to the doctrine of the Person of Christ and of the Incarnation, where participatory language and thinking have also been important. This is worked through in terms of a number of central contentions in traditional Christology. It also brings some less-often-considered aspects of the doctrine of Christ to the surface, such as Christ's participation in God through growth in virtues. A participatory account of Christology can bear witness to the full revelation and presence of God in, and as, Christ. This is contrasted with kenotic Christology.