The Incarnation

The Incarnation
Author: Timothy J. Pawl
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2020-10-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108606261

The Doctrine of the Incarnation, that Jesus Christ was both truly God and truly human, is the foundation and cornerstone of traditional Christian theism. And yet, this traditional teaching appears to verge on incoherence. How can one person be both God, having all the perfections of divinity, and human, having all the limitations of humanity? This is the fundamental philosophical problem of the incarnation. Perhaps a solution is found in an analysis of what the traditional teaching meant by person, divinity, and humanity, or in understanding how divinity and humanity were united in a single person? This Element presents that traditional teaching, then returns to the incoherence problem to showcase various solutions that have been offered to it.

The Metaphysics of the Incarnation

The Metaphysics of the Incarnation
Author: Anna Marmodoro
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2011-01-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199583161

A collection of original essays by leading philosophers of religion and philosophical theologians addressing the metaphysics of incarnation. Can it make sense to say that a single individual is both fully human and fully divine? What implications does such a claim have for our notions of humanity, divinity and personhood?

A Kryptic Model of the Incarnation

A Kryptic Model of the Incarnation
Author: Dr Andrew Loke
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2014-12-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1472445759

The Incarnation, traditionally understood as the metaphysical union between true divinity and true humanity in the one person of Jesus Christ, is one of the central doctrines for Christians over the centuries. Nevertheless, many scholars have objected that the Scriptural account of the Incarnation is incoherent. Being divine seems to entail being omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, but the New Testament portrays Jesus as having human properties such as being apparently limited in knowledge, power, and presence. It seems logically impossible that any single individual could possess such mutually exclusive sets of properties, and this leads to scepticism concerning the occurrence of the Incarnation in history. A Kryptic Model of the Incarnation aims to provide a critical reflection of various attempts to answer these challenges and to offer a compelling response integrating aspects from analytic philosophy of religion, systematic theology, and historical-critical studies. Loke develops a new Kryptic model of the Incarnation, drawing from the Greek word Krypsis meaning ‘hiding’, and proposing that in a certain sense Christ’s supernatural properties were concealed during the Incarnation.

Incarnation

Incarnation
Author: Michel Henry
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Flesh (Theology)
ISBN: 9780810131255

Michel Henry defends the illuminating thesis that Incarnation is not existence in a body, but existence in the flesh. It is not in a body that flesh appears originally, but being in the flesh that comes first. For only in flesh can one see or touch, feel joy or sorrow, hunger or thirst--and undergo each of these impressions as one's own. But how does flesh come into this condition? How is life given to it so that it can feel itself, or anything else, in this way? Christianity's fundamental thesis, on which its fate plays out in every generation, is that "the Word was made flesh." Henry then asks what revelation must be for it to be accomplished as flesh, and what flesh must be to be revelation. He pursues such questions with lucidity and rigor in this astonishing meditation on the human condition.

Speech and Theology

Speech and Theology
Author: James K.A. Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2005-06-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134473931

God is infinite, but language finite; thus speech would seem to condemn Him to finitude. In speaking of God, would the theologian violate divine transcendence by reducing God to immanence, or choose, rather, to remain silent? At stake in this argument is a core problem of the conditions of divine revelation. How, in terms of language and the limitations of human understanding, can transcendence ever be made known? Does its very appearance not undermine its transcendence, its condition of unknowability? Speech and Theology posits that the paradigm for the encounter between the material and the divine, or the immanent and transcendent, is found in the Incarnation: God's voluntary self-immersion in the human world as an expression of His love for His creation. By this key act of grace, hinged upon Christs condescension to human finitude, philosophy acquires the means not simply to speak of perfection, which is to speak theologically, but to bridge the gap between word and thing in general sense.

The Logic of God Incarnate

The Logic of God Incarnate
Author: Thomas V. Morris
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2001-04-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1579106293

This book is a philosophical examination of the logical problems associated with the claim that Jesus of Nazareth was one and the same person as God the Son, the Second Person of the divine Trinity. How can a being or person who is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc., have become human given that humans are limited in knowledge and beset with weaknesses? Unless this belief in the incarnation is to be dismissed as pious sentimentality, a philosophical case must be made for at least the possible rationality of the idea. Tom Morris makes such an attempt in this book. Indeed, although it claims only to be arguing that the idea of God Incarnate is not impossible, The Logic of God Incarnate confronts the preponderance of modem philosophical argumentation against the incarnation and manages to put the traditional doctrine in a quite plausible light.

The Resurrection of God Incarnate

The Resurrection of God Incarnate
Author: Richard Swinburne
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2003-01-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191531480

Whether or not Jesus rose bodily from the dead remains perhaps the most critical and contentious issue in Christianity. Until now, argument has centred upon the veracity of explicit New Testament accounts of the events following Jesus's crucifixion, often ending in deadlock. In Richard Swinburne's new approach, though, ascertaining the probable truth of the Resurrection requires a much broader approach to the nature of God and to the life and teaching of Jesus. The Resurrection can only have occurred if God intervened in history to raise to life a man dead for thirty six hours. It is therefore crucial not only to weigh the evidence of natural theology for the existence of a God who has some reason so to intervene, but also to discover whether the life and teaching of Jesus show him to be uniquely the kind of person whom God would have raised. Swinburne argues that God has reason to interfere in history by becoming incarnate, and that it is highly improbable that we would find the evidence we do for the life and teaching of Jesus, as well as the evidence from witnesses to his empty tomb and later appearances, if Jesus was not God incarnate and did not rise from the dead. The Resurrection of God Incarnate offers a clear and penetrating new perspective on Christianity's central mystery. It will be of great interest to philosophers, theologians, and all those trying to discover the truth about the Christian religion.

God, Time, and the Incarnation

God, Time, and the Incarnation
Author: Richard A. Holland
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2012-02-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1610977297

The dominant view among Christian theologians and philosophers is that God is timeless--that he exists outside of time in an "atemporal" eternity. In God, Time, and the Incarnation, Richard Holland offers a critical evaluation of this traditional view in light of the most central doctrine of Christianity: the Incarnation of Christ. Holland reviews the history of this controversy, highlighting the various theological problems for which atemporal models have been offered as a solution. He asserts the central importance of the Incarnation for Christian theology and evaluates several atemporal models in light of this doctrine. Finally, he suggests that the traditional atemporal view is not compatible with a robust and orthodox view of the Incarnation. This book rejects the traditional atemporal view of God's relationship to time and argues, based on the Incarnation, that God experiences temporal sequence in his existence.

Transcendence, Creation and Incarnation

Transcendence, Creation and Incarnation
Author: Anthony O'Hear
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000164101

This book expounds and analyses notions of transcendence, creation and incarnation reflectively and personally, combining both philosophical and religious insights. Preferring tender-minded approaches to reductively materialistic ones, it shows some ways in which reductive approaches to human affairs can distort the appreication of our lives and activities. In the book’s first half it examines a number of aspects of human life and experience in the thought of Darwin, Ruskin, and Scruton with a view to exploring the extent to which there could be intimations of transcendence. The second half is then devoted to outlining an account of divine creation and incarnation, deriving initially, though not uncritically, from the thought of Simone Weil. The text concludes by examining the extent to which grace is needed to engage in religious practice and belief. Taking in art, literature, music and classical Greek writings, this is a multifaceted thesis on transcendence. It will, therefore, will be of keen interest to any scholar of Philosophy of Religion, Theology, Aesthetics and Metaphysics.