The Philosophy of Incarnation
My Design in these pages is to discuss, not the Incarnation, but the philosophy of incarnation as such, the word “incarnation” being interpreted very widely. What is commonly called the Incarnation in Christendom, at any rate when interpreted in the common way, is the birth and life of Christ more t...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1940
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1940, Volume: 33, Issue: 2, Pages: 131-149 |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | My Design in these pages is to discuss, not the Incarnation, but the philosophy of incarnation as such, the word “incarnation” being interpreted very widely. What is commonly called the Incarnation in Christendom, at any rate when interpreted in the common way, is the birth and life of Christ more than 1900 years ago, that is to say a historical occasion, supposed to be unique in kind, in which one of the persons in the Godhead, although always God, actually became a man. To those who take their stand upon this historical fact (as they deem it) I have nothing to say. I cannot see that philosophers are compelled to accept such a datum, and I am not specially interested in the question whether, accepting it, they could accommodate it to their philosophical theology. Anything that is said about incarnation in general will presumably have a certain bearing, direct or indirect, upon the Incarnation and upon any problems that may remain when that is accepted as a datum; but I shall not try to draw the moral if there is one. What I want to discuss is whether there is any sense of “incarnation” in which incarnation is, metaphysically speaking, necessary, probable or plausible. Would a theologian who had never heard of Palestinian history incline from the natural (or inevitable) trend of his closer reflection upon deity towards the opinion (or constraining inference) that there must be some sort of incarnation of the Godhead? That seems to me to be a general philosophical problem of some interest to philosophical theologians. In any case it is the problem that I want to discuss here. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000024251 |