Could God Incarnate as an Animal? : Putting Bonaventure & Aquinas into Dialogue with Wallace’s Christian Animism
In Mark Wallace’s When God Was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World (Fordham University Press, 2019), two interrelated claims are pursued: (1) that Christianity and animism are complementary; and, (2) that the Holy Spirit literally became incarnate as a bird at Christ’s...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2026
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| In: |
TheoLogica
Year: 2026, Volume: 10, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-27 |
| Further subjects: | B
Animals
B Christology B Animism B Aquinas B Bonaventure |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | In Mark Wallace’s When God Was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World (Fordham University Press, 2019), two interrelated claims are pursued: (1) that Christianity and animism are complementary; and, (2) that the Holy Spirit literally became incarnate as a bird at Christ’s baptism. In this paper I mostly focus on the second claim, bringing his view into dialogue with those of two mediaeval Scholastics who remain highly influential in Catholic thought: St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas. I examine what they have to say on two questions relevant to assessing Wallace’s striking claim regarding the Spirit’s avian incarnation: first, whether the Holy Spirit could become incarnate at all; and second, the question of whether any divine Person could become incarnate in a non-rational nature. |
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| ISSN: | 2593-0265 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: TheoLogica
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.14428/thl.v10i1.85983 |
