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The Incarnation as a Continuing, Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David A. Pailin
David A. Pailin
Affiliation:
Lecturer to the Philosophy of Religion, University of Manchester
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Extract

Professor MacKinnon, in an essay on Philosophy and Christology, remarks that Christology confronts theology with difficult but ‘inescapable problems’ because logically ‘it is unique; and yet it overlaps here, there and everywhere’. The complexity of the task, however, does not excuse the theologian from the need to determine the logical nature of the concept of ‘incarnation’ if he wishes to use it in his work—and, as I hope to show, any theology which attempts to describe the actual nature of God probably cannot avoid using this concept in some form or other. Only by appreciating the logic of this concept can the theologian be confident that he understands its proper content and implications and that he offers appropriate justification for his claims about it. In this paper I want to suggest one possible way of viewing the logic of incarnational talk in theology which is based upon the attempt to treat such talk in terms of the notion of ‘revelation’.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , December 1970 , pp. 303 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

page 303 note 1 MacKinnon, Donald M., Borderlands of Theology (Lutterworth Press, 1968), p. 61.Google Scholar

page 303 note 2 Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality (Harper and Row, 1960), p. 521.Google Scholar

page 304 note 1 Cf. Process and Reality, pp. 522–6.

page 304 note 2 ibid., p. 525 f.

page 304 note 3 Hocking's, CL. remarks in Alfred North Whitehead, Essays on His Philosophy, ed., Kline, George L., (Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 16.Google Scholar

page 304 note 4 Cf. especially, Hartshorne, Charles, Man's Vision of God (Harper and Row), 1941Google Scholar; The Divins Relativity (Yale University Press, 1948)Google Scholar; The Logic of Perfection, (Open Court, 1962); A Natural Theology for Our Time (Open Court, 1967); and Cobb, John B., A Christian Natural Theology (Westminster Press, 1865)Google Scholar; and Ogden, Schubert M., The Reality of God (SCM Press, 1867).Google Scholar

page 304 note 5 Cf. Pittenger, Norman, Process Thought and Christian Faith (Nisbet, 1968), p. 70.Google Scholar

page 307 note 1 Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (Cambridge University Press, 1927), p. 110.Google Scholar

page 307 note 2 ibid., p. 21; cf. p. 32, p. 37.

page 308 note 1 Cf. The Deists who held this view of revelation. e.g. Tindal.

page 309 note 1 Cf. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Mentor), p. 174.Google Scholar

page 309 note 2 Cf. Hartshorne, A Natural Theology for Our Time and Hartshorne's various works on the ontological argument.

page 309 note 3 Cf. my article ‘Some Comments on Hartshorne's Presentation of the Ontological Argument’ in Religious Studies, Vol. 4, no. I, October, 1968, especially pp. 119 to 122Google Scholar; and Analecta Anselmiana, I (Minerva GMBH, 1969), pp. 195–221.Google Scholar

page 311 note 1 Science and the Modern World, p. 179; cf. p., 174.

page 313 note 1 Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 1933), p. 211; cf. pp. 216 ff.Google Scholar

page 314 note 1 Whitehead, , Adventures of Ideas, p. 212.Google Scholar

page 314 note 2 Cf. Process and Reality, p. 520; Religion in the Making, pp. 58 ff.; Adventures of Ideas, p. 216 f.

page 314 note 3 MacKinnon, , op. cit., p. 56.Google Scholar

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page 315 note 1 Cf. MacKinnon, , op. cit., p. 81, p. 87 f.Google Scholar

page 316 note 1 MacKinnon, , op. cit., p. 58; cf. pp. 81, 87 f.Google Scholar

page 318 note 1 Williams, C. J. F., ‘A Programme for Christology’, in Religious Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 04 1968, p. 522.Google Scholar

page 318 note 2 ibid., p. 523.

page 319 note 1 John B. Cobb, A Whiteheadian Christology-a paper presented to the Society for the Study of Process Philosophy.

page 319 note 2 Cf. Reality of God, pp. 180–7, 200–4.

page 319 note 3 Barnhart, J. E., ‘Incarnation and Process Philosophy’, Religious Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, April 1967, p. 230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 319 note 4 Pittenger, W. Norman, The Word Incarnate (Nisbet, 1959), p. 181Google Scholar; cf also Process Thought and Christian Faith, p. 65 ff.

page 319 note 5 Hamilton, Peter N., The Lining God and the Modern World (Hodder and Stoughton), 1967, p. 206.Google Scholar

page 319 note 6 Cf. Williams, Daniel Day, The Spirit and the Forms of Love (Nisbet, 1968), pp. 158–72.Google Scholar

page 320 note 1 A Whiteheadian Christology.

page 320 note 2 Cf. Ogden, Schubert M., Christ without Myth (Collins, 1962), pp. 168 ff., 183 ff.Google Scholar

page 320 note 3 I am intrigued with I. T. Ramsey's suggestions about ‘disclosure-situations’ but feel that we need to know more about why one pattern and not another discloses itself to us.

page 321 note 1 Bultmann, Rudolf, ‘Bultmann Replies to His Critics’ in Kerygma and Myth, Vol. I, edited by Bartsch, H. W. and translated by R. H. Fuller (SPCK, 1964), p. 211.Google Scholar

page 321 note 2 MacKinnon, , op. cit., p. 54.Google Scholar

page 321 note 3 Religion in the Making, p. 53; cf. p. 53 f, 71 f, 74; Adventures of Ideas, p. 138.

page 321 note 4 Cf. Lessing's remark: ‘That the Christ, against whose resurrection I can raise no important historical objection, therefore declared himself to be the Son of God; that his disciples therefore believed him to be such; this I gladly believe from my heart. For these truths, as truths of one and the same class, follow quite naturally on one another. But to jump with that historical truth to a quite different class of truths, and to demand of me that I should form all my metaphysical and moral ideas accordingly; to expect me to alter all my fundamental ideas of the nature of the Godhead because I cannot set any erodible testimony against the resurrection of Christ: if that is not a Мɛτάßαςıς ɛις άλλο γένος, than I do not know what Aristotle meant by this phrase’. This h from ‘On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power’ printed in Lessing's Theological Writings, edited and introduced by Chadwick, Henry (A. & C. Black, 1956), p. 54.Google Scholar

page 323 note 1 Cf. Religion in the Making, p. 21, p. 55 f.; Adventures of Ideas, p. 217.

page 323 note 2 Cf. MacKinnon, , Op. cit., pp. 45 ff.Google Scholar

page 323 note 3 Cf. Pittenger, , Process Thought and Chsistian Faith, p. 19.Google Scholar Tests 5(a) and 5(b) would probably not be acceptable to most Buddhists since their goal of ‘Nirvana’ is contrary to the ‘flourishing’ and ‘creative understanding’ referred to here. Possibly no rational test at all would appear intuitively valid to a Zen Buddhist. This suggests that what seem to us to be intuitively appealing tests may be too much conditioned by our metaphysical presuppositions and cultural and religious back-ground to be able to provide a universally significant mode of verification. What I offer here are what seem to me to be appropriate tests: the defence of the general validity of these bests, however, cannot be explored in this paper.

page 323 note 4 Cf. Emmet, Dorothy M., The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (Macmillan, 1945), pp. 196 ff.Google Scholar

page 323 note 5 Religion in the Making, p. 21, cf p. 109.

page 324 note 1 Process and Reality, p.520.

page 324 note 2 John 20, v. 31.

page 325 note 1 Williams, Daniel Day, op. cit., p. 156 f.Google Scholar

page 325 note 2 Adventures of Ideas, p. 213; cf p. 205 f.

page 325 note 3 Cf. Hegel's view of the nature of theological statements.

page 325 note 4 MacKinnon, , Op. cit., p. 83.Google Scholar

page 326 note 1 Cf. ibid., pp. 74, 76 f., 82–9.

page 326 note 2 Williams, Daniel Day, op. cit., p. 157.Google Scholar