Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God

Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God

by C Stephen Evans PhD
Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God

Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God

by C Stephen Evans PhD

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Overview

This collection of essays, by a team of Christian philosophers, theologians, and biblical scholars, explores the viability of a kenotic account of the incarnation. Such an account is inspired by Paul's lyrical claims in Philippians 2:6-11 that Christ Jesus, though God in nature, 'emptied himself' or 'made himself nothing' by becoming human. The biblical support for such a view can be found throughout the four gospels and the book of Hebrews, as well as in other places. A kenotic account takes seriously the possibility that Christ, in becoming incarnate, temporarily divested himself of such properties as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Several of the contributors argue that this view is fully orthodox, and that it has great strengths in giving us a picture of a God who is willing to become completely vulnerable for the sake of human beings, and one that is completely consistent with the very human portrait of Jesus in the New Testament. The proponents of kenotic Christology argue that the philosophical accounts of God's nature that have led to rejection of this theory ought themselves to be subjected to criticism in light of the biblical data. Some essays test the theory by raising critical questions and arguing that traditional accounts of the incarnation can achieve the goals of kenotic theories as well as kenotic theories can. The book also explores the implications of a kenotic view of the incarnation for philosophical theology in general and the doctrine of the Trinity in particular, and it concludes with essays that examine the validity of the ideal of kenosis for women, and a challenge to traditional Christology to take a kenotic theory seriously.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781573834780
Publisher: Regent College Publishing
Publication date: 12/01/2009
Pages: 360
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

C. Stephen Evans is University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Baylor University.

Table of Contents


Notes on Contributors     ix
Introduction: Understanding Jesus the Christ as Human and Divine   C. Stephen Evans     1
The New Testament and Kenosis Christology   Gordon D. Fee     25
The Odyssey of Christ: A Novel Context for Philippians 2:6-11   Bruce N. Fisk     45
Nineteenth-Century Kenotic Christology: The Waxing, Waning, and Weighing of a Quest for a Coherent Orthodoxy   Thomas R. Thompson     74
Is Kenosis Orthodox?   Stephen T. Davis     112
A Kenotic Christological Method for Understanding the Divine Attributes   Ronald J. Feenstra     139
Trinity and Kenosis   Thomas R. Thompson   Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.     165
Kenotic Christology and the Nature of God   C. Stephen Evans     190
'He descended into hell': The Depths of God's Self-Emptying Love on Holy Saturday in the Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar   Edward T. Oakes, S.J.     218
Does Kenosis Rest on a Mistake? Three Kenotic Models in Patristic Exegesis   Sarah Coakley     246
The Logic of Assumption   Edwin Chr. van Driel     265
Kenosis and Feminist Theory   Ruth Groenhout     291
Conclusion: The Promise of Kenosis   Stephen T. Davis   C.Stephen Evans     313
Bibliography     322
Index     337
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