2 - Divine Kenosis as Either Depotentiation or Divestment

Summary

This chapter examines nineteenth-century kenoticism through the theologies of Gottfried Thomasius, Wolfgang Geß, A. B. Bruce, and H. R. Mackintosh. Before doing so, however, it establishes the historical context for kenoticism through two periods. First, analyzing the classical Lutheran Christology that took shape in the debates between Lutheran and Reformed theologians, giving special attention to the Christology of Martin Chemnitz. Second, through examining the revolutionary critique of classic Lutheran theology found in David Friedrich Strauss. In the end, this chapter argues that all of the kenoticists’ attempts to introduce modifications into the Chalcedonian dogma, without addressing the logical aporia of the definition itself, were bound to result in divine mutability – or, more precisely, a mutation of the divine nature of the Chalcedonian Logos.