Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
The classical christology employed the categories of nature and person in its attempt to elucidate the meaning of the incarnation. Today actional categories seem preferable and are used here in an experimental and exploratory way. The incarnation is, as a result, described as the conjunction of God's giving and man's receiving, a conjunction which in turn gives rise to man's giving in imitation of the divine activity. The analysis of the divine giving focuses particularly on the actional or “economic” meaning of the trinitarian doctrine while the analysis of the human receiving concerns itself principally with the question of human freedom and sinlessness and its implications for a processive understanding of incarnational communion. These christological reflections give rise, in conclusion, to some brief soteriological considerations on Jesus' catalytic influence in the process of human growth or salvation.
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2 In using Rahner's language here, and similar language of my own, I do not intend to suggest that he would subscribe to the conclusions which I draw from it in the body of the article. The article is not an exposition of Rahner's christology.
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18 This insistence on what Jesus received from God is not intended to ignore or to obscure what Jesus received from men. Certainly he received from his tradition, his family, his disciples and, in a particularly significant way, from John the Baptist, as Dunne, John, A Search for God in Time and Memory (New York: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 8–14Google Scholar, has recently suggested. Undoubtedly much, if not most, of what Jesus received from God he received from the giving of these human intermediaries. As Dunne, , The Way of All the Earth (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 181Google Scholar, has further noted, however, “willingness to receive from others, to be sure, is not a very evident trait” in the life of Jesus as we know him, “although willingness to give is quite evident. Perhaps this is inevitably the way the master appears to his disciples. They are conscious of receiving from him, not of giving to him; in their eyes, consequently, he is one who gives, not one who receives.”
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25 Gregory Baum's Man Becoming represents a particularly illuminating discussion of this thesis.
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