Incarnation as Translation

Extract

There has been a remarkable convergence in recent years between Catholic and Protestant theology in the field of christology. The old pattern was that Catholic theologians offered scholastic interpretations of the incarnation, centring on such conciliar and scholastic concepts as person, nature, subsistence and existence, while Protestants followed some form of kenoticism. Kenotic theories of the incarnation, ostensibly based on the ancient hymn in Philippians 2, 5-11, affirmed some sort of change of the Logos or Word of God into human form, and ran into insuperable difficulties concerning the immutability of God as taught by the Bible (cf. Wisdom 7, 27, James 1, 17, and especially Psalm 102, 25-27 and Ecclesiasticus 42, 20-21).

Instead of this dichotomy, there is now emerging a new type of christology, which I classify as ‘translation christology’. Among its supporters I would list J.-J. Latour, Christian Duquoc, Edouard Schillebeeckx, Christopher Butler and Charles Davis among the Catholics, and John McIntyre and Wolfhart Pannenberg among the Protestants. Many other modern authors can be quoted in support of the view, although few if any have explicitly made the concept of translation the heart and centre of their christology.

But pride of place must go to Eustace of Antioch, that staunch supporter of St Athanasius who was deposed from his bishopric by the Arians. ‘As God the Son, he says, is the image of the Father, so is the man whom He wore the image of the divine Son, though in a different material.’ A modern Catholic theologian would want to phrase this differently, and to speak of the manhood which Jesus assumed rather than of the man whom Jesus wore.