Dialectics and Apologetics in Yerkes's Interpretation of HegelThe Christology of Hegel. James Yerkes

Abstract

We can dispense with usual concessions that have be made for doctoral dissertations: The Christology of Hegel by James Yerkes can take its place among finest studies in Hegel's philosophy of religion in any language. The price of admission Hegel scholarship of this quality runs high, and Yerkes has paid it. He has mastered all relevant texts in Hegel's corpus, moving among them with easy familiarity. He has read widely in best of secondary literature, organization of his study shows magisterial command, and he turns his scholarship service of well-formulated contemporary issues. The book is written, furthermore, in mercifully lucid and lively style. Only toward end does prose begin get a little cumbersome, dual stupefactions of dissertation writing and Hegelian jargon beginning take their toll. For instance, Yerkes introduces his concluding critique by announcing that he is going to try turn a more transcendent of these views, and speaks of religiously clarificatory possibilities of christology (pp. 307, 308). One may hope that he is fully recovered by now. The main body of Yerkes's study consists in four lengthy chapters. The first, devoted Hegel's early writings, is perhaps overly influenced by interpretation of H. S. Harris (in Hegel's Development [Oxford, 1972]), who treats fragmentary, diverse, experimental pieces of 1790s as if they made up a single self-consistent program. Yerkes comes into his own in second chapter, a deep-going and quite original exploration of Hegel's theory of religious consciousness. The heart of book is contained in chapter 3, addressed directly Hegel's christology, showing how theory of religious consciousness is fulfilled in it, developing Hegel's interpretation of incarnation, and arguing that what Yerkes calls the incarnational principle lies at foundation of Hegel's whole philosophy. This latter argument continues in fourth chapter, which is methodological, treating relation of philosophy theology in Hegel's thought. Then there is a brief but suggestive conclusion, containing that interpretively transcendent evaluation of Hegel's christology.