Nineteenth-Century Kenotic Christology: The Waxing, Waning, and Weighing of a Quest for a Coherent Orthodoxy

Abstract

Abstract Every Christology of Incarnational tack celebrates a kenotic motif. Only the most docetic of Christological models depreciate the deigning grace of God the Son, who though rich became poor for our sakes. Such impugn the gospel witness: that the wisdom of God is uniquely cruciform, and therefore humble and meek-a refinement in the doctrine of God that many Greeks found unpalatably foolish. At the heart of its confession, the catholic church has long affirmed the humbling, self-accommodating, lisping humanity of God. In this broad thematic sense a ‘kenotic Christology’ is rather a tautology, much like a ‘theology of hope’.