The Incarnation as a Contingent Reality: A Reply to Dr. Pailin

Abstract

In 'The incarnation as a continuing reality,' Dr David A. Pailin claims that the incarnation which Christians confess as normative for their faith reveals to us the necessary, empirically non-falsifiable characteristics of God's 'active actuality'. In contrast we wish to show that it is precisely the contin gent dimensions of divine activity manifest in the incarnation that give it its significance and normativeness. Dr Pailin distinguishes between God's passive actuality, the way in which God experiences the world, and his active actuality, the way in which he responds to each situation as it arises and expresses his potentialities. He believes that the former can be adequately known through metaphysical and historical inquiry, but this 'is not sufficient for the believer who is seeking to base his life on faith in and about God, that is, about the concrete values that direct God's creative activity' (p. 3 IO) which requires an appeal to revelation. In a somewhat similar fashion he distinguishes between 'the metaphysical qualities of God's structure of existence (which words like infinity, eternity, necessity and absoluteness are used to describe)' and 'the personal qualities and values which determine his active actuality . . qualities like love and mercy and respect for others' (p. 318), seeing only the latter as particularly revealed in the incarnation. This distinction between the active and passive aspects of God's actuality corresponds to Whitehead's distinction between God's nature as 'primordial' and as 'consequent', but there is nothing in Whitehead to suggest that God's active response in providing purposes to the created order is less meta physically knowable than his passive experience of the world; on the contrary, God's direct influence upon each creature through the aims derived from his primordial nature is experienced by all, though mostly unconsciously, while our knowledge of God's consequent nature can only be inferred. His argument becomes plausible only if we turn to Hartshorne's proposed revision of Whitehead in terms of the abstract and concrete aspects of God.. Yet this reduction of the primordial nature to that which is abstract in God is only possible if we give up the one function of God which concerns Dr Pailin the most, namely, God's active response to each situation as expressive of his potentiality. Let us stick to Whitehead then in this account, measuring