Christ the Heart of Creation

when we speak theologically of the divine Word, we do not and cannot speak simply of this eternal subject; we speak of what the divine Word has actually done in this world and of how we have learned to identify the divine Word in action within human history.

as it is, the content of ‘being Jesus of Nazareth’ is grounded in and determined by the esse that is ‘being the eternal Word’.

Belief in the Incarnation is the belief that the specific concrete and historical agent that is Jesus of Nazareth simply is the act of God the Word in a unique sense, quite distinct from the way in which divine agency is universally the ultimate activator of any and every finite substance.

It is the case that the life of Jesus makes certain things true about the activity of the Word in history; it is not the case that the life of Jesus makes certain things true about the way divine life is lived in the mode of filiation.

the focus on Jesus as a continuous human subject, born, maturing, dying.

the identity of Jesus as human sufferer and the further identity of that suffering with the divine action are never eclipsed in the language of Christian Scripture.

when Paul speaks of being ‘in’ Christ, it is hard to avoid the implication that he sees Jesus as being as much the source of a single community of kinship as Adam or Abraham – the source of a new human kinship (as in Adam) and the source of a specific kinship among those who have received God’s promise (as in Abraham).

the strong pressure to accept a ‘heavenly power’ model is repeatedly resisted in the name, initially, of the need to affirm without ambiguity the vulnerability of Jesus to suffering

the only way in which the exchange of properties can make sense is if the unbroken and unqualified agency of God acts upon the humanity to create actual new possibilities for it, while itself permitting a qualified use of human predicates to be ascribed to the Word in its action to bring this about.