Incarnational Humanism: A Philosophy of Culture for the Church in the World (Strategic Initiatives in Evangelical Theology)

Our current intellectual and cultural crisis demands a sense of solidarity and common humanity that is intrinsic to the Christian faith, and we should recover the early church’s spirit of passionate engagement with culture based on the mystery of the incarnation.

The most ancient of human questions about our identity and purpose lie—Who are we and what are we here for?—at the heart of many contemporary cultural conflicts. After all, how a society answers these questions, or refuses to answer them, reveals a people’s cultural ethos.

Based on the incarnation and the consequent development of trinitarian theology, Christianity prepared the way for modern conceptions of freedom, personhood, solidarity and social compassion.

the church fathers grasped fully the import of the incarnation and its recapitulation of humanity for a unifying and glorious vision of what it means to be human.

the evangel, the good news, was that Christ had recapitulated humanity by affirming, judging and redeeming it through incarnation, death and resurrection in order to restore humanity to its ultimate purpose of communion with God.

As the church fathers in both the Eastern and Western traditions have pointed out, the becoming human of the divine Logos first established the idea of a common humanity.