Christology as Critique

On the Relation between Christ, Creation, and Epistemology

Alfsvag

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532644917
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

If the origin of the world is not a part of the world, what are the implications for our understanding of ourselves, the world, and its origin? In antiquity, both gentile and Christian authors agreed that the significance of this question could only be maintained by accepting the unbridgeable difference between the world and God. Not even Christology as the most ambitious attempt at developing a model for divine-human communication was allowed to undermine the principle of absolute divine difference. This changed with the modern emphasis on univocity and measurability as the defining aspects of knowledge. From the point of view of a philosophy of absolute difference, this appears as an arbitrary loss of perspective. By focusing on four authors--Cusanus, Luther, Hamann, and Kierkegaard--who have explored how the Christian and paradoxical understanding of Christ as eternal God and true human subverts the modern emphasis on unambiguity and definability, the present investigation makes an attempt to retrieve what has been lost. Classical Christology as interpreted by these authors thus appears as an indispensable tool for receiving and appreciating the gift of the world in a way that is not unduly limited by anthropocentric prejudice.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: The Indispensability of Theology and the Irrationality of Modernity
• Chapter 2: The Significance of Difference in the Thought of Nicholas Cusanus
• Chapter 3: Divine–Human Communication in the Thought of Martin Luther
• Chapter 4: Christology and Critique in the Thought of Johann Georg Hamann
• Chapter 5: The Incarnational Worldview of Søren Kierkegaard
• Chapter 6: The Indispensability of Christology
• Bibliography