The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God (2002 Davis, Kendall, O'Collins), edited volume

The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God (2002) is a book edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O'Collins.

Abstract

This edited volume is the proceedings of an international colloquy, held on April 23-25, 2000, in Dunwoodie, Yonkers, NY, which gathered together experts from a wide range of fields from biblical studies, early Christianity, early Judaism, theology, philosophy, preaching, and literature in order to explore the doctrine of the Incarnation. As such, the essays are arranged into four primary parts: 1) biblical background and historical milieu, 2) classical teaching, 3) philosophical & theological debates, and 4) practical applications in preaching and the arts. The contributions of Andrew Dearman, Tom Wright, Gordan Fee, Jean-Noël Aletti, and Alan Segal look at the first category, namely the biblical background and historical milieu of the doctrine. A brief description of each of their chapters is discussed below.

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Andrew Dearman

• In order to locate potential precursors to the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, Dearman investigates two elements of the Hebrew Bible, namely the anthropomorphic presentation of God in theophany and the creation of humanity in the imago Dei.

N.T. Wright

• N. T. Wright offers a different perspective, challenging the perspective that no "first-century Jew could think of incarnation, let alone believe himself to be the incarnate Son of God."

Gordan Fee and Jean-Noël Aletti

• Both of these authors, in different ways, investigate whether Paul articulated the idea of the Incarnation. While Fee explores a number of passages, Jean-Noël Aletti looks almost exclusively at Romans 1:3-4. Both independently argue that Paul's writings do suggest incarnational language, although Jean-Noël Aletti is much more cautious in his presentation of the material.

Alan Segal

• Alan Segal outlines what he sees as the Jewish milieu of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, from Philo, to Wisdom, to the Angel of the Lord, to Enoch and other intermediaries, to the Shekinah, to even the Temple itself. Segal concludes that though the Jewish milieu provided a preparation for the Christian articulation of the Incarnation, "It may be that the exact formulation of the doctrine of incarnation [was] deliberately constructed to emphasize and underline the differences between Christianity and its Jewish past... The doctrine of the incarnation is certainly one of the biggest differences between Judaism and Christianity (136)."

~Deborah Forger

Editions and translations

Published in Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Contents

• The incarnation: the critical issues / Gerald O'Collins

• Theophany, anthropomorphism, and the Imago Dei: some observations about the incarnation in the light of the old testament / J. Andrew Dearman

• Jesus' self-understanding / N.T. Wright

• St. Paul and the incarnation: a reassessment of the data / Gordon D. Fee

• Romans 8: the incarnation and its redemptive impact / Jean-Noël Aletti

• The incarnation: the Jewish milieu / Alan F. Segal

• What does Chalcedon solve and what does it not? Some reflections and the status and meaning of the Chalcedonian 'definition' / Sarah Coakley

• Nature and the 'mode of union' late patristic models of the personal unity of Christ / Brian E. Daley

• Aquinas' metaphysics of the incarnation / Eleonore Stump

• Was Jesus mad, bad, or God? / Stephen T. Davis

• The self-emptying of love: some thought on Kenotic Christology / C. Stephen Evans

• A timeless God incarnate / Brain Leftow

• A word made flesh: incarnational language and the writer / Kathleen Norris

• The incarnation and virtue ethics / Linda Zagzebski

• The incarnation in twentieth-century art / David Brown

• The incarnation in selected Christmas sermons / Marguerite Shuster

External links

• [ Google Books]