openpolitics.com

Ongoing Incarnation

Would Christmas have come even if we had not sinned?

Duns Scotus and his school suggested that Incarnation was the underlying motive for Creation, not merely a correction to it

.. Ultimately the church decided that both approaches had biblical support and could be accepted as orthodox. Though most theologians tended to follow Aquinas, in recent years prominent Catholics such as Karl Rahner have taken a closer look at Duns Scotus. Perhaps evangelicals should, too.

.. Yet far more often—164 times in Paul’s letters, according to one author—the New Testament uses the image of us being “in Christ.” At a time when theories of the Atonement seem incomprehensible to moderns and when the Christian subculture easily shrinks into a defensive posture, we could learn from the Christ-centered view of creation once expounded by an obscure theologian from the High Middle Ages.