The Incarnation: A philosophical Case for Kenosis

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to compare two rival accounts of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, the classical and the kenotic, defending the latter. These accounts agree that the second divine person, the Word, remained divine at the Incarnation. They disagree, however, in that the kenotic account denies that Jesus had the powers 'normal' for a divine person. Here the plural "powers" is a reminder that I am including both the power to act and the power to know. So the normal divine powers would include a capacity to act and know far exceeding the human, without the implication that these capacities are exercised. As a preliminary, I shall clarify the kenotic position by arguing that a position which is often called kenotic is actually a quasi-kenotic version of the classical account, according to which Jesus had normal divine powers but chose not to exercise them. I suggest that Thomasius, the source of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century kenotic theories, and Stephen T Davis, often cited as a philosopher defending kenosis, held the quasi-kenotic theory. This might suggest that my terminology is eccentric, so if readers prefer, they could re-label quasi-kenosis as moderate kenosis, and kenosis in my sense as extreme kenosis. In that case this paper is a defence of extreme kenosis as a serious alternative to both the classical account and moderate kenosis. This dispute over terminology is not entirely trivial, however. For mine is the natural one if we are primarily interested in the relevant philosophical issues, whereas the alternative might be more appropriate if we were considering Scripture or the beliefs of the early Church. For I doubt if such considerations would distinguish between quasi-kenotic and kenotic accounts except via philosophical argument such as I provide in this paper.