1 - Hegel's christology: ‘The speculative mid-point of philosophy’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2010
Summary
Hegel, it might be said, makes a two-fold contribution to christology ‘inclusively’ understood. This contribution lies
(1) in the profoundly original way in which he sets this particular issue into a broader context of systematic dialogue between philosophical thought and religious dogma in general; and
(2) in the way in which he then also goes on to underpin that with a radical polemic against any sort of theological reductionism – by which philosophy, in effect, tries to back off from the actual difficulties of such dialogue.
THE BROADER CONTEXT
Hegel places the Incarnation into a world-historical context. In his account the appearance of the Christian gospel features as a decisive turning point in the education of the human race; a definitive revelation of the true meaning of freedom. For him, God is to be grasped as being present throughout the whole length and breadth of human history, wherever there is some experience of liberation; as the Spirit which liberates. And where God is ‘made flesh’ in the individuality, and hence the mortality, of the particular historical individual Jesus, this is also, by virtue of the transformation it ought to effect in the way we conceive of the divine–human relationship in general, a profoundly political event; with, in principle, far deeper implications than traditional church theology has ever recognized, for the continuing political life of the present. A society properly based on the truth of the Christian gospel would be one which recognized the presence of God in each human individual, in a much more critical sense than the tradition tends to allow.
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- Hegel's Political Theology , pp. 16 - 70Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991
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