A Franciscan perspective on the Incarnation
A key point of the Franciscan view that is often surprising to some is this: The Word of God did not become a creature, a human being, because Adam and Eve sinned. Rather, the divine Word became flesh because from all eternity God wanted Christ to be creation’s most perfect work, the model and crown of creation and of humanity—the glorious destination toward which all creation is straining. The Word would have been incarnated in Christ even if the first man and woman had never sinned!
The foremost champion of these views—after St. Paul, whose writings first introduced them—was the Franciscan friar Blessed John Duns Scotus. Scotus was born in Scotland in 1266, educated at England’s Oxford University and ordained a Franciscan priest in 1291. He taught theology at the University of Paris, died at 42, and was buried in Cologne, Germany, in 1308. Though the approach of John Duns Scotus differs from that of standard Catholic theology, it has never been labeled unacceptable by the Church. And Franciscans, over the centuries, have generally imbibed Scotus’s way of looking at Christ.
If anything, Scotus’s viewpoint has gained prominence in recent times. It has been adopted by such notable Catholic thinkers as Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit poet; Thomas Merton, the Trappist writer; and Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest-anthropologist. “Christ is not an afterthought in the divine plan,” writes de Chardin. “He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all things.”
According to Scotus, God’s first intention—from all eternity—was that human nature be glorified by being united to the divine Word. And this was to happen regardless of the first humans’ innocence or sinfulness. To say that the Incarnation of Christ was an afterthought of God, dependent on Adam’s fall, would be to base the rich Christian theology of incarnation on sin! Theologians could come up with something better than that, and Duns Scotus did.
Of course, given humanity’s sin, the way Christ eventually came was in the form of a Savior whose great act of love and self-surrender set us free. In Scotus’s view, however, the God-man would have entered creation and human history under any circumstances as the perfect model of the human being fully alive. It was not Adam who provided the blueprint or pattern that God used in shaping the humanity of Christ. It was the other way around, insists Scotus: Christ was the model in God’s mind according to which Adam and Eve, as as well as the rest of the human race, were created.
Comments?
A key point of the Franciscan view that is often surprising to some is this: The Word of God did not become a creature, a human being, because Adam and Eve sinned. Rather, the divine Word became flesh because from all eternity God wanted Christ to be creation’s most perfect work, the model and crown of creation and of humanity—the glorious destination toward which all creation is straining. The Word would have been incarnated in Christ even if the first man and woman had never sinned!
The foremost champion of these views—after St. Paul, whose writings first introduced them—was the Franciscan friar Blessed John Duns Scotus. Scotus was born in Scotland in 1266, educated at England’s Oxford University and ordained a Franciscan priest in 1291. He taught theology at the University of Paris, died at 42, and was buried in Cologne, Germany, in 1308. Though the approach of John Duns Scotus differs from that of standard Catholic theology, it has never been labeled unacceptable by the Church. And Franciscans, over the centuries, have generally imbibed Scotus’s way of looking at Christ.
If anything, Scotus’s viewpoint has gained prominence in recent times. It has been adopted by such notable Catholic thinkers as Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit poet; Thomas Merton, the Trappist writer; and Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest-anthropologist. “Christ is not an afterthought in the divine plan,” writes de Chardin. “He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all things.”
According to Scotus, God’s first intention—from all eternity—was that human nature be glorified by being united to the divine Word. And this was to happen regardless of the first humans’ innocence or sinfulness. To say that the Incarnation of Christ was an afterthought of God, dependent on Adam’s fall, would be to base the rich Christian theology of incarnation on sin! Theologians could come up with something better than that, and Duns Scotus did.
Of course, given humanity’s sin, the way Christ eventually came was in the form of a Savior whose great act of love and self-surrender set us free. In Scotus’s view, however, the God-man would have entered creation and human history under any circumstances as the perfect model of the human being fully alive. It was not Adam who provided the blueprint or pattern that God used in shaping the humanity of Christ. It was the other way around, insists Scotus: Christ was the model in God’s mind according to which Adam and Eve, as as well as the rest of the human race, were created.
Comments?
