Chapter Six: Jesus Christ

Part 4: What Does It Mean to Say: "God Became Man"?

In this section, Rahner asks how the notion of absolute saviour can be identified with the incarnate Logos and Son whom Christianity calls Jesus of Nazareth. He begins with a sustained meditation on the meaning of "incarnation." He notes that the Church's traditional teaching--the "descending Christology" according to which God descended to earth and became man--is a starting point and point of departure (A). He then foreshadows his own approach to the Trinity. His approach insists that the Logos is distinct, not just in terms of its inner relation to the Father, but because only the Logos became incarnate (B). By becoming incarnate, the Logos made the human reality God's own reality. When God took a human nature, human nature reached the goal toward which it had always tended (C). God "became" the human nature which God had prepared for the Logos, so that human nature might be divinized (D). The "lesser" (i.e., human nature) finds its foundation and goal in the "greater" (i.e., the Logos) (E). Hence we can say that humanity is a cipher or abbreviation for the Word of God. Divinized human nature expresses God's intention for us (F). For a true Christology, the affirmation of a dogmatic formula is less important than an existential decision. The important decision is to accept existence as an expression of God's love, and love extends beyond death (G).

A. The Question of the "Incarnation of God" (VI.4.A, p. 212). The incarnation makes accessible the Trinity and our participation in the divine nature. That is its central importance. Because God became a human being, the gulf between divinity and humanity collapsed. We have been enabled to share God’s own life. Rahner’s goal is not to “prove” the teaching of the Church. But in this section he starts with the Church’s traditional teaching of a “descending Christology,” the idea that God “descended” to earth and became man. . . .

Section 4.A continues in the printed version of The Foundations of Karl Rahner, now available from the Crossroad Publishing Company.