Deep Incarnation

Front matter

RINE

DENIS EDWARDS

The Laudato Si’ Integral Ecology Collection

Contents

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2. Irenaeus and the Earthly Incarnation

Of the Word. sanie nekeen Aa Are ahh 29 The One Down-to-Earth Economy of

Preface

Niels Henrik Gregersen

Denis Edwards belongs to the rare breed of contemporary theologians who at once are rooted in a calm spiritual presence while persistently looking for new theological ways of explaining what the Christian faith is all about, and why it matters—for us and for our contemporaries.

When I was still a young theologian, I knew Denis Edwards’s name from his contributions to the dialogue between theology and the natural sciences. Even then I detected two ways in which he stood out from most scholars in the field. One thing was that his interest in the sciences was not only about science per se, but just as much about broadening the horizon of his own theological perspective; his own tradition was at play and in principle at risk, but it was also part of the game.

Another thing was the practical approach he took to science as well as theology. This came to the fore in the first book I read by him, Ecology at the Heart of Faith: The Change of Heart That Leads to a New Way of Living on Earth (Orbis Books, 2006). I was surprised to find that Denis had a keen understanding of the relevance of “deep incarnation” for ecotheology, a field that had hitherto mostly been framed in the context of a theology of creation. I have to thank Denis for discovering that the proposal of deep incarnation was not only about evolutionary thinking but also about ecological thinking— xi xii e Niels Henrik Gregersen about how to rescue a flourishing and inhabitable planet from too linear, too anthropocentric ways of thinking. So I found in him a kind of kindred spirit, even though we lived far apart from each other, in Australia and Denmark, and only meet occasionally.

One of those occasions was a science-and-religion conference in the Bay Area hosted by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. We went out for dinner in San Francisco Harbor and talked about deep incarnation among many other things. I expressed my wish to one day collect a group of creative and critical thinkers around a deepening of Christology. At the end of the dinner (when I had already forgotten about it), Denis concluded with his deep voice: “Niels, I think you should go for it.” And so it went. Some years later, in 2011, it became real in Hamlet’s Elsinore due to substantial help from the John Templeton Foundation, and we again became part of a common publication.

In his new book Denis Edwards offers several things. First, he gives us very fair and precise analyses of the ramifications of the different aspects of deep incarnation and of the main proponents involved. But as always, Denis also does something more. Although Athanasius, Bonaventure, and Martin Luther have been dealt with before, Denis Edwards leads us back to the second-century Church Father Irenaeus. In a sense, Irenaeus gave the birth-seed of what was later to develop into Eastern and Western traditions—and later again into Catholic and Protestant tradition. The interrelation between creation theology, Christology, and pneumatology in expressing the deep divine involvement in our corporeal world carries with it clear parallels with central aspects of the proposal of deep incarnation. Through this new volume, we know why.

Likewise, at the other end of the spectrum, Denis Edwards offers an analysis of the evolutionary theology of Karl Rahner, who has already shaped a substantial part of modern Roman Catholic theology. Now suddenly, it appears to what extent

Preface e xiii common concerns emerge between a Protestant theologian writing on Luther and an almost-contemporary giant such as Karl Rahner.

I recommend that laypeople concerned about the relation between Christ and evolution and ecology should read Denis Edwards’s new theological book. Also, I advise the reader to be aware of why Denis Edwards insists on taking time as seriously as space in expressing the broad-scale Christology of deep incarnation. For the actual Jesus story, enacted in time and space, should be the basis for any future Christology— deep, or skin-deep.

Niels Henrik Gregersen University of Copenhagen