This book is the fruit of a close collaboration between three leading scholars with a background in systematics, philosophical theology and ethics. It sets out a new account of how incarnation is mediated in the world of space and time, leading to a new orientation of theology within the world. The doctrinal ('from above') and philosophical ('from below') sections lead to a new exposition of Christian life in confrontation with deep-seated problems of ethics and justice.The three pieces closely interweave with each other in the elaboration of a new kind of practical, doctrinal theology of full philosophical integrity. There are extended passages of reflection upon the historical processes which shaped the theological present in terms of the evolution of science and cosmology, and the consequent development of an array of idealist or anti-empirical conceptualities and methods.This book offers a powerful and sustained critique of modern theologies across the traditions which evade, assimilate or fail to take account of the real world of sensible embodiment, in which, according to creedal affirmations, incarnation continues.
In place of idealist readings of faith in different guises, it argues for the centrality of sensibility and the unresolved problematics of everyday empirical existence as the primary place of divine disclosure in which theology is learned and practiced with integrity.