Abstract:

: 

This article starts by examining the `shift' in thinking on kenosis from the sixteenth-century doctrine established by Lutheran orthodoxy to the nineteenth-century understanding developed by Gottfried Thomasius. Karl Barth's understanding of `kenotic Christology' was largely controlled by the nineteenth-century definition and, as a result, he rejected it. However, Barth's later treatment of the incarnation in CD IV/I provides resources for taking up the language of kenosis in a positive way that would be thoroughly `Reformed' in character. There are considerable theological gains to be made by such an approach.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2400.2006.00212.x

Affiliations: 1: Princeton Theological Seminary, 64 Mercer Street, PO Box 821, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803, USA.