Christocentrism of Charism – Buggert - CarmelStream

century Franciscan theologian, John Duns Scotus, on the question of the motive of the incarnation.
For Scotus, sin or no sin, there would have been the Christ, for in Christ God was to bring his
creation to completion. Hence, Rahner will view Christ from the perspective of creation itself, i.e. as
its goal and culmination, or as DeChardin says, its omega point. In this regard, Rahner's is a "New
Adam" or "Eschatological Adam" Christology, i.e. Jesus is the crown of God's creation itself.
In this "New Adam" Christology, Christ will not be explained so much "from above" as
"from below," or "from within," i.e. in terms of proceeding from creation itself, and in fact creation
understood as occurring in an evolutionary way, i.e. in terms of the evolutionary, historical and
creative process itself. In this way Christ will not appear as the big "exception," but as the supreme
exemplification or the supreme instance of what God is always doing everywhere in God's creative
activity. Hence Rahner's Christology can also be called an "archetypal" Christology. Jesus is
"exhibit A" of the human, the perfect model, the New Adam.
After taking the above mentioned Scotistic option, Rahner then contextualizes his
Christology within the framework of evolution. He points out that as any being emerges from within
the evolutionary process, it stops being "what it had been" and is now "sublated" to a new and higher
level of being. When matter evolves to life, it is no longer mere matter but living matter. In other
words, at every stage of the evolutionary process the new reality which emerges has a limited
potentiality for development. It has limits to its possibilities of becoming. It can itself become so
much and no more. If it transcends its own being in its process of becoming, an evolutionary critical
threshold has been crossed and it ceases to be what it had been. When in the evolutionary process
animal became human, it ceased being just an animal and has become rational animal. In simple
language, you can teach a dog so many tricks and no more. Once the dog learns the trick of saying "I
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