Pluralism is not a Solitary Endeavour

we understand it less as a mechanism by which God becomes human and more as a disposition of God’s eternal being. This is reflected in the title of the work, ‘the humility of the eternal Son’. The Son’s humility is not to be understood as a temporary divestment but as the eternal decision of God to be with us and for us as Jesus Christ. This decision is co-extensive with the self-constitution of the divine being as Father, Son and Spirit. This takes Barth’s rule to a new level, beyond where Barth himself went, though he provides pointers in this direction. Its Christological payoff is that the problems of Chalcedon can be resolved by understanding the eternal Son as being ‘ontologically receptive’ to the human Jesus. Rather than bolting together two entirely different realities that cannot be fully integrated, an ontologically receptive Son is eternally constituted to be united with the human Jesus in the incarnation. This generates the notion of a ‘composite hypostasis’ in which the union is fully actualized while also maintaining the duality of the divine and the human in accordance with the Reformed tradition. By eternalizing the human Jesus in this way, adoptionism is excluded. McCormack retains much of Chalcedon – a unity in distinction of the divine and the human, and a resistance to all lower forms of Christology. The hypostasized composite is the Logos and the human Jesus. His humanity is not instrumentalized – a fuller account is maintained in which Jesus’ divine powers and knowledge derive from the Holy Spirit rather than the hypostatic union. As a distinctively Reformed approach, McCormack maintains the duality of the divine and the human through a steady refusal to confuse them. This sets him apart from other post-Barthian approaches which he suspects of collapsing the divine into the human. This is a formidable work that is ambitious in scope, original in outcome, and rigorous in execution. Inevitably, criticisms will emerge from both the right and the left. Does the ‘composite hypostasis’ generate a new form of Nestorianism? Might the criticisms of Chalcedon be overcome by a different reading of the patristic texts? Is the eternal self-constitution of God as triune and incarnandus a speculation too far? Is there an over-reliance on a handful of New Testament texts? McCormack has careful responses to each of these criticisms and a lively series of exchanges with his interlocutors will surely continue. In the meantime, we also look forward to the other volumes in his trilogy.