Theology Today - Vol 45, No.3 - October 1988 - BOOK REVIEW - The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Thought as Prolegornena to aFuture Christology

375 - The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Thought as Prolegornena to a Future Christology

The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Thought as Prolegornena to a Future Christology
By Hans Kiing

New York, Crossroad, 1987. 601 Pp. $37.50.

The name of Hans Kiing is widely known to a great many people, most of whom possess only limited interest in technical theology and none at all in the value of nineteenth-century German idealism as a potential theological tool. Kiing's fame (or notoriety) rests largely on a few of his published books, beginning with Infallible?: An Inquiry (1971), Why Priests? (1972), On Being a Christian (1977) and Does God Exist? (1981). These works demonstrate Kiing's idiosyncratic

376 - The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Thought as Prolegornena to a Future Christology

combination of controversy and pastoral concern, reappearing most recently in his introductory essay to the volume co-edited with Leonard Swidler, The Church in Anguish: Has the Vatican Betrayed Vatican II? (1987).

This Swiss-born Catholic theologian, currently Professor of Ecumenical Theology and Director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research at the University of Tubingen, a position to which he moved after the Vatican withdrew his license to teach Catholic theology in the Catholic Faculty at Tilbingen, has also authored a number of more technical theological works. Chief among these are Structures of the Church (1965) and The Church (1967), in which he developed the ecclesiological vision that lies behind the pastoral-polemical treatises of the last twenty years. But the ecclesiology, too, seems to owe little if anything to Hegel, and certainly not to focus centrally on christology. Whence, then, The Incarnation of God?

The truth is that The Incarnation of God was first published in German in 1970, and though it received translations into Italian (1972)., French (1973), and Spanish (1974), it has had to wait until now for an English version. The explanation for this is less the complexity of the work than the xenophobia of English-speaking peoples where Hegel is concerned, perhaps particularly in church circles, where Hegel might be known as the intellectual inspiration of Marx, proclaimer of the death of God long before Nietzsche, and (through writers like Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper) inspiration to totalitarianism. Ming's work reflects another influential interpretation of Hegel, however, in which the great philosopher is seen as a profound support to religious reflection, either in his reworking of the Lutheran notion of the death of God into a critique of atheism-see, for example, Eberhard Ringel's God as the Mystery or the World--or for a vision of the incarnation that allows for a corrective emphasis on the humanity of God, perhaps most visible in Catholic theology in the work of the late Karl Rahner.

This massive volume is both a study in the development of Hegel's christological thought and an attempt to use the fruits of this thought to develop directions for a christology. Seven of the eight major chapters pursue the first aim, with Chapters One to Four focusing on Hegel's early writings, Chapters Five, Six, and Seven on the great works of his maturity. Chapter Eight draws upon this lengthy, exhaustive, and frequently over-detailed consideration of the development of Hegel's thought. KUng tries to mediate the dispute between those who see Hegel as misunderstanding Christianity and those who see him as providing a successful contemporary apologetic by arguing that Hegel understands, but also willfully misunderstands, because his purpose is indeed to reveal the truth of Christianity but only by incorporating it into a larger truth. He shows how Hegel is valuable for understanding the historicity and vitality of God, and how Hegel helps to critique the classical notion of the immutability of God. Hegel emphasizes God's suffering, the internal dialectic of divine process in the "inner life" of the Trinity and in its expression in the "economy of salvation," and God's involvement in

377 - The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Thought as Prolegornena to a Future Christology

historical becoming (a resource process theology might find valuable). Following upon and related to this, Hegel also emphasizes a view of Christ as "God's other," one who is both intimately involved in God's historicity while yet being fully human. In the last analysis, the value of Hegel for christology may rightly be seen to be, as Ming seems to suggest, in supporting a christology from below that is also a christology from above. It is God's initiative that results in a self-alienation in history and thus, to a degree, in a dependence on history and on the historical Jesus for the completion of what is at one and the same time the process of redemption and the full realization of the self of God.

This is a fine and full conversation both with Hegel and with contemporary theologians. It can stand, because of its comprehensiveness, as an introduction to Hegel; and thus, for those with the interest, no previous knowledge is required. But it is now an elderly work, and the excellent final chapter in conversation with contemporary christology cannot take into account the last twenty years of theological discussion. While it is good to have it available in an English translation, it is more valuable in the last analysis to those with an academic interest in Hegel's religious thought than it is to those who have found Ming's pastoral or polemical works a source of intelligent reflection or prophetic challenge. At the same time, however, it refers theologians to potential christological riches in Hegel's thought, which many, if not most, would never suspect.

PAUL LAKELAND

Fairfield University
Fairfield, Connecticut