Recently I read an article by Philip Yancey posted to Christianity Today’s website ( http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/january/20.72.html?start=1 ) about John Duns Scotus and the Doctrine of the Absolute Primacy of Christ in the Universe.

 

As high-minded as the doctrine (teaching) sounds it can be boiled down to the idea that Christ’s incarnation was not simply a restorative response to our brokeness (a simplified version of Scotus contemporary Thomas Aquinas’s approach) but would have happened even if we had never sinned. Scotus felt that to suggest that the incarnation was a reaction or response of God was somewhat limiting Him (in the sense that a reactive God would be a limited God).

 

Scotus uses scripture effectively to show that the incarnation was always a part of God’s grand plan of creation and whether it occured in a broken or an unbroken world was not the primary point. The goal of the incarnation first and foremost was to join creation with God and God with creation. The fact that such joining is also restorative is a testimony to brilliance of God and His nature. On the spectrum of God-centric versus Human-centric I would say that Scotus’s teaching is more God-centric whereas Aquinas’s (at least in this instance) is more Human-centric.

 

Seen from this perspective we become part of the redemptive creative nature of Christ furthering the restorative work of the incarnation through Christ’s body – the church. Yancey points out that the broken nature of the world constantly distracts and fragments the church which requires re-creation and re-union on the sabbath when we come together again as the body of Christ regularly resurrecting and extending the Kingdom of God into the world.

 

Scotus’ views tie nicely into my sermon last Sunday on the tapestry of faith & works because they emphasize action not for (as Yancey says) humanistic, Arminian reasons, but creative kingdom reasons.

 

In summary – I need to read more Scotus.