Incarnational Theology Re‐Imagined

Abstract The relationship between conceptions of a creator God and models of evolutionary development has been characterised mainly by each position’s inability to acknowledge the possibilities of the other. Rather than dismissing the views as incompatible with one another, or pursuing academically unsatisfying attempts to harmonise the two positions, this article attempts philosophically and theologically to reinterpret the role of Christian theism, particularly belief in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, in light of understanding the evolutionary development of reality as a fact of existence. Philosophically, I propose the use of Luis de Molina’s theory of middle knowledge as one possible means of reconciling divine omniscience with quantum uncertainty and biological evolution; while theologically, the concept of theosis will be utilised to rearticulate the role of Christ’s incarnation in light of evolutionary and quantum realities as a means of demonstrating humanity’s gradual evolutionary development from animal, to physical human being, to spiritual human being, as modelled on a belief in the work of Christ.