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Access to Divine Goodness: the Incarnation 

Transcendent divine goodness is present and accessible in the human sphere through the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. Transcendence does not thereby mean aloofness and indifference, a burdensome or unreachable standard of perfection. It calculates instead as a creative, fruitful engagement with the world, society, and institutions. Transcendent divine goodness takes on an historical and christological determination in order to impact the human moral, political, and cultural world. By reading the moral life through the life of Christ (David Gushee, The Moral Teachings of Jesus, 2024), one cannot espouse a minimalist and juridical conception of the moral life that merely acts on what is permitted or forbidden. Instead, we find a moral life that makes sense in the light of a Christ who is himself full of goodness (an exemplum), who incarnates goodness in human flesh, articulates it historically and culturally with integrity. D. S. Long appeals to the moral normativity of the life of Jesus. 

In Christian theology, Jesus reveals to us not only who God is, but also what it means to be truly human. This true humanity is not something we achieve on our own; it comes to us as a gift.… The reception of this gift contains an ineliminable element of mystery that will always require faith. Jesus in his life, teaching, death and resurrection, and ongoing presence in the church and through the Holy Spirit … orders us towards God. He directs our passions and desires towards that which can finally fulfil them and bring us happiness … [and] reveal to us what it means to be human. (D. S. Long, 2001, 106-7) 

This immanence offers the option of life of the self, lived not autonomously but in cooperation with divine wisdom and goodness. In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, goodness is made accessible, personal, and real; it is not left as an abstract unattainable ideal, or a wholly other reality alone; it is transcendent goodness expressed in immanent, here-and-now reality. Jesus is claimed to be the very image of the invisible God (John 1:1-4). The incarnation is a statement about how God has chosen to use material reality to reveal the divine self. J. Richard Middleton writes:

The incarnation, at the very centre of Christian faith, provides a touchstone for understanding the world as God’s good creation and human beings as called to embodied, dialogical relationship with their creator. Dr. Carkner in his book contrasts the incarnational Christian vision with contemporary permutations of ancient Gnosticism, teasing out philosophical implications of an incarnational spiritual culture for human identity in the twenty-first century. (J. R. Middleton, Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture).

Within this particular plausibility structure, the roots for the ethical life, i.e., the transcendent condition for the moral life, lie in God himself, not in a mythological ontology of freedom nested within the ideology of the aesthetic. Jesus and his followers, the church, form the dynamic unity between the transcendent and the temporal, the absolute and the contingent. The relational goodness of God is discovered, not by means of a mere abstract speculation, but in real human lives that are oriented toward God. This entails a subjectivity engaged and inspired by the needs of the human other, as well as by the goodness of God. It is inspired by both top-down and bottom-up movements. Therefore, the first human life to consider for this position of hope is the life of Jesus of Nazareth depicted in the Four Gospels. The brilliant interdisciplinary thinker William Cavanaugh puts it this way: “The very idea of the Incarnation means that Jesus takes on, while also transforming, the particulars of human life in a particular time and place.” (W. T. Cavanaugh, 2024, 340). Yes, this trinitarian goodness is a gift, and profoundly it is the gift of Jesus Christ. He is God’s goodness embodied historically in the complex dynamics of the ancient world. This is God’s own self revealing his love for humans in profound ways. The big paradigm shift from Foucault’s interpretation is that the human self, in this case, is constituted by its engagement with the divine self in the process of discovering spiritual and moral epiphany. This is an encounter which provides transformation/transfiguration of the self or human identity. The focus here is not power, but love and humility (servant leadership). We can become fully and genuinely ourselves through a relationship with a transcendent self who is goodness, and love in the communion of the trinity. 

The veracity of the gospel–the claim that, in Christ, God has decisively reconciled humans to God–hinges on Christ being fully human, subject to the conditions of bodily life where people and things are related to one another in a way appropriate to the spatiality of the created world. But the gospel also hinges on the Son being at every point the eternal Son of the Father, sharing the Father’s being and life, living as the one through whom all creation is upheld and held together. That is to say, the incarnate Son inhabits both the “space” of the triune God (primordially) and the space of the world. God’s immensity, God’s uncontaianbility by created space–therefore has nothing to do with the impossibility of fitting God’s enormity into a finite container. It has everything to do with the pressure of divine love–with God’s desire to relate creatively and savingly to the entirety of the world as spatial, and yet without that spatiality being compromised in any way. John Webster writes: Immensity and embodiment … are not competing and mutually contradictory accounts of the identity of the Son of God. Incarnation is not confinement, but the free relation of the Word to his creation–the Word who as creator and incarnate reconciler is deus immensus. (J. S. Begbie, 2023, 141-2)

There is a second aspect of incarnation, beyond Jesus’ particular presence on earth. It is God the Son’s presence in his church, who he wants to represent his values and vision. The church offers, at its best, an historical and cultural presence, performance and embodiment of God’s goodness, socially locating divine goodness in a human community and a lively, transformative narrative. Christoph Schwöbel (1992, 76) notes that divine goodness “finds its social form in the community of believers as the reconstituted form of life of created and redeemed sociality.” D. W. Hardy (2001, 75) underlines that the task of the church is to face into “the irreducible density of the goodness that is God in human society.” William Cavanaugh finishes the point in his climactic statement: “Central to the Incarnation is a profound sense of communion, both with our contemporaries and with those who have gone before us…. The Incarnation reveals something true about the world and makes possible a different way of living in the world. The Incarnation opens possibilities not just for Christians but for the world more generally” (W. T. Cavanaugh, 2024, 346). We cannot read God off the face of humanity; we can, however, read a renewed humanity off the face of Jesus Christ.

Thereby, one’s own self-constitution is seen to require the flourishing of the other, the honouring of the other, as well as receiving from the other in mutuality, in this wonderful communion of love. Other people change in significance within this calculus: from a categorical threat, a potential dominator in the world of will to power and disciplinary practices in Foucault’s ethics, to an esteemed opportunity for creative mutuality or one-anotherness. She is highly valued as an end in herself. In this case, one discovers and re-articulates oneself within community, exhibiting a moral inclusiveness that involves the pursuit of peace, forgiveness, compassion, rather than pursuit of radical autonomy. 

However fragile or imperfect this incarnation of trinitarian goodness in Christian community appears, it is no less profound for the transformation of the individual according to a strong transcendence of depth. Human creatures are called upward morally and spiritually to image and give witness to the dynamic being and activity of the triune God. This imaging transforms one’s moral vision in a dynamic way. It enhances human possibilities for action towards the common good of all of society.

That most poignant image of hope, the Kingdom of God, expresses the relation of free divine love and loving human freedom together in depicting the ultimate purpose of God’s action as the perfected community of love with his creation. (C. Schwöbel, 1995, 80) 

This entails a transcendent moral turn for the self, beyond alienation, fear of domination and mutual competition (agonisme) or pursuit of self-indulgence (an anti-humanist stance), to a pro-humanist, self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Jesus identified the divine nature with giving. 

At its weakest, the institutional church can obfuscate this goodness, reneging on its most fundamental mandate. But at its best, as Christ’s representatives on earth, it produces people on a quest for goodness of this higher quality, people who seek to mediate this transcendent goodness in society. The church at its best still believes that God speaks and acts, that the triune God is present to the world, cares deeply for individuals, wants to open dialogue. At its best, religious experience and spirituality are a seamless experience of God that has both an inner and an outer dimension: a personal and communal experience of God that leads into wisdom, ethics, self-sacrifice and kindness/compassionate care. Authentically, the church also believes that it is vital to engage and love this personal Good and allow ourselves to be loved/affirmed/validated by God. It is vital to seek the divine personal Good and be sought by him. God’s transcendence does not mean God is far away. As creator of all, God is wholly other to creation, and precisely therefore God is not another thing competing for space with created things. As the ground of all being, God is innermost to all beings. God is both wholly transcendent and wholly immanent in all things. One does not have to leave the world to escape into some gnostic space to experience such transcendence (epiphany).

In fact, this renders problematic the seeking of the good or goodness apart from seeking God, making up morality on our own terms, the pursuit of the good while walking away from a relationship to God. The always ends up in a form of idolatry. Ethics within the economy of human relations changes from a contest within a general will to power, to the economy of grace within a communion of agape love. It is not the economy of a naked, free human will choosing to follow a moral law or choosing to design self autonomously (expressive individualism). Goodness is no mere achievement of the human will; it is truly a mysterious gift of God. Once again, Cavanaugh captures the pulse of it: “The community receives its identity not by looking in a mirror narcissistically but by looking toward the weakest among them, who are icons of the self-emptying God whose power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). (W. T. Cavanaugh, 2024, 383)

Practical Application: Meditate on the Psalms of Ascent 120-134. Our movement towards God must be metaphorically upward, like climbing Garibaldi Mountain or Everest. Focus and effort are involved in growing in virtue, and in moral strength. Then reflect on the lives of faith in Hebrews 11. What made the difference in these personal spiritual journeys and how is their freedom discovered within the exercise of their calling? There is endless potential for those who set out to focus on finding freedom in Christ, hope in Christ, meaning in a relationship with the Logos become flesh, creating a robust identity rooted in the great drama of the ages. It is existentially yours to discover. David P. Gushee (2024) does a splendid job of showing how the moral teachings of Jesus set people free in a creative direction.

People who are determined to love their enemies are the freest and the most powerful people in the world. They set their own agenda, and no one can distract them from it—making the journey through fear, through anger, even through hate, all the way to love. This is what we see in Jesus. (D.P. Gushee, 2024, 73).

See especially Chapter 26. The Greatest Commandment.

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinars and Lectures, Meta-Educator with UBC Postgrad Students and Faculty.

Begbie, J. S. (2023). Abundantly More: The Theological Promise of the Arts in a Reductionist Age. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Carkner, G. E.. (2024). Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding Our Identity in Christ. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishing.

Cavanaugh, W. T. (2024). The Uses of Idolatry. Oxford University Press.

Gushee, D. (2024). The Moral Teachings of Jesus: Radical Instruction in the Will of God. Cascade Books.

Hardy, D.W. (2001). Finding the Church: The Dynamic of Anglicanism. London: SCM Press. 

Long, D. S. (2001). The Goodness of God. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. 

Schwöbel, C. (1992). God’s Goodness and Human Morality. In C. Schwöbel, God: Action and revelation (pp. 63-82). Kampen, Holland: Pharos. 

Schwöbel, C. (1995). Imago Libertatis: Human and Divine Freedom. In C. Gunton (Ed.) God & Freedom: Essays in historical and systematic theology (pp. 57-81). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.