Body Unity

Abstract: IN ONE RECENT ISSUE of a theological journal abroad, several articles deal with various aspects of \"God's saving presence in the man Jesus Christ.\" The last three of these contain reactions of the Dominican Schillebeeckx and the Jesuit Schoonenberg to a bold hypothesis of the Augustinian Hulsbosch. The divinity of Christ is seen to consist in the perfection or elevation of His humanity. This formula takes as its point of departure an assurance regarding the body-soul relation in man which happens to be identical with what we defended in a recent volume. Hulsbosch specially links this problem with the name of Teilhard de Chardin, and has in fact specialized in Teilhard's thought and unmistakably shows its influence. So daringly new an approach to the perennial Christological mystery is of sufficient intrinsic urgency to merit presentation here. But our goal is proximately to evaluate the extent to which it really is, as claimed, a corollary of the evolutionist body-soul relation. To the extent that this claim is valid, our own position is weakened or strengthened by being wedded to the reformulation of a dogma of incalculably greater delicacy. That Hulsbosch chose to link his true and valid conclusions with an ephemeral evolutionism is a pity, we will see Schillebeeckx saying. Though he meant by this chiefly to accept and bolster Hulsbosch's conclusion, he in fact thereby asserted that the validity of the evolutionism was independent of whatever judgment one might make about the Christology which he rather shares with Hulsbosch. Perhaps not all will agree that such complex issues warrant such a simple compartmentalizing. Here is the relevant passage: