Universe, Incarnation, and Humanity

The paper discusses the sense of the spatial paradox of the Incarnation along the lines presented in T. F. Torrance’s book Space, Time and Incarnation and accompanying papers. The aim is to elucidate the paradox in modern cosmological terms, as well as to give its further interpretation based on modern philosophical developments. It is argued, in particular, that the paradox of the Incarnation resembles a well-known philosophical paradox of embodied subjectivity in the world, thus elucidating an epistemological commensurability between the universe and humanity in the Divine image. As an extension and development of Torrance’s reasoning, a phenomenological interpretation of space as the explication of personal relatedness to God is proposed. This interpretation implies the refusal of the natural attitude with respect to space and the need for the acquisition of the mind of Christ through whom and by whom the non-extended wholeness of space is revealed to humanity.