Wil, persoon en zelfbeperking. Een structureel verschil tussen christologie en pneumatologie

Samenvatting

Will, person and self-limitation
The idea that God’s will ‘restrains itself’, characteristic of the so-called ‘kenotic
Christology’, offers an answer to the vital question, How God can act as man? This
article engages the analysis of the will(s) of Christ, intensely debated in the early
church but neglected in modern theology. The article defends the thesis that, since
Christ has a human will, there is ‘theonomic reciprocity’ (A.A. van Ruler) not only in
Pneumatology but also in Christology. This position is closer to Chalcedon than many
Modern-orthodox Christologies (A. Kuyper and H. Bavinck). In terms of the wider
Christian tradition, the argument moves from a Thomist to a Scotist Christology and
suggests a re-location of God’s self-limiting will: not in Christology, but in
Pneumatology. In Jesus God acts with a human will, in the Holy Spirit poured out in
human hearts God acts with his own will, but like Jesus.