International Journal of Arts and Humanities (IJAH)

Recognizing that complexity and emergence provide powerful models of physical and social behavior, some contemporary Christian theologians have adopted evolutionary and emergent views of God’s relation to humanity and to the physical world. However theoretically astute these adaptations may be, they entail significant risks to organized religion in general and to traditional Western Christianity in particular. The dynamic nature of emergent systems coupled with a new model of personhood arising from both psychology and theology challenge the veracity and value of religious doctrine, dogma, and even programmatic codes of ethics. In this paper I examine kenosis, a fundamental concept in the Christian vision of the relationship between God, humans, and the natural world, initially to defend the cogency of systems theologies in general but ultimately to draw attention to, ironically, the a-doctrinal, a-dogmatic implications of one system theological perspective on God’s relationship with Its creation.