Starkenburg Abstract CTRF

Compared to the incarnation as such, Christ’s resurrection is often treated as relatively dispensable. For instance, Schleiermacher argued that Christ’s resurrection, though it must be believed, is irrelevant to Christ’s identity because sharing Jesus’ God-consciousness does not require such an event. However, this makes materiality as such to be a problem, something to be overcome in life of Christ and his community. Against this, using Augustine, Pavel Florensky and Sergius Bulgakov, I argue that it is better to understand the entire incarnation as a Trinitarianly ordered assumption of the creation into God’s self-delight. Christ’s resurrection becomes indispensable because it is how God fully self-displays God to God as an embodied human being. In Trinitarian terms, the Father raises Jesus from the dead in the Spirit’s delight for the Son’s self-offering. (Or, put in terms of divine simplicity: by the Spirit who is given as the delight of the Father, Jesus raises from the dead.) I further argue that the creation and veneration of relics are a way for other human beings to be incorporated in this divine self-display and delight. In conclusion, I suggest two additional implications. First, against the background of global consumer capitalism, the veneration of relics trains human faith by showing the impotence of a consumeristic telos, since relics show both the inevitability of death and the potential rewards of ascesis. Also, relics encourage communities to support themselves through gift-giving, since relics commend human beings whose delight in God’s life debouches in self-offering