Sarah Coakley’s Contemplative Solution
British theologian, Sarah Coakley, gives a feminist critique of how Kenosis has been translated and applied to the Christian life. For her, Kenosis is about ‘power-in-vulnerability’. [1] In her analysis she simultaneously critiques and corrects, taking the tradition very seriously. Coakley gives us a good view of how constructive theology is done well. In her chapter, “Kenosis and Subversion,” (from her book Powers and Submissions) she explores 6 primary ways in which Kenosis has been understood throughout the tradition.1) Cosmic Redeemer: Jesus temporarily relinquishes his divine powers which are Christ’s by right
2) Gnostic Redeemer: Jesus pretends to relinquish divine powers whilst actually retaining them (Cyril of Alexandria)
3) Jesus chooses never to have certain (false and worldly) forms of power—forms sometimes wrongly construed as ‘divine’
4) Jesus reveals ‘divine power’ to be intrinsically ‘humble’ rather than ‘grasping’
5) Divine Logos: The divine Logos’s taking on of human flesh in the incarnation, but without loss, impairment, or restriction of divine powers (14)
6) Retracting: Jesus’ life is a temporary retracting (or withdrawing into ‘potency’) of certain characteristics of divinity during the incarnate life. (19)Coakley’s Definition
Coakley argues that in order to understand Kenosis, we must begin with the narrative of Jesus Christ, with a narrative commitment. In looking at the story of Jesus Christ, Coakley contends that Kenosis is about the humanity of Jesus not about the emptying out of pre-existent ‘divine stuff’. In other words, it is about how he lived not what he gave up to become human. This combines this presupposition with the third definition, that Jesus chose never to have or grasp at certain forms of power, and so we have Coakley coming to a similar definition of Kenosis as Fee.
Primary here is the holding together of the vulnerability of human life with the power of divinity, and this is the point for Coakley, that in Christ we have a category in which to talk about the shape of the relationship between humanity and divinity. Thus, Jesus reveals a God of vulnerability and risk who establishes and maintains power through vulnerability. When I say that God is vulnerable I mean that God, in the very act of creation, does not impose a coercive and absolute power over the creation. Instead there is space for the created order to rebel against and reject God. God is not some monolithic tyrant who demands our love and loyalty but a God who draws near and provides what is necessary for relationship and reconciliation.
Hence, the kenotic movement of Jesus reveals something of who God is for us. For this reason, Coakley asserts that Kenosis is not just “a philosophical embarrassment to explain away” (25) instead it is inherent in the narrative of Jesus. In this way, she argues that Jesus redefines ‘vulnerability’. It is not a feminine weakness but a human strength (25) and she holds (along with Radford Ruether) that Jesus’ way of vulnerability also empties ‘patriarchal’ power (25). Thus, this is why Coakley defines Kenosis as ‘power-in-vulnerability’. And here is the key point: in the life of Jesus a ‘space’ is created in which “non-coercive divine power manifests itself.” (5) Jesus’ life showed that there was space for God to be God and humanity to be humanity—this is the manifestation of reconciliation.
Our Response
Coakley turns to contemplative prayer in order to nuance her understanding of Kenosis, because it is through contemplative prayer that we practice making space for God to be God. Her assertion is that Jesus, in the incarnation, made space for humanity to be itself through his reconciling and redemptive work for the whole of the created order while simultaneously making space for God to be God in his life. It was this practice of ‘making space’ that enabled reconciliation to happen through a vulnerable life; which included death and resurrection. And it is through this vulnerability that Jesus is Lord (“divine power ‘made perfect through weakness’”)—not because he seized power but because he created space for life to happen in the midst of death.
Coakley argues that Jesus shows us a different way of living with power. The problem that she points out is that we all have power on some level and we all have the potential to abuse the power given to us. If this is true, then we have to find ways and practices that shape in us Jesus’ way of vulnerability in power.[2] Coakley believes that if we allow God to be God in our lives, then we will be empowered to live into the way of Jesus. We will give up abusive and coercive power and make space for others to be healed and reconciled.[3]
By choosing to ‘make space’ in this way, one ‘practices’ the ‘presence of God’—the subtle but enabling presence of a God who neither shouts nor forces, let alone ‘obliterates’. (35)
Further on she stresses that this way of making space for God and practicing self-emptying “is not a negation of the self, but the place of the self’s transformation and expansion into God.” (36) Coakley pairs this with the necessity of self-disclosure in our lives, that in this process of contemplative prayer we are actually known in a deep way (double knowledge). Thus, contemplative prayer holds in tension our vulnerability with personal empowerment. We lose our lives in order to find ourselves before God and others.[4]
Ultimately, Coakley calls us to live into the narrative gap and live in expectant waiting. New life and healing takes time and struggle to be brought forth. And this wait and struggle is the shape of the Christian life.
[1] Sarah Coakley, “Kenosis and Subversion,” in Powers and Submissions, Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. See the bottom of 31 for her summary and cursory analysis of these categories of Kenosis.
[2] “If ‘abusive’ human power is thus always potentially within our grasp, how can we best approach the healing resources of a non-abusive divine power? How can we hope to invite and channel it, if not by a patient opening of the self to its transformation?” (34)
[3] “What I have elsewhere called the ‘paradox of power and vulnerability’ is I believe uniquely focused in this act of silent waiting on the divine in prayer. This is because we can only be properly ‘empowered’ here if we cease to set the agenda, if we ‘make space’ for God to be God.” (34)
[4] “what Christ on this view instantiates is the very ‘mind’ that we ourselves enact, or enter into, in prayer: the unique intersection of vulnerable, ‘non-grasping’ humanity and authentic divine power, itself ‘made perfect in weakness’.” (38)
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