Kindsein und Gotteskindschaft. Zur Spannung zwischen Fragilität und Vollkommenheit

Huian, Georgiana (2023). Kindsein und Gotteskindschaft. Zur Spannung zwischen Fragilität und Vollkommenheit. Internationale kirchliche Zeitschrift IKZ, 113(1), pp. 21-42. Stämpfli

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This essay explores possible connections between the child’s person, presence and experience and the theological concept of «children of God». New impulses from Child theology challenge various models of relating to God that express the «accomplished» humanity. Starting with Early Christianity, passing through Nicolaus Cusanus, and reaching 19th-century understandings, such as the view of Wilhelmine Ritter, those models put forward an ideal of perfection or completeness. On the other hand, 20th-century theologians such as Hans Urs von Bathasar or Maria Skobtsova admit fragility in the very condition of being a child of God, arguing on a christological, mariological or eschatological basis. Still, the question of reconciling vulnerablity with a perfect human state remains open, and the task of brigding the real child with the ideal «child of God» is as urgent as ever. Finally, the cultural concept of homo ludens, coined by Johan Huizinga, and the phenomenological idea of gift, shaped by Jean-Luc Marion, are called to build this bridge. Becoming the child of God, as participation in God’s own life, is like an antagonistic play between the human person and God: it incorporates fraglity, as it escapes human control. The same process is like a perfect gift, exceeding human comprehension: God gives without measure a gift that is not to be possessed, but endlessly lived.

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