“And wisdom became matter”

Departing from the translation of John 1:14 as “And wisdom became matter,” Aurica Jax examines the metaphor of a Cosmic Body of Christ against the background of recent theories of New Materialism. The chapter investigates the manifold reflections on the cosmic dimensions of Christology in the works of Nicholas of Cusa, Teilhard de Chardin, Sallie McFague, Raimon Panikkar, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Laurel C. Schneider, and Catherine Keller. The material conditionality of being and the ecological crisis lead the contemporary authors among them to a critique of the idea of a human exceptionalism. Most of the analyzed authors promote a model of incarnatio continua. So a “Christology of becoming” seems to be appropriate to the requirements of a “materialist” theological reflection in the 21st century.