Christ as Infinite and Finite: Rowan Williams’ Christ the Heart of Creation

In this splendid volume, Rowan Williams offers a modern Christology re-presenting and interpreting the Cyrillian theology as expressed in the councils of Constantinople II and III. A “single Subject” Christology is built up from Scriptural, Patristic, and Scholastic sources, drawing heavily on Maximus the Confessor, Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas Cusanus. The conceptual framework for the whole is provided by Austin Farrer, especially in his early essay, Infinite and Finite, and in his later Bampton Lectures, The Glass of Vision. Whether a Christology adhering closely to axioms of incommensurability and non-competition between Creator and creature can undergird a fully Chalcedonian Christology is the demanding query posed at the heart of Christ the Heart of Creation.