All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. From this scripture text the twentieth century Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, SJ, speculates that we need to rethink our approach to the incarnation of Jesus into human history. There is a traditional line of thought that the reason Christ was born was to repair a wounded creation. Original sin had broken the harmony of God’s creation and it needed correction. St. Paul teaches, according to Rahner, that in fact the birth of Jesus as both human and divine was in the mind of God from the very beginning and not as a response to sin. God intended to incarnate into human history not to repair what was broken but as the expression of why creation in the first place. God created “all things” to provide the opportunity for divine live and love to be poured out as the expression of overflowing love in which share.
