Monday, August 29, 2011

Word of the day: kenosis

The word of the day is kenosis:

Etymology:  < Greek κένωσις an emptying, < κενοῦν to empty, with ref. to Phil. ii. 7 ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε ‘emptied himself’.
Theol.
The self-renunciation of the divine nature, at least in part, by Christ in the incarnation. (OED)


"Both Christianity and Islam harshly challenge the self with an insistence on submission, sacrifice, and kenosis—an emptying out of the self, an exchange of the wrong kind of fullness for the right kind of humility—and Buddhism seeks to undermine the very idea of the sovereign, unified self."

 - James Wood, "Is that all there is?  Secularism and its discontents", 15 & 22 August 2011 The New Yorker

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