The Coming Emmanuel

Jesus asked the disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" His followers have been pondering his identity ever since. One answer came in the form of the Nicene Creed. The "Great O Antiphons" provide another. These liturgical texts, dating from the same era as the creeds, apply a variety of images from Jewish tradition to the Christ. Unlike the creeds, though, they concern what (from a sixth-century viewpoint) the Christ was doing from creation to his incarnation. Most familiar through the carol "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," these antiphons are increasingly being used in creative ways for worship and meditation, and not only in Advent. Astonishingly, however, in their fifteen-hundred-year history, they apparently have never been studied for their christological significance: What do they say about the person of Christ? That is what The Coming Emmanuel strives to address, responding to a question that is as old as Christianity and as recent as today.