Historical research has confirmed that there can be no doubt of the importance of Jesus Christ to Aquinas’ faith, devotion, and theological enterprise. This scholarship has exposed the faults of unsympathetic portrayals of his Christology as docetic or Monophysite, and presented his doctrine of the incarnation afresh, particularly by manifesting its distinctiveness in context and its maturation over time. In this way Aquinas’ Christology has been made available for reception in contemporary Christology in a way that goes beyond the recounting of the history of medieval theology. For those who share his confession of faith, the tasks of contemporary Christology can benefit from the enduring worth of many of his conclusions, the arguments employed, and his organization of material. Such a reception can retrieve a sense of fundamental continuity in Christology, of how Christ is unlike as well as like us, and of the bearing this has on our salvation.
