In an essay in First Things back in 1991 entitled Education and the Mind Redeemed, my Philosophy professor at Franciscan University, Dr. John Crosby (the first to introduce me to Bl. John Henry Newman), draws out the fact that “certain theological traditions” uphold an “incarnational humanism” because Jesus, by virtue of His absolute primacy in the divine plan, belongs to the very order of creation and not just to the order of redemption. Here is the paragraph where he speaks of this:

It is perhaps worth observing that there are certain theological traditions that have a particular reason to make their own the incarnational humanism taught by the Council. Even before the Blessed John Duns Scotus, the great medieval Franciscan theologian of the fourteenth century, but especially after him, the doctrine of what is called the “absolute primacy of Christ” has been dear to many theologians, including, I believe, certain Protestants, among them Karl Barth. They disagree with those who say that the incarnation of the Son in Jesus Christ belongs only to the order of redemption and not to the order of creation, and that, apart from the fall of man, there would have been no incarnation. They hold instead that Jesus Christ belongs to the order of creation no less than to the order of redemption, that God in His original plan of creation, and not just as a response to human sin, created the world for the God-man, and destined it to be subject to His kingship (as St. Paul seems to teach in Col. 1:15-18 and elsewhere). And it should be especially clear why everything human is ordered to Jesus Christ and can be fulfilled only in Him: for His kingship over creation is rooted not only in the economy of our salvation, but in the original plan of creation. And it should be especially clear why for Christians life in Christ should not compete with our love of His creation, but should rather support our commitment to “build up the earth” in and with and through Him.