Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-wq484 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T14:59:45.563Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hylemorphism, rigid designators, and the disembodied ‘Jesus’: a call for clarification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2019

JAMES T. TURNER JR. Open the ORCID record for JAMES T. TURNER JR. [Opens in a new window]
JAMES T. TURNER JR.*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, College of Christian Studies, Anderson University, 316 Boulevard, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, USA
*
e-mail: jturner@andersonuniversity.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many in the Christian tradition affirm two things: (1) that Jesus Christ descended to Hades/Limbus Patrum on Holy Saturday and (2) that the human nature of Jesus is a hylemorphic compound, the unity of a human soul and prime matter. I argue that (1) and (2) are incompatible; for the name ‘Jesus’, ‘Christ’, and ‘Jesus Christ’ rigidly designates a human being. But, given a certain view of hylemorphism, the human being, Jesus, ceased to exist in the time between his death and resurrection. So, Jesus did not descend to Hades/Limbus Patrum, even if God the Son did.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 193 - 208
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aristotle, (1936) On the Soul, in Aristotle: On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On Breath, Hett, W. S. (tr.) (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Aquinas, St Thomas (1975a) Summa Contra Gentiles II, Anderson, James F. (tr.) (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press).Google Scholar
Aquinas, St Thomas (1975b) Summa Contra Gentiles IV, Anderson, James F. (tr.) (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press).Google Scholar
Aquinas, St Thomas (1981) The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas Fathers of the English Dominican Province (tr.) (Notre Dame IN: Ave Maria Press).Google Scholar
Aquinas, St Thomas (1999) A Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima, Pasnau, Robert (tr.) (New Haven CT: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Aquinas, St Thomas (2008) The Soul, Rowan, John Patrick (tr.) (Eugene OR: Wipf & Stock).Google Scholar
Baker, Lynne Rudder (1997) ‘Why constitution is not identity’, The Journal of Philosophy, 94, 599–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Lynne Rudder (1999) ‘Unity without identity: a new look at material constitution’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 23, 144–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Lynne Rudder (2000) Persons and Bodies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Lynne Rudder (2007) The Metaphysics of Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brower, Jeffrey E. (2012) ‘Matter, form, and individuation’, in Davis, Brian & Stump, Eleonore (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 85–103.Google Scholar
Brown, Christopher (2005) Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus (London: Continuum).Google Scholar
Catholic Church (1999) Catechism of the Catholic Church (London: Geoffrey Chapman).Google Scholar
Crisp, Oliver D. (2007) Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eberl, Jason T. (2009) ‘Do human persons persist between death and resurrection?’, in Timpe, Kevin (ed.) Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump (London: Routledge), 188–205.Google Scholar
Feser, Edward (2014) Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Neunkirchen-Seelscheid: Editiones Scholasticae).Google Scholar
Hershenov, David B. & Koch-Hershenov, Rose (2006) ‘Personal identity and purgatory’, Religious Studies, 42, 439–451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hershenov, David B. & Koch-Hershenov, Rose (2017) ‘Purgatory’, in Nagasawa, Yujin & Matheson, Benjamin (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Afterlife (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 35–52.Google Scholar
Jaworski, William (2016) Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind: How Hylomorphism Solves the Mind–Body Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kripke, Saul A. (1972) Naming and Necessity (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaPorte, Joseph (2018) ‘Rigid designators’, in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/rigid-designators/>..>Google Scholar
Leftow, Brian (2002) ‘A timeless god incarnate’, in Davis, Stephen T., Kendall, Daniel, & O'Collins, Gerald (eds) The Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 273–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levering, Matthew (2012) Jesus and the Demise of Death (Waco TX: Baylor University Press).Google Scholar
Madden, James (2013) Mind, Matter, and Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for the Philosophy of Mind (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nevitt, Turner C. (2016) ‘Aquinas on the death of Christ: a new argument for corruptionism’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 90, 77–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oderberg, David S. (2007) Real Essentialism (London: Routledge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oderberg, David S. (2012) ‘Survivalism, corruptionism, and mereology’, European Journal of Philosophy of Religion, 4, 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pasnau, Robert (2002) Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Pasnau, Robert (2005) ‘Review: Aquinas’, Mind, 114, 203–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pelikan, Jaroslav (1975) The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, I: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Rea, Michael C. (2011) ‘Hylomorphism reconditioned’, Philosophical Perspectives, 25, 341–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stump, Eleonore (1995) ‘Non-Cartesian substance dualism and materialism without reductionism’, Faith and Philosophy, 12, 505–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stump, Eleonore (2009) ‘Aquinas’ metaphysics of the incarnation’, in Crisp, Oliver D. (ed.) A Reader in Contemporary Philosophical Theology (London: T&T Clark), 165–184.Google Scholar
Stump, Eleonore (2012) ‘Resurrection and the separated soul’, in Davis, Brian & Stump, Eleonore (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 458–466.Google Scholar
Stump, Eleonore (2003) Aquinas (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Toner, Patrick (2007) ‘Thomas versus Tibbles: a critical study of Christopher Brown's Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 81, 639–653.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toner, Patrick (2009) ‘Personhood and death in St. Thomas Aquinas’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 26, 121–138.Google Scholar
Toner, Patrick (2011) ‘On hylemorphism and personal identity’, European Journal of Philosophy, 19, 454–473.Google Scholar
Turner, James T. Jr. (2014) ‘No explanation of persons, no explanation of resurrection: on Lynne Baker's constitution view and the resurrection of human persons’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 76, 297–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, James T. Jr. (2019) On the Resurrection of the Dead: A New Metaphysics of Afterlife for Christian Thought (New York, NY: Routledge).Google Scholar
van Dyke, Christina (2009) ‘Not properly a person: the rational soul and “Thomistic substance dualism”’, Faith and Philosophy, 25, 186–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Dyke, Christina (2014) ‘I see dead people’, in Pasnau, Robert (ed.) Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, II (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 25–45.Google Scholar