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Chapter 6 - Duns Scotus on the dignities of human nature
- Edited by Giorgio Pini, Fordham University, New York
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- Interpreting Duns Scotus
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- 23 December 2021
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- 06 January 2022, pp 122-148
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Summary
This essay shows that Duns Scotus firmly believed in the dignities (plural) of human nature—both the natural human dignity celebrated by Aristotle, who maintained that the material world was made for the sake of rational animals, and the supernatural dignities paid to humankind by God in the Incarnation and to particular human beings by predestining them to glory. When it comes to identifying more concretely the features in which such dignities consist, Duns Scotus’s metaphysical views—about essential powers and about what is essential to powers—combine with his theological conviction that, when it comes to patterns of Divine concurrence with or obstruction of natural powers, God has different policies for different states of human history—to complicate his method.
5 - Aquinas on the Soul: Some Intriguing Conundrums
- Edited by Jeffrey Hause, Creighton University, Omaha
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- Aquinas's <I>Summa Theologiae</I>
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- 07 March 2018
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- 15 March 2018, pp 88-110
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Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
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- 05 August 2015
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- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: A Thought-Experiment in Medieval Philosophical Theology
- Marilyn McCord Adams
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- Harvard Theological Review / Volume 103 / Issue 2 / April 2010
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 April 2010, pp. 133-159
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- April 2010
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On 8 December 1854, Pius IX issued Ineffabilis Deus, in which he dogmatized the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The bull reads,
For the honor of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, for the glory and ornament of the Virgin Godbearer, for the exaltation of the catholic faith and the growth of the Christian religion, by the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own, we declare, pronounce, and define the doctrine which holds that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary at the first instant of her conception was by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in consideration of the merits of Christ Jesus, the Savior of the human race, preserved immune from every stain of original guilt; that this was revealed by God and therefore is firmly and constantly to be believed by all of the faithful.1
Index
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 323-331
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Frontmatter
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp i-vi
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5 - Recovering the metaphysics: Christ as God-man, metaphysically construed
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 108-143
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Summary
Central to my “Chalcedonian” approach to Christology is the insistence that it is God who becomes human. Positively, from the viewpoint of my cosmological hypothesis, Incarnation is key to satisfying God's unitive aims in creation. Negatively, Divine solidarity is key to the solution of human non-optimality problems: Stage-I defeat requires that it is God who participates in horrors. Both ways identify God as the One of Whom we affirm that He was born of the Virgin Mary; that He walked and talked; spat and touched; ate, drank, and slept; that He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered, died, was buried but rose on the third day.
Yet, common sense joins with philosophy and Myth-of-God-Incarnate theologians to press Mary's question: “how can this be?” (Luke 1:34). By way of an answer, I shall outline two accounts of the metaphysics of Christology: one offered by Richard Swinburne in his book The Christian God; and the other inspired by a family of formulations defended by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century medieval Latin school theologians. Like all theories, each has its costs and benefits. My own preference is for the second, but I believe that either is sufficient to rebut the mythographers' charge that the notion of a God-man is unintelligible.
Doctrinal desiderata
First, a brief reminder of the historical parameters of the discussion is in order. Chalcedon laid it down that
(T1) in Christ there are two distinct natures – one human and one Divine;
and
(T2) in Christ, there is a real unity of natures in a single person or supposit;
6 - Learning the meanings: Christ in the hearts of all people
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 144-169
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Christ in the hearts of all people
In his monumental Atonement and Personality (1901), R. C. Moberly insists not only that
“[t]he meaning of Incarnation was not exhausted … when Jesus Christ passed away from this visible scene of mortal life,” but also that it is “not more directly” “to be recognized” “in the contemplation of the Presence of the Son of Man in Heaven … than in the recognition of the Presence working here on earth, of the Spirit of the Incarnation and of the Incarnate” in the hearts of all His people.
Moberly and others of his Anglican contemporaries (e.g., Weston, Forsyth, and Temple) were brought to this conviction by a kind of triangulation, this time among systematic desiderata on the one hand, and the testimonies of Scripture and Christian experience on the other.
Systematically, Moberly contends against mere retributivists that “external” transactions will not win Divine–human at-one-ment apart from the “internal” transformation of alienated human beings. He declares that nothing less is necessary than a change in the very meaning and significance of the word “I,” in which we are “translated into the Spirit of the Crucified” in such a way that “[t]he Spirit of the Crucified, the Spirit of Him who died and is alive,” is “the very constituting reality of ourselves.” Like many turn-of-the-twentieth-century British Christologians, Moberly conceives of human non-optimality problems moralistically, beginning with a Kantian paradox about how a righteous God, Whose systematic role is to render to each his/her just deserts, can forgive sinners who don't merit pardon.
[…]
Christ and Horrors
- The Coherence of Christology
- Marilyn McCord Adams
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006
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Who would the Saviour have to be, what would the Saviour have to do to rescue human beings from the meaning-destroying experiences of their lives? This book offers a systematic Christology that is at once biblical and philosophical. Starting with human radical vulnerability to horrors such as permanent pain, sadistic abuse or genocide, it develops what must be true about Christ if He is the horror-defeater who ultimately resolves all the problems affecting the human condition and Divine-human relations. Distinctive elements of Marilyn McCord Adams' study are her defence of the two-natures theory, of Christ as Inner Teacher and a functional partner in human flourishing, and her arguments in favour of literal bodily resurrection (Christ's and ours) and of a strong doctrine of corporeal Eucharistic presence. The book concludes that Christ is the One in Whom, not only Christian doctrine, but cosmos, church, and the human psyche hold together.
Bibliography
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 314-322
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10 - Christ in the sacrament of the altar: Christ in the meantime
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 282-313
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Summary
Interim exercises
Futuristic eschatology promises that, in the life to come, the plot will resolve for everyone: all shall be well, all shall be well, all shall be very well! But what about in the meantime? Horrors, the attendant alienation from self, God, and others, are a heavy cross to bear.
Christianity advertises a God Who wants to help us in the meantime. Traditionally, sacraments are means of grace, liturgical rites through which participants appropriate ante-mortem benefits of the Savior's work. Like birth, baptism is once and for all and acknowledges our adoption as God's children. By contrast, the second sacrament – the Lord's supper, holy eucharist, the sacrament of the altar, the sacrifice of the mass – is oft-repeatable, a rite to which we regularly return throughout our lives, and so a scene of Divine–human relationship development. For horror-participants who have not given up on God altogether, for the wrestling and congregating Church, the second sacrament is particularly promising because it puts horrors front and center. By Christ's own command, its explicit purpose is “to show forth the Lord's death until He comes”: “do this in remembrance of me!” My suggestion is that this makes the second sacrament an apt place for horror-participants to begin to “learn the meanings”: to enter into an ever deeper recognition of how Stage-I horror-defeat is accomplished through Christ's Incarnation and passion, and thereby to take some steps towards Stage-II horror-defeat.
8 - Resurrection and renewal: Christ the first fruits
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 205-241
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Summary
Resurrection, another conditional necessity?
Thwarted evasions
What you think the non-optimality problems are determines what you think it will take for God to solve them. Reflecting on the history of soteriology, Paul Tillich distinguished: for the ancients, death was the problem; for the medievals as for both Protestant and counter-reformers, sin was the problem; for “modern man,” meaning is the problem. In both this and my earlier book, I take a page from Tillich and other neo-orthodox twentieth-century theologians to contend that meaning is the issue and horrors are the problem. I have defined horrors as evils participation in which makes positive meaning prima facie impossible for the participant. Like Tillich, I have seen the meaning-problem as a fundamentally ontological problem, one which underlies and explains our propensity to inauthentic choices and living, to our being and doing the kinds of things that medieval and reformed theology identified as sin (see chapter 2).
Twentieth-century neo-orthodox theologians set about to solve the meaning-problem without solving the death-problem. Either they did not believe that biological death – after bringing each of us to an end – would be overcome and itself be brought to an end; or they did not bring that belief systematically into play. Tillich urged stoic courage to be, held out the hope of new being, of living without anxiety in the face of finitude. Bultmann promised “a new self-understanding” which accepts and moves into the uncertain future that God will provide.
3 - Sharing the horrors: Christ as horror-defeater
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 53-79
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Introduction
Christ comes as Savior to solve our non-optimality problems. Like Anselm, I have argued that it takes a God-man to do the job. Like Anselm, I want my Christology to be normed by the so-called Chalcedonian definition, negotiated in 451 BCE. Sarah Coakley translates as follows:
Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all with one voice teach that it should be confessed that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same Son, the Same perfect in Godhead, the Same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the Same [consisting] of a rational soul and a body; homoousios with the Father as to his Godhead, and the Same homoousios with us as to his manhood; in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of the Father before ages as to his Godhead, and in the last days, the Same, for us and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin Theotokos as to his manhood; One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only begotten, made known in two natures [which exist] without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the difference of the natures having been in no wise taken away by reason of the union, but rather the properties of each being preserved, and [both] concurring into one Person (prosopon) and one hypostasis – not parted or divided into two persons (prosopa), but one and the same Son and Only-begotten, the divine Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from of old [have spoken] concerning him, as the Lord Jesus Christ has taught us, and as the Symbol of the Fathers has delivered to us.
7 - Cosmic coherence and the primacy of Christ: Christ, the One in Whom all things hold together
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 170-204
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Christ, the One in Whom all things hold together
The letter to the Colossians celebrates the preeminence (later dubbed the “primacy”) of Christ as a surprising fact of startling scope. Christ is the image of the invisible God. Christ is the first-born of all creation. Christ is before the One in Whom and through Whom and for Whom all things were created – things in heaven and things on earth, things visible and invisible. Christ is before all things, and Christ is the One in Whom all things hold together. Moreover, Christ is the One in Whom the whole fullness of God dwells bodily. Christ is the One in Whom God triumphs over the principalities and powers and makes a public example of them. Christ is the first-born from the dead. Christ is the One through Whom God reconciles all things to Himself, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. Consequently, Christ is the head of the body, the Church, the One through Whom the whole body is nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, and grows with a growth that is from God. Christ is the One in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Christ is the One in Whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.
Contents
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp vii-viii
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2 - Posing the problems: beginning with Job
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 29-52
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Rubrics, manifold and shifting
Good theories exhibit elegant simplicity by virtue of having one (type of) explanatory posit do many different jobs and thereby occupy a variety of theoretical roles. In patristic and medieval Latin school theology, God is taken to be the ultimate explainer of both the being and the goodness of everything. Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas add truth to the list of what needs to be explained; following Aristotle, Aquinas identifies God as the unmoved mover, the first efficient cause of any and every change. In the order of discovery, Christology begins with another set of explananda – with the fact that the human condition generally and Divine–human relations in particular are non-optimal. It attempts to analyze their nature, to trace their source, and to identify their remedy. Christian soteriology (which probes how we are to be saved from what ails us) concludes that God was in Christ exercising the Savior's role.
Overlapping rubrics
Beginning with the Bible, Christian tradition has conceptualized these twin non-optimalities in different, contrasting, and complementary ways. (1) In terms of purity versus defilement: The God of Leviticus declares, “You must be holy as I am holy!” (Leviticus 2:19). But humans are unclean, defiled. Christ is both priest and victim, the one pure sacrifice offered for us once and for all on the cross, that spotless oblation presented daily on that altar eternal in the heavens.
Preface
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp ix-xii
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Summary
In my earlier book, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, I registered my discontent with standard “big-picture” and “free-will” theodicies. Not only do they not do justice to the very worst evils – the ones I identified as “horrendous.” I argued that, where horrors are concerned, no solution within the confines of a religion-neutral value-theory is possible. By contrast, a range of options opens up if one turns to the wider resources of Christian theology. One methodological moral of my story was that, in explaining how Christian faith can be coherent, Christian philosophers should not act as if Christian beliefs sum to “restricted-standard theism” – the claim that there exists an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good God. Instead, Christian philosophers should bring the richer and more nuanced doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and atonement into play.
My own wrestlings with evil convinced me that, while sin and horrors are both problems, horrors are the more fundamental problem. My opening question in this book is: what does Christology look like, if rescuing the world from horrendous evils is the Savior's principal job? Where Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God urged philosophers to be more theological, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology invites theologians to define the soteriological problem in a philosophical way. I myself am committed to this approach and its consequences. Naturally, I hope my arguments will convince many readers.
1 - Christology as natural theology: methodological issues
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Christ and Horrors
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- 03 December 2009
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- 21 September 2006, pp 1-28
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Summary
Introduction
My topic is Christology; my thesis, the coherence of Christology; my theme, Christ as the One in Whom all things hold together. Metaphysically, Christ is the center both of Godhead and cosmos. Existentially, Christ is the integrator of individual positive personal meaning; psychologically, our inner teacher; body-politically, the organizer of Godward community. Christ saves us by virtue of being real and really present: Emmanuel, God with us, sharing our human condition; ascended to His most glorious throne in heaven at God's right hand; in the most blessed sacrament of the altar; and in the hearts of all His faithful people. Switching from object- to metalanguage, from the order of reality to the order of theory, turn-of-the-twentieth-century Anglicans declare that Christology is the centerpiece of systematic theology, that which integrates the creed, that from which we reason up to the Trinity, down to creation, out through the Church to the world. My own conviction is that they got this substantially right. Thus, in arguing for the coherence of Christology, I will take the coherence of theism for granted. But I will not treat Christology as an optional supplement to generic – what philosophers of religion often call “restricted-standard” – theism. My contention is that, because of its explanatory power, Christology has an integrating force of its own.
In the order of discovery, my argument begins with soteriology: with the fact that the human condition generally and Divine–human relations in particular are non-optimal.
9 - Horrors and holocausts, sacrifices and priests: Christ as priest and victim
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Book:
- Christ and Horrors
- Published online:
- 03 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 21 September 2006, pp 242-281
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Summary
Cultic reconnection
Horrors threaten to ruin human lives. Horror–participation strains Divine–human relations to the breaking point. Cult condenses cosmos, becomes a focal scene of Divine–human relationship development. It is a scene of close encounters: even if God is supposed to be everywhere, Divine presence and influence certainly not confined to temple precincts, there is still the notion that by coming to the holy place one is drawing near to God. Cult is a scene of obstacle-removals: most notably, cult defines the etiquette that allows humans and divinities to share the same social space, furnishes ritual remedies by means of which offenses and disabling conditions can be recontextualized and removed. Cult is a scene of covenant-making, of covenant-renewal, and of payment of vows. It is also a scene of thanks and praise, of celebration and consummation.
In the Bible, patriarchal religion linked theophany with cereal and animal sacrifice. Tabernacle, shrine, and temple focussed worship in sacrificial rites, and codified elaborate rules and regulations as to who, what, when, where, how, and why. Nor was this an Israelite invention. Sacrificial emphasis was widely taken for granted and crossculturally shared. Nor was this a fleeting cultural phenomenon. Despite critiques, sacrificial cult – including the offering of animals – remained entrenched in majority-report religion in the Roman empire until Constantine. Christians and Jews (after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE) stood alone in refusing any longer to participate in the sacrifice of bulls and goats, birds and lambs.
4 - Psychologizing the person: Christ as God-man, psychologically construed
- Marilyn McCord Adams, University of Oxford
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- Book:
- Christ and Horrors
- Published online:
- 03 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 21 September 2006, pp 80-107
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Summary
No clear meaning?
A God-man can't have explanatory value without being logically or metaphysically possible. Embracing Chalcedon – the claim that in Christ there is one person but two (Divine and human) natures – medieval theologians recognized that explanations would be needed; “faith seeking understanding” shouldered the task of philosophical articulation. Already Boethius, in his theological treatises, draws on Aristotelian metaphysics to define “person” as “an individual substance of a rational nature.” Although in Cur Deus Homo Anselm recognized Incarnation to be one of the most difficult mysteries, he struggled through succeeding drafts of his Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi to offer an intelligible account that gets it (at least superficially) right. In the twelfth century, Peter Lombard took on the issue in Book III of his Sentences. Following Lombard's syllabus, the school theology of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries raised the standard of debate to a high level of philosophical sophistication, and spawned not one, but a whole family of attempts to modify Aristotelian metaphysics to accommodate the datum of a God-man. Thus, it is prima facie surprising to find 1970s Myth-of-God-Incarnate authors – most notably, John Hick, Maurice Wiles, and Don Cupitt – rendering the verdict that Christian theological tradition has never assigned the Chalcedonian definition any clear meaning.
Yet this declaration does not come out of nowhere. The way to it was paved by the previous century of British Christological thinking.