Incarnation

In this theological dialogue two characters, the skeptical Simon and the man of faith, Joseph, engage in a wide-ranging conversation touching on the meaning of morality, God, revelation, the Bible, and the viability of faith in a world full of evils.

Even thirty years after Thomas Morris wrote The Logic of God Incarnate, there are some claims that Morris makes that require examination in analytic Christology. One of those claims is a concession that Morris gives to modalists near the end of the book, where he says that the two-minds view he has defended can be used to provide a consistent modalistic understanding of Jesus’s prayer life. This view, he says, blocks the inference from the fact that Jesus prays to the (...) Father to the additional claim that Jesus and the Father are numerically distinct. I argue that Oneness Pentecostals can appropriate central concepts from The Logic of God Incarnate as Morris suggests, and further that this means Oneness Pentecostals should abandon the claim that Jesus believes he just is the Father. Once Oneness Pentecostals abandon this claim, they can give a possible explanation of how it is that Jesus relates to the Father in prayer even though he just is the Father. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the Incarnation of the Son of God, understood in a traditionally orthodox way, is incompatible with an atemporalist concept of God. First, I explain what I mean by atemporalism, namely the idea that God exists outside time. I also show the main corollaries of that doctrine, most notably that all of God’s life occurs eternally simultaneously. Second, based on New Testament teaching and widely accepted creeds, I spell out philosophically what I mean by the (...) Incarnation. In short, I take it to be the doctrine that the Second Person of the Trinity at some point in time took on a human body as part of a fully human nature. I then proceed to my central argument, which derives a contradiction from the definitions of the Incarnation and of atemporalism, respectively. In the last section, I shall treat some possible objections to my argument and show that they do not solve the problem satisfactorily. (shrink)

The Eucharist is at the heart of Christian worship and at the heart of the Eucharist are the curious phrases, 'This is my body' and 'This is my blood'. James M. Arcadi offers a constructive proposal for understanding Christ's presence in the Eucharist that draws on contemporary conceptual resources and is faithful to the history of interpretation. He locates his proposal along a spectrum of Eucharistic theories. Arcadi explores the motif of God's presence related to divine omnipresence and special presence (...) in holy places, which undergirds a biblical-theological proposal concerning Christ's presence. Utilizing recent work in speech-act theory, Arcadi probes the acts of consecration and renaming in their biblical and liturgical contexts. A thorough examination of recent work in Christology leads to an action model of the Incarnation that borrows the notion of enabling externalism from philosophy of mind. These threads undergird a model of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide an account of the ontological status of Christ’s dead body, which remained in the tomb during the three days after his crucifixion. Our account holds that Christ’s dead body – during the time between his death and resurrection – was prime matter without a substantial form. We defend this account by showing how it is metaphysically possible for prime matter to exist in actuality without substantial forms. Our argument turns on the truth of two theses: (...) God is able to produce all acts of secondary causes without those secondary causes, and Substantial forms are secondary causes of the actuality of prime matter. We argue that the metaphysical possibility of matter without form is perfectly consistent with holding both there is only one substantial form in a material substance and that prime matter is pure potentiality. Moreover, we argue that the metaphysical possibility of matter without form does little-to-no damage to our natural understanding of material substances. (shrink)

[paragraph 3 of the article] The goal of this article is to flesh out that initial understanding of incarnational immutability. The method I employ to attain this goal is to consider cases of predications from the texts of conciliar Christology. I show potential ontological truth conditions for those predications being true that do not require the truth conditions I propose for immutability to be unsatisfied. Put otherwise, I show ontological truth conditions for predications that imply Christ’s mutability and Incarnation that (...) are also consistent with the truth of “Christ is immutable.” Since the truth conditions for the incarnational texts do not require the falsity of the claim that “Christ is immutable,” the incarnational claims do not require the rejection of immutability. In other words, the Incarnation is no reason to deny divine immutability, and vice versa. (shrink)

‘There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus’, wrote Schweitzer at the end of The Quest of the Historical Jesus. The subsequent history of Gospel research in Germany was to reinforce this judgement beyond its author's expectations. The signpost to the future turned out to be Wrede's book on The Messianic Secret in the Gospels which had appeared five years earlier on the same day in 1901 as Schweitzer's own Mystery of (...) the Kingdom of God, and which is still the classical example of redactional criticism of the gospels. Schweitzer's final alternative: either consistent eschatology or thoroughgoing scepticism proved to be unnecessary. Both won and took prizes. But whereas Schweitzer has slain his thousands, Wrede has slain his ten-thousands. (shrink)

contents -/- i. short review: Beyond the Black Rainbow -/- ii. as you die, hold one thought -/- iii. short review: LA JETÉE .

This paper analyzes Catholic philosophy by investigating the parameters that Catholic dogmatic claims set for theories of truthmaking. First I argue that two well-known truthmaker views—the view that properties alone are the truthmakers for contingent predications, and the view that all truths need truthmakers—are precluded by Catholic dogma. In particular, the doctrine of transubstantiation precludes the first, and the doctrines of divine causality and divine freedom together preclude the second. Next, I argue that the doctrine of the Incarnation, together with (...) an admittedly-contested theological premise, requires a vast and sweeping revision to the standard view of truthmakers for predicative truths. (shrink)

I greatly appreciate Thomas Flint’s reply to my paper, “Flint’s ‘Molinism and the Incarnation’ is too Radical.” In my original paper I argue that the Christology and eschatology of Flint’s paper “Molinism and the Incarnation” is too radical to be considered orthodox. I consider it an honor that a senior scholar, such as Flint, would concern himself with my work in the first place. In this response to Flint’s reply I will explain why I still find Flint’s Christology and eschatology (...) to be too radical. Below I shall attempt to address various issues raised by Flint in his reply. (shrink)

This is a spiritual-theological reflection on the meaning of the Cross of Christ, in the form of a prose-poetic monologue.

In this essay, I assess Marilyn McCord Adams's important and provocative incarnation-centered approach to the problem of evil. In particular, I examine the central theological components of her approach: her novel but also problematic conceptions of creation, sin, redemption, grace, and eschatological consummation. My further goal is to use my critical analysis of Adams's approach in order to begin to articulate and defend an alternative incarnation-centered approach, based on a more classically orthodox conception of divine defeat of evil, which is (...) both immune to the criticisms I raise against Adams's approach and possesses a higher degree of explanatory power. (shrink)

This dissertation traces the historical development and gives systematic theological expression to the fundamental ethics that is implicit in the writings of Edward Schillebeeckx since his turn to hermeneutics in 1967. lt argues that Schillebeeckx's fundamental ethics, like his later political theology generally, is "liberationist" in its perspective, insofar as it has been influenced by Latin American liberation theology and more recently, although to a much lesser extent, by European and North American feminist theology. ;The first three chapters involve a (...) critical exposition of Schillebeeckx's hermeneutics and theological method, anthropology, and christology. Chapter 1 presents Schillebeeckx's hermeneutics and theological method, highlighting in particular the contributions of Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jurgen Habermas, Paul Ricoeur, Jurgen Moltmann, and Clodovis Boff to his thought. Chapter 2 explores Schillebeeckx's anthropology, underscoring especially the influences of Ian Barbour, Thomas Kuhn, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Theodor Adorno, and Norbert Elias on his reflections. Chapter 3 presents Schillebeeckx's christology, stressing in particular his engagement with contemporary biblical scholarship. ;The final two chapters make explicit the contribution that Schillebeeckx's theology can make to the construction of a fundamental liberationist ethics. Chapter 4 explores the ethical implications of Schillebeeckx's hermeneutics and theological method, anthropology, and christology--in other words, his fundamental Christian ethics--highlighting especially the contributions of Roman Catholic social teaching, Johann Baptist Metz, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, and Thomas Aquinas to his work. Chapter 5, the concluding chapter, discusses the contribution that Schillebeeckx's theology and ethics can make to contemporary North American discussions regarding the ethical norm of political justice, using the applied ethical issue of international debt as a test case for how his hermeneutical and methodological insights might work out in practice. (shrink)

Craig, Barry M The season of Advent is not well-defined as it flows almost seamlessly from the end-time themes of the Sundays late in Ordinary Time and turns to the approaching Nativity of Christ. Lacking an event-defining start, Advent in the Roman Rite is named as the four Sundays before Christmas, thus lasting twentyone to twenty-eight days, while in the Ambrosian Rite of Milan it is six Sundays. The elements common to each Sunday's gospel reading in the Roman Rite's three-year (...) Lectionary reveal this sequence: Stay awake; John the Baptist is a voice crying in the wilderness 'Prepare a way for the Lord'; John the Baptist is a witness to Christ; Annunciation to Joseph, or to Mary, or the Visitation -in any case Mary is with child. Although this year, B, we follow the Gospel according to Mark, after reading its opening on the Second Sunday of Advent we do not read from it again until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Thus the Lectionary for Advent and Christmastide presents a melange of all four Gospels, with Mark the least represented. This is unavoidable since Mark provides no information from before the emergence of Jesus in his public ministry. However, homilists need to remember that this socalled year of Mark will have several interruptions from John's Gospel. (shrink)

Christmas gives us that 'sweet little Jesus Boy' and Lent follows that with the 'gentle Jesus, meek and mild.' He was neither of those. In point of fact, he was the 'tough guy from Nazareth.' He was consistently abrasive, if not abusive, to his mother (Lk 2:49; Jn 2:4; Mt 12:48) and aggressively hard on males, particularly those in authority. In Mark 8 he cursed and damned Peter for failing to get Jesus' esoteric definition of Messiah correct. Nobody else understood (...) it either. Jesus had made it up himself and not adequately explained it to anybody until then. He called the religious authorities snakes, corrupt tombs, filthy chinaware, fakes, and Mosaic legalists who had forgotten God's real revelation of universal grace and salvation in the Abraham Covenant. He tore up the temple in the middle of a worship service and cursed those present for turning God's house of prayer into a den of thieves, when actually they were kind, helping out-of-town tourists obtain the proper sacrifices for the liturgical rituals. Jesus was persistently aggressive, often angry and not infrequently irrational, killing an innocent fig tree with his curse, for example. He constantly attacked the Pharisees and their proposals for renewing the spiritual vitality of the Jewish Community. He abused numerous people by healing them on the Sabbath just to make his political point against the religious leaders. He could just as well have healed them on Tuesday, if he really wanted to heal them. By healing the blind man in John 9 on the Sabbath, for example, he caused the man to be driven out of his synagogue, his family, and his community of faith; isolated and abandoned as if he were a leper. Even when he said surprising things about children, his focus was not on the children but on his disciples, using the children as tools for making an assertive teaching point. Jesus' life was one of perpetually aggressive claims for his vision of God's reign. He constantly and intentionally provoked conflict and disruption of the status quo, spiritually and politically. He refused to negotiate, compromise, palliate, or mollify his insistence upon keeping his elbow perpetually in the eye of the people in power. In all this he would not back down. The principle by which Jesus operated was absolute and that is why he did not back down, even though they killed him for this very reason. His principle was simply that the renewal of Jewish spirituality could only come from a return to the Abrahamic Covenant, which declared (Gn 12; Rm 8) that God is gracious and universally forgiving towards all humankind, unconditional to our conduct and behaviour, and radically in that it removes all fear, guilt, and shame from the equation of our relationship with God (Mi 7:18-20). He saw that the Pharisees and Scribes were absolutely wrong in assuming that the Mosaic legal system would renew the Jewish relationship with God. He was not the gentle Jesus, meek and mild. He was that tough guy from Nazareth! He had good reason and he was willing to go the distance for what he stood for, even to death on the cross. (shrink)

As bishops, both Augustine and Ambrose wrote sermons on Psalm 118 towards the end of their lives. This article puts these two exegetical works in dialogue with each other by focusing on the common theological theme of participation operative in both commentaries. I argue that both Ambrose and Augustine present a Christological account of participation which functions as the basis of their respective ecclesiologies. Within this overarching Christological framework, the article notes that Ambrose grounds participation in the imago Dei, whereas (...) Augustine’s takes his starting point from the grace Christ offers through the incarnation. (shrink)

Christ’s name is often taken in vain, but not in this book title. It is at once a prayer and a cry of anguish. Robinson was deputed to deal with the whole abuse problem in the Archdiocese of Sydney and knows horrid things at first hand: abuse and clerical cover-ups, both.Bishop Robinson’s book is practical—if perhaps at the time of publication unduly sanguine. He calls, in chapter 13 for ‘A New Council for a New Church’ to enable to get the (...) problem of sexual abuse fixed and for the Church to get out of its self-constructed ‘prison of the past’.See Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, Melbourne, Garrett Publishing 2007: reviewed in Sophia, vol.47, pp.231–239 in 2008. See page 119 and passim. The authoritarian Church to date has not squarely faced, and not by any means fixed, the sexual abuse problem. It can do this, Robinson argues, only if it changes both its ways and its structures. Such a change, Robinson suggests, could happen if there we. (shrink)

Present knowledge of evolutionary history challenges traditional concepts of the Christian salvation history. In order to overcome these challenges, theology needs to articulate a wider, more open and more universal approach to the understanding of God's salvific action. One way of doing this is to employ the notion of “deep incarnation” suggested by Danish theologian Niels Henrik Gregersen. His suggestion may also blur the lines that mark a sharp distinction between the history of creation and the history of salvation, in (...) a way that safeguards some of the basic tenets of classical theology. (shrink)

This book reconstructs the cornerstones of Jesus’s moral teachings about how to lead a good, even exemplary, human life. It does so in a way that is compatible with the most prominent, competing versions of the historical Jesus. The work also contrast Jesus’ understanding of the best way to lead our lives with that of Friedrich Nietzsche. Both Jesus and Nietzsche were self-consciously moral revolutionaries. Jesus refashioned the imperatives of Jewish law to conform to what he was firmly convinced was (...) the divine will. Nietzsche aspired to transvalue the dominant values of his time —which themselves were influenced greatly by Christianity— in service of what he took to be a higher vision. The interplay of these radical versions of the good human life, seasoned with critical commentary emerging from modern findings in the sciences and humanities, opens possibilities and lines of inquiry that can inform our choices in answering that enduring, paramount question, “How should we live our lives?”. (shrink)

Theodore of Tarsus served as archbishop of Canterbury for twenty-two years until his death in 690, aged eighty-eight. Because the only significant record we had of Theodore was that contained in Bede’s Historia, until recently it was very difficult to say anything about his life before this appointment, and even more difficult to determine anything about his thought. All of that changed in the last half of the twentieth century, when the discovery of some biblical glosses from Canterbury was revealed (...) and the ensuing scholarship uncovered more of Theodore’s work than had previously been known. The Laterculus Malalianus is a text that benefited from treatment in this period. This present work examines the Laterculus for what it has to say about the person and work of Christ, and establishes that Theodore’s main theological inspiration was Irenaeus of Lyons and the concept of recapitulation, even while he cast his thought in language heavily drawn from the Syriac East, and Ephrem the Syrian in particular.The volume represents a contribution to our understanding of the early medieval theological project in Britain, the transmission of eastern Mediterranean thought in the early medieval West and, ultimately, of the work of Theodore of Tarsus. (shrink)