Identity and Coherence in Christology: One Person in Two Natures 1032450479, 9781032450476

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Identity and Coherence in Christology

This book explores a number of closely related logical and metaphysical questions relating to the identity of Jesus Christ. In particular, it considers: ‘What does “Jesus Christ” name?’ and ‘How may Jesus Christ be the subject of both divine and human attributes, given their apparent incompatibility?’. The author draws on analytic and scholastic influences and integrates them into a rehabilitation of the neglected habitus theory of the hypostatic union. The theory maintains a real identity between Christ and the Word and emphasises the instrumental or possessory dimension of Christ’s relationship to his human nature. This approach allows for an account of the hypostatic union that is true to the indispensable articles of classical Christology and which satisfies the demands of logical coherence. Yet, at no point is the mystery of the Incarnational event reduced to the strictures of creaturely comprehension. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of Christology, analytic theology and the philosophy of religion. Paul S. Scott (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is a systematic theologian with a special interest in philosophical, analytic and scholastic theology.

Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology Series editors James Turner Thomas McCall Jordan Wessling

Impeccability and Temptation Understanding Christ’s Divine and Human Will Edited by Johannes Grössl and Klaus von Stosch Forgiveness and Atonement Christ’s Restorative Justice Jonathan C. Rutledge Theological Perspectives on Free Will Compatibility, Christology, and Community Edited by Aku Visala and Olli-Pekka Vainio The Church and the Problem of Divine Hiddenness Derek S. King Theological Perspectives on Free Will Compatibility, Christology, and Community Edited By Aku Visala, Olli-Pekka Vainio Forsaking the Fall Original Sin and the Possibility of a Nonlapsarian Christianity Daniel H. Spencer Identity and Coherence in Christology One Person in Two Natures Paul S. Scott

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studiesin-Analytic-and-Systematic-Theology/book-series/RSAST

Identity and Coherence in Christology One Person in Two Natures Paul S. Scott

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Paul S. Scott The right of Paul S. Scott to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-45047-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-46364-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-38135-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003381358 Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For my parents.

Contents

Acknowledgementsviii Introduction1 1 Matters of Method

25

2 Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word

54

3 Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature

86

4 Christological Semantics

114

5 Identity and Coherence in Christology

142



174

Postscript: The Incarnational Mystery

Bibliography176 Index 188

Acknowledgements

The number of individuals to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for the development of this book is relatively few, though my thanks to them are no less heartfelt for it. This work began life as a PhD thesis which was undertaken at the University of Edinburgh between 2018 and 2021, under the primary supervision of David Grumett and the secondary supervision of David Fergusson. Doctor Grumett’s oversight of my progress has always been greatly appreciated, as has his generous assistance along the way. Professor Fergusson’s early input into my (initially malformed) research project was also invaluable in determining the course which it would eventually take. The other two individuals whom I wish to thank by name are Joshua Ralston and Oliver Crisp, who jointly examined my thesis in October 2021 and determined it worthy of passing without corrections. In addition to this determination, they advised me on how best to adapt my manuscript for publication, and what few changes (dare I say, improvements?) this work has sustained between then and now is owing largely to their feedback. Finally, my thanks go to the two anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments on the book. Although it is, by now, well past the post of qualifying as an academic cliché, it must nonetheless be stated that any material failings which survive in the book are owing entirely to me.

Introduction

The Problem of Christological Predication So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect (τέλειον) in divinity and perfect (τέλειον) in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον) with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον) with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer, as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures (ἐν δύο φύσεσιν) which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union (ἕνωσιν), but rather the property (ἰδιότητος) of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person (πρόσωπον) and a single subsistent being (ὑπὸστασιν); he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning.1

With these words, the Council of Chalcedon (451 ce) bequeathed to the Christian tradition its most decisive declaration regarding the identity of Jesus Christ. Christ is one and the same person as the Son, the Word, who is at once complete in both Godhead and manhood. Christ is perfectly divine just as God the Father is, and is perfectly human just as we are. ‘Perfection’, here, means fullness or completion; that Christ is perfect in his humanity speaks to there being nothing that is lacking in his humanity, to the fact that nothing must be further added to Christ in order for him to be truly human. Christ, as the Son, is a divine person, and as such is perfect in his divinity from eternity (‘before the ages’). His humanity, however, is something which came to be true of him in time (‘in the last days’): a divine person became human, yet not in such a way that in any sense compromises or denigrates the perfection of his divinity. In short, the Chalcedonian Creed is a definition, one which delineates the teaching of the Church with regard to the Incarnation of the Son of God. DOI: 10.4324/9781003381358-1

2  Introduction Yet, despite its privileged status as the Church’s definitive Christological statement, it appears to raise more questions than it answers. There are two ways in which this is so. Not only does the Creed make use of a vocabulary which, in at least some cases, is alien both to the biblical text and to a modern audience (even one that is philosophically trained), a vocabulary which the Creed itself does not see fit to explain or to define further, but the Creed may also be thought to express a notion that is unintelligible, perhaps even incoherent: that one and the same person exists in such a way that he is perfect in both divinity and humanity. To the first point, it must be conceded that the Chalcedonian Definition does make use of a vocabulary which may reasonably be thought abstruse. The Creed is a ‘definition’, not in the sense that it furnishes the Christian Church with a glossary by which to comprehend the doctrine of the Incarnation, but in the sense that it demarcates the Church’s teaching about the Incarnation from various heresies which threaten to compromise its essential truth. The four adverbial qualifications with which we are to understand Christ’s existing in two natures illustrate well the Council’s intention: Christ is to be acknowledged in two natures unconfusedly (ἀσυγχύτως), unchangeably (ἀτρέπτως), indivisibly (ἀδιαιρέτως) and inseparably (ἀχωρίστως). The first and second of these four adverbs rule out the possibility that the two natures in any way ‘blend’ so as to produce an admixture, a tertium quid or ‘third thing’ which is perfect neither in one nature nor in the other. Particularly, neither becoming nor being human brings about any change in the essentially immutable divinity. The third and fourth, meanwhile, rule out the possibility that the divine person is united to the human nature by anything less than a unity which secures the divine person as the very subject of that nature. The union of divinity and humanity in the Incarnation is not that of a divine person with a human person, but of a divine person with a human nature which admits of no personal subject other than that of the Son. Chalcedon may therefore be understood as defining the doctrine of the Incarnation with at least as much emphasis on what must be repudiated as on what must be affirmed. Yet, in so doing, the Creed appears to do little more than construct parameters of belief, boundaries of a purely exclusionary or regulative character, but which do not provide a clear metaphysical account of what lies within.2 Positively, however, there is one thing about which the Creed is quite clear: within the doctrine of the Incarnation, there is both a unity and a duality to which justice must be done. The unity is one of person or hypostasis; the duality, one of nature or essence. Beyond this, however, the Creed does not satisfy the curiosity of the philosophically interested reader. All that one knows is that the unity of Christ’s person must not be construed in such a way that compromises the perfection of either nature, and that the duality of natures must not be thought to divide or to multiply the person into two. That all of this may sensibly be held together is at least

Introduction 3 questionable. Famously, the coherence of the doctrine has been called into question by philosopher John Hick: For to say, without explanation, that the historical Jesus of Nazareth was also God is as devoid of meaning as to say that this circle drawn with a pencil on paper is also a square. Such a locution has to be given semantic content: and in the case of the language of incarnation every content thus far suggested has had to be repudiated. The Chalcedonian formula, in which the attempt rested, merely reiterated that Jesus was both God and man, but made no attempt to interpret the formula.3 Hick goes on: The doctrine of the incarnation is not a theory which ought to be able to be spelled out but – in a term widely used throughout Christian history – a mystery. I suggest that its character is best expressed by saying that the idea of divine incarnation is a mythological idea. And I  am using the term ‘myth’ in the following sense: a myth is a story which is told but which is not literally true, or an idea or image which is applied to someone or something but which does not literally apply, but which invites a particular attitude in its hearers.4 Hick’s critique is deserving of comment. The central issue is that what it means to provide an ‘explanation’ for the Incarnation is not made plain. Is it necessary, in order to salvage the doctrine from the realm of the mythical, to ‘explain’ how God became man, or is it necessary merely to ‘explain’ why God’s becoming man is non-contradictory, and therefore not analogous to a belief in a square circle? If the former (which appears to be Hick’s preference), what could an ‘explanation’ of the Incarnation possibly involve? Presumably, it would involve expressing the metaphysics of the Incarnation in terms of categories with which we are already familiar from creaturely experience. But what if the Incarnation is simply not like any event which occurs in creation, and what if the divine person who is the subject of the Incarnation is not like any created entity? This would almost certainly mean that the Incarnation cannot be ‘explained’, yet this surely does not entail that it is mere ‘myth’, in Hick’s sense of the word. To put all of this in another way, is the Incarnation a ‘mystery’ because it cannot, under pain of contradiction, be literally true, or is it a mystery merely because God’s becoming man is something incomprehensible to us? Hick’s suggestion that the Incarnation be understood according to the rubric of ‘mystery’ is quite traditional, and is not, in itself, antagonistic to the Church’s historical teaching with respect to the doctrine. But Hick is much too casual in equating a theological ‘mystery’ with ‘myth’, where ‘myth’ is understood as something which is not ‘literally true’. That the Incarnation is

4  Introduction a mystery is owing to the mysterious character of theology as such, and not merely to the fact that it is intended to evoke a particular kind of attitude in those who hear of it. In saying this, I do not intend to be dismissive of Hick’s concerns. On the contrary, the suggestion that the teaching of Chalcedon is manifestly self-contradictory, and therefore false, is one which does demand a response, and providing such a response is one of the primary purposes of this work. Addressing a single paragraph of Hick’s is not, however, the only or even the chief motivation for engaging in such a project. Others within Hick’s own liberal tradition have levelled similar critiques,5 as have certain philosophers who oppose religious belief tout court.6 Moreover, my purpose in this work is not merely defensive or apologetical (although it assuredly is partly this) but also exploratory. The question of coherence serves as a convenient and theologically productive vector into the very heart of the doctrine of the Incarnation, by which we might come to understand it better. Many figures within the Christian tradition, some of near-unparalleled influence, have wrestled with the logical and metaphysical problems associated with the doctrine of the Incarnation, and yet have offered and continue to offer ‘solutions’ or ‘explanations’ which differ from one another, in some cases quite considerably. This is indicative – or, so I shall argue – of fundamental differences regarding how the doctrine is to be construed metaphysically. In other words, ‘contradiction’ or ‘coherence’, which are primarily semantic or conceptual concerns, are united inextricably with properly metaphysical concerns. As such, mustering a defence of the doctrine’s coherence will undoubtedly involve expositing the finer metaphysical contours of the doctrine and will thereby serve the theologian’s ends of ‘faith seeking understanding’. In short, the question of coherence in Christology is at least as much of an intramural discussion as an adversarial one. The aim of this project is best understood in relation to the problem to which it is principally addressed, which I term ‘the problem of Christological predication’; though, in the literature, it has also been termed ‘the fundamental philosophical problem’7 and ‘the incoherence objection’.8 The problem is as follows. As per the Chalcedonian standard, Jesus Christ is said to be a person who exists in two natures: a divine nature, in which respect he is consubstantial with the Father, and a human nature, in which respect he is consubstantial with us. In virtue of existing in two natures, he is said to have all of the attributes (certainly, the essential attributes) of both. However, it would appear that certain of the attributes of divinity and of humanity are logical contraries or contradictories9 (e.g. impassibility and passibility), so a single subject cannot be said significantly to exemplify both at the same time. The question, then, is this: how is it that one person may simultaneously exemplify incompatible attributes?

Introduction 5 This problem is both old and new. It was a preoccupation of the medieval schoolmen, most notably Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Both of these figures developed a number of ways of articulating the metaphysics of the Incarnation in such a way that seeks to circumvent this problem of Christological predication. In more recent times, and especially within the context of analytic philosophy of religion, the problem has received renewed attention, owing no doubt to the challenges posed by Hick et al. In the latter part of the twentieth century, these challenges were taken up by numerous Christian philosophers, such as Stephen Davis10 and Thomas Morris.11 More recently still, in the twenty-first century, certain philosophical theologians who are also interpreters of the medieval scholastics seem to have excited a renewed interest in this problem.12 Suffice it to say that this particular problem boasts two noteworthy features: it has a venerable theological history, having enjoyed significant treatment by some of the tradition’s most distinguished thinkers, and it is a problem which is still alive and well in the contemporary literature. Though there are numerous existing proposals as to how best to respond to the problem of contradictory predication in Christology, there is by no means a consensus on which proposal is to be preferred. By way of contribution, I wish to advance a strategy for addressing the problem. My strategy is, I suggest, worthy of consideration, partly because it has been almost completely neglected in the literature, and partly because I believe it to exhibit considerable promise. Before describing the precise nature of my proposal, however, it is important first to consider a fundamental Christological question which will bear on all future discussion: the question of identity. The Problem of Christological Designation As part of addressing the problem of Christological predication, this project will additionally address a closely related question, which we might call the problem of Christological designation. This secondary question should be taken to be a parallel sub-theme of this work. The problem is simply this: when we use Christological names such as ‘Jesus Christ’ (or ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’), who or what is the object of reference? What, precisely, is being ‘picked out’ or denoted? The urgency of this question should be apparent in the light of concerns over the coherence of the Chalcedonian formula, for the two-nature doctrine requires that there be a single subject of which both divine and human attributes are simultaneously predicated, and that this subject be none other than Jesus Christ. Determining the precise ontological status of this subject is therefore amply motivated, yet it is also deceptively fraught. Indeed, it is my suggestion that this question represents a long-standing, unresolved and somewhat under-reported tension in the tradition, giving rise to a measure of conceptual confusion which can only impede attempts to arrive at a coherent expression of the two-nature doctrine.

6  Introduction In addressing this question, there are two prominent answers which both appear to be eminently traditional. The first answer is that ‘Jesus Christ’ is the name of a person, and that the person who Christ is is the divine Word. ‘Jesus Christ’, then, is a name for the second person of the Trinity, and it is this eternal, uncreated divine person who is the object of this name’s grammatical designation. This answer has a good deal to commend it. For one, it seems strongly Chalcedonian, being consonant with the basic ‘Cyrilline’ insight that it is the second person of the Trinity who is the very subject of the Incarnation. The divine Son or Word is the one who is incarnate. Furthermore, the alternatives do not look particularly promising, from a creedal – or, indeed, a biblical – point of view. Are we to say, for instance, that Jesus Christ is not a person? Or, perhaps, that he is some person other than the person of the Word? Given its apparent faithfulness to Chalcedon, as well as the poverty of its most ready competitors, the claim that Jesus Christ is identical with the Word looks like a promising candidate of first consideration. There is a potential danger here, however. If we consider the divine person in se – in abstraction, that is, from the hypostatic union and from all creaturely reality – we must say that the human nature of Christ, the human nature that is assumed in the Incarnation, is not integral to the identity of the Word as such. Not only does the Word pre-exist the Incarnational event, and hence pre-exists the human nature that is assumed, but the Word’s becoming flesh was itself a free and gracious act, one which was, at most, fitting for God but was in no respect compelled by the unilateral influence of creaturely impetus. What is more, even during the incarnate life of Christ, there is a proper distinction to be made between the divine and human natures, such that they are neither confused nor essentially changed by their union. There is therefore a measure of independence which the divine person maintains even when incarnate, lest the two natures be thought to ‘mix’. In short, the human nature of Christ is not integral to, nor is it constitutive of, the Word’s very identity; it does not alter, determine or inform who or what the Word is, either in essence or in hypostasis. If, as we are considering, Jesus Christ is the Word, then everything that is true of the Word is, by implication, true of Jesus Christ. Just as the assumed human nature is not integral to the identity of the second person of the Trinity, so too does it fail to be integral to the identity of Jesus Christ. Whether this consequence proves fatal is unclear. Suffice it to say, by way of preview, that there are doubtless at least certain kinds of theological sensibilities against which this claim is bound to offend. There may be a risk here of the humanity of Christ being relegated to a peripheral rather than a privileged position in the ontology of the hypostatic union; that the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth is, to put the matter rather casually, ‘taking a back seat’ rather than being ‘front and centre’. Is it plausible, let alone theologically desirable, that the identity of the incarnate one be definable absent of any reference to

Introduction 7 the human nature? Indeed, would it now be false to say that Jesus Christ is the God-man? It must be observed for the sake of clarity that this view does not amount to a denial that Jesus Christ is truly human, or that the hypostatic union is an ontological reality. It simply amounts to the claim that the humanity of Christ, while genuine, is extrinsic to his very personal identity, that it is strictly orthogonal to who he is. The other traditional answer to the question of Christological designation involves taking as given the indispensability of the human nature in determining the identity of Jesus Christ. Christ is the incarnate one; he is, indeed, the God-man. While Christ is uncontestably divine, there is, as it were, more to him than his divinity. In order to give an adequate description of the ‘whole’ Christ, not to mention doing full justice to Chalcedon and its conspicuously balanced descriptions of Christ’s divinity and humanity, the human nature of Christ must be understood to be an indispensable ingredient in determining who Christ is. An ontological description of the identity of Christ which omits reference to his humanity, or which relegates his humanity to a relatively peripheral or incidental place, is nothing short of a failure to coordinate one’s Christology with the demands of the Chalcedonian standard. But there is danger here also. For, if we take it that the human nature of Christ is determinative of Christ’s very identity, then it is doubtful that we can continue to maintain that Jesus Christ is the very person of the Word. By way of a modus tollens counterpart to the modus ponens argument given earlier, if the assumed human nature is not integral to the identity of the Word, and yet it is integral to Christ, then Christ is not identical with the Word. And this would seem to compel assent to one of the unfavourable alternatives already canvassed; either that Jesus Christ is not a person or that he is a person other than the assuming Word. If the humanity of Christ is no less integral to him than the divinity, then all manner of entailments follows which are ill-befitting a divine person. If the identity of Christ altogether depends upon the human nature, then, presumably, Jesus Christ did not exist prior to the assumption of human nature, and hence is not eternal. If the Incarnation had not taken place, then Jesus Christ would not have come into being, and his existence is thus modally contingent. Moreover, if Jesus Christ ‘contains’ the human nature in some sense, then Christ admits of complexity and cannot be metaphysically simple as the tradition has classically held God to be. My argument is not that theologians who speak of the human nature as being integral to Christ explicitly endorse any or all of these entailments, but merely that there are also potential dangers in affording Christ’s humanity too privileged a place in the hypostatic union’s intrinsic constitution. We might baptise these two views as ‘instrumentalist’ and ‘compositional’, respectively. On instrumentalism, Christ is the divine Word, and hence the assumed human nature is not intrinsic to Christ’s identity. While Christ is truly incarnate, and is truly the subject of the assumed nature such that we may say

8  Introduction of him that he is human as well as divine, the assumed nature is understood to be something of an external fixture, rather than being ontologically determinative of who Christ is. So conceived, the humanity of Christ is taken to be something like an instrument of the Word, a creaturely vehicle which is not strictly a ‘part’ of Christ but which is still appropriately related to him, such that there remains a true union. On compositionalism, however, Christ is in some sense ‘made up’ of the divine person and the assumed humanity, inclusive of both a human body and a rational soul. Both the divinity and the humanity are equally indispensable components in giving ontological determination to Christ’s identity. We might put the tension between these two views in the following way: is Christ’s identity a simple divine identity, to which an assumed human nature is extrinsically related, or is Christ’s identity a divine–human identity, in which both natures enjoy an equally privileged position? It is especially interesting that both instrumentalism and compositionalism enjoy explicit, convicted and enduring representation in the Christian tradition. The confession that Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity is emblematic of the very highest Christology and is the fundamental conviction of the orthodox against many of the historic Christological heresies, not least Arianism and Nestorianism (generally regarded as the premier heretical opponents to the Councils of Nicaea (325 ce) and Ephesus (431 ce), respectively). While this alone does not strictly amount to instrumentalism as I have defined it, the claim that the Word, as true God, is independent of all creaturely reality and does not contain any created nature as an integral part is unimpeachable by the standards of classical theism, which predominated virtually without question in the early Church’s most decisive doctrinal declarations. That Christ is the Word may therefore be said to entail instrumentalism to the extent that the human nature can only be united to the Word by means of an extrinsic relation. Augustine, for one, considers various senses in which the human nature of Christ might be said to be a ‘habit’ (habitus) of the Word. The broad sense on which he settles is that by which the humanity is thought to be ‘fitted onto [it] externally’, as a ‘thing which is added to someone in such a way that he could just as well not have it’.13 He then defines the human habitus of the Word with more specificity as something which is given its shape or ‘filled out’ (formaretur) by its being possessed by the Word, but which does not change the Word intrinsically in any way: In regard to this term [viz. habitus], it is necessary for one to understand that the Word was not changed by the assumption of humanity, just as the members clothed by a garment remain unchanged, although that assumption has joined in an inexpressible manner the thing assumed to the one assuming it.14 No less explicitly, Thomas Aquinas considers the human nature to be exactly an ‘instrument’ (instrumentum) of the Word. Though Aquinas shows

Introduction 9 some reserve concerning Augustine’s ‘habitus’ language, to the extent that it connotes an ‘accidental union’,15 he nonetheless considers the description of the human nature as an ‘instrument’ to be important in preserving not only the integrity of the unchanging divine nature but also the completeness and distinctiveness of the human nature. Far from denigrating or downplaying the significance of the human nature by emphasising its externality from the Word, it is precisely the assumed nature’s ‘instrumentality’ which affords it its perfection and distinctiveness of operation: In Christ, accordingly, his human nature has its own form and possibility of action; and the same is true of his divine nature. Consequently the human nature has its native activity, distinct from the divine activity, and vice versa. Yet at the same time the divine nature employs the activity of the human nature as the activity of an instrument. Similarly, the human nature participates in the activity of the divine nature as an instrument participates in the activity of its user.16 Yet, running alongside these abundantly clear instrumentalist texts, we see equally clear statements made in favour of compositionalism by the very same outstanding figures. Augustine’s writings are replete with references to the ‘whole Christ’, and on at least one occasion he informs us in no uncertain terms of precisely what he means by this designation: ‘accept the whole Christ, Word, rational mind, and flesh. This whole is Christ’17 (the Latin also comfortably bears, ‘This is the whole Christ’). This text – surely no less privileged than the above habitus text – is strongly suggestive of the fact that ‘Christ’ is the name of something composite; whatever ‘Christ’ is being taken to name, it is surely something of which the assumed human nature is necessarily a part. To speak of the Word alone, in such a way that does not make reference also to the human nature (flesh and soul), is to fail properly to describe the ‘whole Christ’ (totus Christus). There is more to Christ than the Word alone, and hence the Word is not simply Christ. As with Augustine, so with Aquinas. Though Aquinas is expressly clear that no proper parts can be admitted into the divine Word as such, he nonetheless maintains that Christ is a ‘composite person’ (persona composita),18 at least following the Incarnation. There is, to be sure, much complexity here, and the later Duns Scotus introduces still more (and I dare say some confusion with it). Speaking of the hypostatic union as a union that is compositional or synthetic (synthesis being the Greek precursor to the Latin compositio) is quite strikingly traditional, enjoying attestation in Gregory Nazianzen,19 Maximus the Confessor20 and above all John of Damascus,21 the great consolidator of Eastern theology as well a considerable influence on Aquinas himself. It is likely that much of the enthusiasm for ‘composition’ arises from the venerable body–soul analogy, after which it was conventional, for many

10  Introduction centuries, to model the hypostatic union. Cyril of Alexandria, in particular, draws strong parallels between the manner in which the two ‘natures’ of body and soul compose the unity that is a man and the manner in which the natures of God and man compose the unity that is Jesus Christ.22 Though Cyril remains insistent that Christ is (or has) but one ultimate personal subject (physis; not altogether appropriate by the standards of developed orthodoxy), and that this ‘one’ is the divine Word, there is nonetheless a complex Incarnational product to consider, a ‘one from both’ (mia ek dyo), a ‘whole’ (holos).23 That the tension between instrumentalism and compositionalism endures, and that it does so in such a way that is both under-reported and unresolved, is evidenced in a recent publication of Ian McFarland’s. McFarland seeks, in a manner with which the present work is fully sympathetic, to defend a ‘Chalcedonianism without reserve’.24 As part of this undertaking, he critiques those formally Chalcedonian dogmatic Christologies which, while by no means denying or denigrating the humanity of Christ, fail to acknowledge the human nature as being integral to Christ’s identity.25 It would seem that what I have here labelled ‘instrumentalism’ would be the exact target of such an objection. To this extent, McFarland would appear to favour ‘compositionalism’, at least as I have defined it: that divinity and humanity are both constitutive of Christ’s identity. Yet, McFarland also commits himself to the following: In other words, the confession that Jesus’ hypostasis is that of the Word means that the designations ‘Jesus’, ‘Christ’, ‘son of Mary’, ‘God’, ‘Son of God’, ‘Word’, and so forth are fully convertible: any one of these designations can always be substituted for any other without changing the referent or the truth value of the statement in which it is found. . . . If it is true that the Word is eternal, infinite, and immense, so is Jesus; and if Jesus hungers (Matt. 21:18), weeps (John 11:35), or is in anguish (Luke 22:44), then it follows that those same actions both may and must be predicated of the Word as well.26 This is quite striking. If, as McFarland claims, ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘the Word’ are fully convertible, and if no created being is integral to the identity of the latter, then it follows that Christ’s human nature is not integral to the identity of the former. Hence, humanity is not integral to Christ’s identity after all, and this looks to be the very result which McFarland wishes to avoid. While it would be uncharitable to characterise this as a contradiction in McFarland’s thought, it is, at least, a tension; indeed, it is the very tension on which I am now attempting to press. And, as I have already argued, this tension is by no means unique to McFarland but is, on the contrary, suffusive of traditional Christology in its historical development. In describing this tension as ‘under-reported’, however, I do not mean to suggest that it has sustained no

Introduction 11 attention whatsoever. Rowan Williams, in an extended discussion of Byzantine Christology, indicates his acute cognizance of it: And so the theologian has to say that when we talk about the one hypostasis of the incarnate Word, we may mean either the eternal and simple reality which is the eternal Word or the ‘composite’ reality which is ‘Jesus of Nazareth as animated and actualized by the Word’.27 The tension is also discussed by Darren Sumner, in the context of what he aptly terms the ‘identity problem’: Yet, once a full human existence was reckoned to be indispensable to Christ’s metaphysical makeup, it became increasingly difficult for theologians to identify Jesus as ‘God the Son’ without significant, material qualification in their Christologies. The development of Christology had involved a shift from regarding the Lord Jesus Christ as the Word of God making use of humanity to the Word of God joining humanity to Himself. The eternally simple, second person of the Trinity thereby became complex, in that He identified Himself not with the human Jesus (in an adoptionist sense) but fully as the God-human.28 For this reason, it might be thought that the Council of Chalcedon was simply inadequate for the task of resolving Christological tensions pertaining to Christ’s identity. This has, indeed, been argued in recent scholarship. According to such a historical estimation, Chalcedon is responsible for entrenching schisms and raising more questions than it answers.29 If this is true, then it is perhaps little wonder that conflicting impulses can be detected in the tradition concerning what is designated by ‘Christ’. Perhaps it is the later, postChalcedonian developments to which we should instead turn if we wish to lay the problem of Christ’s identity finally to rest. By contrast with Chalcedon’s reputation for ambiguity and unhappy compromise, the Second Council of Constantinople (553 ce) might appear refreshingly decisive. Constantinople II identifies the one Lord Jesus Christ with the Son, the second person of the ‘consubstantial Trinity’ (triada homoousion).30 To this extent, instrumentalism might appear to have won the day. It may be excessively optimistic, however, to suggest that the post-Chalcedonian era, crucial though it was, laid to the rest any and all tensions which Chalcedon itself is responsible for generating. The same Creed also makes explicit use of the language of composition, describing the hypostatic union as one that is ‘by synthesis’ (kata synthesin),31 and speaking of the two natures as those ‘of which he is composed’ (ex hōn kai synetethē).32 The contemporary Christologist therefore faces the daunting yet vital task of identifying who or what Jesus Christ is, and, in so doing, facing up to a conceptual tension which the tradition has by no means resolved. If one

12  Introduction identifies Christ with the second person of the Trinity straightforwardly, then the externality of the assumed human nature must be given emphasis. If one instead chooses to identify Christ with the complex divine–human product which the Incarnation yields, one in which divinity and humanity are both equally privileged, then it is the internality of the assumed human nature which must correspondingly be emphasised. Much of the metaphysical discussion in this work will be oriented towards the question of whether it is the externality or internality of the human nature with respect to Christ which ought to prevail in a truly classical and truly coherent Christology. A Proposal Reckoning with the related questions of Christological predication and Christological designation is therefore an exercise that is partly semantic and partly metaphysical. If greater clarity is to be achieved regarding Chalcedon’s claim that Jesus Christ is one person who is the subject of two natures, then two things are required: the Christologist must construct an account of the metaphysics of the hypostatic union whereby the divine person is properly the subject of both the divine and human natures, as well as advancing a semantic strategy of Christological predication whereby all of the essential attributes of the divine and human natures are assignable to the divine person without contradiction. It is this twin purpose with which the present work shall be occupied. In a recent summary of the present state of scholarship in analytic Christology, James Arcadi distinguishes between three branches of literature.33 First, there is the ‘defensive’ branch, which is orientated towards defending the coherence of the two-nature doctrine against charges of contradiction. Second, there is the ‘faith seeking understanding’ branch, which is preoccupied with the metaphysics of the Incarnation – ‘how it works’, so to speak – in such a way that furthers our doctrinal understanding. Third, there is the ‘constructive’ branch, which considers the implications of Christology for other areas of the theological ‘curriculum’, such as free will, atonement and the sacraments. In relation to this system of classification, this work should be understood to correspond with the first and second branches. I advance this project as a work of philosophical theology, conducted in an analytic-cum-scholastic mode. By ‘philosophical theology’, I intend a work of theology, into whose service the tools and conceptual apparatus of philosophy are pressed. This is not a work of philosophy, but an exercise in doctrinal speculation or reflection which enjoys philosophy as its handmaiden. My approach is ‘analytic’ in the sense that it places a high importance on defining terms and deducing logical implications, with the aim of achieving greater conceptual clarity. Finally, the term ‘scholastic’ indicates a commitment to what may (perhaps somewhat lazily) be described as ‘traditional metaphysics’: the metaphysics of Aristotle and the medieval scholastics. Scholasticism shares a good deal in common with contemporary analytic philosophy, particularly its emphasis on clarity of expression and the rigorous application of

Introduction 13 logical principles. However, it eschews analytic philosophy’s preoccupation with ‘ordinary language’ and intuition, as well as some of its more prevalent methodological trends (such as ‘possible worlds’ semantics), in favour of a set of distinctive metaphysical commitments, whose particulars will be presented in due course. As is characteristic of a work of philosophical theology, my approach is thematic rather than historical. The trajectory of this work will follow a conventional scholastic order, whereby the hypostatic union – that is, the union of divine and human natures in the one person of Jesus Christ – will be considered, first with regard to the assuming person, then with regard to the assumed human nature, and finally, after considering the various semantic options available to the Christologist, the union itself. My humble hope is that this project is of interest not only to analyticians but also to Christologists generally. The coherence of the doctrine of the Incarnation cannot be gauged except in relation to what the doctrine materially affirms, and attaining to ever greater clarity regarding what it means to say that God became man, within the limited bounds of creaturely comprehension, is this project’s primary ambition. To any reader who shares this ambition, this work modestly commends itself. I will now sketch the structure of this book. In Chapter 1, I will seek to justify a number of foundational issues which bear on the methodology of the present project: my analytic approach, the fundamentals of scholastic metaphysics, the doctrine of the analogy of being and the proper place of ‘mystery’ in theology. In Chapters 2 and 3, I will first consider the hypostatic union with respect to the divine person who assumes a human nature and subsequently with respect to the nature that is assumed. In Chapter 4, I will consider the various semantic strategies which Aquinas, Scotus and a number of recent analytic thinkers have developed, and consider which, if any, are fit for purpose in maintaining both logical coherence and the indispensable articles of the Chalcedonian Definition. In the fifth and final chapter, I will put forward an account of the metaphysics of the hypostatic union which, I argue, satisfies this project’s central desiderata. In what remains of this introductory section, I will sketch the broad contours of my position and relate it to certain contested issues in contemporary analytic Christology. If there is anything which could aptly be described as a ‘tendency’ in recent analytic Christology, it is the tendency towards a compositional conception of the hypostatic union. Not only has the language of ‘composition’ been met with approval by many of the Christian tradition’s most outstanding figures, both antique and medieval, but it also appears to offer a convincing way in which to conceptualise how a single entity may be the subject of apparently incompatible attributes. If the divine and human natures of Christ are conceived as being something like ‘parts’ of the ‘whole’ Christ, then Christ may be said to ‘borrow’ divine and human properties from these parts. Compositionalism has enjoyed sophisticated exposition and defence by figures such as Brian Leftow34 and Oliver Crisp.35 While a compositional account of the

14  Introduction hypostatic union has by no means achieved the status of a consensus,36 there is a distinct paucity of alternatives at present, at least in the domain of classical Christology. One could be forgiven for thinking that, if one wishes to hold to a classical Christology in the contemporary analytic landscape, then one must be compositionalist. What of non-classical alternatives? One prominent approach which has attained some traction in the analytic literature is ‘kenotic Christology’. Kenotic accounts of the Incarnation typically conceive of the act of assumption – that is, the act by which the second person of the Trinity took to himself a human nature – in terms of a self-emptying on the part of God the Son, rather than as an act of mere addition. The thesis of kenoticism is that, in order for the doctrine of the Incarnation to be made intelligible, with respect to either logical coherence or the biblical data, we must understand God the Son as having undergone self-limitation, after some fashion or other, in order to accommodate himself to a creaturely mode of existence.37 Kenotic theologians are typically motivated by numerous considerations, of which ‘logical coherence’ is only one. Nonetheless, contemporary kenotic thinkers, mostly analytic philosophers of religion, certainly do advance ‘kenosis’ as a promising way of addressing the problem of Christological predication.38 The essence of the kenotic suggestion is that, in the Incarnation, God the Son divests himself of all those divine attributes which are incompatible with authentically human existence; though, in so doing, he does not forfeit that which is essential to the divine nature itself. A third alternative is to radically revise the principles of logic which threaten to generate Christological contradiction in the first place. One prominent example of this is the ‘relative identity’ approach which was introduced into the Christological literature by Peter van Inwagen.39 The logic of relative identity offers a way in which to say that ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘God the Son’ are identical in the sense that they are the same person, even if they are non-identical in other respects. A second approach which has been recently introduced into the analytic discussion is that of ‘contradictory Christology’, which has been given expression by Jc Beall.40 Beall’s approach embraces the charge of contradiction levelled against the doctrine of the Incarnation and yet calls into question the degree to which this should serve as a source of embarrassment for classical Christology. Perhaps, Beall suggests, contradiction is just what we ought to expect from those truths about God and his works that are the most mysterious and incomprehensible. In contrast with these various accounts, my intention is to accentuate the ‘instrumentalist’ dimension of the classical Christological tradition. As I wish to present matters, Christ is simply the divine Word who, consequently, admits of no composition and therefore does not contain the assumed human nature as an integral part. Humanity is not integral to Christ’s very personal identity but is instead an external adjunct to his essentially divine identity, by means of which he comes to exist and operate within the created order as

Introduction 15 man. In contrast with compositional accounts, Christ is not a complex entity which incorporates the human nature as a part. In contrast with kenotic accounts, the divine Word is not intrinsically moved or changed, let alone diminished, by becoming man. Finally, in contrast with the relative identity and contradictory Christology approaches, an instrumentalist account of the hypostatic union can, I believe, be expressed coherently without having to radically revise standard logic, even if it does not render the Incarnation completely comprehensible in the final analysis. My fundamental argument in favour of instrumentalism – over and against compositional expressions of the hypostatic union – is that Chalcedonian orthodoxy demands that Jesus Christ be a person, and that the person who Christ is is the second person of the Trinity. If Jesus Christ is a divine person, then he does not contain a human nature as a part, nor is he identical with some thing which contains a human nature, nor is his human nature modally necessary to him (in the de re rather than the de dicto sense of necessity; that is, necessary to his real definition rather than necessary to qualify him as falling under a certain nominal description). That Christ is the Word thus demands that the hypostatic union be conceived as an extrinsic relation, whereby the assumed nature is truly related to Christ, and Christ is truly the nature’s subject (thus rendering him vere homo), but Christ’s humanity is not integral to his identity. To put this in a manner with which the classical Christologist is likely to be sympathetic, Christ is not a divine–human person, but a divine person who assumes a human nature. The externality of the hypostatic union vis-à-vis the divine person does not thereby denigrate Christ’s true humanity. The above distinction between de re necessity and de dicto necessity serves as a convenient introduction to what sort of claim I  have in mind when ‘Christ’ and ‘the Word’ are identified. The intended sense of identity here is that of real identity: that which is designated by both names is the very same object, and hence whatever is necessary to the object designated by one name is necessary to the object designated by the other (for they are simply the same). However, this is not to say that the two names are identical in all that they connote. ‘Socrates’ and ‘the husband of Xanthippe’ are the same in denotation but they differ in connotation, in that they designate the very same object and yet the latter brings to mind a further specification which the former does not. We may wonder: is being the husband of Xanthippe a necessary part of the identity of the object that is designated by ‘the husband of Xanthippe’? The answer depends on whether we intend ‘necessary’ in a de re or a de dicto sense. In a de dicto sense, it is of course necessary: one cannot be aptly designated as ‘the husband of Xanthippe’ unless one is, in fact, the husband of Xanthippe. But in a de re sense, it is by no means necessary: that which is designated by ‘the husband of Xanthippe’ is simply Socrates, and it is not a necessary part of Socrates’s identity that he be married to Xanthippe. The

16  Introduction distinction here is that something can be necessary in order to fall under a certain description (de dicto) or something can be necessary all things considered, such that the object in question could not exist apart from it (de re). My claim that ‘Christ’ and ‘the Word’ are really identical leaves open the possibility that they might be conceptually distinct: that they designate the selfsame object and yet differ in what they connote. With this in mind, we might think of the distinction between ‘Christ’ and ‘the Word’ as mapping onto the distinction between the Logos ensarkos and the Logos asarkos. While there is but one Logos, and it is this divine person that is being designated in both cases, ‘Logos ensarkos’ brings to mind a notion which is absent in ‘Logos asarkos’: that this person is also the subject of an assumed human nature. The assumed human nature is necessary to the identity of the Logos ensarkos only in the sense that, if the Word were not incarnate, ‘ensarkos’ would be a misnomer and hence ‘incarnate’ would not be a description under which the divine person falls. Yet, the human nature is not a necessary part of the identity of the Logos as such. In this way, the assumed human nature might be said to be de dicto necessary to Christ and yet not necessary de re, if we take ‘Christ’ as being equivalent to ‘the Word incarnate’. A more detailed analysis of these semantic and logical niceties will be conducted in the later chapters of this work. In one important respect, my handling of these issues is quite traditional. The account of the hypostatic union which I  offer is true to the commitments of classical Christology, particularly the commitment that all of the essential divine and human attributes are predicable, simultaneously, of the divine person. Moreover, in virtually every respect, my account is one that is likely to be agreeable to a theologian of broadly ‘Latin’ or ‘scholastic’ commitments. In two further respects, however, my thesis departs from – or, at least, probes relatively unexplored territory of – a ‘textbook’ Thomistic way of addressing the problems of Christological predication and Christological designation. My preferred semantic strategy, the details of which I defer until the final chapter, finds no expression in the writings of the medieval schoolmen themselves, and is, to that extent, novel. Furthermore, and more daring still, I will argue that the classical Christologist is best served by thinking of the metaphysics of the Incarnation along the lines of a theory which Aquinas did explicitly condemn: the so-called habitus theory, which holds that Christ’s human nature relates to the divine person after the fashion of a donned garment. We have already seen reference to something like the habitus theory in Augustine, for whom the human nature of Christ is something added to the Word yet without affecting the Word intrinsically. What is more, the human nature is afforded its very constitution by its union with the Word, and apart from which the humanity of Christ has no actual or concrete existence. The language of ‘clothing’ or ‘enrobing’ also finds expression in Athanasius, who is particularly enthusiastic to emphasise the human nature’s externality from the Word,41 and presents what one commentator has described as a ‘space-suit

Introduction 17 Christology’,42 a humorous, yet not altogether inapt, characterisation. This brief synopsis captures well enough the virtues of the habitus theory, a more exact and thoroughgoing exposition of which will be provided in Chapter 5. Suffice it to say that the principal hallmarks of the habitus theory, as I wish to present it, are the strict identity between Christ and the Word, the externality of the human nature with respect to the assuming person and the dependence of the assumed nature upon the assuming person for its intrinsic constitution. I have little more to say on these points at present, except that the habitus theory understands the person of Christ to be related to his divine and human natures in two entirely different senses, and that it is this which is of special significance in defending the coherence of the two-nature doctrine. The medieval (and subsequent) rejection of the habitus theory is thus judged to be premature and unwarranted, and the theory is determined to be considerably more promising than the compositional accounts which have prevailed ever since the late twelfth century, with virtually no serious competitor (at least among classical Christologists). One of the more central emphases of this work, therefore, is the rejection of any sense of ‘composition’ in the hypostatic union. It is my proposal that there is considerable theological and philosophical pressure to express the metaphysics of the hypostatic union in decidedly non-compositional terms, instead emphasising the instrumental or possessory dimension of Christ’s relationship to the human nature he assumes. Before commencing, it is necessary to make clear my preferred conventions as regards the use of pronouns in relation to God. When referring to ‘God’ straightforwardly, my preference is to adopt the masculine pronouns ‘he’, ‘him’ and ‘his’. Aside from the fact that this procedure is the most faithful to Scripture and to the Christian tradition, I  consider referring to God either in the feminine or with the impersonal ‘it’ to enjoy no obvious motivation. While an argument might be made for the apparently inclusive ‘they’ or ‘them’, this procedure will not be adopted here. That ‘they’ confers an ambiguity as to gender is presented as its chief stylistic virtue; however, it is surely at least as much of a stylistic vice that it is ambiguous as to grammatical number. This is, in general, inconvenient, but especially so in the context of theology proper, where distinctions must be made between the singular God and the plurality of Trinitarian persons. However, the impersonal ‘it’ will be employed when referring to God under the aspect of ‘nature’, ‘substance’ or ‘essence’, despite the fact that (as I shall discuss later) God is considered to be simply identical with his essence. For the Trinitarian persons themselves, my procedure is as follows. ‘The Father’ need not be considered as anything other than masculine. Just so for the second person, when designated as ‘Son’. However, when designated as ‘Word’, the neuter ‘it’ will be adopted. While this decision respects the Latin verbum more than the Greek logos, nonetheless it offers something of a welcome relief against the otherwise masculine tendency of Christology. ‘Jesus Christ’ and its variations will, naturally, be masculine, though ‘Christ’s

18  Introduction human nature’ will be treated as neuter when considered in isolation from the person. While I  believe that a respectable argument can be made for masculine, feminine or neutral pronouns in designating the third Trinitarian person,43 I happen – for reasons that are not at all deliberate – to avoid the need to refer to the Holy Spirit with a singular pronoun at all. However, in all cases in which God or any of the persons is referenced by means of a relative pronoun, the personal ‘who’ and ‘whom’ are preferred to ‘which’ or ‘that’. Pronouns will not be capitalised. Finally, it should be noted that the words ‘properties’ and ‘attributes’ will be used interchangeably. Traditionally, no properties are admitted into God. This is the case because a ‘property’ is a kind of ‘accident’, and accidents are incompatible with a classical conception of the divine nature. However, I shall use ‘properties’ in a less restrictive sense. I adopt the contemporary analytic convention of using ‘property’ to indicate anything which may rightly be predicated of subject, including essential attributes, accidents and merely logical relations, and make distinctions between these various senses where necessary. Uncontestably, there are divine attributes, and there are therefore things which may appropriately be predicated of God regardless of how one conceives of the metaphysics of the divine nature. On the convention I adopt, there is no incompatibility between a classical conception of the divine nature as immutable, impassible and simple and the claim that God is the subject of properties. In my usage, a ‘property’ simply captures that which is ‘proper’ to a subject, even if the subject in question is divine and admits of no change, modification or internal distinction. Notes 1 Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 86. 2 See Sarah Coakley, “What Does Chalcedon Solve and What Does It Not? Some Reflections on the Status and Meaning of the Chalcedonian ‘Definition’,” in The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 143–63. In this, Coakley is following Karl Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” in Theological Investigations, trans. Cornelius Ernst, vol. 1 (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1963), 149–200. See also Richard A. Norris, “Chalcedon Revisited: A Historical and Theological Reflection,” in New Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff, ed. Bradley Nassif (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 140–58. 3 John Hick, “Jesus and the World Religions,” in The Myth of God Incarnate, ed. John Hick (London: SCM Press, 1977), 178. 4 Ibid. 5 Don Cupitt, “Jesus and the Meaning of ‘God’,” in Incarnation and Myth: The Debate Continued, ed. Michael Goulder (London: SCM Press, 1979), 31–40. 6 Michael Martin, The Case Against Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991), 125–61; Michael Martin, “The Incarnation Doctrine Is Incoherent and Unlikely,” in Debating Christian Theism, ed. James Porter Moreland,

Introduction 19 Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 404–13. 7 Richard Cross, “The Incarnation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, ed. Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 453. 8 Jonathan Hill, “Introduction,” in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3. 9 Strictly, two propositions are ‘contraries’ if they cannot both be true but they can both be false, and are ‘contradictories’ if they cannot both be true nor both be false. Whether two predications are contraries or contradictories has little bearing on the nature of the problem as it stands. What is of significance is that the truth of one predication is incompatible with the truth of the other, which obtains in both cases. 10 Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (London: Macmillan, 1983). 11 Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). 12 Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003); Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Michael Gorman, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 13 St. Augustine, The Fathers of the Church: Eighty-Three Different Questions, trans. David L. Mosher (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1982), question 73, (1). In fact, it is not until a slightly later point in the text, question 73, (2), that Augustine makes clear that this is the sense of habitus which he intends to apply to the Incarnation. 14 Ibid. 15 St  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 48 (3a. 1–6): The Incarnate Word, trans. R. J. Hennessey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3a., q. 2, a. 6. 16 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 50 (3a. 16–26): The One Mediator, trans. Colman E. O’Niell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3a., q. 19, a. 1, reply. 17 St. Augustine, The Fathers of the Church: Tractates on the Gospel of John 11–27, trans. John W. Rettig (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), tractate 23, (4). 18 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 48, 3a. q. 2, a. 4. 19 St  Gregory of Nazianzus, “Oration 29: On the Son,” in On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), chapter 19. 20 St Maximus the Confessor, “Ad Thalassium 60: On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ,” in St  Maximus the Confessor, on the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 123. 21 St. John of Damascus, “The Orthodox Faith,” in The Fathers of the Church: St. John of Damascus Writings, trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958), book 3, chapter 7. 22 St. Cyril of Alexandria, The Fathers of the Church: St. Cyril of Alexandria Letters 1–50, trans. John I. McEnerney (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1987), letter 45, (7). 23 Ibid. Notably, Maximus the Confessor was critical of the body–soul analogy as applied to the hypostatic union, as noted by Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine

20  Introduction Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 100. 24 Ian A. McFarland, The Word Made Flesh: A Theology of the Incarnation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2019), 1–15. 25 Ibid., 3. 26 Ibid., 78. 27 Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2018), 89. 28 Darren O. Sumner, Karl Barth and the Incarnation: Christology and the Humility of God (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 18. 29 Christopher A. Beeley, The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 276–84. 30 Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, 114. See also ibid., 118. 31 Ibid., 115. 32 Ibid., 117. 33 James M. Arcadi, “Recent Developments in Analytic Christology,” Philosophy Compass 13, no. 4 (2018): 1–12. 34 Brian Leftow, “A  Timeless God Incarnate,” in The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 273–99. 35 Oliver D. Crisp, “Compositional Christology Without Nestorianism,” in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 45–66. 36 Compositional Christology has been criticised by the following analyticians: Thomas Senor, “The Compositional Account of the Incarnation,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 24, no. 1 (2007): 52–71; Robin Le Poidevin, “Identity and the Composite Christ: An Incarnational Dilemma,” Religious Studies 45 (2009): 167–86; Thomas P. Flint, “Should Concretists Part with Mereological Models of the Incarnation?” in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 67–87. A  brief response to these figures on behalf of the compositional account may be found in Andrew Loke, “Solving a Paradox Against Concrete-Composite Christology: A  Modified Hylomorphic Proposal,” Religious Studies 47, no. 4 (2011): 493–502. 37 Kenotic Christology is typically considered to have enjoyed three historical phases of prominence: an initial ‘continental’ wave in the nineteenth century, a British revival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (which may be further divided into its Scottish and English expressions) and finally its more recent American analytic treatments. The best historical survey is David Brown, Divine Humanity: Kenosis Explored and Defended (London: SCM Press, 2011). See also Thomas R. Thompson, “Nineteenth-Century Kenotic Christology: The Waxing, Waning, and Weighing of a Quest for a Coherent Orthodoxy,” in Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God, ed. Charles Stephen Evans (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 2010), 74–111; David R. Law, “Kenotic Christology,” in The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Theology, ed. David Fergusson (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 251–79. 38 Inter alios: Charles Stephen Evans, “The Self-Emptying of Love: Some Thoughts on Kenotic Christology’, in The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 246–72; Ronald J. Feenstra, “A  Kenotic Christological Method for Understanding the Divine Attributes,” in Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God, ed. Charles Stephen Evans (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 2010), 139–64; Stephen T. Davis,

Introduction 21 “The Metaphysics of Kenosis,” in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 114–33. 39 Peter van Inwagen, “Not by Confusion of Substance, but by Unity of Person,” in Reason and the Christian Religion: Essays in Honour of Richard Swinburne, ed. Alan G. Padgett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 201–26. 40 Jc Beall, The Contradictory Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 41 William Bright, ed., The Orations of St Athanasius Against the Arians: According to the Benedictine Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), oration II, 8. The discussion takes place in the context of an analogy with Aaron’s donning high-priestly dress, while remaining essentially himself. 42 Richard Patrick Crosland Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 448. 43 The employment of the feminine respects the Hebrew ruach, just as the neuter respects the Greek pneuma. Perhaps less importantly, the masculine respects the Latin spiritus, as well as agreeing with the implied gender of the Father and the Son.

References Adams, Marilyn McCord. Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Aquinas, St Thomas. Summa Theologiae, Volume 48 (3a. 1–6): The Incarnate Word. Translated by R. J. Hennessey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006a. ———. Summa Theologiae, Volume 50 (3a. 16–26): The One Mediator. Translated by Colman E. O’Niell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006b. Arcadi, James M. “Recent Developments in Analytic Christology.” Philosophy Compass 13, no. 4 (2018): 1–12. Augustine, St. The Fathers of the Church: Eighty-Three Different Questions. Translated by David L. Mosher. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1982. ———. The Fathers of the Church: Tractates on the Gospel of John 11–27. Translated by John W. Rettig. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988. Bathrellos, Demetrios. The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of St Maximus the Confessor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Beall, Jc. The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Beeley, Christopher A. The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Bright, William, ed. The Orations of St Athanasius Against the Arians: According to the Benedictine Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Brown, David. Divine Humanity: Kenosis Explored and Defended. London: SCM Press, 2011. Coakley, Sarah. “What Does Chalcedon Solve and What Does It Not? Some Reflections on the Status and Meaning of the Chalcedonian ‘Definition’.” In The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, 143–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Crisp, Oliver D. “Compositional Christology Without Nestorianism.” In The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, 45–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

22  Introduction Cross, Richard. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———. “The Incarnation.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, edited by Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea, 452–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Cupitt, Don. “Jesus and the Meaning of ‘God’.” In Incarnation and Myth: The Debate Continued, edited by Michael Goulder, 31–40. London: SCM Press, 1979. Cyril of Alexandria, St. The Fathers of the Church: St. Cyril of Alexandria Letters 1–50. Translated by John I. McEnerney. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1987. Davis, Stephen T. Logic and the Nature of God. London: Macmillan, 1983. ———. “The Metaphysics of Kenosis.” In The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, 114–33. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Davis, Stephen T., Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, eds. The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Evans, Charles Stephen. “The Self-Emptying of Love: Some Thoughts on Kenotic Christology.” In The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, 246–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———, ed. Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God. Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 2010. Feenstra, Ronald J. “A Kenotic Christological Method for Understanding the Divine Attributes.” In Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God, edited by Charles Stephen Evans, 139–64. Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 2010. Fergusson, David, ed. The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Theology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Flint, Thomas P. “Should Concretists Part with Mereological Models of the Incarnation?” In The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, 67–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Flint, Thomas P., and Michael C. Rea, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Gorman, Michael. Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Goulder, Michael, ed. Incarnation and Myth: The Debate Continued. London: SCM Press, 1979. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius. Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002. Hanson, Richard Patrick Crosland. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988. Hick, John. “Jesus and the World Religions.” In The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick, 167–84. London: SCM Press, 1977a. ———, ed. The Myth of God Incarnate. London: SCM Press, 1977b. Hill, Jonathan. “Introduction.” In The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, 1–19. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Introduction 23 John of Damascus, St. The Fathers of the Church: St. John of Damascus Writings. Translated by Frederic H. Chase, Jr. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958. Law, David R. “Kenotic Christology.” In The Blackwell Companion to NineteenthCentury Theology, edited by David Fergusson, 251–79. Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2010. Le Poidevin, Robin. “Identity and the Composite Christ: An Incarnational Dilemma.” Religious Studies 45 (2009): 167–86. Leftow, Brian. “A Timeless God Incarnate.” In The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, 273–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Loke, Andrew. “Solving a Paradox Against Concrete-Composite Christology: A Modified Hylomorphic Proposal.” Religious Studies 47, no. 4 (2011): 493–502. Marmodoro, Anna, and Jonathan Hill, eds. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Martin, Michael. The Case Against Christianity. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991. ———. “The Incarnation Doctrine Is Incoherent and Unlikely.” In Debating Christian Theism, edited by James Porter Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis, 404–13. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Maximus the Confessor, St. On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ. Translated by Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003. McFarland, Ian A. The Word Made Flesh: A Theology of the Incarnation. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2019. Moreland, James Porter, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis, eds. Debating Christian Theism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Morris, Thomas V. The Logic of God Incarnate. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Nassif, Bradley, ed. New Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996. Norris, Richard A. “Chalcedon Revisited: A Historical and Theological Reflection.” In New Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff, edited by Bradley Nassif, 140–58. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996. Padgett, Alan G., ed. Reason and the Christian Religion: Essays in Honour of Richard Swinburne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Rahner, Karl. Theological Investigations. Translated by Cornelius Ernst. Vol. 1. Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1963. Senor, Thomas. “The Compositional Account of the Incarnation.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 24, no. 1 (2007): 52–71. Stump, Eleonore. Aquinas. London: Routledge, 2003. Sumner, Darren O. Karl Barth and the Incarnation: Christology and the Humility of God. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014. Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 1. London: Sheed & Ward, 1990. Thompson, Thomas R. “Nineteenth-Century Kenotic Christology: The Waxing, Waning, and Weighing of a Quest for a Coherent Orthodoxy.” In Exploring Kenotic

24  Introduction Christology: The Self-Emptying of God, edited by Charles Stephen Evans, 74–111. Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 2010. Van Inwagen, Peter. “Not by Confusion of Substance, but by Unity of Person.” In Reason and the Christian Religion: Essays in Honour of Richard Swinburne, edited by Alan G. Padgett, 201–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Williams, Rowan. Christ the Heart of Creation. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2018.

1 Matters of Method

In this chapter, I will set out the methodological commitments of this work. There are four elements to this prolegomenous undertaking. In the first place, I will say a word about what I intend by describing the present project as ‘analytic’. In point of fact, I use this term in rather a modest sense, denoting little more than an approach to doctrinal speculation which prioritises such academic virtues as clarity and consistency of expression, logical rigour, objective disinterest and a presumption (though, not an indefeasible one) of the amenability of phenomena to some kind of intellectual access. Second, I  will provide a brief – yet suitably technical – introduction to, and motivation for, the principles of scholastic metaphysics, including the concepts of act and potency, form and matter, and substance and accident. These categories serve as an indispensable basis for giving intelligibility to the doctrine of the Incarnation, as will be apparent in Chapters 2 and 3, in which I will attempt to do precisely this. Third, I will present the broad linguistic philosophy of this work by locating it within the traditional doctrine of the analogy of being, and its attendant conception of the analogical use of theological language. God and creatures are both similar and diverse, and the way in which creaturely language is used to express the nature of God and his works must give equal weight to this sameness and difference. Finally, I will temper the speculative ambitions of this work by invoking divine mystery. The relationship between the mystery of God and the intellectual curiosity of the theologian – particularly one of analytic sensibilities – is one that is as tense as it is nuanced. Nevertheless, I will attempt to locate my project within a traditional commitment to the ineliminable mystery of God, in such a way that neither defeats analytical speculation before it begins nor fails to accommodate a God who at all times transcends the strictures of creaturely schemata. Analytic Theology My approach is ‘analytic’ in the sense that it borrows the style of analytic philosophy, but this does not imply any specific philosophical commitments or adherence to a strict school of thought. Indeed, it is debatable whether DOI: 10.4324/9781003381358-2

26  Matters of Method analytic philosophy has any philosophical commitments to which it is necessarily wedded, though there are certain trends which have come to be seen as paradigmatic examples of the analytic approach (particularly by its critics), and it is important to emphasise that my approach is in no way associated with these trends. Prominent phases in the history of analytic philosophy have been the early Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reduction of all philosophical problems to merely linguistic problems, logical positivism’s rejection of all metaphysics (not to mention theology) and W. V. O. Quine’s efforts to ‘naturalise’ the philosophical enterprise and to present it as an abstract branch of the natural sciences, to name but a few. It is no secret that analytic philosophy matured considerably in the latter half of the twentieth century, and at present there appears to be virtually no limit to the range of topics which the analytic philosopher considers to be ‘fair game’, including God and religious belief (as evidenced by the work of Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne and others). How best to transpose the style of analytic philosophy to academic theology is by no means clear or uncontroversial. Michael Rea enumerates five distinctive ingredients of the ‘analytic’ approach: P1. Write as if philosophical positions and conclusions can be adequately formulated in sentences that can be formalized and logically manipulated. P2. Prioritize precision, clarity, and logical coherence. P3. Avoid substantive (non-decorative) use of metaphor and other tropes whose semantic content outstrips their propositional content. P4. Work as much as possible with well-understood primitive concepts, and concepts that can be analyzed in terms of those. P5. Treat conceptual analysis (insofar as it is possible) as a source of evidence.1 I do not wish to commit myself wholeheartedly to these principles, although each does enjoy some prima facie appeal. It should be noted that P1 does not compel the analytician to express every argument with the formality of the logician, inclusive of symbolic notation and the explicit application of rules of inference. The analytician need only resort to such methods where merely verbal presentation of the argument is judged to be insufficiently clear to impress the reader of its soundness or validity. What is demanded by the analytic style is not formality as such, but simply the amenability to formality, should the need arise. Analyticians are suspicious, to say the least, of forms of argument which are not amenable to formalisation or logical manipulation, due to their tendency to conceal implicit fallacy. Furthermore, P3 does not prohibit the use of metaphor or other devices of literary symbolism. Instead, such devices ought to supplement, rather than to replace, formal argument. Where non-literal rhetoric is employed, it should be made apparent precisely where the device is apposite and where it fails to be so, what purpose it is to serve in the expression of the argument. The only methodological prohibition placed upon the analytician in this regard is an employment of rhetoric that is vain or idle. Frequent use is made by

Matters of Method 27 analyticians of metaphor and the like, but only ever for illustrative or heuristic ends (ideally, at least). It seems to me that an analytic theologian should exercise some hesitation about accepting P4 and P5, in particular. Given the fact that the primary object of our inquiry, God or the divine nature, necessarily exceeds our cognitive mastery of it (on which more in due course), it is uncertain how privileged a place should be given to ‘primitive concepts’ or private intuition. Insofar as my method appropriates the analytic style, my methodological assumption is simply this: defining one’s terms and drawing valid inferences is a procedure that is at once truth-conducive and rhetorically persuasive. At the risk of flippancy, the analytic style is seen by its practitioners, not as a school of thought of which they are representative but simply as good academic practice. Thus P2, while perhaps the most trivial of Rea’s five principles, is also the most respectable, and will be brought to bear on this project with the greatest discipline. One of the things which make analytic theology ‘analytic’ is the way in which it approaches theological questions. It typically begins with a theological problem and seeks to address it programmatically and comprehensively. Oliver Crisp characterises this procedure as follows: On one way of characterizing the analytic philosophical project problems are broken down into their constituent parts, analysed, and then reformed in an argument that attempts to make sense of the original problem. Here the analytic philosopher is rather like a mechanic who decides to strip an engine down in order to understand why it is making a peculiar rattling sound. He analyses the parts of the engine, cleans them up, and then reassembles the machine having satisfied himself that he has addressed the problem so that the engine will work properly once reformed.2 Crisp goes on to say that the ‘analysis’ in which the analytic theologian engages is not merely a linguistic or conceptual analysis, but a positive and robust metaphysical analysis of how reality is constituted.3 This is a significant point, for it means that the anti-metaphysical prejudice of logical positivism is not integral to the analytic approach as such. On the contrary, metaphysics has been a preeminent preoccupation of analytic thinkers these many decades. This broadening of the horizons of what the analytic method can be is what makes it a suitable instrument for the present project. My aim, as already indicated, is to arrive at greater conceptual clarity on what it means to say that God became man and now exists as one person in two natures, and the route to arriving at such clarity is a discussion that is metaphysical at least as much as it is linguistic. Had analytic philosophy still been caught in its Wittgensteinian, positivistic or Quinean days, it could hardly serve as the handmaiden to theological speculation that it has, thankfully, become.

28  Matters of Method One final point concerning the analytic method is the following. There is no clear line demarcating where analytic philosophical theology begins and where analytic philosophy of religion ends. They cannot be distinguished by their ‘analyticity’, for this is one respect in which they are evidently similar. It is commonplace to distinguish the two thematically: philosophy of religion treats topics related to theism generically, such as the nature and existence of God, the problem of evil, miracles and revelation, whereas Christian philosophical theology is concerned with specific Christian doctrines, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation and atonement. An alternative view is presented by Max Baker-Hytch, who suggests that analytic theology is distinguished from analytic philosophy of religion by the privileged place it allows to scripture and to tradition.4 It seems to me that there is at least some truth in both of these accounts, and the former may well be explained by the latter. That is, the reason why analytic theologians tend to be more preoccupied than philosophers with specific Christian doctrines is due to their operating within a given theologian tradition and their being relatively conservative to that tradition. Oliver Crisp, James Arcadi and Jordan Wessling make a compelling historical case that what today is known as ‘analytic theology’ in fact stands well within a respectable (and uncontestably theological) tradition of ‘declarative theology’, which holds in high regard the clarification of terms, the importance of argument and the responsible employment of analogical reasoning.5 Most importantly, however, that there be a clear demarcation between analytic theology and analytic philosophy of religion is not, I  think, of momentous importance. Above all, analytic theology ought to be seen as a way of doing theology, of making use of the analytic method as a means of ‘faith seeking understanding’. Provided that analytic theologians be recognised as theologians, it is doubtful that there is more to be profitably said.6 Scholastic Metaphysics I have stated that my analytic style does not imply any further philosophical commitments. However, this is not to say that my project has no such commitments; on the contrary, I will conduct this project within the framework of scholastic metaphysics. I  consider medieval scholasticism to be the most productive period in the Christian tradition both in terms of Christological speculation and in terms of the conscious and programmatic integration of philosophical categories into such speculation. While this claim is vulnerable to opposing estimations, what is far more challenging to dispute is that, as a matter of intellectual history, medieval scholasticism is the period in which Greek – particularly Aristotelian – metaphysical categories were employed as a profitable tool for theological speculation and expression, if not for the first time, then certainly with the greatest discipline and enthusiasm.

Matters of Method 29 By ‘scholasticism’, I refer to the tradition which has Thomas Aquinas as its most outstanding representative, but which also includes the work of the other medieval schoolmen as well as a subsequent tradition of thinkers who operate within the same metaphysical categories. Though I do not consider this project to be expressly or narrowly ‘Thomistic’, it is virtually inevitable that any scholastic exercise will be compatible with the work of the Angelic Doctor to a large degree. Scholasticism is rooted firmly in the work of Aristotle, particularly his Categories, Physics and Metaphysics. It is no exaggeration to say that Aquinas’s intellectual imagination was captured by the translation of Aristotle’s works into the Latin of the School, and that Aristotle’s belated impact upon Aquinas’s writings was a watershed moment in the history of Christian thought.7 Scholasticism also sits well with the analytic approach, as is evidenced by the phenomenon of ‘analytical Thomism’, found in the work of John Haldane and others,8 as well as the Neo-Aristotelian revival that is taking place in contemporary analytic metaphysics.9 In this short introduction, I  wish to devote some attention to the basic concepts of scholastic metaphysics, though this treatment cannot be comprehensive and certain concepts will be treated more thoroughly at later points.10 In particular, I wish to emphasise the centrality of the concept of substance, which will prove to be of foundational significance throughout much of this work. Here I  offer a philosophical account of ‘substance’, understood according to the hylomorphic theory which has its origins in Aristotle and was developed considerably by Aquinas. The most fundamental distinction in scholastic metaphysics is that of act and potency (or actuality and potentiality). The primary motivation for this distinction is that it allows us to accommodate the reality of change. This is an ancient philosophical problem associated most famously with Parmenides of Elea and Heraclitus. Change seems to require a transition either from non-being to being or from being to non-being. After all, if everything that once was continues to be, and if nothing new ever comes to be, it is difficult to see how change of any sort is possible. But, paradoxically, change also seems to require persistence of some kind. If something has passed out of existence, it has not changed, but has simply ceased to be. Similarly, if something new comes into existence, it has not transitioned from one state to another, for it did not exist in any state at all prior to its coming to be. If change is to be distinguished from mere creation and annihilation, then there must be an enduring support for the change. It looks as though ‘change’ requires that something transition from non-being to being (or vice versa) and also that it already exists and continues to do so. This looks like an insuperable paradox, which led Parmenides and Heraclitus both to deny that change is possible, though for different reasons. Parmenides denied the reality of transition, whereas Heraclitus denied the reality of stability and permanence. However, change can be accounted for if we allow that there is a principle of potentiality in reality, which may be actualised in new ways from

30  Matters of Method one moment to another.11 Reality is not a simple column of being, nor is it indistinguishable flux. It is a dynamic complex of two principles, beingin-act and being-in-potency, which are really distinct from one another and yet are mutually limiting.12 For Aristotle, potency is a principle of reality which stands midway between actual being and straightforward non-being. If something is in potency towards some end, this tells us that it does not presently actually exist in this state. But it does not tell us only this; it tells us also that it can come to exist in this state. This is what distinguishes being-in-potency from simple non-being. Non-being can give rise to nothing at all (ex nihilo nihil fit), but potency can be actualised by a prior actuality and thence reduced to a new actuality. What accounts for the reality of change is the division of being into actual and potential being and their relationship to one another. David Oderberg characterises the relationship between act and potency as follows: On the one hand, actuality limits potentiality by carving it up into discrete and qualitatively distinct elements: undifferentiated reality is differentiated by actuality. On the other hand, potentiality limits actuality by restricting it within boundaries so that we can truly say that different actualities are present in different regions of reality: unlimited actuality is limited by potentiality. This is why not everything is green, or wise, or negatively charged; why not everything is a tree, or a philosopher, or an electron.13 In scholastic metaphysics, the units of existence into which material reality is fundamentally carved up are named ‘substances’. A substance is characterised by the fact that it substands (it bears properties), it subsists (it is not a property of anything else), it has a diachronic identity (it exists from one moment to the next, and is capable of sustaining change), it is causally dynamic (rather than causally inert) and it has a quiddity (a ‘whatness’, an essence or nature, which accounts for its causal powers and potencies, as well as its own standard of natural goodness). Socrates exemplifies properties such as wisdom or baldness, but nothing exemplifies Socrates himself. Socrates is therefore something substantial and subsistent. Socrates can lose one property and gain another – he can lose hairiness and acquire baldness – but he remains the very same individual throughout. Socrates is in possession of a range of active and passive potencies: there are things he can do, and ways he can be, as well as things he cannot do and ways he cannot be. Finally, Socrates is not merely a particular thing but also a certain kind of thing, namely a human being or rational animal. The powers and properties which Socrates possesses are owing to the kind of substance that he is. What is more, there are certain things which are good for Socrates and are conducive to his perfection and flourishing, which are categorically different from those things which serve the natural good of, say, a hemlock plant.14

Matters of Method 31 A more concrete expression of the scholastic division between act and potency is that of hylomorphism (literally, ‘matter-form-ism’). A  substance, in its primary designation, is a hylomorphic compound, that is, a compound of matter and form. It should be noted at the outset that this hylomorphic analysis applies paradigmatically to natural bodies, and only derivatively to artefacts, such as an axe, which admit of a somewhat different metaphysical analysis.15 In non-artefactual cases, however, a substance is distinguished by the fact that it is a compound of prime matter and substantial form. Both of these concepts are somewhat slippery for the uninitiated. The word ‘matter’ is reminiscent of physical particles, and the word ‘form’ bears connotations of structure or arrangement, or perhaps simply appearance. In neither case is this a proper understanding of these central Aristotelian categories. ‘Matter’ and ‘form’ may be used in more general and in more precise senses. In general terms, ‘matter’ is simply that which exists through change and has potencies actualised in the change. When Socrates changes from hairy to bald, Socrates’s body is the ‘matter’ of the change. It is the underlying substrate which serves as the very seat or subject of the change, and is capable of taking on new actualities at different times. Similarly, when Socrates is first conceived by the combination of pre-existing reproductive material, the gametes in question are the ‘matter’ out of which Socrates comes to be. The very fact that Socrates comes to be, not ex nihilo, but out of prior material, is what makes his coming to be procreation rather than strictly creation; in the world of finite and material substances, there is no true creation or annihilation in this sense.16 ‘Forms’, meanwhile, are the actualities which obtain at different times. Socrates changes from being actually hairy to actually bald,17 and the reproductive material from which Socrates is conceived changes from actually distinct to actually unified into a single substantial subject, characterised by new attributes and an intrinsic programme of biological development not altogether reducible to the potencies of the disparate gametes (which is why they do not give rise to a human being unless united). All change is from one form or actuality to another; hence, change involves both ‘corruption’ (the loss of a form) and a simultaneous ‘generation’ (the acquiring of a new form). That which loses and acquires form is matter, which is always in potency to the reception of a new form. While the matter of Socrates’s body is actually hairy, it is, simultaneously, in potency to baldness. However, there are in fact two distinct kinds of change: substantial change and accidental change. Some things, like Socrates, are said to be unqualifiedly, whereas other things, like wisdom or baldness, only are insofar as they modify a substantial subject. Thus, as Aristotle himself notes, ‘being’ may be said in many ways.18 Socrates may ‘be’ simpliciter, but he may also ‘be’ this or that, such as bald or wise. Both his unqualified being and his various modifications are actualities, and hence are analysed as ‘forms’, though of different kinds. A substantial change is one in which a substantial form is corrupted and generates another,

32  Matters of Method and an accidental change is one in which an accidental form is corrupted and generates another. Aquinas summarises as follows: Just as everything that is in potentiality can be called ‘matter,’ so everything from which something has being (whatever being it is, substantial or accidental) can be called ‘a form,’ as, for example, a human being who is white in potentiality becomes white in actuality through whiteness, and sperm, which is a human being in potentiality, becomes a human being in actuality through a soul. And because form produces being in actuality, a form is said to be what is actual (actus). And what produces substantial being in actuality is said to be a substantial form, and what produces accidental being in actuality is said to be an accidental form . . . . . . For when a substantial form is introduced, something is said to come to be unconditionally. But when an accidental form is introduced, something is not said to come to be unconditionally, but rather [it is said] to becomes this.19 According to the Thomistic doctrine of the unicity of substantial form, for every substance that exists there is exactly one form which accounts for the fact that it exists. Socrates is informed by the substantial form of humanity, and this might appear to determine him as many things in addition: physical, animal, mammal and so on. However, on at least the Thomistic view (Duns Scotus and Francisco Suárez disagreed), all of these are implicit within the form of ‘humanity’, and do not entail a plurality of substantial forms.20 The unicity of substantial form is required in order to account for the unity of the substance. If the fact of Socrates’s ‘being’ is itself an actuality, then there must be exactly one form which accounts for this actuality. Given that the substantial form alone is that which accounts for the fact that Socrates is (unqualifiedly), any additional form which is introduced into Socrates can only serve as a further modification of his substantial being and will therefore have the status of an ‘accident’, determining him to be this or that (as we shall see in Chapter 3 of this work, the distinction between substance and accident cannot easily be dispensed with). Accidental forms, on the other hand, can inform a substance plurally: Socrates can be wise and bald simultaneously. Furthermore, accidental forms can come and go, whereas the substantial form cannot be lost under pain of the destruction of the substance; indeed, the destruction of a substance just is the loss of its substantial form. Socrates cannot lose his form of humanity without ceasing to be. The matter of Socrates’s body, which endures the loss of Socrates’s human form, will then go on to be informed by some other substantial form, namely that of deceased flesh. Accidental forms, meanwhile, can be gained and lost by a substance. If Socrates were to lose his hairiness and acquire baldness, Socrates would be no less ‘Socrates’ for it.

Matters of Method 33 Corresponding with the distinction between substantial form and accidental form, we must distinguish between prime matter and secondary (proximate or designated) matter. Generally understood, ‘matter’ is that which persists through change and has potencies actualised in the change. In the case of accidental change, the matter of the change is the substance which undergoes modification. However, since accidental change is, by definition, a modification of a complete substance, the matter which undergoes this change is itself informed by a substantial form. ‘Prime’ matter, however, is that which underlies all other levels of matter. Unlike complete substances, it is intrinsically without form and yet is pure unlimited potential to the reception of any form. Again, Aquinas: But we should know that some matter has composition with a form. For example, although bronze is the matter with regard to a statue, the bronze itself is a composite of matter and form. And so bronze is not said to be prime matter, because it has matter. But matter that is understood without any form or privation whatsoever but that is the subject for a form or privation is called ‘prime matter,’ because there is no other matter before it.21 Prime matter has no determinate features of its own but is distinguished by its radical disposition to be determined in this way or that. It is totally neutral regarding how it is actualised; in this respect, it is entirely without limitation. But it is by no means neutral as to whether it is actualised. Because it is pure receptivity, purely passive potency, prime matter can never exist per se but always exists as informed, as determined in some way or other. This is simply to say that potentiality cannot exist except as it is combined with some actuality: We should also note that, although [prime] matter does not have in its nature any form or privation, just as in the formula (ratio) for bronze there is neither shaped nor unshaped, nevertheless matter is never without form and privation, for sometimes it is under one form and sometimes under another. But by itself (per se) it can never be, because it does not have being in actuality, since it does not have any form in its formula and there is no being in actuality without a form.22 The complementary doctrines of the unicity of substantial form and prime matter, which are distinctive of hylomorphism in its traditional Thomistic expression, are posited as preconditions of all substantial change. The actual existence of a substance is to be accounted for by reference to the one form in virtue of which it is (as opposed to the many forms in virtue of which it is this or that) and the matter out of which it is made, matter which is intrinsically without form but receptive to any form. If not a compound of

34  Matters of Method substantial form and prime matter, then a substance can only be composed of yet more substances, which must in turn be accounted for with reference to the principles out of which they are compounded. Prime matter is the enduring substrate of all substantial existence, which fundamentally undergirds all substantial change and thereby makes change possible. Something must exist through substantial change in order for it to be a change at all, and only matter in its primordial sense can fulfil this role. Secondary – informed – matter cannot undergird all substantial change, for matter in this derivative sense is, by definition, the matter of a substance and its continued existence cannot therefore be guaranteed, for it depends on the substantial form which informs it.23 We now have a clearer sense of how the principles of act and potency may be said to ‘limit’ one another. Matter, representing potency, is intrinsically without limit in the sense that it is primed and ready to be anything, merely awaiting actualisation. Intrinsically, matter is no more disposed to constituting a human being than it is to constituting a hemlock plant. However, once matter has been informed in one way or another, it adopts limitations in keeping with the nature of whatever substance it has been made to constitute. Matter that has been informed ‘human-wise’ will, for that time, be more naturally disposed to philosophising than to sprouting small white flowers. In this sense, the informing of matter introduces limitations into the matter which would not be present otherwise. Potency also limits act, though in a rather different sense. Potency represents the ways in which a substance can be, even if these potencies have not yet been made actual. A substance which lacks all potency would, for that very reason, be perfect, having realised all that it could ever be. Though this is not the place to explore the metaphysics of a purely actual being (a task deferred until Chapter  2), it may be inferred that such a being would be changeless, for change requires potency, and immense, lacking dimensionality and location. In short, materiality implies circumscription and imperfection, which a purely actual being would therefore lack. It is little wonder that both the ancients and medievals would identify such a being with God himself. Arguably, materiality and its absence are that which categorically distinguishes the created order from the uncreated divine nature.24 Indeed, matter and God might be seen as exact metaphysical opponents, the former being characterised by its purity of potential and the latter by its purity of actuality.25 To say that God and matter are in exact metaphysical opposition should not be taken to mean that they are, in any sense, ethically opposed, as though matter were intrinsically evil or corrupt. God and matter are, in one sense, in the same metaphysical boat, to the extent that everything other than God and matter is a composite of act and potency, whereas God and matter alone are not so composed but are characterised by a purity of one or the other. The two are opposed merely in the sense that matter is totally dependent upon and receptive to the forms which it is made to assume,

Matters of Method 35 whereas God is no way subject to the actualisation of unrealised potency and is eternally complete in himself. It is for this reason that God and prime matter were understood to occupy the extremes of the so-called great chain of being.26 Returning to the problem with which we began, we may now see the way in which Aristotelian hylomorphism, with its scholastic refinements, may present a unified and satisfying account of the possibility of change. Common sense indicates the existence of two distinct kinds of change: substantial change, whereby a complete being or substance comes into or passes out of existence, and accidental change, or a change by way of modification, whereby a property is lost or acquired. Beings come into and pass out of existence, and beings have an identity through time while being subject to various modifications. The former is accounted for by prime matter’s being informed by different substantial forms at different times, and the latter is accounted for by a substance’s being informed by different accidental forms at different times. In both cases, form actualises the potencies of matter, and matter exists through the change, whether this be matter in its primary sense or the informed matter of a complete substance. Prime matter and substantial form together determine the substance’s essence or real definition, that is, its objective principle of identity.27 This traditional notion of essence incorporates both ‘common essence’, or a substance’s generic or specific classification (such as being a rational animal), and what we might call its ‘individual essence’, or what is integral to the identity of that very individual. This is because the substantial form, which is responsible for determining a substance’s classification, is something universal, instantiable in many particulars, but it becomes something individual only when united with matter. A substance’s real definition therefore involves both its formal and material constituents. Aristotelians are realists about universals, but only in a moderate or immanentist sense; universals exist, but only in the particulars which exemplify them (this positions Aristotelianism against both the transcendent realism of Plato and the later nominalism of William of Ockham).28 In contemporary analytic philosophy, the distinction between the essential and the accidental is taken almost universally to be a distinction between two sorts of properties, and the distinction is one that is modal. An ‘essential’ property is one which a given thing has ‘in all possible worlds’, whereas an ‘accidental’ property is one which a thing has ‘in (only) some possible worlds’.29 On classical essentialism, however, an essence is not merely a modal concept but a robust, ontological concept. What is more, an essence is not merely a set of properties, though it is the ontological basis of a thing’s properties. A thing’s essence is its real definition, which involves modal notions but is not limited to them. For the contemporary (modal) essentialist, water’s being essentially H2O consists in nothing more than the fact that it is H2O in every possible world; modality precedes ontology and is determinative of it. For the classical (Aristotelian) essentialist, it is precisely the reverse:

36  Matters of Method it is because water is essentially H2O that it is H2O in every possible world; ontology precedes modality.30 ‘Accidents’ are classically distinguished from ‘essence’ in that they modify a complete substance but are not part of the substance’s essential constitution, which is simply to say that an accidental form is categorically other than a substantial form. Just as with essentiality, accidentality is therefore also a partly modal notion, but not completely so. Consider the following two properties of Socrates: ‘is wise’ and ‘is being thought about by me’. These are both ‘properties’ of Socrates in the contemporary sense that they are both true, and they both seem, in at least some remote sense, to be true of him. Yet, there is clearly an important difference here. Only Socrates’s wisdom is something that is true of him in himself, as an immanent or internal modification, but his being thought about by me is something that is external to him.31 The former is an accidental form which actualises a potency in Socrates, whereas the latter is merely a relation, and one which actualises no potency in Socrates himself (indeed, the relation in question is really an accident of mine, since I am the one whom it actually affects). ‘Accidents’ are not merely contingent properties but are kinds of forms, which actualise passive potencies in the substance. From a classical point of view, the deficiency in expressing essentialism solely in modal terms is that it fails to distinguish between real definition and merely nominal definition. Something can be modally necessary to fall under a stipulated definition, in the way that being either green or blue is modally necessary to satisfy the definition of the contrived disjunctive predicate ‘grue’ (something is ‘grue’ just in case it is either green or blue). But there is no essence of ‘grue’; at least, not in any metaphysically significant sense. What classical essentialism claims is that material reality is objectively organised, partitioned and parcelled up in certain ways. The world is populated with individuals – substances – each of which has its own identity. Each thing is just the very individual that it is, and not another. What is more, each thing is a thing of some kind or other (one and the same individual may even belong to many kinds at various levels of analysis, in the way that Socrates may be both ‘human’ and ‘mammal’). As such, essentialism is a theory of how material reality is objectively constituted, and is therefore not exhausted by merely modal reflections about ‘possible worlds’. Finally, it is important to say a word about Aristotle’s famous ‘four causes’. Every substance has four principles of explanation for its existence: a material cause, a formal cause, an efficient cause and a final cause.32 The first two are causes that are intrinsic to the substance: the substance’s substantial or essential existence is to be accounted for with reference to that of which it is made (fundamentally, prime matter) and an actualising and unifying principle (its substantial form). The third and fourth causes, meanwhile, are extrinsic to the substance. Every substance must be brought into being by some agency, for all potentialities require some prior actuality in order for them to be actualised. This is the ‘efficient cause’, which effectively makes

Matters of Method 37 the substance come to be. As already discussed, the phenomenon of change always involves both corruption and generation. Since a cause is a kind of change, and since change is always towards a form, we may speak of the form towards which the change tends as its ‘final cause’. As such, all four causes are entailed by the hylomorphic analysis of act, potency and change. The Analogy of Being Before moving on from the topic of scholastic metaphysics, it is important to say a word about the scholastic doctrine of the analogy of being. There are two dimensions to the doctrine of analogy: one metaphysical and one linguistic. The metaphysical dimension is the basis and justification of the linguistic; however, the linguistic dimension of the doctrine is the most convenient point of entry. The analogical use of language is typically presented as a via media between the univocal and the equivocal uses of language, and is seen by the Thomist (though, not by all scholastics) as the most appropriate means of employing creaturely language for theological ends.33 A ‘univocal’ use of language is one in which a term is applied identically to all subjects to which it is applicable. An ‘equivocal’ use of language is one in which there is no similitude whatsoever in the ways in which a term is applied to various subjects. An ‘analogical’ use of language is one in which there is a similitude in how a term is used of various subjects, though the similitude is not absolute. To this extent, analogy is best grasped negatively, by what it is not: it is not univocism, nor is it equivocism. The word ‘being’ is applied to all that is, and is thus applicable to subjects which admit of various ontological statuses. ‘Being’ is comprehensive, in terms of both intension and extension: it refers to and really includes all things. The ontological categories thus far examined – act, potency, form, matter, substance and accident – as well as those not treated here (such as ‘person’ and ‘relation’, to be considered at a later point), all are. Yet, the manner in which they ‘are’ varies incommensurably from one category to the next. As we saw with the fundamental division of being, that of act and potency, both categories are states of being; though, not the same state. This is also the case with the categories of substance and accident. Substances are, and yet the manner of their being is one that is relatively independent and self-contained. Accidents are, and yet their being is entirely inherent and dependent upon substances. Everything that has being ‘is’ (a proposition of unparalleled triviality), but the manner in which things ‘are’ differs irreducibly from one case to the next. Every concept, just to the extent that it is a concept, is unified (if a concept were not somewhat unified, it would not be a concept at all, but many). Hence, there is no such thing as an ‘equivocal concept’; to use language equivocally means precisely that a word is used in such a way as to indicate various distinct concepts, such as when ‘fence’ is used variously to mean a barrier around a garden or a buyer of stolen goods.34 One might argue that,

38  Matters of Method if a concept is unified, then its use must be univocal, for this one concept is being applied to many things which, for that reason, are being spoken of in the very same way. Either I  am using a word to designate one concept or many; if one, then I am speaking univocally, and if many, then I am speaking equivocally. Where, then, does analogy find a place in this analysis? The mistake is to think that unified concepts can only be employed univocally. In fact, unified concepts (which, as has been pointed out, are all concepts) admit of still further division: they may be perfectly or imperfectly unified. Consider a universal concept, such as that of ‘dog’. I form a concept of ‘dog’ by means of mental abstraction from the particular dogs which I encounter, such as Fido and Rex. This mental exercise of abstraction includes two elements: it involves abstracting towards a unified concept of ‘dog’, but it also involves abstracting away from all of the individual differences of Fido or Rex which do not strictly enter into the real definition of ‘dog’. Fido and Rex are each in possession of individual characteristics which are not integral to their caninity, such as Fido’s particular size or Rex’s particular colour. These differences are not involved in the universal concept of ‘dog’, and hence I mentally ‘trim’ these characteristics so that I may consider both individuals under a common aspect. What I am left with is a concept of ‘dog’ which is not only unified, but perfectly unified, and this is how I may mean precisely the same thing by the word ‘dog’ when I say ‘Fido is a dog’ and ‘Rex is a dog’. Crucially, what makes my use of the word ‘dog’ univocal is not merely the fact that I have a unified concept of it, but that this concept has been sanitised of all the individual differences of this or that dog which are incidental to its universal nature. Can the same process of mental abstraction be undertaken with regard to the universal concept of ‘being’? Not entirely. As before, I  might consider many individual beings: Fido, Rex, Socrates, a hemlock plant and so on. In order to form a unified concept of ‘being’, I must abstract towards it, by considering these various beings insofar as they are beings. Because I am considering them according to the most general of all concepts, that of being itself, I must mentally ‘trim’ those individual characteristics which are incidental to the fact that they are beings, such as the particular size of Fido or the particular wisdom of Socrates. But there is a problem: the size of Fido and the wisdom of Socrates also have being – they also are – after a fashion. As we have seen in our analysis of substances and accidents, Socrates and his wisdom are not said to ‘be’ in the very same way, but if my concept of ‘being’ is to be complete, then it must include everything: there is nothing which can be trimmed from it. While a concept of ‘being’ is something which I am capable of abstracting towards, there is nothing from which I may abstract away, for whatever I leave behind is also involved in ‘being’. While ‘dog’ and ‘being’ are both unified concepts, only ‘dog’ is a perfectly unified concept whereas ‘being’ is imperfectly unified, and this is owing to the

Matters of Method 39 fact that it is the most general and comprehensive of concepts from which nothing may be omitted. It excludes nothing, and therefore admits of no ‘definition’, in the strict sense. As with Quine’s memorable reply to the question, ‘What is there?’, the answer is, of course, ‘Everything’.35 ‘Being’ is analogical because it is intrinsically complex, and it is intrinsically complex because it is comprehensive. ‘Being’ fails to be equivocal because it is a unified concept, yet it also fails to be univocal because it is only imperfectly unified. As the Philosopher says, ‘being’ is said in many ways. The imperative to employ analogical language in speaking of God should be apparent. God ‘is’ and creatures ‘are’, and yet there is a vast ontological chasm which divides them. God ‘is’, but his being is a divine being; we ‘are’, but our being is a created and a necessarily dependent being. What is more, God ‘is’ all of those things that are properly ascribed to him (good, wise, powerful) in a divine mode, and we as creatures may ‘be’ these things too, though only in a creaturely sense and to a degree that is constrained by our creaturely finitude. The fundamental claim of the believer in the analogy of being as applied to God is that divine being and creaturely being are categorically rather than merely incrementally or metrically different, and yet the concept of ‘being’ is sufficiently capacious to span this difference. The Thomist doctrine of analogy is captured well by Willliam Norris Clarke: In a word, the analogous term (thought and word) gives linguistic expression to an objective metaphysical structure of participation: many real beings possessing in various limited ways a common attribute, received from a common source, which possesses the same attribute in unlimited fullness. Beings themselves are not analogous: they just are, objectively similar and diverse. But our human thought and language mirror in our human consciousness this objective participation situation by the tool of analogy, with its peculiar ability to hold together in a single flexible term – being, activity, knowledge, goodness, love, etc. – both the similarity and difference we have discovered in things themselves.36 It must be understood that analogical language is not necessarily metaphorical or non-literal (though it may be so). The basis of analogy, at least in the case of theology proper, is one of proper proportionality and participation: many things may be in possession of a common characteristic to different degrees, which gives rise to a real similarity, and each of these things shares a common source which serves as their supreme exemplar. This is how creatures possess ‘being’ as well as whatever else they are truly said to ‘be’: God is the primary analogate in the sense that he is the very source and exemplar of being and goodness, and creatures possess limited being and goodness, according to a mode of created finitude, by participating in the unlimited and paradigmatic being and goodness of God.37

40  Matters of Method A brief yet elegant objection to analogical language as applied to God is offered by Thomas Williams. When we say (truly) that ‘God is wise’ and ‘Socrates is wise’, the proponent of analogy is committed to saying that God’s wisdom and Socrates’s wisdom are not completely similar, even if there is some basis of similarity. To the extent that the two ‘wisdoms’ are similar, they must be related in some way (namely, they are related by their common participation in whatever respect they are similar). What the proponent of analogy must do, according to Williams, is to provide an explanation of what God’s wisdom is in itself, or, failing this, to provide an explanation of how God’s wisdom relates to Socrates’s wisdom. If neither of these is possible, then we really have no sense of what God’s wisdom is, in which case analogy slips into equivocation. If it is possible to do at least one of these two things, then we have fallen back onto univocity (a salutary result, for Williams).38 What is especially interesting about Williams’s critique is that, if it holds good, then analogy is literally impossible, at least in the long run: there is no way in which theological language (and, presumably, language in general) can fail to be either univocal or unintelligible in the way that is proper to equivocism. The very strength of this conclusion should give us pause, for, whatever the shortcomings of analogy, its distinctive employment is surely at least possible. Consider ‘being’: ‘being’ applies both to the principle of act and to that of potency, and this is a complete division of being. What this means is that there is no general ‘being’ that fails to be either actual or potential; all being is either ‘in act’ or ‘in potency’. That which makes being ‘analogical’ is that it incorporates both actual and potential being, yet without collapsing them, either one into another or both into a more basic category. Of the options with which Williams leaves us, providing an account of the relation between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of Socrates is the most attractive option for the proponent of analogy. Williams anticipates this: if the language we use to express this relation carries the same meaning as that which we employ in ordinary discourse, then analogy becomes univocism, and, if it does not, then analogy becomes equivocism.39 This inference is too quick, however, for, in speaking now of a relation, a new complexity is added to the dichotomy. A relation is such that it admits of two terms or extremes, and there is nothing to say that these terms are related to one another in the same way or according to a common order. As we shall see in Chapter 2, a relation need not be symmetrical or reciprocal, especially in how God is related to creatures: God is related to creatures according to his divine mode of being and creatures are related to God according to a created mode of being. The very complexity of the relation between God and creatures is such that it defies straightforward reduction to either univocism or equivocism; only an analogical account will suffice. The relation, in this case, is one of participation, whereby God’s wisdom serves as the cause and supreme exemplar of wisdom: God causes Socrates to be wise, and Socrates’s wisdom resembles God’s wisdom in certain respects, but not in others. There is no common order of ‘wisdom’ in which God and

Matters of Method 41 Socrates participate together. It is the objectively analogical way in which God and Socrates are related that justifies – indeed, requires – the analogical use of language. To Williams’s challenge, ‘Does the language which we use to express the relation mean the same as what it means ordinarily?’, the proponent of analogy may reasonably respond, ‘Yes, in one respect; no, in another. And it is this very fact which demands that our language be analogical’. Given that the relation in question is one between God and creatures, and therefore one which spans radically divergent ontological orders, it could hardly be otherwise. A further complexity to be considered is the recent introduction of ‘partial univocity’, coined by William Alston.40 Alston’s programme of classification is somewhat anachronistic, for he defines ‘partial univocity’ in such a way that is satisfied by the traditional theory of analogy, whereby there is partial, though incomprehensive, conceptual overlap in how a term applies to God and to creatures. Nonetheless, the concept of partial univocity occupies an important place in an argument presented by Jordan Wessling in favour of the ‘pure univocity’ theory. Wessling makes the case that partial univocity in theological predication implies at least the possibility of pure univocity. This, of course, proves problematic, for if the definition of ‘partial univocity’, novel though it may be, is such as to incorporate analogical predication in its traditional sense, then it would seem that analogy may also be thought to imply the possibility of pure univocity, thus making the analogy theory self-undermining. Wessling’s argument is as follows. For any predication which is made of God and Socrates,41 such as ‘wisdom’, there will doubtless be some basis of both similarity and dissimilarity. But it is conceivably possible for us to ‘strip away’ all aspects of dissimilarity in how both God and Socrates are wise, leaving us only with an inner kernel of similarity. Even if we must invent some new word for the purpose, there is surely at least some restricted respect in which God’s wisdom and Socrates’s wisdom are exactly similar, and thus there is some way of giving expression to this similarity without needing to resort to anything other than pure univocity.42 Wessling also presents biblical evidence of univocity in the mouth of Jesus himself: ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have also loved you. . . . My commandment is that you love one another, as I have loved you’ (John 15:9–12, NRSV). An analogical interpretation of these verses, says Wessling, cannot be sustained, for the emphasis is surely on the disciples loving one another in the very way that the Father loves the Son.43 The proponent of analogy is unlikely to be persuaded by the suggestion that all traces of dissimilarity may be stripped away from the predication of ‘wisdom’ to God and to Socrates. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) states: ‘For between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them’.44 It is precisely in the attempt to isolate where God and creatures are similar that the immensity of their difference is impressed upon us most strongly. Exegetically,

42  Matters of Method we might wonder how Wessling would accommodate the following words of Jesus, cited in Lateran IV in this very context: ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48, NRSV). While it must be granted that there is a slight linguistic difference between this Matthean verse and Wessling’s Johannine verse,45 nonetheless an argument exactly parallel to Wessling’s might be made here: the perfection for which disciples are to strive is, seemingly, the very same as that of God himself. Yet, clearly the perfection of divinity is not within the grasp of creatures. If one were to attempt to cognitively isolate those aspects of divine wisdom which are exactly similar to creaturely wisdom, while purposefully excluding those aspects which are dissimilar, it is unlikely that the ‘kernel’ which remains would be an accurate representation of truly divine wisdom. Wessling’s example of a point of simple commonality between divine and human wisdom is ‘knowledge of the most moral and propitious courses of action’; this, asserts Wessling, is said of God and Socrates univocally.46 Yet, even here, God’s ‘knowledge’ and Socrates’s ‘knowledge’ are qualitatively different. Divine knowledge is immediate and complete, whereas creaturely knowledge is discursive and incomprehensive. Thus, even Wessling’s sole example in fact serves as an effective illustration of the principle of Lateran IV, that dissimilarity will always be found in and amongst similarity. Whether other and more compelling examples of simple univocity may be offered remains to be seen. The origins of a ‘univocity theory’ are typically traced to Duns Scotus. There exists something of a narrative, particularly within the Radical Orthodoxy movement, that Scotus’s abandoning of an analogical ontology in favour of a univocal ontology was a moment in intellectual history which was nothing short of disastrous, and has resonated, negatively, throughout ‘modernity’ ever since.47 It is likely that such claims are somewhat exaggerated, however. Scotus presents his ‘univocity theory’ first and foremost as a merely semantic theory, concerned far more with our concepts and the words used to designate them than with there being a ‘common order’ of being in which God and creatures participate together. Scotus’s principal concern is with preserving the scientific character of theology, which demands the validity of syllogistic reasoning and hence the avoidance of equivocation. For instance, in order for ‘God is a finite being’ and ‘God is an infinite being’ to be logical contraries, ‘being’ must be employed univocally in the two cases.48 It seems to me that univocity is not required in order for the above two propositions to be logical contraries, if by ‘univocity’ we intend ‘exhaustive conceptual and semantic overlap’. What is required is merely that there be sufficient similarity between ‘infinite being’ and ‘finite being’, and that our concept of ‘being’ be sufficiently capacious, that they both fall under a common description. To this extent, the conceptual overlap between the two cases of ‘being’ need only be partial. Yet, for univocity to be preferable to analogy, even as only a semantic theory, more than this is required. We must distinguish between two subtly, though importantly, different claims:

Matters of Method 43 it is one thing to suggest that God and creatures may fall under a common description, but it is quite another to suggest that they fall under a common description in the very same way. While contemporary defences of univocity are eager to present it as nothing more than a semantic theory, in no way connected with an idolatrous metaphysics, nonetheless it must be allowed that the analogy theory is motivated by certain metaphysical commitments, namely the analogy of being. Between God’s wisdom and the wisdom of Socrates, there is objectively both similarity and dissimilarity. It is therefore not enough to defend the univocity theory over and against the analogy theory merely by observing that there are certain concepts whose definitions are sufficiently permissive that they apply both to God and to creatures, for the analogy theory does not deny this. What the analogy theory is denying is that God and creatures may fall under a common description in the same way. God and Socrates may both be this or be that, though in a sense that is at all times conditioned by their ontological divergence. The Incarnational Mystery At this point, having surveyed the various principles upon which this project rests, there might appear to be an outstanding tension. On the one hand, the analytic approach suggests a method whereby theological problems are ideally reduced to nothing. Recalling Oliver Crisp’s ‘mechanic’ analogy, once the parts of the problem have been isolated, cleaned up and reassembled, it is definitively ‘solved’. The suggestion seems to be that, whatever the nature of the original problem, it must be such that it is effectively ‘bounded’ by whatever metaphysical categories the analytician brings to bear in its examination. The analytic procedure might be characterised as setting an ‘upper bound’ upon the kind of problem which is amenable to the analytician’s scrutiny. Specifically, any problem which is not bounded by the metaphysical categories with which the analytician has already come equipped would seem to be necessarily out of reach. To this extent, the analytician might be tempted to assume, if only operatively, that any given theological problem is awaiting a solution by means of the selfsame metaphysics which is employed in mundane and creaturely cases. In short, God must be small enough to fit into the metaphysical schema we have prepared for him. In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that such a presumption is integral to the analytic method as such (nor indeed that this is Crisp’s own stated position), but merely that this is an excess into which the analytician may be in danger of slipping, as well as being a forgivable estimation of analytic theology by those who are sceptical of it. On the other hand, a commitment to the analogy of being pulls in the opposite direction. Because God and creatures do not converge upon a common ontological order, there is no reason to think – indeed, we have a principled reason to deny – that God is subject to the selfsame metaphysical analysis as that to which

44  Matters of Method creatures are subject. For this reason, any procedure which employs creaturely categories so as to set an upper bound on what kind of phenomena are amenable to analytic examination is doomed to fail from the start: God is not bounded by such categories. This threatens to render any and all attempts at analytical reduction totally without power. Our metaphysical schema must be capacious enough to accommodate a God who necessarily exceeds its strictures. An exercise in analytic theology might strive to ‘prove’ that the doctrine of the Incarnation is coherent and free from formal contradiction. How might it do so? One way in which it might do so is by taking a mundane, creaturely phenomenon – one which, we may all agree, is logically and metaphysically unproblematic – and argue that the Incarnation is but one further instance of this phenomenon. On such a procedure, the Incarnation would effectively ‘borrow’ its coherence from this more general phenomenon of which it is fortunate enough to be an instance. However, this procedure is not to be accepted, for it simply represents a failure to reckon seriously with the analogy of being, with the fact that God is no mere instance of ‘being’, and that his is an ontological order which defies reduction. Analytic theology often deals in ‘models’.49 It is something of an open question as to whether ‘modelling’ the Incarnation is an appropriate procedure, in light of the analogy of being. Typically, models are expressly and shamelessly analogical, suggesting a fundamental compatibility between analytic modelling and analogical predication. Models are, by definition, incomprehensive and aim only at approximating the object after whose style they are modelled. For this reason, theological modelling might appear to be a procedure that is especially sympathetic to the analogy of being, for no pretence is made by the analytical ‘model builder’ to collapse God and creatures into univocal categories.50 However, the imperfection implicit within theological models is by no means unique to them, and is in fact characteristic of all models, including those of the natural and social sciences. So, paradoxically, theological modelling may not succeed in preserving the privileged place for the ‘otherness’ of the divine nature which it may appear to at first sight. That the divinity belongs to an ontological order of its own entails that the theological enterprise is inescapably mysterious. The theologian simply should not expect to find that the Incarnation is subject to comprehensive analysis in terms of the metaphysical categories which are brought to bear in the analysis of finite and material beings. It is therefore imperative that our speculation into the Incarnation preserve a privileged place for mystery, for, if we fail to do so, it is inevitable that the doctrine be obscured. However, there are also ways in which the concept of ‘mystery’ may be abused; for instance, by employing it as a principled excusal for upholding crass contradiction, or as a last-ditch invocation where we have said all that we think we can say, and must pass over whatever remains in silence. ‘Mystery’ is not the final step in doctrinal speculation when our analysis has been pushed as far as it can go. It is its very principle, one which recognises that the object of our inquiry necessarily exceeds whatever cognitive purchase we might secure over it.

Matters of Method 45 There are, therefore, two excesses into which a defence of the Incarnation’s coherence must avoid slipping. One is the way of univocal reduction, whereby the Incarnation is presented as but one further instance of a mundane phenomenon. The other is the way of equivocal surrender, whereby ‘mystery’ serves no role other than to uphold the truth of the Incarnation despite appearances of incoherence, to present the alleged contradictoriness of the doctrine merely as an arbitrary exception or anomaly to the principles of logic which we are only too happy to apply in all other cases, including in other areas of theological speculation. The principle of divine mystery may appear to be purely destructive or negative. If the Incarnation is essentially and irreducibly incomprehensible, does this mean that any attempt to give intelligibility to the doctrine, as the present work is engaged in doing, is bound to fail? Indeed, ought such a project to be positively discouraged, on dogmatic grounds? This would certainly not be the perspective taken by the theological tradition in the history of doctrinal development. To say that the divinity – and, by extension, any relation in which it is involved – is irreducibly mysterious is not a purely destructive epistemic constraint, nor is it to ‘wave the white flag’ against critics of the doctrine who doubt its coherence or intelligibility. Rather, it is to say that, while true predications may be made of God and his external works, these predications never fully ‘capture’ or ‘bound’ the divine essence, such that it may be cognitively reduced to some more basic or primitive form of understanding. Contemplation of the divine mystery may indeed advance our knowledge of it, but such knowledge serves only to increase our appreciation of the mystery’s profundity and ultimate incomprehensibility. That is, the better we come to know the object, the greater our appreciation of how enormously it exceeds our cognitive mastery of it. By way of analogy, consider the human body. The human anatomy admits of a sophistication, both in terms of compositional complexity and in terms of the harmony which its components jointly produce, which could not be imagined in a technologically more primitive age. Yet, each level of particularity into which we probe undoubtedly raises more questions than it answers. The discovery of DNA, far from reducing the mystery of the human being, bequeathed to us an enterprise more daunting still than examining human bodies at the level of mere appendages and organs. The discovery of DNA does not ‘close the book’ on our journey of discovery but makes us aware of how much larger the book is than originally thought (to crudely extend the metaphor). Real advances in knowledge are made, and questions really answered, while at the same time expanding our appreciation of the domain of what is unknown to us. Each new discovery bewilders us anew at the profundity of the selfsame object. The analogy with the divinity is imperfect. The mystery of human complexity may indeed be finite. There may be a level of such irreducible fundamentality that the human body is, in the end, totally comprehensible. There is no sure promise of ever-expanding circles of complexity, periodically

46  Matters of Method upsetting our sense of how unfathomable human nature is. God, however, defies such cognitive reduction, even in principle. The mystery of God is not merely provisional, but essential and thus perennial. The impossibility of reducing the divine mystery is not owing to the divine essence’s being like a shadow or an optical illusion, insubstantial and flitting away whenever any attempt is made to lay seizure of it. Nor is it like the complexity of the human body, only more so. The mystery of the human body is the product of compositional complexity, which, at a suitably basic register of analysis, may indeed admit of a ‘bottom’. For God, it is not a matter of never-ending ‘layers’ of complexity, each one more bewildering and unsettling than the last. The irreducibility of the divine mystery is one of immeasurable simplicity. The divine essence is of such unbounded immensity that no attempt to ‘probe’ it can ever exhaust it. We must never arrive at a point at which we consider the Incarnational mystery to have been effectively ‘solved’, as though there is nothing more to be said. However, this does not mean that contradiction must be accepted uncritically, without further exploration. Mysteries are not intellectually inaccessible to us; indeed, the intellectual posture of the theologian is precisely that of ‘faith seeking understanding’, the intellectually responsible probing of the divine mystery, both in se and in its external relations. The Word’s existing both as God and as man, with all the accompanying attributes, is not a conjunction of incompatible facts, held together on the strength of nothing more than dogmatic pressure. The Incarnation is an event on which conceptual purchase is assuredly possible, but this conceptual purchase is not such as to compete with its incomprehensibility. ‘Comprehension’, unlike knowledge, is perfect and completed, the product of total cognitive reduction. It is thus the possibility of comprehension which must be denied, not the possibility of greater understanding through analytical reasoning and responsible speculation. As such, there is no principled reason why we should not engage in the very kind of philosophical–theological exercise as the present project is engaged in, provided that we not reduce the Incarnational mystery to the confines of creaturely categories, as though the hypostatic union is but one instance of a creaturely phenomenon with which we are more readily acquainted. Indeed, if we believe ourselves to have successfully done this, such a conception of the hypostatic union is very probably mistaken in a fundamental way. If we do not see the Incarnation as a theological mystery essentially, then we do not see it rightly. Rather, the incomprehensibility of the Incarnation’s How? must be made to coincide with God’s own activity in bringing about the union. It is with this principle in mind that I undertake this study. Notes 1 Michael C. Rea, “Introduction,” in Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 5–6.

Matters of Method 47 2 Oliver D. Crisp, “On Analytic Theology,” in Analytic Theology, ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 36. 3 Ibid. See also Richard Swinburne, “The Value and Christian Roots of Analytical Philosophy of Religion,” in Faith and Philosophical Analysis: The Impact of Analytical Philosophy on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Harriet A. Harris and Christopher J. Insole (London: Routledge, 2005), 35. 4 Max Baker-Hytch, “Analytic Theology and Analytic Philosophy of Religion: What’s the Difference?” Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016): 347–61. 5 Oliver D. Crisp, James M. Arcadi, and Jordan Wessling, The Nature and Promise of Analytic Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 20–33. 6 For recent extended treatments of analytic theology, besides those already referenced, see Thomas H. McCall, An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology (Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015); William Wood, Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 7 See Raymond Hain, “Aquinas and Aristotelian Hylomorphism,” in Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 48–69. 8 John Haldane, “Analytical Thomsim: A  Prefatory Note,” The Monist 80, no. 4 (1997): 485–86; John Haldane, ed., Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2002); John Haldane, Faithful Reason: Essays Catholic and Philosophical (London: Routledge, 2004); Craig Paterson and Matthew S. Pugh, eds., Analytical Thomism: Traditions in Dialogue (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); John P. O’Callaghan, “Thomism and Analytic Philosophy,” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 71, no. 2 (2007): 269–317; Rafael Huntelmann and Johannes Hattler, eds., New Scholasticism Meets Analytic Philosophy (Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014); Mirosław Szatkowski, ed., Analytically Oriented Thomism (Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2016). 9 Tuomas E. Tahko, Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Lukáš Novák, Daniel D. Novotný, Prokop Sousedík, and David Svoboda, eds., Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012); Lukáš Novák and Daniel D. Novotný, eds., Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014). 10 There are very many introductory textbooks for scholastic metaphysics. Those who are interested in consulting some of the classic textbooks (in English) might choose from the following: Peter Coffey, Ontology or the Theory of Being (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1918); Henri Renard, The Philosophy of Being (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Company, 1946); Reginald GarrigouLagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1950); Louis De Raeymaeker, The Philosophy of Being: A Synthesis of Metaphysics, trans. Edmund H. Ziegelmeyer (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1954); Henry J. Koren, An Introduction to the Science of Metaphysics (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1955); George P. Klubertanz, Introduction to the Philosophy of Being (New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc., 1955); Charles A. Hart, Thomistic Metaphysics: An Inquiry into the Act of Existing (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959). For more modern textbooks that are written in a traditional scholastic style, see Leo J. Elders, The Metaphysics of Being of St. Thomas Aquinas in a Historical Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 1993); John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000); Willliam Norris Clarke, The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).

48  Matters of Method 11 Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics: A  Contemporary Introduction (Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014), 34–39. 12 Ibid., 39–42. 13 David S. Oderberg, Real Essentialism (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), 65. 14 For more detailed treatments of the concept of ‘substance’ in Aristotle, with a variety of emphases, consult the following: Mary Louise Gill, Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); Charlotte Witt, Substance and Essence in Aristotle: An Interpretation of Metaphysics VII–IX (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); Frank A. Lewis, Substance and Predication in Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Frank A. Lewis, How Aristotle Gets by in Metaphysics Zeta (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Lynne Spellman, Substance and Separation in Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Michael V. Wedin, Aristotle’s Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Theodore Scaltsas, Substances and Universals in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). For further philosophical treatments of substance, though not all scholastic in emphasis, see Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz, Substance Among Other Categories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz, Substance: Its Nature and Existence (London: Routledge, 1997); Kathrin Koslicki, Form, Matter, Substance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Ross D. Inman, Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar: A Neo-Aristotelian Mereology (New York, NY: Routledge, 2018). 15 For hylomorphic analyses of artefacts, see Oderberg, Real Essentialism, 166–70; Jeffrey E. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism,  & Material Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 210–17; Simon J. Evnine, Making Objects & Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts, Actions, & Organisms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 16 Oderberg, Real Essentialism, 73–74. 17 Strictly speaking, ‘baldness’ is a privation or absence, rather than a form or actuality, but it will serve as an adequate illustration regardless. 18 Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2016), book Gamma (IV), 2. 19 Thomas Aquinas, “On the Principles of Nature, trans. Eleonore Stump and Stephen Chanderbhan,” in Basic Works, ed. Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014), chapter 1. 20 Oderberg, Real Essentialism, 68–71; Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics, 194–96. 21 Aquinas, “On the Principles of Nature,” chapter 2. 22 Ibid. 23 Oderberg, Real Essentialism, 71–76. 24 A Thomist might dispute this claim, on the grounds that angelic beings are created rather than divine and yet are immaterial. I will not pursue this line here, except to signal my tentative dissatisfaction with Aquinas’s angelology as it is conventionally understood. My suspicion is that Aquinas assigns to angels an ontological status which comes too near to that of the divine nature. 25 That God is not immaterial is boldly argued in Stephen H. Webb, Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 26 For a recent defence (as well as helpful diagrammatic illustrations) of the great chain of being, see David S. Oderberg, “Restoring the Hierarchy of Being,” in Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Theology of Nature, ed. William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons, and James Orr (New York, NY: Routledge, 2022), 94–119.

Matters of Method 49 27 Aquinas, “On Being and Essence, trans. Peter King,” in Basic Works, ed. Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014), chapter 2. 28 Oderberg, Real Essentialism, 81–85; Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics, 247–54. 29 Gyula Klima suggests that contemporary (as opposed to Aristotelian) essentialism is nothing more than a belief in ‘rigid designators’: “Contemporary ‘Essentialism’ vs. Aristotelian Essentialism,” in Mind, Metaphysics and Value, ed. John Haldane (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2002), 175–94. A ‘rigid designator’ is a name which designates or refers to the same object in every possible world in which it exists. See Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). 30 That essence is not a modal concept has been argued most influentially by Kit Fine, particularly in his “Essence and Modality: The Second Philosophical Perspectives Lecture,” Philosophical Perspectives, (Logic and Language) 8 (1994): 1–16. See also Oderberg, Real Essentialism, 1–12. 31 This kind of relation is called a ‘mixed relation’, about which I will have much to say in chapter 2. 32 Arisotle, Physics, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018), book II, 3. 33 For studies in Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy, see Gerald B. Phelan, St. Thomas and Analogy (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1941); George P. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A  Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1960); Ralph McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996); Bernard Montagnes, The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being According to Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M. Macierowski, translation reviewed and corrected by Pol Vandevelde, edited with revisions by Andrew Tallon (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2004); Steven A. Long, Analogia Entis: On the Analogy of Being, Metaphysics, and the Act of Faith (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011). 34 Note that, as in this case, the fact that a word is used equivocally does not mean that the word is homonymous, for homonymy additionally requires that the different senses of a word have independent etymologies. This more stringent condition is not required for there for be equivocation. 35 Willard V. Quine, “On What There Is,” The Review of Metaphysics 2, no. 5 (1948): 21. 36 Clarke, The One and the Many, 56. 37 This raises the question, ‘What of those things that we are that are bad or evil? Is God the source and supreme exemplar of these characteristics?’ The scholastic answer is ‘No’, chiefly because evil is understood as a privation of being, not a species of being itself. For a recent defence of evil as privation, see David S. Oderberg, The Metaphysics of Good and Evil (London: Routledge, 2020). 38 Thomas Williams, “The Doctrine of Univocity Is True and Salutary,” Modern Theology 21, no. 4 (2005): 579. 39 Ibid. 40 William P. Alston, “Religious Language,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, ed. William J. Wainwright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 220–44. 41 In fact, Wessling uses the example of Solomon, not Socrates, though this has no bearing on the argument as presented. 42 Jordan Wessling, “Colin Gunton, Divine Love, and Univocal Predication,” Journal of Reformed Theology 7 (2013): 94–95. A very similar argument is ascribed

50  Matters of Method by Richard Cross to Duns Scotus, Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 33. 43 Wessling, “Colin Gunton, Divine Love, and Univocal Predication,” 101–7. 44 Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 232. 45 In the Johannine case, ‘as’ renders καθὼς, whereas in the Matthean case ‘as’ renders ὡς. 46 Wessling, “Colin Gunton, Divine Love, and Univocal Predication,” 95. 47 See particularly the work of John Milbank, especially Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). 48 Richard Cross, “Idolatry and Religious Language,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 25, no. 2 (2008): 195. See also Marilyn McCord Adams, “What’s Wrong with the Ontotheological Error?” Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2014): 1–12. 49 See Oliver D. Crisp, “The Importance of Model Building in Theology,” in The T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology, ed. James M. Arcadi and James T. Turner, Jr. (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021), 9–19. 50 William Wood, “Modeling Mystery,” Scientia et Fides 4, no. 1 (2016): 39–59.

References Adams, Marilyn McCord. “What’s Wrong with the Ontotheological Error?” Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2014): 1–12. Alston, William P. “Religious Language.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, edited by William J. Wainwright, 220–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Arcadi, James M., and James T. Turner, Jr., eds. The T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021. Aquinas, Thomas. “On Being and Essence (Translated by Peter King).” In Basic Works, edited by Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014a. ———. “On the Principles of Nature (Translated by Eleonore Stump and Stephen Chanderbhan).” In Basic Works, edited by Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014b. Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2016. ———. Physics. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018. Baker-Hytch, Max. “Analytic Theology and Analytic Philosophy of Religion: What’s the Difference?” Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016): 347–61. Brower, Jeffrey E. Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, & Material Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Clarke, William Norris. The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. Coffey, Peter. Ontology or the Theory of Being. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1918. Crisp, Oliver D. “On Analytic Theology.” In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, 33–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Matters of Method 51 ———. “The Importance of Model Building in Theology.” In The T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology, edited by James M. Arcadi and James T. Turner, Jr., 9–19. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021. Crisp, Oliver D., James M. Arcadi, and Jordan Wessling. The Nature and Promise of Analytic Theology. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Crisp, Oliver D., and Michael C. Rea, eds. Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Cross, Richard. Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. ———. “Idolatry and Religious Language.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 25, no. 2 (2008): 190–96. De Raeymaeker, Louis. The Philosophy of Being: A Synthesis of Metaphysics. Translated by Edmund H. Ziegelmeyer. St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1954. Elders, Leo J. The Metaphysics of Being of St. Thomas Aquinas in a Historical Perspective. Leiden: Brill, 1993. Emery, Gilles, and Matthew Levering, eds. Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Evnine, Simon J. Making Objects & Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts, Actions, & Organisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Feser, Edward. Scholastic Metaphysics: A  Contemporary Introduction. Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014. Fine, Kit. “Essence and Modality: The Second Philosophical Perspectives Lecture.” Philosophical Perspectives, (Logic and Language) 8 (1994): 1–16. Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald. Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought. St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1950. Gill, Mary Louise. Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Hain, Raymond. “Aquinas and Aristotelian Hylomorphism.” In Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, edited by Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering, 48–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Haldane, John. “Analytical Thomsim: A  Prefatory Note.” The Monist 80, no. 4 (1997): 485–86. ———, ed. Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2002. ———. Faithful Reason: Essays Catholic and Philosophical. London: Routledge, 2004. Harris, Harriet A., and Christopher J. Insole, eds. Faith and Philosophical Analysis: The Impact of Analytical Philosophy on the Philosophy of Religion. London: Routledge, 2005. Hart, Charles A. Thomistic Metaphysics: An Inquiry into the Act of Existing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959. Hause, Jeffrey, and Robert Pasnau, eds. Basic Works. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014. Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary S. Rosenkrantz. Substance Among Other Categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. Substance: Its Nature and Existence. London: Routledge, 1997. Huntelmann, Rafael, and Johannes Hattler, eds. New Scholasticism Meets Analytic Philosophy. Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014.

52  Matters of Method Inman, Ross D. Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar: A Neo-Aristotelian Mereology. New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. Klima, Gyula. “Contemporary ‘Essentialism’ vs. Aristotelian Essentialism.” In Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions, edited by John Haldane, 175–94. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2002. Klubertanz, George P. Introduction to the Philosophy of Being. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc., 1955. ———. St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis. Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1960. Koren, Henry J. An Introduction to the Science of Metaphysics. St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1955. Koslicki, Kathrin. Form, Matter, Substance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Kripke, Saul. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980. Lewis, Frank A. Substance and Predication in Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ———. How Aristotle Gets by in Metaphysics Zeta. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Long, Steven A. Analogia Entis: On the Analogy of Being, Metaphysics, and the Act of Faith. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011. McCall, Thomas H. An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology. Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015. McInerny, Ralph. Aquinas and Analogy. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996. Milbank, John. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Montagnes, Bernard. The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being According to Thomas Aquinas. Translated by E. M. Macierowski. Translation reviewed and corrected by Pol Vandevelde. Edited with revisions by Andrew Tallon. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2004. Novák, Lukáš, and Daniel D. Novotný, eds. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics. New York, NY: Routledge, 2014. Novák, Lukáš, Daniel D. Novotný, Prokop Sousedík, and David Svoboda, eds. Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. O’Callaghan, John P. “Thomism and Analytic Philosophy.” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 71, no. 2 (2007): 269–317. Oderberg, David S. Real Essentialism. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007. ———. The Metaphysics of Good and Evil. London: Routledge, 2020. ———. “Restoring the Hierarchy of Being.” In Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Theology of Nature, edited by William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons, and James Orr, 94–119. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. Paterson, Craig, and Matthew S. Pugh, eds. Analytical Thomism: Traditions in Dialogue. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Phelan, Gerald B. St. Thomas and Analogy. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1941. Quine, Willard V. “On What There Is.” The Review of Metaphysics 2, no. 5 (1948): 21–38.

Matters of Method 53 Rea, Michael C. “Introduction.” In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, 1–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Renard, Henri. The Philosophy of Being. Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Company, 1946. Scaltsas, Theodore. Substances and Universals in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010. Simpson, William M. R., Robert C. Koons, and James Orr, eds. Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Theology of Nature. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. Spellman, Lynne. Substance and Separation in Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Swinburne, Richard. “The Value and Christian Roots of Analytical Philosophy of Religion.” In Faith and Philosophical Analysis: The Impact of Analytical Philosophy on the Philosophy of Religion, edited by Harriet A. Harris and Christopher J. Insole, 33–45. London: Routledge, 2005. Szatkowski, Mirosław, ed. Analytically Oriented Thomism. Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2016. Tahko, Tuomas E. Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 1. London: Sheed & Ward, 1990. Wainwright, William J., ed. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Webb, Stephen H. Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Wedin, Michael V. Aristotle’s Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Wessling, Jordan. “Colin Gunton, Divine Love, and Univocal Predication.” Journal of Reformed Theology 7 (2013): 91–107. Williams, Thomas. “The Doctrine of Univocity Is True and Salutary.” Modern Theology 21, no. 4 (2005): 575–85. Wippel, John F. The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000. Witt, Charlotte. Substance and Essence in Aristotle: An Interpretation of Metaphysics VII – IX. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. Wood, William. “Modeling Mystery.” Scientia et Fides 4, no. 1 (2016): 39–59. ———. Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

2 Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word

This chapter marks the first of two chapters which have the joint purpose of laying a metaphysical foundation for the confession that the second person of the Trinity assumed a human nature. Here, I will consider a number of metaphysical questions concerned with (if I may so put it) the divine side of the ‘one person, two natures’ formula. This discussion will consider a number of related topics: the divine nature as such, general principles governing the relationship between God and creatures, the ontological status of divine persons and, finally, how a given relation between God and the created order may be predicated uniquely of a single divine person, especially in light of the persons’ substantial and operative unity. In the following chapter, I will consider the metaphysics of the assumed human nature and its place within the hypostatic union. This chapter will proceed in four sections. First, I  will consider the divine nature or essence under the category of ‘substance’, and determine what sense, if any, is to be assigned to the claim that God is one divine substance. The urgency of this question arises from the Chalcedonian claim that Christ is ‘consubstantial’ (homoousion) with the Father as regards his divinity. Vital for understanding this claim, however imperfectly, is determining the sense in which the Son may be said to be – or, be of – a divine ‘substance’. Second, I will consider the nature of divine relations ad extra, elucidating the Thomistic theologoumenon of the ‘mixed relation’. The motivation for this exploration is that the hypostatic union is a union of divine and human natures, whose relationship can be nothing less than (though it must, of course, be rather more than) the relationship of creator to creature in general. A correct understanding of the Incarnation therefore depends upon our arriving at some clarity on this, more general, issue. Third, I will consider what is meant by the term ‘person’ in the context of theology proper. In entering into such a discussion, one cannot avoid the Trinitarian conversations which have been lively for much of the twentieth century, and have persisted well into the twenty-first century. Modern theology has experienced a ‘Trinitarian revival’ of sorts, which incorporates restatements of the classical doctrine as well as a number of constructive developments. In recent years, systematic discussions concerning the DOI: 10.4324/9781003381358-3

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 55 ontological status of the divine persons and their internal relations have percolated through to the analytic literature, and warrant fresh engagement. Fourth, and finally, I will consider the problem of how the Son alone, in distinction from the Father and the Holy Spirit, may be said to be the unique subject of the Incarnation. Historically, the tradition has held (with, I believe, good reason) to the doctrine of inseparable Trinitarian operations ad extra: what God does, at least insofar as he relates to the created order, he does as one, such that every external act of God is necessarily an act of the three divine persons together. How, then, can it be that only the Son is incarnate in Jesus Christ? For the sake of clarification, my interest is not in the question of why it is uniquely fitting or appropriate for the Son to become incarnate, nor with the vexed debate over whether it is metaphysically possible for a person other than the Son to be incarnate. The question at hand is one of sheer intelligibility: how can the confession that the Son alone is incarnate be reconciled with the doctrine of inseparable Trinitarian operations? My approach to these theological paraphernalia will be broadly ‘Latin’ in emphasis, by which I intend that the figures from whom I take greatest inspiration will be Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Given the focus of the present project, it is sadly impossible to do full justice to each of the various themes which will be incorporated into this chapter’s discussion, and I am therefore unable to present a comprehensive defence of Latin theology against alternative conceptions, a project which would undoubtedly demand an extended treatment in its own right. My modest hope is that I can provide sufficient motivation for operating within the Latin tradition that it might serve as a respectable foundation for further Christological speculation. Much of the ensuing discussion will depend upon the Aristotelian metaphysical categories introduced in Chapter 1, but it will also stretch these categories, for expressly theological reasons, to a point which Aristotle could not possibly have foreseen. Yet, it does not do so in an arbitrary or irresponsible way. Rather, the Latin theologian is motivated by the doctrine of analogy to employ such categories with the explicit avowal that they do not apply univocally to God and to creatures, and will thereby necessarily allow for only imperfect cognitive purchase on the God whom they designate or describe. But, as the prior discussion of the place of mystery in analytical speculation has argued, this should not stand in the way of attempts at constructive progress in our theological knowledge. Divine Substance Substantia entered into the theological tradition synchronically with the entrance of the Latin language: through Tertullian.1 It is to Tertullian that we owe the venerable formula una substantia, tres personae.2 It should be noted in passing that the Greek counterpart, mia physis, treis hypostaseis, seldom appears in the writings of the Greek fathers to whom the formula is traditionally accredited, that is, the Cappadocians.3 It is the first half of the formula – the

56  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word unity, or unicity, of the divine substance – with which I am presently concerned. However, ‘substance’ bears a certain ambiguity, for this term may be employed in such a way as to refer to general kinds, such as ‘humanity’ or ‘caninity’, or to individuals, such as ‘Socrates’ or ‘Fido’. In short, we must determine whether the divine substance is a ‘substance’ in the sense of being a kind or an instance of a kind. ‘Substance’ is therefore a rather more broad and complex notion than the previous chapter’s analysis has allowed. Substantia renders the Greek ousia, a term which provides a double service in Aristotle.4 Deuterai ousiai, or secondary substances, are best understood as universal common natures and are exemplified by prōtai ousiai, primary substances, which are concrete particulars. These are not two different kinds of spatially located objects which exist in the world; rather, secondary substances and primary substances relate to one another as universal to particular, which are distinguished by their respective shareability and unshareability. Many particulars share ‘humanity’, and ‘human’ is said of many things. But nothing shares ‘Socrates’, nor is ‘Socrates’ said of anything. I wish to argue that the divine substance cannot be merely either of these, but must instead be a ‘substance’ in a sense that is quite unique. This view may be taken to imply that the divine substance is both universal and particular, such that the two are somehow ‘one’ in God. Alternatively, it may be taken to imply that the divine substance is neither universal nor particular, but enjoys a unique ontological status which admits of no creaturely parallel. It is this second alternative which I intend to emphasise. Rather than thinking of the divine substance as a kind of self-instantiating universal, we should instead think of the divine substance as a ‘substance’ in a sense that is entirely unique to it, frustrating creaturely classification in terms of universality and particularity. I take this view to be particularly ‘Latin’ in emphasis, not necessarily because it is strictly opposed to ‘Eastern’ ways of expressing the matter, but because hints in this direction are detectable in both Augustine and Aquinas. Augustine, for instance, claims that ‘substance’ is said of the divine essence only improperly.5 In a similar vein, Aquinas insists that God is not in the ‘genus’ of substance, which I take to be, not a denial that God is a substance in any sense, but an affirmation that God is a substance in an entirely unique sense.6 This is not to say that the divine substance does not exhibit any features in common with either universals or particulars. With universals, it may have in common the fact that it is shareable (by the three divine persons), communicable (from one person to another, through relations of origin) and predicable (of all the persons). However, it is not multiply instantiable; it cannot exist in many, numerically distinct, particulars, for reasons I  will explore momentarily. With particulars, the divine substance may share the feature of being numerically singular, an ontologically unique, unrepeatable individual.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 57 But, unlike creaturely substances, the divine substance is not a hylomorphic compound, nor is it the bearer of accidents. What is more, ‘divinity’ is said of things, not least the divine persons themselves. The distinction between primary and secondary substance problematises, albeit in an interesting way, the Chalcedonian affirmation of Christ’s consubstantiality with us in his humanity and with the Father in his divinity. What it means for Christ to be consubstantial with us in his humanity is quite straightforward on Aristotelian terms; indeed, it appears difficult to make the Chalcedonian claim intelligible except by positing a distinction between individual substances and common natures. Christ assumes a human nature, understood as a concrete particular (a claim which will be defended in Chapter 3). This particular is a substance with a substantial form, in virtue of which it instantiates a common nature, humanitas. We, as humans, instantiate the same common nature. Our consubstantiality with Christ therefore consists in our instantiating one and the same common nature as the individual nature he assumed. But this is assuredly not what we mean to say when it is affirmed that Christ is consubstantial with the Father in his divinity. Suppose that Christ’s consubstantiality with the Father did indeed mirror his consubstantiality with us. On such a rendering, ‘Christ’ would name a particular divine substance, an instantiation of the common nature divinitas. The Father, as a distinct hypostasis from the Son, is divine in precisely the same way, as an instantiation of ‘divinity’, and just so again for the Holy Spirit (interestingly, the 451 Creed neglects to make reference to the third Trinitarian person). In this way of expressing the matter, the divine essence is treated as a universal common nature which is instantiated triply by the three divine persons, understood as distinct individuals, resulting inescapably in tritheism. For this reason, the Son cannot be understood as being ‘consubstantial’ with the Father in the sense of their being two distinct instances of a common nature, as Peter and James are two distinct instances of humanity. Peter and James are two human beings, but the Father and the Son are not two Gods. Alternatively, we might consider the divine essence as a primary substance. In other words, we might – prior to making any personal distinctions between the divine Three – consider the singular essence to be itself an instance of ‘divinity’. The problem with this way of classifying the divine substance is that it cannot account satisfactorily for God’s numerical unity. Why is it the case there is only one God, rather than many? A commitment to the uniqueness of God requires a statement far stronger than that God is ‘one’ merely in the sense that there happen to be no further instantiations of a common nature ‘divinity’. The truth of monotheism would be a merely contingent fact, owing presumably to some reality more fundamental than the Godhead itself. Monotheists do not, I think, wish to say that the numerical unity of God is a state of affairs which God is fortunate enough to have received from a higher reality to which the Godhead itself is subject; nor even that God

58  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word has efficaciously willed himself to be numerically one, where he might have caused himself to be otherwise (a suggestion of dubious coherence). Furthermore, every being is, in a sense, ‘one’, and therefore exemplifies a transcendental property of ‘unity’, thereby threatening to trivialise the affirmation of God’s radical unity. To affirm the unity of a subject is to say little more than that it is, that it exists. Any compound necessarily admits of both unity and plurality: there is the plurality of the various parts of which the substance is compounded, but there is also the unity whereby we identify a given substance as the very thing that it is. If Socrates were not ‘one’, then we would have no business referring to him as ‘Socrates’ (nor, indeed, as ‘him’). Instead, we would speak of the many parts which comprise him: a plurality rather than a singularity. This is in spite of the fact that Socrates is a complex rather than a simple being. Aquinas explains as follows: Oneness adds nothing real to any existent thing, but simply denies division of it, for to be one means no more than to exist undivided. And from this it is clear that everything existing is one. For everything existing is either simple or composite. Now simple things are neither actually nor potentially undivided, whilst composite things do not exist as long as their constituent parts are divided but only after these parts have come together to compose the thing. Clearly then everything’s existence is grounded in indivision. And this is why things guard their unity as they do their existence.7 It is important to distinguish between two distinct, though related, senses of ‘unity’: an unitas singularitatis, or unity of singularity, and an unitas simplicitatis, or unity of simplicity. The unity of singularity is that unity whereby God is numerically singular: there is not, and could not be, more than one God. The unity of simplicity is that unity whereby God is not a composite of principles more fundamental than himself. This latter sense of unity is, without doubt, the more contested in contemporary philosophical theology. Nonetheless, it is the confession that God is simple, and thus absent of composition, which provides the basis for the confession that God is numerically singular as a matter of metaphysical necessity.8 In order to account for the necessary numerical unity of God, God cannot be considered as an instance of a natural kind. The most decisive way in which to uphold such an account is by denying any distinction in God between essence and existence, as is done most explicitly by Aquinas.9 In short, there is no distinction in God between essentia, that by which God is what God is, and esse, the act by which God is. In God, it is not one thing to be and another thing to be God.10 This marks a categorical distinction between God and all created beings. In created beings, there is a real distinction between existence and essence. This is fundamentally because it is not part of the essence of any created being to exist; if it were, it would exist necessarily.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 59 What is more, it is a metaphysical impossibility that there be more than one being whose essence is to exist, for there would be no basis upon which many such beings could be individuated from one another, as Aquinas himself observes.11 The claim that there is a real identity between existence and essence in God, and a real distinction between them in creatures, was hotly contested in Aquinas’s own time and continues to draw criticism today, perhaps most influentially by Anthony Kenny.12 However, as David Oderberg points out, the real distinction in creatures is required in order to secure their contingency, and the real identity in God is required in order to secure his necessity.13 Furthermore, and as I am now employing this point, the real identity of existence and essence in God is required in order to secure his necessary numerical unity, such that there could have been no more than one God. There are numerous models of composition which are classically denied of God, but it is the denial of composition of essence and existence in God that is the most distinctive. For all other models of composition – such as a distinction between act and potency, form and matter, and substance and accident – it is denied that God is a composite of two principles for the reason that God is really identical with one while lacking the other. God is pure act because he lacks passive potency, God is identical with his form because he lacks matter, God is identical with his substance because he lacks accidents and so on. However, Aquinas denies a distinction of essence and existence in God, not because God lacks one and is therefore fully identical with the other, but because God is fully identical with both, and, consequently, both are fully identical with each other. If God had only an act of existence but had no essence, he would exist as nothing at all, which is impossible. And if God had only an essence but no act of existence, he simply would not exist.14 The divine simplicity additionally entails the impassibility of the divine essence. If it is of the very essence of the divine simply ‘to be’, then God is identical with his own act of being, and is therefore not in a complex state of being and becoming. Creaturely reality is compounded of act and potency, which, respectively, are the principle of a substance by which it exists and has the power to move things into new states of being by realising passive potencies in them, and the principle of a substance by which it has the receptive capacity to be so moved. If God is nothing other than the simple act by which he is, then there is no further state of being into which it is possible for him to be moved (even by himself). God is not composed of being-in-act and being-in-potency. God is simply pure subsistent being, ipsum esse subsistens. God lacks all passive potency, and hence is actus purus, purely actual being.15 What this means is that the distinction between individual substance and common nature is inapplicable to the divine life. There being in God no distinction between existence and essence, God cannot be considered an instance of a repeatable kind. We must conclude that the Aristotelian distinction between primary and secondary substance, while perhaps perfectly

60  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word serviceable in creaturely cases, is not applicable to God. It might be suggested that, in God, primary substance and secondary substance are simply coincident and identical.16 I do not think that such a suggestion is helpful, however, since the divine substance does not satisfy very comfortably the definition of either category. Instead, it should be said that the divine substance is neither a universal common nature which allows for numerically distinct instantiations nor is it one such instantiation, even if, fortunately, there happen to be no others.17 Rather, God is a substance in a sense that is related only analogically to our common-sense substances. In one sense, the doctrine of divine simplicity and the doctrine of analogy are indicating the very same truth about God, which is captured in the medieval slogan that God is not in a genus (deus non est in genere); that is, there is no ontological category to which God belongs. To put this same point slightly less accurately, although arguably more helpfully, there is no ontological category to which God belongs with which God is not fully identical. The doctrine of divine simplicity frames this truth positively in terms of identity: God is identical with all that is in him. The doctrine of analogy frames this same point negatively: given that God is identical with whatever ontological categories characterise his own Godhead, he exhausts them, meaning that they cannot also be occupied by creatures. Whereas simplicity says that God is identical with his wisdom, analogy says that God and creatures do not occupy a common order of wisdom. The two doctrines are, to this extent, complements and corollaries, alike motivated by the conviction that there is nothing generic of which God is but one more case. Returning to the question of substantial unity as a trivial ascription, there is an important point of disanalogy between creaturely substances and the divine substance: Socrates is undivided but he is not indivisible. Socrates is a composite being, but he is, in principle, capable of dissolution. Dissolution is impossible of Socrates only in the modest sense that, if Socrates were dissolved into his constituent parts, he would cease to be. But the dissolution of Socrates is not impossible absolute; it is entirely possible that the complexity that is ‘Socrates’ be dissolved and that Socrates cease to be. But the divine substance, as metaphysically simple, is not a composite of principles with which the Godhead itself is not fully identical, so dissolution is not possible for God, even in principle. Where does this leave us with respect to the consubstantiality stipulation of Chalcedon? If the divine substance is a ‘substance’ in a sense that is related only analogically to creaturely substances, then already it is clear that Christ cannot be consubstantial with the Father in precisely the same sense as that in which he is consubstantial with us. On what has become regarded as a ‘Latin’ model of the Trinity, the only things which objectively distinguish the divine persons are their relations to one another.18 What this manoeuvre permits is the real identification of each divine person with the singular divine substance itself. Christ is none other than the hypostasis of the Son, who, on (at least) the Latin view, is really identical with the divine substance. Thus,

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 61 Christ is vere deus. Christ is ‘consubstantial’ with the Father in the sense that he and the Father are each truly God in virtue of their each being numerically identical with the singular divine substance. How the real identity of each person with the divine substance fails to imply the real identity of the persons with each other requires an exploration of the concept of ‘subsistent relation’, to be conducted at a later point. The Mixed Relation The simplicity of God has profound bearing on how we conceive of God’s external relations to the world. In order to appreciate these implications, however, we must first achieve some understanding of the nature of ‘relation’ as such. It is Aquinas on whom it is most appropriate to focus, for his constructive development of Aristotle’s concept of ‘relatives’, found in the Categories,19 is pressed most conspicuously into theological service, particularly with respect to God’s relationship to the world. Gilles Emery notes that, as with Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy, his teaching on relations is something which must be synthesised from its various incidental treatments across his corpus. Emery pieces together four elements of Aquinas’s philosophical account of relations. First, there must be a subject of the relation, that which is related and is expressed by a certain name. Second, there is a foundation, the cause of the relation. Third, the term, toward which the relation tends. Finally, the order according to which the subject is related to the term, which serves as the formal reason for the relation.20 Initially, it would seem as though there are two basic varieties of relations. The first is that of a real relation. Crucially, ‘real’ is to be understood in the classical sense of ‘thing’ (res). The emphasis is on the relation as existing in re, in the very subject and the term of the relation. For a relation to be real, both of the related items must be really distinct objects. Moreover, they must both belong to the same ontological order. Lastly, and most distinctive of real relations, the foundation of the relation must inhere within the subject as an accident.21 There are, for Aquinas, only two causes or foundations for a real relation: that of quantity (e.g. that which is double to that which is half) and that of action and passion, in which both the subject and the term of the relation actualise some passive potency in the other.22 If I  bring my hand down upon the surface of an open-topped tank filled with water, my action will make an impression upon it, unsettling the water and causing it to splash back upon me. I and the water are related really due to the fact that we each enact causal agency on the other and realise some passive potency in the other. The other basic variety of relation is that of the logical relation (also known as a conceptual relation or a relation of reason). Logical relations are those in which the above conditions of real relations do not obtain. For instance, if the subject and the term of the relation are not really distinct (such as a subject’s relation of identity to itself), or if they are related by some foundation

62  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word other than quantity, action or passion, then the relation is not real but merely logical. There are a number of other conditions which might qualify a relation as logical rather than real,23 but the most distinctive ingredient of a logical relation is that it exists only as a result of an apprehending intellect, rather than being an inherent accidental feature of a substance. Logical relations fail to be ‘real’, not in the sense that they are untrue or that they do not describe ‘reality’, broadly construed, but merely in the sense that they do not describe inhering features of the subject or the term of the relation. It may appear that real and logical relations are the only two possible varieties, for the former are satisfied where certain conditions obtain and the latter are satisfied where those conditions do not obtain. However, there is nonetheless a third permutation to consider: that in which the conditions of the real relation obtain in the case of the subject but do not obtain in the term, or vice versa. That is, we must consider cases in which one item, considered as the subject, relates to the other item, considered as the term, after the fashion of a real relation, but the relation is merely logical when we consider the reverse, where the role of subject and term are inverted. In other words, we must not assume that all relations are reciprocal or symmetrical, where both items relate to one another in the same mode. Such asymmetrical relations are known as ‘mixed’ relations. Examples of mixed relations would be the relation between knower and known, or a moving subject to a static term. Aquinas uses the example of a man who moves from being to the right of a pillar to its left. There is a change in how the man and the pillar are related (the pillar is first ‘to the left of’ the man and then is ‘to the right of’ him), but the change is owing entirely to how the man changes in respect of the pillar. No change is implied in the pillar itself.24 To use another example, if a patron of an art gallery admires a beautiful work of art, he is really affected by his relation to it. The piece impresses itself upon him as agent to patient. He, as patient, is moved into new states of being, perhaps by being moved to awe or pleasure or admiration. The work of art, however, is not of itself moved into a new state of being. It receives no new actuality simply by virtue of being admired.25 It is tempting to imagine that any relation in which there is causal agency is one in which the agent is really affected by the causal influence it exerts over the patient: when my hand smacks the surface of the water, I am made wet as a result. However, in this case, it is not strictly my causal influence upon the water which causes me to be splashed; at least, not directly. Rather, it is the water’s causal influence upon me which brings about this new effect. I and the water each have a range of active and passive potencies, and it is the reception of my act by the water which is met with the water’s act whereby it splashes upon me. In this sense, I and the water are both agents and both patients, even if the agential impact of the water upon me is one that had first to be stimulated by my prior act upon it. A mixed relation, on the other hand, is one in which the agent exerts a causal influence upon the patient without being met with an effect in kind. In

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 63 other words, there is only one agent and only one patient; there is no principle of reciprocity. Such mixed relations obtain between God and the world. Created reality is a composite of act and potency. As such, the created order has the capacity to receive new being. But God, as actus purus, has no such receptive capacity. God’s relations to the world are not transactional; God possesses only active potency, the power to relate to that which is external to himself as an agent, but no passive potency, by which he might relate to the world as a receptive patient. Creation is at all times related to God as its creator and sustainer, but creation does not ‘splash back’ and make its impression upon God, corresponding to the action impressed upon it. The denial that God is related ‘really’ to creation may appear somewhat scandalous, perhaps even unintelligible.26 It must be understood, however, that it is not being denied that God is truly related to creation. Rather, what is being affirmed is that God’s external relations to things, while genuine, are not such as to move God into new states of affairs in anything other than a relational sense. God brings about new created effects in a single timeless act of creation, while the effects themselves proceed in time. As temporal events unfold, the things of the created order come to relate to God in new ways, and, in virtue of these new relations, ascriptions come to be newly predicable of God which previously were not so. However, while new predications may be made of God in accordance with their temporal occurrence, this does not entail an internal change in God’s own life.27 Upon my conversion, God ‘changes’ from not being my object of worship to being my object of worship. This change fails to be ‘real’ in God only in the sense that God undergoes no intrinsic alteration thereby, yet this by no means renders the relation fictitious.28 The theologoumenon of the mixed relation is no scholastic novelty. Rather, it has notable precedent much earlier in the Latin tradition, through Augustine. Augustine, like Aquinas, recognises that a change in the way in which God and creation are related speaks only to an objective change in the created order itself. In virtue of changing in itself, creation also changes in how it relates to its creator and sustainer, but this is not to say that there is a change in God’s own inner life. God may ‘become’ this or that in virtue of creation coming to relate to God in some new way: Lord, says the psalm, you have become our refuge (Ps 90:1). God is called our refuge by way of relationship; the name has reference to us. And he becomes our refuge when we take refuge in him. Does this mean that something happens then in his nature, which was not there before we took refuge in him? No, the change takes place in us; we were worse before we took refuge in him, and we become better by taking refuge in him. But in him, no change at all.29 The classical commitment that God has no real relation to the world has been indirectly critiqued by R. T. Mullins, in the context of an extended

64  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word argument against the doctrine of divine simplicity. On Mullins’s understanding, classical theism (divine immutability, in particular) rules out not only internal changes in the divine nature but also external or ‘merely Cambridge’ changes. Mullins considers this to be a commitment of classical theism and to have been defended by Paul Helm.30 However, Helm only rules out ‘merely Cambridge’ changes of a spatial or temporal kind (God is never nearer to or farther away from the death of Napoleon, for example) but goes no further than this.31 Indeed, Helm employs ‘merely Cambridge’ changes to anticipate something very much like Mullins’s argument.32 Classical theism, as presented by Augustine and Aquinas, is evidently compatible with the claim that God may ‘become’ what he previously was not, in virtue of how the created order changes in relation to God. The classical or ‘strong’ doctrine of divine simplicity does not (contra Mullins) deny that God may be the subject of such predications as ‘being referred to’.33 Mullins considers divine simplicity to be helplessly incompatible with God’s freedom to create possible worlds other than the actual one.34 The fundamental problem with Mullins’s argument is his failure to distinguish between active potential and passive potential. Classical theism only denies that God admits of passive potential. It is not committed to the claim that God has exercised his creative power to its limit, nor that God is metaphysically ‘locked into’ doing so. While the doctrine of divine simplicity identifies God with his essence and with his attributes, it does not identify God with his external relations. This is why God may not be the subject of accidents, and yet may have the likes of ‘creator’ and ‘redeemer’ predicated of him. Accidents are inhering features of a substance which actualise passive potencies in that substance. But the above designations may properly be assigned to God – if only relative to us – because they do not entail the actualising of passive potential in God’s own nature. This is compatible with the commitment to divine freedom which Mullins wishes to preserve. It makes no intrinsic difference to God’s own life whether he creates or not, whether he creates one possible world as opposed to another or, indeed, whether he becomes incarnate. Not only would the admission of a mutually real relation serve to introduce passive potency into the divine essence, it would also ‘correlate’ the divine essence with creaturely reality in such a way as to reduce God and creation to a single ontological order. To say that God relates ‘really’ to creation is to say God is ordered towards creation, that God’s existence is correlated or correlative to that which is other than himself. It is critical that the relation between God and creation be real in the created order, for creation’s dependence upon God is no mere mental imposition. But this must not be thought to necessitate a relation which really inheres in God, such that a change in the created order implies a corresponding modification of the divine life.35 The divine simplicity therefore requires that God relate to creation according to an asymmetrical relation for at least two reasons: not only because God lacks all passive potency, and thus cannot be moved into new states of being, but also because God does not belong to a common order of being

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 65 with creatures. Being identical with his own act of existence, God cannot be considered as a further instance of communal being, in which he participates equally with creatures, but must instead be understood as belonging to a radically different ontological order, one which distinguishes him from creatures, not merely incrementally, but categorically. Thus, Mark Henninger: God is not esse creatum; He is ipsum esse subsistens. He is esse per essentiam, not esse participatum. God and creatures are of radically different orders. In sum, the God-creature relations are non-mutual because they lack foundations of the same type, as required by . . . mutual real relations.36 The implications for Christology should be apparent. The hypostatic union is a relation which spans divergent ontological orders. Divinity and humanity are not two related objects lying alongside one another in a shared ontological domain, but are related as creator to creature. While there is much more to be said regarding the relationship between the two natures of Christ, we must say no less than this: God relates to the assumed human nature as God and the human nature relates to God as a creature. The Incarnational ‘becoming’ does not bring God into a new state of affairs, except insofar as the created order enters into a new state of affairs in relation to God. The Word’s becoming flesh does not speak to an internal change in the immanent life of the Word but consists in a created human nature’s depending, from the first moment of its existence, upon the Word. In this sense, the language of ‘becoming’ is neutral as to whether any real change has taken place in the subject itself. Divine Persons as Subsistent Relations A crucial step in our achieving greater conceptual purchase on what it means for the second person of the Trinity to assume a human nature is an exploration of the concept of ‘person’. The classical definition of ‘person’ is that of Boethius: for Boethius, a person is rationalis naturae individua substantia (an individual substance of a rational nature).37 Here, ‘individual substance’ should be taken as ‘primary substance’ and ‘nature’ should be taken as ‘common nature’ or ‘natural kind’. Significantly, ‘rationality’ is proper to the latter; the ‘kind’ rather than the individual. As things stand, however, this definition brings us into strife in respect of both Christology and theology proper. On Boethius’s definition, God the Trinity would be three substances, and the two-natured Christ would be two persons. It may be the case, however, that this definition can be accommodated, with perhaps only minor modification, to suit the requirements of these two doctrines.38 In the early modern period, ‘person’ would take a ‘psychologising’ turn, in which it would come increasingly to be defined in terms of being in possession of a set of psychological or mental faculties, not least consciousness. At

66  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word first glance, this does not mark a great change from Boethius’s definition, for it, too, requires that a person be of a ‘rational nature’. The change, however, is far more significant than it may at first appear. Even assuming that the psychological properties on which the early moderns placed such great emphasis are equivalent to ancient conceptions of ‘rationality’, such properties came to be seen as requirements of the individual, not of the kind to which the individual belongs, that is, a ‘person’ is now a ‘rational individual’ rather than an ‘individual substance of a rational nature’. Contemporary analytic theologians are divided on the question of whether or not ‘person’ is to be employed univocally when used of divine and of human persons. This question is answered in the affirmative by Social Trinitarians. Social Trinitarianism is difficult to define decisively and comprehensively. Brian Leftow, an opponent, understands Social Trinitarianism to be committed to the existence of three divine substances: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each particularised instances (‘tropes’) of deity.39 A similar definition may be found in Thomas McCall and Michael Rea’s general survey of contemporary Trinitarian options, in which Social Trinitarians are considered to hold that the divine persons share a common ‘essence’ though they are not numerically the same ‘substance’, analogous to how Peter, James and John share a common essence while remaining numerically distinct.40 This definition is open to dispute. Social Trinitarians like Cornelius Plantinga, William Hasker and William Lane Craig instead emphasise the mental, volitional, operative and amative distinctions between the three persons.41 There is a twofold commitment among such thinkers. Not only is there the commitment that ‘person’, when used in typical non-theological contexts, refers predominantly to a distinct psychological subject, but there is also the commitment that, in order for the claim that there are three divine ‘persons’ to be meaningful, they must be persons in a univocal or closely related sense to that which is employed in creaturely cases. These commitments are on full display in Carl Mosser: The thesis is this: within the immanent Trinity the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are persons in the ‘full, modern’ sense of the term. They are not mere subsistences or modes of being. Each is a distinct agent who possesses all the necessary attributes of divinity as well as his own center of consciousness, thought, will, and love. The three interact with and respond to one another as distinct selves. From this it follows that their unity is irreducibly social in nature.42 In this section, I  will provide an outline of what may be termed a ‘Latin’ account of the doctrine of the Trinity. Among the most distinctive features of Latin Trinitarianism is its commitment to the simple unity of the divine essence. Lest composition be introduced into the Godhead, the divine persons are defined purely in terms of their relations to one another. Once again, to describe this account as ‘Latin’ is not necessarily to say that these

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 67 commitments are at any point absent in the East. It is, partly, a concession to certain conventional divisions which have so predominated in scholarship in the last century as to become entrenched. But it is also partly an indication of the debt that it owes to Augustine and Aquinas as the greatest masters of the Latin tradition. A consequence of the Latin view is that the sense of ‘person’ that is employed in the context of theology proper is not univocal with that which is employed in a creaturely context, but is only analogous to it.43 For this reason, it provides us with a way of side-stepping the unhappy theological ramifications of adopting Boethius’s definition as a means of capturing the ontological status of both divine and human persons. A common claim on behalf of Social Trinitarianism is that it enjoys the Eastern theologians as its champions, not least Gregory of Nyssa.44 Whereas Latin theologians ‘start with’ the unity of God, subsequently inquiring into how the singular divine essence may be shared eternally and simultaneously by three persons without dividing or multiplying the divine essence, the Eastern theologians instead ‘start with’ the plurality of persons, taken as incommunicable and unrepeatable psychological subjects, only then to ask how it could be that these ‘three’ are also ‘one’ in the robust sense that monotheism requires.45 However, the historical tenability of this division has been called into serious doubt.46 Latin Trinitarianism, by contrast with Social Trinitarianism, does not consider the divine persons to be ‘persons’ in the ‘full, modern’ sense, but instead considers them to be persons in a sense that is related only analogically to human persons, similarly to how (if my argument in the first section of this chapter is accepted) the divine substance is a ‘substance’ in an entirely unique sense, one that is not univocal with creaturely substances. Indeed, Augustine appears frankly to concede that ‘person’ is applied to the divine Three, not because it serves as the ideal encapsulation of what the doctrine of the Trinity is intending to express, but as an imperfect accommodation, ‘in order not to be reduced to silence’.47 The dilemma facing Augustine was whether the names of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are to be predicated of God ‘substantially’ or ‘accidentally’. If applied substantially, then there is no basis of real distinction between the persons, for each of the three is simply a name which names the singular divine substance differently. If applied accidentally, accidents are introduced into the Godhead, compromising the divine simplicity and pure actuality. Besides this, it is difficult to see how an accident inhering within the divine substance might be truly and fully God in the way that the doctrine of the Trinity requires. Augustine’s strategy is to posit a third metaphysical category, a non-accidental relation, so that the personal names are taken to name relations of this peculiar kind: But since the Father is only called so because he has a Son, and the Son is only called so because he has a Father, these things are not said substance-wise, as neither is said with reference to itself but only with

68  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word reference to the other. Nor are they said modification-wise, because what is signified by calling them Father and Son belongs to them eternally and unchangeably. Therefore, although being Father is different from being Son, there is no difference of substance, because they are not called these things substance-wise but relationship-wise; and yet this relationship is not a modification, because it is not changeable.48 We thus arrive at the Augustinian novelty of ‘person’ as ‘relation’. Each divine person is understood as being fully identical with the divine nature. All that distinguishes the persons from one another are their relations of origin, whereby the Father, who is alone ingenerate, ‘generates’ the Son, together with whom the Father ‘spirates’ the Spirit, who proceeds from them both. It is proper to the Father alone to be ‘from’ no other. It is proper to the Son alone to be ‘from’ one other. And it is proper to the Spirit alone to be ‘from’ two others. Each person is distinguished from the others by their unique ‘personal properties’, yet these properties also speak to the inseparable unity of the persons, for each person is who he is only in virtue of his relation to the others. In short, ‘relation’ is the conceptual and semantic key to expressing (while not comprehending) both the inseparable unity of, as well as the real distinctions between, the persons: They are, therefore, not substances that stand next to each other, but they are real existing relations, and nothing besides. . . . In God, person means relation. Relation, being related, is not something superadded to the person, but it is the person itself. In its nature, the person exists only as relation. Put more concretely, the first person does not generate in the sense that the act of generating a Son is added to the already complete person, but the person is the deed of generating, of giving itself, of streaming itself forth. The person is identical with this act of self-donation.49 It may appear somewhat vacuous to identify the persons as nothing more than relations. Ordinarily, a relation obtains only between things which already have a substantial existence apart from the relation. It is only because Socrates exists substantially that he is capable of entering into relations of one sort or another with other things. To this extent, Socrates’s substantial existence is logically and ontologically more primitive than the relations in which he is implicated. To say, therefore, that a divine person simply is a relation risks vacuity so as to border on the incoherent, for it forces the question of what it is that is doing the relating, and what it is that the relation is to. To say that each divine person is a person only insofar as he relates to another, where that ‘other’ is, in turn, a person only insofar as he relates to another, appears to bat the question perpetually into the air rather than to settle it.50

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 69 It is for this reason that the Latin theologian – particularly in light of constructive developments by Aquinas – identifies the divine persons, not as relations merely, but as subsistent relations. However, the roots of this are also detectable in Augustine, for whom the subject of a relation is always something apart from it.51 This is not to say that the divine persons may be abstracted from their personal properties. Rather, the relations are ‘subsistent’ in the sense that the personal properties – paternity, filiation and procession – designate unique modes according to which the divine essence is possessed. ‘Subsistent relation’ therefore captures two truths: that each person is who he is only as ‘being towards another’, and that each person subsists in, and is identical with, the simple divine essence. There is, therefore, perhaps some justification for the Latin theologian’s ‘starting with’ God’s simple unity. As Matthew Levering points out, to say that each divine person is a subsistent relation is to say that each person possesses the divine essence according to a mode that is distinct from that of the other persons. As such, ‘subsistent relation’ incorporates the divine essence.52 This is opposed, not only to certain forms of Social Trinitarianism, which see ‘person’ as a more fundamental ontological category than that of ‘essence’,53 but also to ‘relational ontology’, which threatens to trivialise the relationality of the divine persons by effectively replacing ‘substance’ with ‘relation’ in distinguishing material objects.54 Defining the persons as subsistent relations therefore provides us with the conceptual apparatus by which to express both proper unity and proper plurality in the Godhead. Each divine person is simply the divine essence, possessed according to a distinct mode. The respective ‘modes’ are what they are only in relation to the others. Yet, there is perhaps more to be said with respect to the manner of the persons’ unity. It is commonplace to invoke the doctrine of ‘perichoresis’, or circumincession, to account for the immanent unity of the three persons. Each person is fully ‘in’ the others, such that their unity is one of exhaustive mutual interpenetration. But there is a danger here of introducing the concept of perichoresis merely as a convenient fiat, simply in order to ‘label’ the alleged unity of the persons, rather than to account for it or illuminate it in any way; what Oliver Crisp describes as ‘a kind of theological black box’, employed ‘as a means of filling a conceptual gap’.55 The persons’ mutual indwelling, rather than being smuggled in post hoc, must be motivated by a good-faith rationale. The relations ought not to be thought of as ‘hanging between’ the persons, but as being integral to them, as Gilles Emery has observed.56 As such, the interpenetration of the persons is not to be understood as an external structural imposition, as though the divine essence is cast into a tri-personal configuration by something other than it; such would make the perichoresis a ‘dance of three strands (a triple helix)’.57 What it means to identify the persons as subsistent relations is that their inseparable unity is integral to the persons: the metaphysical

70  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word impossibility of separating the one who begets from the one who is begotten is owing to the internal dynamic of the divine life itself. ‘Perichoresis’, then, is not something to be introduced only subsequently into one’s doctrine of God, in order to ‘shore up’ the unity of the persons after they have been pushed too far apart by defining them in absolute rather than relational terms. By this point, it is already too late; the persons must already have been defined in such a way as to incorporate ‘being towards another’. ‘Perichoresis’ thus, I submit, puts in far more respectable work in Latin Trinitarianism than in Social Trinitarianism. For the Social Trinitarian, perichoresis is something to which to resort, so as to salvage the unity of the persons after too much emphasis has been placed on their distinction as psychological subjects. In this case, it serves as an artificial and post hoc annexation. The Latin Trinitarian, by contrast, has an authentic theological rationale for affirming the mutual indwelling of the persons, one which flows organically from the distinctively ‘Latin’ commitment that the persons are subsistent relations or modes of being. It is the substantial unity and irreducible relationality of the persons which necessitates their exhaustive mutual indwelling. A Latin account of the Trinity is considered problematic by Social Trinitarians because, allegedly, it cannot account for satisfactory distinctions between the persons. Arguably, however, this is a problem from which the Social Trinitarian suffers only more acutely, especially with respect to the question of individuation. Social Trinitarianism superficially provides a strong account of the distinction between the persons, for each is its own centre of consciousness. However, it does not account nearly so strongly for the distinctiveness of the persons, that which determines their unique, unrepeatable personal identities. The divine Three of the Social Trinitarian, though distinct, are at risk of being merely a generic ‘Three’. This, to my mind, is a score on which the Latin Trinitarian has the upper hand, for the persons are defined entirely in terms of what makes them distinctive as the very persons that they are: the one who begets, the one who is begotten and the one who proceeds. The problem of individuation is one which arises in creaturely cases also. The problem is as follows: if some universal common essence (like ‘rose’) is shared by many particulars (i.e. many roses), what makes these particulars different individuals? What makes this rose the very one that it is, and that rose the very one that it is? A standard Thomistic line is to say that individuation is accounted for by matter. It cannot be the form of the particular substance which is responsible for its individuation, for it is precisely this which is common. So it must be the substance’s matter which plays this role (there is considerably more metaphysical complexity in this debate, but more than we presently need). Clearly, however, such a hylomorphic account is not applicable to the divine persons, for they are not material substances. But something must individuate them. In Latin Trinitarianism, it is their personal relations which individuate the persons.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 71 What alternative can the Social Trinitarian provide? If not by matter, or by their personal relations, then perhaps they are individuated by their each being in possession of their own distinct mental faculties. But if these faculties are also common – that is, each person is in possession of a divine mind, a divine will, a divine activity and so on – then what individuates these? Even if there is some way of accounting for what makes each person distinct, all we would have established in so doing is that any given person is not identical with the others. But what now prevents the three persons from being merely generic and interchangeable, a divine ‘council’ whose members may be permuted or exchanged for one another with no difference in individuating characteristics? In other words, even if the Father is distinguished from the Son and the Spirit by the fact that he is (or has) his own centre of consciousness, what makes him distinctive as the Father? Just so, mutatis mutandis, for the other persons. Latin Trinitarianism preserves the distinctiveness of the persons because their distinct identities are constituted by how they relate uniquely to one another. A word must be said about what it means for the persons to be ‘really distinct’. Quite what counts as a ‘real’ distinction depends on whether one is operating within a Thomistic or Scotist framework. For Duns Scotus, real distinction requires separability, a condition which clearly does not obtain in the Trinitarian case. But nor can their distinctions be logical only, for this would imply that the personal distinctions are mind-imposed, having no extra-mental reality. Famously, Scotus posits the ‘formal’ distinction as a via media between these two extremes. Two items are ‘formally’ distinct just in case they are inseparable and yet the definition of one exceeds the definition of the other. For the Thomist, however, real distinction does not imply separability, but merely mind-independence, a condition which the personal distinctions indeed satisfy.58 It is thus only in the Thomistic sense that there is a real (as opposed to formal) distinction between the divine persons.59 A number of analytic writers have detected difficulties for those who would hold both to the doctrine of the Trinity and to divine simplicity.60 Syllogistic attempts to demonstrate the incompatibility of the two doctrines typically proceed in the following manner: 1 The Father is really identical with the divine essence. 2 The Son is really identical with the divine essence. Therefore, 3 The Father is really identical with the Son. Given 1 and 2 (both of which are principles of Latin Trinitarianism), together with the logically unimpeachable law of the transitivity of identity, 3 appears inescapable. The problem, of course, is that 3 is hostile to Latin Trinitarianism, which insists that there is a real distinction between the divine persons. The literature which treats this problem is voluminous, and solutions vary

72  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word considerably. While I make no pretence at being able to settle the matter here, it should be observed that ‘The Father is really identical with the divine essence’ should not be interpreted as ‘The Father is a name which straightforwardly designates the divine essence’. The Father is indeed identical with the divine essence, but only according to the mode of paternity, just as the Son is identical with the divine essence according to filiation. ‘Real identity’ is not equivalent to ‘synonymy’. The Father communicates the divine essence to the Son in its fullness; it is this complete, rather than merely partial, communication of the divine essence which establishes the real identity of this essence both with the donating Father and with the receiving Son. It is for this reason that the concept of ‘subsistent relation’ is so vital to a formal expression of the doctrine of the Trinity, for it is precisely this which captures both the unity and distinction of the persons. ‘The divine essence begetting’ and ‘the divine essence begotten’, which are the modes of being of the Father and of the Son, respectively, are clearly not identical. Yet, it is one and the same divine essence which is communicated in this inseparable internal operation. Father and Son do not pre-exist their relations to one another, but are constituted entirely by them, and these relations are nothing other than the donation and the receiving of the divine essence (similarly with the procession of the Spirit from the Two who jointly spirate). What is more, the divine essence is not something superadded to the three persons in their mutual relations. The persons exhaust the essence, lest there be a ‘fourth’: When we speak of the divine persons we are not speaking about something other than the divine essence, something adjoined to it, and determining it to be in some way or another. The divine relations are not principles of actuality supplying concrete personal existence to an abstract divine essence. Rather, they are simply the divine essence subsisting in a threefold manner.61 The Latin theologian thus resists the Social Trinitarian’s impulse to conceive of the divine persons as being ‘persons’ in the ‘full, modern’ sense. Quite apart from the fact that the modern sense of ‘person’ is, precisely in virtue of its modernity, other than the sense which prevailed when the classical statements of the doctrine were originally formulated (which is no mean objection in itself), the Latin theologian sees little motivation in predicating personhood of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit univocally with how it is predicated of Peter, James and John aside from a distaste for analogical language which the Latin theologian does not share. Perhaps somewhat predictably, the confession that God is una substantia, tres personae is understood by the Latin theologian entirely in analogical terms. Both in the case of ‘substance’ and in that of ‘person’, we should not expect to uncover a comprehensive definition which captures the full sense of these concepts as they are applied to both God and creatures.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 73 Inseparable Operations and the Incarnation of the Word An outstanding puzzle for one who holds that the divine persons are subsistent relations is that of how only one divine person may be the unique personal subject of an action or a state of being, especially as that person relates to the created order. There are, in fact, two difficulties concealed here: there is the question of how one divine person may be the subject of something of which the other persons fail to be subjects, and there is the question of how a divine person may be the subject of something of which the divine essence itself fails to be subject. Most pressing, for our purposes, is the question of how the Incarnation may have the Son alone as its personal subject. According to the Augustinian axiom, opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa, any action of a divine person is necessarily an act of the Trinity. For the Son to act in such a way that excludes the Father or the Spirit is therefore anathema to the Latin theologian. The motivation for the doctrine is quite straightforward. A divine person is nothing other than the divine essence subsisting in a certain mode. The person is not ‘something’ over and above the essence; each person is understood to be really identical with it. As such, a person cannot act independently of the essence. When a divine person acts, he acts only by means of the divine essence in which he subsists. But the divine essence is one: one in substance, one in power and one in will. The persons’ unity of action ad extra is thus an implication of their substantial unity ad intra. What is more, as per the doctrine of perichoresis, each person is integrally present in the others. The suggestion that one person might act ‘separate’ from the others therefore serves to vacate the persons of their irreducible relationality towards one another, which correspondingly vacates them of their distinct personal properties. The first attempt in the tradition (as far as I am aware) to wrestle with this problem is to be found in an early epistle of Augustine’s, replying to his friend Nebridius, who appears to have raised precisely this question: given that the Father, Son and Spirit act inseparably, why do we say that only the Son, and not the Father or Spirit, assumed a human nature?62 Augustine’s answer is, in fairness, not particularly impressive. The first part of his response involves demonstrating the inseparability of the external Trinitarian operations by drawing an analogy with the threefold being of a substance: its existence (the fact that it is), its essence (what it is) and its persistence (the fact that it exists through time). The force of the analogy appears to be that these three elements are really distinct while remaining inseparable in a substance. A substance cannot have any of these elements without the others. It cannot exist, for example, without existing as a certain kind of thing, nor without persisting through at least some measure of time. Nonetheless, existence, essence and persistence are not identical.63 This first analogy merely speaks to how the three divine persons may exist and (more importantly) act as one, despite their real distinction. The question remains as to how a particular action may be assigned to a particular

74  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word person. Augustine therefore shifts to a slightly different analogy, one between three distinct questions which the mind naturally poses when it encounters a substance: does it exist? What is it? Ought it to be approved or disapproved of, by some standard of worth?64 These questions (the first two, at least) are closely parallel to the threefold distinction of a substance just mentioned, although the emphasis here is more epistemic than ontological, concerned with the questions to which the apprehending intellect is prompted rather than with the ontological constitution of the object itself. It is this which Augustine presents as a truer analogy for the specific activities of the divine persons. Just as there is a discursive order in which these three questions are posed, there is a natural taxis which exists among the divine persons. Nonetheless, as already established, the principles of a substance’s constitution are inseparable, and just so for the persons of the Trinity. The Son is the analogue to the question the mind prompts as regards the essence of the object. The personal activity of the Son is that which trains the intellect and brings it to a proper understanding of God and his saving works. However, the analogy is strained, for several reasons. For one thing, given that the analogy is concerned with epistemic rather than ontological distinctions – a distinction between questions posed discursively by the subject rather than principles of being that are implicit within the object – there is little room in the analogy for real, extra-mental distinctions between the persons. For another, the analogy invites an interpretation whereby the persons perform three different (albeit inseparable) actions. But this is not what the doctrine of inseparable operations requires; what is required is that the persons together perform one act, because they act by means of the one simple essence. Finally, it is doubtful that the problem raised by Nebridius has truly been dissolved. If, as Augustine is at pains to stress, the persons act inseparably, and if the Incarnation is a divine act, then it is an act of the whole Trinity. At most, Augustine seems to have shown how the persons may act differently in the Incarnation. He has not shown how one person may act in the Incarnation in such a way that excludes the others; indeed, on Augustine’s own terms, this looks to be an impossibility. It is therefore difficult to share Michel René Barnes’s confidence that ‘Augustine has thereby answered Nebridius’ question’.65 A more promising avenue is one explored by Aquinas. First, let us consider Aquinas’s more straightforward approach to the question of how the Incarnation may have the Son, but not the divine essence in which the Son subsists, as its subject. As is well known, Aquinas maintained that there are real, extra-mental distinctions between each of the divine persons, but each divine person is really identical to the divine essence itself, differing from it only in concept. For Aquinas, this logical distinction between the essence and the second person is adequate to allow for only the latter to be incarnate, to the exclusion of the former. On the face of it, this defence looks rather weak. If the Son is really identical to the divine essence, differing

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 75 from it only in thought, it is difficult to see how only the person could be the subject of something of which the essence fails to be the subject. Numerous schoolmen succeeding Aquinas agreed that a merely logical distinction is inadequate.66 But there is perhaps more promise here than is readily apparent. Michael Gorman has suggested that we be attentive to the distinction between a union in and a union with. Aquinas does not state merely that the assumed human nature is united ‘with’ the second person; rather, it is a union ‘in’ person. The force of this statement is simply that the union is such as to result in exactly one person. Naturally, the human nature cannot thereby fail to be united ‘with’ the divine essence, and this much Aquinas is happy to grant. But this does not entail that the union is one that is ‘in’ nature; such would give rise to a single nature.67 In short, to speak of that which the union is ‘with’ signifies only the relata implicated in the relation, and the divine essence is surely involved, to say the least, in the hypostatic union. But to speak of that which the union is ‘in’ indicates what results from the union. And that which results is but one person or hypostasis. So, there is no contradiction in saying that the hypostatic union is a union ‘in’ person but not ‘in’ nature (even if, strictly speaking, the union is ‘with’ both). Turning to the question of how just one divine person may become Incarnate without the other two, Aquinas would have us distinguish between the principium of an action and its terminus, its source and that to which it relates or refers back. Insofar as God relates to the created order as its efficient cause, all three persons of the Trinity act inseparably. As per the doctrine of inseparable operations, Father, Son and Spirit are all involved in the external works of God. Importantly, this would include the Incarnation just as it includes all created effects which God brings about by his power: Aquinas is quite clear that the event of the Incarnation has God the Trinity as its cause. Therefore, if there is to be a sense in which the Son alone is related to the assumed nature, it cannot be according to the principle of the act, which belongs to the Trinity undividedly, but according to the term of the created effect. The Trinity causes the created human nature to relate back to God in such a way that the Son alone is the personal subject of that nature: As noted above, assumption holds two notes, the act itself and its term. The act comes from the divine power, common to the three persons; what belongs to its meaning as term belongs to one person in such a way that it does not belong to another. For the three persons caused the human nature to be united to the one person, the Son.68 The apparent incompatibility is defused by Aquinas by denying that the Incarnation is an act of the Son alone. The act of bringing the Incarnation about is a Trinitarian act, but the Son is the unique personal subject of the Incarnation in virtue of the manner in which the human nature relates to God: it relates to God in such a way that terminates particularly upon the

76  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word person of the Son. As with all God–creature relations, the relation is one that is entirely in the creature.69 Aquinas’s strategy is founded upon the concept of the mixed relation, explored earlier. God and creation relate to one another non-reciprocally, so that any change in the relationship between God and the world speaks only to a change in the created order itself, implying no corresponding change in the divine life in se. A fortiori, this would apply equally to the Word’s Incarnational ‘becoming’. It might seem natural to understand the Word’s ‘becoming’ flesh as some activity which the Word alone undertakes; however, this is not correct, nor is it a requirement of the language of ‘becoming’. In the Incarnation, the Trinity brings about a new created effect in which a created nature depends in a peculiar way upon the second person. What is more, the created nature never exists apart from this unique dependence-relation. To say that the three persons act inseparably in all of their external operations is not to say that they act indistinguishably or merely generically. The persons act inseparably, but only according to their own distinct personal properties; that is to say, only as the persons they are. In short, an authentically Trinitarian account of divine action must not erase either their substantial unity or their personal distinctions. Just as there is one divine essence and three distinct modes of being, so too there is one divine action ad extra and three distinct modes of action. But these ‘modes’, corresponding as they do to the personal modes of being which are immanently present within the divine life, are not distinct as to their external relations. It is not towards creation that the Father and the Son act according to distinct modes; it is only towards one another. Gilles Emery explains: The Son’s distinct mode of action (the Son is the one through whom the Father acts) does not consist in his way of being related towards creatures; it is rather the relationship to the Father which is proper to the Son within the heart of the Trinity. Another way of putting it is to say that this proper modality entirely resides in the person-to-person relations within the Trinity, and not in a relation to creatures which is other to this.70 For this reason, when the persons of the Trinity work so as to bring about a new created effect, they do so in such a way that a particular divine person is made newly present. For Aquinas, this may happen in one of two ways. One is according to exemplar causality, whereby the created effect bears a distinctive resemblance to the personal property of one divine person in particular (such as charity’s resemblance to the Holy Spirit as Gift). The other is according to esse, whereby a creature is joined to the very personal being of a particular divine person. It is this second sense that is operative in the case of the Incarnation.71 ‘Being’ or ‘esse’ in this context is an act: the Son’s unique act of being. Although there is but one single act of being in God, this act of being exists in three modes, corresponding with the three persons. The Son’s

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 77 personal mode of being is that of receiving the divine essence in its fullness from the Father, and, together with the Father, spirating the Holy Spirit. It is this unique mode of being to which Christ’s human nature is united.72 What precisely does this mean? Here, we are at the very heart of the hypostatic union itself. Metaphysically, it is doubtful that a human nature’s union to the personal being of the Son is one which admits of a creaturely parallel. As I shall return to this subject in the final chapter, I will simply draw out what I take to be the theological yield of this section: the hypostatic union is a relation between a divine person and a created human nature, where that nature is made by the power of God the Trinity to depend upon the second person such that the person is the ultimate subject of that nature, yet without any change being brought about in the life of the person as such. What is more, due to the way in which our language relates to God – incomprehensively and analogically – we should not expect to reduce the human nature’s dependence upon the Word to an instance of a mundane phenomenon. In light of the above treatment of ‘substance’ and ‘person’ as they apply to God, we have a principled way in which to deny that any God–creature relationship, not least the hypostatic union, should admit of an absolute cognitive reduction by means of the metaphysical equipment by which we analyse created substances and persons. Conclusion The doctrine of God which has been presented in this chapter is one of a simple, purely actual, numerically singular divine substance, possessed according to three modes, subsisting in the divine essence distinctly, yet integrally and inseparably, as persons. Both the sense in which the divine substance is a ‘substance’ and the sense in which the divine persons are ‘persons’ are analogical rather than univocal, which is to say, among other things, that the divine life is unique so as to transcend creaturely categories. I take these three elements – the simplicity of the divine essence, the irreducibly relational character of the persons and the doctrine of analogy – to be the central bulwarks of what has come to be known as a ‘classical’ doctrine of (the Christian) God. What is more, God and creation relate to one another according to an asymmetrical or non-reciprocal relation, such that any change in how God and creation are related speaks only to a change in the created order itself, implying no corresponding change in God. The Word’s becoming flesh is a matter of a created human nature being made by divine power to relate to the Word’s personal esse or mode of being. This chapter’s discussion may perhaps be seen as something of a ‘test case’ for an application of the doctrine of analogy to a number of contentious issues in theology proper. Much may meaningfully be said about both the internal life and external works of God, without either of these things being reduced to univocal categories which apply equally and identically to God and to creatures. Yet, the selection of each of these topics is not motivated

78  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word idly. Though not expressly Christological, each element of this chapter’s discussion composes part of a foundation for the Chalcedonian claim that Jesus Christ is a divine person who assumes a human nature. We now have at least enough conceptual purchase on the ‘divine side’ of this confession to proceed. Notes 1 George Christopher Stead, “Divine Substance in Tertullian,” The Journal of Theological Studies 14 (1963): 46–66. 2 Tertullian, “Against Praxeas, trans. Peter Holmes,” in Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2006). 3 Joseph T. Lienhard, “Ousia and Hypostasis: The Cappadocian Settlement and the Theology of ‘One Hypostasis’,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 99. 4 Aristotle, “Categories,” in Introductory Readings, trans. Terence Irwin and Gail Fine (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996), chapter 5. 5 Saint Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991), book VII, chapter 3.10. 6 St  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 2 (1a. 2–11): Existence and Nature of God, trans. Timothy McDermott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1a., q. 3, a. 5, reply 1. 7 Ibid., 1a., q. 11, a. 1, reply. Problematically, this principle might appear to militate against Aristotle’s account of immanent universals. For Aristotle, shared attributes exist, but only in the particulars which exemplify them. This suggests that universals exist in a ‘scattered’ way: the universal ‘humanity’ exists ‘here and there’, in this or that particular human being. However, I  believe that the principle that ‘being’ and ‘unity’ are the same can be reconciled with a belief in immanent universals. Something is ‘one’ only if it either lacks parts or if its parts are really united. This is only embarrassing for the immanent realist on the understanding that universals are divided by their several instances, that the humanity of Socrates and the humanity of Theaetetus are scattered ‘parts’ which make up the universal ‘humanity’. However, nothing demands this compositional interpretation, and there is therefore no difficulty in maintaining that universals exist as locatively scattered and yet without undergoing numerical division, that is, without failing to be ontologically ‘one’. 8 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 2, 1a., q. 11, a. 3, reply. See also James E. Dolezal, God Without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 73–77. 9 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 2, 1a., q. 3, a. 4. 10 Augustine, The Trinity, book VII, chapter 1.1. 11 Aquinas, “On Being and Essence, trans. Peter King,” in Basic Works, ed. Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014), chapter 4. 12 Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), esp. 25–50. 13 David S. Oderberg, Real Essentialism (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), 121–25. 14 John Laurence Hylton. Thomas, “The Identity of Being and Essence in God,” The Heythrop Journal 27, no. 4 (1986): 394. 15 Oliver Crisp disputes the claim that the doctrine of divine simplicity strictly entails the doctrine of divine impassibility: Analyzing Doctrine: Toward a Systematic Theology (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019), 62. As Crisp

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 79 observes, divine simplicity may be defined in various senses, and the claim that God’s essence is identical with his very act of existence is not the only way of defining the doctrine. However, since the sense of ‘simplicity’ which I am employing here is that in which existence and essence are understood to be identical in God, simplicity does indeed entail impassibility for the purposes of this discussion. 16 Alvin Plantinga suggests that the doctrine of divine simplicity entails that God is ‘a self-exemplifying property’: Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980), 47. That God may be thought of as a selfexemplifying property is explored more sympathetically in William F. Vallicella, “Divine Simplicity: A New Defense,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 9, no. 4 (1992): 508–25, and further defended in William F. Vallicella, “On Property Self-Exemplification: Rejoinder to Miller,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 11, no. 3 (1994): 478–81. 17 Aquinas, for one, asserts that God is neither universal nor particular: Summa Theologiae, Volume 3 (1a. 12–13): Knowing and Naming God, trans. Herbert McCabe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1a., q. 13, a. 9, reply 2. 18 Though it is not beyond all doubt that this might not have been the Eastern view as well. See Richard Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity?” The Heythrop Journal 43, no. 3 (2002): 275–94. 19 Aristotle, “Categories,” chapter 7. 20 Gilles Emery, “Ad Aliquid: Relation in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Jennifer Ramage,” in Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting Against Reason Is Contrary to the Nature of God, ed. Matthew L. Lamb (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 176. 21 Ibid., 185. 22 Mark G. Henninger, Relations: Medieval Theories 1250–1325 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 17–19. 23 Emery, “Ad Aliquid,” 188. 24 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 3, 1a., q. 13, a. 7, reply. 25 Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 87–88. 26 William Lane Craig, “Timelessness, Creation, and God’s Real Relation to the World,” Laval Théologique et Philosophique 56, no. 1 (2000): 93–112. 27 The central text on this subject in the analytic literature is Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” The Journal of Philosophy 78, no. 8 (1981): 429–58. 28 For further discussion, especially in relation to the above article by Craig, see Matthew R. McWhorter, “Aquinas on God’s Relation to the World,” New Blackfriars 94, no. 1049 (2013): 3–19. 29 Augustine, The Trinity, book V, chapter 4.17. 30 Ryan T. Mullins, “Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity,” Journal of Reformed Theology 7 (2013): 182–83, n5. 31 Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God Without Time, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 19–20. 32 Ibid., 44–45. 33 Mullins, “Simply Impossible,” 186. 34 Ibid., 195–99. 35 Mikail Whitfield, “Aquinas on Relations: A Topic Which Aquinas Himself Perceives as Foundational to Theology,” European Journal for the Study of Thomas Aquinas 38, no. 1 (2020): 24–25. 36 Henninger, Relations, 38.

80  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 37 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, “A  Treatise Against Eutyches and Nestorius,” in Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), III. 38 Aquinas certainly appeared content with Boethius’s original definition: Summa Theologiae, Volume 6 (1a. 27–32): The Trinity, trans. Ceslaus Velecky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1a., q. 29, a. 1. For a survey of the history and relevant philosophical and theological issues related to the development of ‘person’, see Marilyn McCord Adams, “What’s Metaphysically Special About Supposits? Some Medieval Variations on Aristotelian Substance,” Supplementary Volume – Aristotelian Society 79, no. 1 (2005): 15–52. 39 Brian Leftow, “Anti Social Trinitarianism,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, ed. Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 53. 40 Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea, “Introduction,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, ed. Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3. 41 Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., “Social Trinitarianism and Tritheism,” in Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Essays, ed. Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 22. See also: William Lane Craig, “Toward a Tenable Social Trinitarianism,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, ed. Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 89–99; William Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. 19–25. 42 Carl Mosser, “Fully Social Trinitarianism,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, ed. Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 133. 43 See Rudi te Velde, “The Divine Person(s): Trinity, Person, and Analogous Naming,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 359–69. 44 For a recent argument to this effect, see Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God, 26–39. 45 This paradigm is usually associated with Théodore de Régnon and has been utilised in various influential works, including the following: Jürgen Moltmann, History and the Triune God: Contributions to Trinitarian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1991); Colin E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Catherine Mowry Lacugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1993). 46 Phillip Cary, “On Behalf of Classical Trinitarianism: A  Critique of Rahner on the Trinity,” The Thomist: A  Speculative Quarterly Review 56, no. 3 (1992): 365–405; Phillip Cary, “Historical Perspectives on Trinitarian Doctrine,” Religious and Theological Studies Fellowship Bulletin 9 (1995): 2–9; Lewis Ayres, “ ‘Remember That You Are a Catholic’ (serm. 52.2): Augustine on the Unity of the Triune God,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 8, no. 1 (2000): 39–82; Lewis Ayres, “On Not Three People: The Fundamental Themes of Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology as Seen in To Ablabius: On Not Three Gods,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 445–74; Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Sarah Coakley, “ ‘Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: A Critique of Current Analytic Discussion,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 123–44; Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity?”; D. Glenn Butner, Jr., “For

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 81 and Against de Régnon: Trinitarianism East and West,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 17, no. 4 (2015): 399–412. 47 Augustine, The Trinity, book V, chapter 2.10. 48 Ibid., book V, chapter 1.6. 49 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “Retrieving the Tradition: Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17, no. 3 (1990): 444. Aquinas, likewise, warns against abstracting the persons from the personal properties which distinguish them, under pain of eliminating the persons entirely: Summa Theologiae, Volume 7 (1a. 33–43): Father, Son and Holy Ghost, trans. T. C. O’Brien (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1a., q. 40, a. 3, reply. 50 A number of objections to this effect, presented by recent theologians who are critical of the Latin tradition, are canvassed in Wesley Hill, “Divine Persons and Their ‘Reduction’ to Relations: A  Plea for Conceptual Clarity,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 14, no. 2 (2012): 149–50. 51 Augustine, The Trinity, book VII, chapter 1.2. 52 Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Williston, ND: Wiley, 2008), 215. 53 Most influentially, John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997). 54 Willliam Norris Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics: Being, God, Person (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 102–22. 55 Oliver D. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1. See also Karen Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81, no. 956 (2000): 432–45; Randall E. Otto, “The Use and Abuse of Perichoresis in Recent Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 54, no. 3 (2001): 366–84. 56 Gilles Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas? trans. Matthew Levering,” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 64, no. 4 (2000): 554. 57 Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics, 232; cf. Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992), 233. 58 See Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014), 79–84. 59 This difference between Aquinas and Scotus thus appears to be merely semantic. However, the formal distinction itself is rather dubious as a via media between real and logical distinctions. As Feser observes, either the intellect plays a role in creating the distinction or it does not, and the formal distinction therefore seems to be reducible to one kind of distinction or the other: ibid., 83. 60 Among others, Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God, 37–38. 61 James E. Dolezal, “Trinity, Simplicity and the Status of God’s Personal Relations,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, no. 1 (2014): 94. See also Thomas Joseph White, “Divine Simplicity and the Holy Trinity,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 18, no. 1 (2016): 66–93. 62 Saint Augustine, “Letter 11. Augustine to Nebridius (c. 389),” in The Fathers of the Church: Saint Augustine Letters, trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons, vol. 1. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1951), 27. 63 Ibid., 27–28. 64 Ibid., 28–29. 65 Michel René Barnes, “Rereading Augustine’s Theology of the Trinity,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 163.

82  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 66 Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 149–51. Scotus, in particular, invokes his ‘formal distinction’ in order to solve the difficulty. 67 Michael Gorman, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 51–52. 68 St  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 48 (3a. 1–6): The Incarnate Word, trans. R. J. Hennessey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3a., q. 3, a. 4, reply. 69 Similar approaches have been adopted in a handful of contemporary treatments, but none, it seems to me, has advanced very much beyond Aquinas’s insight on this matter. See Kyle Claunch, “What God Hath Done Together: Defending the Historic Doctrine of the Inseparable Operations of the Trinity,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 56, no. 4 (2013): 781–800; Adonis Vidu, “Trinitarian Inseparable Operations and the Incarnation,” Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016): 106–27. 70 Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 352. 71 Dominic Legge, The Trinitarian Christology of St Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 105–6. 72 Ibid., 106–11.

References Adams, Marilyn McCord. “What’s Metaphysically Special About Supposits? Some Medieval Variations on Aristotelian Substance.” Supplementary Volume – Aristotelian Society 79, no. 1 (2005): 15–52. Aquinas, St Thomas. Summa Theologiae, Volume 2 (1a. 2–11): Existence and Nature of God. Translated by Timothy McDermott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. Summa Theologiae, Volume 3 (1a. 12–13): Knowing and Naming God. Translated by Herbert McCabe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. Summa Theologiae, Volume 6 (1a. 27–32): The Trinity. Translated by Ceslaus Velecky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. Summa Theologiae, Volume 7 (1a. 33–43): Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Translated by T. C. O’Brien. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. Summa Theologiae, Volume 48 (3a. 1–6): The Incarnate Word. Translated by R. J. Hennessey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. “On Being and Essence (Translated by Peter King).” In Basic Works, edited by Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014. Aristotle. Introductory Readings. Translated by Terence Irwin and Gail Fine. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996. Augustine, Saint. The Fathers of the Church: Saint Augustine Letters. Translated by Sister Wilfrid Parsons. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1951. ———. The Trinity. Translated by Edmund Hill. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991. Ayres, Lewis. “ ‘Remember That You Are a Catholic’ (serm. 52.2): Augustine on the Unity of the Triune God.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 8, no. 1 (2000): 39–82. ———. “On Not Three People: The Fundamental Themes of Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology as Seen in To Ablabius: On Not Three Gods.” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 445–74.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 83 ———. Augustine and the Trinity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Barnes, Michel René. “Rereading Augustine’s Theology of the Trinity.” In The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, 145–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Boethius. Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968. Butner, D. Glenn, Jr. “For and Against de Régnon: Trinitarianism East and West.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 17, no. 4 (2015): 399–412. Cary, Phillip. “On Behalf of Classical Trinitarianism: A  Critique of Rahner on the Trinity.” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 56, no. 3 (1992): 365–405. ———. “Historical Perspectives on Trinitarian Doctrine.” Religious and Theological Studies Fellowship Bulletin 9 (1995): 2–9. Clarke, William Norris. Explorations in Metaphysics: Being, God, Person. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. Claunch, Kyle. “What God Hath Done Together: Defending the Historic Doctrine of the Inseparable Operations of the Trinity.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 56, no. 4 (2013): 781–800. Coakley, Sarah. “ ‘Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: A Critique of Current Analytic Discussion.” In The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, 123–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Craig, William Lane. “Timelessness, Creation, and God’s Real Relation to the World.” Laval Théologique et Philosophique 56, no. 1 (2000): 93–112. ———. “Toward a Tenable Social Trinitarianism.” In Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, edited by Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea, 89–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Crisp, Oliver D. Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ———. Analyzing Doctrine: Toward a Systematic Theology. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019. Cross, Richard. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002a. ———. “Two Models of the Trinity?” The Heythrop Journal 43, no. 3 (2002b): 275–94. Davis, Stephen T., Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, eds. The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Dolezal, James E. God Without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011. ———. “Trinity, Simplicity and the Status of God’s Personal Relations.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, no. 1 (2014): 79–98. Emery, Gilles. “Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas? (Translated by Matthew Levering).” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 64, no. 4 (2000): 521–63. ———. The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. Translated by Francesca Aran Murphy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. ———. “Ad Aliquid: Relation in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (Translated by Jennifer Ramage).” In Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting Against Reason Is Contrary to the Nature of God, edited by Matthew L. Lamb, 175–201. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016.

84  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word Emery, Gilles, and Matthew Levering, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Feenstra, Ronald J., and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., eds. Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Essays. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. Feser, Edward. Scholastic Metaphysics: A  Contemporary Introduction. Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014. Gorman, Michael. Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Gunton, Colin E. The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Hasker, William. Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Helm, Paul. Eternal God: A Study of God Without Time. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Henninger, Mark G. Relations: Medieval Theories 1250–1325. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Hill, Wesley. “Divine Persons and Their ‘Reduction’ to Relations: A  Plea for Conceptual Clarity.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 14, no. 2 (2012): 148–60. Johnson, Elizabeth A. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992. Kenny, Anthony. Aquinas on Being. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Kilby, Karen. “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity.” New Blackfriars 81, no. 956 (2000): 432–45. Lacugna, Catherine Mowry. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1993. Lamb, Matthew L., ed. Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting Against Reason Is Contrary to the Nature of God. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Leftow, Brian. “Anti Social Trinitarianism.” In Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, edited by Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea, 52–88. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Legge, Dominic. The Trinitarian Christology of St Thomas Aquinas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Levering, Matthew. Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology. Williston, ND: Wiley, 2008. Lienhard, Joseph T. “Ousia and Hypostasis: The Cappadocian Settlement and the Theology of ‘One Hypostasis’.” In The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, 99–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. McCall, Thomas, and Michael C. Rea. “Introduction.” In Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, edited by Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea, 1–15. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009a. ———, eds. Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009b. McWhorter, Matthew R. “Aquinas on God’s Relation to the World.” New Blackfriars 94, no. 1049 (2013): 3–19.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assuming Word 85 Moltmann, Jürgen. History and the Triune God: Contributions to Trinitarian Theology. London: SCM Press, 1991. Mosser, Carl. “Fully Social Trinitarianism.” In Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, edited by Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea, 131–50. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Mullins, Ryan T. “Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity.” Journal of Reformed Theology 7 (2013): 181–203. Oderberg, David S. Real Essentialism. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007. Otto, Randall E. “The Use and Abuse of Perichoresis in Recent Theology.” Scottish Journal of Theology 54, no. 3 (2001): 366–84. Plantinga, Alvin. Does God Have a Nature? Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980. Plantinga, Cornelius, Jr. “Social Trinitarianism and Tritheism.” In Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Essays, edited by Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., 21–47. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. Ratzinger, Cardinal Joseph. “Retrieving the Tradition: Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology.” Communio 17, no. 3 (1990): 439–54. Schaff, Philip, ed. Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2006. Stead, George Christopher. “Divine Substance in Tertullian.” The Journal of Theological Studies 14 (1963): 46–66. Stump, Eleonore, and Norman Kretzmann. “Eternity.” The Journal of Philosophy 78, no. 8 (1981): 429–58. Te Velde, Rudi. “The Divine Person(s): Trinity, Person, and Analogous Naming.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, edited by Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering, 359–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Thomas, John Laurence Hylton. “The Identity of Being and Essence in God.” The Heythrop Journal 27, no. 4 (1986): 394–408. Vallicella, William F. “Divine Simplicity: A  New Defense.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 9, no. 4 (1992): 508–25. ———. “On Property Self-Exemplification: Rejoinder to Miller.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 11, no. 3 (1994): 478–81. Vidu, Adonis. “Trinitarian Inseparable Operations and the Incarnation.” Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016): 106–27. White, Thomas Joseph. “Divine Simplicity and the Holy Trinity.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 18, no. 1 (2016): 66–93. Whitfield, Mikail. “Aquinas on Relations: A Topic Which Aquinas Himself Perceives as Foundational to Theology.” European Journal for the Study of Thomas Aquinas 38, no. 1 (2020): 15–32. Zizioulas, John D. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997.

3 Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature

This chapter continues the task of giving metaphysical expression to the hypostatic union, though this time with emphasis upon the human nature assumed by the Word. My purpose is, first, to discuss what is intended by ‘human nature’ and, second, to consider the place of the language of ‘composition’ in an expression of the metaphysics of the hypostatic union. I argue that Christ’s human nature should be understood as an individual, not in the sense of being a complete human person separate from the Word, but in the sense of being a concrete particular, rather than as something universal or abstract. Following this, I present a philosophical and theological case against various accounts of the hypostatic union which emphasise the compositeness of Christ; that Christ is, in one sense or another, a composite being which includes the assumed human nature as a part. This purely negative treatment will later be supplemented by a more positive account of the hypostatic union, to be conducted in the final chapter of this work. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section includes a brief philosophical discussion of an ongoing debate in metaphysics, that of the relationship between a substance and its properties. Certain of the early moderns such as John Locke and David Hume problematised the concept of ‘substance’, either by abstracting a substance from all of its properties or by simply identifying the former with the latter. I suggest that returning to a more traditional Aristotelianism on this question is sufficient to resolve the difficulties associated with this rather anachronistic dilemma. Second, I present a discussion of the metaphysical status of Christ’s human nature. The human nature, I  argue, should be understood as a substance, which has an inherent capacity to bear properties from which the divine nature is, in a sense, insulated. As such, Christ’s human properties are not borne by the Word ‘immediately’, such that they inhere within and inform the divine life itself, but are borne immediately by the human nature and are predicable of the Word only insofar as the Word and the human nature are related hypostatically. In the third and fourth sections, I present the case against composition in Christology, by first treating the medieval subsistence theory and then contemporary ‘compositional Christology’ as it finds expression in the work of DOI: 10.4324/9781003381358-4

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 87 a number of analytic thinkers. Though the two theories are somewhat different, they both share in the commitment that the hypostatic union is best understood in compositional terms, whereby Christ is taken to be a composite being (whether Christ is to be counted as a composite person remains to be seen) of which the assumed nature is a component. While there is a superficial promise in modelling the hypostatic union after the fashion of a whole’s relationship to its parts, I intend to make the case that a low value is to be assigned to such accounts in the final analysis. Instead, I  suggest that preference should be given to an account of the hypostatic union which emphasises a strong identity between Christ and the simple divine person who, owing precisely to his simplicity, admits of no composition whatsoever. This is not to say that there is no union between the divine person and the human nature. Rather, my claim is that the two do not, in virtue of their union, go on to compose something, whether this ‘something’ is understood to be the very Word itself or something distinct of which the Word is one part. My rejection of compositional accounts in all their expressions rests on the twofold commitment that nothing is a part of the divine Word and the divine Word is not a part of anything else. Substance and Accident Substances are the bearers or supporters of accidents or properties. However, there is what seems to be a destructive dilemma concerning the relationship of a substance to its properties, which may be expressed in the form of the following two questions: is a substance nothing over and above its properties? or, is a substance something over and above its properties? If a substance is indeed something which bears properties, and is not simply reducible to them, then we seem to be committed to positing a substrate which undergirds the properties in question. Since this substrate is, by definition, something other than the properties it bears, the substrate considered in itself must be bare and featureless, a ‘bare particular’ or ‘bare substrate’. John Locke famously posited such entities.1 If, on the other hand, a substance is nothing in addition to its properties, such that there is no substrate at all (bare or otherwise), then it would seem that a substance just is a bundle of properties. Such was argued by David Hume.2 Neither suggestion looks particularly promising. Bare substrates are not at all intelligible. What could a substance possibly be, apart from its properties? A featureless entity is not really anything at all, and so to posit the existence of such entities is dubious indeed. More dubious still is the suggestion that not only do such entities exist but that they capture the identity of a given substance; that what Socrates truly is is just one such substrate, bare and featureless. And if the ‘true’ Socrates really is a bare substrate, what makes it distinctive as Socrates, rather than as something else? If the substrate with which Socrates is allegedly identical is featureless, there is nothing by which to distinguish the substrate as Socrates, nor as anything else which Socrates

88  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature essentially is (like a human being). The only way of securing the individuation of substances, therefore, is for each substrate to have a distinct, individualising feature (a haecceity). But then the substrate would no longer be truly bare, contra hypothesin.3 Perhaps, then, a substance really is not anything over and above its properties, but is simply a bundle of properties. However, this Humean avenue is not obviously any more intelligible than the Lockean. Properties, after all, are properties of something; there must be something – Socrates, say – to which wisdom, baldness etc. are proper. For Hume, however, there is no such thing. Fundamentally, there really are no substances, no property bearers. There are only the properties themselves, but nothing for these properties to be of. In one sense, then, Hume has effectively defined substances out of existence. But if there is no substance, to which the accidents are proper, then what accounts for their unity? As David Oderberg points out, it is not at all clear how the yellowness of a lump of gold could be united to its malleability, or how its weight could be united to its fusibility, if there were not a common underlying subject. It is not enough merely to appeal to their spatial proximity, for there is a sense in which the surface of the gold is physically contiguous with the surrounding air, and yet we speak of the gold and the air as distinct entities.4 In another sense, Hume has effectively elevated properties to the dignity of substancehood; they are now the things that really exist, undergo change and even bear properties of their own. As Edward Feser has it: Suppose the lump of gold is thrown through the air. Its motion is an accident, but of what? If we say that the motion is not an accident of any of the other accidents, but is entirely separate from them, then how is it that the other accidents move through the air? Why is it not the motion alone that moves, while the yellowness, malleability, etc. stay still? But if we say instead that the motion is an accident of the accidents, then we’re back to the ontology of substances and accidents that the bundle theorist was trying to avoid.5 Feser goes on to frame the dilemma between Locke and Hume with admirable clarity: The mistake both of these competing views make is to suppose that there is something more fundamental than the gold, to which it is reducible. The substratum theory strips away all the accidents of the gold and identifies the gold with whatever it is that is left. Since there doesn’t seem to be anything left, the bundle theorist takes the stripped off accidents and identifies the gold with them instead. But what the gold really is is substance and accidents together. The substratum theorist is like someone who peels away every layer of an onion and thinks that what an onion ‘really’ is is what is left after all the layers are removed.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 89 The bundle theorist is like someone who arranges the peeled away layers into a pile and says that that is what an onion ‘really’ is. Of course, what an onion really is is what you had before the layers were stripped off. And what a lump of gold really is is what we have before we abstract the accidents of the gold from the substance.6 If one were to approach the concept of ‘substance’ with the impression that the substrate theory and the bundle theory are the only available options, then one could be forgiven for doubting the intelligibility of substance talk. Allegedly, substances are the things which bear properties, but if we create too much conceptual space between a substance and its properties then we are left with the bare and featureless ‘we know not what’ of Locke. And if we do not create enough space between a substance and its properties, to the extent that the former is simply identified with the latter, then we are left with what is probably the equally unintelligible notion of properties that are ‘just there’, with no decisive principle of unity. Both mistakes, as Feser is suggesting, spring from the unspoken commitment that substances themselves cannot be the kinds of things that there really are, such that substances must be reduced to some more fundamental reality (substrates, property bundles). But perhaps this intuition is misplaced. Perhaps the things that there really are are substances; that is, hylomorphic compounds which are the subjects of accidents. Substances are the basic entities which comprise reality for the reason that they are compounds of form and matter, and form is never encountered except insofar as it is enmattered and matter is never encountered except insofar as it is informed. It is for this reason that any and all attempts at reduction are bound to fail. The bare substrate of the Lockean is reminiscent of the concept of prime matter, to the extent that both are per se featureless and are characterised only by a receptivity to activation. But we cannot reduce a substance to a bare substrate any more than we can reduce a substance to its primary matter: in the absence of some principle of actuality, pure potency is really nothing at all. Nor can we do away with the substantial form of a substance which affords it the unity required for there to be a subject of the properties. Bundle theory is notorious for running into modal problems associated with identity: if a substance is identical with a certain bundle of properties, and one of those properties is lost, then the substance surely ceases to exist and something new appears. Bundle theorists thus forfeit any principle of stability in nature. A bundle theorist may respond by positing an essential ‘nucleus’ of properties, whose loss the substance could not survive even if it can survive the loss of its more peripheral qualities. However, in the absence of any principle of unity, such as a substantial form, there is simply no metaphysically decisive division to be made between nuclear and non-nuclear properties. Moreover, there is no way of accounting for the unity of the nucleus any more than that of the bundle in toto.

90  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature As discussed in Chapter  1, Aristotelian hylomorphism distinguishes between two senses of ‘form’: substantial forms and accidental forms. The substantial form – of which there is exactly one in each substance – directly informs prime matter and gives rise to a substance. It will then come to be the subject of many accidental forms, which do not themselves directly determine prime matter but which further modify the already-complete substance. Thus, on hylomorphism, not all ‘properties’ are of the same status. While mere accidents may be stripped away, whether in reality or in concept, leaving behind the substrate which serves as their support, this substrate is not ‘bare’ as it is for Locke, but is itself a complete substance, a compound of prime matter and substantial form. Yet, this substantial form (and the essential properties which attend it) cannot be stripped away in the same manner, for all we would be left with is naked prime matter, which is a metaphysical impossibility. Hylomorphism, therefore, is advantaged over the Lockean view, for it may safely jettison a curious and unintelligible item from its ontological inventory. Because prime matter is, necessarily, always informed by some substantial form or other, bare substrates are surplus to our metaphysical requirements. But hylomorphism is also advantaged over the bundle theorist, particularly one with ‘nuclear’ sympathies. Because the hylomorphist distinguishes strongly between a substance’s substantial form and its many accidental forms, there is a categorical distinction between what may be said of it essentialiter and what may be said of it accidentaliter. The basis of the substance’s unity is the union between substantial form and prime matter, and whatever else may be predicated of the substance is said only by way of modification. The substance’s unity and continuity are thus both accounted for, in such a way that they are not accounted for by Hume. It must be recognised, furthermore, that hylomorphism is decidedly antiPlatonist. For the hylomorphist, everything that is required for Socrates to be human is contained within Socrates. It is precisely his substantial form which determines him to be what he is. By contrast, the Platonist considers Socrates to be human only by virtue of his participation in the transcendent Form ‘humanity’. Platonism may be rejected chiefly on the grounds of explanatory parsimony, that it is by no means necessary to invoke a realm of uninstantiated universals in order to account either for sameness of attribute or for degrees of exemplification. What is more, Platonic Forms cannot even supply what Aristotelian substantial forms supply, namely, the principle of unity in a substance. Finally, Platonism famously runs into problems of regression which the Aristotelian does not face, problems which further motivate the rejection of transcendent universals.7 Concrete Versus Abstract I have already given some consideration to the question of what is meant by the term ‘nature’ in the Chalcedonian ‘one person, two natures’ formula,

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 91 particularly as it regards the divine nature. My purpose now is to probe similar questions as they relate to the assumed human nature. One question which, as Oliver Crisp observes, has been discussed quite extensively in the literature by philosophical theologians, but which has been undeservedly neglected by systematicians of a less analytic persuasion,8 is that of the metaphysical status of the human nature assumed by the Word, namely, is Christ’s human nature to be understood in concrete or abstract terms? Is it to be understood as a thing, a substance and (in some sense) an individual? Or is it to be understood as merely a property or set of properties? On the concretist understanding, Christ’s human nature has all the trappings of an Aristotelian primary substance, a ‘something’, individuated from all other substances, thus enjoying a kind of ontological independence. One sense in which a substance is independent is that which is opposed to the dependence of accidents: accidents depend asymmetrically upon a substance such that the former only ever exist ‘in’ the latter. Accidents inhere in substances, but not vice versa. A  second sense in which substances are independent is that nothing more needs to be added or related to them in order to determine them as the things that they are. In contrast with the Platonic view, it is the form of humanity, immanently present in a particular human substance, that is sufficient to determine its essence as human. It requires no external relation to an abstract Idea of ‘humanity’. The human nature is ‘individual’ in the sense that it admits of an objective principle of unity, namely its substantial form, and hence exists undividedly. On the abstractist view, however, the assumption of human nature consists in the acquiring of a set of properties. Christ has a human nature in the sense that he exemplifies sufficiently many specific properties to qualify as a member of the natural kind ‘human’. Christ’s humanity is therefore the result of a certain critical mass of human properties having been acquired by the Word. How best to make sense of the abstractist proposal? One way is to conceive of the assumed nature according to some kind of bundle theory. Bundle theories come in both realist and nominalist varieties: they may understand concrete particulars as being composed of bundles of universals or bundles of tropes, properties that are as particular as the particulars which exemplify them. However, we have already seen that bundle theories are highly questionable. Due to the paucity of the bundle theorist’s ontology, admitting only of properties but no distinct property bearers, they offer no principles of unity and distinction by which to ‘carve up’ the world into really distinct objects. A second (and more conventional) way in which to make sense of abstractism is to understand the human properties as being acquired by the Word ‘immediately’, so to speak. There are certain properties which are required in order to qualify as a member of humankind, and the assumption of human nature consists in the Word’s acquiring these very properties. What distinguishes this view from the first is that the Word is considered

92  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature to straightforwardly exemplify all of the properties required in order to be human. Unlike the bundle theory, which struggles to find any meaningful subject of the human properties, this second form of abstractism (for which there seems to be no available name) understands the Word itself to be the immediate and unqualified subject of all of the human properties. The most significant metaphysical difference between concretism and abstractism is that only the concretist view considers the human nature to be a property bearer in its own right. This raises the question of what, on the abstractist view, can be the bearer of the human properties. It would seem that the only plausible candidate for the role of property bearer is the person of the Word itself. What else could be the bearer of human properties, if not the Word? Certainly not the human nature: on the abstract-nature view, Christ’s human nature is nothing other than the set of properties that are sufficient to qualify the Word as human. As such, the human nature cannot be said to bear properties, for it just is a set of properties. Perhaps the divine essence, in distinction from any divine person in particular, might be understood as the bearer of human properties, but, as we shall see, this does not improve matters. The Incarnation is therefore understood by the abstractist as the Word’s acquiring human properties that it previously did not possess. Among such would be properties that are the logical complements of other properties traditionally understood as being essential to divinity. It therefore follows that the only way in which the Word may acquire such human properties is if the Word does not also possess the divine properties that are incompatible with them, either because such properties are forfeited in a kenotic fashion or because they are simply not divine properties in any sense. For instance, if ‘passibility’ is an essential human property, then the Word must be(come) passible in order to be vere homo. This, in turn, requires either that the divine essence is never impassible or that the Word ceases to be impassible when it becomes passible. In any case, there seems to be no sense in which the Word may be both impassible and passible simultaneously. Extending this procedure, it would appear that all of the essential divine and human properties must be compatible with each other. The concrete-nature view is not committed to this, however. Because the concretist allows that the human nature may be understood as being the bearer of human properties – the immediate bearer, at least – there is no need for all of the divine and human properties to be mutually compatible. Instead, the divine and human properties may be ‘segregated’ to one or the other of the two natures, on the understanding that the divine and human natures are each capable of bearing properties, and are not simply reducible to them. Abstractism, on the other hand, would seem to imply that all of the human properties are predicated of the divine person accidentally, or by way of modification, which prompts all manner of difficulties of its own. Not only would this serve to introduce accidents into the Godhead, but it also tends

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 93 towards a Monophysite Christology, by which ‘human nature’ is considered to be nothing more than a set of properties which modify the divine nature rather than constituting a complete substance in its own right. Concretism avoids these difficulties by affording substantiality, and not merely accidentality, to the human nature itself. Perhaps the best way to proceed on the question of whether Christ’s human nature is concrete or abstract is to pose the further question, ‘How plausible is the thesis that all of the properties that are essential to divinity and all of the properties that are essential to humanity are compatible with one another?’ At this stage, I will simply assert without argument that I find such a thesis implausible. Instead, I consider it to be far more plausible that there are at least some essential properties of the divine nature which are incompatible with human existence as such, and vice versa. I will return to this question in Chapter 4. But, if I am correct on this point, then I suggest that we are committed to the concrete-nature view. It is difficult to dispute the fact that concretism is the more traditional position. It seems to have been accepted with virtual universality by the fathers and the medievals alike.9 The textual evidence for this is considerable, but perhaps the clearest and most authoritative statement to this effect is that of John of Damascus. For the Damascene, the Word cannot have assumed humanity understood as a mere abstraction, for this would render the Incarnation a purely conceptual phenomenon and thus a fiction. But nor can the Word have assumed humanity understood as a universal, for this would imply that the Word had assumed all particular human beings. The only remaining possibility is that the Word assumed an individual human nature: Now, when God the Word became incarnate, He did not assume His human nature as taken in a purely theoretical sense – for that would have been no real incarnation, but a fraudulent and fictitious one. Nor did He assume it as taken specifically, because He did not assume all persons. But He did assume it as taken individually, which is the same as that taken specifically.10 One prominent voice in favour of the abstract-nature view is Richard Swinburne. Although Swinburne does not state explicitly that he understands the assumed human nature in abstract terms, he does believe human nature to be universal rather than particular or individual. The Incarnation is to be understood as the Word’s acquiring properties necessary and sufficient to qualify as human (which is precisely what I take the abstract-nature view to be): ‘His human nature must be universal, in no way peculiar to Christ – it is just a set of properties he acquires’.11 Swinburne therefore considers the medieval understanding that Christ’s human nature is an individual to be a ‘muddle’ and an aberrant departure from what was apparently the patristic consensus that human nature is universal.12

94  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature Swinburne’s argument does not take account of the fact that certain of the terms being employed in this discussion – especially ‘nature’ and ‘individual’ – may be used in various senses. Swinburne argues that Christ’s human nature cannot be individual, because that would imply that it cannot be shared. But, clearly, ‘human nature’ is something which can be shared: apart from the common-sense observation that there is more than one human being in existence, the Chalcedonian ‘consubstantiality’ stipulation requires that we and Christ instantiate the same universal common nature. This observation is fair but ignores the fact that ‘nature’ may be employed in both universal and particular senses. ‘Human nature’, in the sense of the natural kind ‘humanity’, is indeed shareable, but an individual human nature, understood as a substance, is particular and hence is unshareable. To this extent, there is no difficulty in the claim that the Word assumed humanity in atomo. Swinburne takes it for granted that allowing the human nature to be an individual requires that it be a hypostasis in its own right. Swinburne observes that there is no such thing as a nature existing independently of a hypostasis, which is indeed an ancient and respectable metaphysical axiom.13 This much we may grant; however, the concretist at no point claims that Christ’s human nature is without a hypostasis. The traditional claim that the human nature is anhypostatos indicates merely that the hypostasis of the human nature is none other than the person of the Word. The assumed nature is anhypostatos, lacking a hypostasis, only in the sense that it fails to be idioupostatos, supplying or serving as its own person-forming principle. Thus, in claiming that Christ’s human nature is individual, this does not imply that it is, or has, a hypostasis separate from that of the Word.14 As Richard Sturch has observed, to say that every nature must have a hypostasis is not to say that it must have its own distinct hypostasis, in the same way that the requirement that all squares have four corners does not prohibit two complete squares from sharing a corner.15 In treating the question of the Incarnation’s logical coherence, Swinburne resorts to the traditional procedure of predicating suffering of Christ qua human and the inability to suffer of Christ qua divine.16 However, given his insistence that only the divine nature is a substance, whereas the human nature is not, being only a set of properties acquired by the Word, this classical manoeuvre seems somewhat limp. As we shall discover in Chapter  4, ‘qua’ modifications may be interpreted in various exclusive senses, and Swinburne does not tell us which sense he intends. Moreover, since for Swinburne the Incarnation is to be understood as a divine person’s acquiring a set of human properties, there is nowhere for these properties to be segregated to, other than the divine essence itself. ‘Passibility’ is a property acquired by the divine Word in its very divinity, and so it is not at all clear what it would mean to say that Christ is only passible qua human. It would be false, after all, to say that Christ is passible in virtue of being human; on Swinburne’s account, the reality is precisely the reverse: Christ is human in virtue of being passible (as well as possessing any other properties that are essential to humanity).

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 95 I argue, therefore, that the concrete-nature view is to be preferred, for it allows the human nature to be the immediate (if not the ultimate) subject of the human properties, thus blocking the human properties from informing, altering, constituting, inhering within or actualising any passive potencies of the divine essence itself. The classical doctrine of God which was defended in Chapter 2 thus demands a concretist understanding of the assumed human nature, for abstractist conceptions, understanding the human nature simply in terms of properties which the Word acquires, cannot secure the simplicity and pure actuality of the divine essence. In Chapter 4, it will become apparent that concretism is demanded not only by the principles of classical theism but also by the principles of logic, for the claim that all of the essential divine and human properties might be exemplified immediately by the Word cannot, it transpires, avoid formal contradiction. Composition and the Hypostatic Union I – The Subsistence Theory It is commonplace for concretists about Christ’s human nature to express the metaphysics of the hypostatic union with at least some reference to ‘composition’. It is not difficult to see why: if Christ’s human nature is understood to be a concrete particular, an Aristotelian primary substance (or something very much like it), then the hypostatic union appears to involve some manner of conjunction. Insofar as a divine person and an individual human nature are united, it seems natural to hold that there is some definite product to which the two jointly give rise. Such would imply that there is some complex object which includes both a divine person and a human nature as parts, something which, as a result of the union, comes to be. For those who hold to such a view, the product in question is none other than Jesus Christ. Christ is a composite being which has, as its parts, the second person of the Trinity and a particular human body and soul. One finds that certain of the medievals, notably Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, speak of the hypostatic union in compositional terms. One also finds that ‘compositional Christology’ has enjoyed enthusiastic defence by a number of contemporary analytic thinkers. These various figures are by no means united, however, on precisely what sense of ‘composition’ is at work in their respective accounts of the metaphysics of the hypostatic union, and each is deserving of separate treatment. In this section, I  will discuss the medieval compositionalism of Aquinas and Scotus. In the following section, I will discuss two of its contemporary analytic expressions. My intention is to argue against composition in the Incarnation except in its most modest sense, a sense which is most in keeping with Aquinas’s account. Furthermore, I will argue that adopting the language of ‘composition’ for expressing the metaphysics of the hypostatic union is more trouble than it is worth. Medieval discussions of the metaphysics of the hypostatic union were dominated by Peter Lombard’s Libri Quattuor Sententiarum, commonly known as the Sentences, in the third book of which were presented three ‘opinions’ regarding the hypostatic union.17 Though they were frequently

96  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature referred to simply as the first, second and third opinions, they would later come to be known, respectively, as the assumptus homo theory, the subsistence theory and the habitus theory.18 The first and third opinions would come to be widely rejected and both suffered critical treatment at the hands of Aquinas, who settled upon the subsistence theory. Aquinas maintained that the first and third opinions implicitly entail Nestorianism: the former, because it posits a duality of subjects in Christ; the latter, because it suggests a merely accidental union.19 The assumptus homo theory states that what was assumed in the Incarnation is a complete human being, composed of a human body and a rational soul.20 Though this opinion enjoyed some support in early scholasticism, the general consensus of the tradition is that it amounts to little more than thinly veiled Nestorianism, whereby the Word is united to a human being which is complete in itself, apart from its union with the Word. Supporters of the theory are content to say not only that ‘God became man’ but also that ‘a man became God’. Yet, this latter proposition proves either incoherent or unorthodox, depending on what sense is assigned to the subject term, ‘a man’. If we take ‘a man’ as referring to the divine Word, as the conventions of medieval semantics would ordinarily dictate, then ‘a man became God’ is clearly false: the Word never became God.21 If, on the other hand, we take ‘a man’ as referring to the assumed human nature, then we may only say that ‘a man became God’ if we conceive of the human nature as something complete in itself prior to the Incarnational event. It appears, therefore, that charges of Nestorianism are indeed well founded. The habitus theory states that the human nature of Christ is related to the Word after the fashion of a donned garment. Typically, this is taken to mean that Christ’s human body and rational soul enjoy no substantial unity among themselves but are rather united to the Word independently of one another.22 There is, to be sure, a certain attraction to this view. Arguably, what the habitus theory allows is that the Word be fully human – for it is united severally to everything that is required in order to qualify as human – while offering a principled way in which to deny that Christ’s human nature is a person in its own right. Because Christ’s human body and soul are united to the divine person severally rather than as a substantial unity, there is a metaphysical ‘block’ on the human nature’s counting as a person or hypostasis. What is more, there need be no ad hoc tinkering with Boethius’s classical definition: a person (at least in creaturely contexts) can simply be counted as an individual substance of a rational nature. Happily for the Chalcedonian Christologist, the habitus theory appears to be denying that Christ’s human nature is a complete human substance at all, and so there is no question of its counting as a person. Aquinas’s rejection of the habitus theory is quite straightforward. For Aquinas, and closely following Aristotle, a human body that is separated from its soul is called ‘man’ only equivocally, just as an eye that has been separated from the rest of the body is called an ‘eye’ only equivocally. Strictly

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 97 speaking, an ‘eye’ is only truly an eye insofar as it is part of a substance, and a ‘man’ is only truly a man insofar as it is a complete human substance. For Christ to be truly human just as we are, soul and body, form and matter, must be united.23 Due to the habitus theory’s denial of the Word’s union to a complete human substance in which body and soul are united, what is assumed is not truly ‘man’, but is called ‘man’ only equivocally. The habitus theory thus denies the complete reality of Christ’s human nature.24 In a sense, the assumptus homo theory and the habitus theory are committing a common error. For the habitus theorist, the assumed human body and soul cannot be permitted to have a substantial unity lest this give rise to a human person. For the assumptus homo theorist, the fact that the Word does become united to a complete human substance implies a union with a human person. Both theories assume, in other words, that there is no metaphysical distinction to be made between Aristotelian primary substances, on the one hand, and hypostases or supposits (of which persons are a particular kind), on the other. It is precisely this which Aquinas would dispute. Aquinas’s subsistence theory, corresponding with the second of Lombard’s opinions, charts something of a middle way between the two extremes of the first and the third. Christ’s human nature is indeed a substance and an individual, yet its union with the Word is such that it does not qualify as a person. For Aquinas, then, the human nature does not qualify as truly ‘man’ or ‘a man’ except insofar as it is united to the divine person as its term. Against assumptus homo, the subsistence theory denies that what is assumed is homo, a man; though, ‘a man’ results from the union, due to the assumed nature’s relation to the divine supposit. Against habitus, the subsistence theory maintains that what is assumed is a complete human nature, understood as a substance which is united to the divine supposit, but has no existence or subsistence apart from it. The subsistence theory understands Jesus Christ to be a composite person, composed of the Word and the human body and soul. Prior to the Incarnation, the assuming person is incomposite. Upon the Incarnation, the person becomes composite, acquiring the human body and soul, united in substance, as a new part.25 For Aquinas – and, it would seem, for those in the tradition from whom he borrowed, particularly John of Damascus26 – the confession that Christ is composite speaks merely to the fact that the person of Christ subsists in two natures. To speak of the person of Christ becoming composite is to say that he acquires a second nature where previously he existed according to only one nature. Indeed, those schoolmen who affirmed the compositeness of Christ denied that any composition, change or actualising of passive potency is introduced into the divine life.27 We find the theory expressed by the Lombard as follows: They profess this Christ to be only one person; however, that person was simple only before the incarnation, but in the incarnation he was made into a person composed of divinity and humanity. Nor is he

98  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature therefore another person than before, but what was before only a person of God, in the incarnation was also made a person of man: not so as to be two persons, but that the person of God and of man be one and the same. And so the person which before was simple and existed only in one nature, then subsists in and from two natures.28 This sense of composition is perfectly innocent. If a ‘composite person’ is nothing other than one who is the subject of two natures, then Christ can certainly be counted as such without doing injury to the divine simplicity, immutability or impassibility. But there is at least another sense of ‘composition’ which is suggested by the subsistence theory: that of ‘Jesus Christ’ naming a mereological whole which includes both the assuming person and the assumed nature as parts. This yields the odd result that there is a composite person who contains an incomposite person as a part; that Jesus Christ both is a person and contains the person of the Word. What is more, Jesus Christ and the Word are said to be the very same person: the second person of the Trinity. It is this more thoroughgoing species of compositionalism which appears to be held by Duns Scotus.29 I wish to argue against the subsistence theory on two grounds specifically. With respect to the latter (Scotist) sense of ‘composition’, I argue that it is incoherent to speak of a necessarily composite person admitting of a necessarily incomposite person as a part, in such a way that both persons are said to be really identical. With respect to the first (Thomistic) sense, I argue that, while it is theologically innocent as to content, there is precious little motivation in speaking of ‘composition’ in the hypostatic union at all. Given that the cases of ordinary composition with which we are acquainted from creaturely experience are theologically problematic when applied to the Incarnation, we would do well to jettison such language altogether. The notion that a composite whole may be identical with one of its proper parts is one that arises in non-theological cases, such as those of accidental unities. Consider the distinction between ‘wise-Socrates’, a substance– accident composite which includes the accident of wisdom, and ‘Socrates’, a substance in abstraction from all of his accidents. Are the two identical? A compositionalist might argue as follows. Both names name a substance, and, in fact, both are the very same substance. However, the two are not altogether identical, for wise-Socrates cannot survive the loss of the accident ‘wisdom’, whereas Socrates can. Perhaps, analogously, we might think of ‘Jesus Christ’ as naming an accidental unity of which ‘the Word’ is the principal part, such that the two names denote the same person, despite the fact that the former has parts which the latter does not (such as the assumed human nature) and the latter pre-exists the part and could survive its forfeiture, whereas the former cannot. Thus, Jesus Christ and the Word are identical in the sense that they are the same person, despite the fact that they have different properties and even different persistence conditions.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 99 There are a number of difficulties with such cases. For one, it is not certain that ‘wise-Socrates’ cannot survive the loss of wisdom after all. Suppose we take ‘wise-Socrates’ to be the name of a substance. That substance is none other than Socrates himself, and Socrates can indeed survive the loss of wisdom. Thereafter, ‘wise-Socrates’ may be a misnomer, but the substance that is designated by this name continues to exist, and in this sense wise-Socrates can indeed survive the loss of his wisdom. These kinds of cases, counterintuitive as they are, are analogous to propositions of the form ‘Possibly, the UK Prime Minister is not the UK Prime Minister’. If we take the first instance of ‘the UK Prime Minister’ in a ‘rigid’ sense, designating a particular individual – Benjamin Disraeli, say – and the second instance in a ‘variable’ sense, designating an office which may be held by some individual or other, then the proposition is simply stating ‘Possibly, Benjamin Disraeli is not the UK Prime Minister’, which is true: it is modally possible of Benjamin Disraeli that he had never held office. Refocusing our interpretation so as to express what is possible de re as opposed to what is possible de dicto is sufficient to dispel the appearance of incoherence. One could instead choose to confine the use of ‘wise-Socrates’ to the more restrictive sense, employing it exclusively to name the accidental union of Socrates plus the accident of wisdom. In this case, wise-Socrates cannot, by definition, survive the loss of wisdom. However, it is no longer clear that ‘wise-Socrates’ names a person at all. What is being named is a conglomeration of a substance plus a particular accident inhering within it. Socrates and the accident of wisdom are two equally indispensable components in this conglomeration. In order to render this applicable to the Incarnational case, it would need to be that wise-Socrates is a person, that he is Socrates. But how could this be? Wise-Socrates comes into existence when (let us imagine) Socrates first acquires wisdom, and he ceases to exist when that wisdom is lost. One might conclude that wise-Socrates and Socrates are the same person despite the fact that they do not have the same persistence conditions, such that one can come into and pass out of existence while the other endures (i.e. when Socrates’s wisdom comes and goes). But surely it is at least as plausible – indeed, far more so – that wise-Socrates, when taken as naming the conglomeration of Socrates plus his wisdom, is simply not a person. In fine, it appears that accidental unities such as wise-Socrates cannot be employed as convincing analogues to the hypostatic union. In order for the analogy to hold good, the subsistence theorist requires that both wiseSocrates and Socrates be persons, that they be the same person, and yet they have different persistence conditions to the extent that the latter can survive the loss of wisdom whereas the former cannot. But, as we have just seen, this interpretation of accidental unities cannot be sustained. If ‘wise-Socrates’ is doing nothing more than naming Socrates, then wise-Socrates can survive the loss of wisdom even if this should render the designation a misnomer. And if ‘wise-Socrates’ is defined in such a way that it cannot survive the loss

100  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature of wisdom, then we must conclude that wise-Socrates is not a person after all, but is merely a conglomeration which includes the person of Socrates as a part. I submit that these difficulties carry over to Christology. If Christ and the Word both are persons and are, moreover, the same person, then the human nature cannot be considered a ‘part’ of either of them. Both names name the divine person, so that neither of them came to be in time and both survive the hypothetical forfeiture of the human nature. And if ‘Christ’ is taken to name a conglomeration which depends de re upon the human nature, then Christ is not a person at all (and hence not the same person as the Word). A final metaphysical point concerning accidental unities. On the standard medieval analysis of the numerical sameness of wise-Socrates and Socrates, that which provides for their sameness is the fact that they materially overlap. Even if wise-Socrates and Socrates have different persistence conditions, they may still be considered to be numerically the same on the grounds that they are both simultaneously occupying the same portion of prime matter.30 Yet, the immateriality of the divine Word calls into serious doubt the propriety of the accidental unity analogy. Returning to Aquinas’s rather softer account, it seems to amount to the claim that, while Christ and the Word are really identical, they are conceptually distinct. What is more, when considered according to one aspect, one set of persistence conditions obtains, and, when considered according to another aspect, a different set of persistence conditions obtains. In short, whether or not the very existence of the person depends upon the existence of a particular part – namely, the assumed nature – is determined by the aspect from which we are viewing the person. Whether or not the existence of the person depends upon the existence of the human nature is therefore entirely a conceptual matter. Aquinas appears to suggest as much in the following: The person or hypostasis of Christ can be viewed in two ways. As it is in itself, it is completely simple, just as is the nature of the Word. But considered under the aspect of person or hypostasis, which means subsisting in some nature, the person of Christ subsists in two natures. Hence, although there is a single subsisting reality there, the style of subsisting is double. He is thus called a composite person in that the one reality subsists in two natures.31 Again, what Aquinas means when he speaks of Christ as a ‘composite person’, on my reading, is merely that he exists in two natures.32 Furthermore, the person of Christ may be viewed according to two aspects which differ only in connotation: he may be viewed as a divine person separate from the Incarnation or he may be viewed insofar as he is incarnate and is related to the human nature. To this extent, I find Aquinas’s account unproblematic. Indeed, Aquinas is most clear that, despite his decision to express the hypostatic union in compositional terms, the union is not to be conceptualised in

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 101 terms of a relation of a whole to its parts.33 The question, then, is whether the language of ‘composition’ enjoys any motivation whatsoever in this context. To this, I answer in the negative. Where there is composition, there must be (to speak loosely) some thing which contains some things as parts. There are, it seems to me, only two ways in which this may take place. One is where the components are united so as to yield some new thing which is identical to none of the components taken singly. This is easily exemplified in artefactual cases: plausibly, an automobile is identical with no single component which comprises it (though it may be identical with some subset of its components). Another way is that of one item becoming a component of another, such that the former is integrated into the latter, and the latter serves as an enduring subject which is really identical with the product of the composition despite having undergone an accidental change. When a new component, such as a new tyre, is conjoined to an automobile, the product of this union is still an automobile; indeed, it is very plausibly the selfsame automobile as that with which we began. It is simply a matter of a new component being integrated into a preexisting substance. Neither of these cases appears to be a promising candidate for modelling, let alone describing with literal precision, the metaphysical status of the hypostatic union. According to the first case, the Word and the assumed nature would unite in such a way that the product of the union is identical to neither of them; a fortiori, the product would fail to be identical with the Word. According to the second, the assumed nature would be integrated into the divine person in such a way as to alter and inform the person, and give rise to a tertium quid. There would not be two complete natures, but a new component that is absorbed or ingrafted into one nature. In short, given that there is no sense of composition which adequately captures the metaphysics of the hypostatic union, it is better to dispense with such language entirely. Composition and the Hypostatic Union II – Compositional Christology Compositional accounts of the hypostatic union have received renewed attention from a number of analytic theologians. However, this renovated expression of compositionalism is not entirely identical with the medieval subsistence theory. The subsistence theory, whether in the hands of Aquinas or Scotus, maintains that ‘Jesus Christ’ names a person, even if that person is in some sense composite. However, in contemporary compositional Christology, ‘Christ’ does not name a person. Rather, it is the name of the mereological sum which results from the Word’s assumption of human nature, the contingent product of the hypostatic union. In this sense, the compositional Christologist accepts the principal argument of the previous section, that ‘Christ’ cannot name the divine person if Christ is thought to contain that very person as a part. In short, one must deny either that Christ contains a

102  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature person or that Christ is a person. It is the second option which the compositional Christologist prefers: for compositional Christology, Christ is not a person precisely on the grounds that Christ contains a person as a part. Thus, ‘Christ’ is not identical with ‘the Word’. My objections to compositional Christology in its contemporary sense are similar to those which were levelled against the medieval subsistence theory, in that I  judge it to be both problematic and unnecessary. I  maintain that there is no pressure, either of a theological or philosophical kind, to deny the identity of ‘Christ’ and ‘the Word’, and that doing so generates insuperable difficulties which can only be resolved by the rejection of compositional Christology. Instead, ‘Christ’ should be understood to name the second person of the Trinity, though perhaps according to a different aspect. That is, ‘Christ’ might be taken as naming the second person of the Trinity understood from the perspective of the Incarnation (Logos ensarkos), whereas ‘the Word’ might be taken to refer to the divine person in se, in abstraction from the Incarnation (Logos asarkos). We might say that ‘Christ’ and ‘the Word’ differ only in connotation but not in denotation. In taking this position, I consider myself to be mostly in line with Aquinas, who takes the subject term of a proposition to designate the supposit.34 Adopting such a semantic procedure, ‘Christ’ cannot name a mereological sum, but can only be taken to designate the divine person. The difference between compositional Christology and the non-compositional form of concretism which I  wish to preserve is therefore largely a semantic one, concerned with little more than the question of what ‘Christ’ names. However, these semantic issues are bound up inextricably with metaphysical considerations also, and it is the metaphysics of compositional Christology which I  believe to be chiefly objectionable. Probably the two most prominent defenders of compositional Christology in recent times are Brian Leftow and Oliver Crisp. Both agree that the defining hallmark of compositional Christology is that ‘Christ’ is not the name of a person, but of the collection of objects which results from the hypostatic union. Let us begin with Leftow: Perhaps the most formal, abstract thing one can say about the incarnation is this (following such as Aquinas): for the Son to become incarnate is at least for there to come to be a whole consisting of certain parts. Let ‘the Son’ name the Trinity’s second person and ‘Jesus Christ’ name the whole consisting of the Son + B + S [B = Christ’s body; S = Christ’s soul]. Then for the incarnation to take place is for Jesus Christ to come to be, by the joining of the Son, S and B.35 Leftow is clearly a compositionalist in the sense just described. The second person of the Trinity is not ‘Christ’, but a part of ‘Christ’. ‘Jesus Christ’, it would appear, is a kind of ‘emergence’ of the union of the Word with a particular human body and soul. It (I use the impersonal pronoun to make clear

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 103 that ‘Christ’ is designating a sum rather than a person) is the product of the union, rather than its personal subject. Curiously, Leftow seems to believe that the union of divine and human natures in Christ serves to produce a single substance.36 But this, by my reckoning, is quite wrong. As concretists, we should want to say that the two natures of Christ are themselves to be understood as substances. For divinity and humanity to unite in a single substance would therefore be a Monophysite Christology. But if Christ is not a substance, then in what sense can it be said to bear properties at all? In an immediate sense, it cannot. As a mereological sum, it can only ‘borrow’ properties from its parts. And here we come to the chief attraction of compositional Christology: it allows for the divine and human properties to be segregated to the corresponding nature, thereby preserving logical coherence in our predications. Christ’s divine properties are properties of a divine ‘part’ and Christ’s human properties are properties of a human ‘part’. ‘Christ’ may be said to exemplify all of these properties by means of a property-borrowing relation, just as an apple is said to be red by virtue of the redness of its skin.37 However, Leftow has no decisive procedure for determining which properties may trace straightforwardly from part to whole, and in some cases the property-borrowing relation does not hold.38 Although Leftow appears to want to liken his compositional account to that of Aquinas, Leftow clearly parts ways from Aquinas at certain points. Strikingly, Leftow wishes to maintain that the proposition ‘Jesus Christ is created’ is true!39 Leftow reasons that Christ is created on the grounds that the sum that Christ is did not exist prior to the Incarnation itself. In other words, the Incarnation brought ‘Christ’ into being: Any whole with created parts is a created whole, even if it also includes an uncreated part. But this does not entail that the Son is created. For as we are now using ‘Jesus Christ’, the Son is not identical with Jesus Christ. The Son is instead just part of Jesus Christ, the part which determines who Christ is.40 This is, in fact, very different from what one finds in Aquinas. In treating the question of whether Christ began to be, Aquinas has this to say: It is not permissible to say without further qualification, ‘This man – namely, Christ – began to be’. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, in the light of the teaching of our Catholic faith which attributes to Christ one subsisting subject, one hypostasis and one person, the statement is, in its obvious interpretation, false. For, according to this faith, the term ‘this man’, namely Christ, must stand for an eternally subsisting subject; and beginning to be is incompatible with its eternity.41 The attraction of a mereological model is that it putatively allows the whole to be the subject of the properties of its parts. However, the fact that

104  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature compositional Christology denies the identity between Christ and the Word generates two quite distinct problems. In the first place, the imagined mereological cases which are intended to serve as analogues to the Incarnation – such as Leftow’s example of the apple borrowing redness from its skin – are insufficiently analogous, since they are clearly cases of a substance borrowing properties from its parts. But, according to the compositional account, Christ is a conglomeration of substances, not a substance itself. So, it would appear that we are considering two very different kinds of case here: a substance’s borrowing properties from its parts, and a collection of objects borrowing properties from one of its members. But aggregations of substances have parts in a very different way from that in which substances themselves do. It is by no means clear, for instance, that a pallet of apples may borrow the property of redness from the individual apples in the same way that an individual apple may borrow redness from its skin. Second, compositional Christology would seem to imply that there is no person who is the subject of all the divine and human properties. The person ‘in’ Christ is the Word, who is the subject of the divine properties. But who is the person who serves as the subject of the human properties? Certainly not ‘Christ’, for Christ is not a person. So, it can only be the Word. But what licenses the predication of human properties to the Word? The Word and the human nature are both parts of Christ. Even if a mereological model licenses the predication of the properties of a part to the whole, it does not license the predication of the properties of one part to another part. The redness of the apple’s skin may make redness predicable of the apple, but it does not make redness predicable of one of the apple’s non-red parts, such as the core.42 By the same token, the passibility of the assumed human nature is not predicable, even non-literally, of the Word, from which it follows that no person is the subject of the human properties.43 We turn next to Oliver Crisp. In his major contribution on the subject of composition in the hypostatic union, Crisp describes his view as conforming to a ‘habitus’ model of the Incarnation.44 However, I choose not to follow Crisp’s terminology for the purposes of this discussion, not because such a usage is strictly incorrect, but simply because it would serve to confuse the terms as I have used them in the present work. In my usage, compositional accounts and habitus accounts are distinct, representing the second and third of Peter Lombard’s opinions respectively. Compositional accounts affirm, whereas habitus accounts deny, that the Word and the human nature are parts of a composite whole, which is Christ. Meanwhile, habitus accounts affirm what compositional accounts deny, that Christ is simply the very person of the Word and does not include the human nature as a part. To put the matter starkly, compositional accounts assert that the assumed nature is intrinsic to Christ and habitus accounts state precisely that the assumed nature is extrinsic to Christ. So as not to confuse matters, I  will therefore respectfully decline to describe Crisp’s account as a ‘habitus’ model, and will instead classify it simply as ‘compositional’.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 105 Crisp is, like Leftow, explicitly compositionalist, taking ‘Christ’ to be the name of the sum of the divine person and the human nature: The concrete human nature and divine nature of God the Son together compose Christ. That is, God Incarnate is a whole composed of the proper parts of God the Son and (the parts of) his human nature.45 Again, and still more explicit: Christ is not a person on [compositional Christology]. Christ is just the mereological sum of God the Son and his human nature.46 Crisp defends the orthodoxy of the claim that Christ is non-identical with the Word. He points out that the Chalcedonian statement that it is ‘one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten’ who is to be acknowledged as the subject of the Incarnation implies only that God the Son is identical with ‘the person who is Jesus Christ’.47 But it is doubtful that this truly settles the matter. For, according to compositional Christology, Christ has a person as one of its parts, but is not itself a person. Thus, there simply is no ‘person who is Jesus Christ’. Instead, we might say ‘the person who is in Christ’ (a formulation Crisp adopts elsewhere).48 But it is less clear that ‘God the Son is identical to the person who is in Jesus Christ’ is a faithful reconstruction of the Chalcedonian statement. On the other hand, ‘God the Son is Jesus Christ’, understood as a statement of identity, is perfectly and unqualifiedly true, if we take both terms as names which designate the supposit. The supposit who is God the Son and the supposit who is Jesus Christ are ‘one and the same’: the second person of the Trinity. It seems to me that there is a considerable difference between confessing that Jesus Christ is one person, the Son, and confessing that there is one person, the Son, ‘in’ Christ, and yet Crisp appears to elide these two propositions. It might be suggested that Christ’s containing the person of the Son as a principal part serves to make Christ that very person. However, as I have argued in the previous section in connection with Duns Scotus’s account, it is highly doubtful that it can be coherently maintained that Christ and the Son are both simultaneously the very same person even as the former contains the latter (plus a human nature) and the latter remains altogether simple. Chalcedon does not, in fact, ever state explicitly that there is a person ‘in’ Christ at all; a far more plausible reading is simply that Christ is a person, and the person who Christ is is the Son. Chalcedon is, to my mind, to be read very much more naturally as identifying the Son with Christ than enumerating the Son as one of Christ’s components: ‘we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ’. And, if Christ is truly identical with the divine person, then Christ can be no more composite than the divine person himself.

106  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature This point may be made stronger still if we consider, as Crisp subsequently does, the third anathema of the Second Council of Constantinople: If anyone declares that the Word of God who works miracles is not identical with the Christ who suffered .  .  . or was in him in the way that one might be in another, but that our lord Jesus Christ was not one and the same, the Word of God incarnate and made man . . . let him be anathema.49 Crisp asserts that it would be ‘perverse’ to claim that this anathema requires the identification of Christ and the Word,50 yet here again issue must be taken. If there is one thing which is being anathematised here, it is surely the denial that the Word of God is identical with Christ and the claim that the Word of God is instead ‘in another’. No doubt Crisp would wish to say that, on compositional Christology, the Word is not ‘in another’ in any deleterious sense, for the Word is the sole person ‘in’ Christ and hence is Christ’s principal and most ontologically decisive part. This may well be so; however, the fact remains that, if Christ is not identical with the Word, as compositional Christology maintains, then Christ is to that extent ‘other’ than the Word, and hence the Word exists ‘in another’. Even if there is no other person ‘in’ Christ, nonetheless the Word is ‘in’ something other than itself. And it is by no means perverse to point out that it is exactly this which Constantinople II appears to be so plainly anathematising. One problem which arises for all forms of concretism, and not merely compositional Christology, is the danger of Nestorianism. Given that the assumed nature is a concrete substance in its own right, what prevents it from being a person? Crisp’s answer to this question is, to my mind, not altogether adequate to meet this challenge. His strategy involves drawing on an illustration of Peter Geach’s, that of Tibbles the cat. Tibbles is an individual substance of the natural kind Felidae. But we might also consider Tibbles, minus one of the hairs which he currently possesses. The ‘cat’ which results from this abstraction we might call ‘Tibbles-Minus’. The question is whether Tibbles-Minus is a distinct cat, a distinct substance, from Tibbles. If ‘Yes’, then surely considering Tibbles in abstraction from two of his hairs would serve to produce yet another cat, and so on. Finally, this would imply that there are in fact a multitude of cats located in one and the same place (on a mat, say). If, more plausibly, the answer is ‘No’, and Tibbles-Minus et al. are one and the same substance as Tibbles, then we might infer the following principle: ‘no proper part of a member of a given natural kind constitutes another member of the same natural kind’.51 Given Aristotelian hylomorphism and its commitment to the unicity of substantial form (which amounts more or less to the claim that no complete substance contains another complete substance as a proper part), this certainly appears the more viable solution. Applied to the hypostatic union, one therefore has solid metaphysical grounds for maintaining

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 107 that no part of Christ is a distinct person from Christ. If Christ is a person, then neither the Word, nor the human nature, is an extra person in addition to Christ; though, presumably, for two different reasons. The Word would fail to be a distinct person from Christ because Christ and the Word would be considered the same person, just as Tibbles and Tibbles-Minus are considered one and the same cat. Meanwhile, the human nature would fail to be a distinct person from Christ because the human nature is not a person, just as Tibbles’s hair fails to be a substance in its own right, at least until it is plucked. The problem here is that, on compositional Christology, Christ is not a person, nor a substance of any kind. Because Christ is a conglomeration of a divine person and a human nature, each of which belongs to its own distinct natural kind, Christ per se is not a substance belonging to any given natural kind. Here again we come to the problem already alluded to in relation to Leftow’s account, that the two natures are ‘parts’ of Christ in a sense that is quite different from that in which parts exist in a substance. Tibbles-Minus is not a distinct substance from Tibbles because (i) Tibbles is itself a substance, (ii) Tibbles-Minus is a proper part of Tibbles and (iii) by the principle of the unicity of substantial form, no proper part of a substance counts as another substance, distinct from the substance of which it is part. The parity is violated when we realise that, on compositional Christology, Christ is not a substance, and hence (i) does not obtain in the Incarnational case. Crisp is wishing to infer the non-personhood of the human nature from the personhood of Christ. But the fact that Christ is not (on Crisp’s own terms) a person renders the analogy inapplicable.52 Crisp also presents a defence against the ‘no-person’ objection already introduced. Crisp’s strategy at this point is to invoke the communicatio idiomatum, a linguistic convention whereby the properties of the natures are treated as being predicable of the divine person, yet without implying any literal, metaphysical interchange between the two natures. This manoeuvre is intended to block the inference from ‘Christ is passible according to his human nature’ to ‘Christ is passible simpliciter’.53 Understood in this way, Crisp’s defence against the ‘no-person’ objection looks perfectly correct: the Word may be said to be passible according to its human nature, but this does not imply that the Word is passible simpliciter, that is, as God. The question at hand is whether this defence requires, or is even compatible with, compositional Christology. It certainly does not require it. As I am presenting matters, Christ and the Word are identical: Christ is a divine person who relates to a concrete human substance in such a way that the human properties truly are properties of the Word, though not in a sense that these properties inhere within, or in any way alter, the Word or the divine substance in se. As such, ‘Christ is passible’ is true, if suitably qualified according to nature. Crisp agrees on this point, but only by suspending his compositional commitments: ‘According to orthodoxy, Christ is one divine person who assumes a human nature in addition to his divine nature’ [my italics].54

108  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature Clearly, Crisp is here treating Christ as the name of a person, contrary to his previous usage. He then goes on – in the very same paragraph – to say that the subject of the weeping before Lazarus’s tomb in John 11:35 is the person ‘in’ Christ.55 One cannot help but receive the impression that Crisp is employing ‘Christ’ inconsistently: in some cases, ‘Christ’ names the divine person as such; in others, it names the mereological sum of objects which are hypostatically united, and ‘in’ which there exists a divine person. This equivocation yields flatly incompatible answers when considering the question of whether ‘Christ’ is the subject of the weeping. On the former interpretation, ‘Christ weeps’ is true, though in such a way that denies the central thesis of compositional Christology, that Christ and the Word are non-identical. On the latter interpretation, ‘Christ weeps’ looks false, since Christ is neither the name of the divine person nor the name of the human nature. In sum, Crisp does indeed have a plausible way of finding a person to be the subject of the weeping, but only at the expense of compositional Christology. Conclusion In this chapter, I  have explored the metaphysical status of Christ’s human nature and considered its place within the hypostatic union. In the former respect, my conclusion is (pace Swinburne) eminently traditional: Christ’s human nature is an individual substance, a concrete particular, and not merely a bundle of properties, be they universals or tropes. As a consequence, the human nature is to be understood as the immediate bearer of human properties: passibility is, at least in a proximate sense, a property of Christ’s human nature. This is not to say that passibility is not also in some sense a property of the Word. But the sense in which passibility is said to be proper to the Word is certainly not a matter of inherence, as it is for the human nature. It is, rather, a matter of relation. This is a point about which I will have a good deal more to say in the final chapter. As regards the union itself, I have presented a critical case against various expressions of the hypostatic union which hinge upon the notion of ‘composition’. Christ, I argue, is a person, and that person is none other than the simple divine Word. This much cannot be denied except by suggesting that Christ is some person distinct from the Word or by denying that Christ is a person at all, neither of which seems to be a promising avenue. Be it in its medieval scholastic or contemporary analytic expressions, I argue that construing the hypostatic union in compositional terms is fundamentally mistaken. In this respect, I am perhaps departing to some extent from tradition. The language of ‘composition’ finds expression in numerous Patristic and medieval sources and was found to be promising by the most distinguished of the schoolmen. I believe that this departure is, however, warranted. In my concluding chapter, I will present a positive account of the hypostatic union which, while being in no wise dependent upon composition, does not depart

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 109 from traditional accounts in any material particular. It will then be for the reader to determine whether the forfeiture of composition is justified. In bringing this section to a close, I trust that an adequate metaphysical foundation has been laid for the basic claims of Chalcedon as regards the assuming person who is the subject of the Incarnation and the two natures in which this person exists. Henceforward, I will be concerned to a greater degree with semantic issues, though by no means leaving metaphysics behind. My concern will be with how best to express the confession of Chalcedon in such a way that does not collapse into incoherence, which is, after all, this project’s principal preoccupation. Notes 1 Peter H. Nidditch, ed., John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), book II, chapter 23. 2 David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, eds., David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), book 1, part 1, section 6. 3 For a critical assessment of the substrate theory, see Michael J. Loux, Substance and Attribute: A Study in Ontology (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1978). 4 David S. Oderberg, “Hume, the Occult, and the Substance of the School,” Metaphysica 13 (2012): 163–64. For a similar objection to bundle theory on the grounds that it offers no basis of unity between the properties, see Edward Jonathan Lowe, The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 205–9. 5 Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics: A  Contemporary Introduction (Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014), 216. 6 Ibid., 214–15. 7 David Malet Armstrong, Universals and Scientific Realism, Volume 1: Nominalism and Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 64–76. 8 Oliver D. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 69–70, n47. 9 For evidence of the patristic consensus, see Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 39– 42. For evidence of the medieval consensus, see Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), esp. 1–26. 10 St. John of Damascus, “The Orthodox Faith,” in The Fathers of the Church: St. John of Damascus Writings, trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958), book 3, chapter 11. 11 Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 213. 12 Ibid., 212. 13 This principle was employed as something of a mantra by Chalcedon’s opponents. See Johannes Zachhuber, The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Father John of Damascus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 193–94. 14 A similar confusion may be detected in Alvin Plantinga, “On Heresy, Mind, and Truth,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 16, no. 2 (1999): 183. Plantinga equates the concretist view, that the Word assumes a concrete human nature, with the claim that the Word assumes a human being, which is plainly Nestorian. Similarly in James Porter Moreland and William Lane

110  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 608. Moreland and Craig believe that the Word’s assumption of a complete individual human nature implies the assumption of a human person. Although Moreland and Craig are concretists, in the sense that they believe that the assumed nature is individual rather than universal, they do not believe that the assumed nature is ‘complete’. Instead, the Logos supplies the human nature’s rational soul; a ‘rehabilitated’ Apollinarianism. Their mistake is to equate ‘person’ with ‘soul’, as though the Word’s serving as the human nature’s rational soul is what makes their union ‘hypostatic’; see Stephen J. Wellum, God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 390–91. 15 Richard Sturch, The Word and the Christ: An Essay in Analytic Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 131. 16 Swinburne, The Christian God, 197. 17 Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3: On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2008), distinction VI. 18 Bernhard Barth, “Ein neues Dokument zur Geschichte der frühscholastischen Christologie,” Theologische Quartalschrift 100, no. 4 (1919): 409–26. 19 St  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 48 (3a. 1–6): The Incarnate Word, trans. R. J. Hennessey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3a., q. 2, a. 6, reply. 20 Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3, distinction VI, chapter 2. 21 The exception to this medieval consensus is Duns Scotus, who takes ‘a man’ to possibly refer to the human nature, despite the fact that this nature is not strictly speaking a person in its own right; see Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, 189. 22 Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3, distinction VI, chapter 4. 23 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 48, 3a., q. 2, a. 5, reply 1. 24 Jason L. A. West, “Aquinas on Peter Lombard and the Metaphysical Status of Christ’s Human Nature,” Gregorianum 88, no. 3 (2007): 571. 25 Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3, distinction VI, chapter 3. 26 John of Damascus, “The Orthodox Faith,” book 3, chapter 7. 27 See Corey L. Barnes, “Christological Composition in Thirteenth-Century Debates,” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 75, no. 2 (2011): 173–205. 28 Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3, distinction VI, chapter 3.1. 29 Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, 128–33. 30 Jeffrey E. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, & Material Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 91–100. 31 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 48, 3a., q. 2, a. 4, reply. 32 Michael Gorman, likewise, does not seem to think that Aquinas intends very much more than this: “Christ as Composite According to Aquinas,” Traditio 55 (2000): 143–57. Jonathan Hill, on the other hand, has made the argument that Aquinas held to a more thoroughgoing compositionalism, whereby the personal unity of the whole is thought to be something that is ‘borrowed’ from the paradigmatic unity of the divine person: “Aquinas and the Unity of Christ: A Defence of Compositionalism,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 71 (2012): 117–35. 33 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 48, 3a. q. 2, a. 4, reply 2. 34 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 50 (3a. 16–26): The One Mediator, trans. Colman E. O’Niell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3a., q. 16, a. 7, reply 4. 35 Brian Leftow, “A  Timeless God Incarnate,” in The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, ed. Stephen T. Davis,

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 111 Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 287. 36 Ibid., 287–88. 37 Ibid., 288. 38 Ibid., 290–91. 39 Ibid., 291. 40 Ibid., 290. 41 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 50, 3a., q. 16, a. 9, reply. 42 Thomas P. Flint, “Should Concretists Part with Mereological Models of the Incarnation?” in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 80. 43 In a subsequent publication, Leftow alters his terminology, allowing that Jesus Christ is identical to the Son: “Composition and Christology,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 28, no. 3 (2011): 314. Leftow thus ceases to be a compositional Christologist in a sense that is relevant to the present discussion (though, he does continue to consider himself a compositional Christologist in another sense). This difference is by no means trifling: given this terminological shift, it is no longer the case that Christ is composite. Indeed, it would now seem that Leftow must answer the question ‘Is Christ created?’ in the negative, contrary to his earlier position. Christ, after all, is the uncreated Word of God! 44 Oliver D. Crisp, “Compositional Christology Without Nestorianism,” in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 46. 45 Ibid., 45. 46 Ibid., 63. 47 Ibid., 53. 48 Ibid., 53, 59, 64. 49 Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 114. 50 Crisp, “Compositional Christology Without Nestorianism,” 54. 51 Ibid., 59. 52 On the non-compositional form of concretism which I am defending, (i) would obtain but (ii) would not. The former, because ‘Christ’ names the divine supposit; the latter, because the human nature is not a part of the divine supposit. So it looks like both the compositionalist and the non-compositionalist must look to someone other than Tibbles to guard themselves against Nestorianism. Further objections to the typical compositionalist response to the Tibbles problem are presented in Jonathan Hill, “Compositionalism, Nestorianism, and the Principle of No Co-Member Parts,” Religious Studies (2015): 1–15. 53 Crisp, “Compositional Christology Without Nestorianism,” 63–64. 54 Ibid., 64. 55 Ibid.

References Aquinas, St Thomas. Summa Theologiae, Volume 48 (3a. 1–6): The Incarnate Word. Translated by R. J. Hennessey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. Summa Theologiae, Volume 50 (3a. 16–26): The One Mediator. Translated by Colman E. O’Niell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Armstrong, David Malet. Universals and Scientific Realism, Volume 1: Nominalism and Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

112  Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature Barnes, Corey L. “Christological Composition in Thirteenth-Century Debates.” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 75, no. 2 (2011): 173–205. Barth, Bernhard. “Ein neues Dokument zur Geschichte der frühscholastischen Christologie.” Theologische Quartalschrift 100, no. 4 (1919): 409–26. Brower, Jeffrey E. Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, & Material Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Crisp, Oliver D. Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ———. “Compositional Christology Without Nestorianism.” In The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, 45–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Cross, Richard. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Davis, Stephen T., Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, eds. The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Feser, Edward. Scholastic Metaphysics: A  Contemporary Introduction. Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014. Flint, Thomas P. “Should Concretists Part with Mereological Models of the Incarnation?” In The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, 67–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Gorman, Michael. “Christ as Composite According to Aquinas.” Traditio 55 (2000): 143–57. Hill, Jonathan. “Aquinas and the Unity of Christ: A Defence of Compositionalism.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 71 (2012): 117–35. ———. “Compositionalism, Nestorianism, and the Principle of No Co-Member Parts.” Religious Studies (2015): 1–15. John of Damascus, St. The Fathers of the Church: St. John of Damascus Writings. Translated by Frederic H. Chase, Jr. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958. Leftow, Brian. “A Timeless God Incarnate.” In The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, 273–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———. “Composition and Christology.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 28, no. 3 (2011): 310–22. Lombard, Peter. The Sentences, Book 3: On the Incarnation of the Word. Translated by Giulio Silano. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2008. Loux, Michael J. Substance and Attribute: A Study in Ontology. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1978. Lowe, Edward Jonathan. The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Marmodoro, Anna, and Jonathan Hill, eds. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Moreland, James Porter, and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009. Nidditch, Peter H., ed. John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Norton, David Fate, and Mary J. Norton, eds. David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007.

Metaphysical Foundations – The Assumed Nature 113 Oderberg, David S. “Hume, the Occult, and the Substance of the School.” Metaphysica 13 (2012): 155–74. Pawl, Timothy. In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Plantinga, Alvin. “On Heresy, Mind, and Truth.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 16, no. 2 (1999): 182–94. Sturch, Richard. The Word and the Christ: An Essay in Analytic Christology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Swinburne, Richard. The Christian God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 1. London: Sheed & Ward, 1990. Wellum, Stephen J. God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016. West, Jason L. A. “Aquinas on Peter Lombard and the Metaphysical Status of Christ’s Human Nature.” Gregorianum 88, no. 3 (2007): 557–85. Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Father John of Damascus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

4 Christological Semantics

Philosopher Michael Martin, in an essay titled ‘The Incarnation Doctrine is Incoherent and Unlikely’, presents the following argument: If Jesus is the Son of God, then presumably he has the traditional attributes of God. However, if Jesus is a human being, then he seems to have attributes that are in conflict with divine ones, and an obvious logical absurdity can be generated: Jesus, the Son of God, both has and does not have certain attributes.1 This is a conventional statement of the problem of Christological predication. It is also strikingly similar to Aquinas’s own characterisation of the problem: It seems that what is attributed to the human nature may not be predicated of God. For it is impossible that opposites should be predicated of the same subject. But the attributes of human nature are incompatible with those which belong to God. For God is uncreated, unchangeable and eternal, while human nature is created and subject to time and change. Consequently, what is attributed to the human nature may not be predicated of God.2 One way in which to respond to this argument is to distinguish between those properties which are modally necessary either to divinity or to humanity and those which are merely contingent. Arguably, what the doctrine of the Incarnation requires is not that Christ be the subject of every property which might conceivably be predicated of divinity or humanity, but merely that he be the subject of those properties that are necessary to the two natures. This much is at least formally adequate to render the above argument invalid, for, while it is undoubtedly true that certain divine properties and certain human properties are mutually incompatible, this does not yet give rise to incoherence. What is required is a demonstration that properties which are necessary to divinity and others which are necessary to humanity are jointly incompatible. DOI: 10.4324/9781003381358-5

Christological Semantics 115 One of the tasks of this chapter is to explore approaches to the problem of Christological predication which seek to exploit this insight. What such strategies have in common is that they seek to defuse the problem by ‘jettisoning’ one side or the other of each pair of predicates. These strategies are all driven by the metaphysical commitment that it is not possible for Christ to exemplify both passibility and impassibility simultaneously, nor any other pair of apparently incompatible attributes, even given the fact that he exists in two natures. This principle is tempting to endorse, for it seems virtually axiomatic; after all, what could ‘incompatible’ possibly mean, if not that one and the same subject cannot exemplify both properties simultaneously? These strategies will be termed ‘restriction strategies’, owing to the fact that they seek to restrict the properties which are finally predicated of Christ. The other category of strategies we have available are ‘classical strategies’, which are motivated by a quite different metaphysical commitment: that properties correspond, in some sense, most pre-eminently to a nature. This allows for a formal defence of a rather different kind: it would indeed be incoherent for both sides of a contradictory pair of predicates to be apt of a single subject in one and the same sense, but there is no contradiction in their being apt of a subject in two different senses. Thus, if Christ is characterised by impassibility, this is to say something of Christ insofar as he is divine, and if Christ is characterised by passibility, this is to say something of Christ insofar as he is human. Assigning divine or human predicates to Christ, then, is to say something about his divine or human natures; or, perhaps better, it is to say something about Christ with respect to his divine or human natures. As Aquinas has it: It is impossible that opposites should be predicated of the same subject under the same aspect; but there is no difficulty when there is question of diverse aspects. And it is in this latter fashion that opposites are predicated of Christ, for they refer, not to the same aspect, but to the diverse natures.3 Both kinds of strategies are best understood as ‘families’ of proposals, which may be presented and permuted in various ways. It is the purpose of this chapter to explore programmatically the various existing proposals as to how best to defend the coherence of the two-nature doctrine, particularly with respect to the semantics of Christological predication. First, I will argue that no strategy of the first kind can be made to succeed. Moreover, I will show that this is a systemic problem, such that hopes of rescuing such strategies in some novel way do not appear promising. Consequently, I  suggest that adherents to the two-nature doctrine are committed to adopting a strategy of the second kind. However, this chapter’s second task is to show that several of the prevailing methods of approaching the problem from a ‘classical’ point of view are also problematic, either for theological or simply for

116  Christological Semantics logical reasons. This should not be taken to mean that classical strategies are beyond hope of repair; on the contrary, in the following chapter I will present a version of the classical semantic approach which, I believe, circumvents the various difficulties which plague the other variants. Restriction Strategies Versus Classical Strategies In this section, I will argue that a defence of the coherence of Chalcedonian Christology is better served by embracing what I have called ‘classical strategies’ over the ‘restriction strategies’ so that, inevitably, one will have to predicate properties of Christ ‘according to’ one nature or the other. The restriction strategies seek to limit which properties are predicable of the Incarnate Christ, such that whichever properties remain are mutually compatible. There are broadly three ways in which a restriction strategy may proceed. The first is as follows: for every divine property that is incompatible with truly human existence, we consider the property in question to be non-essential to God. The second is precisely the reverse: for every human property that is incompatible with the divine nature, we consider it to be non-essential to humanity. The third is simply an amalgam: we employ a procedure which combines the first two, and we decide on a case-by-case basis whether to jettison the divine or human side of a pair of incompatible properties. All three approaches have enjoyed at least some representation in the analytic literature. Representing the first approach, Stephen Davis adopts a ‘kenotic’ manoeuvre, which understands Christ as failing to exemplify any of the divine properties which have a logical complement in the set of essential human properties. In the Incarnation, God the Son divests himself of all those divine properties which are incompatible with truly human existence. Furthermore, whatever divine properties are forfeited as part of this self-divestiture must be judged to be merely contingent to divinity, and hence theoretically forfeitable in such a way that does not denigrate the Incarnate Christ as anything less than vere deus.4 Davis’s kenotic proposal exhibits a conspicuous limitation, however. Suppose there is some divine property which, for one reason or another, it is not possible for God to forfeit and is also incompatible with human existence as such. Does the Son empty himself of such a property upon his Incarnation? If ‘Yes’, then Jesus Christ now fails to exemplify a property that is essential to divinity, and so the Chalcedonian standard is violated. And if ‘No’, then Davis’s kenotic proposal is inadequate to meet the problem at hand, for we must now find some supplementary explanation of the fact that Christ exemplifies divine properties which are incompatible with human existence. One may deny that there are any such properties, but it seems quite clear that there are: the likes of uncreatedness, eternality and immateriality are striking candidates for divine attributes which both characterise the divine nature essentially and are incompatible with human nature as such.

Christological Semantics 117 Davis fairly concedes this point in a later publication.5 In the case of those properties that are, in his phrase, ‘ungiveupable’ (and which, presumably, are also incompatible with human existence), Davis recommends the use of ‘reduplicative’ propositions, of the form ‘Christ as divine is impassible’. That is, he recommends that such divine properties be segregated off to the divine nature alone, and are predicable of Christ only with respect to that nature. This manner of locution will be a subject of discussion in due course. Now, though, we may reiterate the question which Davis poses to himself in the conclusion of his more recent contribution: Someone might ask at this point: given your use of reduplication in trying to understand orthodox christology, why do you need kenosis at all, for reduplicative strategies can surely be used by classical christologists as well? Just so. If Davis is prepared to concede that the classical strategy of predicating properties according to a specified nature is not only permissible but demanded in some cases, and if doing so is sufficient to avoid contradiction in those cases, then we may ask what pressure there is to imagine the divine Son as having emptied himself of anything at all. Davis’s answer is that, for himself at least, the primary impulse which motivates a kenotic account of the Incarnation is one that is biblical rather than philosophical.6 While it is beyond the scope of the present project to delve into the exegetical issues pertinent to kenotic Christology, this does appear to be tantamount to a concession that kenosis, as a solution to the problem of Christological predication, is philosophically redundant. The second approach is represented by Thomas Morris. Morris begins by drawing a pair of important distinctions. First, he points out that there is a distinction between, on the one hand, a property’s being common or even universal to some natural kind, and, on the other, its being essential for membership within that kind. For example, the property ‘was born on the planet earth’, while very plausibly exemplified by every human being to have ever lived, is not essential for membership within the kind ‘human being’ (one would be no less a human being for having been born in space, for example).7 The other distinction which Morris draws is that between what it means to be merely human and what it means to be fully human. The distinction is encapsulated as follows: To repeat: the kind nature exemplified distinctively by all human beings is that of humanity. To be a human being is to exemplify human nature. An individual is fully human just in case he fully exemplifies human nature. To be merely human is not to exemplify a kind-nature, a natural kind, distinct from that of humanity; it is rather to exemplify humanity without also exemplifying any ontologically higher kind, such as divinity.8

118  Christological Semantics With these distinctions in mind, we may have a plausible restriction strategy which involves jettisoning properties on the human side, rather than on the divine side. Rather than thinking about the Incarnation with a pre-conceived notion of precisely what constitutes ‘human nature’, we allow our understanding of human nature to be influenced and informed by the event of the Incarnation itself. Perhaps the Incarnation reveals to us that a property which we typically take to be essential to human existence is not really essential but is merely common. Or perhaps a property really is essential for being merely human, but not for being fully human. And we certainly should not wish to say that Jesus Christ is merely human, as Morris has defined it. As such, even if it transpires that Christ, in virtue of his divinity, lacks a property which commonly characterises human existence, this need not impugn the verity of Christ’s humanity. It is not clear how far such a strategy may be pushed, however. If we employ Morris’s strategy promiscuously, then we may be forced to concede that all divine properties are compatible with human existence, inclusive of those divine properties which most fundamentally distinguish divine existence from creaturely existence ontologically. The result is that there really is nothing distinctive about human nature at all; any divine property may be reconciled with human existence, if we afford ‘human nature’ a sufficiently open texture. The suggestion that the likes of temporality and materiality are merely contingent to human nature is highly dubious. If those properties which distinguish creaturely existence fundamentally from divine existence are not essential to human nature, then what is? Nor is it clear that Morris’s merely/fully distinction is of much use to us here. For Morris, to be fully human is to fully exemplify human nature, to possess all of the essential properties of the kind ‘human being’. To be merely human is to satisfy this same requirement, plus the additional requirement that one not exemplify any ontologically higher nature. If, as Morris suggests, a property like temporality or materiality is essential to being merely human but not to being fully human, then the only reason why human beings in general do not exemplify properties such as eternality and immateriality is not because they are human, but because they are not divine as well as human. Temporality and materiality are not properties of humanity; they are properties of not being God incarnate. It would seem to follow that there are no distinctively human properties at all; any apparently essential human property which Christ lacks may be explained away by appealing to the fact that he possesses a divine nature over and above his human nature. Thomas Senor echoes this concern: [I]t won’t do to simply make what we might think of as the anti-kenotic move and insist that, for any inconsistent pair of properties that one is tempted to attribute to Jesus Christ one should attribute the divine property at the cost of the human property. For even if that were a way of resolving the incoherence objection, it would give us an account that

Christological Semantics 119 would fail to satisfy our desiderata since it would effectively gut the humanity claim of all content.9 Though Morris does not appear to reflect on the full weight of this problem, he does allow that an unrestrained implementation of his strategy may lead to absurd consequences, and supplementary aid must be sought from a modified doctrine of God in order to constitute a complete strategy: But this can appear to be a near reductio for the strategy. Can a fully human being be omnipotent, omniscient, and the rest? Did Jesus have these properties? . . . And surely no amount of modal manipulation of human nature can render it possible that this man was also incorporeal, immutable and impassible. At this point, the initially promising way for blocking the incoherence charge can appear to break down. One way of rescuing it would be to rethink the traditional concept of God in such a way as to rid ourselves of these absurdities.10 So, we are left with something of a compound strategy. Morris’s two metaphysical distinctions have rather limited mileage in addressing the problem at hand. Jettisoning properties on the human side, it seems, can only take us so far. In order to compensate for these shortcomings, we must also consider jettisoning at least some divine properties. Thus, Morris begins to consider the promise of kenotic Christology. As kenosis has already been considered, at least as it bears on the coherence of the two-nature doctrine, we need not pursue this dimension of Morris’s proposal any further. Suffice it to say that jettisoning neither divine properties nor human properties appears to be a viable option in isolation. A  third (and final) possibility is to embrace an amalgam of these two approaches. Such a strategy is represented by Richard Cross. Cross views Morris’s strategy – that of cultivating a principled agnosticism about which properties are essential to human nature, pending reflections on the Incarnation – with enthusiasm, though he recommends that we also employ a similar strategy for the divine properties. Cross seems to be proposing something like the following. Suppose we formulate a list of apparently essential divine properties and of apparently essential human properties. Should there arise a contradictory pair across the two lists, one or the other property ought to be ‘trimmed’ from the list so as to make the two sets of properties logically compatible. Whether the divine or the human property must concede its place should be determined on a case-by-case basis. Just as it is called into question whether temporality or materiality are essential to humanity, so too is it called into question whether eternality or immateriality are essential to divinity.11 It seems to me that Cross’s strategy is similarly problematic. By ‘trimming’ our shortlists of essential divine and human properties until the conjunction of both sets of properties is exemplifiable in a single subject, we

120  Christological Semantics have effectively collapsed the two natures into one another. There is no discernible importance given to Christ’s existing in two natures. The pressure for all of Christ’s properties to be mutually compatible is the very same as that of any one-natured being. There are no distinctively ‘divine’ properties or ‘human’ properties because, it transpires, they are all compatible with the other nature. If Christ’s divine and human properties are all lying alongside one another in the same univocal space, this looks more like a case of Eutychian ‘blending’ (i.e. Monophysitism) than a defence of a two-nature Christology. Consider, as we did previously, some divine property which is both essential to divinity and also incompatible with humanity. The success of Cross’s strategy would seem to require that there be no such properties. Cross says as much explicitly: ‘What it means is that the set of necessary divine and human properties cannot contain any contradictory pairs’.12 Let us grant this (unsubstantiated) commitment. This would imply that all of the properties that are essential to divinity are such that they are possibly exemplifiable by a human being. We cannot ‘segregate’ a divine property to the divine nature alone so as to insulate the human nature from it, for this kind of classical strategy is the very one which Cross wishes to avoid utilising. This yields a rather bizarre implication: none of the divine properties is incompatible with human nature and, by making the very same argument in reverse, no property of humanity is incompatible with the divine nature. What gives Cross’s proposal its strongly Monophysite flavour is simply the sheer implausibility of this notion. It requires us to adopt an eccentric understanding of the creator–creature distinction: God is distinct from creatures, not in the sense that he possesses a set of divine attributes which distinguish him radically from creatures, but in the sense that the divine attributes are merely non-essential to his creatures. Yet, there is no modal or metaphysical impediment to a human being exemplifying every one of these attributes. The creator–creature distinction, then, is not one that is ontological, but merely modal. By jettisoning divine and human properties left, right and centre, until the two shortlists that remain may dovetail into one another neatly, we threaten to so emaciate the two natures that they prove unrecognisable. Interestingly, Cross seems to recognise the limitations of his Christological programme. In the end, even Cross allows that there are certain properties of the human nature from which the divine Word must be insulated, such that they are properties of the human nature only, and not properties of the divine person: The second person of the Trinity is essentially omniscient. But the Gospels present Jesus as ignorant and mistaken. So, minimally, we need a subject for this lack of knowledge. It cannot be the second person of the Trinity on pain of contradiction. So it must be the assumed nature.13

Christological Semantics 121 Elsewhere, Cross confidently assigns Christ’s human properties to the divine person, even allowing this to inform his understanding of the divine nature itself. For instance, on one occasion he reasons as follows: So if being human entails changing, then the second person of the Trinity can be neither timeless nor immutable. Given that the second person of the Trinity has every property essential for being divine, no divine person is essentially timeless or immutable. And since nothing can be first timeless and then temporal, timelessness cannot be a contingent property. Thus God is not timeless if the Incarnation is true.14 Problematically, Cross provides us with no principled means of deciding when we should reason in the former way and when we should reason in the latter. Moreover, there are cases in which neither of the above strategies may be applied. Consider ‘capability of death’. On the first strategy, the human nature alone is capable of death, and thus the divine person fails to be the subject, in any sense, of the human nature’s mortality. In which case, it would be false to say that Jesus Christ died on the Cross. On the second strategy, whereby properties of the human nature are understood to characterise the divine Word in the Word’s divinity, God himself is now subject to mortality. Cross’s only options, it would seem, are to say that God died (qua God!) or that only the human nature died (and not the Son!). In this sense, Cross’s proposal looks as though it is caught between a kind of Eutychianism and a kind of Docetism: either the divine and human properties are thought to ‘rush together’ into a common pool, or the divine person fails to be the subject of any human property that is incompatible with divinity as such (which, I submit, is a good many of them). It seems to me that similar objections may be levelled against any restriction strategy, no matter what form it takes. The problem may be put in the form of a dilemma. Do we continue to jettison the properties of one nature until all the remaining properties are exemplifiable by the other nature? Or do we stop short of this point, out of respect for maintaining the distinction of the two natures? If we opt for the former, then, as I have argued, we are left with a one-nature Christology, and we have thus failed to defend the coherence of the two-nature doctrine, which was our purpose. If we opt for the latter, then we are left with a Christ who continues to be characterised by at least some contradictory pairs of predicates. Thus, I conclude, all restriction strategies must be judged as either a theological or philosophical failure, depending on which horn of the dilemma is embraced. It is little surprise, therefore, that each of the above figures has resorted to what is, in effect, a compound strategy. Stephen Davis sought to supplement his kenotic Christology by drawing on the classical semantic strategy of reduplication. Thomas Morris, recognising the limits of maintaining human nature’s ‘open texture’, appealed to a modified doctrine of God. And Richard

122  Christological Semantics Cross, while apparently being committed to the belief that all of the essential divine and human properties must be mutually compatible, also seems to allow that there are at least some human properties which must fail to be properties of the divine person. Quite apart from their particular shortcomings, it is my suggestion that such compound strategies are objectionable per se, for they imply that the Incarnation is itself a compound event. If the union of divinity and humanity in the second person of the Trinity is rendered metaphysically possible only by positing a plurality of explanations, then the Word’s becoming man is not one single, simple event. In some cases, the apparent conflicts between the attributes of divinity and of humanity are accommodated in one way, and in other cases they are accommodated in some very different way. As such, the Incarnation is no longer the unified act which God brings about by his power, but is an amalgam of accommodations of God’s power to the logical and metaphysical constraints which would otherwise render it an impossibility. The power of the Incarnational claim is lessened considerably if it is seen as anything other than the simple and unified event of the Word becoming man. A compound approach speaks against this by suggesting that God must resort to a variety of Incarnational techniques, any one of which would, in isolation, prove incapable of making the Incarnation a complete reality. It therefore appears that, sooner or later, one who wishes to defend the logical coherence of the two-nature doctrine must adopt the classical strategy of making predications of Christ according to nature.15 Aside from the foregoing critique of the restriction strategies, Chalcedon itself provides us with a decisive reason for thinking that this is so. Chalcedon stipulates that Christ be ‘consubstantial with the Father’ (homoousion tō patri) and ‘the same consubstantial with us’ (homoousion ton auton hēmin). One who seeks to defend the Chalcedonian standard, and yet is allergic to the semantics of classical Christology, is committed to saying that Christ is consubstantial with the Father and consubstantial with us in one and the same sense. As previously observed, this seems to leave us with a one-nature Christology, not to mention the bizarre implication that divinity and humanity are consubstantial with each other. Clearly, though, it is also anti-Chalcedonian, for the Creed itself specifies the nature according to which the consubstantiality obtains in each case. Predicating of Christ according to nature is therefore not only permitted but also required by Chalcedon. The classical approach maintains that there is no logical impediment to Christ’s having incompatible properties predicated of him, given that the primary or immediate bearers of these properties are the natures themselves (whether, and in what sense, the divine person may be said to bear divine and human properties remains to be considered). We may therefore see that the classical approach is particularly amenable to concretism as regards Christ’s human nature. In discussing the metaphysical status of Christ’s human nature in Chapter 3, I argued for a concrete-nature rather than an abstract-nature

Christological Semantics 123 view. That is, I argued that the assumed nature ought to be understood as a substance rather than as merely a set of properties which the Word acquires. The reason is that, if the latter perspective is adopted, then the Word is the immediate and unqualified subject of all the human properties. Yet, this is only possible if there are no incompatible pairs between the essential divine and human properties. We now have good reason to think that this is highly doubtful. In which case, we must understand the assumed nature, not merely as a set of properties, but as a substance with properties of its own. Classical strategies, like restriction strategies, are really a family of proposals, not all of which are equally promising. They all have in common the employment of a particular kind of semantic form, one which qualifies a predication by relativising it to one nature or the other. The precise semantic form that this qualification takes varies from one classical strategy to the next. Typically, classical strategies make use of a ‘qua’ locution, as follows: ‘Qua divine, Christ is impassible’. ‘Qua’ (or sometimes ‘secundum’) is to be understood here as something like ‘as’, ‘in virtue of’ or ‘according to’. It may be understood as the Latinised counterpart to the Chalcedonian pair of qualifications kata tēn theotēta and kata tēn anthrōpotēta. This semantic strategy is therefore no novelty; on the contrary, it has precedence in the Chalcedonian Definition itself. Fortunately, classical strategies admit of fairly straightforward and seemingly exhaustive classification, according to which part of the predication they seek to modify. A proposition of the form ‘Christ is impassible’ has three grammatical components: the subject (‘Christ’), the predicate (‘impassible’) and the copula (‘is’). This leaves us with four options as to what we may use ‘qua’ to modify: we may modify the entire proposition, or we may modify one of the proposition’s three grammatical components, either the subject, predicate or copula. Of these four possibilities, only the first three will be considered in this chapter. The fourth option, the copula-modifying qua, will be considered in Chapter 5. There are two reasons for this. First, the copula-modifying qua is almost entirely absent in the literature. Even the medieval schoolmen, inventive such as they were, did not consider it. It is therefore something of a novelty, and its exploration ought to be privileged for this reason. Second, it is, in my view, the most promising of all the strategies. Arguing for its viability therefore warrants its own separate treatment. The Reduplicative Qua ‘Reduplicative’ propositions are those in which the ‘qua’ is taken as modifying the proposition in toto, rather than some grammatical component thereof. A proposition of the form ‘Qua divine, Christ is impassible’ is to be understood to be saying not only that Christ is impassible but that Christ’s being divine is that which accounts for, or provides for, his being impassible. The reduplicative qua, then, is something like an explanatory cause. It informs us

124  Christological Semantics of the nature because of which, or in virtue of which, Christ exemplifies the property in question. Such a strategy is hinted at in Aquinas: It must, however, be observed that in a statement where one thing is predicated of another attention must be paid not only to the identity of the subject to which the Predicate is attributed, but also to the particular aspect of the subject which justifies such attribution. While, accordingly, no distinction is to be made between the various Predicates attributed to Christ, it is necessary to distinguish the two aspects of the subject which justify such predication. For attributes of the divine nature are predicated of Christ in virtue of his divine nature, while attributes of the human nature are predicated of him in virtue of his human nature.16 On the face of it, however, such an analysis does not seem to advance us very much in blocking formal contradiction. From ‘Qua divine, Christ is impassible’ it follows that ‘Christ is impassible’, and from ‘Qua human, Christ is passible’ it likewise follows that ‘Christ is passible’. While the qua modifications appear to block contradiction immediately, a contradiction may still be derived from them in fairly short order. Thomas Morris lays this out with succinct formality: Consider any conjunctive reduplicative proposition of the form ˹x as A is N and x as B is not N.˺ If the subjects of both conjuncts are the same and the substituends of N are univocal across the conjunction, then as long as (1) the reduplication predicates being A of x and predicates being B of x, and (2) being N is entailed by being A, and not being N is entailed by being B, then the reduplicative form of predication accomplishes nothing except for muddying the waters, since in the end the contradiction stands of x being characterized as both N and not N.17 Morris’s estimation seems to be quite right. Allan Bäck terms this the secundum quid ad simpliciter inference, by which the straightforward predication may be inferred from the qualified predication.18 Needless to say, if coherence is to be preserved then there must be some way of blocking the secundum quid inference, which the reduplicative analysis does not seem able to do. One of the few contemporary writers to have given the reduplicative analysis more than the time of day is Michael Gorman, who suggests two strategies for refining or clarifying the reduplicative qua in such a way that blocks Morris’s objection. I will devote the remainder of this section to considering Gorman’s proposals. One of Gorman’s suggestions is to refine what it means for a property to be predicable of a subject. To this end, he distinguishes between ‘strong’ predicability (predicabilitys) and ‘weak’ predicability (predicabilityw). Predicabilitys is predicability in the ordinary sense described earlier: impassibility

Christological Semantics 125 is predicables of Christ qua divine just in case Christ is divine, Christ is impassible and Christ’s being divine is that which accounts for his being impassible. This, Gorman acknowledges, is the sense of predicability that is implicated in the above contradiction.19 Predicabilityw is rather more modest: impassibility is predicablew of Christ qua divine just in case Christ is divine, and, if Christ is only divine, then he is impassible.20 The antecedent of this conditional, ‘if Christ is only divine’, does not obtain post-Incarnation, and therefore this weak construal of predicability does not tell us that Christ really is impassible (nor, it should be noted, does it tell us that he is not impassible). It tells us only that he would be impassible if (but not ‘only if’) he were to exemplify no other nature than his divine nature. Does this block formal contradiction? It certainly appears to. Since, on the weak construal of predicability, ‘Qua divine, Christ is impassible’ does not imply ‘Christ is impassible’, and ‘Qua human, Christ is passible’ does not imply ‘Christ is passible’, we cannot derive a contradiction as we could with a strong construal of predicability. However, this weakening of predicability has certain obvious drawbacks, which Gorman concedes. Avoiding contradiction is not our only Christological desideratum, and the question of whether Christ is passible, impassible or both remains open. At this point, Gorman suggests a principle whereby the human properties are given priority over the divine. If the assumption of human nature means anything, says Gorman, it surely means that the Word acquires the properties of human nature, together with our token example ‘passibility’. Both the divine properties and human properties are weakly predicable of Christ – which, we remind ourselves, means nothing more than that Christ has all the properties of a nature if that nature is his only nature – but only the human properties are predicable of him strongly.21 According to Gorman, then, we may say all three of the following: ‘Qua divine, Christ is impassible’, ‘Qua human, Christ is passible’ and ‘Christ is passible’. But we may not say ‘Christ is impassible’. Gorman notes a superficial similarity between his proposal and kenotic Christology, which understands the act of Incarnation in terms of a selfdivestiture of divine properties on the part of the assuming Word. However, Gorman resists such an observation on the grounds that, on his proposal (which he considers to be consonant with a classically Thomistic account of the Incarnation), no change takes place in the inner life of the Word. No properties of the divine Word are lost, and any imperfections which are newly predicable of the Word post-Incarnation are a function of that which the Word assumes, not of anything of which the Word divests itself.22 This is most implausible, however. Gorman’s proposal implies unavoidably that, post-Incarnation, the Word ceases to have at least some of the divine properties it once had. Predicating impassibility weakly of Christ qua divine means that Christ is impassible if divinity is his only nature. This entails that the pre-incarnate Word is impassible. Yet, Gorman also proposes that, postIncarnation, where there is a conflict between a divine and a human property,

126  Christological Semantics the human property prevails. Christ is passible; he is not impassible. So, it is unavoidable, on Gorman’s system, that the Word forfeits divine properties (not least impassibility) upon the Incarnation, and undergoes intrinsic change. For this reason, Gorman’s strategy is most reminiscent of the strategy of Stephen Davis, already considered, and is subject to similar objections to those raised against it. Davis, we recall, sought to speak of God the Son emptying himself of all those divine properties that are incompatible with human existence, while retaining an inner nucleus of properties that are essential to divinity, thus remaining vere deus. The limits of such a strategy are obvious: what if there is at least one property which is both essential to divinity and incompatible with humanity? As argued previously, it is highly plausible that there are at least some such candidates. Gorman’s reduplicative strategy seems to be vulnerable to the very same kind of problem. What would become of such a property, on Gorman’s system? Presumably, it would be predicated weakly of Christ, such that he would exemplify it qua divine at least as long as divinity is his only nature. But would he forfeit this property upon his Incarnation? Like Davis, Gorman is caught in a dilemma. Either the Son retains such a property, despite the fact that it is incompatible with human existence, in which case we must search further for some supplementary strategy to help us in such cases, or else the Son forfeits this property, in which case he has forfeited his very divinity with it. Thus, Gorman’s first proposal must be judged to be as objectionable as the kenotic approach which it obliquely resembles. Gorman’s project seems to be an exercise in generating ambiguity, in contriving a way for us to say that Christ is impassible, even when he really is not. Gorman’s second strategy involves making another distinction among predications, though along rather different lines. Gorman notes that there is an ambiguity inherent in qua denials that is not exhibited by qua affirmations. Consider the following non-theological example: ‘Fido is not able to hear in virtue of having eyes’. This proposition may be interpreted variously. On one interpretation, we may take it as nothing more than a negated counterpart to a reduplicative affirmation: Fido is not able to hear, Fido has eyes, and Fido’s having eyes is that in virtue of which he is not able to hear. Gorman terms this ‘narrow denial’ (DN), and it is implicated in the problem of Christological predication in just the same way as are reduplicative affirmations. Alternatively, we may understand it to be saying nothing more than that Fido’s having eyes does not make it such that Fido is able to hear. Note that, on this interpretation, called ‘wide denial’ (DW), it is left open as to whether Fido is, in fact, able to hear. All that is signified is that Fido’s having eyes is not what provides for his ability to hear (regardless of whether or not Fido can hear).23 Consider the following pair of Christological predications: ‘Christ is passible qua human’ and ‘Christ is not passible qua divine’. The former proposition

Christological Semantics 127 is an affirmation, and as such it allows for the secundum quid inference to go through: Christ is passible simpliciter. But the latter proposition is a denial, and, interpreted according to DW, it blocks secundum quid. All we may infer is that Christ’s divine nature is insufficient to provide for Christ’s being passible.24 From this pair of propositions, all we have licence to conclude is that Christ is passible, and that it is in virtue of his human nature, not his divine nature, that this is the case.25 Once more, Gorman has succeeded in avoiding contradiction, but only by means of generating ambiguity. The above propositions are, to be sure, jointly non-contradictory, but only because we have no way of knowing whether or not Christ is impassible. If we press the point, and if it transpires that impassibility is indeed predicable of Christ, then we are left with straightforward contradiction once more. Just as with his previous strategy, Gorman can successfully avoid contradiction only by denying that Christ really is impassible. To be clear: that Christ is not impassible is not implied by the above propositions, but it is something to which Gorman is committed nonetheless, if he wishes to avoid contradiction. The reduplicative analysis of the qua locutions must therefore be rejected. On the naïve reading, reduplication does not avoid contradiction; it merely throws up a temporary smokescreen which is defeated by a single elimination step, as Morris and others have observed. Attempts to construct more sophisticated reduplicative analyses prove, in the end, rather unimpressive. In Gorman’s hands, the act of predication is simply slackened to a point at which a property is predicable of a subject even if the subject does not truly exemplify the property in question. It seems appropriate, therefore, to join with the consensus in concluding that the reduplicative approach is rather weak, and not suitable for our present purpose. The Specificative Qua The specificative analysis of the qua locutions is the first which seeks to modify some grammatical element of a Christological predication, rather than the proposition in its entirety. Unlike the reduplicative analysis, which relates divine and human predicates to a nature which serves as their explanatory cause, the specificative analysis relates the predicates to a proper part to which they primarily correspond. This analysis suggests that the nature to which the property in question corresponds serves to inform implicitly the precise subject of predication. That is, it is not the person, Christ, who is the subject of predication simpliciter; rather, it is Christ as divine, or Christ as human, to which a predication is ultimately assigned. Since Christ exists in two natures, one must be cognizant of the fact that there are now potentially two distinct subjects of predication. Allegedly, contradiction is avoided because that of which divine properties are predicated is not the same subject as that of which human properties are predicated.

128  Christological Semantics The specificative analysis is therefore accompanied by rather more metaphysical baggage than the reduplicative. Specification is typically understood in mereological terms: Christ is a composite being which admits of divine and human parts and, in virtue of the divine and human properties being predicable of some part or other, they are predicable of the ‘whole’ Christ. Semantically, this is often expressed by making predications of Christ in such a way that the relevant nature is made to be implicit within the subject of predication itself. Thomas Senor makes use of hyphenation so as to embed the nature grammatically into the supposit, creating a composite subject of predication as follows: ‘Christ-qua-divine is impassible’.26 Eleonore Stump advances a modest defence of Aquinas’s mereological attempt at preserving Christological coherence. If we consider Christ as a composite being, of which his human nature serves as a concrete part, we may distinguish between predications that are apt of Christ simply – that is, in his divinity, for he is eternally and unceasingly a divine person – and those predications that are apt of him in virtue of their being apt of the assumed human nature. A composite whole, says Stump, may ‘borrow’ a property from one of its parts, and this ‘piggybacking’ of a whole upon its parts allows for human predicates to be assigned to the divine person without contradiction, for Christ exemplifies such properties only in his humanity.27 So understood, contradiction seems to have been avoided. The human side of each contradictory pair of predicates, while really apt of Christ, is apt of him in a derived sort of sense, being more immediately apt of the human nature. It then ‘traces’, if only qualifiedly, to the divine supposit. This approach is highly reminiscent of compositional Christology, examined in Chapter 3. Richard Cross is unimpressed by this account. Even granting Aquinas’s analysis of wholes borrowing properties from their parts, it is doubtful whether this insight achieves very much purchase in our Christological case. While Aquinas is keen to express the metaphysics of the hypostatic union in terms of a whole–parts analogy (rejecting forcefully a substance–accident analogy), this analogy, Cross points out, serves merely as a model for the hypostatic union, and is therefore literally false. A property, says Cross, is necessarily either a property of a whole or it is a property of a part; if Christ does not literally have parts, then, logically, his properties must all belong to him simply. So long as the whole–parts model remains merely a model and not a literal metaphysical description, one is committed finally to ascribing contradictory predicates unqualifiedly to the person of Christ.28 Indeed, if ‘Christ’ is taken as designating the simple divine person, then it is difficult to see how the human nature may be said to be a ‘part’ of Christ at all. One might instead take ‘Christ’ to name, not the divine person, but the conglomeration of the divine person plus the assumed human nature, as compositional Christology conceives of the matter. However, as already argued in relation to such compositional accounts, this provides no way for the divine person to be the subject of the human properties. The fact that Stump does

Christological Semantics 129 not explain precisely how a human nature may be considered as being ‘part’ of the divine Word weakens the account considerably. Duns Scotus, says Cross, circumvents this difficulty by speaking of Christ as being literally composed of the divine Word and the human nature. As a divine person, divine predicates are apt of Christ straightforwardly; the human predicates, on the other hand, are apt most immediately of the human nature. Christ may be spoken of as exemplifying such properties qua his human nature (i.e. such predicates are apt of Christ in virtue of his possessing a part, the human nature, of which they are apt), but he does not exemplify them simpliciter.29 Scotus therefore distinguishes between two senses of predication: ‘proximate’ predication, by which the predication is made of the nature, and ‘remote’ predication, by which the predication is made of the suppositing Word.30 By way of a non-theological illustration, Scotus considers the propositions ‘x is blind’ and ‘x sees’. Contrary to appearances, these two propositions are not contradictory. Suppose the subject in question has two visual systems. If x is blind in just one of its visual systems, then ‘x is blind’ may be considered true (if it is understood to be saying, ‘x has a visual system with respect to which x is unable to see’). This would not imply, however, that ‘x sees’ is false, for such would require that x be blinded in both of its visual systems.31 Returning to our Christological case, the insight appears to be this: from the proposition ‘Christ has a nature with respect to which he is not impassible’ (i.e. his human nature), it cannot be inferred that ‘Christ does not have a nature with respect to which he is impassible’ (i.e. his divine nature). The problem with this account – and one which Cross recognises – is that ‘Christ’ is not strictly identical with ‘the Word’: ‘the Word’ is the divine person considered as such, whereas ‘Christ’ is the name given to the mereological sum of the divine Word plus the assumed human nature. The parallels to the foregoing discussion of the medieval subsistence theory are apparent. It is incoherent, so I have argued, to have ‘Christ’ name a composite person and ‘the Word’ name the simple divine person, if (as Scotus wishes to maintain) the two ‘persons’ are understood to be one and the same. Christ cannot both be the Word and contain the Word as a proper part. If Christ is truly identical with the Word, then Christ is a simple divine person and thus cannot contain the human nature as a part, in which case we may no longer speak of Christ’s exemplification of human properties in terms of a mereological ‘borrowing’. And if Christ is not identical with the Word, then considerably more work must be done to show how the Word may finally be the subject, in any sense, of the properties of the human nature. Turning from metaphysics to semantics, there is not, on the specificative analysis, a common subject of all the divine and human predicates; or, if there is, then it cannot be a person. It can only be a conglomeration of the divine person and the assumed human nature. But Chalcedon demands far more than this: it requires that there be a common subject of the divine and human predicates and, moreover, that this common subject be the very person of the

130  Christological Semantics Word. Specification, however, distracts the divine and human predicates to two distinct subjects. Timothy Pawl thus levels the following objection: If Christ-qua-divine is not the same thing as Christ-qua-human, then the predicates aptly predicated of Christ according to his human nature are not predicated to one and the same thing as the predicates aptly predicated of Christ according to his divine nature. But, Conciliar Christology entails that the predicates aptly predicated of Christ according to his human nature are predicated to one and the same thing as the predicates aptly predicated of Christ according to his divine nature.32 The specificative analysis should therefore be rejected in its mereological expression. As I  have already made a case against composition in the Incarnation, this should come as little surprise. Construing the hypostatic union in terms of a whole–parts relationship simply has no way of allowing the simple divine Word to be the subject of both divine and human predicates. If ‘Christ’ is none other than the divine Word, then he has no parts, and if ‘Christ’ contains the Word as a part, then Christ cannot be identical with the Word and thus we have no way of predicating human properties of the divine person, contrary to the standard of Chalcedon. Specification seeks to preserve coherence by predicating divine and human properties of two distinct subjects; however, what this manoeuvre gains in coherence it loses in fidelity to Chalcedon. Despite his misgivings about the specificative analysis, Pawl has recently contributed a strategy which seeks to exploit Scotus’s basic insight. Pawl’s strategy involves a logical manoeuvre whereby the truth conditions for the predications we make of Christ are revised so as to incorporate implicit reference to a concrete nature. For example, Pawl provides the following revised truth conditions for the predicates ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’: Visible: s is visible just in case s has a nature that is perceivable. Invisible: s is invisible just in case s has a nature that is not perceivable.33 So defined, there is no contradiction entailed by one and the same subject simultaneously being both visible and invisible, on the condition that the subject in question possess more than one nature. As with Scotus’s illustration of the creature with more than one visual system, Christ’s having a nature that is visible does not entail that he does not have a nature that is not visible (indeed, Pawl makes reference to Scotus’s illustration in support of his view).34 Pawl’s suggestion is that, when we make a predication of a subject, the subject satisfies the predication’s truth conditions by virtue of having a nature that exemplifies a certain property. It is in virtue of having a nature that is perceivable that a subject may have ‘visible’ predicated of it, and it is in virtue of having a nature that is not perceivable that it may have ‘invisible’ predicated of it. Thus, predicating visibility and invisibility of Christ

Christological Semantics 131 simultaneously yields nothing untoward, from a logical point of view, so long as we understand concrete natures to be the things which are intrinsically capable (or incapable) of being perceived. We might wonder: what is the difference, if any, between being ‘visible’ and being ‘perceivable’? Let us first suppose that there is no difference apart from a merely linguistic one: being perceivable is just what it means for something to be visible, and vice versa. If this is the case, then, when Christ’s human nature is said to be perceivable, we might just as well say that it is visible; the terms may be exchanged freely. Thus, Christ is visible in virtue of having a nature that is visible. By the same token, Christ is invisible in virtue of having a nature that is invisible. Generally speaking, propositions such as ‘x is F’ are to be understood more precisely as ‘x has a nature that is F’. On such an interpretation, the natures alone are doing the work of property exemplification, and the person himself, namely Christ, is not truly the subject of a property, except in a manner of speaking. I take it that this would be an unacceptable result. Christ himself must really be the subject of both divine and human properties, even if not in entirely the same sense or without qualification. It would indeed be insupportable for the person of the Word to fail to be the subject of the divine attributes! It can be assumed that Pawl does not intend such an interpretation. Being visible is not a matter of having a nature that is visible, but of having a nature that is perceivable. Furthermore, if Pawl’s strategy is to avoid the objection that it fails to allow the person of Christ to be the subject of any properties, then the difference between ‘visible’ and ‘perceivable’ cannot be merely linguistic but must indicate a real ontological distinction. It is therefore not strictly a case of Christ’s being F in virtue of having a nature that is F: Christ, and not his human nature, has a nature that is perceivable. Christ himself is therefore literally and unqualifiedly visible, in virtue of satisfying the truth condition for this predicate. The promise of Pawl’s strategy would seem to hinge, therefore, on the notion that there is a real (and not merely logical) distinction to be made between ‘visible’ and ‘perceivable’, such that being ‘visible’ is a matter of having a ‘perceivable’ nature. Apparently, then, ‘visible’ is the sort of thing which may be aptly predicated of persons (but not natures) and ‘perceivable’ is the sort of thing which may be aptly predicated of natures (but not persons). ‘Visible’ is what Christ is, whereas ‘perceivable’ is what his human nature is. But why should we think this? That is, why would it be inappropriate to predicate ‘visible’ of Christ’s human nature and ‘perceivable’ of Christ himself? Is Christ’s human nature not visible? Is Christ not perceivable (if only qua human)? Thus stated, Pawl’s strategy seems to face a problem of arbitrariness. The problem may be expressed still more strongly with another example, that of mutability. On Pawl’s system, the truth condition for being mutable is ‘has a nature that is able to change’.35 Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between ‘mutable’ and ‘able to change’? Surely, if Christ’s human

132  Christological Semantics nature is able to change, then it is mutable; and, if Christ has a human nature that is able to change, then we should be prepared to predicate ‘able to change’ of Christ himself as well, if only qua human. If we do not accept that there is a meaningful distinction between the two locutions, then we have fallen back into a case of Christ’s being the subject of properties only in virtue of having natures which exemplify those properties. Pawl anticipates something like this objection (his ‘Objection 5’). Pawl claims that the likes of ‘visible’ can be aptly predicated both of Christ himself and of his human nature, though this requires a further revision to his revised truth condition for ‘visible’: ‘s is visible just in case s has or is a nature that is perceivable’.36 Christ satisfies the ‘has’ disjunct of the truth condition, whereas his human nature satisfies the ‘is’ disjunct. Because of the revised truth condition’s disjunctive character, both Christ and his human nature are truly visible. But, supposing that we accept this revision, this would only serve to answer half of the problem just raised. It may now be that we have a way of predicating ‘visible’ of both Christ and his human nature, but we do not yet have a way of predicating ‘perceivable’ of both Christ and his human nature. As yet, ‘perceivable’ looks like something which Christ’s human nature is but which Christ himself is not. Pawl could simply deny that there is any sense whatsoever in which Christ is perceivable. This certainly is a considerable cost, especially if we are already predicating visibility of Christ (how could Christ be visible and yet not perceivable?). But perhaps this is to miss Pawl’s larger point. It may be that what Pawl is truly wanting to capture is not a difference between two properties, or two predicates (namely, ‘visible’ and ‘perceivable’), but the difference between a property and a predicate. That is, perhaps a distinction is to be made between property bearing, which is an ontological phenomenon, and predicating, which is purely a linguistic or semantic phenomenon. Perhaps ‘perceivable’ is a property, something which picks out a real ontological feature (of a nature), whereas ‘visible’ is a predicate, one which, as Pawl has it, may be constructed ‘willy-nilly’ and which need not carve reality exactly at its joints.37 If this is indeed the sort of distinction which Pawl has in mind, then this, in my view, would simply re-double the initial objection to the strategy. The properties are borne exclusively by the natures, and the person of Christ may have the likes of ‘visible’ or ‘invisible’ predicated of him only in virtue of having natures which really exemplify certain ontological features, like being or not being perceivable. All told, Christ’s being the subject of this or that predicate looks to be only a linguistic phenomenon, and not an ontological one. The point is not that this is an inevitable result of Pawl’s strategy, but merely that, if Pawl wishes to avoid this result, he can do so only by making a distinction between the likes of ‘visible’ and ‘perceivable’ which is altogether too likely to smack of contrivance. It seems to me that both Christ and his human nature are both visible and perceivable, just as both Christ and his human nature are both mutable and able to change. If this is the case, then the very distinction on which Pawl’s strategy depends would collapse.

Christological Semantics 133 The Predicate-Modifying Qua The fundamental problem with which this chapter has been wrestling is that of how one and the same subject may be characterised by contradictory predicates. Neither of the two qua analyses examined thus far seems to be able to provide a satisfactory answer to this question. The reduplicative analysis does not provide an adequate means of removing contradiction, and the specificative analysis removes contradiction only by assigning one side of each contradictory pair of predicates to a different subject: either to the natures themselves or to complex supposit-as-nature composites. Thus, reduplication leaves us with logical incoherence, and specification leaves us with something resembling Nestorianism very much more than Chalcedonian orthodoxy. This problem is put best by Marilyn McCord Adams: Indeed, it might seem that Christology is trapped in a dilemma: either the Divine Word and the human nature are united enough for characterization – in which case the Divine Word is the subject of contradictory properties simultaneously, or they aren’t united enough for characterization – in which case Nestorianism seems to follow.38 It may therefore be said that reduplication brings the divine and human natures together too closely, whereas specification keeps them at too great a distance. A third way – owing, once again, to Scotus, and defended by Adams – is to incorporate the nature-specific qualification, not into the subject term, but into the predicate term. The best way in which to express this semantically is to draw again on the conventions established by Senor, and to embed the nature into the predicate term by means of hyphenation: ‘Christ is passible-qua-human’. The purpose of this qualification is to modify the sense of that which is being predicated of Christ, such that the predicates are no longer incompatible and they may both characterise Christ without contradiction. While ‘passible’ and ‘impassible’ may be incompatible, it is not so clear that the complex properties ‘passible-qua-human’ and ‘impassiblequa-divine’ are incompatible, for, in this case, one is not the direct negation of the other. There are two striking advantages to this strategy. First, it appears to avoid contradiction. If, as just observed, the complex predicates are not straightforwardly contradictory, then predicating them both of Christ does not serve to generate incoherence. Second, since the qua clause is being employed in such a way as to modify the sense of the predicate term rather than that of the subject term, both properties are being predicated of a common subject. This removes any concerns regarding Nestorianism which plagued the specificative analysis. Christ, and not merely his human nature, is passible-qua-human: Qualifying the predicates captures the point that the subject is characterized or denominated by the nature for which it is an alien supposit.

134  Christological Semantics Since it is not characterized simpliciter, you do not get contradiction – which is the very result we want.39 However, Richard Cross detects a problem here, too. If it is true that the complex property ‘passible-qua-human’ neither implies nor is identical with ‘passible’, then it seems that we are left unable to predicate passibility of Christ at all, nor any other distinctively human property that is incompatible with divine existence as such. All of the distinctively human properties, which other human beings exemplify unqualifiedly, Christ does not exemplify; it would seem that he instead exemplifies their qualified counterparts. The notion that Christ exemplifies no distinctively human properties, but instead exemplifies an entirely different set of properties, is certainly troubling with respect to Chalcedon’s vere homo stipulation. Cross therefore concludes that such a proposal is Docetic, or very close to it.40 Adams sees no such difficulty. She argues that there are two different ways in which a property may be predicated of a subject. In the case of one-natured beings, properties may be predicated of the subject unqualifiedly; no naturespecific qualification need take place. In the case of natures which depend ontologically upon an alien supposit, however (e.g. Christ’s human nature, which depends ontologically upon the person of the Word), the property may only be predicated of the subject qua the nature in question, and such a predication does not imply that the property is predicable simpliciter of the subject.41 Such would suggest that Christ exemplifies his human properties in a unique way, for his is the only human nature which depends ontologically upon the supposit of an alien nature. Does this run afoul of Chalcedon? Adams thinks not. The fact that there is a difference between the way in which Christ is passible (in a nature that is not essential to him but which depends ontologically upon him) and the way in which we are passible (straightforwardly) does not impugn the verity of Christ’s humanity; the only difference lies in the fact that Christ’s human nature does not serve to ground its own supposit. And it is by no means un-Chalcedonian to observe that Christ’s relationship to his human nature is unique. Adams’s strategy thus seems to weaken Cross’s charge of Docetism, for, on reflection, Chalcedon does not require that Christ exemplify his human properties in precisely the same way as we exemplify ours, for Christ certainly does not exemplify his human nature in the same way as we exemplify ours. However, there does appear to be a sense in which Adams is wishing to have it both ways. On the one hand, Adams seems to be saying that Christ’s human properties are the selfsame properties as ours, and the difference lies solely in the uniqueness of Christ’s relationship to his human nature. On the other hand, she also wishes to say that Christ’s qualified human properties do not imply their unqualified counterparts: ‘Christ is passible-qua-human’ emphatically does not imply ‘Christ is passible’. On this, Adams is most clear. But it is far from clear that these two claims may be held together. Either ‘passible-qua-human’ and ‘passible’ are two distinct properties, or they

Christological Semantics 135 are not. If they are distinct, then it would appear that we and Christ do indeed have two distinct sets of human properties: our human properties and Christ’s human properties are simply not the same. And if they are not distinct (or, if one implies the other), then we have made no headway whatsoever in avoiding contradiction. We are caught in a dilemma. If we emphasise the sameness of Christ’s human properties with ours, then we have the very problem of contradiction with which we began. If we emphasise their difference, then Christ’s consubstantiality with us is called into serious doubt, and the threat of Docetism still looms large. This unsavoury dilemma should lead us to reject this particular avenue.42 Conclusion In this chapter, I have attended to the semantics of Christological predication, and critically considered whether there is any semantic procedure available to the Christologist that is up to the task of preserving coherence in the predications we make of Christ. To this end, I  have distinguished between two distinct species of strategy. The former, restriction strategies, provisionally accept the initially plausible notion that Christ cannot simultaneously be the subject of incompatible attributes. If this is indeed the case, then either the divine side or the human side of such a conflicting pair must be done away with in some fashion or other. This might involve denying that certain articles of classical theism, such as divine timelessness or immutability, are in fact appropriate descriptions of the divine nature; perhaps, that is, the divine nature is intrinsically more metaphysically akin to human nature than is traditionally conceived. Or, perhaps such divine attributes, while characterising the divine nature initially, are subsequently forfeited by the second person of the Trinity upon his Incarnation. Alternatively, it might be the human side of such contradictory pairs which ought to be jettisoned. Perhaps human nature is more amenable to being the subject of divine attributes than common-sense experience would lead us to believe, and the event of the Incarnation is so decisive in disclosing the true ontology of human beings that it transpires that we are, in fact, capable of being far more like God than we might be inclined to think. If human beings, considered as such, are metaphysically capable of the divine attributes, then it is perhaps not so perverse to claim than this man, Jesus of Nazareth, is also God. Finally, we might be tempted to employ an amalgam of both of these approaches, on some occasions having divinity give way to humanity and in other cases having humanity give way to divinity. I have argued that no restriction strategy is acceptable. If there is a unified reason for the rejection of restriction strategies in all their forms, it is the following: it is immeasurably plausible that there are at least some attributes of divinity of which human beings as such are incapable, and that there are, likewise, at least some human attributes of which God as such is incapable, come what may. If this is so, then, I  submit, restriction strategies are

136  Christological Semantics categorically insufficient to address the logic of the problem of Christological predication, for there will inevitably be at least some incompatible pairs of divine and human predicates to which the restriction procedure is altogether inapplicable. As observed, this rather damning conclusion seems to be accepted, at least tacitly, by each of the three ‘restriction strategists’ with whom I  have engaged. It is for this reason that each of Davis, Morris and Cross has made use of an alternative, supplementary approach to shore up the apparent deficiencies of their respective restriction strategies. I have additionally argued that even these supplemented strategies are not adequate to confront the problem of Christological predication, and that resorting to such compound strategies is itself theologically objectionable, for it frustrates the simplicity and unity of the Incarnational event, and instead speaks to a somewhat untidy and compromised set of Incarnational techniques into which God has been pressed to resort, given the logical and metaphysical constraints placed upon him by created reality. The upshot of this segment of the discussion is that divine and human attributes are not competitive. They are not occupying the same ‘space’, as it were, but correspond in some significant sense to Christ’s divine or human nature. For this reason, it is the very fact of Christ’s being dual-natured which provides for the possibility that he be the subject of otherwise incompatible attributes. When divine or human predications are made of Christ, then, they are to be made of him (if only implicitly) according to one or the other of his two natures. This is the general rationale of what I have called the ‘classical strategies’, which jointly represent the other approach to preserving coherence in our Christological semantics. I have treated three different ways in which a ‘qua’ locution may modify the sense of a proposition, either by attaching to the subject, the predicate or to the proposition in its entirety. This method of classification is, of course, a semantic one, concerned with the sense of what is conveyed by a Christological proposition. It may be tempting to think, then, that the entire discussion is one that is purely linguistic, and perhaps rather trifling for this reason. This, I believe, would be a mistake. Each of the semantic strategies I have considered has been accompanied by, and has attempted faithfully to express, a set of metaphysical commitments. Evaluating these various strategies, then, is a twofold exercise: not only is it an exercise in testing whether the locution in question has truly succeeded in preserving coherence, but it is also an exercise in probing beneath the surface grammar of these various Christological locutions, and uncovering the metaphysics beneath to be considered in its own right. The first of the three strategies, the reduplicative analysis, is far and away the least promising. There is a strong consensus that the problem of Christological predication is not in the least mitigated by grounding the two sides of each contradictory pair of predicates in a different explanatory cause. Even

Christological Semantics 137 if that in virtue of which Christ is impassible is distinct from that in virtue of which Christ is passible, the fact remains that Christ ends up being characterised simpliciter by both. Reduplication is therefore not fit for purpose, at least in the absence of a supplementary strategy. Michael Gorman, reduplication’s most committed defender in present scholarship, employs a number of semantic strategies so as to avoid contradiction; but, as was observed, such strategies can only achieve coherence at the expense of characterisation. That is, the success of Gorman’s various proposals is contingent upon Christ’s failing to exemplify a good many divine properties. This approach to reduplication is objectionable on the grounds that it requires that God cease to have many essential properties of divinity, thus collapsing reduplication back into the kenotic strategy which, I  have argued, we must see fit to reject. The specificative analysis is considerably more varied. Aquinas’s approach is relatively uncomplicated: Christ relates to his human nature analogously to how a whole relates to one of its concrete parts, and may therefore ‘piggyback’ upon its properties. The weakness of such a proposal is that a mere analogy is insufficient. If Christ’s human nature is not literally a part of him, then he cannot borrow its properties as in ordinary mereological cases. It would seem, therefore, that the properties of the human nature are properties of Christ simpliciter. Scotus, meanwhile, embraces the literality of the whole–part relationship as regards the hypostatic union, and may circumvent this particular concern thereby. The issue here, however, is one of unity of characterisation: it is doubtful whether, on such an account, Christ may be characterised literally by human predicates. Nor does it seem that Timothy Pawl’s semantic strategy aids in alleviating this difficultly of characterisation. Indeed, the very same problem appears only more pressing on Pawl’s account. On one interpretation of Pawl’s strategy, properties are things that are exemplified only by natures. All predications that are made of the Word, then, are made only in a manner of speaking. While Pawl would no doubt resist such an interpretation, he may do so only by making distinctions in which no obvious difference is to be found, such as that between ‘visible’ and ‘perceivable’, or between ‘mutable’ and ‘able to change’. It is judged to be unconvincing, however, that there is anything other than a merely linguistic difference here. Finally, I have considered the predicate-modifying analysis, defended by Marilyn McCord Adams. Adams draws attention to the fact that, in the Incarnation, the Word takes to itself a nature to which it relates non-essentially. This metaphysically revolutionary event serves to disrupt the standard Aristotelian analysis of substances: an individual substance can be made to be ontologically dependent upon an alien nature, such that it does not serve as its own supposit, nor as the ultimate subject of its properties. These metaphysical observations are, in my view, the most promising of all the analyses considered. As such, they will serve as the basis of discussion in Chapter 5.

138  Christological Semantics Metaphysics aside, what lets this particular qua analysis down is its semantic form. By modifying the sense of the predicate term, Christ’s human properties are no longer the same as ours: ‘passibility’ is a property of every other human being excluding Christ, with Christ instead exemplifying the unique property ‘passible-qua-human’. Adams would draw our attention to the fact that human properties may not be predicable of Christ in the same way as that in which they are predicable of us, and this may well be so. Nonetheless, Christ’s consubstantiality with us does require that that which is being predicated be the same in both cases. Consubstantiality requires that there be a common nature, humanity, which we and Christ instantiate. If we and Christ exemplify categorically distinct properties, then there is no way in which Christ may exemplify the essential properties of the same common nature that we do. If, on the other hand, the modified predicates do imply their unmodified counterparts, then coherence is forfeited once more. The three qua analyses I have treated in this chapter, and the numerous variations thereof, may not be irreparable. Nonetheless, I believe that there is adequate reason to reject them, on the strength of the above treatment. None of them, it seems to me, provides for a single subject being characterised by both the essential properties of divinity and those of humanity, without formal contradiction. Such, I hope, has been demonstrated adequately. In the final chapter, I move on to the remaining qua analysis, that which modifies the sense of the copula. I intend to argue that this final option is the most promising semantic strategy for rescuing the coherence of the two-nature doctrine. Notes 1 Michael Martin, “The Incarnation Doctrine Is Incoherent and Unlikely,” in Debating Christian Theism, ed. James Porter Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 444. 2 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 50 (3a. 16–26): The One Mediator, trans. Colman E. O’Niell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3a., q. 16, a. 4, objection 1. 3 Ibid., 3a., q. 16, a. 4, reply 1. 4 Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (London: Macmillan, 1983), 122. 5 Stephen T. Davis, “The Metaphysics of Kenosis,” in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 122. 6 Ibid., 133. 7 Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 63. 8 Ibid., 66. 9 Thomas D. Senor, “Drawing on Many Traditions: An Ecumenical Kenotic Christology,” in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 102. 10 Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate, 73. 11 Richard Cross, “The Incarnation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, ed. Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 464. Cross suggests that such a strategy is hinted at in certain of the

Christological Semantics 139 medievals and argues that it was their over-attachment to classical theism which prevented them from embracing it more fully: The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 205. 12 Richard Cross, “Incarnation, Omnipresence, and Action at a Distance,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 45, no. 3 (2003): 295. 13 Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, 315. 14 Ibid., 317. 15 Timothy Pawl presents a large body of textual evidence in support of the claim that conciliar Christology took it for granted that at least some contradictory pairs of predicates are apt of Christ simultaneously, in virtue of his two natures: In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 110–13. 16 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 50, 3a., q. 16, a. 4, reply. 17 Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate, 48–49. 18 Allan Bäck, “Scotus on the Consistency of the Incarnation and the Trinity,” Vivarium 36, no. 1 (1998): 85. 19 Michael Gorman, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 151. 20 Ibid., 152. 21 Ibid., 153. 22 Ibid., 154. 23 Michael Gorman, “Christological Consistency and the Reduplicative Qua,” Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2014): 91. 24 Ibid., 93. 25 A very similar strategy may be found in John Haldane, “Incarnational Anthropology,” in Human Beings, ed. David Cockburn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 2002–2006. Gorman, who makes reference to Haldane, considers his and Haldane’s respective strategies to be similar though subtly different. However, it seems to me that their strategies are virtually identical, since Haldane also exploits the ambiguity of qua denials as a means of avoiding contradiction. 26 Thomas D. Senor, “Incarnation, Timelessness, and Leibniz’s Law Problems,” in God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature, ed. Gregory E. Ganssle and David M. Woodruff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 229–30. 27 Eleonore Stump, “Aquinas’ Metaphysics of the Incarnation,” in The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 212–13. A similar strategy may be found in Gyula Klima, “Libellus Pro Sapiente – A Criticism of Allan Bäck’s Argument Against Thomas Aquinas’ Doctrine of the Incarnation,” The New Scholasticism 58, no. 2 (1984): 207–19. 28 Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, 197–98. Cross makes the same point at greater length, though not in explicit relation to Aquinas, in his “Parts and Properties in Christology,” in Reason, Faith and History: Philosophical Essays for Paul Helm, ed. Martin William Francis Stone (London: Routledge, 2016), 181–83. 29 Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, 199–200. 30 Ibid., 191. 31 Ibid., 200. 32 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, 125. Similar objections may be found in Thomas Senor, “The Compositional Account of the Incarnation,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 24, no. 1 (2007): 56. 33 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, 157.

140  Christological Semantics 4 Ibid., 158. 3 35 Ibid., 173. 36 Ibid., 172–73. In fact, Pawl now shifts to the use of the predicates ‘passible’ and ‘impassible’, rather than ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’, but the principle holds regardless. 37 Ibid., 135. 38 Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 128. 39 Ibid., 136. 40 Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, 204. 41 Adams, Christ and Horrors, 135–36. 42 Pawl introduces greater subtlety into the discussion by distinguishing between ‘substitutional’ and ‘non-substitutional’ readings of the predicate-modifying qua: In Defense of Conciliar Christology, 129–43. I will consider this distinction in the next chapter in relation to the copula-modifying analysis. While this distinction is meaningful – giving rise, in effect, to two different theories – I do believe that the dilemma just presented is equally threatening to both readings. One suggestion of Pawl’s which may circumvent the second horn of the dilemma is to maintain that all predicates are modified, that is, there is no such thing as passibility simpliciter. But this is less than ideal: while it would block secundum quid, we would be thrown back onto the first horn of the dilemma, that Christ’s passibility really would not be the same as ours, nor would anyone’s passibility be qualitatively the same as anyone else’s.

References Adams, Marilyn McCord. Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Aquinas, St Thomas. Summa Theologiae, Volume 50 (3a. 16–26): The One Mediator. Translated by Colman E. O’Niell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Bäck, Allan. “Scotus on the Consistency of the Incarnation and the Trinity.” Vivarium 36, no. 1 (1998): 83–107. Cockburn, David, ed. Human Beings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Cross, Richard. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———. “Incarnation, Omnipresence, and Action at a Distance.” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 45, no. 3 (2003): 293–312. ———. “The Incarnation.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, edited by Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea, 452–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ———. “Parts and Properties in Christology.” In Reason, Faith and History: Philosophical Essays for Paul Helm, edited by Martin William Francis Stone, 177–92. London: Routledge, 2016. Davis, Stephen T. Logic and the Nature of God. London: Macmillan, 1983. ———. “The Metaphysics of Kenosis.” In The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, 114–33. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Davis, Stephen T., Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, eds. The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Christological Semantics 141 Flint, Thomas P., and Michael C. Rea, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Ganssle, Gregory E., and David M. Woodruff, eds. God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Gorman, Michael. “Christological Consistency and the Reduplicative Qua.” Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2014): 86–100. ———. Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Haldane, John. “Incarnational Anthropology.” In Human Beings, edited by David Cockburn, 191–212. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Klima, Gyula. “Libellus Pro Sapiente – A Criticism of Allan Bäck’s Argument Against Thomas Aquinas’ Doctrine of the Incarnation.” The New Scholasticism 58, no. 2 (1984): 207–19. Marmodoro, Anna, and Jonathan Hill, eds. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Martin, Michael. “The Incarnation Doctrine Is Incoherent and Unlikely.” In Debating Christian Theism, edited by James Porter Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis, 404–13. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Moreland, James Porter, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis, eds. Debating Christian Theism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Morris, Thomas V. The Logic of God Incarnate. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Pawl, Timothy. In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Senor, Thomas D. “Incarnation, Timelessness, and Leibniz’s Law Problems.” In God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature, edited by Gregory E. Ganssle and David M. Woodruff, 220–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———. “The Compositional Account of the Incarnation.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 24, no. 1 (2007): 52–71. ———. “Drawing on Many Traditions: An Ecumenical Kenotic Christology.” In The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, 88–113. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Stone, Martin William Francis, ed. Reason, Faith and History: Philosophical Essays for Paul Helm. London: Routledge, 2016. Stump, Eleonore. “Aquinas’ Metaphysics of the Incarnation.” In The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, 197–218. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

5 Identity and Coherence in Christology

In the introduction to this work, I indicated my intention to accentuate the ‘instrumentalist’ dimension of the Christological tradition. In this final chapter, I shall attempt to do precisely this. In the preceding discussions, I positioned my thesis such that it is set against both kenotic and compositional conceptions of the hypostatic union. Kenotic accounts understand the assuming Word as having changed intrinsically by becoming incarnate. Compositional accounts, meanwhile, understand the assuming Word as being part of a larger complex whole, namely Christ, with which the Word as such is not unqualifiedly identical. In contrast with these accounts, instrumentalist conceptions maintain that Jesus Christ is the very person of the Word, and that Christ’s relation to the human nature is therefore one that is extrinsic or, to use the language of Aquinas, ‘mixed’, to the extent that the relation is ‘real’ only in the created nature but engenders no change, and actualises no potency, in the divine Word. The exact form of instrumentalism which I will advance is a rehabilitated version of the habitus theory, which has its roots in Athanasius and Augustine and which would later find expression in the Sentences of Peter Lombard. In my defence of the theory, I will argue that it does not differ so greatly from Aquinas’s own account, despite the fact that Aquinas himself considered it so contemptibly. While the habitus theory is by no means identical to the subsistence theory – eschewing, conspicuously, any suggestion of composition in the Incarnation – it does, I maintain, secure the indispensable articles of the doctrine which were presented in Chapters 2 and 3. What is more, the very fact that the habitus theory is capable of doing justice to Chalcedon, despite its seeing fit to make no reference to composition, is, I suggest, a considerable virtue. Moreover, the theory offers a distinctive way in which to coherently express all that Chalcedon requires us to confess of the person of Christ. In the previous chapter, I  examined several ways of responding to the problem of Christological predication, which came under the broad heading of ‘classical strategies’. The characteristic hallmark of classical strategies is that Christ’s divine and human properties are, in some sense or another, ‘segregated’ to Christ’s divine or human nature alone. For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to follow the convention of classifying these strategies DOI: 10.4324/9781003381358-6

Identity and Coherence in Christology 143 according to which part of a Christological proposition they modify, and I have treated three of them already. The fourth and final option is to modify the sense of the copula, ‘is’, as follows: ‘Christ is-qua-divine impassible’. As already mentioned, this option has enjoyed virtually no critical treatment in the literature. The only exception, it would appear, is Timothy Pawl’s In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. In the course of his survey of the qua locutions, Pawl considers the possibility of modifying the copula and subsequently offers a handful of reasons for rejecting it. My first intention in this chapter is to offer theological motivation for the copula-modifying qua analysis. As I have previously argued, using the qua modification to modify the sense of either the subject term or the predicate term threatens to fall short of the Chalcedonian standard, by tending towards Nestorianism (in the first case) or Docetism (in the second). Reduplication, meanwhile, does not succeed in preserving coherence at all. Not only does the copula-modifying qua analysis succeed in preserving coherence, but it does so in such a way that does not do injury to Chalcedon. Indeed, as I shall try to show, I believe it to be motivated by theological impulses that are eminently sympathetic to the intent of Chalcedon. Following this, I will articulate the specific version of the habitus theory which I wish to present. The habitus theory, while independently defensible on theological grounds, has the felicitous advantage of offering a metaphysical framework which accommodates the above semantic strategy. On the theory, Christ is truly divine and truly human, and yet there is a considerable metaphysical asymmetry implicit within the hypostatic union such that Christ does not relate to his divine and human natures in entirely the same sense. What it means for Christ to ‘be’ divine is by no means univocal with what it means for Christ to ‘be’ human, and hence what it means for Christ to ‘be’ impassible is not at all univocal with what it means for Christ to ‘be’ passible. The habitus theory licenses the very kind of semantic qualification of which the classical Christologist is in need, for the sake of rendering the doctrine of the Incarnation coherent. Third, I will explore the matter of subsistence. The question is that of how the human nature’s union with the Word is such as to yield no more than one person, such that the pre-existing divine Word is the unique personal subject of the human nature. I  will, at this point, return to the medieval discussions of this question, and critically consider the answers provided by both Aquinas and Scotus. I will then tentatively reject their respective accounts, in favour of a neglected alternative account which arises organically from my preferred habitus theory. Finally, I  will explore certain of the implications of considering the assumed human nature as an ‘instrument’ of the Word, particularly in relation to Christ’s human will. The tradition has historically maintained a duality of wills, corresponding with each of Christ’s two natures. This ‘Dyothelite’ position, I argue, continues to be defensible, being an authentic, not to mention vital, deliverance of the Chalcedonian standard. Furthermore, while Christ’s

144  Identity and Coherence in Christology human will is truly free, it is also, in virtue of its having been assumed by a divine person, incapable of sin. This does not denigrate the humanity, but in fact crucially distinguishes the human nature of Christ as the very human nature of which the divine Word is the personal subject. At this chapter’s end, we will have arrived at an account of the hypostatic union which satisfies the central desiderata of this project. The habitus theory, so I shall argue, provides an account of the union which is faithful to the principles of Chalcedon and which may be expressed in a semantic form that does not give rise to incoherence. Yet, it does so in such a way that does not exhaust the Incarnational mystery by reducing it to a further instance of a mundane occurrence. The Copula-Modifying Qua In this section, I will explore precisely what the copula-modifying analysis is intended to express. As Timothy Pawl is the only figure to have treated this analysis in any depth, I will follow his distinctions and semantic conventions. Pawl, following Thomas Senor, makes use of hyphenation so as to embed the nature grammatically into the copula: ‘Christ is-qua-divine impassible’. There are, for Pawl, two distinct ways in which such a locution may be understood. What I wish to do is to achieve some purchase on the metaphysical differences between the two interpretations of the modified copula, and to argue that one of the two interpretations is the more suitable for my consciously Chalcedonian purpose. Most crucially, I will argue that modifying the sense of the copula, as opposed to any other grammatical component of the proposition, is the most agreeable option available to the classical Christologist. Doing so, I argue, allows us to preserve coherence, and to do so in such a way that is faithful to the Chalcedonian standard. When the copula is modified, the semantic purpose of this modification is to express the (putative) fact that the hypostatic union involves two metaphysically distinct kinds of property exemplification. What it means for Christ to exemplify his divine properties and what it means for Christ to exemplify his human properties are, metaphysically, two very different kinds of phenomena, which cannot be collapsed into one another, or into a more basic univocal category. Importantly, both the subject term and the predicate term are left unmodified. Unlike the specificative analysis, ‘Christ’ names the selfsame subject in both cases; that which exemplifies the divine properties and that which exemplifies the human properties are one and the same. Unlike the predicate-modifying analysis, the passibility which Christ exemplifies need not be distinguished in any way from the passibility which any other human being exemplifies. The two interpretations of the copula-modifying analysis which Pawl analyses are the ‘substitutional’ and ‘non-substitutional’ interpretations. The non-substitutional interpretation reads ‘is-qua-divine’ and ‘is-qua-human’ as unique, self-contained adverbial modifiers. Simply put, there are two

Identity and Coherence in Christology 145 exemplification relations in view: a divine ‘is’ and a human ‘is’. We employ the divine ‘is’ when speaking of Christ’s exemplification of divine properties, and the human ‘is’ when speaking of his exemplification of human properties.1 To say that ‘Christ is-qua-divine F’, on the non-substitutional reading, is to say that there is a uniquely divine way of being something, of exemplifying properties. Similarly, to say that ‘Christ is-qua-human G’ is to say that there is a uniquely human way of being something. The conjunction of these two Christological propositions, then, should lead us to say that, in the hypostatic union, there are two irreducibly unique kinds of exemplification relation, one which corresponds to the natural kind ‘divinity’ and one which corresponds to the natural kind ‘humanity’. The substitutional interpretation, on the other hand, reads the ‘is’ univocally in both cases. The copula itself is always understood in the same sense, but it has incorporated into it a vacant ‘variable spot’, into which a kind-term may be inserted (i.e. ‘is-qua-x’, where x is the nature we wish to specify).2 The substitutional interpretation would therefore understand the modified copula in a variable (hence, ‘substitutional’), rather than a rigid, sense. Like the non-substitutional reading, the substitutional reading would understand ‘is-qua-divine’ and ‘is-qua-human’ to express two irreducibly distinct exemplification relations, but not because there is a peculiarly or essentially divine or human way of exemplifying properties. Rather, they express two irreducibly distinct ways in which Christ exemplifies the properties of his divine nature and his human nature. We may therefore see that the non-substitutional interpretation is motivated by a principle about universal common natures or natural kinds. To exemplify a given nature is to exemplify one’s properties in a special sense that is peculiar to that common nature (e.g. humanity). The substitutional interpretation, meanwhile, is motivated by a principle about individual or particular natures (e.g. my human nature). ‘Socrates is-qua-human passible’ may thus be interpreted in two ways. On the non-substitutional reading, Socrates exemplifies passibility in the specific way that he does in virtue of belonging to the universal kind ‘humanity’. On the substitutional reading, Socrates exemplifies passibility in such a way that is peculiar to his particular human nature. It is the substitutional reading which I advance as being the preferable of the two, for reasons which will be apparent presently.3 The relationship of Christ’s human nature to the divine person is one of ontological dependence, whereby the assumed nature depends in a special sense upon an alien supposit. This gives rise to a certain ‘asymmetry’ in the hypostatic union. This asymmetry consists in two things. Generally, it consists in the fact that the hypostatic union is a relation which spans divergent ontological orders. It is a relation of that which is divine to that which is created; that which is God to that which is not God. For this reason, everything which essentially characterises the creator–creature relationship also characterises the hypostatic union. More specifically, it consists in the fact that the human nature is not self-suppositing but has the second person of the Trinity

146  Identity and Coherence in Christology as its supposit. The two natures have a supposit in common, but their unity is a ‘lopsided’ unity, in the sense that one nature (the human) depends upon the other (the divine, in particular the Son) for its being, not merely as its creative source, but as its very person-forming principle. Conceptualising the two natures as substances, if only in an analogical sense, implies that the natures play a (though not necessarily the) property bearing role, in such a way that each of the two natures is insulated from the properties of the other nature, though not in such a way that the person of the Word fails to be their subject. For this reason, we must embrace something like Duns Scotus’s distinction between proximate and remote predication. Christ’s properties are predicated in an immediate or ‘proximate’ sense of one nature or the other, and, in virtue of their being aptly predicated of the natures, they are aptly predicated of the Word in an ultimate or ‘remote’ sense. In answer to the question, ‘Is (im)passibility a property of the nature or is it a property of the divine person?’, we must affirm that, in fact, both of these are the case. The properties are indeed properties of the natures, and, in virtue of their being the Word’s own natures, they are properties of the Word also, who serves as their ultimate subject. However, Christ does not exemplify his divine and human properties in a univocal sense. The person of the Word is truly divine and truly human, but the Word relates to the two natures in two, metaphysically very different, ways. As discussed in Chapter 2, Christ’s consubstantiality with the Father in his divinity is not to be understood in the same sense as his consubstantiality with us in his humanity. As a divine person, Christ’s relation to the divine nature is one of simple identity: Christ is one and the same Son, Word, the second of the Trinity, wholly identical with the simple divine essence and hence identical with all of the divine attributes. On the other hand, when humanity is predicated of Christ, this is said, not according to identity, but according to an external relation. The divine person is related to a concrete human nature in such a way that the person is that nature’s very person-forming principle. In short, the question ‘How does the person of the Word relate to the nature?’ yields a very different answer depending on which nature is in view. Rowan Williams is thus correct in saying: There is indeed . . . a problem in Chalcedon’s language to the extent that it implies that there is a single hypostasis which relates in the same way to two sets of attributes – which is the implication of saying, as the formula does, that Christ is of one essence (homoousios) with the Father as regards his divinity and of one essence with us as regards his humanity. The difficulty is that, taken at face value, this would mean either that the hypostasis somehow pre-exists both ‘natures’ or at least is independent of them in some sense, or that two abstract sets of attributes somehow come together to be unified in one agent.4 ‘Christ’ must not be conceived as an abstraction from the two natures, as though the person who serves as the subject of the Incarnation is a further

Identity and Coherence in Christology 147 metaphysical component in the equation, to which divinity and humanity are somehow appended. Nor is Christ the product or emergence of divinity and humanity’s conjunction, coming into being only when their union is complete. Christ is none other than the divine Word, who is the personal subject of both natures and who pre-exists their union. However, given that Christ’s relation to the human nature is other than his relation to the divine nature, divine and human properties cannot be predicated of Christ in a univocal sense. What it means for Christ to exemplify divine properties is informed by the manner in which he relates to his divine nature. By the same token, what it means for Christ to exemplify his human properties is informed by the manner in which he relates to his human nature. Since Christ relates to his two natures in two metaphysically different senses, this would in turn imply that Christ relates to his divine and human properties in two different senses. The non-univocity of the two exemplification relations (between Christ and his divine properties on the one hand and between Christ and his human properties on the other) hinges on the metaphysical asymmetry of the hypostatic union itself. What it means for Christ to ‘be’ impassible and what it means for Christ to ‘be’ passible indicate realities about Christ which, while both genuine, are related to one another analogically rather than univocally.5 It may now be seen why modifying the sense of the copula is the appropriate semantic strategy on which to settle. Impassibility characterises the divine nature and passibility characterises the human nature. In virtue of their being the Word’s own natures, both properties also characterise the Word. However, the Word relates to the two natures in two different ways. Christ thus exemplifies both impassibility and passibility, but the exemplification relations are not identical. ‘Christ is-qua-divine impassible’ and ‘Christ isqua-human passible’ are to be understood in such a way that Christ truly exemplifies both impassibility and passibility, but according to two irreducibly different exemplification relations, in virtue of the person’s non-identical relations to the two natures. It may also be seen that it is the substitutional, rather than the non-substitutional, interpretation of the modified copula which is to be preferred. We recall that, on the substitutional interpretation, subjects exemplify their properties in a sense that is informed by their individual natures, and this ‘sense’ is then expressed by means of the nature being incorporated into the copula. Assuming that properties are predicated ‘proximately’ of a nature, and then ‘remotely’ of the divine person, Christ exemplifies his human properties in a sense that is informed by his unique relationship to his individual human nature, one that is metaphysically distinct, both from how the person of Christ relates to his divine nature, and from how we relate to our individual human natures. The non-substitutional interpretation, on the other hand, does not suit our purposes equally well. It would commit us to saying that Christ exemplifies his human properties in the very same way as that in which all human beings exemplify their properties, which would yield entirely the wrong result. It is precisely the metaphysical uniqueness of the

148  Identity and Coherence in Christology hypostatic union, and the correspondingly unique sense in which the Word relates to the assumed human nature, which is of semantic significance. This is an important point of distinction from Marilyn McCord Adams’s proposal, which was discussed in Chapter 4. Adams was correct in observing that Christ’s human nature depends ontologically upon an alien supposit, and that this serves to inform the sense in which Christ exemplifies his human properties. Her mistake was to modify the sense of the predicate term itself, rather than modifying the sense in which the predicate ‘traces’ from the human nature to the divine person. Arguably, we have now pushed the modification to precisely where it needs to be: not to that of which the predication is being made (as per the specificative analysis), nor to that which is being predicated (as per the predicate-modifying analysis), nor to the ‘truth value’ of the whole proposition (as per reduplication), but to the sense in which the divine person exemplifies those properties which inhere within the assumed nature. One might object, however, that the threat of Docetism lurks here just as it did with the predicate-modifying analysis. It may be that, on the copula-modifying analysis, the properties of Christ’s human nature are the very same as the properties of our human nature(s). Nonetheless, Christ relates to his human nature differently from how we relate to ours, and this in itself serves to threaten the verity of Christ’s humanity. But we may respond that this is not, in fact, a requirement of Chalcedon. What is required is merely that Christ relate to his human nature in such a way that he is the personal subject of that nature, and that the human nature which Christ assumes be consubstantial with ours. Neither of these commitments is threatened by my proposal. Indeed, if Chalcedon demanded that Christ’s relationship to his human nature be the very same as we to ours, this would be tantamount to claiming that Incarnation is impossible. Thus, Oliver Crisp writes: If human nature is a property of God the Son from the incarnation onwards, then it is odd to think that this means there is something lacking in Christ, for he possesses the property in common with all other humans. For, on this way of understanding the matter, humanity just is a kind-essence or property had by God the Son and by every other human being. The difference between Christ and the rest of humanity lies not in the property of human nature he acquires but in the relation he has to his human nature.6 In formulating matters thus, I have given rather more theological content to the copula-modifying proposal than does Pawl in his treatment, in which he considers only its semantic qualities. As such, we may now be in a stronger position to repel Pawl’s several objections. I  will now consider three such objections, those which he advances as the most robust.

Identity and Coherence in Christology 149 The first objection which Pawl raises is that modifying the copula is excessively ad hoc. Pawl queries whether, on the copula-modifying proposal, there is such a thing as a simple, unmodified copula. If there is, then we must establish some non-arbitrary principle so as to determine when we are to use the modified copula and when we are to use the simple copula. We must also ask whether, in any case, the modified copula implies the simple copula (whether, for example, ‘Christ is-qua-human passible’ implies ‘Christ is passible’). Needless to say, if such an implication were valid, this would evacuate the proposal of all utility. In the face of these challenges, Pawl suggests that the advocate of copula-modification might maintain that all copulas are modified. This would, indeed, seem to weaken the above concerns, but, as Pawl suggests, may be unacceptably ad hoc.7 In response, we may suggest that, where the nature in question grounds its own supposit, as in all ordinary cases, the secundum quid ad simpliciter inference goes through. ‘Fido is-qua-canine passible’ implies ‘Fido is passible’, and ‘Christ is-qua-divine impassible’ implies ‘Christ is impassible’. But, in the unique case of the Incarnation, where Christ’s human nature is suppositionally grounded by the person of the Word, ‘Christ is-qua-human passible’ does not imply ‘Christ is passible’; not because Christ is not truly passible, nor because the passibility which Christ exemplifies is any different from ours, but because of Christ’s unique relationship to his human nature. So, it is true that any predicate may attach itself to a supposit in a modified way, its sense being informed by whether or not the nature is an assumed nature, but this does not require any kind of disruptive semantic overhaul. Any ad hocery of which the strategy might be accused is simply a function of the uniqueness of the Incarnation. Of course, the predication of a human property to Christ need not always be presented in this manner. We are not strictly required to incorporate a hyphenated complex into the predication of passibility to Christ. In this sense, propositions of the form ‘Christ is passible’ are entirely permissible. But this is not to say that the secundum quid ad simpliciter inference holds in this case. The hyphenated complex ‘is-qua-human’ merely makes plain that which is already implicit in the predication of human properties to Christ. Christ’s exemplification of divine properties and his exemplification of human properties are objectively dissimilar, and this dissimilarity may be understood as being implicit within the predications we make of Christ even if we choose not to give explicit semantic expression to it. In short, while ‘Christ is passible’ is true, it must be recognised that ‘is’ is not being read univocally with how it is employed in the proposition ‘Christ is impassible’. The hyphenated complex is imported merely to make this non-univocity plain, as required. The second objection to be considered is that of redundancy. Despite protestations against ad hocery, it seems as though the copula-modifying proposal is only relevant in one case: the unique relationship of Christ to his human nature. In all other cases, a nature-specific copula modification seems

150  Identity and Coherence in Christology redundant, for example, ‘Bob is-qua-Bob’s-human-nature sitting’. Were it not for the Incarnation, relating the copula back to the nature in the way that is being proposed would be unnecessary.8 This much may be happily conceded. But since, as already observed, modified copulas do indeed imply their unmodified counterparts (except in our unique Christological case), such redundancy seems unproblematic. Indeed, it need play no part in our ordinary predications at all. We need only invoke it when considering the way in which the assuming Word exemplifies the properties of the assumed human nature. The third and final objection to be considered is that the strategy demands a thoroughgoing revision of standard logic.9 Standard symbolic notation does not accommodate different senses of the exemplification relation. Either a property is predicable of a subject or it is not; there is no ‘assumed nature’ qualification. Pawl is right to say that this is a cost of copula-modification, one which some may find too much to bear. But, as Pawl points out elsewhere, there are other (non-theological) discussions regarding whether predicative copulas are modified in other ways (relating predications to specific moments in time, for example).10 What is more, there is already good reason, within the framework of scholastic metaphysics itself, to think that property exemplification may admit of various senses: something may be predicated of a subject essentially, accidentally, relationally etc. At the very least, the suggestion that the metaphysics of theological speculation, and the semantics we employ to express it, are somewhat more nuanced and qualified than the symbolic notation of first-order logic is one that we should not find at all difficult to countenance. In this section, I have attended chiefly to the semantic qualities of my proposal for preserving coherence in Christology, having opportunity merely to gesture at how best to conceive of the metaphysics of the hypostatic union. In the remainder of this chapter, I will treat the metaphysics of the union itself. My claim is that the semantics of copula-modification coheres best with an account of the hypostatic union which has enjoyed some prominence in the tradition but which has subsequently proved unpopular in the wake of its forceful rejection at the hands of Aquinas. It is this theory – or, at least, a renovated version of it – to which I now turn. The Habitus Theory Aquinas and the later scholastics felt compelled to embrace a form of the subsistence theory (considered and rejected in Chapter 3) largely because of the impossibility of the alternatives. This is not to say that the subsistence theory was accepted begrudgingly or that it has nothing to offer; on the contrary, the theory upholds the traditional commitment that the Incarnation brings about no internal change to the divine person, and that the union is one of a dependence-relation of the human nature upon the person. If the alternatives were perceived to be the Word’s assumption of a complete human being

Identity and Coherence in Christology 151 (assumptus homo) or the denial of the concrete substantiality of the assumed nature (habitus), it is little wonder that the second of Peter Lombard’s opinions would come to be accepted with such enthusiasm. The subsistence theory maintains that Jesus Christ is a composite person, yet not in such a way as to forfeit the simplicity, immutability or impassibility of the divine essence: In the first place, Thomas’s theology of the Incarnation protects the immutability of the divine nature. This had been a concern of both the first and the third opinions. According to Thomas, all change that occurs in the union of a human nature to the person of the Word takes place in the human nature, which is drawn into union with the already subsisting divine person of the Word.11 However, as we have seen, the language of ‘composition’ introduces difficulties which it would be better to avoid, and so the prevailing question is whether the desiderata of the subsistence theory may be captured without resorting to speaking of the hypostatic union in compositional terms. Walter Principe has argued in an important study that Aquinas’s rejection of the habitus theory rests upon a misunderstanding, one that was by no means unique to him in this period. Aquinas took the defining hallmark of the habitus theory to be the denial of substantial unity between Christ’s human body and soul, such that the two are united to the Word independently and, as such, fail to be united to each other. This characterisation is mistaken on two accounts. The claim that the assumed human body and soul do not constitute a substantial unity, while commonly held among advocates of the habitus theory, was not distinctive of it, and was held by many advocates of the subsistence theory also.12 Furthermore, the habitus theory, as it finds positive expression in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, does not strictly deny the substantial unity of Christ’s human body and soul. What is denied is that these two principles constitute an individual substance apart from their union with the person of the Word.13 As Principe observes: Supporters of the habitus-theory were simply trying to point out that the union of body and soul in Christ failed to have the same result as in other men, that is, a human person. Thomas himself makes the same point frequently with respect to the question of a human person distinct from the divine person.14 The habitus theory is most notorious for its insistence that Christus secundum quod homo non est aliquid (Christ, insofar as he is man, is not something), entailing what came to be known as Christological Nihilism and condemned by Pope Alexander III in 1170, and then again in 1177.15 The justifiable concern with the theory is the denial of the perfection of Christ’s human nature. However, the claim that Christ as man is not aliquid must be understood, not as the denial of the completeness of Christ’s humanity, but

152  Identity and Coherence in Christology as the denial that Christ becomes a human substance. The Word becomes human, but the Word does not become human nature, not even the Word’s own human nature. There is no individual human substance with which the divine person is identical. In this sense, we may not say that human nature is something which Christ is, but something which Christ has (habet, hence habitus). Christ is human, but only in virtue of having a human nature. It is this fact of possession which the third of Lombard’s opinions emphasises, in contrast with the second opinion’s emphasis upon composition. To see the habitus theory’s maxim that Christ as man is not ‘something’ in the correct light, it must be recognised that Christ is the very person of the Word. As a divine person, the assumption of human nature does not bring about any essential change to Christ, nor does it establish a new relationship of identity between the nature that is assumed and the person who assumes. The assumed nature does not come to be the Word, as the assumptus homo theory holds. The second person of the Trinity and the humanity of Christ are not identical, nor does the latter serve to modify or alter the former intrinsically. The humanity of Christ is not integrated into him as a part exists in a larger whole, nor does the humanity supply to the divine person any perfection which it otherwise lacks. Christ’s human nature does not contribute to Christ’s being. It is in this restricted sense that Christ does not become ‘something’ in the Incarnation. Though, as discussed in Chapter 2, we may still speak of an incarnational ‘becoming’ to the extent that the assumed human nature comes to be newly related to the Word. The habitus theory states simply this: the hypostatic union is a relation that is entirely extrinsic to the Word. With respect to the assuming Word, this means that the Incarnation introduces no change, no actualisation of passive potency and no composition into the divine person. With respect to the assumed human nature, it means that Christ’s humanity is something concrete, a substance, which serves as the immediate bearer of human attributes, but which has no independent subsistence apart from its relation to the Word. With respect to the union itself, it means that the assumed nature is related to the Word according to a relation of ontological dependence, whereby the Word counts as the ultimate personal subject of the human nature and the attributes of that nature. As such, the union yields only one person or hypostasis. Yet, the person who is yielded by this union is not in any sense its product, but is simply the divine person, who pre-exists the union and is its very subject. According to this understanding, the differences between the subsistence theory and the habitus theory are not so great after all. The most striking point of difference, however, is that the habitus theory does not in any sense understand the hypostatic union in compositional terms.16 The habitus theory does not speak of Christ as a composite person, nor is the human nature considered to be a ‘part’ of Christ. The habitus theory considers Jesus Christ and the Word to be unqualifiedly identical. Both are names which name the divine person, and thus both are names of a necessarily incomposite person.

Identity and Coherence in Christology 153 Their difference is entirely aspectative or connotative: ‘Jesus Christ’ names the person with particular emphasis on his union with the assumed nature and ‘the Word’ names the selfsame person with emphasis on the person’s divinity, independent of any external relations. Both Jesus Christ and the Word pre-exist the Incarnation and neither contains the human nature as a part. The principal point of divergence between the habitus theory and compositional accounts is that, whereas compositional accounts emphasise the internality of the human nature with respect to Christ, the habitus theory emphasises its externality. If ‘Christ’ is taken to name the conglomeration of the Word plus the human nature, then it stands to reason that the human nature is an integral part of Christ’s identity. But if ‘Christ’ is taken to name the simple divine person, then it stands equally to reason that Christ does not have the human nature as an integral part, but must instead be related to the nature by means of an external relation, and this is precisely how the habitus theory conceives of the matter. Is there any sense of ‘composition’ which the habitus theory is prepared to countenance? Arguably, the Incarnation must involve composition of at least some kind. As Brian Leftow argues, if the hypostatic union is real, then the divine person, the human body and the human soul surely must come together so as to become one thing, and some kind of metaphysical account must be given for this unity.17 Against Leftow, the habitus theory denies that the hypostatic union is such as to yield a product. There is no ‘thing’ which the Word and the various parts of the human nature together compose. To the extent that the Word and the human nature compose something, the ‘thing’ which they compose is nothing more than a mental abstraction, the consequence of the intellect considering the assuming person and the assumed nature together as a unity. This is not to say that the hypostatic union is merely a conceptual matter; it is simply to say that there is no item in the world, no extra-mental object, which includes a divine person and a concrete human nature as its components. It is challenging to see how it could possibly be otherwise. The assuming person and the assumed nature correspond to radically divergent orders of being. Whatever they compose could not belong unqualifiedly to either of these ontological orders without eradicating the distinctiveness of the natures, either by integrating the human nature into the Word’s very divinity or by making the Word to be a creature by having it be a component of a creaturely object. A compositional Christologist like Leftow might claim that the hypostatic union’s product need not be either unqualifiedly created or uncreated; perhaps it might be qualifiedly both, by ‘borrowing’ these properties from its created or uncreated parts. But what kind of thing could possibly have both a created part and an uncreated part? What would the ontological status of such an entity be? The habitus theory denies that any entity answers to this description. The hypostatic union is nothing other than the human nature’s relation of dependence upon the Word, such that the Word serves as the nature’s person-forming principle. There need not be – is not – a new

154  Identity and Coherence in Christology and distinct product of this union which fails to be identical with the person who is its subject. The habitus theory, I suggest, is the theory that is most compatible with my preferred semantic strategy. On the strategy I  have laid out, there is a common ultimate subject of all of the divine and human predicates, and this is the divine person. This is something which compositional accounts obscure, or at least confuse, through their distinction between Christ and the Word, a distinction that is at best needless and at worst injurious to the doctrine of the hypostatic union. Although the habitus theory parts ways with the subsistence theory by denying that the human nature is in any sense a ‘part’ of Christ, the habitus theory need not deny (contrary to Aquinas’s characterisation) that the human nature fails to be a substance or an individual. It denies merely that it constitutes an individual substance separate from its union with the Word. The human nature may therefore be the immediate or proximate subject of the human properties. Finally – and most distinctively of the copula-modifying strategy – the habitus theory maintains that, while the Word truly exists as both human and divine, the Word’s relations to the two natures are fundamentally distinct. I quote again from Rowan Williams, who, though of greater sympathy with Aquinas’s subsistence theory, states the matter impeccably: This habitus theory allows us to hold on to the unchanging nature of God and specifically of God the Word, but it also involves making a clear distinction between two things – the relation of the Word to its divine nature and the relation of the Word to the human nature it assumes. The former is intrinsic and necessary, such that the Word is inconceivable unless understood as wholly identical with the essence of God; the latter is more like an ‘accidental’ relation, something that comes to be true in a limited sense or for a limited period without affecting the subject.18 The accidentality of this relation is, of course, only of a qualified kind. Accidents typically do inform their subjects and affect them. In this case, the human nature serves as an ‘accident’ of the Word only in the sense that it depends upon the Word and has no existence apart from it. The human nature does not modify the Word in its divinity. Because this dependence-relation is such that it terminates upon the person of the Word, the Word is the personal subject of the nature, its actions, its potencies and its accidents; not in such a way that the human nature comes to inform the divinity itself, but in virtue of the fact that it never exists apart from its being supposited by the Word. Moreover, it must be emphasised that ‘Christ’ is the name of a person, and that this person is none other than the divine Word, the second person of the Trinity, who remains unchanged by the hypostatic union. While the habitus theory is formally condemned by Aquinas for reasons already discussed, it is

Identity and Coherence in Christology 155 this fact of identity between Christ and the Word which, I believe, secures the theory’s essentially Thomistic credentials: It should, however, be taken into consideration that the term ‘Christ’, like the term ‘Son’, is the name of a person. Whatever, accordingly, affects Christ by reason of his person, which is eternal, may be predicated of him directly and without qualification. . . . On the contrary, whatever affects Christ by reason of his human nature should be predicated of him only if a qualification is added.19 This, in short, is that which renders the doctrine of the Incarnation coherent: the union which the Incarnation brings about is not such that there is some new substantial product which somehow exemplifies incompatible sets of divine and human properties. Divine properties and human properties are not competing with one another in a shared ontological domain, but each set of properties uniquely characterises the corresponding nature. The Word is the personal subject of both natures, and hence is the ultimate subject of the entire panoply of divine and human properties. Yet, because the Word stands in two fundamentally different kinds of relation to the two natures, divine properties and human properties are not said of Christ ‘in the same respect’. The Word is said to be passible in virtue of the fact that the human nature is passible, and the human nature depends ontologically upon the Word in such a way that the Word is its personal subject and is thus the remote – though genuine – subject of its properties, passibility included. The divine person’s being the subject of the human properties is therefore not a matter of inherence but one of relation. Richard Cross, for one, finds this sort of account problematic. For Cross, the suggestion that Christ’s human properties are related to him and yet are not intrinsic to him brings us too near to Docetism. The Word is not intrinsically passible, but has passibility predicated of it only in virtue of being related to something that is intrinsically passible. While Cross’s characterisation of the habitus theory is quite correct, this does not, I argue, necessarily leave us with a Docetic Christology. Cross distinguishes between I-passibility and R-passibility, where the former is exemplified by something that is intrinsically passible and the latter is exemplified by something that is passible only by virtue of its relation to something else that is intrinsically passible (presumably, ‘I’ and ‘R’ are placeholders for ‘intrinsic’ and ‘relational’). On this framing, there is no contradiction between something being I-impassible and R-passible (which, on the habitus theory, is true of God the Word). Cross’s challenge is to pose the question of whether R-passibility counts as an instance of ‘passibility’ in general; that is, whether, in virtue of being R-passible, the Word is truly passible. If we answer in the affirmative, Cross argues, then the Word is passible simpliciter, which means that we must forfeit a commitment to divine impassibility and the habitus theory goes the same way as the other classical

156  Identity and Coherence in Christology strategies which permit the secundum quid ad simpliciter inference. If we answer in the negative, then it is strictly false that the Word is passible in any sense, and so we must deny that human properties are true of the Word in general. Thus, we are left with Docetism after all.20 To the question of whether the Word’s R-passibility implies that the Word is passible in any sense whatsoever, the answer is, of course, ‘Yes’: the Word is truly passible, and it is passible in virtue of being the personal subject of the assumed nature, which is passible intrinsically. Cross considers this to generate a contradiction, for if the Word is essentially impassible then the Word cannot be passible in any sense. This much must be disputed. To say that the Word is essentially impassible is not to make a modal statement, to the effect that it is impossible absolute for the Word to be the subject of passibility. It is, rather, to say that the divine essence is impassible. Yet, this does not exclude the possibility that the Word might additionally be the subject of a distinct human nature that is passible, such that the Word is, in turn, the ultimate subject of this property. The only thing that is excluded by the Word’s essential impassibility is that passibility come to characterise the divine essence as such, which is not a consequence of the habitus theory. In short, the Word’s essential impassibility only rules out the Word’s being I-passible, but not its being R-passible. And, as Cross allows, I-impassibility and R-passibility are non-contradictory. What is more, Cross’s argument proves too much. If successful, it would surely entail that the divine person can only truly be the subject of a property on the understanding that the property characterises the Word in the Word’s very divinity. If the Word’s R-passibility – its being passible in virtue of being related personally to a human nature that is passible – is insufficient for the Word’s being truly passible, then the only way in which the Incarnation can be genuine is if all the essential human properties come to characterise the divine life as such (or the Word’s divine life, at least). As argued in Chapter 4’s discussion of the restriction strategies, it is doubtful in the extreme that such an account can satisfy the demands of Chalcedon and the demands of logical coherence simultaneously. Theories of Subsistence As discussed in Chapter 3, the traditional objection to the habitus theory is that a complete human nature fails to be assumed, due to the lack of substantial unity between the human body and soul. Because the constituents of the human nature are not united to one another but are instead united to the Word separately, Christ cannot be said to have truly become human except by equivocation. As we have seen, this objection does not apply either necessarily or uniquely to the habitus theory: not only is the theory’s denial more subtle than this, but a similar commitment is held by advocates of the subsistence theory also, for both theories deny that the human nature has a concrete existence apart from its union with the assuming Word. But, with

Identity and Coherence in Christology 157 this misunderstanding corrected, the habitus theory now must answer a new challenge: given that Christ’s human nature is complete, why is it not a person? It is this question of subsistence with which this section is concerned. There are two main kinds of account which have traditionally been given as to why the assumed nature is not a person, both of medieval derivation. The first is that there is something which must be added to the nature, in addition to its complete individuality as a human substance, in order to qualify as a person. This is not to say that there is anything lacking in the nature which would prevent the perfection of its humanity. Rather, there is a metaphysical component over and above the humanity which is required in order to achieve full hypostatic existence, which is lacking in the assumed nature as such but which is supplied by the nature’s union with the Word. The most prominent form of this theory is the esse theory of subsistence, most famously (though by no means uniquely) associated with Aquinas. For Aquinas, there is a positive entity which must be superadded to a substance in order for it to enjoy the ontological independence necessary for it to qualify as a person: its own proper esse, or act of being. In the case of the Incarnation, Christ’s human nature lacks its own esse, and instead has its esse supplied by the divine person.21 Much ink has been spilled in debating the question of whether Aquinas held definitively to a one-esse or two-esse view; whether, that is, each nature has its own act of existence or the human nature has its act of existence supplied by the Word. However, it has been argued in some recent publications that the two accounts are basically compatible.22 The trouble with this view is where to locate esse ontologically. There is, after all, no question as to whether substances require a principle of existence; the only question which arises in the Christological case is whether that principle is intrinsic to the assumed nature or supplied by the assuming Word. On one interpretation, esse may be taken to be nothing other than the substance’s own concrete act of existing. Yet, on the hylomorphic view, a substance contains its own principle of actuality, at least in the formal sense: the substance’s substantial form is that which actualises the prime matter and determines it to be a substance of a certain kind. An alternative interpretation is that esse stands for an actualising principle that is extrinsic rather than intrinsic. Even though substances do contain an implicit principle of actuality, nonetheless they must be caused to be, most ultimately by God. In this sense, Christ’s human nature does indeed depend upon an extrinsic principle of actuality, an efficient cause, in order to be. But this is true of all created substances, and therefore cannot be used to distinguish the unique ontological dependence of the assumed nature upon the Word. In sum, if we take esse to be an intrinsic actualising principle of a substance (a formal cause), then to deny Christ’s human nature its own esse is to deny its perfection as a complete human nature, and if we take esse to be an extrinsic actualising principle, such as God’s creative power (an efficient cause), then there is nothing interesting or distinctive in the claim that Christ’s human nature has its esse supplied by God.

158  Identity and Coherence in Christology I do not wish to argue that Aquinas intended ‘esse’ in either of these senses. I am confident that it would have been equally repugnant to Aquinas either to deny that Christ’s human nature was constituted by a substantial form or to suggest that the relationship between the assumed nature and the divine person was merely one of creaturely dependence. The interpretative difficulty is that it is not at all clear what ‘esse’ should be taken to mean, if it is neither of these things. This ontological equivocation may explain why Aquinas’s true position on whether or not there is a second esse in Christ continues to be debated. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Aquinas’s theory may yet be salvaged, but in order for it to be compelling it must give a clear and non-arbitrary account of just what an esse amounts to in this context. The second approach to the subsistence question is to deny that there is anything whatsoever lacking in the human nature, except the independence to which non-assumed natures are ordinarily subject. Individual substances have a natural tendency to be self-suppositing, a tendency which may be blocked by divine power, as it is in the case of the Incarnation. Advocates of this second theory would therefore wish to reverse our order of thinking as regards the logic of hypostatisation: the independence of ordinary created natures should be defined in terms of, and correlatively to, the dependence of assumed natures, and not the other way around. The hypostatic independence which Socrates enjoys as a human person is the consequence of his not being assumed by a divine person. The most distinguished expression of this theory is the negation theory of subsistence associated with Duns Scotus.23 For Scotus, the fact that Christ’s human nature is not self-suppositing is not owing to any metaphysical component which the nature lacks, but to the fact that it is united personally to the Word. As such, the independence of non-assumed human natures is owing to the fact that they are not united to a divine person. On Scotus’s account, for a nature to subsist, it must have two features: it must be actually independent and also have a natural inclination to be independent. Christ’s human nature is made to depend hypostatically upon the Word, but all created natures of which this is not the case are inclined to be self-suppositing and thus hypostases in their own right. What is more, any created nature is in obediential potency to being assumed by a divine person and, had Christ’s human nature not been assumed by the Word, it would have been self-suppositing and would therefore have been a human person. The negation theory has its detractors. Alfred Freddoso argues against the theory as follows. If it is true that the only thing which distinguishes a human person from a mere human substance is a negation or absence (i.e. the absence of the relevant kind of dependence-relation to a divine person), and if, plausibly, this negation or absence is not a thing, then Socrates and Socrates’s human nature are identical. Nothing which is true of Socrates’s human nature as such fails to be true of Socrates the person. By the necessity of identity, it follows that Socrates the person and Socrates’s human nature are necessarily identical (if identity obtains between A and B, it cannot fail to obtain between A and B). However, Scotus holds that a given human person

Identity and Coherence in Christology 159 is a person only contingently, and that Christ’s human nature is assumed by the Word only contingently. Any created nature (let alone human nature) is in obediential potency to being assumed, and Christ’s human nature could be ‘put off’ by the Word, in which case it would instantaneously become selfsuppositing and a person. Scotus’s negation theory therefore leaves us with something of a modal muddle.24 In a similar vein, Richard Cross has argued, invoking the Aristotelian principle that there is no merely relational change, that it is problematic to think of any created substance as being in obediential potency to being assumed. If this were true, then the only things which exist necessarily as supposits would be the three divine persons; all created substances could at any moment be assumed by a given divine person and cease to self-supposit. If this were to occur, this would, to say the least, be a ‘change’ of some kind. Yet, it is not clear where this change is occurring. It does not occur in God himself. Nor, on the negation theory, does it seem to occur in the creature. If assumed natures lack nothing which non-assumed natures possess, then the only thing which distinguishes the two cases is a relation to a divine person. But if this relation is neither in God nor in the creature, then it would appear that nothing has changed when the relation begins. This would suggest that there cannot be a change from a nature’s being non-assumed to assumed or vice versa.25 A possible (and, I believe, the best) response to this line of argument on behalf of the negation theory is simply to concede the point. The most that Freddoso’s and Cross’s respective arguments establish, it seems to me, is that every non-assumed nature is necessarily non-assumed and every assumed nature is necessarily assumed. This much, it seems, can be reasonably affirmed without inflicting excessive injury on the negation theory. While this would put flight to Scotus’s claim that any created nature could, potentially, be assumed by a divine person, and to his claim that Christ’s human nature could have existed as non-assumed, the essence of the negation theory may still be held intact: perhaps it is still the case that there is a natural tendency for a created nature to be self-suppositing unless prevented by divine power. Nevertheless, even if the negation theory is not excessively damaged by the impossibility of merely relational changes, it may be damaged by the impossibility of merely relational facts. On the negation theory, the fact that the Word is the personal subject of Christ’s human nature is explained by the nature’s relation to the Word, a relation which is grounded neither in an intrinsic property of the Word nor in an intrinsic property of the human nature. Reductionism about relations insists that there are no merely relational facts, and that any relational fact is reducible to a set of non-relational facts. What makes it true that London is to the South of Edinburgh is expressible fully in terms of the facts about Edinburgh and the facts about London; there need not be a further fact to account for their relative location. Or, again, what makes it true that water has a natural tendency to dissolve salt is expressible fully in terms of the causal powers and liabilities of these two substances individually.26

160  Identity and Coherence in Christology It seems to me very plausible that reductionism about relations is true. That A and B are related to one another – whether this relation be causal, spatial, temporal or whatever else – surely suggests that there is some way in which either A or B (or both A and B) is different from how it would have been had the relation not obtained. Supposing that two items are related in such a way that does not make any intrinsic difference to either, their relation would not be in any sense ‘real’ but would instead have the status of a merely ‘logical’ relation. The hypostatic union would thus have no extra-mental reality, but would exist only in our manner of thinking. If this is the case, then this has unfortunate consequences for even the chastened version of Scotus’s negation theory. The difference between assumed and non-assumed natures cannot consist solely in a relation between the divine person and the assumed nature, where this relation makes no intrinsic difference to either. As with Aquinas’s esse theory, it may be premature to give up all hope on Scotus’s negation theory, but it would require some further work in order to render it an enduring contender. For one thing, it would require a defence of anti-reductionism about relations, which we may provisionally judge to be an ambitious philosophical task. In the remainder of this section, I will consider a third way in which we might think of the problem of subsistence, which is motivated by the habitus theory of the hypostatic union and which appears to have received little or no consideration from either Aquinas or Scotus. Aquinas sought to explain why Christ’s human nature is not a person by appealing to a metaphysical component which the human nature lacks but which is supplied uniquely by the Word. Scotus grounded his own explanation in something which the human nature uniquely possesses, namely a relation to a divine person. A third option we might consider is that Christ’s human nature fails to be a person, not because of anything it lacks, nor because of anything with which it is specially supplemented, but because of how it is intrinsically calibrated. In order to see just what is at issue, we might begin with the following statement of Peter Lombard’s, who himself probably endorsed the habitus theory:27 But [the Word] did not take the person of a man because that flesh and that soul which it would have taken were not united into the one person. For there was no person composed of those elements when the Word was united to them; indeed, they were united to each other at the same time as they were united to the Word. And yet the union by which these two, namely the soul and the flesh, were united was one thing, and the union by which they were united to the Word was another. . . . And so the Word of God did not take the person of a man, but the nature, because there was no person composed of that flesh and that soul whom the Word took, but the Word united by taking, and took by uniting.28 A true Incarnation requires not only that the Word assume a human body and rational soul, but that these two are also united to one another so as to render a complete human substance. To this extent, we may agree

Identity and Coherence in Christology 161 with Aquinas’s critique of the habitus theory as he understood it. However, Lombard’s distinction between these two – the Word’s union to soul and flesh, and the union of soul and flesh to each other – raises a question of ontological priority. Is it the case that Christ assumes a human nature only in virtue of the fact that the constituent principles of the human nature are independently united to one another? Or, is it the case that the Word’s assuming the human flesh and soul is logically and metaphysically independent of their being united to one another? It must be emphasised that this question of priority is one that is purely ontological or explanatory, not temporal. There is no question as to whether the flesh and soul are jointly united, nor is there any suggestion that one of these two unions precedes the other in time. The question, rather, is which of these two unions serves as the metaphysical basis for the other. In order to achieve some clarity on this question, consider the relationship between a substance coming into existence at a certain moment in time and the accidents of which it is the subject at the very moment of its coming to be. There is an asymmetrical ontological relationship between a substance and its accidents, in the sense that it is proper to an accident that it inhere in a substantial subject, whereas it is proper to a substance not to inhere in anything else but to exist through itself. While the majority of accidents which a substance possesses are temporally subsequent to it, in the sense that they are acquired by the substance after it has already come into being, nonetheless there are at least some accidents which the substance possesses synchronically with its coming to be, even if they are lost shortly after. The substance and the accidents which it immediately possesses as it first comes into being are simultaneous in time, yet this does not frustrate the ordinary relationship of dependence between a substance and its accidents. In this way, A might be more ontologically fundamental than B even if A and B are simultaneous in the temporal order. The precise claim of the habitus theory on the question of human subsistence is not, as Aquinas believed, that the flesh and soul fail to be united to one another, but that they are united to one another only insofar as they are united to the Word. The human body of Christ is united to the human soul, but only as an assumed body, and the human soul of Christ is united to the body, but only as an assumed soul. There is a sense, therefore, in which the constituents of the human nature are assumed by the Word separately, for the human body and soul are not united to each other prior to, or apart from, their union with the Word. If they were, then there would have been a complete human person which pre-existed its assumption. There is a ‘block’ on the human nature’s counting as a person because, when the flesh and soul are jointly united, each ‘already’ (ontologically speaking) has a personal subject. The flesh and soul are indeed united, but they owe their unity to their respective assumption by the Word. It is therefore the separate union of flesh and soul to the person of the Word which is the more ontologically fundamental. I believe that it is this more nuanced interpretation of the habitus theory to which Lombard is gesturing.

162  Identity and Coherence in Christology Is the habitus theory’s answer to the subsistence question a purely speculative doctrine, or does it enjoy implicit biblical support? One advantage of the habitus view is that it provides us with a way of understanding how Christ can continue to be truly human upon his death. When the human nature dies, the body and soul are separated, to the extent that the matter of Christ’s body ceases to be informed by the substantial form of humanity and comes instead to assume the form of deceased flesh. What is more, at the moment of resurrection, there is reunification of flesh and soul, and a complete human substance comes once again into being. Even if there is more to Christ’s resurrection than mere resuscitation (such as transformation and glorification), it minimally involves the returning to life of the very same flesh which was destroyed. The body of Christ is not annihilated upon its death, only to be replaced with an altogether distinct body, but the matter of the body continues to exist as deceased flesh, and is then returned to life when it is reunited with the human soul. We may ask: does the Word cease to be human during this (as we may call it) mortal period? One reason why we might be strongly inclined to answer in the negative is that, in order for Christ to be once again truly human upon his resurrection, it would seem to require a second Incarnation. If the separation of the body and soul entails the separation of both of these from the Word itself, then the Word undergoes an effective Excarnation at the moment of his human death and hence ceases to be human. If it is truly the person of the Son who, in his humanity, dies and is subsequently raised to life, then the returning to life of the human nature would also be the returning of the Son to an Incarnate state which was temporarily forfeited. I shall take it as given that the resurrection of Christ does not involve a second Incarnation. A true death requires the destruction of the human body and hence the separation of flesh from soul. Yet, the enduring humanity of Christ requires that the Word continue to be united to the human soul and body, even as the soul exists separate from the body. The body and soul of Christ transition from being united (at the Incarnation) to being separated (at the moment of death) to being once again united (at the resurrection). Yet, from the moment of the Incarnation onwards, the soul and flesh of Christ continue to exist as the Word’s own soul and flesh. This suggests that the human soul of Christ is united to the divine person by some distinct principle from that by which the body is united to the divine person. The true humanity of Christ survives the separation of the constituents of the human nature from one another, and hence it is their separate, respective union with the person of the Word which is, metaphysically, the more fundamental and grounding relation. As John Wippel observes in another context: As regards the three ‘substances’ [viz. divinity, soul and flesh] . . . in death Christ’s soul was separated from his body, since he truly died. But his divinity was not separated either from his soul or from his body,

Identity and Coherence in Christology 163 since in the Apostles’ Creed it is said of the Son of God that he was buried and that he descended into hell. But while his body was lying in the tomb and his soul was descending into hell, these two could not be attributed to the Son of God unless both his soul and his body were joined to him in the unity of his hypostasis or person.29 On the habitus theory, then, the constituent principles of Christ’s human nature are not calibrated or coordinated to one another in altogether the same way as they are in non-assumed human natures, such as that of Socrates, for their union to each other is ontologically subsequent to their separate assumption by the Word. It is this which allows for the human nature’s qualifying as a complete and fully constituted substance but without qualifying as a person, due to the fact that the person of the Word already serves this role. Does this mean that Christ in his humanity is not consubstantial with Socrates? In responding to this question, we may first point out ad hominem that similar concerns loom over any answer to the subsistence question. If Christ’s human nature alone is an assumed nature, and is therefore unique in having a divine person as its subject, then something must be metaphysically decisive in distinguishing assumed natures from non-assumed natures. Whatever this difference may be, whether it is something which the assumed nature uniquely possesses or uniquely lacks, there is bound to be something which is true of Christ’s human nature which is not true of any other particular human nature, and which itself raises charges of Docetism to the extent that Christ’s human nature differs from ours in this respect. By contrast with the other traditional theories of subsistence, I believe that the habitus theory is the least worrisome. The habitus theory’s claim is that Christ’s human nature, while fully constituted, is constituted only insofar as it is united personally to the Word. The assumed nature lacks nothing which non-assumed natures possess, be it a body, a soul or a substantial unity. And yet something must account for the fact that the assumed nature is not a person distinct from the Word, and for the fact that the Word does not undergo an Excarnation upon the death of the nature nor a subsequent Incarnation at its resurrection. The only thing which can render all of this intelligible, I suggest, is that the separate union of flesh and soul to the divine person is ontologically fundamental in the order of explanation, relative to the union of flesh and soul to each other. There is no substantial lack in the humanity of Christ, only a difference of relation or intrinsic calibration. What, precisely, does Chalcedon’s requirement of ‘consubstantiality’ demand? By my lights, it does not demand that Christ’s human nature resemble ours in every respect. It does not require, for example, that it be in possession of all specific differentiae; Christ’s human nature could hardly be of the same height or the same eye colour as every other human being. What is required, minimally, is that Christ’s human nature be an instance of a natural kind, and that the kind to which that nature belongs be the same as that to which ours

164  Identity and Coherence in Christology belong. And this does not seem to be at all threatened by the habitus theory. While the assumed nature is assuredly not a person, it is truly a substance, and the natural kind to which this substance belongs is none other than our very own humanitas. The Word and Its Instrument A consequence of the habitus theory is that it commits us to a kind of instrumentalism regarding the hypostatic union. Instrumentalism, as it was defined in the introduction of this work, is the view that Jesus Christ is a person, and that the person who Jesus Christ is is the divine Word. This preliminary conviction places stringent constraints on what may be said regarding the place of the human nature in the ontological determination of Christ’s personal identity. As an eternal and unchanging divine person, the humanity of Christ simply does not play a role in determining who Christ is, even if ‘human’ and its attendant attributes are predicable of Christ upon his Incarnation. Thus, while Christ may be truly human in virtue of being appropriately related to the human nature (or, perhaps better, in virtue of the human nature’s relation to him), the assumed nature is not intrinsic to his identity but is more accurately analysed as being something like an external fixture, which brings about no intrinsic change to the divine life. This perspective naturally coheres with an ‘instrumental’ view of the human nature, whereby it serves as the means by which God accomplishes his purposes as man. A conventional way of expressing the notion that the human nature is like an instrument of the Word is that of Dyothelitism, the doctrinal teaching that Christ is the subject of two wills, that of the divine nature and that of the human nature, and affirmed at the Third Council of Constantinople (681ce). Numerous theologians, analytic and otherwise, have found the suggestion of ‘two wills’ in Christ too much to credit.30 Given that (as noted in Chapter 2’s discussion of personhood) there is a modern tendency to correlate mental faculties with the category of ‘person’ rather than that of ‘nature’, Dyothelitism has been seen by critics as tending towards – perhaps even entailing – Nestorianism. There are two principal concerns with the Dyothelite position. One concern is that Dyothelitism divides Christ’s mental life into two, speaking to a schizophrenic psychology and hence a disruption in Christ’s unity of person. The other concern is that Christ’s human will is so obedient to, so domineered by, the divine will as to render the former entirely negligible.31 On the traditional, pre-modern view, the faculty of will corresponds to the nature, and not to the person. The human nature cannot fail to have a will, lest Christ’s humanity be thought to be incomplete. Even in creaturely cases, human persons only ever exercise their will by means of their nature(s). The human will does not ‘stand behind’ the human nature and direct it from the outside, as it were. Rather, the human will is a faculty of the nature itself and is exercised only according to that nature’s cognitive endowment. On the habitus theory as I have presented it, Christ’s human nature is complete and

Identity and Coherence in Christology 165 thus possesses its own will. Just as with all of the attributes of the human nature, the divine Word is the remote or ultimate subject of the human will. Thus, the Word wills both according to the divine nature and also according to the human nature. Importantly, the Word is the very agent of the human nature: there is no question of the nature’s ‘uncoupling’ from the person and turning psychologically renegade in such a way that it may will and act independently or rebelliously (Constantinople III speaks of the human will as being ‘subject’ to the divine will).32 We must therefore distinguish between two different senses of ‘will’: the faculty of willing and the object of one’s willing.33 Christ’s two wills are distinct as to their respective faculties: there is a divine will and a human will, and these two are as divergent as any other attribute which is possessed (in an analogical sense) by both God and human beings. But this does not require that the two natures of Christ be distinct as to the object of their willing, as though recognising two sets of faculties demands the possibility of their conflicting irreconcilably. God causes the human will to be obedient to the divine will just as all of the other activities of Christ’s human nature are harnessed to God’s purposes. It is not a matter of an independent human person having its will commandeered by the divine person, and thereby relegated to insignificance. Rather, the human nature is the instrument, the created vehicle, of the Word, which is thereby in agreement with the Word in all that it does and wills. Dyothelites interpret passages such as Matthew 26:39 as representing a conflict – albeit one that is temporary and defeasible – between the divine will of God and the human will of the assumed nature: ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want’ (NRSV). Monothelites claim that this is more plausibly interpreted as a conflict between the will of the Father and that of the Son, suggesting that ‘will’ corresponds to person rather than to nature. I  will not presume to settle the exegetical question here. More importantly for the present discussion, Dyothelites face the difficulty that, apparently, the human will of Christ can will something other than the divine will. However, the fact remains that Christ’s human will is ultimately obedient to the divine will. In its human weakness, the human will fears death. Yet, Christ as man accepts death willingly. There is authentic conflict in Christ’s human psychology, just as there is in all human beings. But Christ in his humanity cannot fail to be obedient to the divine will. It would have been contrary to his human nature for it not to have recoiled from suffering and death, yet this did not culminate in defection from God’s purposes. This point is made plain by Aquinas, from whom a lengthy quotation is here apposite: Now it is apparent that it is natural for the sensuous will to shrink from physical pain and bodily injury. Likewise the will acting by natural instinct rejects whatever is contrary to human nature and intrinsically evil, such as death and what is connected with it. Nevertheless,

166  Identity and Coherence in Christology as modified by judgment, the will may sometimes choose to undergo such evils in order to attain its goal. . . . It is clear from this that Christ could will something other than what God willed, that is to say, if we consider Christ’s sensuous will and his rational will acting by natural instinct. But by the act of will modified by judgment Christ always willed the same object as God. This conclusion is borne out by Christ’s own words, Not my will, but thine, be done. His will modified by judgment desired that God’s will should be fulfilled, even though he admits that he desires something else with another of his wills.34 As true man, Christ’s human will is complex. It admits of lower-order sensuous or instinctive impulses, which recoil from that that which is not conducive to its own natural good. It would be repugnant to the humanity of Christ for these lower-order impulses to relish rather than resist suffering and death. Yet, he is also in possession of a higher-order judgement by which his baser impulses may be subdued and subordinated to the will of God. This is, categorically, no different from ordinary human cases in which a person’s sensuous impulses incline him or her towards behaviour which is contrary to his or her judgement as modified by reason. Christ is therefore in possession of two sets of faculties which must nonetheless agree as to their object. While the two wills of Christ cannot uncouple from one another and incline towards two distinct objects, this does not relegate the human will to obscurity, any more than it renders obscure any other of the powers of the human nature. Doubtless, there are activities which Christ performs in his humanity which may also be accomplished by divine power. Nevertheless, it is the very fact that what God accomplishes in Christ is accomplished as man that is of supreme soteriological significance. It is not at all trivial, therefore, that Christ is in possession of a human will, even if, in the final analysis, Christ’s two wills cannot fail to be in agreement. A commitment to the impeccability of Christ is thus, to my mind, required. Yet, I take the doctrine of Christ’s impeccability to be a judgement about Christ, and not merely about Christ’s human nature. That the human nature is, all things considered, incapable of disobedience to the divine will is due simply to the causal influence of the divine will over Christ’s human will, and not to any intrinsic lack in the human nature. All of the powers and capacities that are required for sin may indeed be present in Christ’s human nature, considered in abstraction from its being assumed by a divine person. But it is the very fact that the nature is assumed which speaks against the possibility of sin. The impeccability of Christ is owing to the impossibility of the assumed nature’s psychological rebellion against God, something which is causally explained by the divine will, and not by any deficiency in the human nature’s own intrinsic constitution. What makes this view of the hypostatic union ‘instrumental’ is, specifically, the fact that it is God himself, in the person of the Son, who is the subject of all that the human nature does (and has done to it). As Thomas Joseph

Identity and Coherence in Christology 167 White has argued, Christ’s human nature is an instrument of the Word in the sense that it is expressive of who the Word is. It is truly God the Son who thinks, wills and acts in and through the human nature. This is an elevation of his human freedom, by which it is ‘expanded and ennobled, not lessened or restricted’.35 All human choices of the man Jesus are choices of the divine person. Instrumentalism clearly preserves the distinction and integrity of the divine nature, for the hypostatic union is a relation that is extrinsic to God. Yet, lest it be thought that this represents an exaggerated commitment to Greek philosophical conceptions of perfection, thereby diminishing the true humanity of Christ and threatening a descent into Docetism, it must be observed that instrumentalism is equally concerned with preserving the distinction and integrity of the human nature. If Christ possessed but one will, the human nature would not be afforded its own proper activity. The divine Word employs the human nature, yet without subsuming or assimilating it: Although the divine agency must always take the initiative in the human acts of Christ, Jesus is not therefore any less human than we are. On the contrary, his human nature is an ‘instrument’ that operates in accordance with its own divine identity. Therefore, precisely because he has in his human intellect an immediate knowledge of his own personal divine goodness at all times, the judgments and practical choices of Christ are more and not less human than ours.36 What the habitus theory allows is that the human nature be a complete human substance which is in possession of its own human faculty of willing, and yet the divine person, as the personal subject of the human nature, is correspondingly the ultimate subject of all that the nature is and does. Hence, on the habitus theory, the human will does not introduce schizophrenia into Christ, nor does it serve merely as a relic of antiquated Conciliar pronouncements. Rather, it serves as the mechanism through which God accomplishes his purposes as man, a fact whose sense is weakened considerably by the Monothelite claim that Christ fails to be in possession of a distinctively human will. One may harbour the concern that the habitus theory consigns the human nature to far too passive a position in the hypostatic union. Having the human nature be simply an outer vestment for the Word might be thought to denigrate the dignity of the human nature, which is now apparently nothing more than an impersonal tool. Such concerns are, I believe, ill-founded. On the habitus theory, there is nothing whatsoever lacking in the human nature aside from hypostatic independence. Nothing distinguishes Christ’s human nature from Socrates’s human nature, metaphysically speaking, aside from the fact that Socrates is self-suppositing, whereas Christ’s human nature is supposited by a divine person and is united to that person in an ineffable union. Christ’s human nature is in full possession of all human powers and potencies, which are ultimately harnessed and subordinated to the Word’s

168  Identity and Coherence in Christology purposes. It is no denigration of the human nature to rule out its psychological or operational rebellion against the Word. Indeed, neglecting to rule out this possibility can only denigrate the hypostatic union itself. Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted at last to present an account of the metaphysics of the hypostatic union which satisfies the requirements both of the Chalcedonian Definition and of logical coherence. In so doing, I  have attempted to renovate the long-since abandoned habitus theory of the Incarnation. The basic commitment of the habitus theory is that the Word’s being human, and being the subject of all of the attributes of the human nature, is entirely a relational matter. What is more, this relation is an extrinsic relation, which is nothing other than the hypostatic dependence of the assumed nature upon the Word. The Word’s being truly human, not to mention its being truly passible, is thus determined by its being the remote subject of the human nature. The human nature, while being intrinsically fully constituted and therefore a complete substance, is afforded its constitution and completeness only in virtue of the human body and soul being united to the Word, and thence being united to each other only as the Word’s own human body and soul. Thus, it does not subsist as an independent human person, but only as the Word’s own human nature. The Word and the human nature do not unite in such a way as to give rise to a ‘product’; for this reason, the language of ‘composition’ is deemed to be surplus to the habitus theory’s requirements. All of this is to say that, while ‘human’ is something which the Word truly is, ‘human nature’ is something which the Word has, and it is only in virtue of this ‘having’ that humanity and its attendant attributes are predicable of the divine person. Hence, the motivation for the assumed nature’s being likened to a donned garment: the assumed nature relates to the Word as an external adjunct, rather than as a co-equal conjunct or an inhering accident. The assumed nature is then ‘given shape’ or ‘filled out’ by the union, as a garment is given shape when it is made to conform to the contours of the wearer. This, I submit, has implications for how we think of the Word’s being the subject of divine and human properties: what it means for the Word to be the subject of a divine property and what it means for the Word to be the subject of a human property are not metaphysically identical states of affairs, and it is this which is captured by modifying the sense of the copula in Christological predications. Impassibility and passibility are thus not said of Christ ‘in the same respect’. Rather, impassibility is said of Christ in virtue of his being a divine person, identical with the simple divine essence, and hence identical with all of the divine attributes, and passibility is said of Christ in virtue of his being the personal subject of a passible human nature which is appropriately related to him. This being so, it is by no means ad hoc to modify the sense of the copula, so as to convey the fact that Christ’s exemplifying passibility

Identity and Coherence in Christology 169 is understood entirely in terms of his relationship to a created nature: Christ is-qua-human passible. The passibility of the Word is owing to the Word’s hypostatic relation to a passible external adjunct. The account I have given of this relation is such that it speaks neither to an infusion or super-addition of a decisive metaphysical component which the human nature would otherwise lack nor to the addition of a relation to a divine person which makes no intrinsic difference to either terminus of the relation (what I take to be the positions of Aquinas and Scotus, respectively). Rather, the account I have provided is one in which the human nature, while lacking in nothing (including its own substantial unity), is intrinsically calibrated in a unique way. What makes the hypostatic union unique is that it involves a ‘three-way’ union between the divine person and the various constituent parts of the human nature, the flesh and soul. The union of these constituents with the Word is not such as to frustrate their unity with each other; on the contrary, it is the very basis of their unity and is that which prevents their independent subsistence. In this way, the human nature’s union with the Word is the very thing which explains its lack of hypostatic independence. This unique intrinsic calibration of body and soul, whereby they are united to one another only insofar as they are possessed by the Word, is not intended to explain the hypostatic union, as though God’s becoming man is caused by the assumed nature’s having been built differently according to some curious aberrance. The reality is the reverse: it is only as a consequence of the human nature’s being assumed that this difference of internal calibration obtains. Christ’s body and soul are oriented to one another in such a way that is conditioned by their being separately oriented to the person of the Word. The nature’s failing to be an independent human person is a consequence of the hypostatic union, not its metaphysical basis or cause (even if, as I am happy to grant, the assumption of the human nature and the uniting of its constituent parts are simultaneous in time). What my renovated expression of the habitus theory allows, in distinction from its less agreeable and more ‘nihilistic’ versions such as were the subject of some medieval caricature, is that, while Christ’s human nature is by no means a person, it is unequivocally a substance. Throughout this work, I have placed a good deal of emphasis on the philosophical concept of ‘substance’, particularly in its traditional Aristotelian sense. My justification for this emphasis is that I believe it to be important to conceive of the human nature of Christ as being something very much like a traditional substance, so as to preserve its completeness (suitably qualified) and concreteness. In the Incarnation, the Word acquires, not merely the properties of human nature, but a human nature. It is the concrete particularity of the human nature which preserves the distinctiveness of Christ’s humanity as well as his divinity. Having the human nature of Christ be a human substance allows it to be in possession of its own distinctive form of operation. Only if the human nature is something particular and concrete can it be truly said that what Christ accomplishes in his humanity is accomplished by God and as man. This is

170  Identity and Coherence in Christology what makes it appropriate to classify my version of the habitus theory as ‘instrumental’: because the human nature is subject to a substantial unity (even if the ontological basis for its unity is not altogether the same as that of non-assumed natures), it is truly the instrument of the divine person. If we allow any more ontological independence to the human nature than this – perhaps by allowing it to be not only a substance but also a person – then it would not truly be God who is the subject of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. And if we allow any less ontological independence to the human nature – for instance, by denying its concrete substantiality – then God would not truly be acting as man. Christ must therefore have a human will that is naturally distinct from the divine will and yet subordinate to it. I suggest, therefore, that the habitus theory has much to commend it. Because the human nature is understood as a complete substance, Christ as man may be in possession of all human powers, potencies and faculties, being deficient in nothing. Because the assumed nature’s relation to the divine person is one that does not bring about any internal change to the divinity as such, the theory preserves an appropriate distinction between the natures, with each nature retaining what is proper to it. What is more, because the constituent principles of the human nature have no existence prior to, or independently of, the Incarnational event, they have no opportunity to subsist as a person in their own right, but subsist entirely in their relation to the pre-existing Word. The Word is thus the ultimate subject of the human nature and its attendant attributes. For these reasons, I submit that the habitus theory, though much maligned in Aquinas’s wake, is a promising expression of the hypostatic union, and one that is fundamentally in accord with the standard of Chalcedon. Notes 1 Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 145. 2 Ibid. 3 This is not to say that I  reject the insight of the non-substitutional interpretation. It may very well be the case that there is a difference between exemplifying properties ‘divinely’ and exemplifying properties ‘humanly’, particularly if God is a simple being and humans are complex. God does not have accidental forms inhering within him, whereas humans necessarily do. However, while this insight is true, I do not consider it to be a promising strategy for preserving coherence. 4 Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2018), 86–87. 5 It is tempting to cash out the distinction between how the person of Christ relates to his two natures in modal terms, as is done in Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 108–43. That is, Christ is divine necessarily but human merely contingently. While this is undoubtedly the case, it is not the pertinent observation in this context. The fact that there is a modal distinction in how Christ relates to his two natures merely speaks to the fact that Christ is necessarily impassible but only contingently passible. However, ‘x is necessarily F’ implies ‘x is F’, just as ‘x is contingently G’ implies ‘x is G’. In other words, a merely modal qualification is insufficient to block the secundum quid ad simpliciter inference.

Identity and Coherence in Christology 171 6 Oliver D. Crisp, The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 72–73. 7 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, 148. 8 Ibid., 149–50. 9 Ibid., 150. 10 Ibid. 11 Michael B. Raschko, “Aquinas’s Theology of the Incarnation in Light of Lombard’s Subsistence Theory,” The Thomist: A  Speculative Quarterly Review 65, no. 3 (2001): 431. 12 Walter H. Principe, “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Habitus-Theory of the Incarnation,” in St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies, ed. Etienne Gilson, vol. 1 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 399. 13 Ibid., 400. 14 Ibid., 401. 15 Lauge Olaf Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert of Porreta’s Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the Incarnation During the Period 1130–1180 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), 359–61. 16 Walter H. Principe, “Some Examples of Augustine’s Influence on Medieval Christology,” Augustiniana 41, no. 3 (1991): 959. 17 Brian Leftow, “Composition and Christology,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 28, no. 3 (2011): 310. 18 Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation, 23. 19 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 50 (3a. 16–26): The One Mediator, trans. Colman E. O’Niell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3a., q. 20, a. 2, reply. 20 Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 215. 21 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 50, 3a., q. 17, a. 2, reply. 22 Victor Salas, Jr., “Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Esse: A  Metaphysics of the Incarnation,” The Thomist: A  Speculative Quarterly Review 70, no. 4 (2006): 577–603; James B. Reichmann, “Aquinas, Scotus, and the Christological Mystery: Why Christ Is Not a Human Person,” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 71, no. 3 (2007): 451–74. 23 For a fuller discussion of Scotus’s account of the negation theory of subsistence in relation to the hypostatic union, see Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, 297–309. 24 Alfred J. Freddoso, “Human Nature, Potency, and the Incarnation,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 3, no. 1 (1986): 30–38. 25 Richard Cross, “Relations, Universals, and the Abuse of Tropes,” Supplementary Volume – Aristotelian Society 79, no. 1 (2005): 53–72. 26 For defences of reductionism about relations, see Josh Parsons, “Are There Irreducibly Relational Facts?” in Truth and Truth-Making, ed. Edward Jonathan Lowe and Adolf Rami (Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2009), 217–26; Edward Jonathan Lowe, “There Are (Probably) No Relations,” in The Metaphysics of Relations, ed. Anna Marmodoro and David Yates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 100–12. 27 Nielsen argues that Lombard embraced the third opinion due to his devoting the greatest space to it and offering no argument against it: Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century, 256–64. This, however, is disputed by Marcia L. Colish, “Christological Nihilianism in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 63 (1996): 146–55. 28 Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3: On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2008), distinction V, chapter 3.1.

172  Identity and Coherence in Christology 29 John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 198. 30 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 394–95; John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought (London: SCM Press, 1990), 166–67; Colin E. Gunton, Act and Being: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes (London: SCM Press, 2002), 29–30; Garrett J. Deweese, “One Person, Two Natures: Two Metaphysical Models of the Incarnation,” in Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective, ed. Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman Academic, 2007), 114–53; James Porter Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 611. 31 These problems are chronicled helpfully in Deweese, “One Person, Two Natures.” 32 Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 128. 33 See Thomas A. Watts, “Two Wills in Christ? Contemporary Objections Considered in Light of a Critical Examination of Maximus the Confessor’s Disputation with Pyrrhus,” Westminster Theological Journal 71, no. 2 (2009): 455–87. 34 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 50, 3a., q. 18, a. 5, reply. 35 Thomas Joseph White, The Incarnate Lord: A  Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 120. 36 Ibid., 253.

References Adams, Marilyn McCord. Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Aquinas, St Thomas. Summa Theologiae, Volume 50 (3a. 16–26): The One Mediator. Translated by Colman E. O’Niell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Colish, Marcia L. “Christological Nihilianism in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century.” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 63 (1996): 146–55. Crisp, Oliver D. The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016. Cross, Richard. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———. “Relations, Universals, and the Abuse of Tropes.” Supplementary Volume – Aristotelian Society 79, no. 1 (2005): 53–72. Deweese, Garrett J. “One Person, Two Natures: Two Metaphysical Models of the Incarnation.” In Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective, edited by Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler, 114–53. Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman Academic, 2007. Freddoso, Alfred J. “Human Nature, Potency, and the Incarnation.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 3, no. 1 (1986): 27–53. Gilson, Etienne, ed. St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies. Vol. 1. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974. Gunton, Colin E. Act and Being: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes. London: SCM Press, 2002. Leftow, Brian. “Composition and Christology.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 28, no. 3 (2011): 310–22. Lombard, Peter. The Sentences, Book 3: On the Incarnation of the Word. Translated by Giulio Silano. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2008.

Identity and Coherence in Christology 173 Lowe, Edward Jonathan. “There Are (Probably) No Relations.” In The Metaphysics of Relations, edited by Anna Marmodoro and David Yates, 100–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Lowe, Edward Jonathan, and Adolf Rami, eds. Truth and Truth-Making. Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2009. Macquarrie, John. Jesus Christ in Modern Thought. London: SCM Press, 1990. Marmodoro, Anna, and David Yates, eds. The Metaphysics of Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Moreland, James Porter, and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009. Nielsen, Lauge Olaf. Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert of Porreta’s Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the Incarnation During the Period 1130–1180. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982. Parsons, Josh. “Are There Irreducibly Relational Facts?” In Truth and Truth-Making, edited by Edward Jonathan Lowe and Adolf Rami, 217–26. Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2009. Pawl, Timothy. In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Principe, Walter H., “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Habitus-Theory of the Incarnation.” In St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies, edited by Etienne Gilson, 381–418. Vol. 1. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974. ———. “Some Examples of Augustine’s Influence on Medieval Christology.” Augustiniana 41, no. 3 (1991): 955–74. Raschko, Michael B. “Aquinas’s Theology of the Incarnation in Light of Lombard’s Subsistence Theory.” The Thomist: A  Speculative Quarterly Review 65, no. 3 (2001): 409–39. Reichmann, James B. “Aquinas, Scotus, and the Christological Mystery: Why Christ Is Not a Human Person.” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 71, no. 3 (2007): 451–74. Salas, Victor, Jr. “Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Esse: A Metaphysics of the Incarnation.” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 70, no. 4 (2006): 577–603. Sanders, Fred, and Klaus Issler, eds. Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective. Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman Academic, 2007. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Christian Faith. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016. Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 1. London: Sheed & Ward, 1990. Watts, Thomas A. “Two Wills in Christ? Contemporary Objections Considered in Light of a Critical Examination of Maximus the Confessor’s Disputation with Pyrrhus.” Westminster Theological Journal 71, no. 2 (2009): 455–87. White, Thomas Joseph. The Incarnate Lord: A  Thomistic Study in Christology. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015. Williams, Rowan. Christ the Heart of Creation. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2018. Wippel, John F. Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2021.

Postscript The Incarnational Mystery

In these closing remarks, I will relate the yield of this study of the Incarnation to my earlier comments regarding the place of mystery in theological speculation. The precise sense of ‘mystery’ with which I have operated is one which is motivated by a principled commitment to the analogy of being. I will not rehearse my necessarily brief discussion of the doctrine of analogy from Chapter 1, except to remind the reader that the doctrine incorporates both linguistic and metaphysical dimensions, and that this twofold preoccupation is one which has resonated – I hope detectably – throughout the entirety of this project. God occupies an ontological order which is unique to him, such that God and creatures do not converge upon an all-encompassing domain of ens commune, but correspond to distinct orders of being which secures that God is God and creatures are creatures. This demands that creaturely language be thought to ‘map onto’ God and creatures in such a way that is neither totally identical nor unrecognisably divergent. God and creatures are both necessarily distinct and necessarily related. This is the heart of the doctrine of analogy as it pertains to theology proper. This commitment determines both the prospects and the limits of what a study in the Incarnation can be expected to achieve. Analogy is not equivocity: the irreducible mystery of God does not compete with our knowledge of him and hence need not impede genuine advances in our understanding of God and his external works. Nor is analogy univocity: just as God is not simply one more item in a general inventory of all that is, neither can his external relations be classified as further instances of relations between ‘beings’. By extension, the Incarnation does not defy intellectual access but it does defy total cognitive reduction. There is nothing, no general sort of event, of which the Incarnation is merely one more case. This project, then, may be seen as an exercise, not in surrendering to divine mystery at the initial hurdle, nor in ignoring it entirely, but in locating it, in setting it in its proper place. As I trust this work has demonstrated, there is much to be said positively about the hypostatic union that is at once faithful to the standard of Chalcedon and obedient to logical principles. On the other hand, I have resisted attempts to reduce the hypostatic union to an instance of something more general. DOI: 10.4324/9781003381358-7

Postscript 175 The posture with which I  have chosen to approach this problem is not that of having come equipped with a pre-formed metaphysical schema, with the anticipation of ‘slotting’ God Incarnate into the correct category, thereby classifying the Incarnation in such a way that exhausts its mystery in toto. While such a metaphysical schema is no doubt invaluable in securing analogical purchase on God and his works – and I have imported such a schema for just this reason, to make theological speculation possible – the purpose of invoking such categories in the context of ‘faith seeking understanding’ must never be to collapse the divinity into the strictures of creaturely metaphysics. Such is to do irreparable injury to the theological enterprise and to distort beyond recognition the God who is its object. The hypostatic union spans the ontological chasm between God and the created order. It is this which arrests any and all attempts at creaturely comprehension.

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Index

abstract 90–5 accident 32–7, 87–93 accidental change 31–5 accidental unity 98–100 act 29–37, 58–68, 72–7 Adams, Marilyn McCord 133–4, 137–8, 148 Alston, William P. 41 analogy 37–45, 66–7, 72–4, 174–5 analogy of being 37–43 analytic philosophy 25–8, 35 analytic theology 25–8, 43–4 anhypostatos 94 Aquinas, Thomas 8–9, 29, 32–3, 55–64, 67–9, 74–6, 95–7, 100–3, 114–15, 124, 128, 150–1, 154–5, 157–8, 165–6 Arcadi, James M. 12, 28 Aristotle 28–31, 35–7, 55–7, 61, 159 assumptus homo theory 96–7, 151–2 Augustine, St. 8–9, 55–6, 63–4, 67–9, 73–4 Baker-Hytch, Max 28 Barnes, Michel René 74 Beall, Jc 14 body 8–10, 95–7, 151, 160–4, 168–9 body–soul analogy 9 Boethius 65–7, 96 bundle theory 87–92, 108 Cappadocians 55 Chalcedon, Council of 1–7, 10–13, 105, 122–3, 146 Christological Nihilism 151 Clarke, William Norris 39 classical strategies 115, 122–3

communicatio idiomatum 107 composite person 97–101, 151–2 composition 7–11, 13–15, 45–6, 58–9, 95–108, 128–30, 150–4 compositional Christology 101–8 concrete 90–5 Constantinople, Second Council of 11, 106 Constantinople, Third Council of 164–5 consubstantial 57, 60–1, 122, 146, 163–4 contradictory Christology 14–15 copula-modifying qua 144–50 Craig, William Lane 66 creator–creature distinction 120 Crisp, Oliver D. 13, 27–8, 43, 69, 91, 102, 104–8, 148 Cross, Richard 119–22, 128–9, 134, 136, 155–6, 159 Cyril of Alexandria, St. 6, 10 Davis, Stephen T. 5, 116–17, 121, 126, 136 divine nature 55–61, 63–72 divine person 6–8, 12–16, 65–77, 101–8, 120–2, 128–30, 146, 150–6 Dolezal, James E. 72 Dyothelitism 164–8 Emery, Gilles 61, 69, 76 Ephesus, Council of 8 equivocity 37–40, 96–7 esse theory of subsistence 157–8 Feser, Edward 88–9 form 31–7, 89–90 formal distinction 71 Freddoso, Alfred J. 158–9

Index  189 Gorman, Michael 74, 124–7, 137 Gregory of Nazianzus, St. 9 Gregory of Nyssa, St. 67 habitus theory 16–17, 96–7, 142–4, 150–7, 160–4, 167–70 Haldane, John 29 Hasker, William 66 Helm, Paul 64 Henninger, Mark G. 65 Hick, John 3–5 human nature 6–10, 90–108, 150–68 hypostatic union 5–12, 95–108, 150–68 identity 5–17, 35–6, 59–61, 71–2, 101–8 idioupostatos 94 immutability 63–4 impassibility 59 impeccability 166 individual 35–6, 55–7, 65–6, 90–5 individual substance of a rational nature 65–6, 96 individuation 70–1, 87–8 inseparable operations 73–7 instrumentalism 5–12, 14–17, 164–8 John of Damascus, St. 9, 93, 97–8 Kenny, Anthony 59 kenosis 14, 116–19 Lateran, Fourth Council of the 41–2 Latin theology 65–72 Leftow, Brian 13, 66, 102–7, 153 Levering, Matthew 69 logical relation 61–2 Logos asarkos 16, 102 Logos ensarkos 16, 102 Lombard, Peter 95–8, 104, 142, 151–2, 160–1 Martin, Michael 114 matter 31–7 Maximus the Confessor, St. 9 McCall, Thomas H. 66 McFarland, Ian A. 10 mixed relation 61–5 model 44 Monothelitism 165, 167

Morris, Thomas V. 5, 117–19, 121, 124, 127, 136 Mosser, Carl 66 Mullins, Ryan T. 63–4 mystery 3–4, 43–6, 174–5 negation theory of subsistence 158–60 Nicaea, Council of 8 Oderberg, David S. 30, 59, 88 Pawl, Timothy 130–3, 137, 143–4, 148–50 perichoresis 69–70 personal property 68–9 Plantinga, Alvin 26 Plantinga, Cornelius, Jr. 66 potency 29–37 predicate-modifying qua 133–5 Principe, Walter H. 151 Quine, Willard V. 26–7, 39 Radical Orthodoxy 42 Raschko, Michael B. 151 Ratzinger, Cardinal Joseph 68 Rea, Michael C. 26–7, 66 real distinction 58–9, 67–8, 71–2 real relation 61–5 reductionism about relations 159–60 reduplicative qua 123–7 relative identity 14–15 restriction strategies 116–23 scholastic metaphysics 28–37 Scotus, John Duns 5, 9, 13, 32, 42, 71, 95, 98–101, 105, 129–30, 133, 137, 143, 146, 158–60, 169 Senor, Thomas D. 118–19, 128, 133, 144 Simplicity 58–61 Social Trinitarianism 66–72 soul 8–10, 95–7, 151, 156, 160–4, 168–9 specificative qua 127–32 Stump, Eleonore 128–9 Sturch, Richard 94 Suárez, Francisco 32 subsistence theory 95–101, 150–6 subsistent relation 65–72 substance 29–37, 55–61, 87–95, 150–64

190 Index substantial change 31–5 substantial form 31–7, 89–90 substrate theory 87–90 Sumner, Darren O. 11 Swinburne, Richard 26, 93–4, 108 Tibbles 106–7 Trinity 65–77

univocity 37–43 Van Inwagen, Peter 14 Wessling, Jordan 28, 41–2 White, Thomas Joseph 166–7 Williams, Rowan 11, 146, 154 Williams, Thomas 40–1 Wippel, John F. 162–3