Impeccability and Temptation: Understanding Christ’s Divine and Human Will [1 ed.] 9780367615024, 9780367618940, 9780367618933

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Impeccability and Temptation

In Christian theology, the teaching that Christ possessed both a human and divine will is central to the doctrine of two natures, but it also represents a logical paradox, raising questions about how a person can be both impeccable and subject to temptation. This volume explores these questions through an analytic theology approach, bringing together 15 original papers that explore the implications of a strong libertarian concept of free will for Christology. With perspectives from systematic theologians, ­philosophers, and biblical scholars, several chapters also offer a comparative theology approach, examining the concept of impeccability in the M ­ uslim tradition. Therefore, this volume will be of interest to scholars and graduate ­students working in analytic theology, biblical scholarship, systematic t­ heology, and Christian-Islamic dialogue. Johannes Grössl is Assistant Professor for Fundamental Theology and Comparative Studies of Religion at the University of Würzburg, Germany. He has published in Faith and Philosophy and Theology and Science and co-edited a volume of German translations of essays on divine foreknowledge and human freedom, Göttliche Allwissenheit und Menschliche Freiheit (2015). Klaus von Stosch is Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of ­Paderborn, Germany. He is an internationally well-known expert in comparative theology, having published 11 monographs and 40 edited books, among them, together with Francis Clooney, How to do ­Comparative ­Theology? He has held guest professorships in Jerusalem and research ­fellowships at the University of Qom (Iran), Harvard Divinity School, and Georgetown University.

Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology

Series editors: James Turner, Thomas McCall and Jordan Wessling

Impeccability and Temptation Understanding Christ’s Divine and Human Will Edited by Johannes Grössl and Klaus von Stosch

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Genocide-and-Crimes-against-Humanity/book-series/ RSGCH

Impeccability and Temptation Understanding Christ’s Divine and Human Will

Edited by Johannes Grössl and Klaus von Stosch

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Johannes Grössl and Klaus von Stosch; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Johannes Grössl and Klaus von Stosch to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, 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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 9780367615024 (hbk) ISBN: 9780367618940 (pbk) ISBN: 9780367618933 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of fgures List of contributors Introduction: impeccability and temptation

vii ix 1

J O H A N N E S G RÖ S S L

PART I

Was Christ sinless? Exegetical and historical approaches 1 The sinlessness of Christ and human perfection

13 15

JEFFREY SIKER

2 Sinless or not? The baptism by John and Jesus’ consciousness of his personal sins

33

A N G E L I K A S T RO T M A N N

3 “He himself was tempted” (Hebr 2:18): the temptation of Jesus in the New Testament

50

LENA LÜ T T ICK E A N D H A NS -U LR ICH W EI DEM A N N

4 God’s work and human’s contribution: Jesus’ sinlessness in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Christology

75

COR N ELI A DOCKT ER

5 Conciliar Christology, impeccability, and temptation T I M O T H Y PAW L

94

vi Contents PART II

Is Christ impeccable? Systematical approaches

117

6 Seven questions ingredient to Jesus Christ’s temptation

119

JOH N E . McK I N LEY

7 The Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ

143

T H O M A S S C H Ä RT L

8 Classical Theism, Christology, and the Two Sons Worry

164

R .T. M U L L I N S

9 Peccable as Son of Man, impeccable as Son of God: an attempt to reconcile freedom and impeccability

183

DOM I N I K US K R A SC H L

10 The divine and human will of Christ

199

O L I V E R D. C R I S P

11 Deification and the divided-consciousness-view

216

J O H A N N E S G RÖ S S L

PART III

Human perfection and sinlessness in Islamic theology

233

12 The scope of ‘iṣma and Qur’anic evidence

235

M O H A M M A D H AG H A N I FA Z L

13 Inerrancy and exaggeration in Shi‘i theology

253

M U H A M M A D L E G E N H AU S E N

14 The theological concept of imamate: how Imamis reconcile human perfection and free will

271

VA H I D M A H DAV I M E H R

Conclusion: impeccability and sinlessness in Islam and Christianity

286

K L AU S VO N S T O S C H

Author/Subject index Scripture index

297 311

Figures

1.1 12.1

Alexamenos Graffti Five dimensions of inerrancy

18 243

Contributors

Oliver D. Crisp is Professor of Analytic Theology at the University of St. Andrews, UK. His constructive work has, to date, primarily been in the areas of Christology and hamartiology. His publications include Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered (2007) and God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology (2009). Cornelia Dockter is a research assistant at the Institute of Catholic Theology of the University of Paderborn, Germany. Her dissertation on Christological debates in Quranic perspective, Geist im Wort, was published with Brill in 2020. Johannes Grössl  is Assistant Professor of Fundamental Theology and Comparative Religion at the University of Wurzburg, Germany. He has co-edited a volume with German translations of essays on divine foreknowledge and human freedom, Göttliche Allwissenheit und Menschliche Freiheit (2015). His habilitation on Christ’s impeccability will appear as a monograph with Herder in 2021. Mohammad Haghani Fazl is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center of Islamic Theology and member of the Prophetology Project at the University of Paderborn, Germany. His research interests lie primarily in the Scriptures and exegesis. He has published Inerrancy of the Bible from the Christian point of View (in Persian). His PhD dissertation with the title The Impact of Interreligious Dialogue on the Interpretation of the Scripture will be published by University of Religions and Denominations, Iran (in Persian). Dominikus Kraschl OFM  is Professor of Philosophy and the History of Philosophy at University of Chur, Switzerland. His publications (in German) include The Precarious God-World-Relationship (2009), Relational Ontology. A Contribution to the Discussion of Open Questions in Philosophy (2012) and Indirect Experience of God: Its Nature and Relevance for Theological Epistemology (2017).

x Contributors Muhammad Legenhausen is an American philosopher holding a PhD from Rice University and is Professor of Philosophy at the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qom, Iran, as well as the University of Qom. His publications include Islam and Religious Pluralism (1999) and Contemporary Topics of Islamic Thought (2000). Lena Lütticke is a PhD student at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and working on her dissertation on the “Father who is in secret and sees in secret” in the Gospel of Matthew. She has published in the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (2015) and in the Wissenschaftliches Bibellexikon (WiBiLex). John E. McKinley is Associate Professor of Theology at the Talbot School of Theology of Biola University, Los Angeles, USA. His publications include Tempted for us: Theological Models and the Practical Relevance of Christ’s Impeccability and Temptation (2009). McKinley has continued to work on the doctrines of Christology, ecclesiology and sanctification as part of his teaching through these topics. Vahid Mahdavi Mehr  is a PhD student at University of Paderborn, Germany. He has studied the Qur’an, Islamic philosophy, and Imami Jurisprudence. In his dissertation, under the supervision of Klaus von Stosch, he tries to investigate the Quranic foundations of an Islamic comparative theology. R.T. Mullins  is a senior research fellow at the Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. His publications include The End of the Timeless God (2016) and God and Emotion (2020). Timothy Pawl is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, USA. His research focuses on metaphysics, philosophical theology and moral psychology. Pawl’s books include In Defense of Conciliar Christology (2016) and In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology (2019). Thomas Schärtl is Professor of Fundamental Theology at the University of Munich, Germany. His areas of research and interest include philosophical theology, philosophy of religion, theology of God, metaphysics and epistemology. Jeffrey Siker is Emeritus Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, USA, where he worked in the area of New Testament studies. Siker is the author of Disinheriting the Jews: Abraham in Early Christian Controversy (1991); Scripture and Ethics: Twentieth Century Portraits (1997); Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity (2015); Liquid Scripture: The Bible in a Digital World (2017); and Sin in the New Testament (2019). Dr. Siker is an ordained Presbyterian minister in the Presbyterian Church, USA.

Contributors  xi Klaus von Stosch is Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Paderborn, Germany. He is an internationally known expert for comparative theology, having published 11 monographs and 40 edited books, among them, together with Francis Clooney, How to do Comparative Theology? (2017). He has held guest professorships at Jerusalem and research fellowships at Qom University (Iran), Harvard Divinity School and Georgetown University. Angelika Strotmann  is Professor of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Paderborn, Germany. After her doctorate on the paternity of God in early Jewish writings, Strotmann subsequently worked at various universities as a lecturer in Old Testament and New Testament exegesis. Her widely known Introduction to the Historical Jesus (2012) has been published in its third edition. Since 2018 she has been the chairwoman of the German section of the European Society of Women in Theological Research. Hans-Ulrich Weidemann  is Professor of Biblical Theology (Exegesis of the New Testament) at the University of Siegen, Germany, and holds a part-denomination for Historical Masculinity Studies. He has edited Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity. The Reception of New Testament Texts in Ancient Ascetic Discourses (2013), co-edited an introduction to the New Testament (2016) and a volume on Joseph Haydn’s “Seven last words of Jesus on the cross” (2017).

Introduction Impeccability and temptation Johannes Grössl

This volume is the result of a three-year research project dealing with Christ’s temptations and divine impeccability. Both project leaders had previously intensively worked on the concept of libertarian free will and its consequences on divine attributes, the possibility of divine action and the problem of theodicy.1 Especially in order to develop a defense against the charge of inconsistency between divine benevolence, divine omnipotence and the existence of moral evil, they agree that theologians need to concede that free will as the power to choose between good and evil must be, in some sense, essential to human nature – or at least necessary to achieve a certain goal that otherwise would not be able to be achieved. Without this important anthropological premise, it is nearly impossible to understand why God created free beings, knowing what kind of atrocities humans are able to commit. The motivation for this project was the observation that very little research has been done on the consequences of a libertarian concept of free will on Christology. Most Christians believe that Jesus Christ was fully human, yet was unable to sin. If, however, being human implies the power to choose between good and evil, it seems that Christ cannot be both fully human and impeccable. The aim of the project was to discuss different approaches on how to solve this paradox: In fve workshops, philosophers, systematic theologians and biblical scholars from the U.S., Great Britain and Germany were brought together. In addition, one workshop involved an interreligious discussion between Christian and Muslim scholars; using a comparative-theological approach, similar discussions in a different religious tradition, i.e. the impeccability of the Twelve Imams in Shi‘a theology, can help and support or give new perspectives on theological problems within Christianity. 2 In order to defend Christian belief as rational (or at least as non-irrational), it is important that propositional beliefs such as statements about God or Christ do not contain irresolvable contradictions. 3 Although religious belief cannot be reduced down to propositional belief, philosophical theology requires that all attempts to formulate one’s belief using propositions involve consistent models of God and reality that are also compatible with other indispensable philosophical and theological convictions. The  apparent

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inconsistency resulting from attributing impeccability to Christ can be formulated as such: 1 2 3

If x is truly human, x must be (potentially) peccable. If x is truly divine, x must be essentially impeccable. A person cannot be both (potentially) peccable and essentially impeccable.

The insertion of potentiality in parentheses refers to an intensive anthropological and ethical discussion about what constitutes true humanity. One can see that this logical paradox is not only about consistency of Christian doctrine, but also about its compatibility with specifc anthropological commitments. While Christians usually hold that being human does not depend on any individual faculties at all, Kantians think that being human is constituted by a potentiality for rationality and moral agency; preference utilitarians, on the other hand, assume that humanity as used in philosophical contexts should rather be substituted with ‘personhood,’ this being constituted by the ability to act intentionally.4 If one wants to attribute true humanity even to unborn, very young, or strongly mentally disabled persons, one needs to show why all of these groups of people possess the attribute of potential moral autonomy. This shows that abstract theological discussions can have rather important impact on modern-day anthropology and ethics.

Historical introduction The discussion as to whether Christ actually possessed human will can be seen as the key to understanding the doctrine of two natures and, thus, of Christology. It was the intensive discussion in the two centuries after the Council of Chalcedon in the ffth century, which fnally led to the question of whether Christ only possessed a purely divine, or deifed human, will (monothelitism) or whether his human will remained completely preserved beside the divine will despite the hypostatic union (dyothelitism). The offcial two-will doctrine formulated in the seventh century is accepted by most Christian denominations; however, it represents a permanent logical problem for the Christian faith: How can a person or a subject possess two wills? If, based on the anthropology of modernity, human will is understood essentially as free will, can Jesus be attributed both human and a divine freedom? Couldn’t Jesus then have leaned against God with his human will – in other words, couldn’t he have sinned? The juxtaposition of divine and human will in Christ is already a biblical, strongly anchored motif. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus struggles with his mission; in the end he decides to subordinate his human will to the divine will: “But not mine, but thy will shall be done” (Luke 22:42). In various places in the gospels it is reported that Jesus was exposed to temptations. However, according to common understanding, temptation presupposes that it cannot be ruled out that the attempt is subject to temptation.

Introduction

3

But this exact intuitive condition is rejected by almost all church fathers and also by many contemporary theologians: Christ had indeed been truly tempted, as the Epistle to the Hebrews confrms, but it had been impossible for him to turn against the Father’s will. 5 Cyril, who was patriarch of Alexandria from 412 to 444 AD, even went so far as to argue that the temptations took place only so that Christ could be a better example for us, so that we could learn to deal with temptations – an argument that was often taken up in scholasticism and that relativizes the authenticity of Jesus’ temptations (dispensational doctrine).6 Much later, in kenotic schools of thought within Protestant theology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a distinction was made between subjective and objective temptability – kenoticists taught that Christ did not know that he could not sin, and therefore had a psychological state of temptation; nevertheless, it was still assumed that he was not able to be genuinely tempted.7 In medieval theology, an Antiochene strategy was prevalent, however, using a compatibilist theory of free will and responsibility: It is not necessary to possess the power to choose between alternatives in order to be able to be free. The neo-scholastic theologian Ludwig Ott, referring to Thomas Aquinas, emphasizes that Christ’s not being able to sin does not undermine his moral freedom and the merit of his suffering and death. […] Even if he could not act against the ‘commandment of the Father’, he did not compel it, but fulflled it with free consent of his will.8 Without being able to treat all the theories and Christological models in Christian history in this volume, it can be asserted with great certainty that almost the entire Christian tradition until the advent of historical-critical research agreed that Jesus could not have decided against the will of the Father; he did not possess the ability to sin.9 There were and are different attempts at explaining this assumption. The most widespread and obvious motif in late antiquity was to attribute to Christ, because of his divine nature, the quality of moral perfection and the inability to sin. While in Alexandrian tradition such an explanation regards the natures more strongly as unifed entity, followers of an Antiochian Christology tended more towards a differentiation of the natures. They also emphasized the effect of divine grace on Christ’s human nature: Divine grace keeps a human from sinning or motivates her to act in conformity with God. This way, Christ’s impeccability can be understood as a form of impeccability, which potentially every human can or will eventually reach.

Systematic introduction There is biblical evidence for both Christ’s humanity and divinity. Christ is portrayed as acting, feeling and thinking like a human. But also, it seems that he had at least an idea of a special divine status, even if it was expressed

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for him only as a unique relationship with the Father or as the certainty of having a special mission from God on earth. Commenting on Christ’s teaching and forgiving sins with the claim of divine authority, S.T. Davis writes: So Jesus apparently saw himself as having the right to act as God and do what God appropriately does. The argument in favour of this point does not depend on ahistorical readings of the Gospels […]. Jesus implicitly claimed divine status.10 However, the statement that Christ is God and man at the same time seems to imply a logical contradiction: Humans are fnite, contingent, mortal, powerless, ignorant, limited and localized in time and space; God is, at least according to classical theism, infnite, necessarily existing, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, unlimited and omnipresent. Anyone who postulates a being that is both fnite and infnite, contingent and necessary, temporal and eternal, omnipotent and powerless in the same respects violates the principle of noncontradiction, the elementary law of logic.11 John Hick, for example, concludes from this that the Christological dogma can only be understood metaphorically, because literally it would not make any sense at all.12 However, in the Christian tradition, hardly anyone has defended an open logical contradiction claiming, for example, that Christ is omnipotent and powerless in the same respect. It usually refers to the two natures when defning this differentiating respect: Christ is almighty in his divinity and powerless in his humanity. This strategy – also known as a strategy of reduplication – seems simple and elegant, but is it suffcient to resolve all paradoxes? Even more, is it not in contradiction to the doctrine of the communication of idioms, which says that all properties of the human Jesus Christ can be attributes of the divine Logos and all properties of the Logos can be attributes of the human Jesus Christ? Even if it is possible, by using the reduplication strategy, to show the compatibility of some divine and human attributes,13 a major challenge remains: the attribute of sinfulness or the ability to sin. Already the Epistle to the Hebrews regarded sin (even if no distinction has yet been made between sinlessness and impeccability) as something in which Christ differs from other people: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but who was tempted in all things in the same way as we are, but without sin” (Heb 4:15). The Council of Chalcedon has taken up this formulation; in the text of the Council it says, with reference to precisely this passage from the Scriptures, that Christ is “equal in all things to us except sin.” But anyone who claims that Christ differs exclusively from a human being in that he has not sinned does not do justice either to the Greek origin of this statement or to the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon; “equal” here is an imprecise translation of ὁμοίον, Latin similis: a term that expresses similarity.14 However, if one interprets ‘similarly’ in

Introduction

5

too moderate a way, it could lead to Apollinarism, a further development of Docetism. According to this concept, Christ only possessed a human body; but his soul, his inner center, his thinking, feeling and acting were completely divine. But this view does not do justice to biblical testimony either, for Christ is presented there as someone who is not omniscient, who is afraid, who once even seems to be angry and who, above all, suffers temptations; there is a reason why the Epistle to the Hebrews states that Christ “was tempted as we were” and that he had to “learn obedience” (Heb 5:7). Attempts to resolve divine impeccability and human free will include various kenotic Christologies; non-personal or non-classical models of God; non-orthodox strategies such as adoptionism or trinitarian subordinationism, utilizing divine foreknowledge or middle knowledge or, foremost, the attempt to defend a concept of free will without the power of alternate possibilities. There is much work to do, both historic and systematic, on each of these strategies. This volume shall foster this theological discussion. As can be seen, not only are theological presumptions of God’s nature, the Trinity and Christology challenged by this undertaking, but philosophical ideas such as the nature of humanity and the nature of freedom are put to the test.

Chapters in this volume In “Sinlessness of Christ and Human Perfection,” Jeffrey Siker discusses the origin of the concept of sinlessness in Christianity. If Jesus is God (as in the classic Christological formulations of the early church councils), how could he be a sinner in any sense of the word? The notion of a sinless divine Jesus is directly related to the idea of Jesus as a perfect, sinless human being. Although this doctrine has gone relatively unquestioned for 2000 years, almost no attention has been given to how the idea developed in early Christianity. Nor have its consequences been suffciently explored in light of the claim that Jesus is fully human, or as Hebrews 4 puts it, “like us in every respect, except sin.” Siker addresses both the development of the doctrine of the sinless perfection of Jesus and asks whether a sinless Jesus is truly human or is somehow less than fully human ‘like us.’ His argument is that the sinlessness of Jesus is a case of what might be called ‘retrospective theologizing,’ in which the scandal of Jesus’ death was radically reinterpreted in light of faith in the resurrection. The retrojection of this faith led to identifying Jesus as a sacrifcial lamb who atones for human sin, thus necessitating Jesus to be (like all animal sacrifces) unblemished and, hence, sinless. In ‘Sinless or not?’ biblical scholar Angelika Strotmann postulates that there are a number of indications suggesting that Jesus possessed a consciousness of personal sin. The most convincing source for this is the baptism of Jesus by John. By means of the exegetical criteria of embarrassment, counter-tendency and the criterion of historical context plausibility, Strotmann tries to show that Jesus of Nazareth came to John to be baptized by him because he recognized himself as a sinner who was subject to the wrath

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of God and needed forgiveness. In this he was no different from any other baptizands. Strotmann argues that, like every other baptized person, he also confessed his personal sins, this being an essential part of John’s baptism as “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Although we do not know whether it was a ‘free’ spoken confession of sin or a standardized prayer, the person baptized combined his or her personal sins with those of his people and asked God for the forgiveness of both. In ‘He himself was tempted,’ Lena Lütticke and Hans-Ulrich Weidemann analyze the different narrative accounts of Jesus’ temptation in the New Testament. They focus on two different but interrelated strands: The synoptic temptation stories and the depiction of the topic in the letter to the Hebrews. They frst look into the narrative accounts of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, the moments of weakness and agony in his Gethsemane prayer as well as in his outcry at the cross. Afterwards, Lütticke and Weidemann investigate Jesus’ temptation in his fear of death within the Christological framework of the letter to the Hebrews. In “God’s work and human’s contribution,” Cornelia Dockter engages with the question whether one can speak of the ‘peccability’ of Jesus Christ in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Christology. Theodore’s Christology is known for stressing the humanity of Jesus Christ to confront the logoshegemonial tendencies in his day. In accordance with the testimonies of Scripture, Theodore nevertheless underlines the sinlessness of Christ. This chapter addresses the concept of sinlessness in Theodore’s Christology and poses the question of whether this sinlessness entails a principal inability to sin (impeccability). By answering this question, Dockter provides thoughtprovoking impulses for the relation between Logos and Spirit Christology as well as for a principal understanding of human nature. In “Conciliar Christology, impeccability, and temptation,” Timothy Pawl examines the proposition that Christ could not be both peccable and tempted. He discusses two replies to that argument. The frst denies the premise that “if a person is tempted, then that person is capable of sinning” by analyzing temptation in a manner that does not entail ability to sin. The second denies the premise that “if a person is capable of sinning (peccable), then that person is not impeccable” by defning ‘peccable’ and ‘impeccable’ such that they are consistent. Pawl shows that both responses are consistent with Conciliar Christology and concludes that the temptation argument does not show the conjunction of Conciliar Christology and the Impeccability Thesis to be false. In “Seven questions ingredient to Christ’s temptation,” John E. McKinley presumes that the theology of Jesus’ experience of temptation involves the complexity of his divine and human natures, and the unique situation of living as one person in two natures (hypostatic union). He shows that when theologians consider the temptation of Jesus and related questions about his impeccability, several presuppositions about the questions affect how to approach this particular paradox. The aim of his article is to pull back the curtain to see the relative involvement

Introduction  7 of each question with the others and the topic as a whole: Is God able to commit evil or is God impeccable? What is freedom of will? What is temptation to sin? How is Jesus’ experience with temptation relevant for Christians in daily life? What was the role of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ life and ministry? Could Jesus sin or not? How did Jesus avoid sin and fulfill all righteousness? In “Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ,” Thomas Schärtl examines three key analogies that could provide us with a model for understanding the link between the two natures of Christ in the Hypostatic Union. The question of whether Christ was impeccable or merely sinless is discussed based on these analogies, which provide rather different answers to the problem and invite one to assess the costs of preferring one analogy over and above the other. Schärtl points to the fact that the decision of which analogy one might favor and how one responds to the problem of Christ’s freedom to sin ultimately depends on the key soteriological model one is willing to support. In “Classical Theism, Christology, and the Two Sons Worry,” R.T. ­Mullins argues that the combination of classical theism and a traditional three-part dyothelite Christology runs afoul of the “Two Sons Worry” because it cannot offer an account of the hypostatic union. Mullins considers two prominent accounts of the hypostatic union and argues that each account fails to avoid the Two Sons Worry. In “Peccable as Son of Man, impeccable as Son of God,” Dominikus Kraschl discusses the biblical and dogmatic doctrine that Jesus Christ was like us in all things except for sin. He shows that this doctrine provokes a follow-up question, namely, could Jesus of Nazareth have sinned; in other words, was the man Jesus peccable or impeccable? The first part of Kraschl’s chapter presents and discusses an argument in favor of the impeccability view. The second part sketches three ways of evading the conclusion. Thereafter, a new attempt at reconciling Christ’s impeccability and Jesus’ freedom is explored: the ‘backwards constitution model’ of the incarnation and the hypostatic union. In “The divine and human will of Christ,” Oliver D. Crisp critically discusses the neo-monothelite view favored by several evangelical Christian philosophers, claiming that neo-monothelites have shown that there are conceptual problems defenders of the dyothelite alternative must address, which are not easily rebutted. Crisp offers several reasons for thinking that dyothelitism is still worthy of serious theological consideration that depend upon a different model of the hypostatic union, one that is based on the concept of a concrete human nature rather than an abstractist model. He concludes that there is – given concretism – sufficient conceptual reason for holding to the dyothelitism of classical Christology, and sufficient authority for this model in the tradition for us to maintain the doctrine. In “Deification and the divided-consciousness-view,” Johannes Grössl shows, in a first step, that the dilemma of Christ’s free will and impeccability cannot be easily resolved by emphasizing his human nature, even if

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contemporary research in biblical exegesis is taken into account. In a second step, he discusses whether the paradigm of a divided mind can be applied in a way such that Christ’s free will is maintained without attributing conditional divinity to him, as adoptionist and Ockhamist strategies do. Grössl argues that if theologians want to attribute true humanity to Christ, and if true humanity includes peccability (and possibly, in line with Jeffrey Siker, even moderate sinfulness), they need to argue for the existence of a created human consciousness in Christ. Such a consciousness can be, from its creation onward, intertwined with the divine consciousness and thereby willingly transformed by God over time to shape a perfect, then-impeccable character, i.e., become divinized. In “The Scope of ‘iṣma and Qur’anic Evidence,” Mohammad Haghani Fazl shows that impeccability of some humans as a theological belief is not explicitly stated in the Qur’ān but very much related to the widely discussed concept of infallibility (‘isma). By exploring Shi‘i interpretations of related verses, he considers the scope of ‘iṣma in terms of the interplay between Qur’anic evidence and rational arguments for the doctrine. Haghani Fazl argues that there is a common logic behind interpretations of these verses and arguments based on them. Qur’anic evidence provides us with primitive components of the doctrine of ‘iṣma, and these basic components are compatible with the defeat-of-purpose argument: the closer we get to the core of the alleged scope of ‘iṣma, the greater agreement there will be between Qur’anic evidence and rational arguments. In “Inerrancy and exaggeration in Shi‘i theology,” Muhammad Legenhausen shows that there are many discussions of human perfection in Islamic literature: The ideal of human perfection is particularly prominent in Shi‘i and Suf works. Two of the oldest topics of controversy in Shi‘i kalām are those of inerrancy and exaggeration. Legenhausen begins with an introduction to these concepts, followed by a brief overview of their early appearance in theological debates among the Shi‘a. Next, he reviews the place of these concepts in contemporary Twelver Shi‘i theology and related felds, such as jurisprudence and mysticism. Finally, Legenhausen offers observations with regard to the relevance of these issues to interreligious dialogue and Islamic ecumenical discussions. In “The theological concept of imamate,” Vahid Mahdavi Mehr attempts to show more clearly the mechanism through which the concept of Imamate, human perfection and sin work in Imami speculative theology. By explaining this mechanism, Mehr helps us understand, frst, how different approaches to Imamate can coexist, and secondly, that this concept is open to different acceptable interpretations depending on one’s ontological, epistemological or anthropological system of thought. After explaining how the lack of an explicit orthodoxy in Islam renders a plurality of understandings of concepts, in principle, valid, Mehr briefy explains what human perfection and sin mean in Imami thought, which might regulate possible comparative studies between the two traditions.

Introduction  9 In his conclusion titled, “Impeccability and sinlessness in Islam and ­Christianity,” Klaus von Stosch summarizes the puzzles within the attempts to bring together the impeccability of Christ with his humanity, and explores whether the Shi‘i concept of innerancy can be of any help in making a step forward in Christological discussions.

Acknowledgments The research project and this volume was generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation. It was funded as a cluster grant to the Analytic Theology and the Nature of God project, which was administered by Georg Gasser, University of Innsbruck; Godehard Brüntrup, Munich School of Philosophy; and Thomas Schärtl-Trendel, University of Regensburg. Prior work on the topic has been published by Johannes Grössl in the T&T Clark Companion to Analytic Theology, edited by James Arcadi and James T. Turner (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), as well as in Herausforderungen und Modifikationen des Klassischen Theismus (“Challenges and Modifications to Classical Theism”), Volume 2: Inkarnation (Münster: Aschendorff, 2020). We are grateful to all workshop participants and all who have contributed to the project with their ideas and comments, including those not included in this volume. Special thanks are to be said to Ulrich Dickmann, deputy director of the Catholic Academy in Schwerte, who hosted three of the five project workshops; Lisa Heller and Malte Brügge-­Feldhake, who, as former student assistants, have been a great help in organizing the events; and to Julia van der Wal for her assistance in editing the book manuscript.

Notes 1 Johannes Grössl, Die Freiheit des Menschen als Risiko Gottes. Der Offene Theismus als Konzeption der Vereinbarkeit von göttlicher Allwissenheit und menschlicher Freiheit (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015); Klaus von Stosch, Gott – Macht – Geschichte. Versuch einer theodizeesensiblen Rede vom Handeln Gottes in der Welt (Freiburg: Herder, 2006); Theodizee (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2 2018). 2 The topics and participants of the workshops included: (1) “The Sinless of Christ and all Believers,” May 12–13 at the Catholic-Academy in Schwerte, with Brian Leftow (at that time University of Oxford), Angelika Strotmann (University of Paderborn), Hans-Ulrich Weidemann (University of Siegen), Thomas Schärtl-­ Trendel (University of Regensburg). (2) “Two Wills in Christ? Dyotheletism and its Alternatives,” October 13–14, 2017 at the Catholic-Academy in Schwerte, with Oliver Crisp (Fuller Theological Seminary, now University of St. Andrews), Thomas Marschler (University of Augsburg), Ryan Mullins (University of St. Andrews), Dominikus Kraschl (University of Würzburg, now University of Chur), Joshua Blander (King’s College, New York City), Aaron Langenfeld (University of Paderborn). (3) “The Human and Divine Nature(s) of Christ,” June 6, 2018, at University of Paderborn with Timothy Pawl (University of St. Thomas), Benjamin Dahlke (Theological Faculty Paderborn), Matthias Grebe (University

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of Bonn). (4) “Sinlessness and Human Perfection in Islam and Christianity,” September 4–5, 2018, at the Catholic-Academy in Schwerte, with Jeffrey Siker (Loyola Marymount University), Gary Muhammad Legenhausen (Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute) and Mohammed-Taghi Ansari-Pur (Islamic Azad University, Iran), Vahid Mahdavi Mehr (University of Paderborn), Nasrin Bani Assadi (University of Paderborn). (5) “Tempted for Us? A Discussion of Models of Christ’s Sinlessness,” May 5, 2019 at University of Würzburg, with John McKinley (Biola University), Cornelia Dockter (University of Paderborn), Raphael Weichlein (University of Innsbruck), Thomas Schärtl-Trendel (University of Regensburg), Matthias Reményi (University of Würzburg). 3 It is important to note that in many cases, apparent contradictions serve as a starting point for a dialectic process aimed at a better understanding of a certain matter. 4 Cf. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 3 2011), 83: “To have a right to life, one must have, or at least at one time have had, the concept of having a continuing existence. Note that this formulation avoids any problems in dealing with sleeping or unconscious people.” Singer does not accept arguments of potentiality, especially in Kantian tradition; cf. ibid., 138–43. 5 The ordinary usage of the term ‘temptation’ is also deviated from in Christian ethics, which interestingly is justifed referring to Christology. See Karl Hörmann, Art. „Versuchung,“ in ed. Karl Hörmann, Lexikon der christlichen Moral, 2. Edition (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1969), Sp. 1664 (translation: J.G.): Temptation is the incentive to sin. The external incentive, which no person can escape in the long run (even Jesus was tried […]), is to be distinguished from the inner responsiveness (Jesus could not respond to the temptation; […] Mary was kept free from this possibility by special grace […]). 6 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q.40, a. 1; q. 41 a.1 co; Hilarius, De Trinitate, X, 37: So he is not sad because of him, nor does he pray because of him; but for those whom he admonishes to be vigilant in prayer, so that they may not be overcome by the cup of suffering, of which he asks that he should pass by, that he should not remain with them. Augustine, De Trinitate IV, Chapter 13: “He also offered himself to him [Satan] as a temptation, so that he might also become a mediator for the overcoming of temptations, not only by his help, but also by his example.” 7 Cf. Gottfried Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk. Darstellung der evangelisch-lutherischen Dogmatik vom Mittelpunkte der Christologie aus, Vol. 1–3/2 (Erlangen: Bläsing 1853–61), esp. Vol. 2, 144. Thomasius’ view that Christus did not know about his sinlessness is shared today by many theologians, even some Catholics; cf. Gerald O’Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2 2009), 271: Jesus could be truly tempted and tested, provided that he did not know that he could not sin. If he had known that he could not sin, it would be diffcult, if not impossible, to make sense of genuine temptations. 8 Ludwig Ott, Grundriß der katholischen Dogmatik (Freiburg: Herder, 81970), 204 (translation: J.G.); cf. Josef Pohle, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik (Paderborn: Schoeningh, 1960), III 1 §26; Thomas von Aquin, Summa Theologiae III q.47 a. 2 ad 2.

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9 Timothy O’Connor, “Against theological determinism,” in eds. Kevin Timpe & Daniel Speak, Free Will and Theism. Connections, Contingencies, and Concerns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 132–41, here 140: “[N]early all Christians accept that Jesus Christ was (and is) incapable of sin.” 10 Cf. Stephen T. Davis, “Was Jesus Mad, Bad, or God,” in ed. Michael Rea, Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology, Vol. 1: Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 166–85, here 184. 11 The principle of non-opposition represents an elementary principle of thinking, as Aristotle already recognized. If a statement and its opposite could be true at the same time, ultimately nothing at all could be asserted with a claim to truth. A denial of the principle of non-opposition therefore constitutes a contradictio in adiecto. Although non-binary logic systems can be constructed, such a construction always requires a binary meta-system within which such a construction is made. 12 Cf. John Hick, God has Many Names (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1980), 28: [T]he idea of divine incarnation is a metaphorical (or, in technical theological language, a mythological) idea. When a truth or a value is lived out in a human life, it is a natural metaphor to speak of its being incarnated in that life. […] Jesus lived in full openness to God, responsive to the divine will, transparent to the divine purpose, so that he lived out the divine agape within human history. 13 Cf. Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology. A Philosophical Essay (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Eleonore Stump, “Aquinas’ Metaphysics of the Incarnation,” in eds. Stephen T. Davis & Daniel Kendall & Gerald O’Collins, The Incarnation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 211–17; Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 47–8, 194. 14 Cf. Hebr 4, 15; DH 301. In the Latin translation of the Council text it says, “[P]er omnia nobis similem, absque peccato.”

Part I

Was Christ sinless? Exegetical and historical approaches

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The sinlessness of Christ and human perfection Jeffrey Siker

1 Reconsidering the sinlessness of Jesus The notion of a sinless Jesus is completely wrapped up in still larger theological questions about the identity of Jesus and his relationship to God, especially in terms of the understanding of the dual natures of Christ that developed early in the Christian tradition – the paradox that Jesus must be understood as both fully God and fully human. About this conviction, of course, there has been no dearth of discussion and debate from the very beginning of Christianity to the present day. It is within this larger theological framework that I decided to explore how it is that Jesus came to be viewed as sinless in early Christianity. This exploration resulted in my book, Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2015). In the process of writing this book I came to develop three convictions that I think complement the Christological debates about Jesus as fully God and fully human. First, I have become convinced that all theology is fundamentally a retrospective undertaking. We are always engaged in retrospective theologizing, namely, making sense of our pasts in light of our present experiences and understandings. We cannot step out of our current skins and pretend to approach a topic from other than where we stand. And we certainly cannot step out of our human skins and pretend to have the vantage of God. Second, I have become convinced that the Christian theological enterprise has ever and again chosen to sacrifce the humanity of Jesus upon the altar of belief in his divinity. Even in the desire to maintain some semblance of balance between the human and divine natures of Jesus, the Christian tradition inevitably stumbles upon the scandal of his humanity, reverting time and again to what in my mind are – at worst – merely different forms of a docetic Christ, a Jesus who is mostly human, but then ultimately is a divine fgure above all else. In my view, this tendency betrays the true scandal of Christian theology – one of not letting Jesus be truly fully human. Third, I have become convinced that ontological claims are tricky at best, since all ontological claims are proximate and subject to change – for that is our situation as contingent human beings. Thus, it is imperative that we really understand the signifcance of changing creedal pronouncements

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within the life of the church and the life of faith. Contexts change and develop, and our faith perspectives change and develop with them. Just as one example of such change and development, the initial impetus to include Gentiles as Gentiles in the early Jewish Christian movement caused the frst major division within the emerging church (Acts 10–15), with the Apostle Paul arising in the middle of the frst century CE as the champion of Gentile inclusion in Christ apart from Jewish law observance. But within 100 years we fnd the early Gentile Christian apologist Justin Martyr arguing that Gentile Christians are the true descendants of Abraham, not Jews, who have rejected Jesus as the living messiah and have held fast instead to the now-dead Jewish law (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 119).1 The origins and centuries-long impact of Christian anti-Judaism have been well documented. 2 Christian anti-Judaism culminated in its horrifc contribution to the Holocaust during the Second World War. Subsequent Christian refection, in turn, has led to repentance of its long history of anti-Judaism, expressed so clearly in the Vatican II document from 1965, Nostra Aetate, from which have fowed many more statements from various churches that have now recast the Jewish people as beloved elder brethren who remain in covenant relationship with God even apart from Christ. 3 Although faith convictions change and develop over time in response to human experience, this does not mean that certain patterns of belief do not get repeated over and over again. For example, the centrality of the cross of Jesus and his resurrection have been and remain central touchstones of Christian faith. They are considered revelatory events, even if exactly what they reveal are loci of debate. The sinlessness of Jesus is also one such recurring faith conviction that has been repeated time and again throughout Christian tradition. But recurring patterns of belief should still be subject to renewed refection and examination. We need to be careful not to allow ontological claims to harden into unexamined fossils. In particular, I have come to the conclusion that the language of sinlessness, when applied to Jesus, is fundamentally a metaphor, about which I’ll say more below. Beyond these three convictions, I can also say that my own sense of faith and belief in a God who is gracious beyond measure has grown and deepened in ways I never would have imagined throughout the process of working on this book. In particular, I have become more deeply attuned to the dynamics of sin and forgiveness, and especially to our changing understandings of what constitutes sin and why in the varied contexts of our relationships to one another and to God. As the Apostle Paul put it so well in 1 Corinthians 13:12, ‘Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.’

2 Retrospective theology and the sinlessness of Jesus So, how and when did it happen that Jesus came to be viewed as sinless and perfect in early Christianity? The answer to the ‘when’ question is

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relatively simple. The notion of a sinless Jesus did not develop until after his followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead. Faith in the resurrection of Jesus spurred a fundamental change in how his followers remembered and spoke about him. The answer to the ‘how’ question revolves around one event – the crucifxion of Jesus. What we know about the earliest followers of Jesus is that they were scandalized by the death of Jesus. They had believed that Jesus was going to usher in the Kingdom of God, a new era in which the Romans would be expelled from Israel, when God would restore the Kingdom to Israel. They had believed that Jesus would be the source of both national and personal redemption. The Gospel of Luke 24:21 puts it best: “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” But then Jesus died and they hoped no more. Nobody expected Jesus to rise from the dead. That is one thing that historians can say with certainty. After the death of Jesus the women went to the tomb on the third day, after the Sabbath, to anoint the body. They were expecting the body of Jesus to be there. When Mary Magdalene came to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead, she went and told the disciples, but they did not believe her. Why? Because Jesus was dead. His prophetic mission had ended in tragic death at the hands of the Romans. Her testimony “seemed to them an idle tale” (Luke 24:11). But eventually the followers of Jesus came to believe that God had indeed raised Jesus back to life, a transformed life of resurrection.4 But now they had a problem. Nobody expected a dying and risen messiah, let alone a messianic fgure who would be crucifed. The Apostle Paul put it well when he said that the cross was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles (1 Cor 1:23). Who wants to worship a man who was rejected by his people and crucifed as a criminal by the Romans? What kind of messiah was this? It is no accident that perhaps the earliest depiction of the crucifed Jesus is a piece of crude, second-century graffti etched into the wall of a house in the Roman Palatine. The inscription is known as the ‘Alexamenos graffti,’ as it depicts a fgure named Alexamenos worshipping a crucifed fgure who has the torso of a man, but the head of an ass – a donkey. 5 This was apparently a pagan criticism of Christian devotion to Jesus. Only a fool would worship a crucifed man, just as Paul stated. But Paul and the other earliest Christians were convinced that God had raised Jesus from the dead. 6 They describe their experiences in rather different ways, but they came to believe it. The problem, though, was how to explain the death of Jesus, and not only his death, but his death at the hands of the Roman oppressors, and not only that, but death by crucifxion  – a shameful death? The death of Jesus was key to everything that unfolded after they came to believe that God had raised him to new life. The frst thing the early Christians did was to search their scriptures to see if they could make sense of this radical development. They found echoes

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Figure 1.1 Alexamenos Graffti.

that resonated with their experience of a crucifed and risen messiah. Isaiah 53 spoke of a suffering servant; Psalm 110 spoke of a Lord who was called to sit on the right hand of God.7 Death and resurrection. And then the followers of Jesus also refected on the timing of Jesus’ death. He died at the beginning of Passover – either the frst day (as per the Synoptic Gospels) or

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the day of preparation (as per the Gospel of John). What happened on the day of preparation? Thousands of faithful Jewish pilgrims brought their lambs to the Temple in Jerusalem to be sacrifced in commemoration of the Exodus, God’s freeing of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.8 In John’s Gospel, Jesus died at exactly the same time that the Passover lambs were being sacrifced in the Temple (John 19:14). And only in John’s Gospel does John the Baptist see Jesus and say, “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).9 The Apostle Paul could also refer to Jesus as “our Passover sacrifce” (1 Cor 5:6).10 What does it mean that the earliest Christians interpreted Jesus’ death in light of the Passover sacrifce? Various aspects stand out about the status of sacrifcial animals in general, and the Passover sacrifce in particular. They must be unblemished and pure, which means they must be good physical specimens worthy of sacrifce to God. But now Jesus becomes the lamb of God. Jesus becomes the unblemished sacrifcial victim, and so begins the process of perfecting Jesus, of making him sinless. The ritual status of the unblemished lamb becomes the moral status of the unblemished messiah who gave his life for human sin and now had been vindicated by God in resurrection.11 He could only die for sin because he himself was unblemished, sinless (cf. Heb 4:15).12 But a problem arises here. The Passover sacrifce has nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins. It has to do with celebrating the freeing of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. But there is another Jewish high holy day that is all about the forgiveness of sins – Yom Kippur (cf. Lev 16).13 And so the early Christians blended together Passover and Yom Kippur to arrive at a lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The timing of his death revolves around Passover, but the meaning of his death invokes the imagery of the Yom Kippur sacrifcial ritual. Thus, using the imagery of an animal sacrifce in the Temple, Jesus must be unblemished, spotless, without stain, without sin. This began the process by which the early Christians retrojected a perfected and sinless Jesus back into the entire story of his ministry and even his birth. At each stage of the life and ministry of Jesus we fnd evidence that he was accused by his opponents of being a sinner leading the people astray, but we also can trace how the early Christians rebutted such charges by showing that he was in fact perfectly faithful and, hence, sinless. His accusers said that he was born in sin, since there was a scandal about his birth and his legitimacy, but the early Christians turned this into the story of the virgin birth and, in the process, already anticipated his death.14 Remember what the angel said to Joseph when he wanted to divorce Mary since she was pregnant before they married: “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child within her is of the Holy Spirit. And you shall name the child Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Already in the telling of the birth story we fnd the death of Jesus invoked as well as the meaning of his death – he will save his people from their sins.

20 Jeffrey Siker His accusers could say that he was baptized by John the Baptist for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:5), but the early Christians turned this into a story of Jesus fulflling all righteousness as he took over the prophetic mantle from John the Baptist (Matthew 3:15).15 His accusers could say that Jesus sinned against family by saying that his true family consisted of those who followed him (Mark 3:31–35).16 In Luke’s Gospel Jesus even says that whoever does not hate their family of birth is not worthy of being a disciple (Luke 14:26).17 Perhaps this was hyperbole, but Jesus appeared to disrespect traditional family duties and obligations. “Leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22).18 Similarly, Jesus was accused of being a friend of sinners, a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11:19).19 He transgressed the boundaries of Jewish faith and practice by sharing his table with known sinners (Luke 19:1–10). And Jesus was accused of violating Jewish faith by breaking the Sabbath (Luke 14:3; John 9:16), by preaching against the Temple (Mark 13:1–2), and by making blasphemous claims about his relationship with God (John 5:18). Further, Jesus may have healed people, but he was accused of healing through the power of the devil (Matthew 12:24). All in all, the judgment of the Pharisees in John 9 was clear: When Jesus healed a man born blind on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders concluded, “We know that this man is a sinner, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” Jesus was a troublesome prophet during his ministry, but nobody gave any thought to his being sinless or perfect. Such thinking only developed after the crucifxion and belief in the resurrection, as the followers of Jesus tried to make sense of what had happened and what they had experienced. But once they saw Jesus as a sacrifcial victim because of his death on the cross, it did not take long for them to leverage this notion into a Jesus who was not only the perfect sacrifce, but must also have been perfect in every other aspect of his life, from his birth through his death. His death could atone for human sin because he was sinless, and if sinless, then divine, and if divine then the Son of God, the Word of God, the Word made fesh. The Epistle to the Hebrews joins Paul (2 Cor 5:21), 1 Peter (2:22), 1 John (3:5), and the Gospel of John (8:46) in explicitly calling Jesus sinless and, thus, a divine fgure. At the same time, Hebrews asserts that Jesus was also fully human because he was tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin (4:15). 20 The Gospels also present Jesus as being tempted by Satan, yet being without sin; fully human and – at least eventually in Christian tradition – fully divine. But let’s look more closely at this whole question of temptation and peccability. One of the more unusual aspects of the temptation story of Jesus in retrospect is a question that has troubled many throughout the history of Christian theology. Simply put, does the temptation story of Jesus suggest that it was possible or conceivable that Jesus could, in fact, have sinned? Could he have chosen to give in to one of Satan’s snares? The issue has to do with Jesus’ peccability (coming from the Latin root, peccare – to sin). This is one of

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the perplexing little conundrums of having to deal with the two natures of Christ – fully human, fully God. If Jesus was fully human, then the answer must be, “Yes, as a human Jesus could have sinned, but he willed not to and so was perfectly obedient.” But if Jesus was (and, more to the point, still is) fully God, then the answer must be, ‘No, for how could God sin?’ So when one melds these together, there is a major problem. 21 Although neither as human nor as God did Jesus sin, according to Christian tradition, the question remains – could the human Jesus have chosen to sin? Could he have chosen to give in to temptation? True to form, Christian tradition has typically safeguarded the divinity of Jesus by sacrifcing several ounces of his humanity. Thus, the classic formula that has developed parrots Hebrews 4:15, that Jesus was tempted in every way as humans are tempted, but was without sin. The emphasis, then, is on Jesus’ experience of temptation, as if he could have sinned, even though he could not have sinned if he were truly divine. If this sounds like an unsatisfactory answer, it is only because it is. It may be a necessary answer in order to perform the proper calculus of the mystery of the two natures of Christ (and preserve his divinity), but it remains an unsatisfactory one in that it does not resolve the question. The diffculty is clear. Why was Jesus driven out into the wilderness to face temptation and testing from Satan in the frst place (Matthew 4:1–11) if there was no real possibility that he would fail, as humans do? Was it a pro forma event to put Jesus’ fesh, if not Spirit, to the test? Was Jesus a divine automaton going through the motions of a temptation story? And if so, why does he need the ministering of angels at the end of the ordeal, if an ordeal it was? More diffcult still is the prospect that Jesus could have sinned. Does this suggest that human salvation in Christ rested on Jesus’ human obedience to the divine will? When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and asked for God to take the cup of suffering and death away, was this another temptation? Even to ask for the cup to be removed? Was the will of Jesus in tension here with the will of God? If God was in Jesus and Jesus could have sinned, does this mean that Jesus could have frustrated God’s salvifc plans? What would it mean that God could potentially sin against Godself? The real problem, in my view, is actually not with whether or not Jesus could have sinned. The real problem rests with working out all of the theological math to ensure that Jesus was tested and tempted as a real human being, but with the clear understanding that he did so as one empowered by the Spirit of God. Given time, the larger – if understandable – temptation would actually turn out to be engaging in the theological mathematics enterprise itself, as if there could be a satisfactory and reasonable explanation for what remains a fundamental mystery in Christian theology. Still, this has not stopped many a theologian from trying to provide just such a rational explanation. No less a theologian than Karl Barth argued that “the meaning of the New Testament is that Jesus cannot sin, that the eternal Word of God is immune from temptations even in the fesh, that Jesus is

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bound to win in the struggle” (Church Dogmatics IV.2,158). Jesus “really had no awareness of sin. That is the truth of the vere Deus” (IV.2,63). 22 One might ask Barth, then, in what sense Jesus was fully human. Part of the problem in Christian refection on the potential capacity for Jesus to sin rests in how Augustine and later theologians formulated the situation of humanity, especially in light of Adam. 23 When God created Adam and Eve, the argument goes, the frst humans had the posse non peccare  – the ability not to sin. But after the Fall, after they sinned, their status changed to a non posse non peccare – an inability not to sin (i.e., they had no choice but to sin). 24 Their nature was now a sinful one. This is why God had to expel them from the garden. They could no longer remain on holy ground. This sinful nature, according to Augustine, was transmitted in the very birth process (truly, sin was the frst sexually transmitted disease!). This is why Jesus had to be born outside the normal process of human birth, and why Mary herself had to be free from the taint of sin. Hence the immaculate conception of Mary anticipates the virgin birth of Jesus, though the logic of this sequence is actually the reverse. 25 With the coming of Jesus, however, the situation of humanity changed. Like Adam, indeed as a new Adam, Jesus had the posse non peccare, the capacity not to sin, since he had not been born as a regular human being, but came – as Adam had – directly from God. But not only that. Because God fully participated in the identity of Jesus in a way that was not the case for Adam, Jesus had a status never before seen among humans – the non posse peccare, the inability to sin. His divine nature meant that he was incapable of committing sin, though he was capable of experiencing temptation (so says Hebrews 4:15). But what does it mean to have the capacity to experience temptation without being able to sin? Is it truly temptation if there is not even a possibility that one will give in to the temptation? This is a problem that has never been worked out very well or very convincingly in Christian theology. Inevitably, either something of Jesus’ real humanity or his real divinity would be sacrifced, because the divine knows nothing of the experience of sin (except to be on the receiving end of it from human unfaithfulness), and the human knows nothing of real perfection and so is fated to sin. How could perfection and potential imperfection dwell in the same person fully without some kind of schizophrenia between divine and human attributes? For all these reasons, the temptation narrative posed a special problem for Christian tradition, especially during the Christological councils when the church leaders were trying to work out the secret formula for Jesus’ fully human and fully divine nature – two natures in one person. A fnal question regarding the temptation story is the relationship between history and theology. How did anybody know what took place? Did Jesus tell his disciples after the fact what had transpired between him and Satan? Did he give them a blow-by-blow account of the various scripture passages that had been used by him and by Satan, and then go on to

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describe how the angels had come to minister to him (at least in Mark and Matthew)?26 More likely historically is some generic understanding, such as given in Mark, that Jesus went into the wilderness for a time of prayer and discernment, a time that even Mark characterizes in overt theological language as the Spirit driving Jesus into the desert in order to be tested by Satan (1:12–13). The Q tradition of Matthew and Luke has expanded upon the simple report of the temptation with a creative encounter that is faithful to what the earliest Christians imagined would have taken place in such a scene. The goal of this expanded temptation story was threefold: to affrm Jesus’ identity as Son of God, to show Jesus inhabited by God’s Spirit, and to present Jesus as tested and sinless. The temptation story accomplishes each of these goals in anticipation of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, even amidst the scandals that would ensue regarding family, friends, and faith. To discuss the temptation story is also to discuss notions of transgression and sin. When is transgression ‘sin’ and when is it actually an act of faithfulness? The word ‘transgression’ means to cross a boundary, to cross a line, to go against a rule. But what might it mean to be a ‘faithful transgressor’ – to challenge certain boundaries and rules? There’s a classic book by bell hooks entitled Teaching to Transgress, in which she argues that a crucial role of education is to ask challenging questions about prevailing norms and boundaries. In America, the ‘color line’ had to be transgressed. In South Africa, apartheid had to be transgressed. More recently, the ‘gender line’ has been crossed to allow for gay marriage. But crossing boundaries can often be controversial, especially if time-honored traditions have sanctioned and even sanctifed particular boundaries. Jesus was transgressive in his ministry, as were many prophets before and after him. In Chapter 9 of the Gospel of John, Jesus healed a man born blind on the Sabbath – a transgression of the oral law of the Pharisees. The Pharisees concluded that because he transgressed Sabbath law, Jesus was a sinner (John 9:24). But Jesus argued that the real transgression was not acting to heal the man on the Sabbath. He challenged the interpretation of the Sabbath law. The story of Jesus healing the man born blind ends with the following exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees (John 9:40–41): Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” The Pharisees were so convinced of their interpretation of the law that they were blind to the deeper call for compassion and mercy towards those who were suffering, even if it meant violating Sabbath law. By calling the healing

24 Jeffrey Siker action of Jesus sinful, they condemned themselves as the ones blind to the real meaning of the Sabbath law and showed themselves to be sinners opposing the work of God, the work of restoration that the Sabbath provides. 27 So, was Jesus a transgressor? Yes. Was he a sinner? In the eyes of many of his contemporaries, yes. In this regard he was a faithful transgressor, a faithful sinner. But was he a sinner in any other way? In my view, if Jesus is truly fully human, then he must experience the full range of the human reality, and this includes human failure, moral failure. To be fully human is to know the shame of sin, to know the release of repentance and forgiveness, to understand the healing of broken relationships. Christian tradition has sanitized Jesus to the point that he is no longer fully human, but really only the divine in human clothing. If God became human in Jesus, Christians have turned him back into God rather than allowing him to linger as a fellow human, with all that this entails.

3 Is a sinless Jesus necessary for Christian theology? It is clear why Christian tradition has insisted on sanitizing the fullness of Jesus’ humanity. But is such a move necessary to Christian theologizing about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? Inevitably, it seems, Christian tradition is determined to build a shield around Jesus to protect him from any taint of corruption. Thus, as we have seen, the story of Jesus’ baptism was reworked to remove any hint that he went to John for a baptism of repentance. Instead, for Matthew, he was baptized to fulfll all righteousness; for Luke, he was expressly not baptized by John the Baptist, because John had just been put in jail by Herod; and in John’s Gospel there simply is no baptism of Jesus at all. Instead John the Baptist bears witness to the fact that he saw the Spirit of God come upon Jesus. Beyond cleaning up the baptism story, both Matthew and Luke each shaped a birth story, if in very different ways, that portray a miraculous virgin birth of the infant Jesus. For Christian tradition, however, the miracle was extended to make it clear that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was herself the sinless and unstained vessel through whom Jesus was born into the world. This veneration of Mary as a holy person can be found as early as in the second-century Protoevangelium of James.28 Subsequently, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was eventually developed, the doctrine that Mary herself was conceived and born apart from the taint of original sin, lest during gestation she contaminate Jesus with sin. The doctrines of the perpetual virginity of Mary and her bodily assumption into heaven only further served to distance her from any kind of corruption or sin and, with it, from a full humanity of her own.29 Thus, sanitizing Jesus also necessitated sanitizing Mary. By seeking to protect Jesus from any form of contamination by human sin in his birth and life – so that he might be preserved as the perfect, atoning sacrifce at his death and, hence, be worthy of resurrection – Christian theology makes Jesus out to be a kind of Superman who comes from another

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planet, the divine realm, and who has special powers. But in being so much more than human, I would argue that he ends up being less than fully human. It is because Christian tradition views Jesus through the lens of resurrection and perfect, atoning sacrifce that the rest of Jesus’ life is brought into line with this claim of sinless perfection. He becomes a caricature of what we imagine a perfectly divine human might look like – a divine automaton. The second-century gnostic Christian Valentinus famously demonstrated this kind of caricature by arguing that Jesus “ate and drank in a special way, without excreting his solids. He had such a great capacity for continence that the nourishment within him was not corrupted, for he did not experience corruption.”30 According to Valentinus, then, Jesus had no bowel movements, as this would imply some kind of corruption or imperfection in Jesus. Valentinus was, fortunately, sharply repudiated by the emerging orthodox Christian tradition for so divinizing Jesus that his hold on humanity was tenuous at best. To be sure, Valentinus had a thoroughly docetic view of Jesus as one who was utterly divine and managed to appear human, but I wonder if the strong emphasis of Christian tradition on the divinity of Jesus ultimately provides only variations on this docetic theme by precluding any notion of Jesus being one who sinned, or even had the capacity to sin, in any real way. Although we can understand why the early Christians and subsequent church councils put Jesus in a divine straitjacket, a divine box, must we continue to defne the contours of Jesus’ identity in such a way that we inevitably sacrifce his humanity to divinity? Might we allow the possibility that in Jesus God demonstrates the potential for humans to be transformed into the likeness of God from one degree of glory to another and that such transformation not only is open to the followers of Jesus (2 Cor 3:18) but was the path of Jesus as well? Christian faith is not a static and unchanging faith. Our perceptions of God, Jesus, and the guidance of the Spirit are dynamic and develop in relation to our own experiences of change and growth. While we rightly cling tightly to generative stories about God’s relationship with Israel and Jesus, our interpretations of these generative narratives develop in relation to changing times and experiences that shape and reshape our understanding of what it means to be people of faith. Thus, for example, it has become common to speak of pre-Holocaust and post-Holocaust theology, because the Holocaust was so unfathomable an experience of the suffering and death of the Jews, God’s own covenant people, that it has forced Christians and Jews alike to re-evaluate theological claims about God in the aftermath of Auschwitz.31 Thus, fundamental re-evaluations of traditional Christian beliefs are part and parcel of the developing character of the Christian faith, from the frst generation of Christians to the controversies of the Christological councils in the fourth and ffth centuries, to the systematizing of Christian doctrine from Augustine to Aquinas, the Reformation movements led by Luther and Calvin, the modernist controversies of the early twentieth century, the

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movements of the social gospel and liberation theology, the turns toward fundamentalism and evangelical revivalism of the late twentieth century, and beyond. The Roman Catholic Church asserts unity amid tremendous diversity, and the myriad Protestant denominations manifest incredible theological diversity amid various common underlying bonds. Such patterns have ever been so, and there is no reason to think such developments will ever have an end. The debates over what is essential and what is not will continue as each new generation of Christians seeks to adapt its traditions to new and changing times.

4 The sinlessness of Jesus as metaphor One of the vehicles that helps traditions adapt to new and changing times is the language of metaphor. Metaphorical language has always been central to how we speak about God, because at best we can speak only indirectly about God with images that are suggestive of our relationship with God. The parables of Jesus provide many of these metaphors within the Christian tradition: God the father, God the farmer, God the householder, God the pruner of the vineyard, God the woman in search of a lost coin, God the shepherd. Metaphors abound in describing the identity of Jesus: Jesus the slain lamb, Jesus whose blood washes away sin, Jesus the High Priest, the Passover lamb, the bread of life, the light of the world, the resurrection and the life, and so on. In refecting on the sinlessness of Jesus I have become convinced that ‘sinlessness’ is really, at best, a kind of metaphor to describe a life patterned by faithful obedience to God and faithful relationships with others. But metaphors cease to have life when they become fossilized and turned into some kind of literal ontological statement about divine or cosmic reality, as if we ever have a vantage as humans to render such eternal verdicts. As Sallie McFague has noted, a metaphor places two things in comparative relationship, trying to say what one thing is by referring to another thing. 32 Similarly, in his seminal study of metaphorical language, Metaphors We Live By, the cognitive linguist George Lakoff states, “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”33 So, in this light, what does it mean to understand Jesus as ‘sinless’? To say Jesus is ‘sinless’ is to say that he is human, but not human in every way; it is also to say that he is divine, but not divine in every way. To say Jesus is ‘sinless’ is to juxtapose ‘humanity’ and ‘sin’ in a fundamental way. That humans are sinful is not news to anyone. But to say that a particular human, Jesus, is sinless – well, now that’s something! That is part of what it means to understand Jesus as a metaphor of God and God’s relationship to humanity. Again, to invoke McFague, “What must always be kept in mind is that the parables as metaphors and the life of Jesus as a metaphor of God provide characteristics for theology: a theology guided by them is open-ended, tentative, indirect, tensive, iconoclastic, transformative.”34

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And what could be more iconoclastic than the notion of a perfectly sinless human being? But when such an idea becomes a fxed doctrine, it becomes rigid – a dead metaphor that loses its power. Ironically, the very doctrines that have become so fxed in Christian theology as ontological truths are often undermined by the teaching of the Jesus in whom they purport to be grounded. This is not particularly surprising because the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus calls into question the fundamental human desire to make defnitive, direct, and timeless claims about God and God’s activity in the world. This is partly the implication of the Apostle Paul’s description of the cross as foolishness and weakness to those outside the faith (1 Cor 1:18–25), but to those who ‘get it,’ the cross exemplifes the power and wisdom of God. The cross is fundamentally destabilizing, both literally and metaphorically. It is literally the way of death, yet also the way of life transformed and redeemed. Another aspect of metaphor important for the consideration of Jesus as sinless is the ‘is and is not’ character of metaphor, so important in the work of Paul Ricouer35 and McFague. When applying the ‘is and is not’ character of metaphors to the notion of ‘the sinless Jesus,’ what stands out is the juxtaposition of sinlessness with any human being. To be human is to sin – ‘to err is human’ or ‘everyone makes mistakes,’ as the slogans go. But while the Bible regularly refers to various individuals as righteous in the eyes of God, and Paul can refer to himself as ‘blameless’ under the law (Phil. 3), the notion of a ‘sinless human’ is a contradiction in terms – an oxymoron. In Christian tradition, the uniqueness of Jesus as ‘sinless’ is what sets him apart and allows him to bear the sins of others and, hence, atone for their sins. Or so the logic goes. To refer to ‘the sinless Jesus’ casts him in a new light in view of his death and resurrection; “God made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21).36 From this vantage point, Jesus is both sinless and can stand in for sinners. He ‘becomes’ sin, and so completely identifes with human sinfulness, yet he ‘knew no sin,’ because he never did anything that was morally wrong, as the Christian tradition asserts. And so we circle back to what it means to be truly human. When we assert the sinlessness of Jesus we suspend his full humanity, at least insofar as he is like us truly in every respect, because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). We try to claim that he is just like us, but then add a qualifer that nullifes the primary claim: he is like us in every respect, except for sin. But it is really very simple, paradox notwithstanding. Jesus is either human or he is not. If he is human, then he experiences what all humans experience, including the web of human relationships and emotions related to sin. Thus, one consequence of the full humanity of Jesus, from this vantage point, is that traditional incarnational Christology proves problematic in the extreme. And yet, another way to view the claim for the sinlessness of Jesus is to move away from classical incarnational theology with its Trinitarian ontology and toward embracing a retrospective theology that envisions the

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life of Jesus as embodying not an ideal but an actual humanity that bends toward what we might call, given the poverty of our language, a pattern of transgressive faithfulness that redefnes both faith and sin. It is a pattern of life that moves away from conventional and traditional moralistic notions of sin. It is a transgressive faithfulness that crosses boundaries and, in the process, makes us intensely uncomfortable, for it links the perfecting of faith with ways that Jesus transgressed traditional understandings of family, friends, and faith. This very real life has served as an idealized pattern of faithful response. But we are quick both to divinize it beyond our reach and to domesticate it into a banal and polite existence that loses its edges, accommodating the status quo rather than paradoxically letting go of life as a way of fnding it. The letting go of life takes us back to Philippians 2 and Paul’s hymn to the kenotic Christ whose sinful faith leads to death and whose death leads to life, because with God all things are possible. 37 What if we imagine the life of Jesus apart from the retrospective vantage of a crucifed messiah raised from the dead? If we take the humanity and the human development of Jesus seriously, without immediately smothering it in a divine identity born of resurrection, I would argue that a more dynamic and honest image of Jesus emerges. If we imagine Jesus’ life in terms of theosis – of Jesus himself being transformed, as Paul characterized, from one degree of glory to another – a very real Jesus comes into view. 38 It is far more tangible to imagine Jesus as a person whose life took him on a progressive journey of holiness, rather than a perfect human who could do no wrong from the day that his mother Mary brought him into this world. What did Luke say? That Jesus was obedient to his parents after the Temple incident when he was 12 years old and that he grew in wisdom and years (Luke 2:51–52).39 I would argue – although it is certainly far from what Luke likely intended – that this permits the notion of a Jesus who learned and developed, who made mistakes, who failed and then tried again, and who lived the human struggle – not because he was divine from birth, but because he was a human being who sought God in community with others. This is the idea of a Jesus who was moved to identify with the baptism of John. Is it so far-fetched to imagine a human Jesus feeling the need and desire to repent for his sins and dedicate his life to God? This is a Jesus who grows into a sense of his ministry and vocation as one called by God, a Jesus who learns to develop his own prophetic voice. In short, in my view, we need to imagine a human Jesus who was convinced that he was on a path toward God and, out of that conviction, he invited disciples along this path. This path toward God would lead him in the direction of discerning his vision of righteous justice over many of the traditions and presumptions of the day regarding what it meant to be a person of faith, as well as what it meant to be a sinner. This human Jesus was surely an inspired individual, burning with a zeal for God and with a passionate vision for a revitalized community that often put him at odds with various authorities.

Sinlessness of Christ and human perfection  29 While Jesus no doubt agreed with many of the fundamental convictions of the Jewish religious leaders of his day, he also found himself engaged in deep controversy about the meaning of family, about what it means to befriend the disreputable in society, and about the meaning of faith and maintaining fidelity to God’s covenant with Israel. Is it so threatening to imagine a human Jesus who walks on such a path toward God, a Jesus whom others experienced as among the most profound and yet troubling teachers they encountered? In short, we need to suspend our mythic deification of Jesus from birth for one moment in order to hear the human voice of one who felt called by God, as had the prophets of old, and who himself called others along his very messy and transgressive path.

5  Conclusion: saving Jesus from perfection The divinization of Jesus by virtue of his resurrection and the subsequent retrospective theologizing that dominated reflection on his life and death is the age-old story of Christian faith and tradition with all of its permutations. We have seen how one central aspect of such theological reflection led fairly early on to the understanding of Jesus not only as God’s messiah but as God’s sinless messiah, and ultimately as ‘very God of very God,’ to borrow a phrase from the fourth-century Nicene Creed. But the task of speaking about God, of theologizing, is never complete. We may reach various plateaus along the way, but we are never done. If we think we have arrived, it is certainly a sure sign that we have not. So we continue to reflect on the foundational Scriptures and on the great variety of traditions, all filtered through human reason and experience, and such reflection leads us to imagine anew the dynamic presence of God through the life and ministry of Jesus, all animated by God’s Spirit of grace amid the utter turmoil that defines so much of human existence. And we find ourselves trying to define again, afresh, who we are as God’s people. It has been my task in this essay to suggest that part of engaging the presence of God within the Christian faith is to challenge the Christian tradition, to truly embrace the full humanity of Jesus, sin and all, for only then do we see God’s full and transformative embrace of the human condition – and our own call to do the same.

Notes 1 See Jeffrey S. Siker, Disinheriting the Jews: Abraham in Early Christian Controversy (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1987), 163–84. 2 See, e.g., Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (1964; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 135–425; Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York: Seabury Press, 1974); John Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

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3 See, e.g., Pim Valkenberg & Anthony Cirelli, eds., Nostra Aetate: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Catholic Church’s Dialogue with Jews and Muslims (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016); Mary C. Boys & Alan L. Berger, eds., Post-Holocaust Jewish–Christian Dialogue: After the Flood, before the Rainbow (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015). 4 On early Christian faith in the resurrection of Jesus, see Bruce Chilton, Resurrection Logic: How Jesus’ First Followers Believed God Raised Him from the Dead (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019). For broader contexts against which to understand early Christian belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus’ body, see Claudia Setzer, Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Doctrine, Community, and Self-Defnition (Boston, MA: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004); Casey D. Elledge, Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism 200 BCE – CE 200 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Alan Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2004). 5 On the Alexamenos graffto, see especially Thomas F. Matthews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 23–53; O. Larry Yarbrough, “The Shadow of an Ass: On Reading the Alexamenos Graffto,” in eds. Aliou Cissé Niang & Carolyn Osiek, Text, Image, and Christians in the Graeco-Roman World: A Festschrift in Honor of David Lee Balch (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Press, 2012), 239–54. Source of the image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AlexGraffto. svg (public domain). 6 For Paul’s view of the resurrection of Jesus, see James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); Alan Segal, “Paul’s Thinking about the Resurrection in Its Jewish Context,” New Testament Studies 44:3 (1998), 400–19; Haley Goranson Jacob, Conformed to the Image of His Son: Reconsidering Paul’s Theology of Glory in Romans (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018). 7 On Isaiah 53 in early Christian interpretation, see William H. Bellinger, Jr. & William R. Farmer, eds., Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 1998). On Psalm 110 in early Christian interpretation, see David Hay, Glory at the Right Hand of God: Psalm 110 in Early Christianity (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1973). 8 On the Passover in early Judaism, see Baruch M. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); G. Feeley-Harnick, The Lord’s Table: Eucharist and Passover in Early Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981). 9 See the discussion in Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 58–63. 10 See the discussion in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 241–2. 11 See Jeffrey S. Siker, “Yom Kippuring Passover: Recombinant Ritualizing in Early Christianity,” in ed. Christian Eberhard, Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifce in the Bible (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 65–82. 12 On Hebrews 4:15 see Craig R. Koester, Hebrews (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 292–6. 13 On Yom Kippur in Leviticus 16 see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 1009–84. 14 See Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 141–53; William David Davies & Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), 214–7.

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15 See Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 149–66; Adela Y. Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 138–56. 16 See Marcus, Mark 1–8, 277–87. 17 See Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 564–6; John Carroll, Luke: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 306–8. 18 See Jeffrey S. Siker, Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 147–8. 19 See Greg Carey, Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009). 20 See John E. McKinley, Tempted for Us: Theological Models and the Practical Relevance of Christ’s Impeccability and Temptation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock/Paternoster, 2009). 21 See F. Schleiermacher’s classic articulation of the inability of Jesus to sin: The Christian Faith (London: T & T Clark, 1999; originally published in 1830), 361–3, 371–4, 385–7, 413–6. 22 Church Dogmatics, vol. 1, part 2: The Doctrine of the Word of God (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1963), and vol. 4, part 2: The Doctrine of Reconciliation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1967). 23 See Augustine, De correptione et gratia, Library of Latin Texts (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2005) 11.31–12.35. 24 See the discussion in Siker, Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 135–44. 25 The immaculate conception of Mary frst arises in The Protoevangelium of James. See “The Proto-Gospel of James,” in Bart Ehrman & Zlatko Pleše, eds., The Other Gospels: Account of Jesus from Outside the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 18–36. 26 See Susan Garrett, The Temptations of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1996). 27 See Abraham J. Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1995; originally published in 1951). 28 See “The Proto-Gospel of James.” 29 See Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 30 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 3.59.3. 31 See, e.g., Carol A. Rittner & John K. Roth, eds., Good News after Auschwitz? Christian Faith in a Post-Holocaust World (Atlanta, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001); Richard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). 32 Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1982). 33 George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 5. 34 McFague, Metaphorical Theology, 15–16. 35 See Paul Ricouer, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). 36 See Bradley H. McLean, The Cursed Christ: Mediterranean Expulsion Rituals and Pauline Soteriology (Sheffeld: Sheffeld Academic Press, 1996), 112–3; Victor P. Furnish, II Corinthians (New York: Doubleday, 1984). 37 See Lucien Richard, A Kenotic Christology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982).

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38 See Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deifcation in the Greek Patristic Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Stephen Finlan & Vladimir Kharlamov, eds., Theosis: Deifcation in Christian Theology (Cambridge: James Clark & Co., 2006). 39 See Carroll, Luke: A Commentary (cf. n. 18), 82–87.

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Sinless or not? The baptism by John and Jesus’ consciousness of his personal sins Angelika Strotmann

The concept of Jesus’ sinlessness is a central part of New Testament Christology and a theological topos deriving from the soteriological interpretation of his death. We frst encounter such an idea in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 5:21): “He [God] made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” But it is the only statement Paul makes about the sinlessness of Jesus. At the center of his impressive anthropology of sin (cf. especially Rom 1–8), similar ideas are missing.1 That changes with the later New Testament writings, wherein – especially the Johannine writings2 and the First Epistle of Peter3 – Jesus’ sinlessness is addressed in various contexts. We fnd the most signifcant expression in Hebr 4:15: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet without sin.” The idea of the sinlessness of Jesus is based on early confessions of the saving effcacy of Jesus’ death as a death ‘for us’ or ‘for our sins’ (prePauline already in 1 Cor 15:3; cf. Gal 1:4; Rom 4:25 et passim), which – besides a Jewish theology of martyrdom (2 Macc 7:37–38; Wis 2–3) – are especially tied to the fate of the Suffering Servant in Isa 53 who was put to death “for our iniquities” (v. 5) and “for the sins of many” (v. 12), “though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth” (v. 9), but fnally was vindicated by God. In this tradition, the Synoptic Gospels likewise interpret the death of Jesus soteriologically.4 Although they refrain from making explicit statements about the sinlessness of the earthly Jesus, such an attribution is made in an implicit manner, particularly in the pericopes about the baptism of Jesus by John.5 In spite of the kerygmatic interpretation of the Gospels, it appears that the historical Jesus was most likely conscious of his faults, weaknesses and sins, seen in the temptation narrative in Matthew and Luke (Matt 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13), or in his prayer at Gethsemane on the night of his arrest (Mark 14:43–52). An interesting example of Jesus’ consciousness of his personal sins seems to be his harsh reaction to the rich young man who addresses him as “Good Teacher”: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” (Mark 10:17–18 par Luke 18:19f.; differently

34 Angelika Strotmann Matt 19:16–17). With these words Jesus appears to join all men for whom the one God stands alone in his absolute ‘goodness.’ We fnd an even clearer indication of the historical Jesus’ awareness of his own sinfulness in the story of his baptism by John in Mark 1:9–11, Matt 3:13–17 and Luke 3:21–22, especially since the historicity of this story can hardly be doubted, in contrast to Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man.6 The following explanations about Jesus’ awareness of sin therefore start with John’s baptism, which is interpreted by Mark and Luke as “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (gr. βάπτισμα μετανοίας εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν).7 Decisive for the topic is the question of the possible reasons because of which Jesus underwent John’s baptism.8

1 Jesus’ baptism by John as historical fact Jesus’ baptism by John is among the historical facts we are most certain about concerning the life of Jesus. The four canonical Gospels and Acts link the Baptist’s ministry and preaching to the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry (Mark 1:2–13; Matt 3:1–17; Luke 3:1–22; Acts 1:22; 10:37f.; 13:24f.). Furthermore, the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 1:9–11; Matt 3:13–17; Luke 3:21–22) as well as Acts 1:22 report that Jesus underwent John’s baptism. Although there are many events from the life of Jesus that are attested multiple times in the Gospels, none appear so clearly self-evident and as regarded by scholars ‘almost universally’ 9 as one of the surest historical facts as Jesus’ baptism by John. This historical certainty of John’s baptism has less to do with its testimony in the various sources mentioned,10 but rather with the fact that Jesus’ baptism by John clearly stands in opposition to the interests of early Christology, which not only narratively stylizes John as the forerunner of Jesus, but also confesses Jesus as the sinless Son of God and source of the forgiveness of sins in all layers of tradition of the New Testament (see above). Moreover, it is decidedly contrary to this early Christian confession, so that it can hardly have been invented. Biblical scholarship speaks of the criterion of ‘embarrassment’ or of ‘counter-tendency’11. All New Testament texts about the baptism of Jesus show this embarrassment, because all of them clearly enhance the importance of Jesus compared to John. Matthew and John even let the Baptist subordinate himself to Jesus. The oldest gospel tells the story of Jesus’ baptism by John very subtly. Only by its narrative placement in Mark 1:9–10a, between John’s announcement of a stronger one to come (Mark 1:7f.) and the vision and  audition of Jesus, in which he is proclaimed the Son of God (Mark 1:10b–11), does the evangelist suggest to the addressees the following: On the one hand Jesus must be this announced stronger one and, on the other hand, Jesus is clearly superior to the Baptist because of the divine proclamation that Jesus is the Son of God. The brief and simple told act of

Sinless or not? 35 baptism thus becomes, by comparison, almost a minor detail. However, the Baptist himself does not seem to know who he is baptizing. Furthermore, he is also not able to recognize who Jesus really is, because the descent of the Spirit of God and the voice of heaven are only perceived by Jesus himself and by the reader (Mark 1:11: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”). This indirect revaluation of Jesus in relation to the Baptist in the gospel of Mark no longer satisfed other evangelists. According to Matt 3:13–17, the Baptist knew that Jesus is greater than he is, namely the stronger one he announced in v. 11, and that Jesus should baptize him. Therefore John refuses at frst to baptize Jesus until he is convinced by him that both of them will fulfll all righteousness through baptism. In other words, through them the salvation of God, realized in Jesus, would be made known to all who are present (v. 15). Accordingly, the descent of the Spirit of God on Jesus and especially the voice from heaven are not meant for Jesus himself, but (in contrast to Mark 1:11) they publicly proclaim Jesus’ sonship with God: “This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:17) The baptism of Jesus is oddly narrated in Luke 3:21f., since the immediately preceding verses mention the confict of the Baptist with Herod Antipas and his subsequent imprisonment (v. 19f.), so that the impression is created that John was not present at the baptism of Jesus, especially since his name does not appear in the actual baptismal pericope. Was Jesus possibly baptized by God himself? John’s disappearance from the Lucan text before Jesus can encounter him is part of Luke’s theology of Jesus superseding the Baptist (Überbietungstheologie), as has become clear in the composition of the infancy narrative (Luke 1:5–80). Luke 3:19–22 does not deny the baptism of Jesus by John, but through his skillful composition he shows that the task of the Baptist was fulflled and something new was beginning with Jesus. “Luke is not concerned with a chronological priority of John before Jesus, but with John’s theological subordination.”12 Although John does not appear in any other gospel as often as in Luke,13 he is ultimately reduced to a role as a forerunner and proclaimer of the Messiah and is, thus, de-eschatologized to a mere teacher of virtue.14 Finally, in John 1:29–34 the baptism of Jesus is not even mentioned. Jesus only comes to John so that he can bear witness to him as the bearer of the Spirit and the Son of God, and so that he can make him known to the people. The motif of sending the Spirit from the baptismal vision is now put into the mouth of John, who sees the Spirit of God descending and remaining on Jesus. John is, thus, stripped of any theological signifcance on his own and becomes a mere witness to Christ.15 Conclusion: the act of baptism of Jesus by John is more and more pushed back in the Gospel texts until it disappears completely in John and, with it, so does the problem of the superiority of John. Historically, the most likely

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scenario is Mark 1:9: Jesus came from Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan River, without the Baptist knowing who Jesus was.

2 The understanding of John’s baptism with water and his preaching of repentance To answer the question why Jesus was baptized by John, it is necessary to study closely John’s baptism and the Baptist’s sermon on repentance that is associated with it. In this context, the description of the Baptist in the Antiquitates Iudaicae by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (c. 37–100) should also be taken into account. John’s announcement of a coming judgment of wrath As with the account of the baptism of Jesus, there are also great differences between sources regarding the interpretation of John’s preaching of repentance. On the one side, there is the Q source and to some extent the Gospel of Mark, which both understand the Baptist’s announcements eschatologically. On the other side, there is John and Flavius Josephus. While the Gospel of John knows nothing of any penitential preaching by the Baptist and reduces its function to the announcement and testimony of the coming Spirit-Baptist Jesus, Josephus portrays the Baptist as a Hellenistic preacher of virtue and a philosopher,16 calling people to piety before God and to justice toward their fellow humans (Ant 18:117): [F]or Herod slew him (i.e., the Baptist), who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness toward one another, and piety toward God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purifcation of the body: supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purifed beforehand by righteousness. Since, in his other works, Josephus tends to conceal the eschatological thinking of ancient Judaism, because of being suspect to the Romans, we may assume the same tendency here.17 Therefore, Mark and – above all – Q remain the most historically reliable sources, presenting John as an eschatological prophet who calls all Israel to repentance and conversion. However, while Mark’s preaching of repentance leaves only the announcement of a coming stronger one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit instead of water, Q also hands down to us its harsh language (Matt 3:7–10.12 par Luke 3:7–9.17). Only in light of this eschatological judgment sermon do the urgency of John’s baptism and  its success, the latter narrated by all the authors, become understandable.

Sinless or not?  37 Matt 3:7–10.12 (NIB)

Luke 3:7–9.17 (NIB)

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7

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9And do not think you can say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father.” I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10Already, the axe has been laid to the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire…. Announcement of the coming powerful one 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father.” For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9 Already, the axe has been laid to the root of the trees. Every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire…. Announcement of the coming powerful one 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

The Baptist awaits God’s final judgment of wrath in the very near future, which will bring to a conclusion (all) previous history: the axe has already been placed at the root of those trees that have not yet borne fruit, and the coming stronger one holds the winnowing fork in his hand to separate the chaff from the wheat.18 Then God will bring about something completely new, which the Baptist only alludes to by referring to the gathering of the wheat, though he does not describe it in detail. The preaching of John with its strong imagery, which does not shrink from vast generalizations, even includes insults (‘brood of vipers’), recalling the language of Old Testament prophets like Amos, Isaiah or Jeremiah, who threatened Israel with God’s judgment. The climax is the image of the stones out of which God can make children for Abraham, an image that radically questions the certainty of Jewish salvation, especially of the religious elite. According to John, all Israel – without exception – rebelled against God and will therefore not escape God’s judgment. Every concept of election, such as the reference to Abraham’s descendants, is completely irrelevant in the imminent judgment, since only those who bear fruit of repentance will be saved,19 namely, those who from now on orient their lives completely towards the will of God as revealed in the Torah. Specifically, this does not refer to a collective but to the individual, whose conversion or non-conversion is crucial for his or her fate in the imminent divine judgement (cf. v. 10).20 The judgment will be carried out, according to John the Baptist, by a stronger one to come, to whom he submits himself. The identification of this figure with Jesus of Nazareth, as suggested by biblical sources, is rejected by biblical scholars for good reason.21 What is disputed, however, is who the Baptist might have meant by ‘the coming one.’ Biblical scholars

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suggest either God himself22 or a mediator like the Son of Man in Dan 7, 23 very rarely Elijah. 24 James Dunn even suspects “that John had no clear idea as to who was to follow him.”25 Ultimately, this is not decisive; more decisive is the connection that the Baptist makes between his water baptism and the analogous judgment by the coming stronger one, presented as baptism by fre and/or by the Spirit. Mark 1:7f.

Matt 3:11

Luke 3:16

I baptize you with water for repentance.

I baptize you with water.

After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.

But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.

But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.

I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fre.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fre.

John’s baptism with water as a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins Nothing is so typical of John as his water-baptism. All sources agree on this (matter) and give him – with the exception of the Gospel of John – the epithet ‘Baptist’ (gr. βαπτιστής). Within contemporary Judaism, baptism with water was the distinguishing feature of John. Unlike ritual ablutions, which were performed whenever the state of impurity required it, baptism was performed only once in a lifetime. Nor was it a ‘self-washing,’ since the person baptized needed John as mediator. He was “the active part in this rite,” as he had instituted the baptism and also performed it or had it carried out by his disciples. 26 Finally, the sources (again with the exception of John’s Gospel) connect John’s baptism with his preaching of repentance and place it between repentance and forgiveness, namely, between turning to an ethical way of life and acceptance by God. 27 There is a consensus in historical research that the most probable understanding of John’s baptism is expressed in the formula “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (gr. βάπτισμα μετανοίας εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν  – Mark 1:4 par Luke 3:3). The lack of this qualifcation of the baptism by John in Matthew and John is a clear indication of the theological diffculties in speaking of forgiving sins that is not linked to Jesus. This can be seen particularly well in John 1:25–34, where John’s water baptism has the sole purpose of making Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, known to Israel. It is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. He is “the Lamb

Sinless or not? 39 of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29), so that any kind of forgiveness of sins through the baptism of John is superfuous. The Christological reason for the absence of the formula “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” in Matthew cannot be quite so clearly deduced from the context, since the evangelist, unlike John, at least still makes a connection between baptism and the confession of sins (Matt 3:6: “Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the River Jordan”). 28 That Christology is motivating these modifcations is supported not only by the vagueness of the replacement formulation. It is even more evident when looking at the two passages at the beginning and end of the Gospel, which exclusively ascribe the power of forgiveness to the death of Jesus: the Jesus-related promise of Immanuel, who will save his people from sin in Matt 1:21, and the addition of “for the forgiveness of sins” to the words spoken over the cup at the Last Supper (Matt 26:28). The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus also has problems with the baptism of John, of course, not for Christological reasons, but for political reasons. He tries to exclude an eschatological-political and magical understanding of John’s baptizing practice by explicitly rejecting the use of his baptism as a means of remission for individual sins. 29 The concept of forgiveness is not mentioned here, because according to Josephus, the only condition for baptism was the conversion that had already taken place in everyday life. Its only purpose would have been the sanctifcation of the body, “not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purifcation of the body: supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purifed beforehand by righteousness” (Ant 18:117). That all three sources (Matthew, John and Josephus) subsequently omit the original qualifcation of John’s baptism as “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” is also shown by another observation, namely that without this qualifcation the function of John’s baptism clearly loses plausibility. It is hardly comprehensible why crowds of people should have gone to the Jordan and been baptized, just to undergo a better ritual cleansing bath, as per Josephus, or to confess their sins, as per Matthew. Even more improbable is the signifcance of John’s baptism in the Gospel of John. Here, not only a personal profle of the Baptist is missing, but there is not even an ‘attractive’ preaching of judgment and repentance as in Matthew and probably also in Josephus.30 But what does the qualifcation of John’s baptism as “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (gr. βάπτισμα μετανοίας εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν) mean? According to John P. Meier, the frst part of the formula is relatively clear. John’s baptism required repenting the previous sinful life of the baptized person in accordance with the Baptist’s preaching of repentance. By humbly submitting to a baptism conferred by the preacher of repentance and coming judgment, the candidate acknowledged the truth of what John said, confessed and repented of his past sins, … pledged a

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The real problem is the second part of the formula, especially the exact meaning of the Greek preposition εἰς: When and how are the sins of the baptized remitted or forgiven: when they are baptized or only on the last day? Does the baptism somehow cause or mediate the remission of sins (now or on the last day), or is it simply an expression of a human hope or a divine pledge that they will be forgiven? Does the cleansing water effect spiritually what it signifes visibly? Should John’s baptism be considered a “sacrament,” a “quasisacrament,” or an “eschatological sacrament”?31 But it is not quite as diffcult, as Meier suggests here, to understand the forgiving power of John’s baptism. Hardly anyone in current research understands the act of baptism, which essentially includes the confession of sins and promises of repentance, as a mere expression of human hope for the divine forgiveness of sins. This would contradict the problems with the forgiving power of John’s baptism, which can be seen in New Testament sources, since – after the Resurrection of Christ – only the death of Jesus can have the effect of forgiving sins. The stated problems the New Testament sources have with John’s baptism presuppose that John – and his disciples after his death – did indeed understand and communicate his baptizing practice as forgiveness of sins. However, an appropriate interpretation of the formula ‘baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ must take into account the announcement of the imminent judgment by the Baptist and the clear linking of his baptizing to that judgment. This connection, however, is often not taken into consideration.32 Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and salvation in God’s wrathful judgment Against this background, the understanding and message of John’s baptism must be (re)constructed as follows: Even in the present situation, in which all of Israel has turned away from God and therefore deserves judgment, God still offers the possibility of repentance and conversion – through John’s water baptism. This is to be interpreted as a prophetic, symbolic act (prophetische Zeichenhandlung), 33 a performative act that now effects for the future what it expresses in action and confession today:34 a bodily support of the conversion process and the trustworthy promise of God’s forgiveness of sins and his unconditional will of salvation. Accordingly, it is already in the here and now that baptism causes the remission of sins by God and saves one from new sins, while in the immediate future it saves the person from the fre of the fnal judgment. The presumption that the

Sinless or not? 41 sins are already redeemed in the present is supported by the psychological effects of such a ‘liberation’ from the burden of sin, which is hardly to be underestimated, but also by the much invoked priestly origin of the Baptist with the corresponding understanding of the sin offerings in the temple cult (cf. the formula in Lev 4:35 and elsewhere: “In this way the priest will make atonement for them for the sin they have committed, and they will be forgiven”).35 I cannot detect the incompatibility of such an understanding of forgiveness with the spirit baptism in the fnal judgment, as claimed by Meier, 36 especially since the forgiveness promised here and now is made by God alone, analogous to the atoning sacrifce in the temple. 37 The special feature of John’s baptism is that the promised forgiveness saves the baptized person from the fre of the judgment; this can be seen as a prerequisite for being baptized with the Holy Spirit.38 However, it must be emphasized once again that John’s baptism does not automatically save, but remains linked to the sincere repentance of the baptized person and his or her unconditional will to do good works. This is exactly what is manifested in the confession of sins during baptism. It is, therefore, not surprising that the baptism by John was repeatedly referred to by Christians as a ‘sacrament’ or ‘eschatological sacrament.’39 However, according to Meier and others, caution is advised when making this identifcation.40 There is too great a risk of transposing a later system on an earlier one simply because of structural similarities. Strictly speaking, the cult of atonement at the temple in Jerusalem would then also have to be understood in a sacramental manner. What role does John the Baptist play in all this? With Meier something of a paradox should be pointed out, because on the one hand “John proclaims his own insignifcance and the insignifcance of his baptism in the light of the stronger one, who will come soon to baptize with the spirit.” On the other hand, inextricably tying John’s baptism with its salvifc effects to the person of John “makes himself a pivotal, indispensable fgure in the eschatological drama.”41 Less carefully worded – and in reference to Knut Backhaus – John, as the one who preached and performed the baptism as the last opportunity for repentance before the imminent fnal judgment, was “in some way a mediator of salvation” or, to put it another way, “a harbinger of judgment and captain of salvation.”42 Therefore, he is not primarily a prophet of doom or a preacher of judgment, but his proclamation of judgment is one of repentance, as it is totally connected to the salvation that God himself still offers to Israel in this desolate and seemingly hopeless situation. Finally, the authenticity of his lifestyle, his ascetic existence in the wilderness (Mark 1:4–6 par) and his moral integrity (Luke 3:10–14; Mark 6:17–29; Ant 18:116–118), all echoed in several of Jesus’ words in Q, made John and his uncomfortable message of repentance credible and, therefore, not to be underestimated (e.g. QLuke 7:24–28 or QLuke 7:31–35). Jesus of Nazareth, like many before and with him, was so attracted by this prophet and his message that he not only let himself be baptized by him but found that, through this encounter with John the Baptist, his life began to change radically.

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3 Jesus’ baptism by John as an indication of Jesus’ consciousness of his personal sins Jesus’ consciousness of his personal sins as problem for Christian Jesus research For a long time, surprisingly little thought was given in Christian historical research on Jesus to why he decided to be baptized by John. It was recognized early on that the Christological accents in the baptismal accounts of the Gospels are to be attributed to the evangelists and are to be interpreted as attempts to solve the theological problem of Jesus’ baptism by John, as shown above. The most obvious historical reason for Jesus’ decision to seek out John and be baptized by him, however, was rarely formulated, namely, “that Jesus came to John for the same reason that anyone else did […]. That means that Jesus believed he was being baptized for the remission of his sins, preparing himself for the second remission.”43 That this simple reason is neglected in historical Jesus research can be best explained by the following supposition of Paul W. Hollenbach, namely that the Christian Jesus research “has been unduly infuenced by theological concerns,” particularly by “the traditional Christian belief in Jesus’ sinlessness. This belief has colored most historical study of Jesus up to the present.”44 The Christological problem with the baptism of Jesus, which is recognizable in the Gospels, is therefore not only a problem of the early Christians, but is still a problem for some Christian Jesus researchers up to the present day. The most recent example is the essay by the Catalan Catholic New Testament scholar Armand Puig i Tàrrech from 2008, which deals with the question of why Jesus was baptized.45 He comes to the conclusion that Jesus was not baptized to be cleansed of his sins, but because baptism is supposed to be the sign of the beginning of the time of grace and the dawn of the eschaton.46 An apologetic interest is evident throughout the essay, not least because of the author’s uncritical, harmonizing approach to the sources from which he draws the main arguments for his thesis.47 Such arguments do not contribute anything to the historical quest to understand Jesus’ motivations for seeking baptism, and probably have no desire to do so. The following refections are based on results of the previous study of John’s preaching of repentance and baptism, and seek to develop them in view of the question of Jesus’ awareness of sin. It is undisputed that Jesus must have heard about John and his baptism for the forgiveness of sins and was attracted by it. Where he learned of John must be left an open question, although Jerome Murphy-O’Connor argues that he probably did not leave Nazareth solely to make a pilgrimage to the Jordan to meet John, but rather that he came to him during one of his usual pilgrimages to Jerusalem.48 John’s eschatological preaching fell on fertile ground, so that Jesus was baptized, confessed (his) sins and committed himself to live his life according to the will of God. Such behavior suggests that Jesus agreed with John’s preaching in its central points, namely (1) that the end of God’s salvation history with Israel

Sinless or not? 43 is imminent and that God will create something completely new through a great judgment; (2) that Israel, as a whole, had strayed from God and his will and “so all was in danger being consumed by the fre of God’s wrathful judgment, soon to come”; (3) that the only way to be rescued from this judgment was for each individual to recognize their own sinfulness and error, to repent of their evil deeds and to repent before God and so do His will with all one’s heart; (4) that this repentance is sealed by John’s baptism as a sign of God’s unconditional will to save and forgive and (5) that “Jesus acknowledged John to be a or the eschatological prophet.”49 That Jesus not only subordinated himself to John’s baptism, but also oriented himself to him as a prophet and teacher can additionally be concluded from the similarity between Jesus’ and John’s preaching of judgment and repentance, 50 as well as from the high appreciation with which the Evangelists allow Jesus to speak about John. 51 The signifcance of the confession of sin for Jesus’ consciousness of personal sin The crux interpretum regarding the question of Jesus’ consciousness of personal sin remains the confession of sin at John’s baptism: Did Jesus really confess his sins? If so, did he confess his personal sins? Or did he only speak a confession in general, as part of his sinful people and its history of sin and in solidarizing with it? The fact that Jesus must have made a confession of sin in connection with the baptism by John is not questioned in current Jesus research, insofar as it deals with this aspect. If the confession of sins was part of John’s baptism – which is not only indicated by Mark 1:5 par Matt 3:6, but also by the character of John’s baptism as “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” – it must be assumed that Jesus also made a confession of sins at his baptism, even if the Gospels do not mention it for understandable reasons. But what was this confession of sin about? Meier emphasizes in a discussion with Paul Hollenbach that we cannot naturally assume the confession of sins at John’s baptism as a confession of the personal sins of the person baptized.52 He refers to the prayer of Ezra (Ezra 9:6–15) and the prayer of the candidates on entering the covenant community of Qumran (1QS 1:18–2,2) and reckons with the possibility that Jesus, like these praying persons, saw himself as part of a sinful people and part of the history of salvation and disaster of this people, who made their confession of sin out of solidarity with their people and their ancestors. 53 According to Meier, from the mere fact of the baptism of Jesus (including the confession of sin) it cannot therefore be decided whether Jesus considered himself a sinner in the sense of having a consciousness of personal sins. In this matter his baptism is open to a number of interpretations, and the data available do not allow us to probe the depths of Jesus’ individual psyche for a defnitive answer. 54

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But Meier’s argument is not convincing for several reasons. First, the comparability of the different confessions of sin mentioned must be questioned. The confession of sin at John’s baptism was neither a private, substitutionary prayer of repentance like Ezra’s, nor a collective prayer of repentance like on the Day of Atonement, nor a prayer at an admission ritual like in Qumran. The Baptist’s preaching of repentance was addressed to each individual baptized and demanded that he or she renounce his or her previous sinful actions and bear “fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matt 3:8). Accordingly, John’s baptism promised the forgiveness of sins and salvation in the imminent judgment only to the individual baptizand. 55 Therefore, making a confession of one’s sin before or during one’s baptism only out of solidarity with one’s people, but without including oneself, fundamentally contradicts the Baptist’s preaching that all Israel, without exception, is subject to judgment (cf. Matt 3:7–10 par Luke 3:7–9). Second, Meier himself does not argue consistently when he admits the possibility that those who confess the sins of the people, especially the leaders of the people like Ezra, might have felt “that they personally had not done enough to prevent others from transgressing but instead were somehow accomplices by their silence or inaction.”56 This means that from the absence of an individual confession of sin in the sense of a specifc catalogue of sins it cannot be concluded that the speakers of a general confession of sin were not aware of their personal sins, or, to put it more sharply, knew themselves to be free from any sin. 57 Finally, Meier’s fundamental criticism of Hollenbach’s position must be questioned: Why are we, by posing the “question of whether Jesus viewed himself as a sinner” in danger of reverting to the psychologizing of the ‘liberal lives’ era?58 Asking for the motive behind the concrete action of a historical person – here, choosing to be baptized by John – is an important part of historical research and plainly has nothing to do with ‘psychologization.’ Since Jesus’ decision to be baptized by John did not differ from that of other candidates for baptism, it is reasonable to assume that his motivation was the same or similar to that of the others: namely, to hope for the forgiveness of their sins through baptism in order to be saved in the imminent judgment. Such a motivation presupposes the baptizand’s conviction of being a sinner, or at least of being a person who had sinned repeatedly and therefore needs his or her sins to be forgiven. Since Meier assumes an individual consciousness of sin for other baptizands, 59 he must do the same for Jesus. Or vice versa, if he leaves an individual awareness of sin open for Jesus as the basic motivation for baptism, he must do the same for other baptized persons – unless there are historically understandable reasons to distinguish between Jesus’ motivation and that of other baptizands. But even Meier cannot provide these. His criticism of illegitimate psychologization only applies where Hollenbach and other scholars make concrete assumptions about Jesus’ sins or about ‘what he repented of.’

Sinless or not? 45 These assumptions refect more the thinking of liberation theology in the 1960s and 1970s (focusing on ‘structural sin’) than the thinking of pious Jewish people of the frst century.

4 Conclusion and further questions The starting point of this essay was the question of the sinlessness of the historical Jesus. Contrary to the tendency in the early Christian texts to emphasize Jesus’ sinlessness, there are a number of indications suggesting that Jesus possessed a consciousness of personal sin. The most convincing source for this is the baptism of Jesus by John, which is narrated three times in the canonical Gospels. Added to this is the consistently positive and highly esteemed presentation of the Baptist, his baptism and his preaching in the sayings of Jesus and in all the Gospels, which points to a close connection between Jesus and John. By means of the exegetical criteria of embarrassment and countertendency as well as the criterion of historical contextual plausibility, coined by Gerd Theissen, according to which Jesus’ actions must ft into a Jewish context and be plausible in it, I have tried to show that Jesus of Nazareth came to John to be baptized by him because he recognized himself as a sinner who was subject to the wrath of God and needed forgiveness. In this, he was no different from other baptizands. Like every other baptized person, he will have made the confession of sins that is an essential part of John’s baptism as “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” We do not know whether it was a personal and ‘free’ confession of sin or whether the baptizand spoke a standardized prayer. Probably, however, in both cases the person baptized combined his or her personal sins with those of his or her people and asked God for the forgiveness of both.60 It is extremely unlikely that one’s own sins could be excluded from this, both from the character of the Baptist’s repentant preaching, which addresses the individual, and from the biblical and early Jewish understanding of sin. From a consistently historical point of view, Jesus, as a frst-century Galilean Jew, most likely had a consciousness of personal sin that motivated him to undergo the baptism of John as a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” The analysis of relevant texts, taking into account their early Jewish background, confrms this thesis and excludes the alternative that Jesus was baptized by John for another reason (although it is possible in principle). Whoever, like John P. Meier, wants to leave open the question of Jesus’ awareness of sin runs a two-fold risk: either to portray Jesus more pharisaically than the Pharisees in the Gospels, as an arrogant person who sees himself as better than other people (Luke 18:9–14), or ultimately to not take his humanity seriously enough.61 But does the acceptance of Jesus’ awareness of personal sin really exclude the theological confession of his sinlessness? I do not think so, because we have to distinguish the anthropological category from the ontological

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one.  According to the Christian faith these categories are not principally separated from each other, but are united in the human being Jesus of Nazareth. Here one needs to explain more precisely than before what is meant or can be meant by the theological suggestion of Jesus’ sinlessness in the biblical texts themselves. This especially applies to the baptism of John and the understanding of sin in early Jewish biblical texts (e.g. Sirach; Wisdom) and non-biblical literature in general. Furthermore, from where did the New Testament writings adopt the idea of the sinlessness of a human being? This implies the examination of those texts of the First Testament that have had a decisive infuence on the development of New Testament Christology, such as Isa 53, which attributes some kind of sinlessness to the Suffering Servant of God. What kind of sin and what kind of sinlessness is meant here, especially in view of the unspecifc, broad concept of sin in the First Testament and the writings of early Judaism? Or, in other words, according to the biblical and extra-biblical Jewish sources in antiquity, are there sins that humans can basically avoid in a specifc moment in their lifetime and thereafter?

Notes 1 Cf. the Pauline understanding of sin: Günter Röhser, Metaphorik und Personifkation der Sünde: Antike Sündenvorstellung und paulinische Hamartia (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987); Helmut Merklein, “Paulus und die Sünde,” in ed. Hubert Frankemölle, Sünde und Erlösung im Neuen Testament (Freiburg: Herder, 1996), 123–63; Michael Wolter, “Die Rede von der Sünde im Neuen Testament,” in eds. Reiner Preul & Wilfried Härle, Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie XX. Sünde (Marburg: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2008), 15–44, here 33–41; Stefan Hagenow, Heilige Gemeinde – Sündige Christen. Zum Umgang mit postkonversionaler Sünde bei Paulus und in weiteren Texten des Urchristentums (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2011). 2 See John 1:29; 8:24, 34–36, 46; 1 John 3:5. 3 See 1 Peter 1:18–19; 2:22–24. 1 Peter 2:22 cites Isa 53:9 G, but changes “ἀνομίαν οὐκ ἐποίησεν (trans. he had done no lawlessness)” into “ἁμαρτίαν οὐκ ἐποίησεν (trans. he had done no sin).” 4 Cf. e.g. the words spoken by Jesus interpreting the cup of wine during his last supper in Mark 14:24 par Luke 22:20 and esp. in Matt 26:28, where the Evangelist adds “for the forgiveness of sins”; cf. also the oldest gospel Mark 10:45: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” 5 More details below. In Mark, also Jesus’ forgiveness of sins to the paralytic before healing him (Mark 2:(5)6–10) might point to this, especially when connected with the identifcation of Jesus with the Son of Man, who is authorized by God to forgive sins (v. 10). 6 Meier refers to individual modern deniers of the historicity of Jesus’ baptism by John, see John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew. Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Vol. 2: Mentor, Message, Miracles (New York: Yale University Press, 1994), 101; 182 notes 2 and 3, taking a critical approach in particular to Ernst Haenchen and Morton S. Enslin. 7 See Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3. From the literature on the historical Jesus and his baptism by John, which can hardly be surveyed, see e.g. John D. Crossan,

Sinless or not? 47 The  Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1991), 230–8; Gerd Theißen & Annette Merz, Der historische Jesus. Ein Lehrbuch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 32001), 184–98. 8 Cf. the only specifcally exegetic essays to this topic: Eric K. Wong, “Was Jesus without Sin? An Inquiry into Jesus’ Baptism and the Redaction of the Gospels,” Asia Journal of Theology 11 (1997), 128–39; Armand Puig i Tàrrech, “Pourquoi Jésus a-t-il reçu le baptême de Jean?” New Testament Studies 54:3 (2008), 355–74. 9 James D.G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 339: Two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent. They bracket the three years for which Jesus is most remembered, his life’s work, his mission. One is Jesus’ baptism by John. The other is his death by crucifxion. 10 On the different sources in detail see Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 103–5. 11 Knut Backhaus, “Echoes from the Wilderness. The Historical John the Baptist,” in eds. Tom Holmen & Stanley Porter, Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 1747–85, here 1755. 12 Peter Böhlemann, Jesus und der Täufer. Schlüssel zur Theologie und Ethik des Lukas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 54: “Es geht Lukas nicht um eine chronologische Vorordnung des Johannes vor Jesus, sondern um seine theologische Unterordnung.” 13 The Baptist is mentioned by name 33 times in the Lucan double work, 24 times in Acts; see Ulrich B. Müller, Johannes der Täufer: Jüdischer Prophet und Wegbereiter Jesu (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002), 134. His narrative presence is particularly evident in the childhood story of Luke. 14 On the whole ibid., 134–62. 15 Cf. ibid., 162. On the Baptist image of Joh, see in detail Josef Ernst, Johannes der Täufer: Interpretation – Geschichte – Wirkungsgeschichte (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1989), 186–216. 16 Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 21, describes the image of the Baptist by Josephus even more precisely, as “a popular moral philosopher of Stoic hue, with a somewhat neo-Pythagorean rite of lustration.” 17 Martin Ebner, Jesus in seiner Zeit. Sozialgeschichtliche Zugänge, SBS 196 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 22004), 88f. 18 Several times biblical research in this context points out that the expected judgment by the Baptist is not about a judgment of the whole world or a cosmic catastrophe, but “only [sic] about the annihilation of sinners (Is 66:15f.), the creation is preserved” (Müller, Johannes [cf. n. 13], 36). The German original reads: es handelt sich „nur (sic!) um die Vernichtung der Sünder (Jes 66, 15f.), die Schöpfung bleibt erhalten.“ 19 The plural version “fruits” of repentance is most probably due to Luke, who tends to ethicize the Baptist’s preaching in sum. Cf. inter alia Müller, Johannes (cf. n. 13), 146–56. 20 The following statement by Knut Backhaus on the baptism of John fts this well: “[I]n some way baptism was an act of individualisation” (Backhaus, “Echoes” [cf. n. 11], 1763). 21 See Chapter 2 above on the Christian interest in such identifcation. 22 So for example Ernst, Johannes (cf. n. 15), 305; 309; Müller, Johannes (cf. n. 13), 34f., and fnally very detailed Backhaus, “Echoes” (cf. n. 11), 1770–3. 23 So for example Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 33–35; Theißen & Merz, Jesus (cf. n. 7), 189f., whereby it is naturally assumed that God himself is behind this mediator. 24 Dunn, Jesus (cf. n. 9), 370, only mentions John A.T. Robinson.

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25 Dunn, Jesus (cf. n. 9), 371. 26 Backhaus, “Echoes” (cf. n. 11), 1759. 27 Ibid.: “[I]t becomes clear that the baptismal act stands between repentance and forgiveness … or turning to ethical conduct and acceptability to God (Ant. 18.117).” 28 Cf. Peter Fiedler, Das Matthäusevangelium, ThKNT 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006), 73; Theißen & Merz, Jesus (cf. n. 7), 190. 29 See above. For Josephus’ portrayal of John, see as a whole the explanations by Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 56–62. 30 A helpful summary of all arguments for an understanding of the forgiving power of John’s baptism can be found in Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 53f. 31 Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 54. 32 The lack of consideration of these two factors then leads to very open and intangible formulations, such as the formulation adopted by Vincent Taylor in James D.G. Dunn, Jesus (cf. n. 9), 360: “[A] baptism which brought to expression the repentance-seeking-forgiveness of sins.” Not only in Dunn’s case, this also has to do with the fact that the author begins with an interpretation of John’s practice of baptism, which is followed by the explanations of John’s preaching of repentance, and not vice versa. 33 For example, Müller, Johannes (cf. n. 13), 39. 34 Similarly Backhaus, “Echoes” (cf. n. 11), 1761: “a performative act of sealing,” but without further refection on the forgiveness of sins: “How remission ‘functioned’ we do not know.” 35 For further information see section 4 below. An extremely stimulating and knowledgeable treatise on the analogy between John’s baptism and the atonement rituals of the Jerusalem Temple is offered by Ebner, Jesus (cf. n. 17), 85–87. 36 Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 55. 37 Cf. in the sacrifcial cult the passivum divinum in the formula of forgiveness at the sin offering and at the guilt offering. 38 So also Theißen & Merz, Jesus (cf. n. 7), 191; Ludger Schenke, “Jesus und Johannes der Täufer,” in eds. Ludger Schenke et al., Jesus von Nazareth – Spuren und Konturen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2004), 84–105, here 92. 39 Theißen & Merz, Jesus (cf. n. 7), 190; further representatives of this view are named by Dunn, Jesus (cf. n. 9), 360 note 103. 40 Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 54f; Josef Ernst, Johannes der Täufer. Der Lehrer Jesu? (Freiburg: Herder, 1994), 87–89; Backhaus, “Echoes” (cf. n. 11), 1761. 41 Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 55. 42 Backhaus, “Echoes” (cf. n. 11), 1764. 43 Paul W. Hollenbach, “The Conversion of Jesus. From Jesus the Baptizer to Jesus the Healer,” in ed. Wolfgang Haase, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 25.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982), 196–219, 201. 44 Hollenbach, Conversion, 201, who deals specifcally with C.H.H. Scobie. Similarly evasive positions, like the one quoted by Hollenbach, can be found in the more recent German-language historical-critical literature on Jesus and John: e.g., Ernst, Lehrer, 108–11; Joachim Gnilka, Jesus von Nazaret: Botschaft und Geschichte, 4. Auf. der Sonderausgabe (Freiburg: Herder, 41995), 83–85; Jürgen Roloff, Jesus (Munich: C.H. Beck, 42004), 60–63; Günther Bornkamm, Jesus von Nazareth (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, [1956] 151995), 40–47. 45 Puig i Tàrrech, Jésus (cf. n. 8). 46 Puig i Tàrrech, Jésus (cf. n. 8), 371. 47 Puig i Tàrrech, Jésus (cf. n. 8), 370f., supports his thesis with two main arguments: (1) with a combination of four early Christian sources about the sinlessness of Jesus, which he claims to be a solid basis for the earliest tradition

Sinless or not?  49 about the baptism of Jesus. These are Matt 3:14–15, the conversation between John and Jesus, which is consistently judged as secondary in research (see above Chapter 2a), a quotation of Jerome (AdPel 3,2) from the apocryphal EvHeb or EvNaz, John 8:45–46 and EvThom 104; (2) with reference to the vision of Jesus following baptism (Mark 1:10f. par) as confirmation of his recognition that the assumption of John’s baptism was a sign of the coming of the Kingdom of God. Cf. ibid., 373: La vision qui suit le baptême de Jésus est une sorte de réponse divine à son choix d’accepter ce baptême comme signe de l’arrivée du kairos. Jesus a interprété correctement le dessein de Dieu, c’est-à-dire, la signification eschatologique du baptême de Jean, et la vision du Jourdain sert à le confirmer. English translation: The vision following the baptism of Jesus is a kind of divine response which accepts this baptism as a sign of the arrival of kairos. Jesus correctly interpreted God’s purpose, that is, the eschatological significance of John’s baptism, and the vision at the Jordan river serves to confirm it. 48 Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “John the Baptist and Jesus. History and Hypotheses,” New Testament Studies 36/3 (1990), 359–74. He justifies his thesis with the consideration that the journey from Nazareth to John’s baptismal site on the Jordan alone took four days at that time “and no artisan could afford the loss of earnings represented by such idle time” (361) He is supported by Ebner, Jesus (cf. n. 17), 95f. 49 I am essentially orienting myself here to Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 109f. All quotations in this passage are from the stated pages. 50 In current Jesus research such a proximity between John and Jesus is generally assumed, albeit to varying degrees. Usually it is attributed to the fact that Jesus was a disciple of John in an unspecified period of time: for example, Murphy-­ O’Connor, John, passim; Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 116–30. 51 In detail see Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 130–71. 52 Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 113–16. 53 Similar to Gnilka, Jesus, 80, who, however, unlike Meier, does not discuss his assumption any further. 54 Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 116. 55 Cf. Backhaus, “Echoes” (cf. n. 11), 1763. 56 Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 115. 57 Furthermore and in agreement Johann Maier, for early Jewish texts, especially from Qumran, but also for the later synagogal liturgy, it must be taken into account that even the “I” in prayers and in the confession of sins of the individual must not be thought of individually, but representatively: Johann Maier, “Jüdisches Grundempfinden von Sünde und Erlösung in frühjüdischer Zeit,” in ed. Hubert Frankemölle, Sünde und Erlösung im Neuen Testament (Freiburg: Herder, 1996), 53–75, here 55. 58 Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 113. 59 Cf. Meier, Jew (cf. n. 6), 54. 60 Cf. Maier, Grundempfinden (cf. n. 57), 55. 61 Cf. Puig i Tàrrech, Jésus (cf. n. 8), 369–73.

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“He himself was tempted” (Hebr 2:18) The temptation of Jesus in the New Testament Lena Lütticke and Hans-Ulrich Weidemann

The temptation of Jesus is not exactly a central topic in New Testament writings. However, the mere fact that his ‘temptation’ or ‘testing’ through God (!) is considered to be possible and is being narrated, primarily by the Synoptics, has irritated recipients both then and now. The frst (and maybe only) scene that comes to mind is Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness (Mark 1:12f.; Matt 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13). Right after his baptism in the Jordan and just before the beginning of his public ministry, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness, where he is tempted by Satan. To put it bluntly, Jesus, whom God had just proclaimed as his beloved Son (ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός), is now being tested on behalf of his Father.1 We will later demonstrate that what seems like a harsh and paradoxical twist is actually part of evangelists’ narrative strategies. Remarkably, the Fourth Evangelist neither narrates Jesus’ baptism nor his temptation, just like other New Testament authors seem to fnd it theologically and Christologically impossible to imagine that God would test his own son. The Epistle of James (1:12–15) even completely refuses the concept of temptation by God: 12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial (ὑπομένει πειρασμόν), for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God” (μηδεὶς πειραζόμενος λεγέτω ὅτι ἀπὸ θεοῦ πειράζομαι), for God cannot be tempted with evil (ὁ γὰρ θεὸς ἀπείραστός ἐστιν κακῶν), and he himself tempts no one (πειράζει δὲ αὐτὸς οὐδένα). 14 But each person is tempted (ἕκαστος δὲ πειράζεται) when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (ESV) The idea that “God himself tempts no one” (James 1:13) stands in obvious contrast to the sixth plea of the Lord’s Prayer, which asks God – who is addressed here as “Father” (!) – not to “lead us into temptation” (Matt 6:13; Luke 11:4). While James’ notion seems to resonate with modern readers

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(not least with Pope Francis), who fnd it hard to believe God would wilfully and actively lead his believers into temptation, this trait is undoubtedly part of the Synoptics’ conception of God. They might not explicitly develop the idea, but they presuppose it and employ it in some crucial parts of their narratives – including the temptation of the Son of God himself. And they are not the only ones to do so: The Letter to the Hebrews is particularly concerned with the portrayal of Jesus as a “merciful and faithful high priest” (2:17) who, “because he himself has suffered when tempted (πειρασθείς), is able to help those who are being tempted (τοῖς πειραζομένοις)” (2:18; cf. 4:15). 2 That it is God who tempted Jesus becomes clear when looking at Hebr 5:7f. The passage hints at Jesus’ prayer before his crucifxion when he “offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death.” Jesus was eventually ‘heard because of his reverence,’ but ‘although he was the Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.’ The Letter to the Hebrews, thus, interprets Jesus’ fearful prayer as a moment of temptation because God does not answer immediately, and Jesus has to learn to comply with his will. This paper aims at analysing the different narrative accounts of Jesus’ temptation in the New Testament. It will focus on two different but interrelated strands: The Synoptic temptation stories and the depiction of the topic in the Letter to the Hebrews. Section 1 will look into the narrative accounts of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and the moments of weakness and agony in his Gethsemane prayer as well as in his outcry at the cross. Section 2 then investigates Jesus’ temptation in his fear of death within the Christological framework of the Letter to the Hebrews. Section 3 serves as the conclusion.

1 Temptation of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels “If you are the Son of God…” – Temptation in the wilderness We will start with the most prominent and the most obvious temptation story: Mark 1:12f. parr. Matt 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13 is the only narrative account of Jesus explicitly being tempted on behalf of God. 3 It is true that Satan (or ‘the devil’, as in Luke’s version) acts here as the ‘tempting agent,’4 but the whole enterprise is guided by the Spirit (τὸ πνεῦμα). One must, therefore, assume a heavenly source behind this scene, even though it may initially seem odd that the same Spirit who just descended onto Jesus in his baptism is now ‘driving’ him out into the wilderness, and the same God who just proclaimed him as his ‘beloved Son’ is now putting him to the test with the help of the devil. It is important though to realise that the Spirit, who is mentioned both in the baptism and the temptation narrative, connects the two passages into one literary unit. For the larger plots of the

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Synoptic gospels, the baptism functions as the preface to the temptation account: God himself visually (descending dove) and audibly (heavenly voice) reveals who is going to be tested in the wilderness: ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός (Mark 1:11; Matt 3:17; Luke 3:22). Before going into any further detail, we will frst examine the term at issue – the Greek verb πειράζειν. The English translation ‘to tempt’ is slightly misleading, as it is usually associated with desires and pleasurable urges, also of a sexual nature.5 ‘Tempting’ is often considered a manipulative act and ‘being tempted’ a weakness or even an inclination to sin. All these moral connotations can be illustrated through the famous quote from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray: The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. As opposed to this rather ‘negative’, (self-)restrictive meaning, the biblical texts ultimately intend a more ‘positive,’ assertive understanding of the term: “The positive sense of πειράζω is the action to test or discover the truth about something or someone by affiction (e.g., 2 Cor 13:5; 1 Pet 1:6).”6 The verb is thus used to denote critical situations into which God leads his chosen people7 in order to test their faith. After a lengthy discussion of its etymology and literary parallels, J.B. Gibson concludes “that it was basically the idea of being probed and ‘put to the proof’, that is, ‘tested’ to ascertain or to demonstrate trustworthiness.”8 The most famous examples for this kind of ‘testing’ are Abraham (Gen 22:1–19) and Job. According to A. Herrmann, a key characteristic of πειράζειν in the New Testament is danger: It endangers the relationship between the tempted person and God, their trust in and confession of God, and their obedience to his will.9 The ‘temptation’ this paper is looking into, thus, is the biblical motif of a ‘testing’ on behalf of God concerning the ‘testee’s’ (here, Jesus’) relationship to God himself. All three Synoptic Gospels mention Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and they all strategically place it between his baptism in the Jordan and the beginning of his public ministry. Mark’s version is brief,10 whilst Matthew and Luke elaborate on the event with a lengthy dialogue between Jesus and the devil. Despite the differences in detail, it is remarkable that they all narrate this scene that depicts the ‘beloved Son’ in a quite challenging, ‘human’ situation. It is important to note at the outset that, with the temptation story, the evangelists deploy a universal motif. Several extrabiblical heroic fgures are said to have struggled with an adversary at the beginning of their ‘careers,’ e.g., Heracles, Buddha, or Zarathustra.11 This should prompt us to regard the Synoptic temptation accounts as literary works and not (merely) as factual reports.

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The Markan account. We will frst examine the oldest adaptation of this motif to Jesus, i.e., the Markan account. Despite the brevity of his version, “Mark was hardly silent with regard to the question of the nature of Jesus’ Wilderness temptation.”12 If one takes a closer look, the text does actually give a number of details: First of all, by mentioning the spirit (τὸ πνεῦμα) who literally impels (ἐκβάλλω13) Jesus into his temptation, it ultimately connects the event with God.14 This makes the temptation “an experience both that Jesus was constrained to undergo and that occurred under the direction and agency of God.”15 However, it is not God himself who ‘tempts,’ or rather ‘tests,’ his Son. Satan is explicitly mentioned as the perpetrator of the temptation (πειραζόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ σατανᾶ). He is a personal fgure commonly considered God’s “Evil Adversary,” “whose primary function was the proving of the faith and steadfastness […] of the pious.”16 That leaves the careful reader/listener of the gospel with twofold information regarding the fgures involved: Satan is the tempter (i.e., acting subject), Jesus is the object of his temptation, and the Spirit (of God) is the initiating power in the background. It is noteworthy though that while the Spirit (i.e., God) forcefully drives Jesus into the desert, he then leaves him to his own devices.17 The ‘beloved Son’ is confronted with Satan on his own, neither the ‘Father’ nor the Spirit assist him in his contest with the tempter. Therefore, E. Best rightly considers the temptation story “a confict between the Son of God and the prince of evil.”18 Mark’s temptation narrative also provides information as to where the scene was set and how long it took. The event is located “in the wilderness” (ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ)19 and extends over a period of 40 days (τεσσεράκοντα ἡμέρας).20 This combination of the area in the lower Jordan valley and the highly symbolic number ‘forty’ almost certainly alludes to “Israel’s post-Exodus wanderings.”21 By indicating the place and the duration of the temptation, the evangelist implicitly flls the participle (πειραζόμενος) with meaning. Jesus is ‘being tempted/tested’ in a place and for a period of time that are reminiscent of Israel’s wilderness experience, so it seems likely that also the nature of his temptation is somewhat similar to theirs. Moreover, according to Gibson, Mark and his readers would not only have been acquainted with the word, they would have been familiar with the contexts in which it was used, its range of signifcation, and the associations that were attached to it and its derivates. 22 If, then, the semantic weight of πειράζω can be assumed to be part of the contemporary cultural encyclopaedia and the verb occurs with well-known typological associations, the participle πειραζόμενος will evoke a clear conception even without further explanation: The temptation in Mark 1:12f. must be about Jesus’ faithfulness and obedience to God, or, to put it as McKinley does, “[a]s with Israel’s wilderness experience […], Jesus, as the messianic Son, is confronted primarily in his relationship to God as his Father.”23

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Nevertheless, one must acknowledge that these assumptions are based on a number of deductions and are not explicitly stated in the text. One has to be careful not to infer the devil’s provocative question, “If you are the Son of God…” from the Matthean and Lukan versions and jump to a conclusion too quickly. The connection of the two pericopes, however, admittedly suggests that the temptation has been ‘triggered’ by Jesus’ proclamation as the ‘beloved Son’ in the baptism. Given that, the OT context, and the literary motif of testing heroes embarking on their missions, it does seem likely that in Mark also Jesus has to prove himself as the Son of God, and that the πειράζειν is about his (obedient/faithful) relationship to the Father. 24 It is just not literarily unambiguous because Mark does not expand on the content of the temptation in any way. The outcome or the consequences of the contest between Jesus and Satan, by contrast, seem to be more relevant for the Markan narrative and can be analysed with more certainty. While the temptation episode itself neither reports Jesus’ struggle with his adversary nor his triumph over him, the following exorcisms can be considered a realisation of a victory that has already been achieved. The dispute between Jesus and the scribes about his exorcistic powers especially underlines this, for Jesus claims to have ‘bound’ Satan: When the scribes accuse him of casting out demons “by the prince of demons” and “being possessed by Beelzebul,” Jesus counters with a parable, explaining that “no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he frst binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house” (3:27). The peculiar answer shows that at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (πρῶτον) Satan was defeated and rendered powerless. He may be strong (ὁ ἰσχυρός), but Jesus has proven to be stronger by ‘binding’ him (δέω) and ‘plundering his house,’ i.e., casting out demons. In Mark 3:28–30, Jesus ultimately points out that he does not do all this ἐν τῷ ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων (as he was accused by the scribes in 3:22) but with the power of the Holy Spirit (3:29: τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον). According to E. Best, Mark 1:12f. and 3:22–30 “supplement one another.”25 This is because “[t]hey are the only incidents in which the Spirit is seen as active in the ministry of Jesus and both concern his warfare with the spiritual powers.”26 He therefore argues that 3:27 supplies the “conclusion” that had not been previously narrated in 1:12f., and that the temptation narrative is not “a preliminary to the ministry of Jesus” but “its decisive frst act.”27 The exorcisms, which are so crucial for Mark’s portrayal of Jesus, “are mopping-up operations of isolated units of Satan’s hosts and are certain to be successful because the Captain of the hosts of evil is already bound and immobilised.”28 Again one needs to be cautious because nowhere does Mark 3:22–30 explicitly refer to the wilderness temptation. Jesus, for instance, does not claim to have bound Satan ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ. But it is true that both passages are intricately connected by Jesus’ powers – gifted by the (Holy) Spirit – on the one hand, and Satan on the other. They are further linked with all the exorcisms by the use of the distinctive verb ἐκβάλλω.

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Interestingly, the frst thing Jesus does after calling the frst disciples is healing a man with an unclean spirit (Mark 1:21–28). Again, he does not have to fght or invoke them, as is noted by eyewitnesses in the synagogue of Capernaum: “He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him” (1:27). This may add to Gibson’s conclusion “that in the wilderness Jesus successfully resisted the efforts of Satan.”29 He bases this assumption on V. 13b, to which we will now turn. Specifcally Markan is the mentioning of the ‘wild beasts’ whom Jesus is with, as well as the ‘angels’ who serve him. Together with Satan they belong to the threefold group of non-human beings Jesus faces in this temptation account. They are all equally important for the narrative, even though Satan is responsible for the actual πειράζειν.30 Furthermore, they qualify the wilderness as a non-human sphere, which, being the natural home of wild animals and demons, is beyond human control (cf. Dtn 8:15). But at the same time they are probably more than just “a pictorial description of the desolation and danger of the landscape in which Jesus found himself.”31 It has often been argued “that the statement is a reminiscence of the friendly relations between Adam and the beasts in the Garden of Eden before the fall,”32 which is grounded in the expectation of peace prevailing between human beings and animals in the messianic kingdom (cf. Isa 11.5–9; 65:25; Hos 2:18).33 All the in-depth studies of the Markan temptation account, however, point out that this messianic harmony is not clearly indicated and that “wild beasts normally suggest evil rather than good.”34 They view the θηρία as “congruent with Satan and the desert, all of them suggesting the evil with which Jesus must contend.”35 Rather than being harmless and peaceful, the wild beasts should therefore be considered dangerous. Nevertheless, they will not attack the Son of God because he has been given the power of the Spirit and, thereby, tames and scares them.36 Herrmann, Best, and Gibson unanimously point to several passages from the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs that closely resemble the ‘Markan triad’ of devil, beasts, and angels. They particularly quote TestNaph 8:4, where the devil is said to “fee from you, the wild animals will be afraid of you, and the angels will stand by you when you strive to do what is good.”37 While none of the authors assumes literal dependence, they all agree that Mark has been infuenced by the general idea as stated in TestPat.38 Yet again one needs to exercise caution, for Mark 1:13b does not speak of Jesus ‘frightening’ or ‘taming’ the θηρία. It is simply said that he is with them (εἶναι μετά). But at the same time the text does not indicate the motif of messianic harmony either, and the parallel with TestNaph 8:4 is admittedly striking. In the Gospel of Mark, ‘being with’ someone is often positively connotated, but the phrase is also used in contexts of confict and tension (14:18.54).39 Best goes on to argue that the “angelic service” is to be interpreted along the lines of TestNaph as well. He admits that the verb διακονεῖν “retains its basic meaning in the New Testament, including Mark (i.31),” but also

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argues that it “underwent considerable development and was given an important theological overtone.”40 To him, therefore, the angels’ ministry is not necessarily restricted to feeding Jesus – in fact, Best reckons this interpretation is distorted by the Matthean/Lukan temptation narrative. It is true that the Markan account does not mention that Jesus is hungry (or even fasting, as in Matt 4:2), and in the light of TestNaph 8:4 one could indeed interpret the angels’ ministry more generally as assistance in Jesus’ contest with Satan.41 This would oppose the widely acknowledged assumption that, with the angelic service, Mark wants to allude to “the bread of the angels” (Ps 78:25), i.e., the manna (Ex 16), and/or to the feeding of Elijah (1 Kgs 19:5–8). Once again, “Mark leaves us to make up our own minds on this point.”42 To a certain degree, his temptation account is like a newspaper article that remains on the surface of its subject matter. It addresses most relevant questions: What is going on (wilderness sojourn)? How does it look like, i.e., what features does it have (testing by Satan, being with wild beasts, and angelic service)? Who is it about (Jesus, last mentioned in 1:9)? Where does the event take place (wilderness) and how long does it take (40 days)? When does it happen (εὐθύς after Jesus’ baptism)? The only question that is not properly answered is why all this happened. The Markan account lists all the (literary!) “facts” but does not give any cohesive background information.43 At the same time it uses highly symbolic language, which makes its audience infer the details from several intertexts  – be it Israel’s wandering in the wilderness, Elijah’s wilderness escape, and/or the exhortations in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. In this sense, Gibson is right in claiming that Mark is not “silent” as regards the nature, content, and outcome of Jesus’ wilderness temptation.44 He is just not explicit about it, which maybe once again emphasises the literary character of the account. The Matthean account. Matthew and Luke, by contrast, explicitly fll the temptation account with meaning and elaborate on the why of the event with a threefold dialogue between Satan and Jesus. Acknowledging the recent debate among source-critical researchers,45 we presume they probably both draw on Mark and the so-called Sayings Source (Q) independently of each other. Since they both have the devil question Jesus’ divine sonship, their (hypothetical) second source seems to have connected the events of Jesus’ baptism and his subsequent temptation in the wilderness as well. We will thoroughly consider the Matthean account46 and take a brief look at Luke’s version afterwards. At the end of the “overture” to Jesus’ public ministry (1:1–4:11), Matthew narrates three temptations as the ‘prelude’ to his subsequent teachings and actions. In addition to Mark, the evangelist had previously emphasised Jesus’ divine sonship as well as his obedience to his heavenly Father. His infancy story presents Jesus as born of the virgin, conceived by the Holy Spirit (1:18–25) and part of a just and obedient family: Joseph (the “Just”: 1:19) is unwilling to put his pregnant fancé to shame and marries her after

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an angel tells him to do so (1:20.24). When the family returns from their fight to Egypt (again directed by an angel, cf. 2:13.19f.), the prophecy of Hosea is fulflled: “Out of Egypt I have called my Son” (Hos 11:1). The fulflment quotation on the one hand declares Jesus as Son of God. Its contextualisation, on the other hand, shows that by ‘answering’ the ‘call out of Egypt,’ he has been obedient from the start. This combination of the title “Son of God” and his obedience recurs even more explicitly in Jesus’ baptism. Here, God himself declares Jesus as his “beloved Son” by means of a heavenly voice (3:17). Just before that, Jesus had persuaded John to baptise him “for thus it is ftting for us to fulfll all righteousness” (3:15). Righteousness (δικαιοσύνη) is a coined term in the Gospel of Matthew;47 it is essentially characterised by doing the will of God. So when Jesus is inficted in the temptation by the devil, which immediately follows his baptism, it is obvious that he is tested as the obedient Son of God. Similar to the Markan account, in Matthew’s retelling, it is the Spirit who leads Jesus into the desert. Matthew uses a less violent verb (ἀνάγω instead of ἐκβάλλω), but the passive formulation still shows that Jesus is ‘externally driven.’ In Matthew, the ἔρημος is a “place where some important truths about the nature of that sonship would become clear through the process of resisting temptation.”48 This is immediately indicated by the infnitive of purpose in V. 1.49 Other than in Mark, the temptation is not only part of Jesus’ wilderness sojourn but the whole point of it. Matthew’s wilderness episode is explicitly about the πειρασθῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου and how Jesus overcomes this temptation. In a threefold dialogue with the tempter, Jesus rejects each of the temptations by quoting scripture, or, more precisely, a passage of scripture referring to the temptations Israel was confronted with in the desert. Thus, in Matthew, the ἔρημος is clearly associated with the post-Exodus context we could only assume in Mark. The three tests take place in different locations, all of which Matthew associates with God’s presence.50 They are presented in a climactic order: from the wilderness to the “holy city” with the pinnacle of the temple to, fnally, a “very high” mountain.51 The frst temptation (4:2–4) is based on Jesus’ hunger for food. Matthew explicitly states that he had been fasting (νηστεύσας) for 40 days and (!) 40 nights.52 Other than Mark, who does not mention any hunger at all, and Luke, who merely claims Jesus “ate nothing during those days” (Luke 4:2), Matthew strongly emphasises this point by using the cultic term νηστεύειν and by highlighting that this fasting lasted day and night. By means of the temporal adverb ὕστερον, he presents Jesus’ hunger as a reasonable consequence of the long period of food abstinence. It is then53 that ‘the tempter’ (ὁ πειράζων) comes to him and challenges him to miraculously provide bread for himself. Jesus, therefore, is approached by the devil in the very moment of physical weakness. He is susceptible to temptation because he is a true man with bodily needs, and the question now is whether or not he will seek to satisfy those needs, i.e., still his hunger. By asking Jesus to “command these stones to become loaves of bread” (4:3), Satan obviously intends him

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to react by using his divine power.54 The reader/listener of the gospel will soon learn that Jesus is indeed able to perform such miracles: In 14:13–21 and 15:32–39 he multiplies loaves of bread and thereby uses his power to provide food for the multitudes. In the temptation narrative, however, he refuses to do so because it would mean using his power in his own way to serve his own ends. Thus, he resists the temptation to abuse his power in a “Satanic” way, i.e., against the will of God. 55 By quoting scripture (here Dtn 8:3), Jesus demonstrates unwavering fdelity to God and proves to be his obedient Son. 56 It is precisely this title that Satan questions in his temptations: “If you are the Son of God…” (4:3.6). 57 Thus, the focus of the tempting in Matthew is on Jesus’ identity and loyalty as Son of God.58 Satan’s doubt is echoed in the passion narrative when spectators mock the crucifed by saying: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (27:40). Similarly, the chief priests, scribes, and elders scoff at him referring to his sonship: “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (27:43). The ones who realise, ironically, that “[t]ruly this was the Son of God” (27:54) are the centurion and the guards (i.e., Gentiles!). So the declaration and questioning of Jesus as Son of God is a literary topos, which connects the baptism/temptation with the passion narrative in Matthew. For the second temptation (4:5–7), the devil takes Jesus along to the holy city and sets him on the wing of the temple (4:5). Again, he introduces his temptation by saying: εἰ υἱὸς εἶ τοῦ θεοῦ (4:6). This time he wants to test whether or not God would keep His promise to protect Jesus if he threw himself down from there. In essence, he wants Jesus himself to test God by provoking a life-threatening situation. It is remarkable that here the devil himself quotes scripture, too (Ps 91:11f.). Not only does he thereby adapt to Jesus’ way of speaking, but he also grounds his bold demand in God’s “written” promise.59 The temple locale further emphasises the proximity of God’s presence and suggests that Jesus should be safe in these surroundings. Jesus, however, counters with another passage from scripture (Dtn 6:16) and does not take a leap. The quote from Deuteronomy shows that the devil not only wants to challenge Jesus’ divine powers but God Himself, and Jesus sees right through this plan: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test (οὐκ ἐκπειράσεις)” (Matt 4:7). Again, literary parallels with the Passion narrative cannot be missed: Even when he actually is in danger, the Son of God remains obedient to the will of the Father and refuses to ask him to send “more than twelve legions of angels” to save him from being arrested by the chief priests and elders (26:53). Just like he does not feed himself but the multitudes, he does not save himself from death but gives his life “as a ransom for many” (20:28), “for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28). Another important scene connected to the second temptation is Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the temple in 21:1–27. It is the second time within the narrative that he enters frst the ‘holy city’ and then the temple. This time, however, is decidedly different, for he returns as the Davidic king.

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In the third and fnal temptation (4:8–10), Jesus is asked to seize power to rule on his own. The devil takes him along to “a very high mountain” and shows him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour, i.e., he offers him the prospect of an empire that would span the whole world.60 He offers to give Jesus “all these” if only he would fall down and worship him (4:9). This offer implies that the whole of humanity (i.e., the nations) is ruled by the devil, which does bear a certain irony, for all the world is under the rule of the Roman emperor (cf. Luke 2:1; 3:1). It also implies that by breaking with God and worshipping Satan, Jesus could have power, possessions, and honour without suffering on the cross. What sounds very tempting indeed basically boils down to: “Serve the devil and rule the world.”61 Morris rightly points out that “Jesus would obtain the mighty empire only by doing what Satan wanted,”62 so the price to pay for ‘all these things’ is a very high one. This is especially true because Satan wants Jesus to worship him and he indicates that by using the verb προσκυνεῖν, which, in the Gospel of Matthew, is reserved for worship directed at God and Jesus.63 Jesus, however, repels Satan and cites Dtn 6:13: “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” Then, fnally, the devil leaves him and angels come to minister him (4:11). It seems as though Jesus’ repeated adherence to the will of God has eventually defeated his adversary. His appeal, “Be gone, Satan!” recurs in 16:23, where Jesus addresses Peter who rebukes him for the proclamation of his suffering (16:21). Even more striking is the connection with 28:16–20: While Satan offered Jesus sovereignty over all the earth if he would but worship him, Jesus worshipped God only and “all power in heaven and on earth” was given to him by God. He, thus, received even greater power and sovereignty than the devil could have ever promised him, but only after suffering, dying after being forsaken, and being resurrected. The προσκύνησις-motif recurs as well because the disciples worship Jesus when they see him (28:17) on the mountain (28:16) – the locale of the fnal temptation. One can therefore conclude, in line with U. Luz, that in 4:1–11 Matthew narrates a mythical story as a gateway to his Jesus story.64 The temptation story anticipates in nuce the way that the Son of God obediently leads his disciples.65 The Lukan account. Luke’s temptation account, fnally, is very similar to that of Matthew. The most signifcant difference is that he presents the second and the third (Matthean) temptation in a reversed order. That means the devil frst tempts Jesus “in the wilderness” (cf. Luke 4:1), then he “takes him up”66 and challenges him a second time (4:5–8), and, fnally, takes him to Jerusalem, sets him on the pinnacle of the temple, and tries his luck one last time (4:9–13). Thus, the Lukan temptation narrative culminates in the temple scene. For the third evangelist, Satan’s attempt to make Jesus test God ranks higher (or is narratively more dramatic) than his wish to be worshipped by Jesus. Luke also directly links the wilderness account with his genealogy of Jesus (3:23–38), which ends with Adam (3:38). It is therefore likely that the Adamitic background67 that scholars generally suppose

60 Lena Lütticke and Hans-Ulrich Weidemann for the temptation narrative can be assumed for Luke. While the genealogy marks a narrative pause, the action commences again with Luke 4:1.68 The narrative unit of 4:1–13 can be considered a “bridge scene,” for it is “moving Jesus from his endowment with the Spirit to his public ministry.”69 Jesus is now more active than before and “becomes the deixic center, […] the one preparing to take the initiative (4:14–15).”70 It is noted twice, however, that his activity is empowered by the Spirit: He is “full of the Holy Spirit” when he is led into the wilderness (4:1), and he returns to Galilee “in the power of the Spirit” (4:14). Just like in Matthew, the testing is conducted by the devil who “seeks specifcally to controvert Jesus’ role as Son of God.”71 The account makes it clear that behind the opposition Jesus faces from the beginning (cf. the “darkness and […] the shadow of death” in 1:79, or the hostility in 2:34; 3:19f.) stands the devil “who now steps out from behind the curtain for a direct confrontation.”72 Moreover, it is obvious that Israel’s testing in the wilderness (Deut 6–8) provides the interpretative context for Luke 4:1–13, particularly the divine leading in the wilderness, the number “forty,” Israel’s role as God’s son, and the nature of their testing.73 While the Lukan account resembles the Matthean one in many respects, Matthew’s linking with his Passion narrative is quite unique. Nevertheless, Luke also links several motifs, such as connecting God’s promise to grant Jesus an everlasting kingdom (Luke 1:32f.) with Satan’s offer to give him “all the authority and glory” of “all the kingdoms of the world” (4:5f.). The fnal remark that “when the devil had ended every temptation (πάντα πειρασμόν), he departed from him until an opportune time” (4:13), and Jesus’ remark that his disciples had stood with him ἐν τοῖς πειρασμοῖς μου (22:28), are further specifcally Lukan mentions of Jesus’ temptation. “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” Temptation in Gethsemane Another episode commonly associated with the temptation of Jesus in the New Testament is his prayer in Gethsemane.74 This is striking because the actual term πειράζειν is not applied to Jesus in this context but only to his disciples. Nevertheless, Best (and others) argue that “the conception of temptation is defnitely present.”75 The Gethsemane scene differs from the wilderness temptation in terms of its literary character as well.76 While the latter is a highly stylised, genre-conforming account of a hero embarking on his mission, the former depicts this hero in a crisis, which is quite adverse to his overall portrayal. The Gethsemane prayer is, therefore, much more likely to be a historical recollection of an event that might have actually taken place, one way or another. The essence of the pericope can be deducted from Mark 14:38 (Matt 26:41 par.): “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation (ἵνα μὴ ἔλθητε εἰς πειρασμόν).”77 Knowingly approaching his trial and death on the cross, Jesus fnds himself in a moment of deep agony and struggles with the

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will of God. The text is full of strong verbs like ἐκθαμβέομαι (to be greatly distressed) and ἀδημονέω (to be troubled).78 With the words of Ps 42:6 Jesus claims that his “soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Mark 14:34), and he prays that God may “remove this cup” from him (14:36).79 He then goes on to pray that God’s will be done instead of his will. It is remarkable that throughout the distressing process God remains silent. He does not respond to Jesus’ prayer but leaves him to his own devices, so he must face his struggle alone. Jesus eventually wins over temptation because he does exactly what he asks his disciples to do: watch and pray in the face of a testing. Mark and Matthew present the prayerful struggle in Gethsemane as an explicit account of temptation, for they ground the exhortation “to pray not to enter into temptation” in the weakness of the fesh (Mark 14:38 par. Matt 26:41). Best argues that “[d]espite the manner in which Mark has shown Jesus to be conscious of the necessity of his death, he now shows him afraid before it.”80 What might appear inconsistent at frst is actually two lines of thought coming together in Gethsemane: On the one hand, Mark depicts Jesus’ death as predetermined, and as engineered by sinful men, on the other. “Spirit and fesh are opposed; God and man are opposed; evil now comes as close to Jesus as it possibly can; it attacks from within.”81 Since Jesus considers his will as opposed to God’s will, it is fair to say that “[t]he temptation now defnitely comes from within Jesus himself.”82 He initially prays for the Father to spare him from the vicarious punishment symbolised by the cup. Thus, Mark and Matthew depict Jesus as tempted to turn away from his Father’s plan according to which “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31). The aim of his petition, therefore, “is nothing less than the elimination of the cross from the messiahship.”83 By asking his disciples to watch and pray with him, Jesus also shows awareness that they “will be scandalized by him and will desert and deny him (14:27–37; cf. 14:50).”84 In this moment of weakness Jesus hopes to avoid what apparently comes down to a complete failure of his ministry.85 To accept God’s will also means having his mission defeated, his calling and messianic task failed.86 When his (human) will struggles with the divine will, Jesus for a moment doubts the path of suffering. This, by implication, means that his petition entails the desire to be allowed to implement a plan of action to accomplish the Messianic task which is the very opposite of God’s will in this regard, one namely, that uses violence and domination, instead of suffering and service, to achieve this end.87 But by means of prayer, Jesus is able to overcome this temptation. Three times he withdraws from the three disciples88 he had chosen to accompany him to be alone with God. His initial wish to have “the hour passed” (Mark 14:35) and “the cup removed” (14:36) from him is followed by a resolute

62 Lena Lütticke and Hans-Ulrich Weidemann commitment to God’s will. While Jesus does express his own desire, he at the same time subordinates his will to God’s will: “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (14:36). However, it takes time until Jesus has fully come to terms with his Father’s plan: Three times he returns to his disciples, and three times he withdraws to pray. One can therefore assume that he ‘prays himself’ into alignment with God’s will. Prayer, thus, is the appropriate medium to resist and overcome temptation according to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew.89 This is also refected in the crucifxion: When dying, forsaken, Jesus addresses his Father one last time with the words of Ps 22:2, i.e., with prayer language. His last words on the cross (Mark 15:34 par. Matt 27:46) display an inner confict similar to that in Gethsemane. On the one hand, Jesus desperately asks: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” On the other, it is obvious that he must die this painful, lonely death on the cross for the judgment of the world’s sin to which he has submitted obediently. Signs of hope and divine presence persist even in the hour of death: The curtain of the temple is torn in two (Mark 15:38), the Roman (i.e., Gentile!) centurion identifes Jesus as “Son of God” (15:39), and, last but not least, Psalm 22 – of which Jesus only utters the opening verse – will turn into a long line of confdent praise (V. 22–31). The Gospel of Matthew, in particular, emphasises the protective/supportive function of prayer in temptation. It employs the Lord’s Prayer as “the authoritative prototype,”90 which notably contains the petition “lead us not into temptation” (Matt 6:13). In the Matthean Gethsemane scene Jesus emphatically practises what he preaches: He taught his disciples to pray to God as their “Father in heaven” (6:9) that “your will be done” (6:10). Now that he himself is tempted to disobey, he prays with the words of his own model prayer: Twice he addresses God as πάτερ μου (26:39.42) and twice he prays that if there was no other way, God’s will should take effect. While Mark 14:39 states that when Jesus returns to pray for the second time he is “saying the same words,” Matt 26:42 gives another detailed account of his words: πάτερ μου, εἰ οὐ δύναται τοῦτο παρελθεῖν ἐὰν μὴ αὐτὸ πίω, γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου. Any careful reader/listener of the gospel will immediately note that Jesus’ petition literally resembles the third petition in the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew, thus, has adapted Mark’s version of Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer to match his teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount. In the appeal to the disciples, the evangelist also slightly modifes the verb ἔλθητε (Mark 14:38) to εἰσέλθητε (Matt 26:41), which is closer to Matt 6:13 (καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν). The “doubling” of a verb with the prefx εἰσ- followed by the preposition εἰς is typically Matthean,91 and, thus, Jesus’ warning to “watch and pray not to enter into temptation” is reminiscent of the sixth petition in the Lord’s Prayer. With these allusions to 6:9–13, Matthew depicts Jesus as praying along the lines of his own model. While he need not cite all the exact words in Gethsemane, he defnitely prays that his Father’s will be done – and given the context of 26:41, it is likely that he also asks to be kept from temptation.

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The fact that he prays and eventually overcomes the temptation to depart from God’s plan distinguishes Jesus from his disciples. They fail to “watch and pray,” even though they have been instructed to do so three times (cf. Mark 14:41). Each time Jesus returns, he fnds them sleeping and they all will soon leave him and fee (14:50). Peter, who had previously attempted to keep Jesus from his death (8:31–33) and, hence, had been called ‘Satan,’92 will even deny him (14:66–72). The contrast between Jesus and his disciples, therefore, is the point of the Gethsemane episode.93 He struggles but regains obedience through prayer, while the weakness of their fesh (14:38) makes them fall asleep and eventually betray their master. Some fnal remarks on Luke: Luke’s account of Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives is decidedly different from the Markan/Matthean version. For one, he does not locate it in the “place called Gethsemane” (Mark 14:32; Matt 26:36) but in “the place” (Luke 22:40) on the Mount of Olives (22:39). The scene is shorter; Jesus only withdraws for prayer once and he does not single out three of his disciples but tells all of them in the beginning to pray not to enter into temptation (20:40 προσεύχεσθε μὴ εἰσελθεῖν εἰς πειρασμόν). This appeal is repeated literally in V. 46 and therefore frames the narrative unit as Jesus’ frst and last utterance. Other than in Mark and Matthew, the disciples have been instructed about the purpose of their prayer from the start. The emphasis is, thus, placed on their (possible) temptation, which is drawing near with Judas (V. 47), who is possessed by Satan (22:3). Judas has already entered into temptation and so will Peter – the only one who follows Jesus after he has been arrested (22:54) and who emphatically denies him three times.94 Jesus, by contrast, is not really at risk of falling into temptation. While it is true that in Luke the opposing purposes of God and Satan also coalesce in the prayer scene, “Jesus embraces the cup in obedience to the divine purpose [… and] accept[s] the fate willed for him by Satan.”95 He is presented as an athlete wrestling heavily against the Satanic opposition (cf. 22:44: “agony,” “praying more earnestly,” “sweat like great drops of blood,” etc.), but he is not alone. The most striking difference between the Lukan and the Markan/Matthean versions is Luke’s addition of the appearance of an “angel from heaven” strengthening Jesus in his agony (22:43). In Luke, therefore, God does respond to Jesus’ prayer – not by removing the cup but at least by providing strength for the ordeal. With this divine support, Jesus is a priori protected from temptation. Moreover, Luke does not present Jesus as ‘greatly distressed and troubled’ but as confdently fghting the ‘spark’ of disobedience. He does not really ask God to remove the cup from him (cf. the more urgent language in Mark 14:36 and Matt 26:39) but rather subordinates his will to his Father’s from the start: His prayer begins with πάτερ, εἰ βούλει … and immediately transitions into the petition πλὴν μὴ τὸ θέλημά μου ἀλλὰ τὸ σὸν γινέσθω.96 Thus, even though Jesus’ will initially differs from that of God, he would not dare ask for anything other than what his Father wants. In the Lukan version, therefore, Jesus is considerably less

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close to temptation (i.e., disobedience) than he is in Mark and Matthew – and he will explicitly reject the mere thought of it in the Gospel of John (cf. John 12:23.27f.).

2 Tempted by fear of death – temptation of Jesus in the Letter to the Hebrews The Letter to the Hebrews explicitly mentions a temptation of Jesus during his earthly life, i.e., his time “in blood and fesh” (cf. Hebr 2:14). The verb πειράζειν occurs in relation to Jesus twice: in Hebr 2:18 and 4:15.97 It does not, however, refer to a temptation by the devil/Satan at the beginning of his ministry (even though the devil is mentioned in 2:14; not as the ‘tempter’ but as ‘the one who has the power of death’). Therefore, unlike in the wilderness temptation of the Synoptic gospels, Jesus is not (tentatively) tempted by power, greed, hunger, etc. He is instead tempted by his fear of death. Signifcantly, this is a feature he shares with “every one of us” (cf. Hebr 4:15) – it is part of the human condition. Two sections need to be taken into account: Hebr 2:5–18 and 4:14–5:10 (esp. 4:15 and 5:7–10). Hebrews employs the temptation of Jesus as an important issue for his qualifcation as the perfect High Priest, who has compassion for us. Jesus is qualifed as the perfect High Priest by means of his suffering and death, but also by means of his temptations (and ability to still remain without sin). P. Nyende is therefore right to claim that “Hebrews’ commentary on Jesus’ temptations are within the context of Jesus’ mediatorial roles, and more specifcally, as we shall see shortly, within the context of his priestly role.”98 Hebrews 2:5–18 deals with Jesus’ relation to the believers. In this section, the temptation, suffering, and death of the Son are presented as ‘the path to glory’ both for Jesus himself and for the believers. The focus is on Jesus’ earthly life, since he “was made for a little while lower than the angels” (Ps 8:5–7).99 Through his humiliation he gets to “taste death for everyone” (Hebr 2:9). Hebr 2:10 emphasises that by imposing suffering on Jesus, God is “bringing many sons (and daughters) to glory.” This ‘glory’ (δόξα) is the same that the Son was crowned with at his exaltation (Hebr 2:7). It is closely related to salvation (σωτηρία) in Hebr 2:10: The founder (ἀρχηγός) of that salvation is perfected through suffering, for he must be totally identifed with those he sanctifes. The condition of the ‘children’ (τὰ παιδία) is one in which they “share in blood and fesh” (2:14: κεκοινώνηκεν αἵματος καὶ σαρκός), i.e., human beings permanently share with one another a common human condition. One of the key claims of Hebr 2:5–18 is that Jesus fully shares this human ‘nature’ – he partook (μετέσχεν) of that human condition. According to Hebr 2:14, therefore, Jesus is a “true human being, a genuine partaker of fesh and blood.”100 His participation in blood and fesh resulted in his death, and through death he broke the power of the one who holds sway over death, i.e., the devil. This led to the release of those who the devil

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held captive (2:15). Jesus’ incarnation, suffering, and death have, on the one hand, enabled him to destroy the one who holds its power (2:14), and, on the other, to free those who have been held in bondage by the fear of death (φόβος θανάτου) (2:15).101 It is important to note that this liberation, which results from Jesus’ victory over death, is seen as a release from the lifelong fear of death (ὅσοι φόβῳ θανάτου διὰ παντὸς τοῦ ζῆν ἔνοχοι ἦσαν δουλείας).102 Verses 17 and 18 then “explicitly introduce for the frst time the theme of Christ’s high priesthood.”103 According to 2:17, Jesus has to be linked to his brothers and sisters in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in matters pertaining to God, in order to make expiation for the sins of the people. Verse 18 then adds that “he is able to help those who are being tempted” (τοῖς πειραζομένοις) because (γάρ) “he himself has suffered when tempted” (πέπονθεν αὐτὸς πειρασθείς). The participle πειρασθείς does not refer to the temptation stories of the gospels but to Jesus’ suffering,104 even though it is unclear whether it points to Gethsemane or to “the cross as being itself Christ’s supreme πειρασμός.”105 Following the logic of Hebr 2:17f., Jesus was ‘tested’ in his suffering because his brothers and sisters too are being tested. This specifc interpretation of Jesus’ suffering (and, by implication, his death) as ‘temptation’ or ‘testing’ “recurs in 5:7, though without the use of πειράζω, so an implicit allusion to the fnal test of the cross is possible, as perhaps in 12:4 (cf. 12:2).”106 Hebr 2:5–18, thus, presents a complex network of Jesus’ function as merciful high priest and his relation to the believers, which is grounded in the shared experience of temptation. P. Ellingworth concludes that [b]y the end of the paragraph, it is clear that it is precisely through Christ’s temptation, suffering, and death that he was and is able to help human beings, and so carry out the work for which God has exalted him.107 The “knitting together of the purpose of Jesus’ temptations to his priestly role of intercession is more pronounced” in another context, namely Hebr 4:14–16.108 The two verses need to be considered within the larger frame of 4:14–5:10, which forms one pericope.109 While the motif of Jesus as high priest was only briefy touched upon in 2:17, it is “more fully developed”110 here. “We” (i.e., the believers) “have a great high priest” (4:14). He entered into God’s presence passing through the heavens. Importantly, he is able to sympathise with our human weakness. This is based on the fact that he was tried in every respect like every other human being, even if this likeness excludes sin (cf. 4:15).111 Hebr 4:15 strongly emphasises the ὁμοιότης of the tempted human Jesus to the addressees; his mercies “are grounded in his intimate experience of their humanity and the temptations thereof.”112 The two perfect forms διεληλυθόντα (V. 14) and πεπειρασμένον (V. 15) underline that both Jesus’ exaltation and his temptations “are now viewed as permanent aspects of the Christ-event.”113 Thus, the temptations serve

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the particular purpose of qualifying “him to be a priest by enabling him to sympathize with those whom he represents before God and then intercede for them accordingly.”114 The question then arises: what kind of temptation or testing did the author of the letter have in mind? Hebr 2:10–18 prepares us for the answer that is ultimately provided in 5:7–10: Both texts refer to Jesus as “being perfected” (2:10: τελειῶσαι; 5:9: τελειωθείς). Since human beings who share in blood and fesh are subjected to slavery by fear of death (2:15), fear of death is the ultimate temptation of Jesus. This becomes obvious in 5:7–10. Jesus, the high priest, fully shared in the temptations of a life in blood and fesh, i.e., the temptation by the fear of death to which his followers are exposed. Even though there are almost no verbal connections to the story of his agony in Gethsemane, it seems likely that the author of Hebrews is alluding to it.115 This is because Hebr 5:7 explicitly refers to Jesus’ earthly ministry and claims that he had “offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death.” The idea of Jesus both praying and crying is reminiscent of the crisis at the end of his ministry, as narrated by the Synoptics. Moreover, the predication of God as ‘the one who was able to save him from death’ suggests the content of Jesus’ prayer, namely to be saved from death – or, in Markan terminology, that the ‘cup be removed’ from him. The phrase ἐκ θανάτου, however, is (deliberately) ambiguous: it can either mean “from [impending] death” or “out of death.”116 Hebr 5:7 then adds that Jesus’ prayer was heard, but it was answered in his exaltation. What follows is another complex interlocking of Jesus’ feshly vulnerability and his priestly status. The condition of sharing in blood and fesh is the condition of realising the perfection of his priestly status. It is the condition of being tempted by the fear of death and suffering and dying. While suffering and death are without doubt “an essential part of the Son’s salvifc work,”117 it is his temptation that qualifes him to be the compassionate high priest. For the confdence of his audience, the author of Hebrews points out that this superior priestly intercessory role of Jesus was evident during his earthly ministry when he made prayers and supplications to God, which were heard (Heb. 5:7–10).118 Hebr 5:8f. then claims that Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered, and being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.” Jesus’ sufferings – his fear of death as well as the painful death itself – had an educational effect119 on him, which is stressed here to portray him as a salvifc model for believers. Because Jesus shares in blood and fesh and because he shares in human temptation and suffering, he saves those who share in his obedience in that they obey him. The tempted and suffering Jesus in the Letter to the Hebrews, thus, is the cause of salvation as well as its model.

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3 Summary and prospects We have shown that the New Testament texts basically narrate two different stories of Jesus being ‘tempted’ or ‘tested’ by God, one at the beginning and one towards the end of his ministry.120 While the so called ‘wilderness temptation’ occurs only in the Synoptic gospels, the critical experience (in Gethsemane) is – in one way or another – recounted in all canonical gospels and in the Letter to the Hebrews. The former is a genre-conforming, stylised account of a hero embarking on his mission, and the latter an interpretation of a multiply recollected event. The many different witnesses to the ‘Gethsemane crisis’ – which, as the downplaying approaches by Luke and John show, is quite adverse to the biblical portrayal of Jesus – speak in favour of its historicity. As opposed to this, the historical truth of the wilderness temptation – if there is any – is much harder to grasp. One should be aware that when dealing with Mark 1:12f. (parr.), methods of historical inquiry can only be applied to a certain extent due to literary stylisation. ‘Temptation’ is a theological category in the frst place.121 It is used by several New Testament authors to interpret and describe different moments in the life of Jesus. Since (historical) events are generally ambiguous and ambivalent, it is striking that different authors associate the ‘Gethsemane event’ with temptation. Mark uses Jesus’ crisis to illustrate his threefold prayer for alignment with the will of the (silent) Father. The term ‘temptation’ is explicitly applied only to the disciples, but the reader/listener of the gospel learns that Jesus ‘watches and prays’ and ultimately triumphs over temptation, for he succumbs to the will of God. He has been tempted by disobedience, but he resists by means of prayer. Matthew goes even further by connecting the prayer scene with Jesus’ teachings on prayer in Matt 6, particularly with the petition not to be led into temptation in Lord’s Prayer. The Letter to the Hebrews, which does not specifcally mention Gethsemane but refers to a testing closely resembling the Synoptics’ account, emphasises that Jesus was tempted by the fear of death. He shares in this human experience because he ‘partakes in blood and fesh’ and thereby qualifes as a compassionate high priest. Fear of death is of course implied in the ‘distress’ and ‘sorrow’ of the Markan/Matthean Jesus as well, but the point of the gospel authors is that this fear might tempt him to disobey his Father. The Letter to the Hebrews, by contrast, uses the concept of obedience to highlight that Jesus is both the cause as well as the model of salvation. The same end-of-life crisis is also echoed in Luke and John. This is strong evidence ex negativo for the historical plausibility of a crisis experience at the end of Jesus’ life. These two authors, however, do not interpret his troubled mind in the light of temptation. Luke adapts the Markan Gethsemane prayer in such a way that the elements of crisis and temptation are softened and overshadowed by Jesus’ athletic fght against the Satanic opposition, in which he is supported by an angel. The third evangelist also uses

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the concept of temptation for the disciples in this context but, in contrast to Mark and Matthew, the reader is not compelled to draw inferences from their situation about Jesus’. The Johannine Jesus merely mentions that his “soul is troubled” (John 12:27). He then adds the rhetorical question: “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?” only to reaffrm Jesus knows full well that “for this purpose I have come to this hour.” Nevertheless, it is striking that even John integrates Jesus’ troubled mind into his Christology. And this is not the frst time that Jesus was moved in the face of death: In John 11:33, Jesus is “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” when he sees Mary, Lazarus’ sister, weeping over her brother’s death. He then weeps himself as he visits Lazarus’ tomb (11:35) and is “deeply moved again” on his second visit (11:38). The Jews therefore comment: “See how he loved him” (11:36). In a way that is semantically and conceptionally different from both the Synoptics as well as the Letter to the Hebrews, John also depicts Jesus as compassionate and troubled in the face of death. Nowhere, however, does John speak of Jesus as being ‘tempted’ or ‘tested’ by God. The fnal question that should be addressed in the interest of this volume is: Could Jesus have failed in the face of testing? An exegetical answer, indebted to the text, can only be a short one. Several New Testament texts narrate different tests of Jesus, all of which he passes. From a narratological point of view, a ‘failure’ is, of course, impossible for the development of the story. The wilderness temptation, in particular, expects Jesus to resist all of Satan’s temptations because this is the genre-specifc outcome. His testing in Gethsemane, however, is different. It would not make much sense to interpret Jesus’ prayerful struggle as temptation if failure was not at all an option (this is exactly the challenge of the Lukan account). But even though Jesus sincerely struggles in both Mark and Matthew, and needs to pray (!) in order to succeed (i.e., he cannot just divinely resist the desire for disobedience), he wins over temptation in the end. Nothing else can really be deduced from the text. Notably, and unlike Hebrews (!), the Synoptics reserve the category πειρασμός for the disciples in this context, even though Jesus himself experiences just the same. Maybe this refects their caution in dealing with the concept that, in their view, best describes his crisis but that is a loaded term at the same time.

Notes 1 Cf. the title of the essay by Martin Hasitschka, “Der Sohn Gottes – geliebt und geprüft. Zusammenhang von Taufe und Versuchung Jesu bei den Synoptikern, in ed. Christoph Niemand, Forschungen zum Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt: Festschrift für Albert Fuchs (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2002), 71–80. 2 Cf. Heinrich Seesemann, Art. “πεῖρα”, in: ThWNT VI (1965), 33: “Unter den Briefen des NT betont der Hebräerbrief mit ganz besonderer Eindringlichkeit die Tatsache, daß Jesus zu seinen Lebzeiten versucht wurde”.

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3 The temptation in the wilderness foreshadows the subsequent three temptations by the Pharisees (and the Herodians) in Mark (8:11; 10:2; 12:15). It indirectly qualifes them as “satanic”. Cf. Jeffrey B. Gibson, The Temptations of Jesus in Early Christianity, JSNT.S 112 (Sheffeld: Bloomsbury Academic, 1995), 119–237 and 256–317. 4 In Matt 4:3, the evangelist accurately labels him “the tempter” (ὁ πειράζων). The present active participle perfectly underlines his agency. 5 Cf. Arnd Herrmann, Versuchung im Markusevangelium. Eine biblischhermeneutische Studie, BWANT 197 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011), 55f., who makes a similar point for the German language. 6 Cf. John E. McKinley, Tempted for Us. Theological Models and the Practical Relevance of Christ’s Impeccability and Temptation (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 15. According to him (ibid., 15f.), Determination of the sense depends on the context. Some New Testament occurrences of πειράζω contain both senses as two sides of the experience: God tests Jesus to prove his obedience while Satan simultaneously tempts Jesus to draw him into sin. (Emphases original) 7 Remarkably, God is never said to test non-believers, peoples other than Israel, or sinners. He is entirely concerned with the justice, faithfulness, and obedience of (mostly individual) pious Jews. His testing, therefore, is always a consequence of election, cf. Michael Wolter, Das Lukasevangelium, HNT 5 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 178f. 8 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 56 (emphases original). 9 Cf. Herrmann, Versuchung (cf. n. 5), 110. 10 It is widely acknowledged that Mark’s version derives from an older preMarkan tradition, cf. Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 42. 11 Cf. Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus I, EKK I/1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 52002), 221, n. 12. 12 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 64. Cf. also ibid., 57: On the contrary, since in Mark’s time and among those schooled in the biblical tradition (as Mark and presumably his intended audience were) the notice’s wording was extremely evocative and bore a specifc set of associations, we should actually assume that […] this notice, even brief as it is, actually spoke volumes on the issue and signifed that the temptation was a trial of Jesus’ faithfulness. 13 The verb ἐκβάλλειν has a dynamic and violent character, cf. Herrmann, Versuchung (cf. n. 5), 157, n. 30, who points out that the term is frequently used in the Markan exorcisms (e.g., in 1:39), and for the expulsion of the merchants from the temple in 11:12. It emphasises that Jesus is compelled to go. 14 Cf. Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 64: “‘The Spirit’ […] is, of course, the Spirit of God. The activity in which it here engages (i.e., expulsion) is the exercise of a type of power used to bring divine purposes to fulflment”. 15 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 64. Cf. also ibid.: “Mark in effect says that this temptation is willed by God, indeed, that God is its ultimate author”. 16 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 58. 17 Herrmann, Versuchung (cf. n. 5), 154, notes that Jesus is not mentioned by name in the Markan temptation account (but the pronoun αὐτόν in Mark 1:10.12 of course refers back to Ἰησοῦς who was last mentioned in V. 9). 18 Ernest Best, The Temptation and the Passion. The Markan Soteriology, SNTS Monograph Series 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ²1990), 7.

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19 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 62, rightly argues that the defnite article, the temptation context, and the location of the wilderness in “the area which in contemporary thought was regarded as the setting of the latter half of the book of Exodus and of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy” all help defne the ἔρημος as “not just any wilderness” but as “the wilderness, the scene of Israel’s post-Exodus wanderings”. 20 Cf. Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus, EKK 2 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlagshaus / Patmos: Düsseldorf, 2010), 57: “Die Versuchung durch Satan fndet nicht am Schluß des Wüstenaufenthalts statt, sondern hält die ganze Zeit an”. For a discussion of the syntax of Mark 1:13, cf. Herrmann, Versuchung (cf. n. 5), 155, who concludes: “Die Formulierungen ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ und τεσσεράκοντα ἡμέρας sind präzisierende Umstandsbeschreibungen des den gesamten Wüstenaufenthalt Jesu prägenden Versuchungsgeschehens”. 21 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 62. Like most scholars, McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 6), 23, argues for the biblical typology as well and sees a link between the wilderness temptation accounts and “Israel’s forty years of wandering between Egypt and the conquest of Canaan”. 22 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 56. 23 McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 6), 23. 24 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 48–80, elaborates that the wilderness temptation is all about the question of whether or not Jesus would live up to the expectations raised by the proclamation in Mark 1:11. 25 Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 15. He goes on to say that “i.12f. has no conclusion; the conclusion is supplied by iii.27”. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 80. According to Gibson (ibid.), the “result” of the wilderness temptation is that Jesus “proved himself loyal and obedient to the commission he received at his Baptism”. 30 This detail must not be overlooked. In fact, the Markan “temptation account” is more accurately described as an account of “Jesus’ wilderness sojourn” that is, amongst other things, fanked by the temptation. 31 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 65. Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 8, points out that “it is unlikely that Mark would have wished to emphasise human loneliness at this stage of the story, and in his confict with Satan the Son of God could hardly have expected to fnd assistance from men”. 32 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 65 (emphases original), with reference to J. Jeremias, Art. Ἀδαμ, in: TDNT I, 141–3. 33 Cf., e.g., Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus (cf. n. 20), 57. 34 Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 8. See also Herrmann, Versuchung (cf. n. 5), 163: “die These vom eschatologischen Tierfrieden überzeugt nicht”. 35 Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 8. He goes on: The very fact that in the Messianic kingdom the beasts are at peace with man implies their normal ferceness and opposition, a fact which would have been much more obvious to those living in the Palestine of the frst century than to citizens of the western world today. 36 Herrmann, Versuchung (cf. n. 5), 164: Die wilden Tiere stellen durchaus eine Bedrohung dar. Sie sind nicht friedlich und harmlos, können aber dem Gottessohn nichts anhaben. Sein gottgegebenes Charisma, seine Geisteskraft und Gerechtigkeit hält die Tiere dermaßen im Zaum, dass sie sich vor ihm fürchten (TestNaph 8,4). (Emphasis original)

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37 Herrmann, Versuchung (cf. n. 5), 163f., who also points to TestIss 7:5–7 and TestBenj 5:2; Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 10; Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 68, who points to TestBenj 5:2 as well. 38 Cf., for instance, Herrmann, Versuchung (cf. n. 5), 163f.: “Sicher scheint mir, dass er sich von diesem Vorstellungsgut hat leiten lassen”. 39 Cf. Herrmann, Versuchung (cf. n. 5), 163, who lists 2:19; 3:14; 5:18; 14:67 as positive counterexamples but also argues that they do not necessarily support the thesis of Jesus’ harmonious coexistence with the “wild beasts”. 40 Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 9. 41 Cf. Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 9f. He ibid., points out that the Matthean/ Lukan accounts, which so often infuence the reading of Mark 1:12f., also mention the angels’ function of guarding Jesus (Matt 4:6; Luke 4:10f., quoting Ps 91:11f.). 42 Susan R. Garrett, The Temptations of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 1998), 56. 43 Cf., for instance, Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 4: “The account of the Temptation in Mark is bare of details”. 44 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 80 (and more often). 45 See Stanley E. Porter & Bryan R. Dyer, eds., The Synoptic Problem. Four Views (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016). 46 This is guided by our research interest in the Gospel of Matthew, cf. the forthcoming dissertation by Lena Lütticke, “Your Father who is in secret and sees in secret”. Matthew’s conception of God based on Matt 6:1–6.16– 18 (translated working title). Cf. also, e.g., Hans-Ulrich Weidemann, “Being a Male Disciple of Jesus According to Matthew’s Antitheses”, in eds. Ovidiu Creanga & Peter-Ben Smit, Biblical Masculinities Foregrounded, Hebrew Bible Monographs 62 (Sheffeld: Sheffeld Phoenix Press Ltd, 2013), 107–55. 47 Out of the wealth of literature on Matthew’s concept of righteousness, we will only refer to one important English monograph and one paper that points out the major interpretative problem: Benno Przybylski, Righteousness in Matthew and His World of Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Donald A. Hagner, “Righteousness in Matthew’s Theology”, in eds. MichaelJ. Wilkins & Terence Paige, Worship, Theology and Ministry in the Early Church. Essays in Honor of Ralph P. Martin, Journal for the Study of the New Testament (Sheffeld: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1992; Supplement Series 87), 101–20. 48 Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1992), 71. 49 Cf. Morris, Matt (cf. n. 48), 71: “[T]he construction seems to signify purpose: this took place in the plan of God”. 50 On the notion of God’s presence in Matthew, cf. the forthcoming dissertation by Lena Lütticke. 51 William D. Davies & Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, vol. 1 (Matthew 1–7), ICC (London/ New York: HardPress, 2004), 352, speak of “spatial progression, from a low place to a high place”. They also note that “[t]his progression corresponds to the dramatic tension which comes to a climax with the third temptation”. 52 Matthew thereby quite clearly alludes to Moses neither eating bread nor drinking water for 40 days and nights in Ex 34:28, and Elijah sustaining on the angelic food for 40 days and nights in 1 Kg 19:8. 53 The timing in Matthew differs from both the Markan and the Lukan version where the temptation is said to last for the whole duration of Jesus’ stay in the wilderness. This is the most likely reading of Mark 1:13, and it is syntactically unambiguous for Luke 4:2: ἡμέρας τεσσεράκοντα πειραζόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου.

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54 Cf. McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 6), 26: “Satan intended that Jesus respond frst by a display of divine power, and then by a deed that would precipitate a powerful divine rescue”. 55 Cf. Morris, Matt (cf. n. 48), 73: “His multiplication of loaves on those occasions was consistent with his God-ordained mission, just as was his refusal to do it here”. 56 It is noteworthy that Jesus does not resort to inherent divine powers (such as the Holy Spirit). All of his resistance to temptation is fought within his limitations as a man, which makes him a model for all humankind, cf. McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 6), 27. 57 Morris, Matt (cf. n. 48), 73, adds that “the frst-class conditional [n.b. εἰ + indicative] seems to assume the reality of the case”. 58 On the structural parallels of Jesus’ baptism and temptation in Matthew, see Hans-Christian Kammler, “Sohn Gottes und Kreuz. Die Versuchungsgeschichte Mt 4, 1–11 im Kontext des Matthäusevangeliums”, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 100 (2003), 163–86, esp. 170f. 59 God has already lived up to that promise multiple times within the narrative of Matt 1–2, so the reader of the gospel knows full well that God protects his Son. 60 Cf. Morris, Matt (cf. n. 48), 77. 61 Floyd V. Filson, A Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: Moody Publ, ²1971), 71. 62 Morris, Matt (cf. n. 48), 77. 63 On that topic, cf. the dissertation by Joshua E. Leim, Theological Grammar. The Father and the Son, WUNT II/402 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). 64 Cf. Luz, Mt I (cf. n. 11), 230. 65 Cf. ibid., 231. 66 Luke only uses the verb ἀνάγω and does not refer to a “very high mountain” (cf. Matt 4:8) or any other place. 67 The temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3). 68 Cf. Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1997), 191. 69 Ibid., 192 labels 4:1–13 “an episode of transition”. 70 Ibid. 71 Green, Luke (cf. n. 68), 192. 72 Ibid. Green furthermore points out that with the Holy Spirit standing behind Jesus “4:1–13 presents a clash of cosmic proportions” and “thus exhibits the basic antithesis between the divine and the diabolic that will continue throughout Luke-Acts”. 73 Cf. Green, Luke (cf. n. 68), 192f. 74 Mark 14:32–42; Matt 26:36–46; Luke 22:39–46. 75 Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 7. 76 Cf. Hans-Ulrich Weidemann, “Versuchung und Erprobung. Skizzen zum neutestamentlichen Umgang mit einem beunruhigenden Thema”, IKZ Communio 47 (2019), 21: „Wendet man sich vom Beginn der erzählten Vita Jesu ihrem Ende zu, dann betritt man mit der Gethsemani-Geschichte (Mk 14,32–42 par) literarisch ganz anderen Boden.“ 77 The Matthean version differs from the Markan only by using the verb εἰσέρχομαι instead of ἔρχομαι. Luke, who has an angel strengthen Jesus and thereby alleviates the crisis and temptation, makes Jesus exhort his disciples twice by saying: προσεύχεσθε μὴ εἰσελθεῖν εἰς πειρασμόν (Luke 22:40.46). 78 It is unlikely that these emotions indicate Jesus is shrinking (only) from physical pain and death. They are rather caused by the kind of death he is about to die: a death on the cross, being forsaken by his Father, cf. McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 6), 30.

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79 The cup is, of course, a cipher for the suffering and death ordained by God. But it is also more than that when given its full signifcance as the wrath of God (Ps 11:6; Isa 51:17; Ezek 23:33). Since it is God who can take the cup from Jesus, it must also be God who gives it. This is fully in line with the OT references to the cup as given by God to men to drink. 80 Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 93. 81 Ibid., 93f. 82 Best, Temptation (cf. n. 18), 30. In his chapter on “The Origin of Temptation”, Best rightly emphasises that “Satan is not even mentioned” in Gethsemane (ibid.). 83 Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 248 (emphases original). 84 Ibid. 85 Cf. Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 250. 86 Cf. ibid., 251: “[O]bedience produces nothing but a literal dead end”. 87 Ibid., 253. 88 Most of the disciples are supposed to sit in a distance (Mark 14:32) while Jesus tells the “inner Three”, i.e., Peter, James, and John, to “remain here [closer] and watch” (14:34). The trio, who had previously witnessed the transfguration, now witnesses Jesus’ desolation. 89 Cf. Gibson, Temptations (cf. n. 3), 247: “Jesus further says that the πειρασμός is something that is to be resisted and overcome through prayer (cf. 14:38a)”. 90 Hans D. Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, a Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount Including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49) (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, MN: Paulist Press International, 1995), 350. 91 Cf., e.g., 2:21; 5:20; 6:6.13; 7:21. The construction is often (but not exclusively) used to designate the entry into the βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. 92 Jesus rebukes Peter and addresses him as “Satan” for he is not setting his mind on the things of God but on the things of man (Mark 8:33). Setting one’s mind on the things (i.e., the will) of God, however, is exactly what Jesus’ struggle and prayer in Gethsemane is about. 93 Cf. Walter Schmithals, Das Evangelium nach Markus II, ÖTK 2/2 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, ²1986), 636. 94 Unlike Mark and Matthew, Luke does not explicitly state that all the disciples leave Jesus and fee (Mark 14:50/Matt 26:56). But the fact that Peter is the only one “following at a distance” (Luke 22:54) implies that the others have given up on him at this point. 95 Green, Luke (cf. n. 68), 779. He ibid. rightly emphasises that “only as the story unfolds does it become clear that Jesus’ death represents not the greatest of the devil’s achievements but actually his demise”. 96 Jesus’ language in Luke 22:42 is quite stylised; however, Luke does not hint at the Lord’s Prayer here for his version does not include the petition that God’s “will be done” (cf. Luke 11:2–4). 97 Hebr 3:8f. quotes Ps 94:8f., a warning illustrated by the reference to the time of “your fathers” in the desert. Once again, the Exodus events are employed as a prototype of the situation of the church. Hebr 11:17 refers to Abraham (Πίστει προσενήνοχεν Ἀβραὰμ τὸν Ἰσαὰκ πειραζόμενος καὶ τὸν μονογενῆ προσέφερεν). 98 Peter Nyende, “Tested for Our Sake. The Temptations of Jesus in the Light of Hebrews”, The Expository Times, 127 (2016), 525–33, here: 527. 99 In Hebr 2:9 Jesus is identifed as the “man” the psalm refers to. 100 Frederick F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 1964), 48. 101 Cf. Nyende, Tested (cf. n. 98), 528.

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102 Cf. Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia; Philadelphia, PA: Paulist Press, 1989), 93. 103 P. Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews. A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 1993), 143. Cf. also Attridge, Hebr (cf. n. 102), 95. 104 Cf. Attridge, Hebr (cf. n. 102), 96. 105 Ellingworth, Hebr (cf. n. 103), 191. 106 Ibid., 269. 107 Ibid., 144. 108 Nyende, Tested (cf. n. 98), 528f. 109 Cf. Attridge, Hebr (cf. n. 102), 137–8. 110 Ibid., 138. 111 Ibid., 140. 112 Nyende, Tested (cf. n. 98), 530. 113 Ellingworth, Hebr (cf. n. 103), 266 (our emphasis). 114 Nyende, Tested (cf. n. 98), 529. Cf. also ibid., 530: “[T]he purpose of Jesus’ temptations was to enable fully his priestly role of intercession before God for those in temptation whom he represents before God”. 115 See the discussion by Attridge, Hebr (cf. n. 102), 148–9. Cf. also Ellingworth, Hebr (cf. n. 103), 288. 116 Attridge, Hebr (cf. n. 102), 150. Cf. Ps 114:8; Hos 13:14 etc. 117 Attridge, Hebr (cf. n. 102), 152. 118 Nyende, Tested (cf. n. 98), 529. 119 Cf. Ellingworth, Hebr (cf. n. 103), 292. Attridge, Hebr (cf. n. 102), 153, points out that “Jesus can learn obedience only in the sense that he comes to appreciate fully what conformity to God’s will means”. 120 Several testings by the Pharisees take place in between these two poles, cf. n. 3. 121 It has a long tradition, and Jesus has some prominent precursors in the Old Testament, cf. n. 7.

4

God’s work and human’s contribution Jesus’ sinlessness in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Christology Cornelia Dockter

1 Preliminary remarks The Council of Chalcedon from 451 AD provides a Christological defnition that concentrates on creating a balance between two essential soteriological truths: Jesus Christ has to be truly divine in order for it to be true that it is really God himself who encounters us in Christ. And second, Jesus Christ has to be truly human to be a real counterpart for humankind, to really sympathize with our fears and sorrows, to suffer our suffering. Bringing together these two soteriological requirements is not the only diffculty that faces us when we look at the Chalcedonian defnition. The Chalcedonian text confesses the true humanity of Christ and quotes the Pauline Epistle to the Hebrews: “like us in all things, sin apart” (Hebrews 4,15). The exclusion from sin in combination with the confession of the true humanity of Christ seems to imply that true humanity does not need to entail the ability to sin. However, the Chalcedonian text is not specifc about the reason for Jesus being without sin. Was it his inability to sin (non posse peccare, i.e., impeccability) or was it really the merit of Jesus Christ that he would have been able to sin (posse peccare), but ‘just’ didn’t do it (posse non peccare)? In the latter, true humanity would imply at least the theoretical ability to sin. These two possibilities bring us to the discussion about the two-natures doctrine. A non posse peccare view of Jesus Christ is unavoidable when we think of the divine Logos being the prevailing subject of Jesus’ acts (as it would be described by the important Alexandrian theologian Cyril).1 The posse non peccare view of Jesus Christ (which may, but does not have to, entail posse peccare) is only conceivable in a Christological concept that provides the possibility of a human centre of agency in Jesus Christ – the way it is particularly stressed by the Christological school of Antioch. In the context of Alexandrian Christology, the impeccability of Christ is emphasized and ascribed to the prevailing presence of the divine Logos in him. Therefore, the question does not arise whether Jesus actually could sin during his lifetime. Since the School of Antioch stresses the true humanity of Christ, I want to focus on its Christology and ask whether the socalled Christology of separation takes the true humanity of Christ seriously

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enough to postulate that there was a possibility for Jesus to sin (a posse peccare). I want to concentrate on a theologian who made signifcant contributions to this question: Theodore of Mopsuestia, who lived in the fourth century. This theologian tried to preserve the idea of a true humanity of Christ, not without facing the accusation of being heretical. Furthermore, the examination of Theodore’s Christology will open up another feld of discussion: the question of the importance of the infuence of the Holy Spirit in the sinlessness of Jesus Christ. When the Chalcedonian Council underlines the lasting indivisibility and inseparability of the human and the divine nature of Christ, it affrms the Incarnation Christology of the Johannine prologue. John’s Christology emphasizes the real incarnation of the divine Logos (John 1,1.14). It corrects any gnostic understanding that promotes an indwelling of the Logos/the Spirit in Jesus and that negates a real identifcation of the Logos and Jesus Christ. 2 But what importance does the baptism of Christ and the descent of the Spirit have, when Christ’s divinity is suffciently expressed by the idea of the incarnation?

2 Theodore’s Christology Theodore (born around 350 AD in Antiochia, died around 428 AD in Mopsuestia) was bishop of Mopsuestia. 3 More than a hundred years after his death, in the course of the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 AD, his Christological teachings were condemned as heretical. This condemnation was provoked by the Church’s refusal of Nestorianism. Nestorius, from whom the term Nestorianism originates, was a supporter of Antioch Christology and the rival of the famous Alexandrian theologian Cyril of Alexandria. Although nowadays the majority of theologians evaluate Nestorius’ teachings in a more differentiated way,4 the Alexandrian party blamed Nestorius for proclaiming a Two-Sons Christology. In 431 AD, the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius – a victory for the Alexandrian school that soon was to be counterbalanced by the Council of Chalcedon. But not everyone accepted this Christological counterbalance. In the period that followed the Council of Chalcedon, the Alexandrian school demanded a more Alexandrian interpretation of the Chalcedonian defnition. To appease these patriarchates, the imperial church aimed to condemn three chapters that were under suspicion of denying the true divinity of Christ. 5 The condemnation of the three chapters took place at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 AD.6 Why was it Theodore of all the Antioch theologians who was chosen to manifest the Nestorian threat in this doubtful way of re-establishing the unity of faith? One of the main historical reasons may be the dissemination of Theodore’s scriptures by Nestorius’ supporters after the Council of Ephesus as substantial texts in support of Nestorian Christology. We now want to focus on the theological reasons for Theodore’s condemnation.

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According to Franz Dünzl, we can deduce how Theodore understands Christ by reading his Catechetical Lectures (homiliae catecheticae).7 As a contemporary witness of the Council of Nicaea, Theodore was well aware of the danger of the denial of the existence of a human soul (or intellect) in the person of Jesus Christ. It is frst and foremost the Alexandrian theologian Apollinaris of Laodicea who tried to justify the divinity of Christ by stating that the human intellect or the soul endowed with reason (nous) in Jesus of Nazareth is replaced by the divine Logos in the process of the incarnation. Because of this, there is no human centre of agency in Jesus – everything the person Jesus Christ does and thinks is a result of the acting and the willing of the divine Logos. It is obvious that this logos-hegemonial thinking, which leaves no space for human willing, was strongly refused by Theodore. The overcoming of any kind of Logos-Sarx Christology in which the divine Logos just assumes a human body without a human soul and intellect was pathbreaking for Theodore.8 According to him, a true human being is not imaginable without a body, an eternal human soul and a human intellect (nous).9 As the Logos became a real human being (enanthroposanta), we have to assume the same above-mentioned conditions for Jesus Christ. With this, Theodore became one of the most important representatives of a Logos-Anthropos Christology, which is not just characteristic of the Antioch school, but was, as well, taught by the Alexandrian school after the condemnation of Apollinarism. It is this adherence to the completeness of the humanity of Christ that fosters the suspicion that Theodore believed in a Two-Persons Christology consisting of the human being Jesus of Nazareth and the divine Logos. The question is how Theodore understood the unity of the humanity and the divinity of Christ. This is not just decisive for the question of how Theodore can worship the one Lord without having to address two distinct persons. The challenge to maintain the unity of the human being Jesus of Nazareth and the divine Logos also leads us directly to our initial question: How does Theodore understand the sinlessness of Christ? In his Catechetical Homilies, Theodore describes how Christ assumes the form of a human being who was just like Adam to take away human sin.10 Dünzl states correctly: “Theodore’s Christology has a soteriological aim – it shall explain how redemption came about.”11 It is the mercy of God that preserves the human being Jesus, whom the Logos has fully assumed, from sin. But being subject to the same conditions as every human, Jesus must also suffer death.12 Theodore understands the realm of the dead as the kingdom of Satan. That means, on the one hand, that Jesus falls under Satan’s control in the moment of his death on the cross. On the other hand, as he is without sin, Christ does not deserve this satanical punishment and God restores justice by raising him from the dead. The interesting thing here is the focus on the sinlessness of Jesus, which is the fundamental reason for his resurrection. Since the mercy of God preserves the human being Jesus of Nazareth from every sin and misconduct, he can overcome the human fate of dying the eternal death (i.e., the eternal separation from God).

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The interesting thing is surely not the fact that it is the sinlessness of Jesus that makes him the redeemer. In fact, it is the question about the origin or the reason of Jesus being sinless that deserves closer attention: In the works of Theodore, the sinlessness of the Redeemer is no ‘natural necessity’, as it is in the case of Apollinaris’ concept, stating that the, ‘incarnated God’ was not able to sin anyway. Rather, it is a, ‘merit’ of the real human being Jesus, supported by the grace of the Logos.13 Two observations about Dünzl’s diagnosis: (1) it is God, the Logos, that is the supportive power in Jesus’ life; and (2) in Theodore’s concept, salvation can be understood as a merit of the human being Jesus. Regarding the frst observation: In calling the Logos the supportive power in Jesus’ life, Theodore has to explain how he understands the relation between the divine Word and the human being Jesus of Nazareth. This question brings us back to Theodore’s way of thinking, the Logos-Anthropos Christology, that disassociates itself from Apollinaris’ Logos-Sarx Christology. Firstly, Theodore does not use the concept of incarnation when he speaks about the connection between the divine Logos and Jesus.14 As he wants to avoid confusing the divine and human nature and to ensure the transcendence of the Logos, he speaks of the assumption of the human being or of the divine Logos putting on a human nature.15 Thus, he is able to emphasize the preservation both of the divine and the human natures.16 The difference of the two natures of Christ is expressed by the two names: The Firstborn and the Only-Begotten.17 The name and title Firstborn shows the human nature of Christ, as he is just the frst of many (brothers and sisters) to participate in the glory of the Logos. He is the frst who is renewed by the mercy of God and, by means of this renewal, he is able to cause the renewal for the whole of creation. The role of God’s mercy, acting in the human being Jesus, is crucial here. Jesus is the frstborn Son of God because of the mercy of God, but not by nature.18 In contrast, the Only-Begotten Son is actually the divine Son by nature.19 The Logos is immutable, impassible and immortal, whereas the human temple is mutable, passible and mortal. The two natures are united in the one person (prosopon) of Christ, while conserving their difference. 20 However, the imprecise differentiation between hypostasis, person and nature – one of the most striking problems in the Christology of the Late Antiquity – also affects Theodore’s Christological approach. Usually, Theodore uses the term prosopon to describe the unity of the two natures as well as “a potential ability to express itself outwardly simply as a human being in a visible and tangible way.”21 But at the same time, the term is attributed to the person Jesus of Nazareth by itself and the person of the divine Logos by itself, as each nature is an entity (hypostasis) in itself. 22 Because of this

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impreciseness, Theodore’s concept is accused of “dyoprosopism”23 and, hence, of a two-Sons Christology. To avoid being accused of proclaiming two Sons, Theodore quotes the confession of faith that describes the Oneness of the Lord Jesus Christ. 24 This unity is assured by the concept of the synapheia akribes 25 of the two natures. In Dünzl’s translation, this expression describes a “connection in the proper sense.”26 Thus, the adjective akribes means an intensifcation of a loose, breakable connection. The connection between the Firstborn and the Only-Begotten as two ontological different entities 27 is not to break or to dissolve. 28 Even if Theodore is to be understood as a supporter of a Christology of Separation, he does not deny the unity of the one person Jesus Christ that lasts not just all his lifetime, but even in the moment of his earthly death and is the cause of the resurrection. 29 The starting point of this permanent connection is the work of the Logos, who graciously assumes the form of a human being (homo assumptus). In this way, the homo assumptus participates in the glory of the divine Son. Even if Theodore’s Assumption Christology shows strong conformity with adoptionist approaches, his Christology is not a Christology from below or a form of adoptionism in the proper sense.30 Theodore’s line of thought goes strictly from the divine Logos to the human being Jesus of Nazareth. 31 It is, thus, not a human being who is the primary cause of salvation, but the divine Logos, who is from the moment of the conception onward strongly connected to the ‘person’ Jesus of Nazareth. Even though this connection between the Logos and the human being Jesus of Nazareth is not one by nature, the concept of the synapheia akribes wants to underline the exceptionality of the strong bond between the divine and the human in Jesus Christ. The priority of the divine hypostasis of the Logos, however, shows that Theodore is a logos-Christological thinker and promotes a Christology from above. At the same time, he strongly rejects the idea of incarnation since he stresses that God’s form is never the form of a servant. 32 With this, he wants to secure the transcendence and, frst and foremost, the immutability of the divine Logos. According to Theodore, salvation does not work without the idea of an immutable Logos, who is not troubled by the power of evil.33 Theodore points to the Church Fathers who frst proclaimed the Son by nature, who is the basis for the voluntary and merciful assumption of the servant.34 The unity of the two natures is then, following the lex orandi, perfectly shown in the worship of the faithful. They praise just one Jesus Christ – the Logos together with the human being Jesus of Nazareth – as both could not, at least from the moment of the assumption on, exist without one another.35 Hence, the Logos and Jesus do have two different functions worshipped by Christians: Whereas the Logos is, by nature, the Son of God, the Only-Begotten, the frstborn Jesus participates in the glory of the divine Son in order to be God’s salvifc revelation to mankind. Despite this joint

80  Cornelia Dockter worship, only the Logos is truly divine and, thus, really deserves to be called Son of God.36 With this Christological reasoning, Theodore does not only try to refute the suspicion of adoptionism but also diminishes the danger of possibly proclaiming two Sons. Regarding the second observation: Despite the intention of proclaiming just one Christ, Theodore’s Christology is mainly characterized by the fact that he also tries to preserve the true humanity of Jesus Christ. As we have seen, this idea seems to be jeopardized by the assertion that we worship primarily the divine Son, who nevertheless cannot be separated from the human being Jesus. Is it appropriate that the salvation of humankind can be understood as a merit of the human being Jesus, as Dünzl states it (see above)? As indicated at the beginning of this chapter, all logos-hegemonial concepts exclude the possibility of a posse peccare of Christ. I posed the question of whether a Christological concept that emphasizes more the humanity of Christ permits the theoretical existence of a sinning Christ. Theodore depicts Christ in an Adam-Christ typology. Like Adam, Christ consists of a “mortal body and a reasonable soul”37; unlike Adam, he is without sin.38 The possession of a reasonable soul that is provided with free will implies mutability.39 Hence, the fact that Adam was able to sin is not rooted in his flesh but in his human will.40 It is quite probable that Theodore rejects the Augustinian idea of the transmission of original sin as this would mean that “the human race is punishable for the fault of a single representative.”41 It is the peculiarity of Theodore’s attempt that he emphasizes not just the general human ability to choose between what is good and what is bad, but also attributes the same ability to Jesus. Accordingly, this implies not just a Jesuanic human free will, but also that Jesus faces the same danger of being overwhelmed by the power of evil like Adam and his descendants. Therefore, not only does Jesus feels the human urge to eat, drink and sleep,42 he knows, as well, the despair of a human will that wants to follow the right path but is inclined to surrender to the temptation of evil. It is notable that Theodore understands Jesus’ submission under the will of the Father in a dynamistic way.43 According to Jewish law, he is circumcised and by “growing in greatness, wisdom and grace,”44 he learns “step by step like humankind”45 how to be obedient not just to his parents, but to the commandments of Moses as well. He is baptised by John, he suffers the temptations from Satan and leads a physical demanding life with travelling and praying. Theodore explicitly describes Jesus’ life as filled with “a lot of hardship and sweat.”46 The process of the renewal of the Adamites is effectively (en pragmasi) exercised by Jesus.47 In the end, he suffers on the cross to earn the fruits of his obedience in the moment of his resurrection.48 This, however, does not imply sinfulness in Jesus at any moment in his life, since divine grace preserves him from every sin. Despite Theodore’s emphasis on human freedom, he also underlines that humanity

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is in need of divine grace, as the human will alone cannot overcome the power of evil.49 Being free from sin is neither just an act of Jesus’ human will nor due to a human, immutable nature. Peter Bruns points to the idea of synergeia as the cooperation of human and divine in the context of Theodore’s concept of salvation. 50 The synapheia of the Only-Begotten and the Firstborn is the perfect example of the anthropic synergy that consists of human free will and divine grace, with the divine Logos as the basis of and the reason for the perfection of this relationship. 51 By stressing the existence of a soul endowed with reason that is not replaced by the divine Logos (contrary to Apollinaris), Theodore underlines that nature and grace are not mutually exclusive concepts. 52 The acting of the Logos does not contradict the human nature of Jesus, it corresponds with it and leads to its perfection. 53 In accordance, Justin the Martyr describes that a human beatifc vision is not possible without the gift of divine grace (here, the divine Spirit), despite the “basic human equipment with the nous.”54 The existence of a human soul and intellect in every human being is an indispensable precondition for the human ability to accommodate God’s grace. Hence, real humanity is not to be negated but to be fulflled in order to reach salvifc unity with God. 55 Following this thought, we can conclude that the human being Jesus had to face the temptations of evil and actually did have the ability to sin. Nevertheless, it was not possible for him to succumb to the temptation of sin, because of God’s merciful preservation. In contrast to the normal relationship between God and his creation, in Jesus’ life the gift of grace is a permanent one. This idea is crucial to differentiate between Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament (and all human beings after Jesus). Whereas the prophets are just occasionally flled with the grace of God and, thus, cannot claim to be absolutely free from sin, Jesus does not run the risk of losing God’s grace. Dünzl speaks of an “extraordinary grace, that is bestowed on the human being Jesus, an overabundance of permanent presence of God and divine support.”56 This concept shows a huge affnity with the so-called Spirit Christology, which emerged as an alternative to the prevailing Logos Christology. 57 Spirit-Christological concepts ascribe divinity to Christ in virtue of the Holy Spirit indwelling in him. The important point is that the general relationship between God and humankind is understood in terms of a spiritual ‘interweaving’ of creation. The same relationship marks, as well, the relationship between God and Jesus Christ with the only difference being that the Spirit works in him in a more intensive way. Hence, the difference between Christ and humans in general is understood as quantitative and not qualitative.58 This quantitative difference is a stumbling block for proponents of a Logos Christology. As long as the contrast between Christ and the Christians is merely established by a quantitative difference regarding the

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spiritual infuence, they consider the true divinity of Christ endangered. It is a typical attribute of logos-Christological concepts that the Spirit does not play any role, at least not for the character or identity of Jesus Christ. In other words, the Spirit is not constitutive for the divinity of Christ, but is just understood as a divine gift to the faithful. Hence, Christ receives the Spirit from his Father and passes it on to his disciples, but he himself does not depend on the giving of the Spirit. To avoid the risk of ‘downgrading’ Jesus Christ, logos-Christologies prefer to speak of a qualitative rather than quantitative difference between Christ and us human beings. 59 The question is how Theodore integrates the idea of a quantitative difference between Jesus and us human beings into his logos-Christological thinking.

3 Theodore’s pneumatology According to Theodore, Jesus depends – just like any other human – on receiving God’s grace in order to be saved from sin. That way he underlines the consubstantiality of Jesus and his disciples – he is not divine and sinless by nature. At the same time, Jesus possesses God’s grace in such an abundance that he does not risk losing it at any moment of his life and death. This is exactly the above-mentioned quantitative difference that marks the relationship between Jesus and mankind. In the scope of spirit-Christological concepts, this quantitative difference is characterized by the working of the divine Spirit. It is not surprising that in Theodore’s Catechetical Lectures the Spirit does not play a major role, as Theodore is a logos-Christological thinker. However, he dedicates the ninth and tenth chapter of the volume to the Spirit, to confrm the divinity of the Spirit who is of the same nature (physis) as the Father and the Son.60 He deduces the divinity of the Spirit from the history of salvation as described in Scripture: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28,19). According to Theodore, the confession of the divinity of the Spirit is essential to understanding the effects of baptism as a divine gift to the faithful.61 Hence, he clearly distances himself from the pneumatomachoi, who denied the divinity of the Spirit in the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea.62 Just as it was indispensable to state the divinity of the Son against the heresy of Arius, Theodore claims the same worship of and confession to the Spirit.63 By this, he understands himself in strong agreement with the Church Fathers who spoke of the holiness of the Spirit and, through this, implicitly states his divinity.64 It is interesting that Theodore uses the term spirit with the same doublemeaning that Dünzl fnds in the early Church Fathers in general.65 Like them, Theodore both uses the category spirit to describe God’s divine nature as well as the third person of the Trinity, who has the same spiritual nature as Father and Son.66 The Trinitarian differentiation in the Catechetical Homilies67 shows that Theodore did not follow the spirit-Christological tendency to identify Logos and Spirit.68 Furthermore, he joins the ranks

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of logos-Christological theologians, as he understood the working of the Spirit primarily as a divine gift to the faithful and, thus, in a soteriological way.69 Here, Theodore differentiates between the divine Spirit itself and the spiritual gift for the faithful. It is not the Spirit himself who is present in the faithful, but the gift of grace, bestowed by the divine Spirit.70 The Spirit grants the gift of immutability to the faithful, as he himself is immutable. At this point, Theodore connects our salvation with the salvation of the human being Jesus: Jesus has been transformed to immortality through his resurrection from the dead and through the power of the divine Spirit.71 In this, he is the Firstborn of the frstborns, granted with the gift of immortality.72 The purpose of this spiritual gift is the forgiveness and remission of all our sins.73 This remission of sins is to be understood as a total extinction of all sin, which will come about in the eternal life after our resurrection. The strong link between the concepts of immortality, immutability and sinlessness (the resurrection destroys even the smallest impulse to sin) leads us back to Christology. As already mentioned, Theodore underlines the effects of the divine Spirit for salvation. Human beings have no other avenue to obtain the remission of their sins but baptism. The sinlessness of Christ, however, is explained by his connection (synapheia akribes) with the divine Logos and, in this, he is not comparable to mankind. But in a few passages in the Catechetical Lectures, he indicates how he understands the accomplishment of this connection: The Holy Scripture speaks of “the Lord Jesus Christ” to designate the human being that God (the Logos) has assumed. The title ‘Christ’ is added to the name Jesus “to proclaim the Holy Spirit.”74 Surely, the Holy Spirit is used here as a cypher for the divine nature of Christ. But keeping in mind Theodore’s differentiation between the second and the third person of the Trinity, we can even deduce that he understands the Spirit as the divine giver of his spiritual gift to the human being Jesus and, through this, as the cause of Jesus’ connection to the Logos. The Christological infuence of the Spirit is emphasized by passages that speak of the working of the Spirit, who is the cause of Jesus’ justifcation,75 of his faultlessness and sinlessness76 and of his immortality.77 Theodore underlines that Jesus’ immortality is not due to his human nature, but due to the working of the Spirit as the giver of life (how it is described in the Nicene Creed), which is fulflled in the moment of his resurrection.78 Theodore combines soteriology, Christology and ecclesiology by drawing a line to the gifts of the Spirit that the faithful obtain through the sacrament of the Eucharist.79 The bread does not grant salvation by its mere nature, but through the working of the Spirit, who transforms the bread into the body of Christ.80 In the same way, the body of Christ is not immortal by nature, but because of the working of the Spirit. It comes as no surprise that it is the passage about the transformation of Jesus in the context of his resurrection that is criticized by the Church Fathers in the scope of the Third Council of Constantinople.81 Even if Theodore

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declares the sinlessness of Jesus to be due to the working of the Spirit,82 he speaks as well of the mutability of Jesus’ soul, not transformed into its immutable state before the resurrection from the dead.83 That implies that Jesus’ soul has been mutable and, through this, potentially sinful throughout his lifetime. As Theodore emphasizes the idea that salvation is not possible without a saviour who himself has gone through the same abysses that we have to endure, the mutability of Jesus is a necessary precondition for our salvation: “It would have been an easy and simple thing for God to make him [Jesus; C.D.] immortal, incorruptible and immutable”84 from the beginning, but he waited until the resurrection so that we can participate in the salvation of the Firstborn. This participation is granted through the sacraments of the church and, frst and foremost, through baptism and the Eucharist.85 As indicated above, the baptism of Christ himself is not the moment in which the human being Jesus is connected to the divine Logos.86 The connection with the Logos that is worked by the abundance of the spiritual grace is no sudden turning point in the life of the human being Jesus but characterizes his whole existence. Through this, Jesus’ baptism is a model (typos) for our own baptism in which we receive forgiveness for our sins. But – and this is the decisive difference – Jesus himself did not need forgiveness for his sins through baptism as he was already completely free from sin. The baptism of Jesus is a confrmation or an intensifcation of the already existing spiritual connection of the Logos and the human being Jesus that preserves him from every sin.

4 Conclusion Even if the refection of Theodore’s concept has revealed a lot of weak theological points, there are three important ideas that we can retain from his Christology so as to enrich the Christological, soteriological and anthropological discussions of our time. i Christology The last thought about the baptism of Jesus shows that Theodore takes up an interesting intermediate position between logos-Christological and spirit-Christological concepts. On the one hand, he marks a qualitative difference between Christ and us human beings, as he is the only one who stands in a close conjunction (synapheia akribes) with the divine Logos.87 Because of this relationship, which shapes Christ’s human nature from the frst moment of his existence, Jesus does not need the giving of the divine Spirit through baptism. Theodore describes the function of Jesus’ baptism as an exemplar (typos) for mankind and not in a constitutive way.88 On the other hand, the affliation of the Firstborn and the Only-Begotten is caused by the (qualitatively) same spiritual grace that is given to all human beings – just in a more intensive and in a permanent way.

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Bruns calls this intermediate position an “unpleasant […] side effect”, because of the “apparent rivalry between logos- and spirit-Christological concepts.”89 From my perspective, the juxtaposition of these concepts points to one of the most urgent problems in Christology – the missing integration of the deeds of the Spirit into Logos Christologies. Thus, I would rather say that Theodore’s oscillation between Logos and Spirit Christology is a helpful attempt not only to conceive the two natures of Christ adequately, but also to mediate the infuence of the Word and the Spirit on the person Jesus Christ.90 Theodore is able to describe the importance of the Spirit not just in the anthropological and the soteriological contexts but also in the Christological one. He fully thinks out the confession of Jesus Christ’s consubstantiality with humankind, showing the parallels between the divine Spirit working on all faithful people and on Jesus Christ, being the frst of all frstborns. Even though the awareness of the Christological importance of the Holy Spirit has increased due to objections from Spirit Christologies, contemporary Logos Christologies still tend to ignore the infuence of the Spirit in Jesus’ life. It is the divine Logos who is constitutive for the person of Christ and, through this, this assures his divinity. The weak point of every concept that is in line with the reasoning of the Alexandrian school emerges again: As soon as Christ is merely defned by the presence of the divine Logos, it is diffcult to conceive the autonomous and self-determined agency of the human being Jesus. Thus, logos-Christological concepts still tend to neglect the true humanity of Jesus Christ and overemphasize his divinity. Moreover, if the Spirit was relevant only in a soteriological but not in a Christological context, the unity of the working of the three divine persons of the Trinity might be undermined. A redefnition of the role of the Spirit that is both in accordance with Scripture as well with Christological dogmas is able to reaffrm the common working of the three divine persons in the history of salvation and, thus, contributes to an appropriate understanding of the Trinity. At the same time, contemporary Spirit Christologies fail to include the person of the divine Logos in their concepts as they ascribe the divinity of Christ completely to the working of the divine Spirit in the human being Jesus. They do not just risk interpreting Christ in an adoptionist way, thereby neglecting the true divinity of Christ. Furthermore, they completely lose sight of the importance of differentiating between the Logos and the Spirit as two distinct Trinitarian persons. The majority of Spirit Christologies use the term Logos and Spirit synonymously to describe how the transcendent God communicates with the world (in other words: how the transcendent God can become immanent). In doing so, they represent a binitarianism that is neither in accordance with Scripture nor with the doctrine of the Trinity, as developed by theologians like Tertullian and confrmed by the councils in the fourth century. On that count, Theodore’s Christology is a helpful reminder of the importance of bringing together logos- and spirit-Christological concepts,

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even if he himself fails to overcome the problem of the permanent separation of the divine Logos and the human being Jesus and, thus, is not able to fully conceive the true unity of Jesus Christ. ii Soteriology The separation between the divine Logos and the human being Jesus, which are in close conjunction because of spiritual grace, leaves room for the idea of a self-determined agency of Jesus.91 Even if Theodore emphatically underlines that Jesus was without sin at all moments of his life, his Christological approach stresses the severe temptations and the true suffering in the life of Jesus.92 Because of Jesus’ mutability, which was not perfected until his resurrection, we can deduce a potential sinfulness of Christ (posse peccare).93 The fact that Jesus did not sin is due to the preservation of the divine Logos and, thus, is caused by grace and not by nature. Theodore uses this idea to justify why it is possible to imitate Jesus and, by doing so, gain the fruits of salvation.94 Thus, we can conclude that the potential sinfulness of Jesus (Jesus, not the Logos!) is crucial for Theodore’s soteriological reasoning. In that regard, we can indeed state that Theodore manages to emphasize the merit of the human being Jesus to salvation. Even though we cannot say that Jesus really had the ability to reject God’s will and to sin, the surrender to the divine Father is based on the reality of a true human being who receives heavenly support. Here, Jesus is comparable to every human being who is supported and promoted by God’s grace through the spiritual gifts. Of course, we must not interpret the term ‘merit’ here in a contemporary way. Today we tend to speak of merits when a decision is involved that was made out of one’s own personal freedom. This would entail the availability of alternative options, either really existing (libertarianism) or at least existing in the perception of the one who has to decide between two (or more) options (compatibilism). But even Theodore, who is one of the most prominent promoters of Christ’s true humanity, does not promote the real possibility of Christ denying God’s will. That does not exclude, however, the possibility that Jesus was not aware of the divine guidance in his life and, thus, really experienced the depths of despair when facing his death on the cross. But – at least in his Catechetical Lectures – Theodore does not reason the human consciousness of Jesus. These insights present contemporary Christologies that are in line with the Antioch School of thought with a diffcult task. On the one hand, they should – like Theodore – describe the relation between nature and grace in the life of Jesus in a way that stresses the infuence of the divine grace. On the other hand, such an attempt should – unlike Theodore95 – leave room for alternative options without undermining the divinity of Christ and without putting in danger the reality of salvation.

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iii Anthropology This chapter depicted helpful fndings – by means of Theodore’s Christology  – to the question of whether there can be a posse peccare of Christ in a concept that follows the Christology of the School of Antioch. Furthermore, it showed the open questions and blind spots that hint at important tasks for contemporary Christology. But from my point of view, the most intriguing insight is related to the context of anthropology. In the context of his Adam-Christ typology, Theodore describes the humanity of Jesus in a way that is compatible with the real conditions and problems of human existence.96 In this, Theodore’s Christology is remarkable as he draws attention to the need to not defne human existence from the perspective of its perfection. Theodore underlines that Jesus was truly corruptible during his lifetime and did not receive the incorruptible state before his suffering on the cross and his resurrection.97 As much as he runs the danger of not emphasizing enough both the self-determination of Jesus as well as the unity of the person Jesus Christ, the endeavour to respect the abysses of human existence shows the particularity of Theodore’s Christological approach. Even the important representative of the School of Antioch, Maximus Confessor, does not go as far as to take seriously the idea that human existence is not understood properly without breaches. In contrast to Theodore, Maximus was vindicated by the Third Council of Constantinople in 680/81 AD. His struggle with monothelitism in the seventh century in favour of dyothelitism makes him an important defender of Christ’s humanity. Even if we cannot go deep into the Christological thoughts at this point, we can take a look at how Maximus understands Christ’s humanity. In contrast to the monothelite thinking of his opponent Pyrrhus von Constantinople I, Maximus stresses the existence of two wills in Christ – the human and the divine will.98 To avoid the so-called Nestorian problem of bursting the unity of the person Jesus Christ, he differentiates between the ability of the will (potentia) and the acting of the will (actus). Whereas the ability of the will is located at the level of natures, the realization of this ability is attributed to the hypostasis. Here, Maximus makes use of the Christological developments both of the Council of Chalcedon as well as of the Christology of Neo-Chalcedonism, which advances the Christological differentiation between hypostasis and nature. Maximus defnes the human will as something that strives to fulfl the purpose it befts according to its original nature. The human nature is characterized by being the image of God. Through Adam’s sin, this nature is corrupted but stills holds the ability to move towards fulflment in God, who is both the origin and the aim of striving humans. According to Maximus, it is a typical characteristic of human existence to be either able to fulfl or reject this movement towards God. In this, human beings possess a certain amount of freedom, even if the frst step as well as the fulflment of

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the movement towards God depends on divine grace. Whereas human beings can, thus, choose not to fulfl the will of God (and thereby act against their own nature), this possibility is excluded in the Christological context. Maximus refutes the possibility that the human will of Jesus decides against the divine will of the Logos. Thus, there is no true freedom of will or gnomic will in the person Jesus Christ. Maximus and Theodore coincide in emphasizing the sinlessness of Christ and in underlining the consensus of will between the divine Logos and the human being Jesus. The important difference is the way the two theologians proceeded to save the true humanity of Christ. Whereas Theodore elects the problematic way of distinguishing sharply between the Firstborn and the Only-Begotten, Maximus reinterprets the defnition of true humanity.99 According to him, the freedom of will is a “perversion of nature,”100 a defcient modus of the original purpose of humanity and a result of Adam’s original sin. As Jesus’ humanity lacks the ability to choose between the option of fulflling or not-fulflling God’s will, he is the true, perfect human being.101 In other words: the lack of freedom of alternative possibilities does not make him less, but even more human. But in my view, no Christology or soteriology should defne humanity without taking into account both the reality of failure and the consequences that sin has for human existence as well as the human potential of overcoming the temptations of evil. In this regard, I agree with Bruns’ statement that the “neutral status of the primordial man beyond sin and mercy and between mortality and immortality […] is more than a pointless precondition for the right understanding of the Christological question that is based on these preconditions.”102 The question is whether there is a way to secure the true humanity of Christ without defning true humanity as impeccable.103 A Christology that is sensible for the needs of human beings has to include the experience of being truly tempted and of undergoing devastating fear and suffering. Such a Christology would have important consequences for both ecclesiology and the theology of the sacraments. It makes a huge difference when humans are viewed and treated in light of an unrealizable sinlessness or against the backdrop of the breaches and abysses of life, in which the grace of God is able to support and fulfl human freedom.

Notes 1 Which does not have to contradict the true humanity of Christ, as long as that true humanity is understood in terms of its supralapsarian status. The differentiation between an antelapsarian/prelapsarian/supralapsarian and a sublapsarian/postlapsarian/infralapsarian understanding of the human nature refers to the condition of humankind with no regard to and with regard to Adam’s fall and is originally linked to the discussion about God’s predestination (see Heribert Schützeichel, Art. “Antelapsarier, Supralapsier,” LThK 1 (2006), 718). An infralapsarian perspective on humanity perceives all humans as being inevitably sinful due to the original sin committed by Adam. A Christology

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that wants to ensure the non posse peccare of Christ has to either completely “abandon the dogma of original sin, […] deny the reality of Christ’s fesh” (Giulio Malavasi, “The Involvement of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the Pelagian Controversy: A Study of Theodore’s Treatise Against those Who Say that Men Sin by Nature and Not by Will”, Augustiniana 64 [2014], 227–60, here 254) or to refer to the humanity of Christ as representing the human being in its supralapsarian status. Cf. Michael Theobald, Die Fleischwerdung des Logos. Studien zum Verhältnis des Johannesprologs zum Corpus des 4. Evangeliums und zum 1. Johannesbrief (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988); Id., Das Evangelium nach Johannes. Kapitel 1–12 (Regensburg: Pustet, 2009). For a general overview of Theodor’s life and theology cf. Alois Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche. Volume 1: Von der Apostolischen Zeit bis zum Konzil von Chalcedon (Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder, 31990), 614–34; Hubertus Drobner, Lehrbuch der Patrologie (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 32011), 331–5. Cf. Karl-Heinz Menke, Denkformen und Brennpunkte der Christologie (Regensburg: Pustet, 2008), 254–7. The subject matter of the so-called Three-Chapter Controversy were the following texts (and persons): a letter of Ibas of Edessa who argued in favour of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the scriptures of Theodore of Kyros against Cyril and the person and the scriptures of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Of course, this condemnation did not affect the judgment of the East Syrian Church that already separated from the Imperial Church around the Council of Ephesus (431) and maintained the veneration of Nestorius as their most important Church Father. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien. Zweisprachige Neuausgabe christlicher Quellentexte aus Altertum und Mittelalter. Translated and introduced by Peter Bruns (Freiburg: Herder, 1994–1995 [Fontes Christiani; 17]). Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 5,9f. (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 140–2 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 5,15–17 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 146–8 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 5,17–18 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 147–9 Bruns). Franz Dünzl, Geschichte des christologischen Dogmas in der Alten Kirche (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2019), 83–95, here 86 [own translation]. “Christ assumed a human nature that, for Theodore, is characterised by death but not by sin” (Malavasi, “The Involvement of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the Pelagian Controversy,” 244). Dünzl, Geschichte des christologischen Dogmas, 87 [own translation]. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 8,15 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 199f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 3,5f. (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 106f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 6,4f.; 8 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 156–8; 185–202 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 3,6–11 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 106–13 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 3,6 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 106f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 3,11 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 112f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 3,6 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 106f. Bruns); Frederick G. McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Understanding of Two Hypostaseis and Two Prosōpa Coinciding in One Common Prosōpon,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18 (2010), 393–424. Frederick G. McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” Theological Studies 61 (2000), 447–80, here 463. Cf. Peter Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden. Eine Studie zu den katechetischen Homilien des Theodor von Mopsuestia (Louvain: Peeters,

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Cornelia Dockter 1995), 213–5; Id., Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien. Erster Teilband, 111, footnote 11. Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden, 203, 215 [own translation]. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 3,1–4 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 103–6 Bruns). Gr. συνάφεια ἀκριβής, lt. coniunctio exacta (cf. ibid., 3,4.6f.10 [Fontes Christiani 17,1, 105–9.111f. Bruns]). Dünzl, Geschichte des christologischen Dogmas, 89 [own translation]. Cf. Bruns, Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien. Erster Teilband, 105, footnote 4. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 8,7.15 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 190f.200f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 5,6 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 138 Bruns). Theodore does differentiate himself clearly from adoptionist approaches such as the Christology of Paul of Samosata, whom he calls an “angel of Satan” (ibid., 13,8 [Fontes Christiani 17,2, 348 Bruns] [own translation]). Nevertheless, Theodore cannot fully free himself from the accusation of maintaining at least “a residual sort of adoptionism” (Aryeh Kofsky & Serge Ruzer, “Theodore of Mopsuestia. Rationalizing Hermeneutics and Theology,” in eds. Yohanan Friedmann & Christoph Markschies, Rationalization in Religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam [Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2019], 74–102, here 93). Cf. Frederick G. McLeod, “Two Major Attempts to Articulate an Authentic Role for Christ’s Humanity in Salvation,” Irish Theological Quarterly 79 (2014), 241–64, here 247: Theodore “is distinguishing the Word as the metaphysical subject of unity from the functional level where Christ as the one who is both divine and human, can operate as one, but yet in two different ways.” Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 8,1 (Fontes Christiani 17,1 185f. Bruns). Cf. Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden, 233f. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 3,10 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 111f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 8,14 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 197f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 3,8.11; 8,15f. (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 109.112f.; 199–201 Bruns). Ibid., 5,17 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 147 Bruns) [own translation]. “Theodore […] considered Christ as man to be the true archetype who fulfls the role of God’s image in Adam. […] [He] envisaged Christ as man as constituting the integral unity of all creation that Adam prefgured as a type and that is now perfectly fulflled in Christ” (McLeod, “Two Major Attempts,” 251). See as well McLeod’s thoughts about Adam and Christ as the imago Dei (Id., “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” 456–61). Cf. Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden, 178f. “For Theodore, sin is an effect of free will, while for his opponents human nature is essentially sinful” (Malavasi, “The Involvement of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the Pelagian Controversy,” 236). Ibid., 241. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 5,9 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 140f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 6,8–10 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 160–3 Bruns). Aryeh Kofsky and Serge Ruzer impressively depict the idea of a human development of Jesus in Theodor’s Christology: (cf. Kofsky & Ruzer, “Theodore of Mopsuestia,” 93). Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 6,8 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 161 Bruns) [own translation]. Ibid., 6,11 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 164 Bruns) [own translation]. Ibid., 6,8 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 161 Bruns) [own translation].

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Cf. ibid., 6,12 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 164f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 7,1–4 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 169–73 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 5,9; 16,29 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 140f.; 17,2, 444 Bruns). Cf. Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden, 171–5. Here it also becomes apparent that although Theodore strengthens the idea of human freedom, he is not a representative of an extreme Pelagian position according to which man can be sinless through his own efforts (see Malavasi, “The Involvement of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the Pelagian Controversy,” 242, 248). Thus, we can speak of a “consensus of will” between the assumed man and the assuming Word (McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” 467), in which the Logos always holds the “principal role within the incarnation” (ibid., 479). For a further examination of Theodore’s position on the relation between divine grace and human freedom see Rowan A. Greer, “The Analogy of Grace in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Christology,” Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983), 82–98, here 92–98. Cf. Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden, 169f. “The unique operation of God’s grace explains the unique humanity of the Man” (Greer, “The Analogy of Grace,” 96). Franz Dünzl, Pneuma. Funktionen des theologischen Begriffs in frühchristlicher Literatur [Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum; Ergänzungsband 30] (Münster: Aschendorff, 2000), 264 [own translation]. Of course, this leads to the underlying debate about the appropriate relationship between human freedom and divine grace that primarily infuenced discussions in scholastic times and that remains a major point for discussion even for contemporary anthropological and Christological approaches (cf. McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” 478f.). Dünzl, Geschichte des christologischen Dogmas, 92 [own translation]. Cf. Ulrike Link-Wieczorek, Inkarnation oder Inspiration? Christologische Grundfragen in der Diskussion mit britischer anglikanischer Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998 [Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie; 84]), 236–48. Cf. Michael Preß, Jesus und der Geist. Grundlagen einer Geist-Christologie (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2001), 19; Roger Haight, Jesus. Symbol of God (Maryknoll/New York: Orbis Books, 1999), 432. Cf. Karl-Heinz Menke, “Inspiration statt Inkarnation?, oder: Das heterogene Phänomen der ,Geist- Christologien‘” in Id., Das unterscheidend Christliche. Beiträge zur Bestimmung seiner Einzigkeit (Regensburg: Pustet, 2015), 411–50, here 413, 415, 425; Georg Essen, “Die Personidentität Jesu Christi mit dem ewigen Sohn Gottes. Dogmenhermeneutische Überlegungen zur bleibenden Geltung der altkirchlichen Konzilienchristologie,” Communio 41 (2012), 80–103, here 91f. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 9,3–6 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 205–8 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 9,3.15 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 205f.215f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 9,14 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 214 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 9,2.6 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 204.207f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 9,7 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 208f. Bruns). Cf. Dünzl, Pneuma, 379. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 9,9–18 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 209–19 Bruns). Ibid., 9 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 203–19 Bruns). Cf. Link-Wieczorek, Inkarnation oder Inspiration?, 247f. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 10 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 220–38 Bruns).

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Cornelia Dockter Cf. ibid., 10,7.9 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 225.227 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 10,11f. (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 229f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 10,19 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 235 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 10,20 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 236 Bruns). Ibid., 3,4 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 105 Bruns) [own translation]. Cf. ibid., 5,19 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 150 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 5,19; 7,13 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 150; 181 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 15,11 (Fontes Christiani 17,2, 394f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 16,12 (Fontes Christiani 17,2, 431 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 15–16 (Fontes Christiani 17,2 387–456 Bruns). Cf. ibid., 15,12; 16,12 (Fontes Christiani 17,2, 396; 431 Bruns). Cf. Bruns, Theodor von Mopsuestia. Katechetische Homilien. Erster Teilband, 150, FN 23. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 5,19 (Fontes Christiani 17,1 149f. Bruns). Cf. ibid., 14,25 (Fontes Christiani 17,2, 383 Bruns). Ibid., 6,11 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 164 Bruns) [own translation]. For the baptism cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien, 12– 14 (Fontes Christiani 17,2, 319–86 Bruns); for the Eucharist cf. ibid., 15–16 (Fontes Christiani 17,2, 387–456 Bruns). Cf. as well Frederick G. McLeod, “The Christological Ramifcation of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Understanding of Baptism and the Eucharist,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 (2002), 37–75; Id., “Two Major Attempts,” 252f. “[A]t an undefned moment of the pregnancy or at the very moment of birth […] the union [between the Logos and humanity; C.D.] comes about through the mediation of the Spirit” (Kofsky & Ruzer, “Theodore of Mopsuestia,” 93). “Theodore maintains […] a profound difference between the way God showered the divine good pleasure upon Christ and all others, including the saints. For Christ’s humanity shares in the honors that the Word naturally participates in as the Son within the Trinity” (McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” 471). Cf. as well Greer, “The Analogy of Grace,” 95f. and Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden, 216f. Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 6,2.8.11 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 153f.160f.163f. Bruns). Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden, 283 [own translation]. For a more detailed discussion in this regard cf. Cornelia Dockter, Geist im Wort. Aktuelle christologische Debatten im Horizont koranischer Perspektiven (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2020 [Beiträge zur Komparativen Theologie; 32]). Cf. Kofsky & Ruzer, “Theodore of Mopsuestia,” 86; McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” 454; Id., “Two Major Attempts,” 248. Accordingly, McLeod also states with regard to the question “could Christ’s human will freely sin?”: “Theodore would have been nonplussed by the idea that Christ’s hypostatic union and his access to the beatifc vision from the time of his conception removed all possibility of his sinning” (McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” 475). Although the concept of imperishability is not specifc to Theodore, it is integrated idiosyncratically into his overall scheme of a progressive upgrade of the humanity of the assumed man, resulting from the enhanced conjunction with the Logos and, correspondingly, the realization of the full potential of grace through the Holy Spirit after resurrection. This further emphasizes that Jesus’ humanity – body and soul – even in its dignity-enhanced state after his baptism, was not yet fully perfected (Kofsky & Ruzer, “Theodore of Mopsuestia,” 97). Cf. McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” 475.

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95 Cf. Greer’s critique on Theodor’s understanding of the interaction of human freedom and divine grace: Theodore “cannot in the long run square the Man’s constant election of the good with a view of freedom that emphasizes choice between good and evil” (Greer, “The Analogy of Grace,” 98). 96 It is remarkable that Theodore understands Adam primarily as being the imago Dei and not frst and foremost as the one who brought original sin to the world. In addition, this idea of being the imago Dei refers not just to the “spiritual part of the human soul,” but “to the whole human being” (McLeod, “Theodore of Mopsuestia Revisited,” 458). 97 Cf. Theodor von Mopsuestia, Katechetische Homilien 6,8; 8,9 (Fontes Christiani 17,1, 160f.; 192f. Bruns). 98 Cf. Maximos Confessor, “Disputatio cum Phyrro,” Patrologia Graeca 91, 288–353. About Maximus Confessor’s Christology see as well Guido Bausenhart, „In allem uns gleich außer der Sünde“. Studien zum Beitrag Maximos’ des Bekenners zur altkirchlichen Christologie (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1992 [Tübinger Studien zur Theologie und Philosophie; 5]); JeanMiguel Garrigues, “L’instrumentalité rédemptrice du libre arbitre du Christ chez saint Maxime le Confesseur”, Revue Thomiste 104 (2004), 531–50; Felix Heinzer, Gottes Sohn als Mensch. Die Struktur des Menschseins Christi bei Maximus Confessor (Fribourg: Universitätsverlag, 1980); Id., “Anmerkungen zum Willensbegriff Maximus’ Confessors,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 28 (1981), 372–92; Karl-Heinz Uthemann, Christus, Kosmos, Diatribe. Themen der frühen Kirche als Beiträge zu einer historischen Theologie (Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 2005 [Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte; 93]); Adrian J. Walker, “Der menschliche Wille Jesu. Zur ,Gnomie‘ bei Maximus dem Bekenner,” Communio 44 (2015), 184–8. 99 Some ideas are taken from the article Cornelia Dockter, „Freiheit in unvermittelt-unmittelbarer Gottesbeziehung? Eine Diskussion der Christologie Georg Essens,“ in eds. Klaus von Stosch, Saskia Wendel, Martin Breul and Aaron Langenfeld, Streit um die Freiheit. Philosophische und theologische Perspektiven (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2019), 393–419, here 393–401. 100 Heinzer, Gottes Sohn als Mensch, 122 [own translation]. 101 That means that he represents humanity in its supralapsarian status. 102 Bruns, Den Menschen mit dem Himmel verbinden, 167 [own translation]. 103 Cf. ibid.

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Conciliar Christology, impeccability, and temptation Timothy Pawl

Christian scripture and the early ecumenical councils both teach that Christ was sinless yet was tempted. In addition, many in the Christian tradition claim that, not only was Christ without sin, he was unable to sin, an attribute most commonly known as ‘impeccability.’ Moreover, in this view, he wasn’t just impeccable at some point or other, say, prior to the incarnation and after his resurrection. He was impeccable during his earthly ministry as well. We can defne the thesis appended to Conciliar Christology in the extension under discussion in this chapter as follows: The Impeccability Thesis: Christ was unable to sin.1 In this chapter, I consider one reason for thinking that the Impeccability Thesis is inconsistent with Christ as being tempted. I will discuss multiple responses to that argument, as well as the concepts employed in the premises – tempted; able to sin. 2 Finally, drawing on previous work, I will discuss a means by which to affrm that Christ is both peccable and impeccable without contradiction.3 Here, my goal is to show that the conjunction of the Impeccability Thesis and Conciliar Christology (which, as we will see, includes as two of its conjuncts the claims that Christ was tempted and that Christ was sinless) is not shown to be false by an argument that claims that being tempted implies being peccable.4

1 The witness of tradition Christian scripture teaches that “in every respect [Christ] has been tempted as we are, yet [is] without sin” (Hebrews 4:15, RSV).5 The earliest ecumenical councils echo this teaching. For instance, Cyril writes to Nestorius of Christ’s sinlessness, in a letter accepted as an offcial part of the Council of Ephesus: “For he never committed a fault at all, nor did he sin in any way. What sort of offering would he need then since there was no sin for which offering might rightly be made?”6 The documents accepted at the Council of Constantinople affrm both Christ’s temptation and his sinlessness. Concerning his temptation, we read in Leo’s Tome: “[T]he same one whom the devil craftily tempts as a man, the angels dutifully wait on as God.” Concerning Christ’s sinlessness, the defnition of faith from Chalcedon likewise

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says of Christ that he was “like us in all respects except for sin.”7 Christ, then, according to scripture and the Christology of the earliest councils, is sinless, yet was also tempted.8 Whether the Impeccability Thesis enjoys as strong support from either scripture or early council as do claims that Christ was sinless and that he was tempted is vexed.9 I need not settle whether the scriptural or conciliar evidence implies the truth of the Impeccability Thesis. For an argument for the falsity of the conjunction of Conciliar Christology and the Impeccability Thesis to be sound, it would have to show that the majority of Christian thinkers have held false Christologies. Pannenberg (1968, 360), for instance, notes that “[o]lder Protestant dogmatics retained the doctrine that Jesus was incapable of sin.” If this incapability for sin is inconsistent with Christ’s being tempted or free, so much the worse for Catholic, Orthodox, and older Protestant dogma.

2 The problem The view that being tempted implies that the person tempted is able to sin is not a historical novelty, though it may have more proponents in the recent past than it did in the remote past. It seems to me that these two conditional statements, temptation precludes impeccability and being human precludes impeccability, underlie the main philosophical arguments against the truth of the conjunction of Conciliar Christology and the Impeccability Thesis.10 One can present the argumentation of these thinkers as follows: 1 2 3 4 5

If a person is X, then that person is capable of sinning (i.e., peccable). Christ is X. Thus, Christ is capable of sinning (peccable). If a person is capable of sinning (peccable), then that person is not impeccable. Thus, Christ is not impeccable.

(Assume) (From Conciliar Christology) (From 1, 2) (Assume) (From 3, 4)

The argument schema is valid. Thus, if the premises are true for some way of flling in for X, we have a sound argument for the conclusion that Christ was not impeccable. Furthermore, if that substituend for X is something which traditional Christology teaches of Christ, then we have a proof for the claim that traditional Christology is internally inconsistent. Since Steps 3 and 5 are derivations, the main focus of our discussion must be on Premises 1, 2, and 4. It seems overly pedantic, even for an analytic philosopher, to include Premise 4 in the argument. Isn’t it obvious that someone can’t be both peccable and impeccable at the same time? Well, it depends on how we understand the terms, as I will explain in a later section. Some thinkers have argued that Christ was both peccable and impeccable, in which case peccability wouldn’t imply the lack of impeccability, and Premise 4 would be false.

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Concerning Premises 1 and 2, the substituends for X that philosophers and theologians have put forward include ‘human,’ ‘tempted,’ and ‘free.’ Suppose, then, that we substitute in ‘tempted’ for the variable in our argument schema. Only two premises change, and, of those, I’ve already given a reason in the frst section of this chapter for believing that the second – that Christ is tempted – is true, given scripture and Conciliar Christology. Similarly, we have reason from scripture and Conciliar Christology to think that Christ is human. The focus, then, should be on the instances of the frst premise, that if a person is tempted, or free, or human, then that person is capable of sinning. Why think that these claims are true? Concerning freedom, if there are some individuals who are free and yet cannot sin, that shows that the ability to sin is not a necessary condition for freedom. The Christian tradition has seen ft, in all ages, to claim that the Father and Holy Spirit cannot sin.11 Moreover, the good angels are confrmed in their righteousness now, which implies that they are unable to sin. Finally, there is reason to believe that the redeemed are free but unable to sin. Thus, there is at least one individual who is free and unable to sin. In traditional Christian theism, then, freedom does not require the ability to sin. What of substituting in ‘human’ for x: does being fully human require that the human be able to sin? Again, I don’t see why the answer should be a ‘yes.’ First, Kevin Timpe and I have argued in print elsewhere that the redeemed in heaven are unable to sin, yet are free.12 Second, consider a thought experiment. Suppose that God ‘took over’ my volitional abilities and kept me free from sin. Suppose that, for some length of time – it could be just to get me past a trial, or it could be for the entirety of my existence– God moved me (and only me, not you) around like a puppet. If you’ve followed me so far in that supposition, then you’ve allowed for the possibility that something can be human but also be unable to sin. On the other hand, perhaps you thought, “I can’t suppose that! That’s like trying to assume that God took away your essential qualities and left you around. Or like trying to assume that God took the mammality but left the cat. It can’t be.” If you thought that, then this thought experiment won’t be of use to you. But if you did consider the possibility of God leaving me in existence but taking away my ability to will freely, and so taking away my ability to sin, while not destroying me and my humanity, that’s evidence that you didn’t really think that the ability to sin is a necessary condition for being human. For now, I will focus on the premise we acquire when we substitute ‘tempted’ in for ‘X.’ That is the premise I fnd the most plausible. Thus, henceforth, when I mention Premise 1, I mean the premise when ‘tempted’ is substituted in for ‘X.’

3 Responses that deny the truth of premise 1 On my part, I do not believe that the ability to sin is analytically required for the very notion of temptation.13 Drawing from recent work in psychology,

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philosophy, and theology, this section will attempt to give some insight into what temptation is, but more into what it isn’t.14 As this chapter was written during Lent, this section is also a work of experimental philosophy, or perhaps experimental phenomenology. The goal of this section is to show that there is a viable understanding of temptation that does not require peccability of the tempted. To begin, to feel tempted is to feel ‘pulled’ toward doing something or letting something happen. But it is more than that. The pull needs to be in a direction that the tempted person thinks she shouldn’t go. That ‘shouldn’t’ needn’t be assumed to be a moral shouldn’t. For instance, when dieting, a person might say that he feels tempted to eat the cake, because his appetite is riled up by the smell of the cake, but in a typical diet scenario, one doesn’t sin in eating the cake (I’m supposing that the eater made no ‘no cake’ vow; eating this bit of cake is no transgression of prudence, etc.). This view that the pull need not be in the direction of something viewed as immoral is consonant with the contemporary psychological research on temptation.15 For instance, a recent study writes: We defne desire as an “affectively charged cognitive event in which an object or activity that is associated with pleasure or relief of discomfort is in focal attention.”16 From this defnition of desire, the study goes on to defne temptation as: desires [that] may or may not confict with the person’s values and goals. Confict is the perception that there is some reason not to enact the desire and thus serves to distinguish unproblematic desires from problematic desires (i.e., temptations).17 The full concept of temptation being employed in this study, then, is: Temptation: An affectively charged cognitive event in which an object or activity that is associated with pleasure or relief of discomfort is in focal attention, yet the object of that desire conficts with the person’s values and goals. One might question certain aspects of this defnition. Must the discomfort be merely relieved? Couldn’t it be avoided? Must the desire confict with both a person’s values and goals? Wouldn’t just a confict with goals be enough? If I desire to eat cake, have set the goal of weight loss, and have no values contrary to eating cake, couldn’t this be a case of temptation? Moreover, isn’t the defnition of desire in the above quotation contrary to traditional faculty psychology? It appears to reduce desiring – the act of the will – to an intellectual act (‘cognitive event’) conjoined with an act of the appetite (‘affectively charged’). In response to this second objection, I

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don’t think that the psychologists were intending to imply anything about faculty psychology or the reduction of acts of the will to conjoined acts of the appetites and intellect. The exact defnition of desiring here isn’t necessary for the point I am making. My main goal is to show a viable sense of ‘temptation’ as a desire that conficts with one’s goals, and not necessarily one that is sinful. We can take or leave the exact understanding of desire while noting that this defnition of temptation does not require the object of the affectively charged cognitive event to be something sinful. Likewise, another study understands temptation as requiring a ‘distal goal’ that is in confict with that which one desires: The presence of a distal goal that conficts with the immediate temptation is a necessary precursor to self-control. Indeed, it may be argued that a distal goal is required for a self-regulation confict to arise in the frst place—if there is no goal of eating healthy, or losing weight, then the piece of chocolate cake does not constitute a “temptation,” and no self-control will be needed.18 Here again, the temptation is a desire to do something that is contrary to one’s goals, and not necessarily a desire to do something that is sinful. Of course, if one has a goal of not being sinful, or if one values not being sinful, then these understandings of temptation will explain why sinfulness is often referenced in understandings of temptation – many temptations we face are precisely those that offend our goal of being good people. But not-being-sinful is not the only goal one could have for a desire that interferes with that goal to count as a temptation.19 This view, that sin is not integral to temptation, appears contentious in theological writings. Some authors write as if, for a desire to count as a temptation, it must be a desire for something sinful. This is ambiguous. It can be read to mean that the desire has to be for something that is sinful, under the aspect of sinfulness. That is too much, though. When someone who has promised to quit smoking feels the craving or temptation for a cigarette, the object of temptation is the cigarette or smoking a cigarette. The object of temptation is not the sinful act of smoking a cigarette. When a scoundrel feels a temptation to steal money from the poor box, the temptation is that money and not the sinful act. There may be cases where someone desires something precisely because it is sinful – Milton’s Satan and his “Evil, be thou my good” spring to mind – but the majority of everyday cases, with everyday people, are cases where the object is not desired because it is sinful, but rather because it is, as Hofmann et al. write above, associated with pleasure or relief of discomfort. 20 It is not hard to fnd authors who write in ways that leave it unclear as to whether sin itself is the target of temptation. For instance, John McKinley defnes temptation thus: “Temptation is the internal struggle among a person’s beliefs and desires within a particular setting of external

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circumstances and pulls the person to sin as its target.”21 Elsewhere he writes: “Simply stated, temptation is the enticement to evil.”22 Here I think that we need to be careful. Sin need not be the target of temptation. Sure, the target may, in fact, be sinful. But the pull, in all or almost all cases, is not toward sin properly so-called. It is to some pleasure or lack of discomfort. Neither psychological work on temptation nor a plausible philosophical analysis of temptation require sin or evil to be the explicit, willed target in a case of temptation. In addition, the psychological work on temptation does not require the object of temptation to be sinful or evil at all. As Stephen Wellum puts it in our context, Jesus was tempted “in terms of normal sinless human weakness.”23 In the next part of this section, I will consider whether one can be tempted to do something that one cannot do, all things considered, even if one knows that fact. I will argue that one can be tempted in such a case, given the above psychological account of what temptation is. Bartel raises a worry about temptation for those who know they cannot succumb to it: [I]f Christ is both essentially sinless and permanently omniscient, it is diffcult to see how he could be tempted to sin – or at least it is diffcult to see how he could be tempted as we are. For when we are tempted to do what is morally wrong, we do not infallibly know that we shall choose the good no matter what. 24 Does Christ’s knowledge that he will infallibly choose good no matter what, supposing he has such knowledge, preclude the possibility of temptation? Not on the account I consider in this section, drawing from psychologists, for temptation is the result of appetitive cravings. No mere knowledge that one will prevail is suffcient to deaden appetitive cravings (though it may well help in coping with those cravings). Even when the temptation comes from a tempter enticing one to an action, that temptation still requires the allure of appetitive cravings. One can tempt a hungry man to reveal some confdential information for the sake of a piece of stale bread. But one cannot likewise tempt a miserably stuffed man to do the same. The external tempter, to tempt at all, must align the offered enticement with the appetitive urges of the enticed. Gondreau notes that St. Thomas thinks similarly when discussing the temptation of Christ by the devil: Aquinas propounds the view … that the devil’s tempting infuences proceed nowhere without the presentation of an object which, though illicit according to reason and the higher human good, is yet perceived by the senses as desirable and good—and desirability, or appetibility, implies an already initiated affective inclination to the object in question. 25

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Here we see that Aquinas, too, claims that the object of an attempted temptation, to actually tempt, must be something to which the appetites are already drawn. Think of a case where you believe that God told you that you would face a trial, a temptation, but that you would persevere through it. The Lord says, “You will face a hard battle. You will come to the very cusp of your self-control, but you will persevere through the temptation, with my grace.” You believe as strongly as you believe anything that God spoke to you. Then you get into the situation. Say, you are locked in a room for two days with delicious, fragrant foods, yet you must fast the whole time. Your appetites work something ferce. You sweat, shake, and cry, but you don’t give in. People, both malicious and well-meaning, encourage you to eat the food in myriad ways. Given that you know you will choose the good – given that you are maximally confdent that God told you so, and that God is not a liar – does it follow that you didn’t face temptation? No. For the appetitive cravings that are part of temptation are not under our volitional control, no matter what we know. 26 One might balk at the previous example. One might think that if one has good reason to believe that one cannot do something, then however strong the craving is, one cannot be tempted to do it. Suppose by some weird appetitive malfunction I feel an overwhelming desire to leap to the moon, and suppose that I know that I can’t actually do so. We’d not naturally think that I was tempted to leap to the moon, whatever else we thought of me. The case, it might seem, is relevantly analogous to Jesus’s situation. In reply, this moon case is helpful to me, but I don’t see it as relevantly analogous, for two reasons. First, I don’t see it as a case where my craving is contrary to my distal goals, as I claim – following the psychologists I cite – it would need to be in order to qualify as a temptation. Second, it is disanalogous because I don’t, with my natural capacities, have all that it takes to leap to the moon. But suppose leaping to the moon is contrary to my distal goals. Maybe because I have a goal to see my kids grow up, and I wouldn’t live to see that if I leapt outside Earth’s atmosphere. And suppose that I did naturally have the capacity to do so, as Christ naturally has the capacity required to sin in virtue of his human nature. Then I would view the case as a case of temptation. My point: when you make the case really relevantly analogous, I think it is a case of temptation. Temptation, then, under the model of temptation being discussed in this section, does not require that the object of temptation be sinful, and it doesn’t require that the object be desired as sinful. Moreover, temptation does not require the one tempted to be able, all things considered, to fulfll the craving. Even if Christ knows his divine identity and knows that he cannot sin, that alone is insuffcient to render him incapable of craving for food when hungry, or undesirous of safety when threatened with a torturous death. Consider a classical breakdown of appetitive powers, most broadly divided. 27 I won’t argue for the breakdown here; I’ll simply use it as a helpful

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heuristic. We see in the frst quotation from Hofmann et al. above a divide between desires for pleasure and desires to avoid the uncomfortable. That appetite, which pulls toward the pleasurable and away from the notpleasurable, traditionally is known as the concupiscible appetite, which must be distinguished from what the tradition has called ‘concupiscence.’28 The concupiscible appetite (or power), as I understand it here, is not only aimed at sensible and bodily pleasures in rational creatures such as humans. 29 Gossiping, for instance, can be quite pleasant, which is why it is sometimes described as ‘delicious’ or ‘savory.’ Similarly, the (vain)glory desired in prideful desires is desired as pleasurable. In addition to the concupiscible appetite, we have an appetite to resist things that appear onerous, dangerous, or diffcult. That appetite, traditionally, is known as the irascible appetite. Finally, we have an appetite for what we intellectually judge to be a good thing. This appetite, traditionally, is known as the will or intellectual appetite. The two lower appetites (concupiscible and irascible) often confict with our doing what we think we should, such as when we feel the allure of the French fries we smell, even though we think we’ve eaten enough food. Or when, seeing the goodness of protecting someone vulnerable, we feel the repulsion of confict, or fear of bodily injury. Sometimes the lower appetites join forces, as when we vow to jog in the morning, only to face both the loss of the pleasant warmth of bed and the resultant blisters and muscle ache. It is important to note that the appetitive pull toward food when hungry or drink when thirsty or sleep when weary, etc., is a natural thing, since these are the natural objects of these appetites. Likewise, the appetitive repulsion from something dangerous is a natural thing.30 Christ, too, was subject to appetitive urges. In scripture, he is hungry, thirsty, weary, anxious, etc. As Alfeyev notes of Orthodox theology, According to the teaching of the Byzantine fathers, especially Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus, Christ was a participant in the “natural and innocent passions,” though he was devoid of sinful passion by nature.31 Of these innocent passions, John of Damascus writes: Now, those passions are natural and blameless which are not under our control and have come into man’s life as a result of the condemnation occasioned by his fall. Such, for example, were hunger, thirst, fatigue, pain, the tears, the destruction, the shrinking from death, the fear, the agony … and any other such things as are naturally inherent in all men.32 Arendzen writes of the Catholic position of Christ’s internal state while in the Garden of Gethsemane, “He was flled with fear and apprehension, repugnance, horror and aversion, sadness and depression.”33

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One might think that such urges or feelings are contrary to Christ’s state of virtue, since his virtue, even in his human nature, was supreme. 34 That’s a faulty view of virtue. Virtue does not remove appetites. To be courageous is not to feel no fear; to be temperate is not to feel no hunger pains. Appetitive virtues, rather than masking appetites, are habits by which we deal with them appropriately. This is what Christ has and what Christ does. Consider an example. If you make a Lenten vow to eat but one small meal a day on Wednesdays during Lent, and at 8pm, hours after your small meal, you are famished, you will feel a strong appetitive urge for food. Such an urge will lodge itself in the forefront of your mind’s eye. You try to read but your consciousness is continually brought back to the screaming appetite. This appetitive craving moves you, pulls you, toward eating.35 But you see eating as inconsistent with your distal goals. There is nothing sinful about feeling this appetite. It is a natural human appetite. If you couldn’t feel it, we’d think something is wrong with you. Go to the doctor (or stop eating so much) if your body never gives you hunger pains. Likewise for Christ. He feels, with his assumed human appetites, a natural appetite to avoid his forthcoming excruciating death. That appetitive pull lodges itself in his (human) psyche. That appetitive craving pulls him toward rationally desiring (with his human will) to avoid the whole ordeal. Such a choice, however, is contrary to his distal goals. Thus, we have all the components required for temptation here. But where is the need for an ability to sin? Not in feeling the appetites. Not in seeing the act of satisfying those appetites as a reason for action. Not in noticing that such an action would confict with his distal goals. Even if we assume that Christ knew all that would befall him while in the garden, prior to his confrontation with his capturers (cf.: John 18:4), this additional knowledge wouldn’t need to lessen the temptation he experienced. Again, one can be certain that he will not sin, wouldn’t even be able to sin, without that certainty alleviating the felt appetitive pangs, which are not under volitional or intellectual control. Those pangs can be seen as reason to do something, and that thing be seen as contrary to his distal goals, even without the person believing that he is able to sin. While I claim that there is nothing morally amiss about the sort of craving discussed in the previous paragraphs, there are types of craving that are morally amiss. For, we are sometimes tempted by or for things that are themselves intrinsically sinful. And we are sometimes tempted in certain ways because of our own cultivated sinful dispositions. Oliver Crisp distinguishes types of temptations in a useful way as follows: [T]he moral quality that differentiates a sinful from an innocent temptation has to do with the fact that a sinful temptation is itself morally culpable, irrespective of whether or not a person yields to it and actually sins.36

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Even feeling the pull of temptation toward certain actions (insert your own deplorable examples) evinces a corrupt state of character.37 According to the view put forward in this section, in temptation, one feels an appetitive pull toward something perceived as pleasurable or in opposition to something diffcult or dangerous. That appetitive craving, or perhaps satisfying that craving, is seen as reason to act in a certain way. But that way of acting is recognized as contrary to an agent’s goals or values, and hence seen as not how one should act in the situation. The pull in such a circumstance is a temptation, and is not itself sinful, unless consented to, delighted in, or produced by a sinful state. With such an understanding, temptation need not imply the ability to sin. Thus, the proponent of this view of temptation is free to deny the truth of the frst premise of the Temptation Argument. The Temptation Argument, then, is no reason to reject the extension of Conciliar Christology, which conjoins Conciliar Christology and the Impeccability Thesis.

4 Can something be peccable and impeccable? In the previous section I argued that Premise 1 of the argument from temptation is false. It is false, I argued, because temptation, when properly understood, doesn’t require its object to be sinful, and it doesn’t require the ability to sin. In this section I want to take a different approach. Even if Premise 1 is false, there still might be reason, as I go on to elucidate in the next section to think that there is a sense in which Christ is peccable. Is there a way in which one interested in saving the consistency of Conciliar Christology and the affrmation that Christ is impeccable can grant that Christ is peccable, and yet still retain consistency? In the fnal subsection of Section 4 I discuss a means by which one may attempt just that. Christ’s powers and the ability to sin Christ took on the entire human condition, except sin. He was like us in all ways. So, the reasoning goes, every power had by humans in virtue of being human was had by Christ, too. But we have the power to sin. Thus, so does Christ. Therefore, Christ is peccable. It appears to me that many people discussing impeccability think that there is something we can call the power to sin. We see this most clearly in articles that argue that God cannot be both omnipotent and impeccable, since to be omnipotent is to have all power, and an impeccable being lacks the power to sin.38 We also see it in the current debate. For instance, Canham writes of an exercise of peccability: “[T]he exercise of his human attribute of peccability apparently limited the exercise of His divine attribute of impeccability.”39 It seems to me, though, that there is no power to sin, properly so-called. Rather, there is, for instance, the power to eat, or the power to drink,

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or the power to walk (and perhaps even these are too coarse-grained). These are powers that we can use poorly or well. We eat poorly when we over-eat, for instance. Consider gluttonous Jim, who receives a red velvet cake. He takes a bite of it, employing some subset of his powers. He takes another bite, and another. As he goes from being hungry to being satisfed, to being miserably full, to being sick, at no point is some new power, the power to sin, activated. Rather, the same powers are employed throughout his binge-eating.40 It isn’t that at bite 10 the power to sin starts warming up, then at bite 20 it engages. But then if there is no power to sin, properly so-called, the capacity to sin discussed in impeccability literature ought not to be understood as having or lacking a particular power.41 While the fact that there is no power to sin, as such, is helpful for the purposes of responding to the argument for Christ’s peccability outlined in the frst paragraph of this subsection, it does not completely answer the charge that Christ is peccable due to what he assumed. Even if Christ, like all of us, doesn’t have something we can call the power to sin, properly socalled, he still has all the basic human powers that you or I have when we sin. And if powers are what make the claims of potentiality true, and my powers make it true that I can sin, then Christ’s powers should make it true that he can sin.42 Thus, again, we have reason to believe that he is peccable. He has, in a dispositional sense, the powers required to sin. What is lacking in his abilities here? To see the same point from another angle, consider the following scenario. Suppose for a moment that God has given us a big warehouse full of powers. We see bins labeled ‘power to run,’ ‘power to laugh,’’ etc. What would we have to add to Christ to get him able – in the power sense of the word – to sin? It seems to me that the answer here is ‘nothing.’ There is no additional power on a shelf in the warehouse such that we can add it to Christ and cause him to gain the ability to sin. He already has all the human powers I have. I can attest – I need no witnesses, but I can surely call many – that those powers are suffcient for sinning. If there is no such thing as the power to sin, and Christ has all the relevant powers you or I have in virtue of which we can sin, why not say he is able to sin? The question here is how much weight the words ‘able’ and ‘can’ are supporting. We use ‘can’ and ‘able’ in many senses, depending on the context of utterance. Following an example from Crisp, we say that a piece of wood submerged in a swimming pool is unable to be set alight.43 Narrowly understood, in its particular circumstance, it cannot be done. But there’s a broader sense: it is possible for the wood to be set alight. It is still the sort of thing that, because of its nature, is able to be burned. Dry it out for a few days and it is able to be burned. Were you and I to argue about whether the stick in the pool is really infammable, the best strategy for us would be to settle the sense we have in mind. For it could be that we are in agreement,

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even with our contrary utterances. And even if we disagree, we will have more clarity in the discussion once the terms are defned. Likewise, when we say that Christ is unable to sin, or able to sin, what is the sense of the term? What is the context in question? Here, the question is vexed, insofar as the subject of the assertion is the Second Person of the Trinity. The traditional view is that no matter what circumstances that person is in, he will not sin. So, the Son case and the wood case are disanalogous, insofar as the wood, in certain circumstances, will burn, yet the Son, under no circumstance, will sin. On the other hand, being able to sin might just require having the powers a thing needs to sin. And Christ might well have those, insofar as he is human.44 The aptness conditions for the predicates, ‘peccable’ and ‘impeccable’ Some thinkers in the debates over the impeccability of Christ have claimed – contradictorily, on the face of it – that Christ is both peccable and impeccable. For instance, Michael Canham asserts that Christ was both peccable and impeccable during his incarnation.45 The phrase “during his incarnation” precludes a kenotic rendering of the text, according to which Christ might be impeccable and peccable at different times.46 The question of whether something can be both peccable and impeccable has many similarities with other questions Christians must face. How can Christ be both passible and impassible, or mutable and immutable, or omnipotent and limited in power, or omniscient and limited in knowledge, etc. The present question can seem like just one more example of that question, and so might well be answered in the affrmative by employing the same tools used to answer the other questions in the affrmative.47 Depending on how one understands the terms ‘peccable’ and ‘impeccable,’ a statement such as Canham’s at the beginning of this subsection seems fatly contradictory.48 Impeccability and peccability are very often understood in the following way:49 Initial Truth Conditions:50 Peccable: Impeccable:

s is peccable just in case s is able to sin. s is impeccable just in case it is not the case that s is able to sin.

On these defnitions of the terms – one of which I used earlier in my formalization of the Temptation Argument – it is not possible for one thing to be both peccable and impeccable. For no statement can be both true and false at the same time in the same way. But that is what would happen were Christ both peccable and impeccable under these defnitions, since the right side of each biconditional truth condition would follow, and those right sides are contradictory opposites. 51

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Perhaps, then, we should explore the terms in a different way. Maybe it would be better to understand them as follows: Revised Truth Conditions: Peccable: Impeccable:

s is peccable just in case s has a concrete nature such that it is possible that s sin by means of that nature. s is impeccable just in case s has a concrete nature such that it is not possible that s sin by means of that nature. 52

The revised defnition of peccability is a good start for those who intend to affrm both the peccability and impeccability of Christ. But I think it will fail because it places ‘s,’ the possessor of the nature, in the right-hand side of the defnition. It would be better to say that s has a concrete nature by means of which it is possible that someone sins. For if Christ’s human nature were not assumed, it would fulfll the conditions for being a human person, just like you or me. And that human person would be able to sin. So, someone – that person – could have that nature, and, by means of that nature, sin. The reader might be surprised to hear that Christ’s human nature, if not assumed, would fulfll the conditions required to be a supposit and, hence, a person. This view, though, is not as scandalous as it might sound. For instance, Aquinas writes: As long as the human nature is united to the Word of God, it does not have its own suppositum or hypostasis beyond the person of the Word, because it does not exist in itself. But if it were separated from the Word, it would have, not only its own hypostasis or suppositum, but also its own person; because it would now exist per se. Just as also a part of a composite body, as long as it is undivided from the whole, is [i.e., exists per se] only potentially, not actually; but this is only brought about by separation.53 Here Aquinas claims that the assumed nature, if it were separated from the Word, would exist per se, and so would fulfll the conditions for being a supposit and a person. This makes sense, given the medieval defnition of ‘supposit.’ One reason why the assumed human nature doesn’t fulfll the conditions for being a supposit is that it is sustained by another thing. If that nature were to be separated from the Word, it would no longer be sustained by another, and so would fulfll the conditions for being a supposit. And it is a rational nature, so it would fulfll the conditions for being a person, too. Similarly, Crisp says, and I agree: Were it possible to decouple Christ’s human nature from the hypostatic union (a controversial idea, to be sure) then possibly, the human nature that had been the human nature of the Word of God would form a supposit—a human person—and may then sin. 54

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Both Crisp and Aquinas discuss the possibility of the assumed nature existing unassumed and, thus, being a person. And Crisp goes one step further to claim that the resultant person could sin. Since that person would have but one nature (we are supposing that it is separated from the Word, but not that it is given a second nature) it would be able to sin in virtue of that nature. Thus, that person would fulfll the Revised conditions for being peccable. Notice that Crisp and Aquinas speak of “decoupling” or “separating” the human nature from the divine nature. Such decoupling or separating need not be understood in a temporal sense, as if Christ’s human nature could go from being assumed to being unassumed.55 Instead, we can make the same logical points if we think of the decoupling and separating in a modal sense, that is, if we think of the human nature assumed by Christ in a different created order, existing but never being assumed. In such a case, it would be able to sin. Changing the right side of both biconditionals from saying ‘s’ to saying ‘someone’ will not be problematic for the impeccability biconditional. For the divine nature, too, is not only possibly had by many; in traditional Christian theism, it is in fact had by many – three persons, to be exact. None of those three, in this view, in virtue of having the divine nature, has a nature in which someone could be able to sin. Thus, the truth conditions can be revised yet again, to say: Revised Revised Truth Conditions: Peccable: Impeccable:

s is peccable just in case s has a concrete nature such that it is possible that someone sin by means of that nature. s is impeccable just in case s has a concrete nature such that it is not possible that someone sin by means of that nature.

With these defnitions of the terms, they are not inconsistent. For one person can have two natures, one of which is such that – when had by some person or other – the person would be able to sin by means of it, and the other is such that no matter who has it, he or she would not be able to sin by means of it. In fact, provided that Christ’s human nature could have existed unassumed, both of these conditions are true of Christ. I don’t claim that these defnitions are common in the traditional discussion. So far as I know, no one has put the defnitions in quite these terms (though I’d be interested to fnd someone who has). We can ask, though, whether these defnitions are materially adequate in all non-incarnational cases. Supposing a domain of all non-incarnation cases, is it true that if something is peccable in the initial sense, then it is peccable in the revised revised sense, and vice versa? And likewise for impeccable? I believe it is true. Consider mere humans. All mere humans are capable of sinning. Adam and Eve, mere humans the both of them, were capable of sinning. Even in Roman Catholic theology, it is not necessarily the case that Mary “the God-bearer without blemish,” as Second Nicaea calls her, was incapable of

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sinning.56 So with respect to non-incarnation cases on the creature side, the initial and revised revised truth conditions are co-extensive: Mary and Eve both are able to sin (initial) and they both have a nature such that someone with that nature could sin (revised revised). Consider a divine person that is not incarnate, say, the Father. The Father has a divine nature, and that nature is such that, no matter who has it, that person is not able to sin by means of it. The initial and revised revised conditions of impeccability, then, are equally met by the Father and Holy Spirit. Neither is capable of sinning (initial) and neither has a nature such that someone who has that nature can sin with it (revised revised). I can think of no non-incarnational case in which the initial and revised revised understandings of the terms disagree on whether something is aptly called ‘peccable’ or ‘impeccable.’ The only case in which the revised revised truth conditions and the initial truth conditions will disagree is in an incarnational case. Because of that, any examples drawn from non-incarnational cases will not be examples that can help us decide between viable contenders for truth conditions. For, both truth conditions will agree on all such examples, whether the thing in question is peccable or impeccable. We will fnd no reason, then, to prefer one or the other of these sets of truth conditions from non-incarnational examples. I conclude here, then, that the revised revised truth conditions are viable for those who wish to affrm both that Christ was peccable and that he was impeccable. In doing so, one opens up another way of arguing that the objection to the extension of Conciliar Christology discussed in this chapter is false. Premise 4 states, the reader will recall, that “if a person is capable of sinning (peccable), then that person is not impeccable.” Given the revised revised truth conditions of impeccability and peccability, this premise is false. Christ is a counterexample, given those truth conditions. 57

5 Summary application of the apparatus of the chapter Given the logical structure of the revised revised defnitions of the terms, and some distinctions drawn earlier, we may be able to reconcile all the apparently inconsistent affrmations of peccability and impeccability in the preceding paragraphs. Christ, the Second Person, is impeccable, since he has the divine nature in virtue of which he fulflls the aptness conditions for the term ‘impeccable.’ He is, we could say, impeccable qua divine, where the ‘qua’ clause there is used as an ontological laser pointer to designate that in virtue of which Christ fulflls the aptness conditions for ‘impeccable.’ That divine nature, too, derivatively has a nature that fulflls the aptness conditions for being impeccable; namely, itself. Christ, that very same Second Person, is peccable, since he has an assumed, human nature in virtue of which he fulflls the aptness conditions for the term ‘peccable.’ He is peccable qua human. His human nature, too, derivatively fulflls those conditions.

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Is there a sense in which the human nature is impeccable? There is, in a narrow sense of the term ‘impeccable.’ If we assume as a regulating principle that the domain of natures in question are assumed natures, then Christ’s human nature fulflls the conditions for being impeccable. For, so long as we are considering it (or any other nature) only when assumed, in this narrow interpretation, there is no condition under which someone with that nature would be able to sin by means of it. For only divine persons can assume (in the relevant sense), and so only three ‘someones’ are available for consideration. Provided that no divine person can sin – and all the proponents of the claim that Christ’s human nature is impeccable (of which I am aware) do affrm that no divine person can sin – then, given our regulating assumption that the nature is assumed, it is such that it is false that someone who has assumed it could sin by means of it. But then it fulflls the conditions for being predicated by “impeccable.”58 Hence, if the foregoing aptness conditions for the terms ‘impeccable’ and ‘peccable’ are granted, many benefts follow. We can account for what Crisp calls “the classical notion that Christ was peccable qua human, whilst impeccable qua divine.”59 We can build consensus among theologians about the incarnate God’s attributes. Christ is both peccable and impeccable, in the revised revised sense of those terms. Moreover, we can answer the Temptation Argument; Premise 4 is false. For Christ, as both peccable and impeccable, would be a counterexample to the claim that if something is peccable then it is not impeccable. And thus, given these revised revised truth conditions, Premise 4 of the Temptation Argument can be denied. A question remains as to whether the peccability theorists I’ve cited in this chapter would be content with the notion of peccability that I’ve provided in this section. I expect that the answer to that question would differ depending on the reasons the thinker has for affrming divine peccability.

6 Conclusion In this chapter I have discussed an argument for the conclusion that Christ could not be both impeccable and tempted. I have discussed two replies to that argument: one that denies Premise 1 of the argument (the psychological response) and one that denies Premise 4 by defning ‘peccable’ and ‘impeccable’ such that they are consistent. These responses are consistent with Conciliar Christology. I conclude that the Temptation Argument does not show the conjunction of Conciliar Christology and the Impeccability Thesis to be false.60

Notes 1 Some have argued that God, even aside from incarnational considerations, cannot be impeccable. This is different from the topic of Christ’s temptation and impeccability, though, of course, it is related. See, for instance: Jerome

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Gellman, “Omnipotence and Impeccability,” New Scholasticism 51 Dec. (1977), 21–37; Thomas V. Morris, “Impeccability,” Analysis 43:2 (1983), 106–12; Vincent Brümmer, “Divine Impeccability,” Religious Studies 20:2 (1984), 203–14; W.R. Carter, “Impeccability Revisited,” Analysis 45:1 (1985), 52–55; Laura L. Garcia, “The Essential Moral Perfection of God,” Religious Studies 23:1 (1987), 137–44; Brian Leftow, “Necessary Moral Perfection,” Pacifc Philosophical Quarterly 70:3 (1989), 240–60; Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2005), 102–7; Eric Funkhouser, “On Privileging God’s Moral Goodness,” Faith and Philosophy 23:4 (2006), 409–22. I will use “capable” and “able” interchangeably in this chapter. See Timothy Pawl, “A Solution to the Fundamental Philosophical Problem of Christology,” The Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2014), 61–85; Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), chap. 7. If the Impeccability Thesis were part of Conciliar Christology, then the Impeccability Thesis would show up twice in the conjunction I am defending. That would be redundant, but it wouldn’t affect the success of the project or the logic of the forthcoming argument. Though see Marilyn McCord Adams, who argues that we need not read this passage as supposing that Christ was utterly sinless; cf. Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 75–76 and 79. Norman Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 Vols (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 57. Tanner, Decrees, 79 and 86. The sinlessness of Christ is taught elsewhere in the conciliar statements as well. Cyril, in his Third Letter to Nestorius, pens the anathema: “[I]f anyone says that he offered the sacrifce also for himself and not rather for us alone (for he who knew no sin needed no offering), let him be anathema” (Tanner, Decrees, 60–61). Leo’s Tome says, “His subjection to human weaknesses in common with us did not mean that he shared our sins” (Tanner, Decrees, 78). See also the Exposition of faith from Third Constantinople (Tanner, Decrees, 127). For more on Christ’s temptation in Christian tradition, see Roch A. Kereszty, Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology. Revised and Updated Third Edition (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 2002), 98–104; John E. McKinley, Tempted for Us: Theological Models and the Practical Relevance of Christ’s Impeccability and Temptation (Eugene, OR: Paternoster, 2009), chap. 1; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus – God and Man (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1968), 354–9; Joseph Pohle, Christology: A Dogmatic Treatise on the Incarnation (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co, 1913), 207–12. For a discussion of the sinlessness of Christ and its relation to whether he had a fallen or unfallen nature, see Ian McFarland, “Fallen or Unfallen? Christ’s Human Nature and the Ontology of Human Sinfulness,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 10:4 (2008), 399–415. For a discussion of this vexed topic, see Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 133–5. Others who discuss the conditionals that temptation precludes impeccability or that humanity precludes impeccability include: John P. Arendzen, Whom Do You Say? A Study in the Doctrine of the Incarnation (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1941), 181–4; Michael McGhee Canham, “Potuit Non Peccare Or Non Potuit Peccare: Evangelicals, Hermeneutics, and the Impeccability Debate,” The Masters Seminary Journal 11:1 (2000), 93–114, esp. 95; Jesse Couenhoven, “The Necessities of Perfected Freedom,” International Journal of Systematic

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Theology 14:4 (2012), 396–419, esp. 406f. Oliver D. Crisp, “William Shedd on Christ’s Impeccability,” Philosophia Christi 9:1 (2007), 165–88; Oliver D. Crisp, “Was Christ Sinless or Impeccable?” Irish Theological Quarterly 72:2 (2007), 168–86; Ivor J. Davidson, “Pondering the Sinlessness of Jesus Christ: Moral Christologies and the Witness of Scripture,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 10:4 (2008), 372–98, esp. 395; Millard J. Erickson, The Word Became Flesh: A Contemporary Incarnational Christology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1996); Philip J. Fisk, “Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will and His Defence of the Impeccability of Jesus Christ,” Scottish Journal of Theology 60:3 (2007), 309–25; Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), chap. 7; Michael Murray & Michael C. Rea, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 82–90; Gerald O’Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 283–4; Richard Sturch, The Word and the Christ: An Essay in Analytic Christology (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1991), 19–20; Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 204–7; Bruce A. Ware, The Man Christ Jesus: Theological Questions on the Humanity of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), chap. 5; David Werther, “The Temptation of God Incarnate,” Religious Studies 29:1 (1993), 47–50; “Freedom, Temptation, and Incarnation,” in eds. David Werther & Mark Linville, Philosophy and the Christian Worldview: Analysis, Assessment and Development (New York: Continuum, 2012), 252–64. I think the case is just as strong for the Son, but since the case of the Son is what is under dispute in this chapter, I will leave it to one side here. For more on God’s freedom, see Kevin Timpe, “An Analogical Approach to Divine Freedom,” in eds. Susan Gottlöber, Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society (2012), 88–99. See Timothy Pawl & Kevin Timpe, “Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven,” Faith and Philosophy 26:4 (2009), 398–419; “Heavenly Freedom: A Response to Cowan,” Faith and Philosophy 30:2 (2013), 188–97. For a critical discussion of the view that temptation doesn’t require the denial of impeccability because Christ didn’t know that he couldn’t sin, see Pawl, Extended Conciliar Christology (cf. n. 9), 139–43. For analyses of temptation, see J.P. Day, “Temptation,” American Philosophical Quarterly 30:2 (1993), 175–81; Paul Hoffman, “Aquinas on Threats and Temptations,” Pacifc Philosophical Quarterly 86:2 (2005), 225–42; Paul Hughes, “The Logic of Temptation,” Philosophia 29:1–4 (2002), 89–110. Brian Leftow provides some careful necessary conditions for temptation, which I consider to map on quite well to the psychological accounts of temptation I consider below; cf. Brian Leftow, “Tempting God,” Faith and Philosophy 31:1 (2014), 3–23. “Temptation,” I’ve found, is not a widely used concept in contemporary psychology. I asked three psychologists – a professor of psychology, a supervisor at a center for children’s psychological health, and a seminarian formation psychologist  – for aid in fnding a standard usage of the term. It appears that of the well-known general psychology textbook used at the University of St. Thomas, The Dictionary of Psychology online, The Psychology of Religion, and The Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality – none of them makes any mention of “temptation.” This study is Hoffman et al. (2012, 1319); the internal citation is to David J. Kavanagh, Jackie Andrade & Jon May, “Imaginary Relish and Exquisite Torture: The Elaborated Intrusion Theory of Desire,” Psychological Review 112:2 (2005), 446–67.

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17 Wilhelm Hofmann, et al. “Everyday Temptations: An Experience Sampling Study of Desire, Confict, and Self-Control,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102:6 (2012), 1318–35, esp. 1319. 18 Marina Milyavskaya et al., “Saying ‘No’ to Temptation: Want-to Motivation Improves Self-Regulation by Reducing Temptation Rather than by Increasing Self-Control,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109:4 (2015), 677–93, 678. 19 Cf. ibid., 680. A third recent psychology article explains temptations as “objects that have already elicited a sense of craving or desire”; cf. Lotte F. Van Dillen, Esther K. Papies & Wilhelm Hofmann, “Turning a Blind Eye to Temptation: How Cognitive Load Can Facilitate Self-Regulation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104:3 (2013), 427–43. A fourth paraphrases temptation as “maladaptive impulse”; cf. Brian M. Galla & Angela L. Duckworth, “More than Resisting Temptation: Benefcial Habits Mediate the Relationship between Self-Control and Positive Life Outcomes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109:3 (2015), 508–25. 20 Even Satan desires evil to be his good, not because it is sin but, as the text makes clear, because it is a means to something he views as pleasurable: “Evil, be thou my good; by thee at least / Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold, / By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign; / As Man ere long, and this new world, shall know.” Evil is desired as a means by which he can attain the souls he wishes to reign over. Perhaps a better example of willing something evil just because it is evil is Sturch’s (The Word and The Christ [cf. n. 10], 263) example of grown men “caught breaking glass into a children’s paddling-pool.” Even there, though, one suspects that there was some grotesque pleasure viewed as a good that motivated the deplorable men. 21 McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 7), 288. 22 McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 7), 272. 23 Stephen J. Wellum, God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 234. 24 Timothy W. Bartel, “Why the Philosophical Problems of Chalcedonian Christology Have Not Gone Away,” Heythrop Journal 36:2 (1995), 153–72, here 154. 25 Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Tacoma, WA: Cluny Media, 2018), 326 (emphasis in the original). 26 Did you think that God’s two-sentence speech, all by itself, was incoherent? If not, then you didn’t think that temptation is inconsistent with infallible knowledge that someone won’t succumb to it. 27 For one typical discussion of this classical breakdown, see Aquinas’s ST. I q.81. 28 The mainstay of the Christian tradition is quite vocal that Christ had no concupiscence. But the tradition does not teach that he had no concupiscible appetite. On the contrary, Christ felt hunger and thirst, which are both actions of the concupiscible appetite, in this traditional distinction. The concupiscence that Christ lacked was not this appetite, but rather a sinful misalignment of that appetite and others. See, for instance, Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd Revised & enlarged edition. (Washington, DC: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000), para. 2515. 29 It is true that one fnds the concupiscible power discussed in the works of thinkers such as Aquinas as being ordered by temperance. And temperance is chiefy concerned with “sensible and bodily” goods and, in particular, the goods of the sense of touch (see, for instance, ST II-II q.141 a.3; a. 5). But temperance also has as a part virtues such as nobility (ST. II-II q.145), and the urge to act ignobly need not be an appetitive pull toward a bodily pleasure. 30 Leftow (“Tempting God” [cf. n. 14], 14) makes these same points about these appetitive pulls being natural.

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31 Hilarion Alfeyev, Orthodox Christianity: Doctrine and Teaching of the Orthodox Church (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2012), 283. 32 John of Damascus, Fathers of the Church: Saint John of Damascus: Writings. Translated by Frederic Chase (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1958), 323–4. 33 Arendzen, Doctrine of the Incarnation (cf. n. 10), 192. For how Aquinas understands the fear felt by Christ, see Dylan Schrader, “Christ’s Fear of the Lord According to Thomas Aquinas,” Heythrop Journal 58 (2017), only published online: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.12487. 34 For a discussion of the relation between impeccability and perfect virtue, see Luke Henderson, “Impeccability and Perfect Virtue,” Religious Studies 53:2 (2017), 261–280. 35 Here and elsewhere I write of the appetitive craving moving a person. Two notes on this. First, one might think that it isn’t the craving itself, but rather the desire to satisfy the craving that moves one. Originally, I wrote of “the appetitive craving, or the satisfaction of the craving,” but I was told that such continuous disjunctions are distracting. Hence this endnote: if you think that it is really the desire to satisfy the craving that moves one, then feel free to substitute that in. Second, I write of the desire “moving” you. That language isn’t perfect. One might think instead of the craving giving reason to act. But “reason” is an act of the intellect, not a result of an appetite. Perhaps I should write of craving as “incentivizing” action, or “pulling” one towards the action. 36 Crisp, “Christ’s Impeccability” (cf. n. 10), 176. In a similar vein, Talbot Brewer writes, “What I will argue is that our moral character is impugned by desires to act immorally only when those desires manifest a lack of conviction in moral values or principles.” Cf. Talbot Brewer, “The Character of Temptation: Towards a More Plausible Kantian Moral Psychology,” Pacifc Philosophical Quarterly 83:2 (2012), 103–30, here 104. 37 Calvin seems to think, too, that while Christ felt the passions mundane humans feel, he did not experience “irregular appetites.” Cf. John Calvin, Calvin’s Complete Commentary, Volume 6: Matthew to John (Fort Collins, CO: Delmarva Publications, 2013), Matthew 4:8. I thank Sabrina Little for this reference. Another useful distinction between types of temptation has to do with their source. Both Aquinas and Crisp argue that the temptations of Christ must fnd their “suggestion” or be “generated” by things external to Christ. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 1–12 (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute, 2013), bks. 4, lecture 1, pg. 101; Crisp, “Sinless or Impeccable” (cf. n. 10), 178. 38 For discussion of such arguments, see, for example, Morris, “Impeccability” (cf. n. 1), Brümmer, “Divine Impeccability” (cf. n. 1); Carter, “Impeccability Revisited” (cf. n. 1); Funkhouser, “Moral Goodness” (cf. n. 1). 39 Canham, “Impeccability Debate” (cf. n. 9), 96–97. 40 Likely some non-volitional powers become activated after a time. His insulin will spike, for instance, and that is caused by some power that he has. But given that sin is of the will, these non-voluntary powers will not be relevant to the supposed power to sin. 41 Morris makes this point, too. Likewise, McKinley (Tempted for Us [cf. n. 7], 258) writes, “Peccability is no power, but a shortcoming.” Cf. Thomas V. Morris, “Perfection and Power,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 20:2/3 (1986), 165–8, esp. 167. 42 For more on powers making true claims of possibility, see Timothy Pawl, A Thomistic Account of Truthmakers for Modal Truths. Unpublished Dissertation (2008); “Nine Problems (and Even More Solutions) for Powers Accounts of Possibility,” in ed. Jonathan Jacobs, Causal Powers (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 105–123.

114 Timothy Pawl 43 Crisp, Sinless or Impeccable (cf. n. 10), 175. 44 Crisp makes the same point. Cf. Crisp, “Sinless or Impeccable” (cf. n. 10), 180–1. 45 Canham, “Impeccability Debate” (cf. n. 10), 108. 46 Cf. Davidson, “Sinlessness of Jesus Christ” (cf. n. 10), 395; Erickson, Word Became Flesh (cf. n. 10), 555. 47 For some recent discussions of these ways, see Timothy Pawl, “Conciliar Christology and the Problem of Incompatible Predications,” Scientia et Fides 3:2 (2015), 85–106; “Temporary Intrinsics and Christological Predication,” in ed. Jonathan L. Kvanvig, Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 7 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 157–89; Conciliar Christology (cf. n. 3), chaps 4–7. 48 His own view (Canham, “Impeccability Debate” [cf. n. 10], 111–2) is that it is an antinomy, which he understands as an apparent contradiction that is unavoidable and not solvable. 49 In this section I follow the same procedure in discussing peccability and impeccability that I followed in previous publications when discussing passibility and impassibility. See Pawl, Philosophical Problem (cf. n. 3); Conciliar Christology (cf. n. 3), chap 7. 50 McKinley (Tempted for Us [cf. n. 7], 3) defnes these terms similarly, saying: Impeccability refers to the absolute inability of a person to commit sin or, alternately, the person cannot fail to do right. … Peccability, means that a person is vulnerable to sin (he may fail to do right acts). A peccable person is mutable, but may be contingently good while remaining sinless. 51 Canham defnes the terms as follows: “able not to sin” (potuit non peccare, peccability), “not able to sin” (non potuit peccare, impeccability). Defned like this, it turns out that the terms are not straightforwardly contradictory. The way he sets up the dialectic, though, makes it clear that he believes the advocates of the opposing views to see their views as inconsistent. Moreover, his arguments for peccability conclude in the claim that Christ is able to sin, not merely that he is able not to sin. So I think Canham means peccability to imply both able not to sin and able to sin. In which case the terms are incompatible. 52 Some readers have thought that “with” clauses would be more intuitive than the “by means of” clauses in these revised truth conditions and the revised revised truth conditions below. On my part, I don’t see anything lost if the reader interprets them as such. 53 Thomas Aquinas, De Unione Verbi Incarnati, a. 2, ad. 10 (translated by Jason L.A. West). 54 Crisp, “Sinless or Impeccable” (cf. n. 10), 181. In addition, Ullmann and Adams cite Lombard as affrming that the soul of Christ, removed from the incarnation, would be capable of sinning. Cf. Carl Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus: An Evidence for Christianity (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870), 257; Marilyn McCord Adams, What Sort of Human Nature? Medieval Philosophy and the Systematics of Christology (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1999), 19. McKinley (Tempted for Us [cf. n. 7], 161–2) writes: Scotus boldly admits that Christ’s humanity was able to sin but became transformed to be not able to sin as an effect of the beatifc vision (not simply by incarnational union): ‘I say that the nature which he assumed was of itself peccable and able to sin, because it was not beatifed by reason of its union and it had free will, and thus was able to choose in either of two ways. But it was because of beatitude that it was confrmed in the frst instant so that it became impeccable in the same way as the other blessed [in glory] are impeccable.’

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55 Aquinas argues that grace is only removed by sin. Since Christ cannot sin, a human nature, once united, cannot lose the grace of union and so cannot be separated from the divine nature. See ST III q.50 a.2 resp, and my discussion of this passage in Pawl, Extended Conciliar Christology (cf. n. 9), chap. 4 section IV.a. 56 See Tanner, Decrees (cf. n. 6), 134–5. 57 For a discussion of multiple objections to the account I offer in this chapter, see Pawl, Extended Conciliar Christology (cf. n. 9), 158–62. 58 Another option for securing the impeccability of Christ’s human will is via Molinism, as has been explored by Thomas Flint; cf. Thomas P. Flint, “‘A Death He Freely Accepted’: Molinist Refections on the Incarnation,” Faith and Philosophy 18:1 (2001), 3–20; “The Possibilities of Incarnation: Some Radical Molinist Suggestions,” Religious Studies 37:3 (2001), 307–20. Flint employs the Molinist’s account of divine middle knowledge to show how God could “have arranged things in such a way that (i) CHN [i.e. Christ’s Human Nature] was placed in freedom-retaining circumstances (i.e., circumstances that left open to CHN the genuine option to sin, and yet (ii) CHN did not in fact sin in those circumstances” (Possibilities of Incarnation, 310). 59 Crisp, “Christ’s Impeccability” (cf. n. 10), 183. 60 I thank the audience at the 2016 Logos Workshop where I presented an earlier version of this material (especially my commentator, Robin Dembroff) and the participants at a workshop led by Johannes Grössl in Paderborn, Germany (June 2018) on two chapters of the manuscript of the book from which I draw this material. I also thank the John Templeton Foundation, which funded some research time for this paper with two grants, ID#48354 and ID#61012. This material was originally published in my book, Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), Chapter 6, excluding subsection V.c., pp. 132–58 and 162–4, and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press (author reuse policy).

Part II

Is Christ impeccable? Systematical approaches

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Seven questions ingredient to Jesus Christ’s temptation John E. McKinley

Jesus Christ is a complicated person. The theology of Jesus’ experience of temptation involves the complexity of his divine and human natures, and the unique situation of living as one person in two natures (hypostatic union). When theologians consider the temptation of Jesus and the related questions about his impeccability, several presuppositions about the questions affect how to approach this paradox. Some make understanding Jesus’ temptation an easier road, and others can complicate matters further. Theologians may agree on some questions while disputing the answers to other questions. The goal here is to pull back the curtain to see the relative involvement of each question with the others and the topic as a whole. Sometimes theology allows for multiple explanations for a situation that is not clearly settled by Scripture or tradition. Some of the questions treated here fall into that category, so that particular answers may be preferable to theologians in one or another confessional tradition, while the alternatives are counted as adequate if less appealing. This complexity of reasonable answers to aspects of the topic calls for continued study towards articulating the best theological ft. Unusual with this topic is the need for a complicated theological ft with Christology, Trinity, soteriology, anthropology, eschatology, and the implication for daily life experience of Christians facing numerous temptations to sin. How does the theology of Jesus’ impeccability and temptation show the relevance of his experience for Christians? The practical ft for this topic is important alongside the theological ft, since Hebrews 4:15 declares that this truth should also work benefcially for Christians. At least seven questions pertain to the topic of Jesus’ temptation. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Is God able to commit evil or is God impeccable? What is freedom of will? What is ‘temptation to sin’? How is Jesus’ experience of temptation relevant for Christians in daily life? What was the role of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ life and ministry? Could Jesus sin or not? How did Jesus avoid sin and fulfll all righteousness?

120 John E. McKinley I will present the controversy of each question in turn, noting how the issues bear on the larger topic. I will argue for a resolution of the questions that the tempted Savior is evidence of the life in the Spirit and personal encounter with the Father that is God’s provision for Christians in daily life.

1 Is god able to commit evil or is god impeccable? Jesus is the fullest revelation of the triune God, since he is God come in person to humanity – seen, touched, known (1 John 1:1–3; Heb 1:1–3). As with other questions in the topic of Jesus’ temptation, the varying answers preferred at this point in regards to God’s inability or ability to commit evil lead to different approaches to other questions. The additional relevance of this question (divine impeccability) is that some critiques of the traditional view are repeated in regards to Jesus’ impeccability. We will consider the positions for divine peccability and divine impeccability in turn. Since the term ‘impeccability’ is a negative description, necessary goodness is preferable as the positive account that includes the inability to commit evil. The Case for Divine Peccability. If Jesus’ temptation cannot be understood any other way than that he was able to sin, then we may consider whether Jesus’ peccability is a revelation of God’s ability to sin. This answer that “God can sin” is an easier ft for the relevance of Jesus’ temptations to our experience (if it is true that Jesus was peccable), but it calls for a serious revision of the traditional concept of God as perfect in every way, immutable, unable to lie (Num 23:19), and unable to be tempted by evil (Jas 1:13). Any argument for divine peccability must overcome these clear statements of biblical revelation that have long been recognized by Christians as clearly supporting divine impeccability. Christian philosophers have recently questioned the traditional claim of God’s impeccability.1 Peccabilists are sure that God could commit sin, but has never done so nor would He do so. Sin is merely an unlikely possibility in God’s freedom of choice. The claim of divine peccability has been argued according to three theological ideas that are understood to be more compossible with God’s peccability than his necessary goodness. First, God’s freedom is seen to be limited if the possibility of committing sin is closed off to him altogether. If we assume a libertarian view of divine freedom, 2 it is apparent that God has the freedom to choose from among several moral actions, while evil actions would be unavailable (and repulsive) to him. Those who object that freedom and the inability to sin are inconsistent betray an assumption that the freedom to will evil is a good thing to have, which seems dubious. God distinguishes himself in the Bible from the failures of creatures to fulfll promises or tell the truth.3 His perfection should be our measure for identifying true freedom, since God has the most power to do what He wants to accomplish. We may think of this as signifcant freedom even in a libertarian and contra-causal sense when God chooses to make promises and chooses when to fulfll them.4 All

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God’s choices with respect to creation and redemption are free and consistent with His goodness, but could have been different from he wanted – all without including the range of options that are evil. Therefore, were it true that God is inability to do other than good by willing evil, this necessary goodness does not count against his real freedom. It is theologically consistent that God is both impeccable and free. A second argument for divine peccability is that God’s omnipotence is not absolute if all the options that would be qualifed as sin were closed off to him. Anselm and Aquinas answered that it is God’s omnipotence that makes him unable to sin. God is too powerful to be vulnerable to sin as a competing power, just as the human or angelic person who succumbs to the temptation to sin is rightly seen as being powerless against sin.5 If God cannot do things that are logically impossible or morally evil, this does not count against his power, since logical impossibilities are not abilities and evil is the failure to do good. The supposed ability to lie is a weakness – the failure to hold to the truth. The ability to break a promise is impotence, not a real ability, since real power is the ability to follow through on what the person pledged to do.6 This does not mean that God is too weak to sin – as if the ability to be evil is a power – but that He is too good to do evil, and he is bolstered in that goodness by his perfect power.7 Divine impeccability and omnipotence are theologically consistent. A third argument for divine peccability is that praising God for his goodness would be diminished or even be rendered invalid were it necessarily impossible for Him to commit sin.8 Theologians should be concerned about the logical inconsistency of theological claims, but proponents of this charge assume a simplistic way of counting praiseworthiness when the actual situation is more complicated. God’s necessary goodness does not disqualify him from deserving praise since we can think of at least two ways in which Scripture is right to direct people to praise him, and this is in harmony with his immutable impeccability. First, God is to be praised for his perfect goodness as the ideal, source, and standard of what is good.9 Many things in the world are praised and appreciated for exemplifying something wonderful (e.g., beauty, strength, self-giving love, etc.) irrespective of the alternatives of the failure to exemplify the trait (e.g., ugliness, weakness, selfshness, etc.). God stands out in goodness in contrast with so much failure on the part of his creatures to exemplify the goodness within creation. The second way that praiseworthiness for God’s good acts is consistent with His necessary goodness is that God chooses freely to act in the ways he did, in contrast to doing nothing at all or acting in some way that is less good. God’s acts of creation, providence, and redemption are harmonious with his essential goodness since all the millions of choices involved were free for God, not required by his goodness in any sense (supererogatory acts). Thus, a necessarily good God who condescends to create, sustain, and redeem people is morally praiseworthy for doing all this freely because he could have done either none of it at all, or all of it differently. God’s

122 John E. McKinley necessary goodness is compossible with his praiseworthiness for his good acts and being perfectly good. The Case for Divine Impeccability. With Scripture as a guide to our knowledge of God, the overwhelming account is that God is necessarily good, and this impeccability is theologically coherent.10 First, God begins his account of self-revelation by defning creation repeatedly in relation to himself as good, especially the pinnacle of creation that bears his image, which He describes as very good (Genesis 1–2). God is described absolutely as “compassionate and gracious” (Ex 34:6–7), with loving kindness that is everlasting (2 Chr 7:3). God’s will is called good and perfect (Rom 12:2), and his goodness is given as an explanation for his provision for the weak and needy (Ps 68:10). God declares that he is good when he reveals himself to Moses, naming this single property to communicate that God himself – stated as “all My goodness” – will pass before Moses (Ex 33:19). Jesus’ recorded affrmation is that “God alone is good” (Mark 10:18). The writer of Hebrews 6:18 testifes that God cannot lie, and Paul reminds us in Titus 1:2 that God never lies; thus, all his promises are thoroughly reliable because of his fxedness in good. In addition to these statements that are just the tip of a vast iceberg of the biblical testimony about God’s goodness, the existence of a specifc, written revelation itself is a sign of God’s goodness in revealing himself to the creatures he made so that – along with refecting his goodness in creation – they can beneft from knowing him in direct encounter (Ps 34:8). Theologically, divine impeccability is a good ft with other things we know of God as immutable. God declares that he does not change (Mal 3:6), so no development or loss occurs for Him. The next step is to see immutability as a necessary part of God’s being because of other clear attributes of omniscience and omnipotence that are essential.11 Since goodness as a moral property is an attribute that God cannot lose because of his immutability, goodness (or impeccability) must be essential to God, not merely contingent. If essential immutability is right that God is unchangeable in his being, it does not preclude him from emotional and relational responsiveness in interactions with his creatures.12 Being unique and eternal in his goodness, God is the unchangeable standard and source of what is good. God also knows himself perfectly (omniscience) and declares to us what he is. The idea of divine impeccability seems to contradict the experience of God the Son experiencing temptation in his incarnation. If divine impeccability is true, then we must consider how it can be that God the Son could be impeccable in one mode (as God) while also being peccable in his mode as a man. The mystery of the incarnation is that what appear to be contradictions are actually true because the Creator became a creature, the eternal Son began to exist as a man – God the Son was weak and limited in power, did not know things, was tempted to sin, and died. All these frailties of created existence may be assigned to his experience as a man, as in

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Chalcedonian Christology, and part of the idea that the Son is one person living through two natures without mixing the natures with each other (the hypostatic union).13 Contradictory attributes may be experienced by the Son of God according to his humanity and his deity.14 Sin (evil) – unlike created limitations of power, knowledge, and presence – transcends created reality so that when humans sin, they violate and offend God, who judges or forgives them. Similarly, God’s goodness is accessible to humans since people may beneft from God’s provisions and be formed to approximate His goodness in their own morally righteous actions (truth-telling, oath-keeping, forgiveness, generosity, mercy, compassion, etc.). It does not seem that sin (evil, the failure to do right) is an exception of ethics among other transcendent, spiritual realities that have been extended from God to humanity, such as rationality, emotion, volition, memory, humor, aesthetics, and axiology. For this reason, the Son of God must operate in his human life in a manner consistent with his divine impeccability. Simply stated, since Jesus is the Son of God, should he sin, then God would have sinned (as a man), which is impossible, since God is impeccable (necessarily good). As should be clear, the claim of divine impeccability makes understanding Jesus’ temptation more diffcult since what he experienced must compare closely with the temptation suffered by other human beings who are able to sin. How can an impeccable person be tempted? We know that God cannot be tempted (Jas 1:13), but Scripture is clear that God the Son suffered temptation throughout his life. We will return to this problem below.

2 What is freedom of will? The topic of Jesus’ impeccability and temptation connects with freedom of will for human beings and for God. Several questions intersect here. What is freedom for human beings? How has sin modifed that freedom? How does Jesus’ freedom as a man compare to the freedom of other human beings? What is freedom for God? We will consider the two leading theories of human freedom as background to considering Jesus’ freedom as a human being. Libertarian freedom. Libertarianism, or indeterminism, is the theory that whenever people choose, the circumstances were not the single causes of the choice they made so that they always could have chosen differently than they did.15 Since people are judged by God for their choices, it must be that they were free to choose as they did. Moral responsibility is only accountable for justice in the case of a person who was free to choose differently than she did. Accordingly, when people choose to sin, God holds them responsible for the wrongdoing that he allowed them to do. In the case of Jesus, the theory of libertarian freedom views his choices in the face of temptations as only free if he was able to choose otherwise, that is, to sin. Were Jesus impeccable, then his temptations did not involve real

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choices and certainly cannot be compared closely to what the rest of humanity experiences. For proponents of libertarian freedom who see problems with removing impeccability from Jesus, one solution is to guess that he believed he was able to sin, and so chose freely among the options before him. In this way, impeccability did not block Jesus’ experience of temptation and exercising his freedom in the libertarian sense. To explain this solution, we can think of an analogy in which some person, Jane, chose to remain in a room for some stated duration while the door was locked. Jane did not know the door was locked and believed that she could choose to leave at any time. Jane’s false belief about the locked door means she still experienced the choice between the two options of remaining in the room or departing. That she chose to remain is to her credit, even though doing otherwise was impossible. For Jesus, the false belief that he could sin (when he could not) preserved his freedom and ensures he is deserving of praise – even when that was the only choice available.16 Perhaps that analogy makes sense, but the explanation creates a new problem – that Jesus believed a wrong thing about himself. Considering the hundreds of temptations that Jesus likely faced throughout his life, this mistaken belief that he was capable of sin is a large and pervasive misunderstanding about himself. He also had to be a poor theologian to believe he could sin, since once he was convinced that he was the Son of God (e.g., Luke 2:52), he would have to be of below average intelligence not to see what God’s impeccability would mean for himself (cf. Mark 10:18). The conclusion that Jesus acted with libertarian freedom, either by actual peccability or imagined peccability, includes the dubitable assumption that real temptation requires libertarian freedom. Also, the guess that Jesus had to believe he was peccable if he was to be tempted does not ft with the devil’s appeal to Jesus in the wilderness. The challenge to turn stones into bread, to act by divine power, requires that Jesus believed he was capable of doing so, since he was God the Son. That he could believe he was omnipotent but not impeccable works against Morris’ solution of Jesus acting with libertarian freedom despite his impeccability.17 The theory of libertarian freedom connects most readily with peccability in Christ to explain the reality of his temptation, but the premise of peccability is dubitable, and another theory of freedom is available. Compatibilist freedom. Compatibilism is the theory of human freedom that people make choices according to their circumstances, including their nature, biography (or developed character), and their desires (will).18 Human freedom is compatible with God’s control of circumstances so that he can absolutely shape and direct the ways people choose while they remain free in a morally responsible way. God can use weather, neurochemistry, illness and injury, words of suggestion or provocation, dreams, demonic attacks, and more to infuence the free decisions of individuals so that people voluntarily fulfll what He has planned. God is as an author to history and people as a potter is to clay – a creator who ordained and determined

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all things before he made anything. Since the Bible affrms human freedom, God’s ordination of all things (e.g., Isa 45:7), and His judgment of human deeds, then it must be that human freedom is compatible with divine determinism (while admitting uncertainty as to how this is true). Human freedom occurs within the predestination and providence formed by divine freedom. People make choices in the context of many factors, and God can determine those factors to direct the freedom of choice that is still a creature’s own choice within God’s works. Compatibilism includes God’s involvement in human choices, so we can imagine that Jesus truly experienced the confict of desires, some aligned with God and some leading to sin (such as to avoid the cross), while God could move him to embrace the desire He wanted for him in every case. This reconstruction imagines providential involvement to facilitate both Jesus’ temptation and his sinlessness. Because of God’s providence, Jesus could be tempted fercely while the result was always assured from God’s perspective (impeccability due to God’s providence). This interaction can be the same for God’s involvement with his people in sanctifcation, as in God’s ordaining of many affictions to conform people to Christ (Rom 8:28–29). When tempted to sin, we can imagine that Jesus deliberated over his options according to the way he understood his situation, including his desires, experiences, and knowledge. The locked room analogy of Morris could work to explain Jesus’ freedom and impeccability on the compatibilist account also. A person, Jane, desires both to remain in the room and to depart (she is hungry or she needs to use the toilet), but she chooses to remain in the room because she desires most strongly to please her friend who asked her to wait there. Jane may imagine that it was for her safety that she was asked to remain in the room, and that the room may even be locked to prevent her from leaving (cf. Jesus’ impeccability), but she cannot be sure unless she tests the door. Desiring to trust her friend above testing the door and leaving the room, she chooses to be still and wait. The determinative factor assisting her choice to remain in the room is a memory of her friend’s seriousness in the request, as if there seemed to be a danger to Jane if she left the room. Similarly to Jane’s complex psychology, Jesus could consider several items while experiencing temptation: (1) he had never sinned up to this point, (2) he felt strong desires to follow whatever his Father told him, (3) he is the Son of God, so is probably impeccable since God is good, (4) he felt strong desires to avoid pain (hunger, cross, uncertainty about his identity, etc.), or (5) he felt strong desires for others to love him, or to experience sex, marriage, and family, etc. We saw in libertarianism that for freedom to be real, the person must have been able to choose differently than she did, so unless Jesus really could have chosen sin or at least believed mistakenly that sin was an option, he was not free. In reply, this premise is questionable in that knowing he

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was impeccable would have excluded Jesus from the experience of temptation. The assumption seems to be that knowing a future state of affairs determines one’s experience to ft that future, which does not happen in common experience. People experience unwarranted fears and hopes every day because we possess multiple levels of consciousness and our psychology has lots of complexity. The grit of personal experience in circumstances cannot be swept aside by our conceptual ability to analyze knowledge and perception like numerical values written on paper. Lived experience has much more to it than an abstract analysis of it typically allows, such as in the charge that impeccability precludes temptation, or that necessary goodness precludes freedom of choice and deep experience of sorrow or anger.19 Sometimes people can even calm their fears by reminding themselves of the sure situation at present or in the future, so the premise that the cognitive certainty about present or future reality excludes the struggle of experience is doubtful. The analogy of Jesus being tempted while knowing he was impeccable is comparable to Jesus grieving the loss of Lazarus while knowing he would raise Lazarus from the dead shortly (John 11:1–44). For Jesus, knowledge of a future situation does not preclude the experience that corresponds to the situation at hand (e.g., suffering, threat of pain, loss, etc). Jesus’ emotions reported in the Gospels tell the reality of a psychological experience (emotion, including temptation as related to fear and imagination) that does not ft the cognitive certainty about circumstances. Jesus knew about the cross and yet feared it in deep anguish. Jesus was convinced he would be raised from the dead and save the world, but he also struggled to accept that plan in Gethsemane. This question of what is freedom of will is important since most (all?) theologians presuppose a particular theory and use it as a lens to consider Jesus’ situation. The two theories give differing visions of Jesus’ impeccability and temptation, and how to consider other questions of what temptation is and how Jesus resisted temptation. Turning away from the theories of freedom of will, we may also consider what sort of human will Jesus possessed, since not all human will is the same. Maximus the Confessor distinguished between gnomic willing that is damaged by sin, and the natural willing of Jesus, which is the same as freedom in the resurrection.20 Because of alienation from God, all sinful humans are doomed to deliberate over what choices are good and evil, with conficting desires. Maximus thought that only because of sin did willing involve the weighing of different options, but is this right? Can Jesus’ temptation be real if he does not deliberate over what is good and evil, and feel the pull to do things that lead to sin (such as to avoid the cross)? As an alternative to Maximus’ sorting of deliberation with the effects of sin, I offer another proposal for Jesus’ human will among four states of human willing. 21 First, the original condition before sin seems to compare best with Jesus’ will. Adam and Eve were able to deliberate good and evil. They were

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tempted even though they had never sinned. Not having sinned, they are aligned with God and were not simply neutral. They were able to sin or remain sinless depending upon God’s providence being exerted to support them in particular ways. God is not to be blamed for their sin, but He could have manifested his presence at the time of the devil’s approach, or could have otherwise kept the devil at bay if He had wanted to maintain them in sinlessness. Similarly, Jesus was tempted and struggled between desires leading to good and evil, but remained sinless because God supported him providentially. Second, the alienated condition of the will after sin compares to what Maximus called gnomic willing and the Reformers called the “bondage of the will.”22 Universal human sinfulness bears out this ruined condition of the will that Jesus called enslavement to sin (John 8:34) because the person does not want anything that does not serve himself (cf. Rom 6:16–20; 8:6–8). People deliberate about good and evil while seeking to fulfll their own mixed desires. People mistakenly deliberate good and evil according to what serves the individual’s own perceived beneft. This self-centered orientation is evil because it contradicts God’s intention that people love others. Without God’s involvement, they persist in sin habitually and voluntarily, so everyone does sin. Third, the reconciled condition of the will is operative for those who have been reclaimed by God through the gospel. People deliberate good and evil, but they are full of confict as a result of being aligned to God while continuing to align themselves with sin. When they surrender to God’s leading, they are sinless, like Jesus, but the daily situation is mixed – sometimes they are moved by God and sometimes they move themselves in continued sin. Upon God’s initiative, they turn away from sin progressively in response to His providential works to conform them to Jesus. Fourth, the resurrected condition of the will is perfectly conformed to God in voluntary embrace of his flling and leading by the Spirit. Their choices remain free deliberations among many good options. Perhaps they will still experience temptation and thereby have to consider options of sin, but we know that they are impeccable, since the idea of death as the consequence for sin is ended in the New Creation (Rev 21:4). We may imagine that God providentially secures their impeccability by orchestrating their deliberation that might involve sins in much the same way that we can imagine was done for Jesus in his earthly suffering of many temptations. For Jesus and all those resurrected in glory, choice continue to be real (even as God is the freest being) while living as unobstructed in relation to God, who secures their unfailing conformity to him. Whatever we conclude about freedom of the will, somehow the sort of freedom that Jesus experienced must ft with his temptation to sin. His temptations must also be of the sort that compares closely with what other people experience, since the Bible marks his relevance clearly as a point of encouragement and a marker of his true humanity.

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3 What is temptation to sin? Temptation to sin has become the most pressing aspect of the topic because theologians have become increasingly concerned about Jesus’ humanity in likeness to ours and the similarities of his temptation to ours. These concerns seem to be blocked by the traditional insistence on Jesus’ impeccability, so that claim has been discarded by many in recent decades. The typical modern account of Jesus’ temptation is as follows: If he is ‘temptable’ because he is truly human, then it must be that he was able to sin. As we have seen above, a view of freedom as libertarian can be controlling in this line of reasoning. But it is just one line. Temptation is a complicated experience that requires a complicated analysis to be accurate. Our intuitions about temptation from daily experience can be misleading if we move right from ourselves to conclusions about Jesus. I submit that an adequate account of temptation requires several details to avoid mistakes. 23 If we start with Scripture, then we can trust as true the claim that Jesus was truly tempted in all the ways that we are so that he is able to empathize with our situation and offer us valuable help to face it (Heb 4:15). It remains for theology to explain what constituted temptation for God Incarnate, and how he was tempted in ways that correspond to our temptations. The temptation to sin is an affiction suffered by all created beings. God cannot be tempted by evil (Jas 1:13) because the factors that make sin appealing to creatures are not part of God’s existence. 24 God the Son became a man so that he could be tempted for us (to renew the human race from the inside, as one of us), since otherwise he could not be afficted in this way, as we are. For example, we know that the resurrected people of God will be exempt from sin forever (Rev 21:4), but we have no witness to a cessation of temptation. They are possibly an example of being tempted while being impeccable. We cannot settle the question of continuing temptation in the New Creation other than to note that Jesus’ situation may correspond to that situation of impeccability and temptation. In all cases of temptation that we know of, to be tempted by evil is part of the created situation that God transcends and orders providentially. Freedom of choice is possible without temptation, since God is free and is not tempted, so temptation is not necessary for the ongoing freedom of resurrected people. What we do know is that temptation is the normal condition of the present age as built-in by God from the beginning, even before people sinned. Temptation is an affiction, but this is a providential beneft to the people who suffer it as a formational crisis of faith. Jesus could be tempted because he was immersed in a created situation orchestrated by God. We have seen that providence can possibly account for Jesus’ impeccability. Temptation is not merely an affiction that God permits or allows as a lamentable by-product of creation. God’s predestination of the cross with the many aspects of human agency shows that He ordains even severe pain and suffering for positive purposes (e.g., Gen 50:20; Acts 4:24–28). Similarly,

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the varieties of temptations should be viewed as affictions that God has orchestrated for positive purposes (Rom 8:28–29). James assured his readers that God tempts no one, but the crises of faith that people experience as temptations to sin are cause for them to rejoice because such tests are God’s method of conforming them to Christ (Jas 1:2–5). Why would God do this? Surely we must hold Him responsible for the conditions that give rise to the inner confict of temptation without blaming him for doing wrong: creating the tree of knowledge in Eden, provoking the devil to affict Job, moving Israel into Egypt, limiting Israel’s food to wilderness manna, driving Jesus into the wilderness without food, giving Paul his thorn in the fesh, etc. In each case, the conditions give rise to a crisis of faith – will people trust God? – and the counterpart of temptation – will people fail to trust God? Temptations to sin should be included positively in “the sufferings of the present time” (Rom 8:17–18) by which Christians follow Jesus to glory in a path ordered by God so as to conform them to the Son (1 Pet 2:21–25). As such, temptations are aspects of the cross that Christians must bear (Luke 9:23) as a cross tailored to our need to experience the “fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Phil 3:10). When viewed this way, temptations to sin are not simply negative irritations like pesky mosquitos or buzzing fies: They are God’s methodology to attack our ongoing attachments to our own ways of living. The continuing affiction of temptation is intended by God as a way for us to practice relying on him instead of living independently by ourselves. God offers to meet us in temptation so we may encounter him in it and refuse evil because of his infuence upon us. God has good reasons for the crises we experience as temptations in daily life. Interpreting temptations to sin as crises to provoke our conformity to Christ parallels the way the Bible frequently urges Christians to see their suffering antithetically – because of God’s providence in all things and the confounding masterwork of the cross. Having shown us how he works in the cross by subverting evil through suffering, we can see that his works everywhere in our lives follow the cross as the model. Repeatedly, Christians are called by the New Testament to see God’s care for them in the conditions of their affictions, persecution, and trials of various kinds since it is through this distress that God forms them into suffering servants who operate like Jesus. 25 Distresses that include temptations are rightly termed alien works of God, because they seem not to ft with His goodness. 26 The alien works are necessary complements to God’s proper works of formation and blessing, even as Jesus was made perfect as a suffering servant through his own lifetime of temptations to sin. We know that in the case of Jesus, his temptations were effective to teach, form, and make him into a faithful high priest who could empathize with the people and give needed help to them. Similarly, without the strain of the temptation to sin – provided by God

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as trials of development – our transformation from corruption to Christ would not be possible. Temptations are God’s instruments to facilitate our sense of need for him and to experience his closeness to us. His goal is for us to conform to Jesus, which I take to be a mode of operating in daily life as flled and moved by God’s Spirit, even in the words that we say, since this is what Jesus demonstrated (John 14:10). Viewing temptations antithetically (good effects from negative causes) as God’s works to make us like Jesus, our experience of these crises of faith can be very different. Circumstances that typically provoke an outburst of anger, a sprout of coveting, a fear of shame or loss, or some other disturbing desire that lead to sin are the conditions of our temptation. Many Christians likely feel shocked and irritated to be accosted by temptations, and we may even feel shame and reproach ourselves for allowing such wrong desires to have a pull on us. Prayer in the midst of temptation is not our natural response, but it could be if we understand temptation as God’s efforts for our sanctifcation. Two important facts about temptation told by Scripture contradict our intuitions about temptation as repulsive chores and setbacks on spiritual progress (or even that temptations are sinful). First, that Jesus was tempted to sin vindicates the experience as part of being a righteous human being living in close harmony with God. Because of God’s work through them, temptations are the means of progress with him because they facilitate our openness to him. They create our feeling that we need his involvement with us. Second, Hebrews 2:17–18 assures us of Jesus’ ability to help us in the circumstance of temptation, and Hebrews 4:15–16 urges us to pull at him for help in the moment of temptation. If Christians attempt to withstand their temptations through personal diligence, steeling their wills, policing their habits, and attempting to keep sin at bay through personal effort, then they would miss the point of temptations as crises prepared by God so that people pull on him as they feel pulled by temptation. The theological meaning of temptation is not simply the inner moral confict with an outcome on one side or the other along the thin edge of freedom of will: failure in sin or success in righteousness. Temptation is not primarily about freedom of choice to embrace evil. Instead, temptation is about God engaging creatures in a relationship by which they voluntarily respond to his leading and warnings. Temptations are the opportunity to turn our back to the pull of sin because God has approached us and draws us after him. While sin is possible for humans when they are tempted – as a failure to respond to God’s initiative – the possibility of sin is not necessary for Jesus to experience real temptation to sin. We may imagine that Jesus could contemplate the possibility of sin because he either mistakenly believed sinning was possible for him, or because sinning actually was possible for him, or because he was uncertain of his capacity to sin (a veiling of his knowledge about what he could do as God Incarnate). But these

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imaginations are only the negative account of his temptations since Scripture declares the positive account: evil approached Jesus multiple times but he always looked to his Father’s imperative, a will that Jesus sought to fulfll. The struggle may have been between desires that led to good and evil options, but just as reasonable is the struggle in the face of evil to stay with his Father as he called his Son into uncomfortable, unpopular, distressing, and painful conditions. In other words, I suggest that temptation is mostly misunderstood as simply a binary set of choices and should be reconsidered along the lines of the choice for salvation, re-enacted hundreds of time each day as the ripples from the one basic surrender to God. God calls us to be reconciled to him, and we either respond or we shrink back from him into the evil of illusory independence and self-suffciency (what Paul calls the fesh in Gal 5:16–25). Avoiding God is not a choice as a power or ability, but the failure of creaturely response, the failure to use freedom gifted to us as God intended. That people repeatedly embrace evil instead of God in episodes of temptation throughout the day is an echo of their failure to surrender to God. That Christians struggle between God’s imperatives and the continuing pull of evil alternatives are voluntary occasions to continue in the surrender, once begun, and thereby have repeated opportunities to rely on and experience God instead of evil in daily life. God draws them after himself in crises of faith that they misunderstand as temptations to sin. For Jesus, he surrendered to his Father’s will from the beginning of his human life, which shows at least in Luke 2:52 when he submitted himself to his parents in Jerusalem. Every case of temptation was a test implicated by that basic surrender of his life as flled, moved, and led by his Father (through the Holy Spirit). Jesus’ refusal to follow desires leading to evil was the outcome of his embrace of his Father’s imperatives. This embrace is visible in Gethsemane, where he is praying for a change of the imperative about the cross. We do not see a struggle of choice between good and evil options, but a struggle to maintain the choice once made, even as pressure against it increases with the prospect of bearing the wrath of God.

4 How is Jesus’ experience of temptation relevant for Christians in daily life? Hebrews 4:15–16 declares the link between Jesus’ temptations and what Christians suffer so that he can sympathize with them and provide the help that they need. Two approaches are possible to make sense of how this declaration can be true. The frst approach is to start with the general human situation and then draw lines of correspondence to what must be the case for Jesus. This is the commensurability side of the question that assumes enough features about temptation are commonly experienced, despite the reality of temptation as an internal and personal experience. One feature of commensurability is

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that one common experience includes the so-called ability to sin (or the capacity for failure to stick with God). Since temptation involves the possible outcome of turning to sin for Christians, the commensurability of Jesus’ temptation must involve possibly turning to sin for him. Jesus’ impeccability must be false; were Jesus impeccable, then his experience is irrelevant for Christians and he does not correctly sympathize with their experience. The frst approach emphasizing the commensurability from common human experience is dubitable because unanalyzed common experiences may contain features that are not essential to commensurability, such as the ability to sin. Peccability is commonly part of what people consider when they are tempted, but this is not necessary to the essence of testing, even as many people may be tempted about things that are actually impossible for them materially to do (e.g., temptation to assassinate a prime minister or president) or impossible for them in particular (e.g., psychological impossibility, even as many people are tempted to kill themselves but cannot bring themselves to do it). A counterexample is how to count essential human existence.27 We might say that aspects common to humanity are to be born on planet earth, to have a navel, to have human parents, to have a mother and a father. These features may be common to many people but would be a false set of criteria since we can imagine some person born in a space station orbiting the Earth, or a human being created through cloning (in addition to Adam and Eve, and Jesus). Instead, an essential trait of humanity is personal existence with a body and a soul, which happens also to be common to all humanity. Similarly, picking out some features of common temptation experiences, such as the capacity to sin, can skew a defnition. A theological defnition should draw from the account of Jesus’ temptation and his impeccability and the possibility of temptation with impeccability in the resurrection. Thus, we should be open to defning temptation as compossible with impeccability instead of narrowly identifying temptation with the ability to sin (and raising the diffcult question of Jesus’ peccability and, thereby, the peccability of the Triune God). The second approach to explain the commensurability of temptation is by identifying the essential experience of temptation for Jesus and others living with God: the struggle to continue obeying God instead of shrinking back from his requirements. This defnition is different from a philosophical or psychological account of temptation, since we are concerned specifically with Jesus and his relevance for Christians. His suffering of God’s tests compares with theirs enough that he sympathizes with them and they can look to his example for confdence and encouragement. The commensurability between his experiences and theirs goes back and forth. We can add that temptation has a commensurable core of relational circumstances (since we are relational beings). Jesus plausibly felt the pull of evil in all fve fronts that are common for most people. 28 The importance of the relational framework of temptations is that particular, unique

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experiences do not count against the commensurability of experience. For example, Jesus was not tempted by shiny sports cars that may lure people today to covet or steal; Jesus was tested in relation to bread. I doubt that anyone besides Jesus could be tempted by the idea of turning stones into bread, but most people can sympathize with his struggle with the devil’s provocations in the wilderness. The uniqueness of personal experience does not discount commensurability. The Apostle Paul could speak categorically to Christians at Corinth about their temptations (1 Cor 10:13) and the writer of Hebrews could do the same to another group, explaining that the essential experience is understood by God, who offers a way of escape. Jesus suffered his crises of faith as their model to follow (cf. 1 Pet 2:21–25; Heb 12:1–3).

5 What is the role of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ life and ministry? Two options are possible here in regards to the involvement of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ earthly life: a representative role and an essential role. The representative role of the Spirit means his presence was to identify Jesus as the Messiah, as in the visible declaration at the Jordan baptism (John 1:32–34). The supernatural works of Jesus were signs of his deity. The Spirit was an accessory to Jesus to identify him offcially (instead of energizing him for supernatural operation). Regarding temptation, Jesus is seen to be resisting temptation through his inherent divine power, since he is the Son of God. Unfortunately, this option provides very little encouragement for people who are similarly afficted by temptation but lack Jesus’ divine power. We may be grateful for Jesus’ sinlessness, but we fnd in his example little that is commensurable to our experience, since his apparent reliance on the word of God and the Holy Spirit were merely garnishes to the real power of his righteous victory over temptation – being God. In contrast, the second option explains Jesus’ life in terms of an essential role of the Holy Spirit. According to Spirit Christology, the Son of God lived as a true human being, enabled by the Holy Spirit in all his works: miracles, teaching, revelation from God, and authority over creation. 29 God the Son lived within the limitations of a true human life and was empowered by the Spirit of God for superhuman experiences, knowledge, and actions. 30 Jesus operated as moved by the Spirit in response to leading by God the Father, which means that as a man he was with his Father and his Father was operative in his human action for all that he said and did (e.g., John 14:10). This details an inner experience of surrender and relationship. The hero of the incarnation is the Son of God, but his necessary ally in this mission was the Spirit of God. The same Spirit is given to indwell Christians to conform them to Christ, who was himself formed and moved by the Spirit. Pertaining to the topic of Jesus’ temptation, Spirit Christology marks the startling continuity between Jesus and his people. The Spirit moving him

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is given to move them in the similar ways. Analogous to Christ’s impeccability is God’s production of Scripture by means of human authors to write what He wanted understood as being “moved by the Spirit” (2 Pet 1:21). If Jesus resisted temptation through the empowering support of the Spirit, then he is model for his people to resist with the same help. This help may be what is intended in Hebrews 4:15, where the problem of temptation is addressed by God’s assurance of “grace to help in time of need” – with help interpreted as reference to the Spirit. If Spirit Christology is right, then Christians are indwelt by the same Spirit for the same operation that was demonstrated in Jesus for the same results. Being Jesus’ members, he equips his people to face temptations the same way he did – not according to his deity, but within the limits of his suffering humanity and as enhanced by the indwelling Spirit. The Spirit’s work may be as simple as leading, guiding, and moving people to continue to cling to God in moments of crisis (Rom 8:16).

6 Could Jesus sin or not? How we answer this question may be seen as the background to the question of Jesus’ sinlessness, but that is only if we think his impeccability was the cause of his sinlessness. For proponents of Jesus’ peccability, that assumption seems to be in play, so they seek to rescue his freedom of choice and relevance to other humans. I see no necessity for us to make these connections, either making peccability the source of his freedom or making impeccability the source of his sinlessness. For example, a police offcer wearing a bulletproof vest can be safe from a bullet hitting his vital organs, but the way he avoided getting shot was actually by running fast and ducking behind a car when he was shot at. Also, recalling the locked-room test mentioned above, the lock on the door may have guaranteed that the person remained in the room, but the lock was not the cause of the person remaining there – she chose to remain. For Jesus, we might say he was impeccable because he was God, but the actual turn away from sin was because of his human choice (as led by the Spirit in response to his Father). To say Jesus was impeccable for different reasons than how he was sinless answers those who object that he was not free as a man and should not be praised for choosing the good.31 The important aspect often missed in theological analyses of Jesus’ impeccability and temptation is to think of him as an independent operator, instead of as him living constantly as a man dependent upon the Spirit in relationship with his heavenly Father (John 5:19). Several aspects of this question of whether Jesus could sin or not can be considered. First, peccability seems to solve the problem of his relevance and the libertarian freedom of his choice. Other accounts are available to solve these problems (e.g., nescience about his impeccability, compatibilist freedom). To say that Jesus could sin raises the much larger problems of

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divine impeccability and the truth of God’s promises to redeem his people. I think the peccability claim is impossible because for God to fail morally or to fail to keep his promises for redemption would mean he is a different god than the one presented in the Bible. The idea of a peccable God is entailed in the idea of a peccable Christ, so both are theologically impossible if Scripture is our authority for knowing God, his works, and his infallible promises. Second, we may say that Jesus’ human nature, when abstracted from the hypostatic union, is capable of sin. His humanity is so similar to ours (Rom 8:3) that he could be tempted in closely similar ways to us (Heb 4:15–16). Similarly, Jesus possesses the physical capacity to commit evil, such as to voice the words of a lie. Certainly, it is correct to align Jesus as truly and fully human in every way that we are, yet as being without sin. This commonality is a redemptive necessity, since Jesus functions as the representative head for the renewal of the human race (cf. Adam, Col 1:18; 1 Cor 15:45–49). Thinking of Jesus’ humanity separately from the incarnational union is theological imagination that, if considered, must continue to the actual situation of whose human nature it is (enhypostasis, the idea that the Logos is the person of the human nature assumed for incarnation). Being who he is, the divine Son, never would he misuse his human capacities to fail to tell the truth. By comparison, a chef’s knife may be misused as a violent weapon, but in the hands of a person who would never misuse it to harm another person, that knife is only used for good. The knife is a morally neutral object. A person commits sin; natures are simply the properties possessed and used instrumentally by persons. Jesus’ human nature is neither peccable nor impeccable – the nature is just a human body and soul. Some human person, Jack, may be able to sin, but Jesus, being the Son of God (an impeccable person), is unable to sin in every nature he possesses. Never could he misuse his powers as God or as man, but this impossibility need not determine his choices nor block his deliberation over temptations to sin. Third, Jesus’ impeccability is important to affrm because of the exception for peccability among other common human weaknesses (such as limits of knowledge, power, presence, mortality, contingency, temporality, etc.). 32 The exception of sin is that moral reality transcends created existence to share in God’s existence. Human moral evil touches God (which is why all sin is against God and deserves divine wrath in response) in a way that, by comparison, other human attributes of being limited in place or too weak to lift a heavy weight do not constitute God’s spiritual reality. Accordingly, sin must be impossible for God the Son when he lives as a man. Fourth, we may give multiple accounts of how he was impeccable. Scripture does not say how, and theologians have offered at least four types of explanations. 33 Alongside those, I offer that Jesus’ impeccability is a necessity for God’s providence for redemption. God had to orchestrate the details of Jesus’ daily experience so that he never failed in any test that

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tempted him towards sin. This is not to say that God would have blocked Jesus’ attempt to sin, but that He orchestrated Jesus’ situation so that he would always continue in righteousness despite the pull to sin. For example, the Spirit’s presence in the wilderness with Jesus could have kept in the forefront of Jesus’ mind the truths declared in Scripture and maintained them as convincing for Jesus in opposition to the claims of the devil. In Gethsemane, an angel was provided to strengthen Jesus, perhaps as a visible sign of divine support, and this was suffcient to keep him on track (e.g., Luke 22:43). We can imagine that God, being infnite in his providence, would be able to do everything necessary to support Jesus’ freedom to choose the right path.34 Were Jesus ever to sin (even now as resurrected), then he would fail at being the Mediator for the salvation of God’s people. The typology of innocence and perfection in OT sacrifces pointed to the need for a substitute Man who was eligible to bear the guilt for others’ sins and thereby propitiate God’s justice against evil. Redemption made it necessary for God that Jesus never sin; God’s many promises of redemption made it necessary, providentially, that Jesus could not sin. The question of whether or not God the Son had the actual capacity to sin in his life as a man usually attracts the most attention in this topic among all other considerations. With the multiple accounts to explain theologically how he was impeccable, these accounts may be distinguished from the cause of his sinlessness. Scripture affrms Jesus’ sinlessness without telling us how he never sinned or whether he could not have been anything other than sinless. We have seen that how we answer this question is heavily infuenced by conclusions for other questions to make it complicated instead of simple. This complication is typical of how theology works, requiring concentration to analyze all the presuppositions with which we approach questions and embrace one conclusion or another as the best.

7 How did Jesus avoid sin and fulfll all righteousness? One typical answer to the question of Jesus’ sinlessness is to count his divine power as the guard and power of his human virtue. This answer invalidates Jesus’ temptation and the requirement that Christians follow his pattern of life, since they are not divine as he is. Another answer is to see Jesus as the pattern for what God wants to do with all Christians. Jesus is the demonstration of life in the Spirit and an inner sense of closeness to God despite torrents of human hostility, circumstances of misery, and much suffering. In this sense, Jesus’ sinlessness is an imperative to persevere with the assurance of God’s involvement. The authentic human life of God the Son includes the restraint from operating with divine abilities in his human life. Restraint of supernatural abilities is necessary to fulfll the role as the Second Adam, come to save the human race from sin. Otherwise, Jesus could not be tempted for us, suffer

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God’s wrath in our place, or die and rise from the dead for us. This restraint is most likely due to the Holy Spirit, since Scripture tells of his involvement in Jesus’ supernatural functioning within the frame of a human life (e.g., revealed knowledge, nature miracles, etc.) and in Jesus’ relationship as a creature with God. The parallels of OT prophets and the Apostles with Jesus’ occasional supernatural functioning further suggests work by the Spirit of God within the human realm. Ascribing the regulative role to the Holy Spirit is simpler to imagine as Jesus’ psychology in parallel with the Christian’s. In the same way that Jesus lived by dependence upon the Holy Spirit leading Him throughout his life, so also the Christian’s life is to be conformed to Jesus in this continual surrender (Luke 9:23). The question of how Jesus lived perfectly must bear close comparison to common humanity because the entire agenda for the incarnation was to bring creatures into communion with the Father (cf. John 17:3). Jesus’ humanity is the only transferable substance available to redeem humanity, so the entirety of his operation as savior must be humanly achieved (Rom 5:12–19; 10:4). There are two answers possible when considering Jesus’ sinlessness as an authentically human achievement. First, we can think of him as a hero, the ideal and model to whom we aspire. We see his exertions as virtues to copy and praise: he prayed diligently, obeyed his Father even in the face of great suffering, denied himself to serve others, was moved by compassion to care for the needs of others, and gave himself up because of his love for the Father and the people he saves. The way Scripture presents Jesus as employing the means of grace can be twisted into a formula for how we follow him in sinlessness. The righteous life will become real for the person who, like Jesus, avails herself of what God has provided in his word, community, prayer, and whatever else is considered sacramental. The means of grace are like a toolbox of resources that God has provided for people to respond to him obediently – they need only use the tools given. Viewing Jesus as a hero of sinlessness can be a subtle way of constructing one’s own sense of heroism for personal feats of righteousness. Jesus used grace to achieve sinlessness; Christians must use grace to achieve sinlessness. Personal diligence in this way does not seem to be what God calls for in appeals to rely on him instead of one’s own devices. The formula of saying a person relies on God while using the tools provided can be just another way of continuing to live independently from God (the fesh, selfsuffciency). In contrast to exerting a personal moral performance, Jesus did not identify himself as a hero to be followed by acting as he did. Jesus disavowed credit for his teachings and the work that he did; he pointed away from himself and towards the initiative of his Father and the operation of the Spirit (cf. John 14:10; Matt 12:28). Jesus as a human hero of virtue follows the theology of glory, that is, the glory of human works. Luther identifed the theology of glory as a way of approaching theology with a vision of human works at the center. 35

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The  theology of the glory of human efforts counts appearances of what seems to look good to people, and the appearance of Jesus’ personal diligence in achieving his obedience looks very good. I consider this answer a mistake because the responsibility is shifted almost entirely onto the creature for moral performance while God remains somewhat distant, as a passive observer. The second answer is the alternative way that Luther labeled as the theology of the cross. 36 Two aspects of Luther’s theology of the cross are relevant here: God’s work in the crucifxion is programmatic due to humans’ inability to contribute to salvation, and God’s works are antithetical to the way people expect Him to do things (1 Cor 1:18–23). Jesus is the suffering servant through whom the Triune God accomplished salvation, so the personal exertion of the Son is not at the center of his achievement. The cross shows the antithesis that God seems to prefer to use suffering and distress to bring about liberty and enjoyment, afficting people while appearing to forsake them to bring them into deeper communion with Him. The cross indicates that salvation is God’s work, and this can apply to Jesus’ sinlessness also. Jesus is the demonstration of what God does with a human life, and programmatically for all of his people, since they are destined to be conformed to the image of the Son (Rom 8:28–29; 2 Cor 3:18). As viewed through theology of the cross, Jesus’ temptations were ordered providentially not as problems to be overcome, but as decisive contributions to his mission. Through the temptations, Jesus was afficted (the alien works of God) so that he could become perfect as a priest for the people (Heb 2:17–18). He suffered to be able to reverse their condition, to empathize with them, and to be a credible example to them with real help to offer. The curriculum of his suffering was ordered providentially by God, and his survival in sinlessness was also ordered providentially by God. What theologians have considered the empowering grace of the Holy Spirit sustaining Jesus for sinlessness, I submit can be more closely defned as life in the Spirit and being moved by God (cf. 2 Pet 1:21). Jesus as the Messiah and the New Covenant account of life in the Spirit are mutually implicative for at least one feature of a personal and internal sense of communion with God. Experience of this communion can take several forms. Jesus experienced direct and personal communication from his Father, which has precedent in God’s work with the patriarchs and prophets and continues in the experience of the Apostles (e.g., Acts 10:1–20; 2 Cor 12:1–10). Jesus experienced direct guidance from his Father (Luke 4:1–14), which also matches OT experiences and people in the New Covenant, such as Philip (Acts 8:29) and Paul (Acts 16:6–7), and normatively for Christians (Rom 8:14). Jesus knew from a young age that he belonged to his Father in a special way (Luke 2:49), and the similar communion by assurance of the Spirit is provided for Christians (Rom 8:15–16; Gal 4:6). The means of grace are important and valuable in Jesus’ life and for Christians as aspects of experiencing a relationship with God.

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When the human being is “flled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18) and thereby moved by God, then that creature will be righteous in existential functioning. The accomplishment of sinlessness is God’s, inclusive of the creature’s liberated response to God’s initiative, just as we are told that all of the believer’s life is God’s workmanship (Eph 2:10). The mode of surrender, trust, and reliance upon God’s provision is the way Jesus explains his life as dependent upon his Father, and how all discipleship is to be as a child the way he is (dependent, trusting, contributing nothing). I propose that the temptation and sinlessness of Jesus be viewed from the starting position of living in communion with his Father. Temptation to sin is the pull to depart from God by relying on oneself. God’s goal in salvation is that creatures would live in a state of having surrendered to him constantly, so that they experience communion with him. In that communion they will also be sinless, since they will not sin while they are with God. For this reason, the means of grace may be reconfgured as means of experiencing God’s presence and communion with him, as in four examples: 1

2

3

4

Jesus answered the devil’s temptations by trusting God’s word instead of what seemed to be wisdom (Luke 4:4, 7, 12); God’s word is described as the antidote to sin (Ps 119:11) because it is a virtual encounter with God speaking to us through his word. Jesus urged his friends to pray that they not enter temptation (Matt 26:41) while he struggled in prayer to stay on the path set by God for him; Christians are urged to pray to receive divine help when they are tempted (Heb 4:15–16). A similar assurance is given in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that God provides a way out of temptations that affict Christians. Jesus is said to have relied on the support from his friends many times; the same mutual support is urged to Christians to experience God’s presence through people who are the virtual and interdependent body parts of Jesus (1 Cor 12:12; Gal 6:1–2). The Holy Spirit gave guidance to Jesus (Luke 4:1–14); to live as led by the Spirit is stated normatively for Christians (Rom 8:16).

These four aspects are valuable because God becomes close to creatures for a relationship through these modes. They are means of grace because people can experience involvement with God through them. God gives himself to people through direct encounter. In other words, the means of grace and empowerment of the Holy Spirit may be just the encounter with God personally and individually. God himself assures and supports the continued trust of his creatures despite the pulls of temptation and threats of suffering that sometimes come with God’s works. God himself is the grace to help in time of need. God’s nearness fortifed Jesus against attacks of temptation. Therefore, God the Father is the cause of Jesus’ sinlessness, not as a deifcation of his humanity or an undefned spiritual power from the Holy

140 John E. McKinley Spirit. Jesus experienced the presence and infuence of his Father who put to fight the fears, threats, lies, and twisted desires for self-gratifcation that lead creatures into sin. Similarly, Jesus’ relevance for Christians facing temptation to sin is that he is the model of the relationship that the Father has provided through the Son and the Spirit.

Notes 1 Nelson Pike, “Omnipotence and God’s Ability to Sin,” American Philosophical Quarterly 6:3 (1969), 208–16; W.R. Carter, “Impeccability Revisited,” Analysis 45:1 (1985), 55; Bruce Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 140; Vincent Brümmer, “Divine Impeccability,” Religious Studies 20 (1984), 204; Robert F. Brown, “God’s Ability to Will Moral Evil,” Faith and Philosophy 8:1 (1991), 3–20; Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), 95. 2 Thomas V. Morris, Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 27–29. 3 E.g., Num 23:19 “God is not a man that He should lie.” All translations from the Bible are taken from nasb. 4 Morris, Anselmian Explorations (cf. n. 2), 27–29. 5 Ronald H. Nash, The Concept of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983), 41–43. 6 Cf. Anselm, “Proslogium,” in St. Anselm: Proslogium, Monologium; An Appendix in Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo, trans. S. N. Deane [electronic ed.] [Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1926], ch. 7. 7 Morris, Anselmian Explorations (cf. n. 2), 74. 8 Bruce Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 152 n17. Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 95. Vincent Brümmer, “Divine Impeccability,” 213. Pike, “Omnipotence and God’s Ability to Sin,” 68–69. 9 Paul Helm, “God and the Approval of Sin,” Religious Studies 20 (1984), 220. 10 For a recent defense of divine impeccability, see John Feinberg, No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 288–92. 11 Morris, Anselmian Explorations (cf. n. 2), 35 and 92–97. 12 Bruce A. Ware, “An Evangelical Reformulation of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29 (1986): 434–44. Nash, The Concept of God, 101. 13 For further explanation, see John E. McKinley, Tempted for Us: Theological Models and the Practical Relevance of Christ’s Impeccability and Temptation (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009), 250–1. 14 Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), 16. 15 Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 129. 16 Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 147–8. I interact with Morris’ view in McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 13), 229–31, 40–41. 17 A third approach that could help the theory of libertarian freedom is to imagine that Jesus was not certain about his impeccability (McKinley, Tempted for Us, 236–9). A fourth libertarian approach to Jesus’ situation is that he was able to exercise real freedom in choosing between greater and lesser goods (Richard Swinburne, The Christian God [New York: Oxford University Press, 1994],

Jesus Christ’s temptation

18 19 20 21 22

23 24

25 26

27 28

29 30

31

32

141

203–7). For example, God chose to make many promises noted in the Bible, but God could have chosen differently than he did (Morris, Anselmian Explorations [cf. n. 2], 27–29). Olson, Arminian Theology (cf. n. 15), 129. For God also, his omniscience (from foreordination) does not preclude him from deeply visceral grief and joy, or anger. Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Copenhagen: Lund, 1965), 229. My analysis is reminiscent of Augustine’s well-known distinctions of posse peccare, non posse peccare, etc. E.g., Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 25: Lectures on Romans, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald & Helmut T. Lehman (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1999), 291. “The reason is that our nature has been so deeply curved in upon itself because of the viciousness of original sin.” I have analyzed temptation at length in McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 13), 261–98. Briefy, humans are tempted to sin for at least fve reasons that do not ft with God: (1) they are contingent beings, (2) they are fnite, (3) they are vulnerable to pain, (4) they can imagine the possibility to avoid pain or transcend their contingency and fnitude, and (5) they can be deceived to view an evil choice as good if it seems to enhance them or help them avoid some pain. By contrast, God is self-suffcient, infnite, impassible, perfect, and omniscient so evil possibilities have no appeal to him in any sense. God cannot be threatened or deceived. God cannot gain or lose anything, since he owns everything. God is untemptable by evil. Acts 14:22; Rom 5:3–5; 8:17–29; 2 Cor 3:18; 4:7–12; Jas 1:2–5; 1 Pet 2:21–25; Heb 12:1–14. Luther’s distinction of God’s alien and proper works, “For the proper work and nature of God is to save. But when our fesh is so evil that it cannot be saved by God’s proper work, it is necessary for it to be saved by His alien work.” Luther’s Works, Vol. 16: Lectures on Isaiah: Chapters 1–39, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald & Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 16 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1999), 233. Morris, Logic of God Incarnate (cf. n. 16), 63–66. Temptation always takes place in one or more of these relational settings – In relation to God: to turn away from his imperatives, to fail to trust him. In relation to stuff: to covet things of others, to possess more than one needs. In relation to other people: to please people, to use people, to be loved by people. In relation to one’s self: to think too highly or to lowly of oneself, to judge oneself. In relation to suffering: to avoid pain or loss through crime, e.g., theft to avoid hunger. McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 13), 262–70. E.g., John Owen, The Holy Spirit: His Gifts and Power (Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2004), 121. Colin Gunton, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit: Toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology (London: T & T Clark, 2003), 144–5. This limitation of not acting according to his divine power as the Son of God was necessary for Jesus both (1) to be a human substitute for Adam (Irenaeus’ theology of recapitulation, Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45–48) as a true representative for Justifcation by grace, and (2) to serve as a reasonable model for responding to God’s work of sanctifcation (imitatio Christi, 1 Cor 11:1; 1 Pet 2:21–25). “Being necessarily good precludes any such scope of freedom.” Keith Yandell, “Divine Necessity and Divine Goodness,” in ed. Thomas V. Morris, Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 333. See McKinley, Tempted for Us (cf. n. 13), 252–4.

142 John E. McKinley 33 Ibid., 102–68. 34 This is similar to the way God seems to be involved in free responses to the gospel according to the person’s needs: the Apostle Paul was confronted by the risen Christ and blinded for three days, the Apostle Thomas was able to touch Jesus’ wounds, Lydia’s heart was opened by the Lord (Acts 16:14), others responded to healing miracles by Jesus or the Apostles (Heb 2:4), and many have responded to an undefned work of the Spirit when told about Jesus (John 5:24; Rom 10:14). 35 Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation, Proof for Thesis 21, trans. and ed. Harold J. Grimm, in Luther’s Works, Vol. 31: Career of the Reformer I, ed. Helmut T. Lehman (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1957), 53. 36 Luther, Heidelberg Disputation, Proof for Thesis 20, in Luther’s Works, Vol. 31, 52–53.

7 The Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ Thomas Schärtl

1  Demands and prospects In his masterpiece work The Divine Trinity, David Brown reflected on two main elements of Conciliar Chalcedonian Christology. In Brown’s view the classical dogma entails two propositions: (a) the identity claim that Christ was a single person, and (b) the constitutive claim that he possessed a fully human and a fully divine nature. From this it might be deduced that any alternative model to Chalcedon is not conceivable. But this would be a mistake. For it is only if a third proposition is added that we have what is, strictly speaking, a Chalcedonian model: (c) that the two natures were simultaneously present in the one person.1 Clearly, Brown is alluding to the conceivability of a ‘kenotic model’ of the incarnation, which he offers, after a careful analysis, as a theologically superior concept2 compared to the traditional two natures approach, which is meant to ascribe divine and human attributes to Christ simultaneously. It is not the scope of this paper to discuss the benefits and downsides of Kenotic Christology; despite some first-glance quarrels regarding the adequacy of kenotic Christology3 to fulfill the demands expressed in Brown’s proposition (b) a four-dimensional picture could do the trick: for the overall ‘lifespan’ the second person of the Trinity truly contains divine and human attributes – such that, from the viewpoint of eternity, both kinds of attributes are ascribed correctly and unambiguously to the eternal Son of God. However, the price one has to pay would be to give up divine immutability;4 for it is the second person of the Trinity that, temporarily, undergoes the transformation of being stripped off of certain divine attributes (like omniscience and omnipotence) in order to be human while still remaining the second person of the Trinity.5 Additionally, expressed in such a way, the kenotic model seems to be intimately connected to a social concept of the Trinity, because, as Brown pointed out, it might be impossible to explain without contradiction how – if there should be only one self in God, as the

144  Thomas Schärtl Latin Trinitarian model proposes – one mere ‘aspect’ or mode of the divine might undergo such a severe transformation, while the other modes remain full-bloodedly divine. I am inclined to respond to this allegedly puzzling problem with a hint to the Hegelian, but admittedly somewhat pantheistic idea of the divine self-manifestation as the process of a divine self-­emptying. Nevertheless, the following proposition seems to be unmistakably true: whoever wants to stick to the framework of Classical Theism – which also permits us to keep the notion of divine immutability intact – is forced to subscribe to the metaphysical demands of a Two Natures Christology. Brown does not really discuss Christ’s sinlessness, but there is an analogy that might help us glimpse how a Kenotic Christology might respond to the problem. It can be found in Brown’s assessment of Christ’s infallibility. Indeed, if fallibility and the sheer need to acquire knowledge over time (instead of having access to superior knowledge in an instant) is a necessary ingredient of being human, a Two Natures Christology is forced to come up with an explanation that, in one way or the other, revolves around a version of the so-called Two Minds Christology or around the necessity of separating two entirely different concepts of knowledge that, when combined and actualized in one epistemic subject, do not cancel each other out.6 In contrast, a kenotic view seems to be somewhat superior: It is argued that historical investigation of the Gospels clearly reveals Jesus to have been subject to human error. KM [the kenotic model, TS] can easily explain this in terms of a self-imposed ‘starting from scratch’, whereas TNC [the Two Natures Christology, TS] has no means available, it is argued, for allowing this.7 But can we really adapt the ‘starting from scratch’ approach in dealing with Christ’s freedom (and its allegedly implied ability to sin)? Would it suffice to say – under the circumstances of kenotic transformation – that the second person of the Trinity also starts from scratch in order to build up a moral character that encompasses all those virtues that ultimately glorify the Heavenly Father? What would have happened if the second person of the Trinity had missed this very goal? Not to acquire superior knowledge is (even in the most intellectualist traditions of theology) not an offense to God, while sinning as such is. If we think – like traditional notions do – of sin as an offense to and even a negation of God’s superiority, the second person of the Trinity would have broken the Trinity apart while sinning.

2  Some analogies for the metaphysics of the incarnation Thus, if there should be a chance to reconcile libertarian freedom with the theological doctrine of incarnation, the best way to do so still seems to follow the roadmaps of the Two Natures Christology. For, if the human

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  145 nature of Christ is seen as a concrete human nature, we might have the metaphysical tools to ascribe a human will to Christ, including the anthropologically relevant idea of libertarian free will. Clearly, we are not out of the woods yet, since the question of how the human will of Christ is related to the divine will remains puzzling. Johannes Grössl has argued convincingly that classical dyothelitism – as developed along the lines of Maximus ­Confessor – appears to offer a rather compatibilist solution because it emphasizes the suppression of the human will by the divine will.8 However, these problems are just the outer skirts of a much bigger issue: The Two Natures Christology has to metaphysically indicate the point of unification of the two natures in order to avoid a Two Sons Christology. Thus, the notion of a submissive human will is just a concrete illustration of a model that seeks to explain the ‘alignment’ of the two natures in Christ – an alignment that is eager to take proposition (a) of Brown’s assessment seriously: at the end of the day there must be only one subject of revelation and action in Christ, which is identical to the divine Logos. But how can we understand this notion of identity? The logos and the identity and individuation of Christ In a previous paper on the metaphysical modelling of the Hypostatic Union, I have argued that mere composition – in contrast to what some metaphysicians have recommended9 – will not suffice to explain the aspect of unification that is expressed in the doctrine of incarnation. In contrast – even at the risk of moving dangerously close to Apollinarianism – I proposed the idea of the divine Logos over-writing (but not annihilating) the individuation and identity-relevant factors that constitute the concrete human nature of Christ.10 One main reason for suggesting a metaphysical model of over-written but not annihilated factors of identity and individuation consists of the fact that certain compositional models of the Hypostatic Union cannot really accommodate the requirements expressed in Brown’s proposition (a). We can identify those problems in the science fiction stories Brian Leftow offered to illustrate what incarnation and Hypostatic Union might mean. His first story operates within the notion of ‘flesh being grafted on’ – imagining that my self starts out as a conscious brain, which over time is supplied with organs and body parts.11 In this very model Christ (i.e., the result of the incarnation) would be a composite entity consisting of the Logos (which is equivalent to the self in the sci-fi story) and ‘something extra’ like a body and a soul (which equals the organs and body parts in the story). But, as Oliver Crisp – despite his defense of compositional C ­ hristology – has analyzed very clearly, there remains a problem of identity in such a model, for the Logos is not identical to the composition of the Logos plus a human body and a human soul.12 Nevertheless, it seems that Crisp reminds us that the notion of identity is not required in this case13 – such that we may have good reasons to replace it with the somewhat more liberal

146  Thomas Schärtl concept of ‘sameness.’ However, from a more strictly revelation-related point of view, as proposed for instance by Michael Welker, we cannot completely abandon the notion of identity. For, in Welker’s view, the human being Jesus of Nazareth is the ultimate self-manifestation and self-definition of God.14 The ‘is’ has to be treated as an identity statement in order to really capture the revelation aspect of the incarnation. Additionally, one might add that the Logos as the second person of the Trinity is not just one among three divine actors in a drama of salvation, because the innermost meaning and determination of the Logos is the self-expression, self-reflection, and self-determination of God’s nature. At least, this seems to be the heritage of nineteenth-century theology in its attempt to use the concepts provided by German Idealism to explain the meaning of the doctrine. As, for instance, nineteenth-century Lutheran theologian August Twesten famously put it: “The divine subject unfolds itself in three interrelated instances of the self: a grounding self, an objective and visible self, and ultimately a subjective self which represents the divine mind as a state of full self-reflection.”15 Possible limitations of idealistic frameworks notwithstanding, the idealistic idea of revelation as the divine self-manifestation in Jesus of Nazareth has become the key concept to understand the meaning of incarnation within the history of salvation. As a consequence, we are obliged to develop a model that underlines that the divine Logos is a constituent of those factors that are relevant for the personal identity of Jesus Christ; but this has to be spelled out in a way that keeps the revelation-related identity between the Logos as the self-manifestation of the divine nature and Jesus of Nazareth as the self-manifestation of God’s presence in the world intact. It is, after all, hard to see how a notion of composition can help us here. Brian Leftow’s second thought experiment is even more problematic than the first one. He invites us to imagine a double earth situation in which our activity on twin earth is mediated through a doppelgänger or avatar – a flesh and blood impersonation of ourselves, which is, however, controlled from outside the twin earth location.16 But this bold illustration of an incarnation-­like model reveals two problems at once: If it is pressed into one corner – emphasizing the distance control the outside person has on the puppet person – clearly the commitment to dyothelitism cannot be fulfilled, for the puppet person seems to be an avatar only, a more or less sophisticated cloaking device that is a perfect tool for an outside impostor. But if the model is redeveloped and pressed into another corner – by emphasizing the consciousness and capacity of self-determination in the so-called puppet person – we will end up with a Two Sons Christology and the charge of Nestorianism. Based on these considerations it seems to be unavoidable to develop a different metaphysical model, moving beyond the notion of composition. Thomas Flint once argued that it might be worthwhile to explore the relations of instrumental causation, condensation, and – especially – o ­ wnership.17 I am going to follow Flint’s advice here and try to offer a deeper understanding

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  147 of the prospects of exploring the ownership-relation. Thus, we can stipulate that, whenever x owns y, it is the case that y belongs to x. It is not just a friendlier tone that might make us prefer the idea that Jesus of Nazareth belongs to God (instead of saying: Jesus of Nazareth is owned by the divine Logos); it also does justice to theological tendencies that have helped us develop what one might call a ‘Christology of Intimacy’: Jesus of Nazareth is the Logos because he is (throughout his human consciousness and life) in an unsurpassably intimate relation to God the Father.18 My proposal tries to unfold certain aspects of ‘belonging’ by way of ­analogy; it also emphasizes that the relation of belonging can be so strong that it alters the identity-relevant and individuating factors of the entity that stands in a relation of belonging to another entity. In the previous paper mentioned above, I explored three models and analogies19 that help us understand how it can be that an entity y belongs strongly to an entity x – such that even its very specific identity and individuation-­constituting factors are influenced, while its nature and kind-relevant determination is not erased. There is the promising relation (a) of parts belonging to a whole, while the parts that exist already in virtue of belonging to the whole (so that their identity is, indeed, heavenly influenced by that) still have their own forms or essences. There is, additionally, (b) the relation of belonging that can be found in subjects that are immersed in social entities – a relation that alters the qualia of self-awareness while the individual sources of self-­ consciousness remain untouched. And there is (c) the relation of belonging that we may detect when we describe our narrated biography as an integral element of our personal identity, which is, equally, based on biological and psychological factors. (a) First analogy: Orthodox Thomism notwithstanding, Aquinas does hint at how such a concept of over-writing identity-relevant factors of individuation could be conceived. In his metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union, Aquinas discusses varieties of constitution, which he rejects based on his (well, rather) monolithic Aristotelian convictions. 20 But Aquinas’s first analogy could serve as an interesting model of an overwritten, yet not-erased criterion of identity: he considers a house (as a whole) that is built up (constituted by) stones and pieces of wood. 21 The stones and the wood ‘belong’ to the house in question; they exist in virtue of forming a house, although they have their own shape and form, which remain intact even after the construction. But it is also very clear why Aquinas himself sees this analogy unfit to help us in Christological matters. Christopher Brown illustrates the reason Aquinas gives himself: Aquinas does not believe in the substantiality of artificial objects. 22 Because of his reductive view of artificial objects, 23 Aquinas thinks that the rather loose collection of stones and wood cannot illustrate the unifying strength required to understand the unity of the Hypostatic Union. 24 For within a reductive view on artificial objects

148  Thomas Schärtl their constituents (constituting parts) always remain more real and more (self-)determined than the whole they constitute. A house can be destroyed, but one can use the bricks and the wood to build a stable, the bricks and the wood are not even reminiscent of their previous relation of belonging to a house. For Aquinas, the problem of ‘loosely belonging’ arises because of his notion of accidental form. In other words: what is constitutive for an artificial compound is never strong enough to unfold any unifying and constitutive power. The form of the house is not really imprinted into the stones themselves; moreover, the house can be destroyed – the whole disappears while the parts remain intact. That said, if another concept of artificial objects is proposed – based on different models – one could easily arrive at different result. Imagine, instead, a house as a complicated, sophisticated mechanism (like a car or a computer). Could one still say that the connection in question is just accidental, if it were true that parts of the machinery remain their integrity only in virtue of being possible or actual parts of a whole? The form of the whole is somehow present in the parts. Just imagine, for the time being, parts of a computer or a car; even when the parts are not actually connected to form a whole, they bear a signature of belonging to the whole. Nevertheless, the individual forms of the parts, which somehow virtually aim at the form of the whole, are not erased, but remain intact and present and keep their specific powers. In such a case, the parts forming the mechanical whole are, as a matter of fact, more self-­ sufficient than, let us say, the biological organs constituting a living body. Take another, more convincing example: The water-­molecule consists of hydrogen and oxygen. In forming the water molecule, the identity and individuation criteria of hydrogen and oxygen are not erased, but they get overwritten by their contribution to the constitution of the water-molecule. Of course, Aquinas would not be happy with this example, for in his view the water-molecule situation would be that of a confusion of forms, resulting, at the end of the day, in a hybrid kind of form, which – if adapted as an ontological model to support the notion of Hypostatic Union – would lead to Christological heresy. 25 Aquinas has several reasons to reject this model based on his orthodox interpretation of the form-matter distinction: a

Anything that is properly formed has an ultimate form (which makes the entity in question unable to receive another form by way of substance). b The divine nature, as such, cannot serve as the form of mundane beings (based on its immutable essence). c If something like a super-formation of something formed should take place, it would ‘suppress’ and overthrow the underlying form

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  149 (like the form of the soul overthrows those aspects of bodily matter such that a living body is significantly different from a corpse). However, since Aquinas is far too strict with regard to the natural-­being and artificial-being distinction, and if a more accurate view of artificial objects is held, the basic intuition of spelling out the belonging-­relation within the whole-parts model may still be a viable option if we point at the peculiarities of parts being integrated into a compound. Furthermore, this is not to claim that the divine nature would have to serve as a forming principle, but rather an invitation to conceive of the Logos as an entity that has the capacity to give its own imprint of the Godhead (expressed in its role as the self-manifestation of God) to another ­nature – a concept that is, at least, foreshadowed in those philosophical speculations that hold that the divine Logos is (at the same time) the principle of reason and order within the world, containing also the astonishing laws of the natural order that have a forming effect on mundane entities. (b) Second analogy: My second analogy might be considerably weaker than the first one, but it again can help understand the consistency provided by the notion of overwritten, yet not-erased identity criteria and factors of individuation. This time, my analogy is drawn from social ontology (the ontology of institutions, especially). The fact that we, as individuals, can partake in social institutions has some kind of qualitative aspect to it, which can be experienced as ‘We-intentions’ that guide our intentionality (while not erasing our self-consciousness and our ‘I-intentions’). With regard to We-Intentions, Raimo Tuomela holds that they cannot be reduced to I-Intentions: being a member of a group is, indeed, another robust layer of reality that supervenes upon I-intentions, but cannot be explained merely by composition. 26 In a recent paper Uwe Voigt adopted a phenomenological description of qualitative states that are, to a certain extent, something that goes beyond the mental capacities of merely single subjects of experiences. Rather, these qualitative states are something a single subject of experience finds herself to be in, i.e., to be part of or to be interwoven with. Voigt refers back to the phenomenological ideas of German philosopher Hermann Schmitz: The phenomenological description of feelings like anxiety, joy and despair shows that they are entities of a certain type which Schmitz calls atmospheres. Atmospheres in this sense are not in the subject but permeate and surround it so that also several subjects may participate in them. Atmospheres may even be there without any subject feeling them. They qualify as mental states in the minimal sense […], because it is like something to be in them, and they are distinct perspectives on the world, which is sensed differently when in anxiety, joy, despair and so on. 27

150  Thomas Schärtl Voigt’s hint proposing a version of mesocosmic panpsychism can strengthen Tuomela’s argument: in order to attribute consciousness-­ related features to some kind of layer of reality and in order to accept the ontological dignity of this layer, there are certain qualitative experiences with which being involved in this layer of reality is essentially connected. If such a perspective is valid, one can easily claim that being in a group, i.e., being the member of a group, has a certain qualitative experience to it that naturally affects individual self-perception and, alongside these qualities, self-consciousness, as well. If this is true, it becomes obvious that We-intentions cannot be reduced to a sum of I-intentions. But still, the I-intentions of the members of a group are not erased, they are still present and, in a way, they are the presupposition of being part of a group. Without the layer of I-intentions, the emergence of We-intentions would not be possible, while at the same time, We-intentions seem to overwrite the purely individualistic side of I-intentions. To use another image, We-intentions incorporate I-intentions, but the I-side is not simply transformed into a We-side, since the I-dimensions remain present inside a group alongside the We-dimension. Agreeing with Tuomela in defending the idea that the inner compositional strength of a group mind comes in degrees, and acknowledging that it is important to distinguish between mere I-mode groups and (more emergent and more integrated) We-mode groups, 28 the above-mentioned aspect of overwriting without erasing is still true for the whole spectrum of group-mind-formation. The notion of ‘overwriting without erasing’ is alluded to when Tuomela points to the fact that institutional entities would not exist without mind-gifted beings in this world. 29 According to Tuomela, a group or an institution must be pictured as a robust ontological entity that cannot be reduced to its parts. Therefore, it is important to flesh out the relations that exist between members, on the one hand, and between the group as a whole and its members, on the other. The realistic interpretation of social entities can help us envision how the ownership-relation can work in many ­contexts  – and, perhaps, even help us understand the Hypostatic Union. For, in its relation to the divine nature, the human nature is brought into a new context with new features emerging. What Tuomela says about new patterns of behavior and the varieties of instrumental and formal causation, as well as the framework of shared goals and intentions, is true for the mystery of Christ as well, despite the fact that these new patterns of behavior and these varieties of causation as group activities or inter-personal relations must not depict the Hypostatic Union as a group-activity that takes place between God and the human Jesus of Nazareth. Instead, this model has to be introduced with a grain of salt: the Hypostatic Union is not based on a social contract. Nevertheless, Contemporary Christologies are inclined to agree that Jesus of

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  151 Nazareth is (identical) to the Son of God because he shares a unique bond with God, his Father. There is, as a matter of fact, some kind of atmosphere, which is the result of this very bond and which serves as the true origin of the church that is (in a mainstream Catholic understanding) the prolongation of the incarnation. (c) Third analogy: Let me finally turn to my third model to illustrate how criteria of identity can be overwritten without being erased and how we can understand the notion of overwritten, yet intact factors of identity and individuation. This time the analogy in question is developed based on the prominent notion of a narrative self-identity view. This view holds that a variety of problems concerning the criteria of personal identity over time can be resolved only if the ways in which one describes oneself and in which one anticipates one’s future are taken into account, i.e., how one directs one’s intentions towards oneself. In a way, this autobiographical narrative is crucial for determining identity, because it solidifies the Lockean criteria of psychological identity over time and because it moves beyond the somewhat restricted view presented by materialistic accounts of personal identity. Marya Schechtman, a prominent defender of this approach, elucidates crucial aspects of this view in clarifying some of its main implications: It is important, for one thing, to make clear that ‘having an autobiographical narrative’ does not amount to consciously retelling one’s life story always (or ever) to oneself or to anyone else. The sense in which we have autobiographical narratives on this account is cashed out mostly in terms of the way in which an implicit understanding of the ongoing course of our lives influences our experience and deliberation. It is also necessary to put constraints on what counts as an identity-constituting narrative. A view which had the implication that a person could make whatever attributes, experiences, or actions she chooses her own simply by thinking that they are is obviously a non-starter. The Narrative Self-­Constitution View thus demands that a properly identity-constituting narrative meet what it calls the ‘reality-constraint’ and the ‘articulation constraint’, constraints aimed roughly at ensuring that an individual is applying our shared conception of personhood to herself, and so is able to interact with others effectively.30 The benefit of this view is that it is a more appropriate, more realistic, and more down-to-earth view of human persons and personhood, in general. In determining what persons are, there is the temptation to identify the kernel of personhood with some kind of substantial quality (a first-person perspective, self-consciousness) or with certain metaphysical features (bodily continuity, integrity of memory), forgetting, as Schechtman points out, that persons are diachronic entities.31

152  Thomas Schärtl So, in this view there is, indeed, the unity (of personhood) built up, so to speak, from different structural layers. There is, for example, the notion of one layer containing our biological and psychological dispositions, which, nonetheless, cannot give a satisfying account of what living beings (who lead certain lives) truly are. The second aspect comes into play only if the structuring aspects of our intentions and experiences (as expressed, for instance, in our autobiographical narratives) are added into the picture. 32 Interesting enough, our narratives depend on our first-person perspectives, as well as on our embeddedness in social interconnections and relations.33 It is important to note that what people are cannot be reduced to their biological or psychological features.34 The life encountered by way of forming a narrative is a metaphysical aspect of personhood in its own right. For Schechtman, this life is a cluster of experiences, intentions, and social interactions resting in a variety of forms of social embeddedness. Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge that the different layers of our personal lives mutually influence each other.35 In order to spell out what this view implies in terms of determining personal identity over time, Schechtman writes: The property cluster understanding of a person life offers an alternative picture. Instead of assuming some one of the relations present in paradigmatic cases of continuation is the one that constitutes our identity, we can think instead of identity as constituted by their interactions with one another. On the standard approach the fact that biological, psychological, and social continuities are intertwined is seen as a complication which makes it difficult to determine which relation constitutes continuation. On the property cluster model the integrated functioning is the true nature of the relation that constitutes the conditions of our continuation.36 Now, what can this view do for our Christological problems? It is, as I mentioned before, a wonderful example of how to think of the criteria of identity and individuation being overwritten by additional criteria without being erased; rather, there is a communication of criteria going on here. In a more simplified version of Schechtman’s view of human persons, one can at least distinguish between what is called the ‘hard’ metaphysical criteria of biological and psychological features on the one hand and the cluster-­ oriented, relational criteria of social and cultural embeddedness on the other. Now, both layers influence each other: the rather hard metaphysical identity and individuation criteria get overwritten by the second kind of criteria in order to form the unified locus of individual existence – the personal locus of our lives. Despite this sort of unity, within the cluster of what makes personal identity expressible, the different layers of identity can still be distinguished. In the case of the Hypostatic Union, an analogous situation exists: the two natures of Christ provide him with different layers of identity criteria.

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  153 Despite the fact that both paths of criteria remain distinguishable, they are, of course, interrelated, since Christ’s individual life is conditioned and determined by the different layers in question. Since the divine nature and the human nature are significantly further apart than the differences between (in our case) biological aspects on the one hand and cultural contexts on the other, Jesus’s unity of life is not a mere mixture of the layers in question. Nevertheless, the divine nature introduces something to the identity of Christ that is analogous with what our social embeddedness introduces to our merely biological and psychological bases as human beings. This analogy can be extended further: it might be true, in Christ’s case, that the unity of life in question cannot be approached without taking into account the narrative dimension of having a life. In attempting to parse what it means to be simultaneously truly divine and truly human, abstract metaphysical models alone are insufficient, because, in line with Schechtman’s assessment, they only inform us about the presuppositions and conditions that frame identity, not about the content of identity itself. However, once committed to the indispensability of the narrative in imagining the content of the unity of life, it becomes almost natural to see the Hypostatic Union expressed as a story, as a gospel in which the identity-criteria overwriting (but not-erasing) effect of the divine Logos becomes visible in the narrative patterns of the revelatory and salvific actions of Christ. If being alive, according to Schechtman, includes social and cultural embeddedness, having a divine and a human life would have to become apparent in social and cultural dimensions as well, which are captured by certain patterns of narration.

3  Three analogies and the freedom of Christ Timothy Pawl has marvelously shown that we can come up with an argument that indicates the problems we eventually arrive at once we combine Conciliar Christology with a robust notion of a libertarian free will in Christ:37 can we really say that Christ’s human will is free – in a libertarian sense of freedom – if the human will of Christ is (totally and completely) subject to the divine will? Isn’t it, on the other hand, important – in the light of soteriology – to insist on a significant amount of freedom in Christ’s human nature, since the heroic act of ‘healing Adamitic disobedience’ cannot be performed if it is not executed, so to say, on the same level of Adamitic freedom? Already at this stage we have two basic options to deal with the problem indicated above: we could question the true nature of the relationship between the two wills in Christ. Although an ownership relation between the human and the divine nature in Christ may lead us to suppose a relation of obedience and submission, the relation in question might also be described differently. We could, for instance, underline that the human will of Christ finds its true fulfillment in being in alignment with the divine will or is

154  Thomas Schärtl disposed to indwell in the divine will – such that the alignment with the divine will is not experienced as a restriction of the range of the human will. In addition, we could point to the idea that – even in our somewhat simpler cases – freedom does not ultimately consist of a wide variety of choices if we take into account that in the eschaton our freedom will arrive at full and unhindered alignment with the divine will, yet that our true desire is aimed at the indwelling in the divine will. The building blocks of the argument in question may be sketched as follows:38 1 Freedom is an essential part of human nature. 2 Anything that is an essential disposition of the human nature shapes human freedom. 3 The ultimate fulfillment in the divine will is an essential disposition of the human nature. 4 The ultimate fulfillment in the divine will shapes human freedom. If we take into account that in the eschaton we may not even want to have a choice in the presence of God, since our nature desires to indwell in the full presence of God, the essential disposition of our nature and our freedom may simply not consist of having certain choices or alternatives. In this regard, Kevin Timpe refers to a view he has developed together with Pawl: its main idea relates to the notion of a freedom aimed at building a determined virtuous character that is ultimately stable and fulfilled in the presence of God.39 In a similar way, Millard Erickson points out that the true human nature and will of Christ does not entail the possibility of giving in to temptation. Although Christ may have experienced some sort of temptation, his will was influenced positively by a number of factors that precluded his sinning, while Christ himself may have experienced such preclusions not as a limitation of his abilities but as the in-depth meaning of what it is like to be human in the full presence of God.40 The notion of ‘fulfilled freedom’ does not rule out the fact that a certain range of choices may remain available within the prescribed possibilities of the essential dispositions indicated above. But the ability to sin would be – at least from an eschatological perspective – excluded. And this could be true in Christ’s case as well, for traditional Christology holds that Christ’s human nature remained in the unhindered and undestroyed presence of God. Accordingly, Pawl states: Concerning freedom, if there are some individuals who are free and yet cannot sin, that shows that ability to sin is not a necessary condition for freedom. The Christian tradition has seen fit, in all ages, to claim that the Father and Holy Spirit cannot sin. Moreover, the good angels are confirmed in their righteousness now, which implies that they are unable to sin. Finally, there is reason to believe that the redeemed are free but unable to sin […]. Thus, there is at least one individual who is

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  155 free and unable to sin. On traditional Christian theism, then, freedom does not require the ability to sin.41 Although this seems like an adequate solution to our problems, we may still look for an alternative that permits us to claim that Christ has a human free will and that he was, as a matter of fact, sinless but not impeccable. There is one main reason why we cannot simply stop at the above-mentioned solution: if we, again, compare Christ’s role to the Adamitic situation, we might want to underline (in a merely speculative way) that Adam, although not being affected by original sin and despite his indwelling in God’ presence and enjoying the beauty and glory of Paradise, did sin. To refrain from sinning – even in the presence of original sin and the effects it has on human nature as such – is the more heroic deed that grants us salvation. Christ’s role is, according to St. Paul, the reverse role of Adam. To understand the mystery of the cross, as Wolfhart Pannenberg points out,42 includes attributing an unhindered free will to the human nature of Christ – a will that resembles our human will to the full extent, apart from actually having sinned. Pannenberg offers the following argument:43 1 If sin belongs to the existential structures of human nature – despite the fact that it is not part of the God given determinants of human nature – then the real confrontation with sin is a necessary part of human life. 2 The doctrine of incarnation includes the notion of the Son of God being immersed in all necessary parts of human life. 3 Thus, the doctrine of incarnation includes the notion of the Son of God being immersed in the real confrontation with sin. 4 If the natural-impeccability doctrine is true, then the notion of the Son of God being immersed in the real confrontation with sin is not true. 5 The natural-impeccability doctrine is not true. A real confrontation with sin would not be exhausted, as Pannenberg seems to think, by a mere tickling of temptation. Instead, there has to be a sinful alternative, a free choice, a road not taken. Even if the possibility of sinning is avoided thanks to the infusion of grace, this infusion must not be pictured in a way that excludes free choice. Rather, grace works like a support to solidify the traits of a person’s character, which eventually make it quite improbable (but not logically impossible) for them to give in to certain temptations.44 The heroic act of doing the right thing in the light of real possibilities going the other way is part of the salvific actions of Christ. Would Jesus have been fully human if he had never encountered the possibility to sin?45 Now, how can we reconcile the idea of Christ’s factual sinlessness (which, in this case, must not rest on some ascribed impeccability) with traditional Christology? What would be the impact of the three analogies I have introduced in the previous section?

156  Thomas Schärtl Testing the analogies (a) First analogy: My first analogy was derived from a whole-parts metaphysics, indicating that the parts are owned by the whole – such that their being is an existence in virtue of being part of the whole. Whether or not one might find the analogy appropriate, it serves as the strongest ontological model for a closer description of the ownership-relation. Clearly, if we follow the analogy to its core, the whole has an influence on the identity of the parts. Transposed to the area of Christology we would have to admit that the Hypostatic Union as such plays a crucial role in the identity of Jesus of Nazareth. If we want to exclude the idea that the second person of the Trinity could have sinned, the ability to sin would have to be a disposition of the human nature of Christ. But, given that my first analogy provides us with a model that implies a rather strong influence of the Hypostatic Union on the individuation and identity of the human nature of Christ, we end up with a severe problem that I addressed in a previous paper and that can be summed up by the following argument.46 The argument presupposes some Kripkean notion of ‘identity of origin’: 1 The sentence “Christ could have sinned” is, by possible world semantics, equivalent to the sentence “There is a possible world w** in which the state of affairs ‘Christ sins’ occurred.” 2 The sentence/ “Christ did not actually sin” is, by possible world semantics, equivalent to the sentence “There is a possible world w* in which the state of affairs ‘Christ sins’ never occurred and w* is identical to the actual world w @.” 3 The understanding of both sentences requires transworld identity – such that Christ in w* is identical to Christ in w**. 4 The identity of Christ crucially depends on the Hypostatic Union with the divine nature. 5 Christ’s sinning would severely threaten the union with the divine nature in the Hypostatic Union. 6 If the identity of Christ crucially depends on the Hypostatic Union, the Christ in w*, who remains united with the divine nature, cannot be identical to the Christ in w**, who, based on his sinning, is not united with the divine nature. 7 If there is no transworld identity between Christ in w* to Christ in w** we do not refer to the very same person when we utter the sentence “Christ could have sinned.” 8 Thus, if we cannot meaningfully express that “Christ could have sinned” while indicating a possibility that is available for Christ in w*, we are not really indicating an option or a possibility Christ in w* truly has. One way to avoid these consequences would be to replace the Kripkean identity of origin (see 4) with some other, maybe more convincing

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  157 notion of identity. Presumably, we could talk of individual essences as identity bearers. But this idea would be available only at the cost of fostering some sort of Two Sons Christology, since we would have to develop the concept of an individual essence of the human nature of Christ that can be approached as an entity with an identity of its own – untouched, so to speak, by the union with the divine nature. Although this seems to be a viable option, it clearly goes against the premises of my first analogy, i.e., the idea that the union within the Hypostatic Union affects the identity and individuation of the human nature of Christ. However, another way to solve the problem might become available if we are willing to embrace some version of compatibilism.47 Erickson seems to have something like that in mind when he makes a distinction between the epistemic possibility and the metaphysical possibility of sinning. While the former was available to Jesus – insofar has he may have been able to contemplate sinning – the latter was not, which means that the Hypostatic Union prevented him from following through.48 (b) Second analogy: But if this is too drastic a move, we might also be well-advised to take a look at the second analogy, which has been developed on the basis of social relations and social entities. In such a view we would have to unfold a theology of the incarnation that inserts the Hypostatic Union of the two natures into the superordinate framework of Jesus’s relation to his heavenly Father. Wolfhart Pannenberg once proposed such a view in order to overcome the problems of a merely static and purely metaphysical image of the Hypostatic Union. In this view, Jesus’s love, devotion, and obedience towards the father provide the actual framework of the Hypostatic Union; the identification with the Father and the self-distinction, which is entailed in the idea that the Son is actually not the Father, serve as a grammar for spelling out the details of a Two Natures Christology.49 The dialectics of self-­ identification with the Father and self-distinguishing from the Father apparently render an atmosphere that can be compared to the atmospheres we create in social entities on the basis of our mutual relations and dependencies. In this view, a free will ascribed to Christ seems to be a requirement. But what would have happened in this view if Christ had sinned? Obviously, the relation between the Father and the Son would have been destroyed, the Hypostatic Union would have been broken apart. Admittedly, it is not easy to imagine what a breaking of the Hypostatic Union would entail, yet such a notion is not self-­contradictory at first glance.50 Maybe Jesus of Nazareth, after having sinned, would have realized a horrible emptiness – the equivalent to hell  – while having lost his immediate awareness of the Father; perhaps he would have turned into a shallow human being – even a devil – while being stripped off his identity core and his most determining ­relationship – the one to the Father. Or his life would have ended ultimately at his

158  Thomas Schärtl death, with no resurrection awaiting him and vindicating his existence. As social relations can be destroyed, according to our second analogy, the Hypostatic Union would not have to be an indestructible bond. But the problem of this view is not just the fact that it challenges our imagination far beyond the Biblical testimony. For, if we agree with Pannenberg’s dialectics, we would have to emphasize that the self-­ identification of the Son with the Father and his simultaneous self-­ distinguishing from the Father is not only the grammar to build a Two Natures Christology on, it is also the grammar for accessing the core meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, the breaking apart of the Hypostatic Union would – in this view – entail a breaking apart of the Trinity – which is, after all, impossible. The only way to avoid such consequences would be to adapt a view that was hinted at when we discussed the impacts of the first analogy: Instead of using the social analogy tool to offer a layout for the relationship between Christ and his Heavenly Father, we would have to focus on a relation between Jesus and the eternal Logos. However, if such a relation were to be assessed in terms of interpersonal and social analogies, a Two Sons Christology would result unavoidably. (c) Third analogy: Could the third analogy offer us a better solution? The point of the third analogy is to access the mystery of the Hypostatic Union through the lens of a relationship between a narrative and its main character: the character in question is owned by the narrative and would, indeed, lose his identity if he were to be cut from the narrative. If we compare the narrative to the divine life and to the divine self-manifestation in time and history, we may see how Christ as the main character is, indeed, heavily influenced by the presuppositions of that narrative and how Jesus’ identity is intertwined with the paths and meanings of the narrative in question. Clearly, as the main actor of the narrative, Christ would have needed some significant degree of freedom and, as the narrative is interwoven with humankind’s narrative, the confrontation with sin would have been required. Nevertheless, if Christ had sinned, he would not have been part of that particular narrative, which proclaims him to be the Risen Lord and the Savior of us all. Christ’s role – and his heroic act of not having sinned – is apparent only after the events of the narrative are completed. So, how can we think of a Hypostatic Union that is in effect only after the story has ended? Basically, such a view is not a devious speculation; for, if we follow Pannenberg’s emphasis of the resurrection we would have to admit that Easter is the becoming apparent of Jesus’ being identical to the Eternal Word.51 But how can we make sense of such a view that, on the one hand, permits the human nature of Christ to have significant freedom, but, on the other, brings the Hypostatic Union into the picture only after the story is told and written? Basically, we would have to get rid of the “before and after”-notion. Thus, this view requires

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  159 an eternal and atemporal point of view on God’s side: If God has significant foreknowledge – within an eternal framework in which he is co-present to every point and every story in time – God could have seen the heroic story of Christ from an eternal point of view and could have decided to self-manifest himself in that very story. Call this version the ‘eternal adoption view,’ which shifts the conceptual burden from the human nature of Christ to the eternal nature of God. According to this view, it would not be possible to break the Hypostatic Union, because a sinning Jesus would not have been Christ right from the start. Furthermore, this account makes sense of the fact that the real meaning of Christ can be accessed only after his death and resurrection – once his earthly story is completed and his human nature is glorified in a way that allows Jesus to be beyond the pitfalls and temptations of merely human choices and alternatives. Although this solution to the problem seems to be somewhat peculiar, it has certain benefits because it is capable of reconciling adoptionism-­ related elements of a variety of New Testament Christologies with later stage pre-existence reflections.52 Within the framework sketched above we can regard these alternatives as the two sides of one coin: from a ­human perspective the meaning of Christ is revealed only once the story of his life is completed. From God’s eternal point of view the Hypostatic Union was already envisaged, because in his eternity the completion of the story was equally present to God as was the beginning of the story. Nevertheless, this view forces us to develop a more complicated picture of the Narrative Identity View as an Analogy for the Hypostatic Union: We would have to suppose the concept of a primary, purely human identity of Jesus of Nazareth, which displays all the features and events of a holy and virtuous life in God’s proximity, and a secondary, human and divine identity of Christ as the self-manifestation of the eternal Logos, which places the life of Jesus into the narrative of the divine revelatory life. The complication is due to the fact that the second narrative is the resulting one that was actualized based on divine decision and pre-election, while the first story is the reason for the divine decision and election. But if we had to say that the first story (in its unembedded plot) never came true but was always embedded in the second narrative, we ultimately arrive at a grounding problem: What, actually, is the story God ‘sees’ from all eternity and which he decides to make the manifestation of his ‘eternal word’? To resolve the grounding problem we would have to confirm that the first story is still in place – the story of a holy and virtuous human person who is fully dedicated to God – and that this story does not get annihilated or erased once God decides to make this very story the narrative of his ultimate self-manifestation. To make sense of such a view, we would have to insert a human story into a revelatory narrative; the indications

160  Thomas Schärtl of the second layer of the divine narrative would have to be inserted in the edges and frames of the first narrative, as the intertwining of the beginning and the ending of the first story with the second story of God’s revelation. And, perhaps, this is exactly what Biblical writings and especially the gospels have always tried to accomplish. Soteriology The second and third analogy provide us with a picture that is capable of including a significant freedom of Christ – beyond the ‘limitations’ of impeccability. The third analogy may be in a better position, although it does come with certain costs: we would have to shift the burden towards a solid notion of divine eternity and atemporality. But would it be disastrous to vote for the first alternative, which, eventually, forces us to adapt a version of theistic compatibilism? In our previous considerations, our soteriological concept was circling around the notion of healing Adamitic disobedience. Clearly, such notions are the offspring of a more or less Anselmian representational soteriology, which emphasizes the notion of representation and the heroic act of the Son incarnate as the one supererogatory act that saves all mankind.53 Cleary, the requirement to ‘act on behalf of the fallen humanity’ presupposes the significant freedom of the God-man. But in soteriology we have another major option, historically associated with Peter Abelard. For Abelard, atonement is not some sort of transaction but the revelation of unrestricted divine love (for the sinner): The supreme love of God in Christ, demonstrated in Christ’s passion, is indeed the means by which fallen human beings are redeemed. But note that this supreme love in us is through the passion of Christ, which frees human beings from slavery to sin so that we may live in love rather than fear. Put differently, divine love is expressed in the passion of Christ, which is redemptive, and which is then communicated to fallen human beings by grace. Salvation is not achieved by the imitation of divine love displayed in Christ’s life and work, according to Abelard. Rather, because of God’s love demonstrated in Christ’s passion, we are redeemed and able to live in love. The passion of Christ does the atoning; the love expressed in this atonement is then communicated to fallen human beings who respond in kind.54 In this view, Christ is the means by which to communicate the divine love. As Crisp pointed out, the Abelardian exemplarist view does not simply consist of an imperative to imitate Christ. Rather the passion of the cross reveals the divine passion for the sinner – getting as close to the sinners’ deadly condition as one can imagine, yet even surpassing our imaginations. The cross is the ultimate offer: God offers his unrestricted and unconditioned love to sinful humankind and, in doing so, prepares a new ethical

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  161 level that makes it even possible for us to respond to God’s love accordingly. In this view, the human nature of Christ becomes a fully transparent sign of divine love. This unsurpassable love is meant to open our hearts and liberate us from sinful self-centeredness. To serve as the unambiguous sign of God’s unsurpassable love, the divine and human nature have to operate in alignment. We can even develop an argument in Abelardian terms to show why the incarnation was necessary: because the divine meaning of the sign has to be embedded into the ‘dust’ of the human world in order to be visible, approachable, and understandable. But it is not necessary, it would even be a disturbing element to ascribe the ability to sin to the human nature of Christ, because human nature’s role is to be the visible aspect of the sign that points to the unlimited divine love. Atonement, according to this view, is not accomplished on Christ’s part by the merit of performing a heroic act of obedience but by demonstrating the dimensions of the divine love. It is the divine freedom that serves as the presupposition of this concept of atonement. So, ultimately, any decisions about the viability of the proposed analogies should be reconsidered in the light of our interpretations of the doctrine of atonement.

Notes 1 David Brown, The Divine Trinity (La Salle, PA: Open Court, 1985), 228. 2 Cf. ibid., 245–71. 3 For a subtle defense cf. Stephen T. Davies, Metaphysics of Kenosis, in eds. Anna Marmodoro & Jonathan Hill, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation ­(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 114–33, esp. 127–32. 4 For a similar assessment cf. Helmut Hopin, Jesus aus Galiläa – Messias und Gottes Sohn (Freiburg: Herder, 2019), 253–67. 5 Cf. Brown, Divine Trinity, 256. 6 Cf. ibid., 258–9. 7 Ibid., 258. 8 Cf. Johannes Grössl, “Die Sündlosigkeit Jesu als logische Herausforderung für die christliche Zweitnaturenlehre,” in eds. Thomas Marschler & Thomas Schärtl, Herausforderungen und Modifikationen des Klassischen Theismus, Vol. 2: Inkarnation (Münster: Aschendorff, 2020), 163–94, here 167–9. 9 Cf. Thomas Schärtl, “Metaphysische Modellierung der Hypostatischen Union. Eine Erprobung von Analogien,” in eds. Thomas Marschler & Thomas Schärtl, Herausforderungen und Modifikationen des Klassischen Theismus, Vol. 2: Inkarnation (Münster: Aschendorff, 2020), 99–130, here 109–13. 10 Cf. ibid., 109–13. 11 Cf. Leftow, “Humanity of God,” 24–25. 12 Cf. Oliver Crisp, “Compositional Christology without Nestorianism,” in eds. Anna Marmodoro & Jonathan Hill, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation ­(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 45–66, here 50. For an in-depth analysis of the identity problem based on a mereological interpretation of the concept of composition, see in the same volume, Thomas Flint, “Should Concretists Part with Mereological Models of the Incarnation?,” 67–87, here 72–75. 13 Cf. Crisp, “Compositional Christology,” 60. 14 Cf. Michael Welker, Gottes Offenbarung. Christologie (Neukirchen-Vlyun: Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft, 2012), 251–7.

162  Thomas Schärtl 15 Cf. August D. Chr, Twesten, Vorlesungen über die Dogmatik der Evangelisch-­ Lutherischen Kirche, Vol. 2/1 (Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes, 1837), 205–6. 16 Cf. Leftow, “Humanity of God,” 33–37. 17 Cf. Flint, “Mereological Models” (cf. n. 12), 84–86. 18 Cf. for instance Karl Rahner, “‘Ich glaube an Jesus Christus’. Zur Deutung eines Glaubensartikels,” Schriften zur Theologie, Vol. 8 (Einsiedeln; Zürich; Köln: Benziger Verlag, 1967), 213–7, here 215: Wenn nun ein Mensch dieses sein Wesen so in absoluter Reinheit und Radikalität von Gott her empfängt und so auf ihn hin vollzieht, das sie diesen Menschen zur Selbstaussage Gottes und zu Gottes unwiderruflicher Selbstzusage an die Welt macht, die Gott wahrhaft dasein läßt, dann ist das gegeben, was wir ‚Inkarnation‘ in einem dogmatisch rechtgläubigen Sinn nennen. 19 Cf. Schärtl, “Metaphysische Modellierung” (cf. n. 10), 113–28. 20 For an in-deep assessment cf. Christopher M. Brown, Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus. Solving Puzzles about Material Objects (New York: Continuum, 2005), 68–112, esp. 75 and 91. 21 Cf. Aquinas: S.Th. IIIa q. 2 a. 1 resp. [Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. Ed. Leonina, Vol. I–V (Madrid: University of Salamanca, 1978f.)]. 22 Cf. Brown, Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus, 98–103. 23 It is still a matter of discussion whether or not Aquinas truly held a reductive account of artificial objects tout court. See Jeffrey E. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World. Change, Hylomorphism, and Material Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), Chapters 9 and 10. 24 Aquinas: S.Th. IIIa q. 2 a. 1 resp. 25 Cf. ibid. 26 Raimo Tuomela, Social Ontology. Collective Intentionality and Group Agents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 91. 27 Uwe Voigt, “What a Feeling? In Search of a Metaphysical Connection between Panpsychism and Panentheism,” in eds. Godehard Brüntrup, Benedikt P. Göcke & Ludwig Jaskolla, Panentheism and Panpsychism. Philosophy of Religion Meets Philosophy of Mind (Leiden: Brill/Mentis, 2020), 139–54, here 147. 28 Cf. Tuomela, Social Ontology, 33–38. 29 Ibid., 230. 30 Marya Schechtman, Staying Alive. Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 101. 31 Ibid., 102. 32 Cf. ibid., 113f. 33 Cf. ibid., 103f. 34 Ibid., 118. 35 Ibid., 148. 36 Ibid., 150. 37 Cf. Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology. A Philosophical Essay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 126f. 38 This argument is in accordance with the core reflections we find in Maximus Confessor; cf. Brian E. Daley, God Visible. Patristic Christology Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 221f. 39 Kevin Timpe, Free Will in Philosophical Theology (London et al.: Bloomsbury, 2013), 87. 40 Millard J. Erickson, The Word Became Flesh. A Contemporary Incarnational Christology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 22000), 563. 41 Pawl, Extended Conciliar Christology (cf. n. 37), 137.

Hypostatic Union and the freedom of Christ  163 42 Cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Grundzüge der Christologie (Gütersloh: Mohn, 6 1982), 376–8. 43 Cf. ibid., 376. 4 4 For a similar approach see also David Brown, Tradition and Imagination. Revelation and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 320f. 45 Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 3rd edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker 2013), 656. 46 Cf. Thomas Schärtl, “The Burden of Freedom. The Interference of Libertarian Freedom and Philosophical Theology,” in eds. Klaus von Stosch, Saskia Wendel, et al., Streit um Freiheit. Philosophische und theologische Perspektiven (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2019), 161–90, esp. 179f. 47 Cf. ibid., 182f. 48 Erickson, Word Became Flesh (cf. n. 40), 562. 49 Cf. Pannenberg, Christologie (cf. n. 42), 349–457. 50 Erickson, Word Became Flesh (cf. n. 40), 563f. 51 Cf. Pannenberg, Christologie (cf. n. 42), 47–105. 52 For an exposition of the problems see Brown, Tradition and Imagination (cf. n. 44), 287–302. 53 Oliver D. Crisp, Approaching the Atonement. The Reconciling Work of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 2020), 67. 54 Ibid., 79f.

8

Classical Theism, Christology, and the Two Sons Worry R.T. Mullins

1 Preliminary remarks For the purposes of this chapter, I shall work with the contemporary taxonomy of composite Christology. I shall refer to a two-part Christology as that which affrms that Jesus Christ is ‘composed’ of the Son and a material body. Here ‘composed’ is used loosely because it does not assume any particular mereology. Three-part Christology shall refer to that class of views that affrm that Jesus is composed of the Son, an immaterial soul, and a material body.1 In this three-part Christology, the Son has two minds  – a divine mind and a human mind. That is, two centers of consciousness, each with a distinct set of mental states such as beliefs, desires, and experiences. This three-part Christology is the view endorsed by the Council of Chalcedon and the majority of subsequent Christians throughout history. As such, it shall be the main focus of this chapter. I shall assume that dyothelitism refers to Christological views that affrm that the divine nature has a will and that the human nature of Christ has a numerically distinct will. On dyothelitism, there are two numerically distinct self-determining faculties that belong to each nature, yet somehow there is only one person in Christ. 2 I wish that I could say more to clarify various distinctions that dyothelites make between natural wills and gnomic wills. However, I fnd such distinctions to be murky at best. 3 Further, the dyothelite claim that Jesus does not have a gnomic will baffes me as it seems inconsistent with one of the main motivations for adopting dyothelitism – the slogan “that which has not been assumed as not been healed.” To be sure, the gnomic will is supposedly a mode of willing, but the human mode of willing certainly needs to be healed. For the purposes of this paper, I shall also assume a generic version of substance dualism since it was widely assumed in Christological debates during the early Church.4 On substance dualism, a person is an immaterial soul with the capacity for conscious mental states and free action. 5 In a statement similar to that of Origin and Apollinaris, Basil says, “Our soul and mind are our self, inasmuch as we have been made in the image of the Creator.”6 In substance dualism, a human person is an immaterial soul that

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is appropriately related to a human body or a physical substance with a human genome. According to Basil, a human is a “soul employing a body” (Ep. 261.3). For the purposes of this paper, I shall also assume Classical Theism. In Classical Theism, God is necessarily timeless, strongly immutable, simple, and impassible. To be sure, Classical Theism also affrms that God is a se, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and perfectly free. Yet neoclassical theists and open theists also affrm those divine attributes.7 What makes Classical Theism unique is its commitment to divine timelessness, strong immutability, simplicity, and impassibility. Elsewhere, I have given a full articulation of Classical Theism, so here I shall provide some quick defnitions.8 God is timeless in that God exists without beginning, without end, without succession, and without temporal location.9 As Paul Helm makes clear, a timeless God cannot stand in any kind of temporal relations such as before, after, or simultaneous.10 With regards to God’s immutability, classical theists claim that He cannot change in any way, shape, or form.11 As Peter Lombard explains, God cannot undergo any intrinsic nor any extrinsic change.12 According to Helm, the traditional doctrine of immutability rules out mere Cambridge change of God as well because such changes would presuppose that God is in time.13 This is closely related to the classical theist claim that God is not really related to creation. This denial of a real relation between God and creation goes back at least to Augustine in the Christian tradition. For Augustine, if God were really related to creation, He would have accidental properties and, thus, not be timeless and immutable.14 God is simple in that God is not composed of any parts. Yet simplicity goes further by denying that God has any properties, forms, tropes, or universals.15 In divine simplicity all of God’s attributes are identical to each other and identical to God’s existence. Further, all of God’s actions are identical to each other such that there is only one divine act, and this one divine act is identical to God.16 Moreover, a simple God is purely actual in that God lacks all potential.17 To say that God is impassible is to say three things: (1) Necessarily, God cannot suffer;18 (2) Necessarily, God cannot be acted upon, nor infuenced by anything ad extra to the divine nature;19 and (3) God cannot have any emotions that confict with His perfect goodness, rationality, and blessedness. 20 The blessedness of God means that He is necessarily in a state of pure, undisturbed bliss or happiness. 21 The reason God cannot suffer is because God is necessarily in this state of pure, undisturbed bliss. The reason that God is in a pure, undisturbed state of bliss is because He has a perfect cognitive grasp of the greatest Good – i.e., Himself. According to Classical Theism, if God’s bliss were to be disturbed by something outside of Himself, it would demonstrate that God had made a moral evaluation of something as having a greater value than Himself. As classical theists make

166 R.T. Mullins clear, God cannot have this defcient evaluation of Himself as the greatest good. Thus, God cannot fail to be perfectly happy. 22

2 The incarnation and the Two Sons Worry: a frst glance After the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the Arian controversy continued to rage. Most of the attention focused on the doctrine of the Trinity, but the stage had already been set for Christological debates. Origen’s Christology had previously set a precedent in many circles for the three-part Christology one fnds in the Antiochene school of theology. 23 Yet, according to G.L. Prestige, it is during the fourth century when Eustace developed the basic shape of the so-called Antiochene school of Christology. 24 Eustace is an ardent proponent of the Nicene Creed and an outspoken critic of Arianism. His criticisms of Arianism eventually lead to him being deposed from his bishopric by the Arians. 25 For Eustace, and the subsequent Antiochene school of Christology, Christ consists of God the Son, an immaterial soul, and a human body. As Eustace sees things, it is necessary to affrm that the Son assumed an immaterial soul in order to avoid the Arian claim that the Son suffered in His heavenly nature. 26 This raises an important point for my chapter. It is my belief that there is an unresolved tension between Classical Theism and Christology. One of the motivations for adopting a three-part Christology – and later dyothelitism – is an incompatibility between classical attributes like impassibility and a two-part Christology.27 In order to understand this tension, it will be helpful to understand some of the debates around this time between theologians in the Antiochene school, like Eustace, who affrm a three-part Christology, and Arians, like Eunomius, who affrm a two-part Christology. For Arians like Eunomius, God the Father is timeless, simple, immutable, and impassible. Since the Son is eternally generated by the Father, the Son is divine but has a less divine status than the Father. As a generated being, the Son is capable of suffering. One line of evidence that the Arians used to establish this lesser divine status of the Son is the fact that the Son is generated by the Father. 28 Another line of evidence is to look to the gospels. In the gospels, Christ undergoes a great deal of suffering. The Arians would point out that the Son suffers, and so must not be the high God. 29 To be clear, in an Arian Christology, the Son is directly related to His body. The Son assumes only a human body. The Son does not assume a human soul because the Arians argue that such a thing would clearly involve two sons in Christ.30 Since the Son is directly related to His body, there is nothing to prevent the Son from suffering. There is no conscious entity to do the suffering for the Son as there is in the three-part Christology of Pope Leo and Gregory of Nazianzus. As the latter explains, the soul serves as a wall to protect the Son from the grossness of human fesh.31 For Gregory of Nazianzus and others, one of the main motivations for adopting a threepart Christology is to preserve the impassibility of the Son. 32

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Understanding this context will help one understand some of the reasons why Apollinaris’ Christology was condemned in the early Church. Since he denies that the Son assumed a numerically distinct soul, he is accused of violating divine impassibility. Various theologians like Gregory of Nazianzus thought that Apollinaris’ Christology violated the impassibility of the divine nature.33 Apollinaris quickly rejected the accusation that the Son suffered in His divine nature. For him, the Son only suffers according to His body. But, the so-called orthodox people of the day were slow to listen and quick to make accusations of heresy. Eunomius and other Arians did not think much of this three-part Christology. As noted before, they thought that it clearly entailed two sons in Christ. This is called the Two Sons Worry. The Two Sons Worry was an incredibly popular argument in the early Church and comes in several forms. One form of the argument from Eunomius goes as follows: A human person is a soul and a body. If the Son assumed a soul and a body, the Son assumed a human person. So there are two sons (two persons) in the incarnation.34 That is heresy. It is not diffcult to develop this argument further. In this three-part Christology, God the Son is a divine mind with a will. God the Son assumes a human soul and body. This human soul has its own distinct will. Earlier it was noted that a substance dualist affrms that a person is an immaterial substance that has the capacity to think and perform free actions. In the standard three-part dyothelite Christology, there are two immaterial substances in Christ that have the capacity to think and perform free actions. Given the dualist’s own understanding of personhood, this Christology entails that there are two persons in Christ. It is not clear that the Two Sons Worry has ever been properly resolved. It is clear though that a three-part Christology eventually became the orthodox position. The two-part Christology was rejected in the early Church because of its associations with Arianism and its incompatibility with Classical Theism – in particular, its incompatibility with impassibility, as is evidenced by the anathemas of the Council of Chalcedon. To be sure, there are other views in logical space about how the Son could be related to His human nature in a two-part Christology, which easily avoid Arianism. However, alternative understandings of the two-part Christology have never been fully explored due to the Church’s unwavering commitment to divine impassibility. All this despite the complete lack of biblical evidence for impassibility.35 The three-part Christology eventually wins the day, but it never solves the Two Sons Worry. What is needed for a solution is an account of the hypostatic union that clearly explains how there is only one person in Jesus Christ and not two. Chalcedon condemns a merely functional unity whereby the divine nature and the human being work so well together that they function as a single person. 36 Yet an actual ontological unity is not clearly established at Chalcedon. To be sure, Chalcedon asserts the

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hypostatic union, but it does not offer an actual account of ontic unity. It is quite easy to demonstrate this by looking at a few historical details surrounding Chalcedon. Building up to the councils at Ephesus and Chalcedon in the ffth century, a three-part Christology is shared by theologians in the Antiochene school, like Nestorius, and orthodox theologians like Pope Leo and Cyril of Alexandria. All three affrmed a three-part Christology, and seemed to affrm that each nature has a distinct will – perhaps some sort of implicit, underdeveloped dyothelitism. As is well known, Nestorius is accused of teaching that there are two sons in Christ. He denied this accusation. 37 In Nestorius’ understanding, there is only one person in Jesus Christ. So what is the difference between Nestorius and the orthodox? The difference is not entirely clear. In Cyril of Alexandria’s second letter to Nestorius, Cyril continually asserts the hypostatic union without explanation, and claims that Nestorius failed to adequately affrm the hypostatic union. What is this adequate account of the hypostatic union that Nestorius failed to offer? Cyril’s only explanation is that the hypostatic union takes place in some unspeakable, unutterable, and incomprehensible way.38 Cyril’s response here is unhelpful. An appeal to ineffable mysteries does nothing to show the difference between Cyril’s own position and that of Nestorius, for it is an unspeakable mystery what the difference really is. This unspeakable difference is further evidenced by the responses to the formula of Chalcedon. According to G.L. Prestige, the success of the council “was only negative; they defned what was false but provided no positive and convincing rationalisation of the right faith.”39 This lack of a convincing rationalization can be felt in the aftermath of Chalcedon. After the Formula of Chalcedon was framed, many Christians in the East remained unconvinced that there was a clear difference between the defenders of Chalcedon and the Nestorians.40 Christopher Beeley explains that the Chalcedonian defnition, which was enforced under governmental pressure, “left the basic identity of Christ and the nature of the union disastrously ambiguous from the point of view of the more unitive traditions. It is no wonder that Nestorius reportedly felt vindicated by the result.”41 According to Prestige, Nestorius thought that Chalcedon and Pope Leo’s Tome “expressed exactly what he himself had always believed.”42 Given this, the inability of Eastern Christians to see a difference between Chalcedon and Nestorianism is understandable. The monophysite Christians in the East at that time were not happy with “the sickness of Chalcedon” that declared that Christ had two natures.43 These Christians are called monophysites because they denied that Jesus Christ had two natures, and instead claimed that he had only one nature. Concurring with Chalcedon, many monophysites held to a three-part Christology, but contrarily, they held that in the incarnation the two natures became one nature – without confusion – through composition. These monophysites maintained that if there are two natures in the incarnation,

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then there are two persons. Again, we see the Two Sons Worry at play here. Hence why the monophysites called the Chalcedonian Christology a sickness. Severus of Antioch has some rather strong things to say about the ‘madness’ of Leo’s Tome and the ‘sickness’ of Chalcedon. According to Leo, each nature in Christ acts only according to what is proper for it. Severus says that this is a “bastard partnership and of a relationship of friendship.”44 In other words, Severus is pointing out that this is a merely functional unity, and not a genuine hypostatic union. Hence why Severus thinks that Leo is a Nestorian. Robert W. Jenson is also unconvinced that there is a clear difference between Chalcedon and Nestorianism. He writes, According to Leo, “Each nature is the agent of what is proper to it, working in fellowship with the other: the Word doing what is appropriate to the Word and the fesh what is appropriate to the fesh. The one shines forth in the miracles; the other submits to the injuries.” If this is not Nestorianism, it is something rather worse. The Son does the saving, the man Jesus does the suffering. The Son does the self-affrming, Jesus does the victim part.45 What we have in the three-part Christology of Chalcedon is a disastrously ambiguous model of the incarnation that fails to avoid the Two Sons Worry. The ambiguity becomes worse when one notices that Leo’s language of ‘working in fellowship’ is incredibly similar to statements from Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia, both of whom were accused of the Two Sons Worry. It would seem that there is no clear hypostatic union in sight. While many in the East were distraught over the result of Chalcedon, various Nestorian parties felt that they were able to interpret Chalcedon in such a way that they could agree with the Formula. In the sixth century, the emperor Justinian was able see right through these moves and condemned a merely semantic hypostatic unity as falling victim to the Two Sons Worry. Justinian notes that Nestorians can and do affrm that there are ‘two natures and one person in Christ’ as Chalcedon claims. In fact, many Nestorians in the early church affrmed this. But what Justinian argues is that the content and meaning of their theology does not in fact support this claim. Instead, he argues that the way the Nestorians use these terms entails that there are in fact two persons in Christ. This, says Justinian, is heresy.46 What one sees here is a demand for an underlying metaphysical account for the hypostatic union instead of a mere verbal affrmation of the union of the person of Christ. One of the main motivations for the Fifth Ecumenical Council, Constantinople II (553 AD), is to give a proper interpretation of Chalcedon that would fully exclude Nestorianism.47 The Christology that eventually emerged from this is often called neo-Chalcedonian. It is this that was

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adopted by the Council of Constantinople II, and it has left a huge mark on the way subsequent generations of Christians have thought about the incarnation. Most Christology today is not in fact Chalcedonian because it bears the marks of the much-needed clarifcations that neo-Chalcedonian Christology developed. One of the most important developments during this time period for this discussion is the anhypostasia and enhypostasia distinction. This developed in the aftermath of Chalcedon, leading up to the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Though the terms anhypostasia and enhypostasia are not used by the Council, the theology is adopted and affrmed by the Fifth Ecumenical Council as the proper interpretation of Chalcedonian Christology.48 The deep concern to avoid saying that there were two sons, or two persons, in the incarnation is one issue that led to the development of the an-/ enhypostasia distinction. The Fifth Ecumenical Council took place because of a controversy over adoptionism, Nestorianism, and Origenism – views that many at the time believed entailed two sons or persons. These views seemed to entail the possibility of the human nature of Christ being a complete, separate person apart from God the Son. Hence, why these views naturally fall under the Two Sons Worry. In order to avoid the Two Sons Worry, the neo-Chalcedonian Christology of the Council claims that the human nature of Christ cannot have a hypostasis (person) of its own. Christ’s human nature is anhypostasis, thus avoiding the Two Sons Worry.49 The hypostasis of the Son is brought to the assumed human nature, thus giving the human nature a hypostatic and personal reality. 50 This en-/anhypostasia distinction needs some unpacking because it gets a bit muddled in contemporary discussions due to the mutually confrming nature of each claim.51 The anhypostasia claim seems to contain two conditions. First, the Son’s human nature would not have existed if it were not for the incarnation. The second condition is that the human nature is not a person apart from the incarnation. The enhypostasia claims that the human nature is only a person because the Son brings His personhood to the assumed human nature. The human nature is not, nor could it have been, a person independent of the Son’s assumption. 52 Fred Sanders explains that this is where the strength of the distinction comes into play in ridding ecumenical Christology of Nestorianism. According to him, it excludes the very possibility that the human nature of Christ could have formed a person if the Son had not assumed this nature.53 Thus, the human nature of Christ cannot form a person apart from the incarnation. The human nature of Christ is a person only because it is assumed by the person of the Logos. The human nature exists only because of the incarnation. Wolfhart Pannenberg sums up the neo-Chalcedonian theology as follows: “By itself Jesus’ humanity would not only be impersonal in the modern sense of lacking self-conscious personality, but taken by itself Jesus’ human being would be non-existent.”54 I must emphasize that the en-/anhypostasia distinction is a constraint on Christological theorizing. Nothing about this constraint, by itself, gives us

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an actual hypostatic union. This constraint gives us a way to test Christological models for any underlying Nestorian tendencies. If a model cannot satisfy this constraint, it is not up to the task of satisfying the hypostatic union. That this is merely a constraint is a very serious problem. It highlights the fact that classical Christology still does not have a hypostatic union. In other words, there is still no solution to the Two Sons Worry from within Classical Theism and a three-part dyothelite Christology. In what follows, I shall examine two contemporary attempts to avoid the Two Sons Worry by establishing a clear hypostatic union that is not merely functional or semantic. The frst attempt is called the Assumption Relation. The second attempt is called the Unity of Consciousness. I shall argue that each attempt fails. Thus, the hypostatic union is still left undeveloped within Classical Theism and a three-part dyothelite Christology. One might think that there is a hypostatic union to be found in an embodiment relation between the Son and His human nature. Elsewhere I have argued that Classical Theism prevents the Son from being embodied in human fesh. 55 This is a serious problem for the incarnation, but embodiment alone does not shed much light on the hypostatic union. Here, I shall focus on two recent accounts of the hypostatic union between the divine mind of the Son and His human mind.

3 The assumption relation: a failed attempt at hypostatic union In the three-part dyothelite Christology under consideration, we have in Christ a divine mind with its own will, and a human soul and body with its own will. Given substance dualism, a rational soul is a person. As Nemesius says, “[W]e should consider the soul to be our self” (de nat. hom. I). So it seems like it is impossible to avoid the Two Sons Worry given the acceptance of substance dualism that is widely affrmed in the Christological deposit of the ecumenical councils. 56 By the twelfth century, the problem seemed to persist. Peter Lombard considers a similar sort of objection that goes as follows: “For a person is a rational substance of an individual nature. But that is what a soul is; and so, if the Word took a soul, it also took a person.”57 Lombard responds by saying that this does not follow, because the soul is not a person when it is united personally to another thing, but when it exists by itself. […] But that particular soul never existed without being joined to another thing; and so it was not the case that the taking of that soul was the taking of a person.58 This is an interesting proposal, but Lombard does not develop it any further. It is worth emphasizing that a development is needed if this strategy from Lombard is going to be distinguished from the heresy of the Two Sons Worry. As it stands, Lombard’s strategy looks like the position defended

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by Theodore of Mopsuestia. According to Theodore, the Son has union with the soul of Christ from the beginning of the soul’s existence. 59 In Theodore’s view, the human soul never exists without being united to the Son. This view is explicitly condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council for violating the Two Sons Worry. Hence, Lombard’s proposal needs to be advanced in order to solve the problem. Several contemporary thinkers have tried to advance this position and have given it the name “the Assumption Relation.”60 Thomas P. Flint has offered the most detailed account of the Assumption Relation, so I shall focus on him. In Flint’s understanding of the Assumption Relation, a complete human nature is a body and a soul with a will. A complete human nature is a human person unless it is assumed by a divine person.61 To be clear, on the Assumption Relation, a soul is a person unless it is assumed by a divine person. As far as I am aware, no one has given a deeper explanation of what this relation actually is. The analysis is simply that a soul is a person unless assumed by a divine person. No one explains why this relationship removes the personhood from the soul. Perhaps it is simply a primitive notion that the assumption knocks the personhood out of a soul. Personally, I fnd this to entail a very implausible understanding of personhood. Following the church fathers cited above, it seems to me that a person is a soul that has the capacity for consciousness, a frst-person perspective, and intentional action. However, Flint asserts that personhood is a contingent property of a soul. For Flint, a soul can have conscious thoughts, a unique frst-person perspective, and unique actions, and yet not be a person. Elsewhere, I have argued that this is deeply puzzling, to say the least.62 This Assumption Relation runs into two fatal problems. The frst is that it cannot be reconciled with Classical Theism’s claim that God does not stand in a real relation to creatures. The second problem is that it clearly violates the an-/enhypostasia constraint. Consider the frst problem. As noted above, Classical Theism denies that God is really related to creation. As classical theists like Aquinas admit, this entails that God the Son is not really related to His human nature.63 Notice, though, that God the Son is not really related to my human nature either. As I have already mentioned, it is incredibly unclear what the Assumption Relation is, but I gather that it is supposed to be some sort of intimate relationship that the Son has to His human nature. Whatever this intimate relation is, it is not something that the Son has with my human nature. Otherwise, the Son would be incarnate in me. Now, if the Son is not really related to His human nature and He is not really related to my human nature, I cannot see what the difference is between me and Jesus. Why is the Son one person with Jesus and not one person with me? It seems that Classical Theism has blocked us from giving a clear answer. One might try to resist this argument by pointing out that Peter Lombard’s defnition of a person is in line with Boethius’ defnition. In Boethius’

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understanding, a person is an independent substance of a rational nature. In reply to the frst problem, one might say that Christ’s human nature is not independent because it is dependent on the Son. This reply says that, even though Christ’s human nature is a substance of a rational nature, it is not a person because it is not an independent substance.64 While this is an interesting rejoinder, I maintain that this does not clarify the situation. If this rejoinder to the frst problem is to work, it will need to clarify what kind of dependency relation stands between the Son and Christ’s human nature. This is because all created substances stand in a dependency relation to God the Son (Colossians 1:17). My existence depends upon God the Son sustaining me. The same is true for the Son’s human nature. What is the difference between me and Jesus? Perhaps the kind of dependency relation that is in view here is not mere divine sustaining. It is diffcult to explicate this relation. One can, however, clearly specify which kinds of dependency relations cannot be in view. The kind of dependency cannot be a grounding relation, nor a causal relation, if one affrms the eternal generation of the Son. According to the ecumenical doctrine of eternal generation, the Father causes the Son to exist. In some late medieval accounts of eternal generation, it is said that the Father grounds the existence of the Son.65 In either account, the Son depends on the Father for His existence. Here is the problem. The Lombard strategy says that a substance of a rational nature does not count as a person if it depends upon a personal substance. The Son depends upon a personal substance (i.e., the Father). That entails that the Son is not a person. This is not good news for Trinitarian theology. There might be a way to try to clarify what kind of dependency relation the Lombard strategy has in mind that avoids any confict with the Trinity. What that kind of dependency relation is remains to be seen. However, the initial point raised in the frst problem still stands. Classical Theism says that the Son is not really related to creation or His human nature on pain of God having accidental properties. As discussed above, a simple God cannot have any accidental properties. It would seem that any kind of dependency relation would entail that the Son is really related to His human nature. Thus, it seems that Classical Theism prevents the Lombard strategy from even getting off the ground. The second problem is that the Assumption Relation violates the neo-Chalcedonian Christology of the Fifth Ecumenical Council. On the Assumption Relation, the Son blocks the assumed soul from having its own personhood. If the Son had not assumed the human nature of Jesus, this human nature would have constituted a full human person. Flint is explicit about this entailment from the Assumption Relation.66 However, in the neo-Chalcedonian Christology of Constantinople II, this is declared as heresy because the human nature could not have personhood apart from the incarnation on pain of the Two Sons Worry. Neo-Chalcedonian Christology denies that the Son blocks the personhood of the assumed soul. A mere

174 R.T. Mullins blocking would be tantamount to Theodore’s view, which is condemned by Constantinople II. Instead, neo-Chalcedonian Christology affrms that the Son brings His personhood to a soul that could not be a person on its own.67 So the Assumption Relation will not help us fnd the hypostatic union. Instead, it leads us back into the Two Sons Worry. One might try to reply to the second problem by saying that in all possible worlds in which Christ’s human nature exists, the Son assumes this human nature. Thus, the human nature never exists as a separate person.68 This reply might say that there is a successful Lombard strategy that has not been specifed yet. With a successful Lombard strategy in hand, the fact that there are no possible worlds in which the Son’s human nature is unassumed, one never has the human nature existing as a person apart from the Son. Thus, according to this reply, the Two Sons Worry is avoided. Again, this is an interesting reply, but it misses the point of neoChalcedonian Christology. This reply is still thinking in terms of the Son blocking the personhood of the human nature. This is exactly what neo-Chalcedonian Christology denies. Again, neo-Chalcedonian Christology says that the Son brings His own personhood to a human soul that “could not possibly” be a person on its own.69 Since I have elsewhere argued for this point in more detail, I shall rest my case and move onto the next issue.70

4 Unity of consciousness: another failed attempt at the hypostatic union Neo-Chalcedonian Christology affrms that the soul of Jesus could not be a person on its own. This seems fairly implausible since a soul is a thing with the capacity to have consciousness and intentional action. So it might seem that a hypostatic union in a three-part dyothelite Christology is a non-starter. However, there is another way that one might try to develop the hypostatic union in Classical Theism and a three-part dyothelite Christology. One might try to say that there is one person in Christ because there is a unity of consciousness between the divine and human minds. Having a unity of consciousness is a clear indicator that there is one person. But I shall argue that the combination of Classical Theism and a three-part dyothelite Christology prevents the very possibility of there being a unity of consciousness because there are two unique perspectives on the world in Jesus Christ – the divine perspective and the human perspective. Given the claims of Chalcedon, these numerically distinct perspectives on the world cannot be mixed nor confused with one another. This creates a disunity of consciousness that prevents there being one subject or person in Christ, thus falling victim to the Two Sons Worry. Mental states are things like beliefs, desires, and experiences. These can be broken down into two kinds of conscious states. Phenomenal-conscious states are mental states that have a phenomenology. There is something that it is like to have them or be aware of them. Phenomenal-conscious states

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include experiences and acts of will. This is because there is something that it is like to undergo an experience, and there is something that it is like to perform an act of will. The other kind of conscious state is called access-consciousness. Access-consciousness involves the cognitive content that is poised for rational use. Mental states like beliefs and desires are access-conscious if they are available to a person to act on behalf of or base her intentional actions upon.71 With these distinctions in hand, I can now discuss the unity of consciousness. There are different kinds of unity relations that are worth considering when trying to understand the unity of consciousness. Tim Bayne outlines four different kinds of unity relations. First, there is subject unity. Subject unity is obtained when various conscious states are had by the same subject of experience. A second kind of unity relation is representational unity. This concerns the representational content of experience. A third kind of unity relation is called access unity. This involves the contents of phenomenal- and access-consciousness being directly accessible or available to a subject for the use in performing rational and intentional actions. The fourth and fnal unity relation is called phenomenal unity. This is obtained when various phenomenal-conscious states have a conjoint phenomenology. In other words, there is something that it is like to experience these phenomenal-conscious states together.72 As Joseph Jedwab explains, a person has a unity of consciousness if and only if all of the conscious states she has at any given time are phenomenally co-conscious with each other. Mental states or conscious states like beliefs, desires, and experiences are co-conscious if and only if these states are part of one and the same larger phenomenal conscious state.73 According to Bayne, the unity of consciousness involves an intimate connection between subject unity and phenomenal unity.74 If God the Son can have phenomenal unity with the human mind of Jesus, this would establish a unity of consciousness. This would give us the hypostatic union that Christology needs. If there is phenomenal disunity between the Son and the human mind of Christ, this would show that there are two persons and, thus, the Two Sons Worry has not been avoided. With this in mind, I shall argue that Classical Theism and a three-part dyothelite Christology cannot offer a unity of consciousness between the divine mind of the Son and the human mind of Jesus. If in Jesus Christ there are two minds, each with their own will, that quite obviously is two persons.75 Each mind or center of consciousness has its own set of beliefs and experiences. The divine mind can believe p and the human mind can believe ~p. This is because, according to Classical Theism, the divine mind is omniscient, whereas the human mind lacks omniscience. As James Arminius explains, God’s knowledge is so peculiarly his own, as to be impossible to be communicated to any thing created, not even to the soul of Christ; though we gladly confess, that Christ knows all those things which are required for the discharge of his offce.76

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What this means is that each mind has a very different perspective on the world. According to Classical Theism, the divine mind knows all things by having a perfect introspective grasp of the divine nature. God does not know anything by means of perception because that would involve external things having a causal infuence on God.77 The human mind knows somethings about the world, but does not know all things. The human mind knows things through introspection, intuition, perception, testimony, and inference. Further, as Peter Lombard explains, the human mind knows itself to be created by the divine mind, and does not know itself to be the creator.78 This entails that each mind has a very different phenomenology. As the divine mind introspects on itself it experiences nothing but uninterrupted joy, and nothing outside of the divine nature can break God from this state of pure bliss. As the human mind experiences various emotional and bodily sensations, it experiences moments of great suffering. What this means is that the divine mind and the human mind have very different phenomenalconscious states. The divine mind cannot possibly share the phenomenalconscious states of the human mind on pain of violating impassibility. It appears that there is a severe phenomenal disunity between these two minds. Yet matters are much worse than this. The divine mind can intend to will some action a, and the human mind can intend to will ~a. This is because the divine mind cannot be tempted, whereas the human mind suffers temptations of all sorts.79 So there is a phenomenal disunity between the divine mind and the human mind because there is something that it is like to be tempted, and this phenomenal-conscious state is something that an impassible divine mind cannot possibly experience. An impassible divine mind cannot possibly experience this because (a) an impassible mind is in a state of undisturbed happiness and (b) an impassible mind cannot be infuenced by anything outside the divine nature. The phenomenal disunity goes even deeper still. Given divine simplicity, the divine mind is pure actuality, which means that the divine mind does not have any potential. Further, all of the divine mind’s actions are identical to each other such that there is only one act, and this one act is identical to the essence and existence of the divine mind. Given divine timelessness, the divine mind performs its one simple act in one timeless present that lacks a before and after. Given impassibility, the divine mind’s one simple act is not infuenced by anything outside the divine nature. This means that the divine mind does not have access unity with the human mind. The content of the human mind cannot serve as the basis of the divine mind’s rational actions on pain of violating divine impassibility. Things are very different for the human mind of Jesus. This human mind has potentiality and its numerically distinct actions are spread out temporally. The actions of the human mind are rationally guided by the accessconscious states of itself. This entails several phenomenal states. There is

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something that it is like to perform these actions on the basis of a human nature. Also, there is something that it is like to perform temporal actions, and to temporally actualize one’s potential. These phenomenal states of the human mind cannot possibly be had by the divine mind on pain of violating the principles of timelessness, simplicity, immutability, and impassibility. Again, the phenomenal disunity goes deeper still, because it is diffcult to make sense of how the divine mind and the human mind can have coconscious states. The divine mind never experiences change and stands in no temporal relations of any sort, given immutability and timelessness. The human mind does experience change and stands in temporal relations. The conscious states of the divine mind cannot be simultaneous with the conscious states of the human mind for simultaneity is a temporal relation that entails having a temporal location. The divine mind cannot stand in any temporal relation nor have any temporal location at all on pain of violating divine timelessness. This makes it very diffcult to see how the conscious states of the divine mind and the human mind can be co-conscious with one another. To make matters even worse, consider the way that dyothelitism is often articulated. It is often said that the divine mind does not exercise direct causal control over the human mind’s actions, and vice versa. This is so for several reasons. First, the divine mind and its will, and the human mind and its will are not identical to one another. Second, the divine and human minds stand in an I-Thou relation, and converse with one another in prayer.80 In fact, the human mind has adoration for the divine mind, and freely obeys the will of the divine mind.81 Dyothelites often point to Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. They interpret this as the human mind and will freely submitting to the will of the divine mind.82 Dyothelites will often say that the relation between the human mind and the divine mind in Christ is much like the relation between God’s will and the will of the saints.83 One can’t help but be reminded here of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s relation between the divine and human persons – the relation of good pleasure that is also obtained between God and the saints.84 As discussed above, Theodore was condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council for running afoul of the Two Sons Worry. So it seems that Christology has not advanced that much since then. The combination of Classical Theism and a three-part dyothelite Christology entailed two sons then and still entails two sons now. This is because there is a deep phenomenal disunity between the two minds, such that it is impossible for their phenomenal states to be co-conscious with one another. Recall that willing or performing an intentional action is a phenomenal-conscious state. What we have in this dyothelite picture is the human mind performing the intentional act of submitting to the divine mind. There is something that it is like for a human mind to submit to the divine mind. This phenomenal-conscious state is not something that the divine mind can have on pain of confusing the natures and wills in Christ.

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One might be tempted to say that God the Son does have a phenomenal unity because the Son does know what it is like to suffer. How can the Son know what it is like to suffer? The traditional answer is that the Son knows this in virtue of having a human mind through the hypostatic union. Yet this is a problem since traditional Christology has not offered an actual account of the hypostatic union. An actual hypostatic union must be offered for consideration before one can say that the Son experiences suffering in virtue of possessing a human mind. In this section I have been examining one attempt at developing a hypostatic union – the unity of consciousness. It will do no good to respond to the objections to this account of the hypostatic union by asserting a different inchoate account of hypostatic union.

5 Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined the combination of Classical Theism and a three-part dyothelite Christology. I have argued that two attempts to establish a hypostatic union from within the combination of these views fails to avoid the Two Sons Worry. There might be other ways to establish the hypostatic union, but those remain to be seen.

Notes 1 Cf. William Hasker, “A Compositional Incarnation,” Religious Studies 53 (2017), 433–47. 2 Cf. Andrew Ter Ern Loke, “On Dyothelitism versus Monothelitism: The Divine Preconscious Model,” The Heythrop Journal 62 (2016), 139. 3 Cf. Ian A. McFarland, “Willing Is Not Choosing: Some Anthropological Implications of Dyothelite Christology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9 (2007), 3–23, 8. 4 Cf. George L. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics: Six Studies in Dogmatic Faith with Prologue and Epilogue (London: The Macmillan Company, 1940), 325–37. 5 Cf. Jonathan H.W. Chan, “A Cartesian Approach to the Incarnation,” in eds. Joshua R. Farris & Charles Taliaferro, The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2015), 356. 6 Apollinaris in ed. Richard A. Norris Jr., The Christological Controversy (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980), 109. 7 Cf. R.T. Mullins, “The Diffculty with Demarcating Panentheism,” Sophia 55:3 (2016), 325–346. 8 Cf. R.T. Mullins, “Classical Theism,” in eds. James M. Arcadi & James T. Turner, T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2021). 9 Cf. R.T. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 10 Cf. Paul Helm, “Infnity and God’s Atemporality,” in eds. Benedikt Paul Göcke & Christian Tapp, The Infnity of God: New Perspectives in Theology and Philosophy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), 291. 11 Cf. Antonie Vos, “Always on Time: On God’s Immutability,” in eds. Gijsbert van den Brink & Marcel Sarot, Understanding the Attributes of God (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 53.

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12 Cf. Peter Lombard, Sentences I, Distinction XXXVII.7. 13 Cf. Paul Helm, The Eternal God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 19–20 and 87. 14 Cf. Augustine, The Trinity V.17. Boethius, The Trinity Is One God Not Three Gods IV. Peter Lombard, Sentences Book I Dist. XXX.1. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles II.12. Arminius, Disputation IV.XIV. 15 Cf. Augustine, The Trinity VII.10. Lombard, Sentences I, Dist. VIII.3. Katherin Rogers, “The Traditional Doctrine of Divine Simplicity,” Religious Studies 32 (1996), 166. Michael Bergman & Jeffrey Brower, “A Theistic Argument Against Platonism (and in Support of Truthmakers and Divine Simplicity),” in ed. Dean W. Zimmerman, Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 359–60. 16 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles. Book Two: Creation, translated, with an introduction and notes, by James F. Anderson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976). 17 Cf. John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus: Annotating the Areopagite, translated by Paul Rorem & John C. Lamoreaux (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 220. For a discussion of John Philoponus, see my “Divine Perfection and Creation,” The Heythrop Journal 57 (2016), 122–34. 18 Cf. Paul Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” in ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron, The Power and Weakness of God (Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books, 1990), 120–1. 19 Cf. Richard E. Creel, “Immutability and Impassibility,” in eds. Philip L. Quinn & Charles Taliaferro, A Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1997), 314. Stephen J. Duby, “Atonement, Impassibility and the Communicatio Operationum,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 17 (2015), 286. 20 Cf. William G.T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Volume 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), 174–7. 21 Cf. James Ussher, A Body of Divinitie, or the Summe and Substance of Christian Religion (London: M.F., 1645), 34. 22 Cf. Eric Silverman, “Impassibility and Divine Love,” in eds. Jeanine Diller & Asa Kasher, Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (New York: Springer, 2013), 168. 23 Cf. Christopher A. Beeley, The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Confict in Patristic Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), Chapter 1. 24 Cf. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (cf. n. 4), 276. 25 Cf. ibid., 280–1. 26 Cf. ibid., 276. 27 Cf. Geoffrey D. Dunn, “Divine Impassibility and Christology in the Christmas Homilies of Leo the Great,” Theological Studies 62:1 (2001), 71–85. 28 Cf. Richard Paul Vaggione, Eunomius: The Extent Works (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 59 and 182–3. 29 Cf. Beeley, Unity of Christ (cf. n. 23), 206; John N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London: Adam and Charles Black Limited, 1958), 282. 30 Cf. Eunomius, 155–7. Cf. Beeley, Unity of Christ (cf. n. 23), 205. 31 Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus in ed. Henry Bettenson, The Later Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Cyril of Jerusalem to St. Leo the Great (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 108. Anna Marmodoro & Jonathan Hill, “Compositional Models of the Incarnation,” Philosophy and Theology 20 (2010), 475–9. Cf. Origen in Norris, Christological Controversy, 76. Peter Lombard, The Sentences Book 3, Dist. II, XXI, and XXII. 32 Cf. Beeley, Unity of Christ (cf. n. 23), 209.

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33 Cf. Beeley, Unity of Christ (cf. n. 23), 182. 34 Cf. Richard Paul Vaggione, Eunomius: The Extent Works (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 155–7. Beeley, Unity of Christ (cf. n. 23), 176–82. 35 Cf. Terence Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984). 36 Cf. Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Change? (Still River, MA: St Bede’s Publications, 1985), 36–37. 37 Cf. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (cf. n. 4), 269. 38 Cf. Cyril’s second letter to Nestorius in ed. Norris, The Christological Controversy (cf. n. 6), 132–3. 39 Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (cf. n. 4), 239. 40 See Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (cf. n. 29), 340–2. 41 Beeley, Unity of Christ (cf. n. 23), 284. 42 Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (cf. n. 4), 269. 43 See Sergius the Grammarian in Iain Torrance, Christology After Chalcedon: Severus of Antioch and Sergius the Monophysite (Norwich: The Canterbury Press Norwich, 1988), 144. 44 Torrance, Christology After Chalcedon, 154. 45 Robert Jenson, “With No Qualifcations: The Christological Maximalism of the Christian East,” in eds. Kenneth Tanner & Christopher Hall, Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 19. Emphasis mine. 46 Cf. Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553 with Related Texts on the Three Chapters Controversy, Volume 1 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 149. 47 Cf. Fred Sanders, “Introduction to Christology: Chalcedonian Categories for the Gospel Narrative,” in eds. Fred Sanders & Klaus Issler, Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2007), 27–35. 48 Cf. Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, 73. Sanders, “Introduction to Christology: Chalcedonian Categories for the Gospel Narrative,” 30. 49 Cf. Demetrios Barthrellos, Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 34–35. 50 Cf. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, Vol. 2 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 84–85, 88–89. 51 Cf. Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 84. Oliver Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 74. 52 Cf. David Brown, Divine Humanity: Kenosis and the Construction of a Christian Theology (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2011), 24. Ivor Davidson, “Reappropriating Patristic Christology: One Doctrine, Two Styles,” Irish Theological Quarterly 67 (2002), 225. Ivor Davidson, “Theologizing the Human Jesus: An Ancient (and Modern) Approach to Christology Reassessed,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 3 (2001), 135. 53 Cf. Sanders, “Introduction to Christology” (cf. n. 47), 30–35. 54 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus – God and Man (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1964), 338. 55 Cf. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God (cf. n. 9), Chapter 7. 56 Cf. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (cf. n. 4), 333–7. 57 Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3, Distinction V.3.2. 58 Ibid. 59 Cf. Theodore of Mopsuestia, in Norris, Christological Controversies, 117.

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60 Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1986), 157–62. Cf. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, 64–65. 61 Cf. Thomas Flint, “Molinism and Incarnation,” in ed. Ken Perszyk, Molinism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 189. 62 Cf. R.T. Mullins, “Flint’s ‘Molinism and the Incarnation’ is Still Too Radical – A Rejoinder to Flint,” Journal of Analytic Theology 5 (2017), 517–9. 63 Cf. Aquinas, ST 3, Q2.7. Cf. 1a, Q13, 7. 64 Cf. Oliver D. Crisp, “Theosis and Participation,” in eds. Marc Cortez, Joshua R. Farris & S. Mark Hamilton, Being Saved: Explorations in Human Salvation (London: SCM Press, 2018), 94. 65 For discussion, see Mullins, “Hasker on the Divine Processions of the Trinitarian Persons,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9 (2017), 181–216. 66 Cf. Flint, “Molinism and Incarnation,” 189. 67 Cf. Mullins, “Flint’s ‘Molinism and the Incarnation’ is Too Radical,” Journal of Analytic Theology 3 (2015), 5–8. 68 Cf. Crisp, “Theosis and Participation,” 96. 69 Cf. Brown, Divine Humanity, 24. 70 Cf. Mullins, Flint’s ‘Molinism and the Incarnation’ (cf. n. 62), 522–3. 71 Cf. Joseph Jedwab, “The Incarnation and Unity of Consciousness,” in eds. Anna Marmodoro & Jonathan Hill, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 170–1. 72 Cf. Tim Bayne, “The Unity of Consciousness: A Cartography,” in eds. Massimo Marraffa, Mario De Caro & Francesco Ferretti, Cartographies of the Mind: Philosophy and Psychology in Intersection (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 201–2. 73 Cf. Jedwab, “The Incarnation and Unity of Consciousness,” 172. 74 Cf. Bayne, “The Unity of Consciousness,” 207. 75 Cf. Tim Bayne, “The Inclusion Model of the Incarnation,” Religious Studies 37 (2001). Peter Lombard attempts to answer objections of this sort in The Sentences, Book 3 Dist. V and X. 76 Jacobus Arminius, Disputation IV.XLVI from “25 Public Disputations” in eds. James Nichols & William Nichols, The Works of James Arminius: The London Edition Volume 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1986). Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Volume 2 (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1994), 348–50. 77 Cf. Thomas Williams, “Introduction to Classical Theism,” in eds. Jeanine Diller & Asa Kasher, Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (New York: Springer, 2013), 95. Augustine, The Trinity, XV.13.22. Stephen Charnocke, Several Dischourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God (London: Newman, 1682), 186 and 192. 78 Cf. Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3, Distinction XIV.1.6. 79 Cf. Ivor J. Davidson, “‘Not My Will but Yours Be Done’: The Ontological Dynamics of Incarnational Intention,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005), 178–204, here 194. David Werther, “Freedom, Temptation, and Incarnation,” in eds. David Werther & Mark D. Linville, Philosophy and the Christian Worldview: Analysis, Assessment and Development (New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2012). Thomas P. Flint, “‘A Death He Freely Accepted’: Molinist Refections on the Incarnation,” Faith and Philosophy 18 (2001), and “The Possibilities of Incarnation: Some Radical Molinist Suggestions,” Religious Studies 37 (2001). 80 Cf. Andrew Loke, “On the An-Enhypostasia Distinction and Three-Part Concrete-Nature Christology: The Divine Preconscious Model,” Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2014), 103–4. Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 316–22.

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81 Cf. Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations: Volume 1 (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1961), 158. 82 Cf. Loke, “On Dyothelitism” (cf. n. 2), 137. 83 Thomas Aquinas seems to cut the operations of the two wills of Christ in terms of primary and secondary causation, just like he does in his account of divine providence. He explicitly compares the relation between the divine and human wills in Christ to that of the divine will and the saints: Whatever was in the human nature of Christ was moved at the bidding of the Divine will; yet it does not follow that in Christ there was no movement of the will proper to human nature, for the good wills of other saints are moved by God’s will, ‘Who worketh’ in them ‘both to will and to accomplish,’ as is written Phil. 2:13. Alittle later he says, “[T]he human will of Christ had a determinate mode from the fact of being in a Divine hypostasis, i.e., it was always moved in accordance with the bidding of the Divine will.” ST III, Q18. 84 Cf. Theodore of Mopsuestia, in ed. Norris, The Christological Controversy (cf. n. 6), 114–5.

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Peccable as Son of Man, impeccable as Son of God An attempt to reconcile freedom and impeccability Dominikus Kraschl

Christians confess that Jesus Christ was like us in all things, except for sin (cf. 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15; 1 Pet 1:22–24; DH 301). However, this biblical and dogmatic doctrine provokes a follow-up question, namely, could Jesus of Nazareth have sinned? In other words, was the man Jesus peccable or impeccable? The frst part of this chapter presents and discusses an argument in favour of the impeccability view. The second part sketches three ways of evading the conclusion. Thereafter, a new attempt of reconciling Christ’s impeccability and Jesus’ freedom is explored: the “backwards constitution model” of the incarnation and the hypostatic union. Before we turn to Christological issues, I begin with some preliminary remarks concerning the concepts of ‘sin,’ ‘possibility,’ ‘morally relevant freedom,’ and ‘moral responsibility.’

1 Preliminary remarks i

Sin: The concept of ‘sin’ has both moral and religious connotations. Besides, it can denote morally wrong habits (e.g., mortal sins) as well as morally wrong actions (e.g., adultery). These connotations (moral vs. religious, habit vs. action) are interrelated. For instance, morally wrong actions are called sinful insofar as they express and/or cause a person to turn away from God. Furthermore, morally wrong actions are either manifestations of bad habits or they tend to produce them. Moreover, objectively and subjectively morally wrong actions are to be distinguished. Subjectively wrong actions are wrong insofar as they are held to be wrong by the person exercising the action, while objectively wrong actions are wrong as such. In this chapter, I will assume that Jesus’ sinlessness is to be understood in the sense that he neither subjectively nor objectively did wrong. The question of whether only morally unacceptable actions are to be regarded as sinful will be left open. If there are morally acceptable actions that are nonetheless opposed to God’s salvifc will, such actions might be

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Dominikus Kraschl called sinful (i) at no time, (ii) sometimes, or (iii) at all times. Be that as it may – with respect to what I am going to say in this chapter, the notion of sin need not be confned to what is morally wrong. As we will see, it is not at all clear whether Christ’s human freedom could be suffciently preserved if it were limited to supererogatory acts. For, even if, let’s say, Christ’s side-stepping the martyrdom had been morally acceptable, it still might have led to the unpleasant consequence of God’s loving self-revelation in Jesus Christ not taking place. Besides, we apparently had to predicate of the incarnate Christ that he had acted against God’s salvifc will. And this is surely not easily swallowed.1

ii

Possibility: The claim “Jesus could have sinned” can either refer to de dicto- or to de re-modalities. The frst are conceptual, while the second are ontological by nature. If one states, for instance, “It is impossible that a bachelor is married,” he is referring to conceptual possibilities. The very meaning of ‘bachelor’ entails the attribute ‘unmarried,’ wherefore attributing ‘married’ to a bachelor would lead to a conceptual contraction. On the other hand, the statement, “It is impossible that Peter’s father is a horse,” refers to the nature of things. In the following, I will assume that we are dealing with de re-modalities when asking whether Jesus could have sinned. 2 iii Morally relevant libertarian freedom (MRF): It has been argued that human beings, by their very nature, possess the power of morally relevant freedom. This power can be possessed either as a predisposition (e.g., in the case of infants) or as a capability (e.g., in the case of average adults). If the power is possessed as a fully developed capability, its exercise can either be fully or partially limited (e.g., under the infuence of drugs). Morally relevant freedom, I will assume, involves libertarian freedom as a necessary condition. A person is endowed with libertarian freedom if she has the power to do otherwise, i.e., the power to bring about or not bring about a certain state of affairs under identical internal and external circumstances. Correspondingly, a person exercises morally relevant freedom, if it is in her power to affrm or not to affrm a morally required action under identical internal and external circumstances. In this chapter, I will assume that during this earthly pilgrimage morally relevant freedom is possessed and exercised by average adults. iv If someone is a moral agent, he not only possesses but is capable of exercising the power of MRF. It should be mentioned, however, that a person can be morally responsible if she could not have done otherwise, but the action in question is a consequence of an earlier exercise of MRF. Think, for example, of a drunk driver, who, due to his limited reactivity, was not able to react correctly, but is nevertheless held to be morally responsible because he had had the power to form his character according to the given moral and legal duties.3

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2 Peccable or impeccable? It is a subject of ongoing dispute whether Jesus possessed and exercised the power of MRF. Scripture and early tradition simply testify that he was like us in all things, with only sin excluded. The rest is open to interpretation. A few scriptural passages possibly indicate that Jesus could have sinned. The temptation stories come into mind (cf. Mk 1:12f, etc.), but also the letter to the Hebrews can be mentioned: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (Heb 4:15). However, the cited wording “tempted in every way, just as we are” can be read in various ways. First, Jesus may have been tempted in every way, just as we are, by external forces like, for instance, other people or dark forces exerting some infuence on him. Second, Jesus might have been tempted in every way, just as we are, by internal forces like evil thoughts or deeds provoking desires or inclinations.4 If Jesus was impeccable, his temptations might have felt like those experienced by us, but it was ultimately impossible that he gave in. May we then still say that Jesus has been tempted in every way, just as we are? Well, that depends partly on our intuitions. On the other hand, if Jesus was peccable, he could have given in to evil thoughts, desires, or inclinations. In this case, Jesus’ temptations not only felt like the temptations experienced by us, but they apparently were like ours. Until recently, the impeccability view has undeniably been the mainstream theological view. However, its adherents pay a price for that. According to this view, Jesus was not able to exercise any morally relevant freedom, and this, in turn, might be regarded as denial of his true humanity. 5 One might ask, therefore, how the predominance of the impeccability view is to be explained. Two factors presumably played a central role. On the one hand, in Western theology from Augustine to Aquinas up to Neo-Scholasticism, a kind of ‘semi-monophysitism’ had been prevalent. According to this view, from his mother’s womb, the man Jesus not only enjoyed the blessed vision of his father but possessed almost perfect knowledge.6 On the other hand, the opposing peccability view was apparently held to be irreconcilable with Conciliar Christology (i.e., the view of Christ laid down by the frst six ecumenical councils). The underlying intuition might be expressed by the following argument: 1 2 3

The incarnate Logos was truly God and in Jesus of Nazareth truly man. Of the incarnate Logos, the concrete attributes of his divine as well as Jesus’ human nature can be predicated. If Jesus could have sinned, the incarnate Logos could have sinned. [from (1), (2)].

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Dominikus Kraschl As the unsurpassable revelator of God and his perfect love, the incarnate Logos could not have sinned. Therefore, Jesus could not have sinned. Therefore, Jesus was impeccable.

Let us have a look at the premises of the argument. In accord with Conciliar Christology, premise (1) states that the incarnate Logos was truly God and in Jesus of Nazareth truly man. Premise (2) gives an account of the doctrine of the communication of idioms. Following Alois Grillmeier, this doctrine can be called the central characteristic and the hard core of Conciliar Christology.7 Premise (3) is an interim conclusion that seems to follow straightaway from premises (1) and (2). Premise (4) is based on a central Christian conviction, namely that the Logos assumed a human nature by which he revealed God’s perfect love for us. The conclusion (5) and its reformulation (6) seem to follow from premises (1), (2), (3), and (4). Now, if the Logos had, in Jesus, assumed a human nature that could have fallen into sin, the incarnate Logos may not only have failed to reveal God and his love for us, but rather could have been said to be a sinner. This, however, is absurd. Therefore, Jesus Christ must have been impeccable. The formal structure of the presented argument is a reductio ad absurdum. It aims to show that the peccability view is not compatible with the presuppositions of Conciliar Christology. Jesus’ impeccability is established via modus tollens: 1 2 3 4

If Jesus was peccable, the incarnate Logos was peccable (p → q), The incarnate Logos was not peccable (not q), Therefore, Jesus was not peccable (not p), Therefore, Jesus was impeccable (not p).

Let us call the above-formulated argument the impeccability argument. If Conciliar Christology is presupposed, as will be here, our discussion will have to focus primarily on premises (3) and (4). Let us begin with premise (4): (4) As the unsurpassable revelator of God and his perfect love, the incarnate Logos could not have sinned. Very few theologians have ever regarded the Logos as such to be peccable. If one was to defend Jesus Christ’s temptability, moral responsibility, and merit by regarding the Logos to be peccable, this would require far-reaching revisions concerning the Christian understanding of God. Since, if moral perfection is part of God’s nature and, thus, one of his essential attributes, God can neither do any evil nor can he have evil desires. Regarding the divine Logos as such to be peccable does not, therefore, seem to be a viable option. Now, let us consider our problem from another perspective. According to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as well as the Apostolic Creed, Christ was conceived by a woman, suffered, and was crucifed. At least in the context of an Antiochian Christology, these statements are not predicated of

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the Logos as such, but rather, insofar as the Logos is hypostatically united with a human nature. Along these lines, one could argue that, even if Jesus of Nazareth had sinned, this would, at last, have touched neither the Logos as such nor his divine nature. So why not allow that Jesus could have sinned? Although the answer has already been indicated above, it may be illuminating to address the problem from another perspective, namely by drawing a parallel between Christ’s (im)peccability and his (in)fallibility.

3 Relating impeccability and infallibility According to the New Testament writings, Jesus’ human knowledge was limited (cf. Mk 13:32; Lk 2:52). Moreover, contemporary exegetes have increasingly questioned Jesus’ infallibility or inerrancy. As a child of his time, Jesus might have entertained some untrue beliefs – think, for example, of his claims that the arrival of the Son of Man would be in his generation (cf. Mt 16:28), that Moses is the author of the Torah (cf. Lk 20:37), or that Abiathar was high priest in the time of King David (cf. Mk 2:26). In line with this, Jesus might have held a few false beliefs, some of which he inherited from his parents, teachers, and other authorities of his time. Besides, some New Testament passages possibly indicate that Jesus regarded himself to be a fallible creature, for example, his rejection of being addressed as “good master”: “Why do you call me good? Nobody is good, except the one, God” (Mk 10:17; Lk 18:19). Besides, Jesus’ receiving the baptism of repentance by John the Baptist might indicate that he regarded himself to be a fallible creature in need of God’s mercy.8 The idea that Jesus, as a man of these times, could have entertained false beliefs is, of course, not innocent in regards to its consequences for Christian doctrine. Given that Jesus’ belief-forming processes were not supernaturally controlled (not to say ‘manipulated’), we must ask whether Jesus could ultimately have erred with respect to soteriologically relevant issues. This, however, would confict with the logic of Conciliar Christology: 1 2 3

4 5

The incarnate Logos was truly God and in Jesus of Nazareth truly man. Of Jesus Christ, the concrete attributes of his divine as well as of his human nature can be predicated. If Jesus of Nazareth could have erred in soteriologically relevant issues, the incarnate Logos could have erred in soteriologically relevant issues and, thus, would have failed to reveal God and his perfect love. [from (1), (2)]. As God’s unsurpassable revelator of God and his perfect love, the incarnate Logos could not have erred in soteriologically relevant issues. Jesus could not have erred in soteriologically relevant issues. Let us call this argument the inerrancy argument. It involves a Christological dilemma: Either Jesus Christ could have erred with respect to soteriological issues or he could not. In the frst case, this appears incompatible with his being the unsurpassable revelator of God, while

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in the second case it does not seem to be reconcilable with Jesus being like us in all things.9 If we assume the latter alternative, the above-formulated argument could be continued in the following way: During earthly pilgrimage, it is part of our nature that humans can err in soteriologically relevant issues. Therefore, Jesus was not like us in all things, only sin excepted.

With respect to our topic, premise (6’) is of great importance. Adherents of the impeccability view might object that even if this premise was true of the rest of mankind, it did not need to be true of Jesus of Nazareth. What is usually the case need not essentially be the case. Even if this is conceded, the adherents of the peccability view might argue that the acknowledgement of the autonomy of human agents10 cannot be easily reconciled with the acceptance that God prevented Jesus from forming false beliefs, be it by supernatural intervention or otherwise. They might also recall that Christ’s assumed nature (which includes a human soul and will) had not been altered due to its hypostatical assumption according to Conciliar Christology (cf. DH 301–3). What shall we think of the outlined parallelism of the impeccability argument and the inerrancy argument? On the one hand, this parallelism may speak in favour of the view that Jesus could neither have failed intellectually nor morally. On the other hand, one may as well remain reluctant towards both arguments. Not only do both arguments entail an undesirable tendency to monophysitism and/or monotheletism, but a thorough analysis also reveals that their validity relies on at least one hidden premise. As we will see, there are at least three ways to side-step the conclusion that if Jesus had been peccable, the Logos too would have been peccable. In the following, a short outline of these three strategies will be given to evade the dilemma. Subsequently, I will unfold some of the implications of the third strategy and discuss its consequences for a revised understanding of Conciliar Christology.

4 Pro peccability: three ways out of the dilemma The impeccability argument aims to show that Jesus either did not have the power of MRF or was ultimately not able to use it. In the following part, I want to show that this argument is not convincing. Here is, once again, the impeccability argument: 1 2 3

The incarnate Logos was truly God and in Jesus of Nazareth truly man. Of the incarnate Logos, the concrete attributes of his divine as well as Jesus’ human nature can be predicated. If Jesus could have sinned, the incarnate Logos could have sinned. [from (1), (2)].

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As the unsurpassable revelator of God and his perfect love, the incarnate Logos could not have sinned. Therefore, Jesus could not have sinned. Therefore, Jesus was impeccable.

This argument rests on a hidden premise that could be formulated as follows: Once a concrete human nature is assumed by the Logos, the same human nature must be hypostatically united to the Logos in all possible world-histories in which it exists. If this is presupposed from premises (1), (2), (3), and (4), then indeed conclusion (5) follows. However, we need not accept this hidden premise; rather, we can side-step it in at least in three ways (M1–3). According to the probation model (M1), the following counterfactual conditional is true: if Jesus had consented to any morally wrong thought or action, the hypostatic union would thereby have ceased to exist. If this is taken to be true, the interim conclusion (3), as well as the fnal conclusion (4), cannot be drawn. Thus, the probation model seems to be a way of affrming both Christ’s impeccability as well as Jesus of Nazareth’s peccability. For, even if Jesus could have sinned, he need not have sinned when hypostatically united with the Logos. This idea may be illustrated by the following analogy: At the altar, a bachelor cannot sincerely say ‘yes’ to his bride and yet remain a bachelor. Given that his bride has already given her ‘yes,’ the bachelor immediately ceases to be a bachelor by consenting to the marriage. Now compare the counterfactual claim, “If Jesus had sinned, the hypostatic union would have broken apart.” Jesus’ consent to sin would not have affected the Logos, for Jesus was only united to the Logos as long as he did not fail. The evangelical theologian Millard Erickson, a representative of the probation view, expounds: Certainly, God cannot sin, and indeed cannot even be tempted. Thus, if Jesus were to have sinned, his deity could not have been involved. Unless we are to adopt some form of Nestorianism, the conclusion seems to be that the incarnation would have terminated short of the actual sin. At the very brink of the decision to sin where that decision had not yet taken place, but the Father knew it was about to be made, the Second Person of the Trinity would have left the human nature, Jesus, dissolving the hypostatic union.11 According to this view, Jesus’ human nature was only contingently united with the Logos. Thus, Jesus would have become a self-standing human person if the Logos had no longer used him as a vehicle of self-communication.12 Not expecting otherwise, the probation model has its costs too. If Jesus had sinned, he would not only have caused a kind of ‘incarnational torso,’ but God’s plan to reveal himself by assuming a concrete human nature would have failed. Accordingly, incarnation would be a highly risky enterprise. This risk, however, may have been limited by God if many

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incarnations were possible and his salvifc plan would very likely have fnally been fulflled. A second model that can be labelled eternalistic adoptionism (M2) is defended by Thomas Schärtl.13 This model presupposes an eternalistic conception of divine foreknowledge. God, possibly because of his middle knowledge (knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom), actualises a possible course of history in which he eternally knows that Jesus will freely not sin. So, even if Jesus could have sinned, this is only true of possible courses of history in which he would, in virtue of the Logos’ knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom, not have been assumed. This solution is unquestionably elegant. Nonetheless, the concept of middle knowledge itself faces several serious problems: (i) M2 raises the fundamental question of whether Jesus of Nazareth could have sinned at some point of his earthly life if God had actualised a course of possible worlds in which he already knew what would happen. It appears as if Jesus’ exercise of MRF is not solely dependent on him, but also on God’s decision as to which course of possible worlds he actualises. (ii) Can God use his middle knowledge, if it is ultimately dependent on his act of creation? This leads into an ongoing discussion that I cannot expound upon in detail here.14 (iii) Are there not strong general objections against Molinism, like the grounding objection, etc.?15 According to the backward constitution view (M3), the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus of Nazareth is partly constituted by his life testimony. This model implies the counterfactual truth that Jesus would not have been hypostatically united with the Logos if he had sinned at some point of his life. Given that this counterfactual is true, conclusion (5) is blocked again. The reason for this is that valid Christological attributions are to be made retrospectively, i.e., against the background of a completed life testimony that has unsurpassably manifested God in his love for us in history. In the following section, I will explore this model more thoroughly. This is not to say that the other two strategies to solve the Christological dilemma do not deserve attention. However, M3 is a thought-provoking option that has not received much theological attention hitherto.16

5 The backwards constitution model A few prerequisites The backwards constitution model, which will be explored more closely now, rests on a key hermeneutic assumption. According to this model, the dogmatic tenets of incarnation as well as of hypostatic union are to be understood against the background of God’s eschatological self-manifestation in the life testimony of the man Jesus of Nazareth.

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This view is not self-explaining if we consider that in late medieval times some theologians debated whether the Logos could have become incarnate in a non-human and even non-rational being. Such free-foating theological speculations can be evaded if the teaching of the two natures of Christ, as unfolded by Conciliar Christology, is strictly tied back to the basic concept of God’s self-revelation and self-communication. In this case, God could apparently not have assumed a non-rational nature, for only a nature that is endowed with reason and freedom may testify God’s love in a truly personal way.17 At this point, I want to go one step further and suggest that the concepts of incarnation and hypostatic union explicate the event of God’s loving self-manifestation history. Hence, I would like to postulate an implication (p → q) between the incarnation of the Logos (p) and his self-manifestation in the life testimony of Jesus of Nazareth (q). In this case, the negation of the self-manifestation of the Logos in the life testimony of Jesus of Nazareth (not-q) implies the negation of the Logos’ incarnation in Jesus’ life testimony (not-p). At least three good reasons can be brought forward in favour of this implication: (i) God’s intention to make his love manifest in our world and history cannot be realised by a human nature as such, but only by a human nature with a proper life history. I will come back to this point in the next section. (ii) Apart from this, the occurrence of God’s self-manifestation in a human life testimony depends on manifold contingent facts, some of which are dependent on free human actions, for example, that Jesus did not succumb to disease too early, that he was correctly introduced into the faith of his ancestors, that he testifed his message until death, and so forth. Therefore, we must ask whether God could have guaranteed the occurrence of these and other facts. Particularly, within the framework of open theism, the answer will turn out in the negative. (iii) Furthermore, the suggested view enables a non-interventionist or minimalist interventionist model of God’s providence that maximally esteems the autonomy of human agents and the resulting contingency of historical events. If it were not even possible for God to completely foresee all free human actions and actualise a course of history in which he knew that a specifc humanly mediated self-manifestation would succeed, such a view would be particularly attractive. The marathon analogy The concepts both of incarnation and hypostatic union, so it has been argued, are to be interpreted in the light of the more fundamental concept of God’s self-manifestation in Jesus’ life-testimony. The punch line of this assumption might be demonstrated by what I would like to call the ‘marathon analogy.’

192 Dominikus Kraschl According to the rules of a marathon, one of the many marathon runs becomes a winning run as one of the athletes frst passes the fnish line. This is, in some sense, remarkable: as soon as the athlete crosses the fnish line, all preceding parts of his run, such as the start or fnal spurt, all at once become parts of a winning run. They become something they were not before. Henceforth, with respect to a marathon, there are two points of view: a simultaneous and a retrospective. According to the simultaneous point of view, before the frst athlete passes the fnish line, the spectators can neither see a winner running nor a winning run. Given that the future is open, there simply is no winning run before one of the athletes has passed the fnish line. However, given a retrospective point of view, the same spectators have been watching a winning run and a winner running. We are faced with a thought-provoking asymmetry. For one can only speak of a winning run if all its parts have already occurred. Something similar might be the case with respect to Christology: God’s self-manifestation and self-communication might have occurred only if Jesus of Nazareth had successfully completed his life testimony. Accordingly, Jesus’ martyrdom for his message might be regarded as an integral part of God’s eschatological self-manifestation. That which has been considered so far encompasses very interesting consequences for a revised understanding of Conciliar Christology. In the following paragraphs, these consequences will be explicated. Traditionally, the hypostatic union was taken to denote a special relationship between two individuals: the divine Logos and a concrete human nature. Both were taken to be instances of natural kinds or species infmae.18 This relation which we call hypostatic union is obviously not one of strict identity. According to Leibniz’s law of the indiscernibility of identicals, two entities a and b are identical if and only if they have exactly the same properties. In our case many properties are not only different but opposed: the Logos is by nature immortal, while the man Jesus is mortal; the Logos is by nature omniscient, while Jesus the man is not; the Logos is by nature eternal and hence uncreated, while the man Jesus is created; and so forth. Therefore, the relation between the Logos and Jesus’ human nature is not one of strict, but rather one of personal identity. The Logos is the ultimate bearer of Jesus’ human nature, including his soul, consciousness, and will. According to Conciliar Christology, Jesus Christ is ultimately not a human but rather a divine person, even though he is also a human being insofar as this divine person has assumed a human nature. This relation, which is denoted by the term ‘hypostatic union,’ may be elucidated in terms of ‘constitution’ or ‘composition.’ Hypostatic union in terms of constitution For God’s self-communication in history to become manifest in a human’s life so that we can speak of incarnation and hypostatic union, several

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conditions must be met. The interplay of these conditions might, at least partly, be explained using the concept of constitution. The relation of constitution applies when a number of elements are related to each other in such a way that a higher order property appears. This property, which is the property of a wholeness, is called constitution product.19 An example of a constitution product is the event of a colour change. The same is constituted by a three-dimensional thing, like a banana, and two qualitative states that are temporally specifed: the state of being green at time t1 and the state of being yellow later than t 1. If the relation ‘hypostatic union’ is elucidated via constitution, the talk of the God-man Jesus Christ refers to the ‘interplay’ of the elements of the constitution basis. From this point of view, the Logos as the second person of the Holy Trinity counts as incarnate (and, thus, hypostatically united with a concrete human nature) if and only if: a b c

God, in virtue of the Logos, intends to make himself and his divine love manifest in and through the life testimony of a human being, the life testimony of a human being can be acknowledged by other people as the unsurpassable real-symbol 20 of God and his love, this life testimony is not dependent on previous life testimonies, which fulfl the abovementioned conditions (a) and (b).

Condition (a) covers two aspects. On the one hand, God’s will to manifest and communicate himself in his perfect love and, on the other, his intention to use a proper human life testimony as a means to this end. The other two conditions specify what is meant by a life testimony ftting God’s purposes. Condition (b) refers to the shape or form of the appropriate life testimony. It says that only a human being whose life-testimony is cognisable as the real-symbol of God’s perfect love can be hypostatically united with the Logos. 21 Condition (c) could be called the newness condition. It resonates in the New Testament when Jesus is called “author and perfecter of faith” (Heb 12:2). Thus, once conditions (a), (b), and (c) have been met in Jesus of Nazareth, further incarnations are excluded. To sum up, precisely the human being who fulfls the following “divine decree” counts, in God’s eyes, as hypostatically united with him and his incarnation, namely, the one who frst succeeds making his life an unsurpassable real-symbol of God’s perfect love. 22 Hypostatic union in terms of hylomorphic composition In the last section, God’s self-manifestation and self-communication in Jesus of Nazareth were elucidated with the help of the concept of constitution. However, this might not suffce to explain the unity of the God-man Jesus Christ. With respect to this question, the concept of hylomorphic composition seems to be very useful.

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Accordingly, Jesus Christ is a compositum, consisting of the divine Logos and a concrete human nature. Thereby the Logos functions as the formgiving element (formal principle), whereas Jesus’ human nature functions as the form-receiving element (material principle). Christ’s concrete divine and human nature behave like form and matter in (neo-)Aristotelian hylomorphism. However, contrary to form and matter in the Aristotelian sense, the Logos, as well as Jesus’ human nature, could have existed independently of their hypostatic union. Viewing Jesus’ human nature as a quasi-material principle is compatible with affrming anthropological hylomorphism. According to this view, human beings are by nature composed of a soul (as the formal principle) and a body (as the material principle). Thus, what in one sense functions as a formal principle, namely Jesus’ human soul with respect to the unity of soul and body, functions in another sense as a material principle that is itself informed by the Logos. The Logos is the paramount principle that determines the personal identity of the divine-human compositum. 23 However, the application of hylomorphism to Christology leads to an often-overlooked problem. If Jesus of Nazareth could have lived very different lives, it should be asked whether Jesus’ individual humanity (in abstraction of any concrete life-history) can be regarded as the formreceiving principle that partly composes the God-man Jesus Christ. In this case, Jesus’ human nature could have functioned as the form-receiving principle of the Logos, even if, for instance, he had died too early. From an Aristotelian point of view, not every material can receive every form. A saw cannot be made of cotton wool nor a pen of orange juice. Mutatis mutandis this might also be true in Christology. Thus, it can be argued that only an individual human nature in combination with a proper life history can receive the Logos as its form and thereby function as the medium of his self-communication. These considerations are of great importance with respect to Conciliar Christology. More than a few theologians have raised the suspicion that a Christology framed by the categories of Greek substance ontology cannot do justice to the dynamic way the Bible portrays God’s salvifc actions in history. While there might be a kernel of truth to this suspicion, the problem is presumably not the recourse to substance ontology, but rather the neglect of the event component of incarnation and hypostatic union: God’s self-manifestation and self-communication are not only constituted by Jesus’ human nature as such but by a proper life testimony. This life testimony is an event beginning with his conception and ending with his martyrdom. Therefore, the sketched criticism might be met within the substance-oriented framework of Conciliar Christology, if Jesus Christ is regarded as a hylomorphic composite, consisting of the Logos (as form-giving principle) and the man Jesus, plus a proper life history (formreceiving principle).

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To sum up, the presented view says that the hypostatical assumption of Jesus’ human nature will always include a history that fts the assumption’s purpose. Objections First objection: If Christ was partly constituted by Jesus’ human nature as well as by his whole life testimony, the incarnation and hypostatic union did not take place during his earthly life, but only thereafter. Therefore, the ‘backwards constitution view’ amounts to adoptionism. Response: First, the Christological model presented here certainly cannot be compared to historically known fashions of adoptionism. The backwards constitution model of incarnation and hypostatic union neither denies Jesus’ true divinity and humanity, nor his hypostatic union with the Logos throughout his whole life. The difference compared to conventional models is rather that the concepts of incarnation and hypostatic union are regarded as unfolding theological concepts that may defnitively be applied only in the light of Jesus’ completed life testimony. As it stands, the presented view questions deeply ingrained Christological ideas. Two things might be said in response. Putting aside the fact that this also applies to other innovative Christological approaches, Conciliar Christology seems frst and foremost committed to the question of who Jesus Christ is – namely, the second person of the Trinity, having a divine and a human nature – whereas the further question, whether this can be predicated only retrospectively to or also simultaneously with the historical Jesus has not really been clarifed yet. Second objection: Even if it is conceded that the backwards constitution view does not imply adoptionism, it would still lead to a form of Christology of separation. According to this objection, the marathon comparison falls short or even fails. A runner may win a marathon and thereby become the winner. However, through that he just gains a new property that is of relevance to what happened before. This seems to be different in the case of Jesus Christ, who is another person before and after the completion of his earthly life. Response: According to the backwards constitution model of incarnation and hypostatic union, Jesus is, from a pre-Easter perspective, only a human person, whereas, from a post-Easter perspective, he is a divine person having assumed a human nature. From the latter perspective, Jesus was never a human person, wherefore the presented model cannot be subsumed under the label ‘Christology of separation.’ To sum up, the view presented here has its costs and benefts. The costs require us to say that central tenets of Conciliar Christology are not true simpliciter, but only from a retrospective point of view. The benefts are that the contingency of history and especially Jesus’ MRF can fully be maintained. Whoever wants to do justice to Jesus’ undiminished humanity

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and refuses to regard him as a compliant tool, lacking libertarian free will or morally relevant freedom, may at least have good reasons to seriously consider the view presented here. This may especially be attractive if it, eventually, turns out that Molinism does not work or is not compatible with acknowledging Jesus’ MRF without comprise.

6 Closing remarks In this chapter, a new model for reconciling Christ’s impeccability and Jesus’ human freedom was presented. This model, which was labelled the “backwards constitution model of incarnation and hypostatic union,” leads to a revised understanding of Conciliar Christology. The core of Conciliar Christology are the doctrines of the two natures of Christ as well as the communication of idioms. Both were developed based on a synopsis of New Testament Christologies, which not only retrospectively depict Jesus as a historical person but offer an account of who he ultimately is from a post-Easter perspective. Against this background, the question arises of whether the completion of Jesus’ life-testimony, especially his martyrdom, by which he defnitively testifed his message, was not only an epistemological but also an ontological condition for God’s eschatological self-manifestation in the Logos. If the latter is true, the concepts of incarnation and hypostatic union should be understood as implications of God’s self-manifestation by which he revealed himself and his love for us. If these considerations hold, in the case of Jesus’ completed life testimony, a kind of backwards constitution may have taken place. Thereby, not only Jesus’ human nature but also his whole life was hypostatically assumed by the Logos. Jesus’ human freedom could have fully been preserved because if he had abused it, he would not have been assumed by the Logos.

Notes 1 The Biblical and early Jewish understanding of sin, against the background of which the New Testament view of Jesus’ sinlessness is to be read, is neither exclusive nor comprehensive. In this context ‘sin’ mainly refers to a life diminishing and destructing disorder of the social, cultic and legal order that is ultimately directed against its creator, God, and affects all areas of life. Cf. Klaus Bieberstein & Lukas Bormann, “Sünde,” in ed. Frank Crüsemann et al., Sozialgeschichtliches Wörterbuch zur Bibel (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2009), 570–3, 570. 2 Cf. Saul A. Kripke, Name und Notwendigkeit, übersetzt von Ursula Wolf (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1993), 51. 3 Cf. Johannes Grössl, “Freiheit – Gott – Verantwortung. Ein Plädoyer für einen philosophisch und theologisch verantworteten Freiheitsbegriff auf Grundlage des restriktiven Libertarismus,” Theologie und Philosophie 92 (2017), 371–90. 4 Cf. Brian Leftow, “Tempting God,” Faith and Philosophy 31 (2014), 3–23, esp. 11–14.

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5 Cf., for example, Philip Schaff, The Person of Christ: His Perfect Humanity a Proof of His Divinity (New York: American Tract Society, 1913), 36. 6 Cf. Philipp Kaiser, Das Wissen Jesu Christi in der lateinischen (westlichen) Theologie (Regensburg: Pustet, 1981). In its decree “Circa quasdam propositiones de scientia animae Christi” (1918) the Holy Offce, apparently against the wording of the New Testament, rejected that Jesus did not know the hour the Son of man would return. Instead, the Holy Offce taught that, due to the hypostatic union, Jesus at all times of his life had enjoyed a comprehensive knowledge about past, present, and future as well as all given facts (see DH 3646). 7 Alois Grillmeier, “Jesus Christus. II. Die nachbiblische Christologie,” in eds. Josef Höfer & Karl Rahner, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, Vol. 5 (Freiburg: Herder, 1960), 941–53, 944. 8 Cf. Angelika Strotmann, “Die Bedeutung der Rückfrage nach dem historischen Jesus für die Theologie an einem Beispiel. Die Johannestaufe als Indikator für ein Sündenbewussstein Jesu,” in eds. Karl Lehmann & Ralf Rothenbusch, Gottes Wort in Menschenwort. Die eine Bibel als Fundament der Theologie (Freiburg: Herder, 2014), 224–54. See also Strotmann’s article in this volume. 9 The Catholic Church has never formally dogmatised Jesus’ inerrancy. However, this doctrine seems to be presupposed by the tenets of the infallibility of the Church (LG 12) as well as of the inerrancy of Scripture (DH 3006; comp. DV 11). The last two doctrines are internally connected. For, if the early Church had not been infallible with respect to soteriological issues, an authentic transmission of revelation could not have been guaranteed. On the contrary, it would have been conceivable that the apostles and evangelists had thoroughly misinterpreted Jesus Christ. 10 Cf. Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Gaudium et Spes (Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on Dec. 7, 1965, n. 36. 11 Millard Erickson, The Word Became Flesh. A Contemporary Incarnational Christology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 563. It is a matter of further discussion, whether the hypostatic union would have been dissolved (i) through the timely withdrawal of the Logos, as proposed by Erickson, or (ii) the giving in of Jesus, whereby the Logos, when assuming human nature, has already decided that the union would have broken apart at the moment of Jesus’ giving in. 12 Cf. Johannes Grössl, “Christ’s Impeccability,” in eds. James M. Arcadi & James T. Turner, Jr., T&T Clark Companion to Analytic Theology (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 215–229, here 223: A model UL2 [=”The union with the Logos could break apart if Christ freely chooses to sin”] would need to postulate that Christ ceases to exist once he by his human will chooses to sin. He would be replaced by a then newly created person Jesus of Nazareth, an ordinary human, who shared all memories of the human nature of Christ. 13 Cf. Thomas Schärtl, “The Burden of Freedom. The Interference of Libertarian Freedom and Philosophical Theology,” in eds. Klaus von Stosch et al., Streit um die Freiheit. Philosophische und theologische Perspektiven (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2019), 161–95. 14 Cf. Johannes Grössl, “Schöpfung, Ewigkeit und Allwissenheit – eine Antwort auf Thomas Schärtl,” Theologie und Philosophie 89 (2014), 200–14. 15 Cf. among others, William L. Craig, “Middle Knowledge, Truth-Makers, and the “Grounding Objection,” Faith and Philosophy 18 (2001), 337–52.

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16 There seem to be at least three viable combinations of a “divine election” with respect to the end of a hypostatical assumption. The divine election can be: (i) singular (related to one specifc human being) and unconditional (fully constituted and comprehensive) like in the case of eternal adoptionism (= exit II); (ii) singular and conditional like in the case of the probation model (= exit I); (iii) universal (not related to a singular human being) and conditional (if this human being does not sin) like in a version of the backwards constitution model (= exit III). 17 Cf. Dominikus Kraschl, Indirekte Gotteserfahrung. Ihre Natur und Bedeutung für die theologische Erkenntnislehre (Freiburg: Herder, 2017), 80–86. 18 Cf. Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology. A Philosophical Essay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 35. 19 Cf. also Thomas Schärtl’s article in this volume. 20 The term “Realsymbol” was introduced by Karl Rahner (cf. footnote 21). It signifes a symbol that does not only point to or inform about something (like in the case of a signpost) but it is a symbol that makes the designated reality present and mediates it (like in the case of a hug or kiss). 21 A real-symbol is a sign that does not only denote another reality but rather mediates and manifests it. Cf. Karl Rahner, “Zur Theologie des Symbols,” in Schriften zur Theologie, Vol. 4: Neuere Schriften (Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1969), 275–311. 22 Cf. Kraschl, Indirekte Gotteserfahrung (cf. n. 17), 86–107. 23 Cf. Josef Quitterer, “Hylomorphic Christology,” in eds. Joshua R. Farris & Charles Taliaferro, The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology (London/New York: Routledge, 2016), 345–54.

10 The divine and human will of Christ Oliver D. Crisp

1 The doctrine of dyothelitism Dyothelitism, the view that Christ has two wills, one divine, the other human, is the historic position of Christian orthodoxy – or what I shall call classical Christology. It was canonized at the Third Council of Constantinople in AD 681. The fathers of the council maintained that the twonatures doctrine of Chalcedonian Christology, according to which Christ has two complete, distinct natures, one human, the other divine, implies that Christ has two distinct wills, one belonging to his human nature and the other to his divine nature. If he has only one will, then (according to classical Christology) either his divinity or his humanity is incomplete, depending on whether the will in question is a divine or human one. One deliverance of the two natures doctrine (as understood by the fathers of Constantinople III, and – as they saw it – in continuity with Nicene Christianity) is that his two natures are complete and personally united. So he must have a complete human nature, including a human will and principle of action that is distinct, and a complete divine nature, including a divine will and principle of action that is distinct.1 As well as affrming dyothelitism as orthodox, the fathers of the council rejected the major alternative, monothelitism. This is the view according to which Christ has only one will, shared between his two natures. For modern thinkers the doctrine of dyothelitism is one of the most puzzling aspects of classical Christology. For we normally think that the will of a person is just a way of speaking about the agency of that person. The person is said to will one thing or another, but the will is not some sort of faculty belonging to the nature of the person. Rather, it is a way of speaking about the person who is willing a particular thing. But if that is right then it seems that the will goes with the person not the nature, so to speak, which is contrary to classical Christology. As Christian philosopher Garrett DeWeese puts it, Since mental properties inhere in persons and not natures, it follows that the mind and will are faculties or capacities of persons and not of

200 Oliver D. Crisp natures. Persons are conscious, natures are not; persons have the capacity of making choices and exercising active power, natures do not. 2 We can put this worry in terms of an axiom (to which we shall return in the course of the argument of this chapter). Elsewhere, I have called this the Chalcedonian Axiom (CA).3 It is this: (CA) Christ has one of whatever goes with the person and two of whatever goes with natures. The concern that CA generates for defenders of classical Christology is that the will of Christ should go with the natures. That is, there should be two wills in Christ, according to classical Christology; hence, dyothelitism. But modern psychology and philosophy presume that it is persons that will things and that are centers of operation. In which case, there should only be one will in Christ, the will of God the Son, which is equivalent to monothelitism. However, monothelitism is unorthodox. This raises a signifcant concern with respect to the classical Christological account. Let us call this the puzzle of dyothelitism. This puzzle has given rise to a recent debate in contemporary analytic theology about the human and divine will of Christ that includes the work of DeWeese. On one side, there are those analytic theologians who want to defend the classical Christological consensus.4 On the other side are several prominent evangelical Christian philosophers (most of whom are associated with Biola University) who maintain that because the will goes with the person, not the nature, it makes little sense to speak of Christ having a human will distinct from his divine will. It might be better, say these philosophers, to speak instead of the one will of the theanthropic person of Christ than to persist with the rather strained language of dyothelitism. 5 This latter view is sometimes referred to in the literature as neo-Apollinarianism. For, like the historic Apollinaris, these philosophical theologians maintain that there is one will in Christ, namely, the will of God the Son who is the only person ‘in’ Christ, so to speak. (For, according to the two natures doctrine of classical Christology, Christ is a divine person with a human nature, not a divine person united with a human person.) Nevertheless, I shall refrain from referring to this view as neo-Apollinarian because such terminology is potentially infammatory. (Designating an opponents’ view as heretical at the outset is clearly a piece of ad hominem guilt-by-association.) What is more, calling this view neo-Apollinarian may actually be misleading, for reasons we shall come to presently. (To anticipate: there are ways of construing this position that don’t seem to be straightforwardly Apollinarian.) Given these considerations, I shall refer to this view as neo-monothelitism instead, since the central claim being made by these authors is that the monothelite position repudiated by the fathers of Constantinople III has more merit than the tradition thought, and should be reconsidered for both biblical and philosophical reasons.

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2 Some metaphysical distinctions To begin with, it will be helpful to set out some terminological distinctions that will inform our discussion of neo-monothelitism. A good place to start is Alvin Plantinga’s short essay, “On Heresy, Mind, and Truth.”6 Therein Plantinga outlines two accounts of Christology that have informed much of the recent discussion of the incarnation in analytic theology. According to the frst view, in assuming human nature, the Word acquired the property of human nature – a property necessary and suffcient for being a human being, as Plantinga puts it at one point. This is the abstract nature view of the incarnation. I will refer to those who take this view in what follows as abstractists. By contrast, according to the second view, in assuming human nature, the Word acquired a specifc, that is, concrete, human nature. As Plantinga puts it, in this view “what he [the Word] assumed was a human nature, a specifc human being.”7 In this second view, “in the incarnate Christ there were two wills, one human and one divine, and two intellects, one human and one divine.”8 This is the concrete nature view of the incarnation.9 Let us call those who defend this view concretists. There are different ways of construing abstractism and concretism in the literature, depending on whether one thinks about the ‘parts’ that compose Christ. But for our purposes we need not enter that discussion here. It will be suffcient to refer to the broad distinction between abstractists and concretists, since, as I shall argue, this is the salient issue that differentiates neomonothelites from their opponents.10 Using these two ways of thinking about the metaphysics of the incarnation, Plantinga sketches his own (perhaps idiosyncratic) account of the history of classical Christological debate. The canons of the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 seem to ft better with an abstract nature view, he surmises, although the canons of the Third Council of Constantinople in AD 681 seem to be a better ft with the concrete nature view. For, according to Chalcedon, Christ is composed of a divine nature essentially and a human nature accidentally. But according to Constantinople III, Christ has a human will and divine will. Much turns on what we make of the wills in question, as Plantinga makes clear: [S]hall we say that duothelitism [sic] is the idea that the will of Christ had both the nature of a human will and the nature of a divine will, in the abstract sense of ‘nature’? The partisans of the abstract view would happily accept that. Or shall we say that duothelitism is the idea that there are two distinct concrete wills (supposing that in fact a will is a concrete object of some kind)? The concretists would happily accept that, and then it looks as if it’s the abstractists that are tugging the laboring oar.11 The moral of this Christological tale, according to Plantinga, is that stipulating what counts as an orthodox doctrine (in this case, an orthodox doctrine

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of the incarnation) is not an easy task. I think he is right about this. The incarnation is a deep and diffcult matter. If one holds to something like an abstract nature view of the incarnation, does that imply monothelitism? Perhaps not. If one holds to a concrete nature view of the incarnation, does that imply Nestorianism? Again, perhaps not. Yet an initial assessment of this matter might lead one to think so.12 Let me explain. Suppose Smith is an abstractist who is committed to classical Christology. And suppose Jones is a concretist who is also committed to classical Christology. Smith thinks that in becoming incarnate God the Son acquires a property, the property of human nature. ‘Human nature’ is a rich property that includes in its conjuncts all those things necessary and suffcient for being human. Naturally, this includes a human will (whatever a human will turns out to be). So, in becoming incarnate, God the Son acquires the property of human nature that includes a human will. What does that mean? Well, according to one way of thinking about this, it means that from the frst moment of incarnation onwards God the Son is able to act as a human being in addition to acting as a divine person. In order to act as a human being he must be able to will as a human being. Because he has a human nature from the frst moment of incarnation, he is able to will as a human being. Notice that, in this view, the subject here is God the Son. To put it more carefully, we might say that from the frst moment of incarnation onwards God the Son is able to will as a divine person and also able to will as a human being. For from the frst moment of incarnation onwards God the Son exemplifes human nature (he has acquired the property of human nature), so that he is able from that time onwards to will as a human being. At frst glance, this seems like a strange thing to say. But, according to an abstractist the reason it seems strange is that we are used to talking about the nature of a person in terms of the one individual nature a person instantiates that is essential to that person. Smith is a human being and exemplifes a human nature. Her human nature, that is, the human nature of Smith, is essentially human. Indeed, Smith is a fully human person; she is also merely a human person. Christ is not like that. As Thomas Morris reminded us in The Logic of God Incarnate, [T]he kind-nature exemplifed 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 exemplifed 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.13 God the Son exemplifes human nature but he is not merely human. He is a divine person with a human nature. In acquiring human nature he acquires the capacity to will as a human being in addition to being able to will as a

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divine person. He – a divine person – is able to will to do things as a human being because he exemplifes human nature. Such distinctions are helpful. They usually go hand-in-hand with what is known as a reduplicative strategy in order to avoid the conclusion that the abstractist position is monothelite. Reduplication involves speaking of Christ qua or ‘as’ human or divine. So we parcel out certain tasks to one or other of the human natures of Christ in order to be able to shield the other nature from certain claims that would otherwise seem to be metaphysically damaging. For instance, classical Christology claims that Christ is omnipotent qua divine, but not qua human; and he is limited in power qua human but not qua divine. Here, the claim is that Christ can will certain things qua human and other things qua divine. So a reduplicative strategy involves attempting to deploy reduplication in the incarnation in order to avoid embracing certain signifcant problems that would appear to be implied by commitment to the doctrine. In my earlier discussion of this matter I said that the problem with this abstractist attempt to avoid the implication of monothelitism is that it seems like a metaphysical sleight of hand.14 Consider the example I used on that previous occasion.15 Clark Kent is a mild-mannered newspaper reporter. Superman is the Man of Steel. Yet one person is both Kent and Superman. He wills certain things qua Kent and other things qua Superman. Yet one person wills both as Kent and as Superman. But this only shows why the abstractist position seems dubious. The attempt made by abstractists to parcel out the two wills of Christ ends up looking very like the Kent-Superman example, and in the case of Kent-Superman we don’t suppose that there are two distinct wills being employed by one person. Rather, we think that Kent-Superman wills certain things in his guise as a mild-mannered reporter and wills other things in his guise as Superman. But one person wills these things and willing them under the guise of Kent or Superman is not suffcient for Kent-Superman to have two distinct wills in the manner that was understood by the fathers of Constantinople III. For they spoke of two natural wills (duo physikas theleseis) and two natural operations (duo physikas energieas) subsisting “indivisibly, incontrovertibly, inseparably, and in confusedly” in Christ.16 It seems to me that this way of construing dyothelitism most naturally suggests a differentiation between the two wills of Christ that is deeper, or more pronounced, than the abstractist position can allow. Let us return to Jones, who I said was a concretist enamored of classical Christology. In her view, the incarnation involves the assumption by God the Son of a human being. This human being begins to exist and at that very moment is assumed by the Second Person of the Trinity. So adoptionism is not obtained in this view. Nor does Nestorianism straightforwardly follow from the view – that is, it does not imply or entail Netorianism. Although God the Son and his human nature are concrete particulars, there are not two persons present in the incarnation. For in this version of concretism

204 Oliver D. Crisp (a version that Jones hopes is consistent with classical Christology), in assuming a human nature, God the Son brings it into union with his person, making it something like his instrument. At no time is it a human nature independent of assumption by God the Son, so it never forms a fundamental substance independent of God the Son. It is always his human nature. This is strange, but a familiar enough view for those conversant in medieval theology and more recent mereological accounts of the incarnation that draw upon this medieval debate.17 Although, on the face of it Jones seems to fnd it easier to give some account of Christ’s willing certain things along the lines of classical dyothelitism, the worry is that in embracing concretism Jones has embraced a view that strongly suggests Nestorianism, though it does not imply or entail it. This much may be true. But it is insuffcient to push concretism beyond the bounds of classical Christological orthodoxy. (A comparison will make the point: smelling of tobacco and ale strongly suggests that a person is a smoker and drinker, but it may be the case that this person has just been in the company of members of the Inklings group – a band of notorious smokers and drinkers! – and is not himself a smoker or drinker. Sometimes theologians are too quick to assign a view to a person on the basis of such circumstantial evidence.) It is very diffcult to see how a concretist could end up with monothelism unless the version of concretism in question is straightforwardly Apollinarian. That is, if the concretist is committed to the idea that Christ’s human nature lacks a distinct human will and center of operation, the absence being supplied by the divine person who assumes the human nature in question, then the concretist is a monothelite – but only because she is an Apollinarian about Christ’s human nature. Provided Christ’s human nature is complete, including a human will and center of operation, the concretist position implies dyothelitism. As just mentioned, it may seem to press beyond this to Nestorianism, but that is another matter. The point here is that concretists who endorse an orthodox two-natures doctrine in accordance with classical Christology are neither Apollinarian nor monothelite. The concretist position that is consistent with classical Christology is clearly dyothelite.

3 The Moreland-Craig proposal With these distinctions in mind, we can turn to the case for NeoMonothelitism. Perhaps the clearest and most theologically and historically nuanced account to date was given by the Biola University philosophers, J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig. They propose a constructive monothelite Christology that endorses the two natures view of Chalcedon, but that postulates, as Apollinaris does, that the Logos was the rational soul of Christ.18 In their view, God the Son contained archetypically within his divine nature all the properties requisite for being

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human prior to the incarnation with the exception of being embodied.19 So their account of human nature is an abstractist one, but with an interesting Apollinarian twist: God the Son possesses human nature independently of the incarnation because he is a divine person. All that was required in the incarnation in order for Christ to be ‘fully human’ was the acquisition of a human body: God himself is personal, and inasmuch as we are persons we resemble him [in virtue of possessing the image of God]. Thus God already possesses the properties suffcient for human personhood even prior to the Incarnation, lacking only corporeality. The Logos already possessed in his preincarnate state all the properties necessary for being a human self. In assuming a hominid body, he brought to it all that was necessary for a complete human nature. For this reason, in Christ the one self-conscious subject who is the Logos possessed divine and human natures that were both complete. 20 Later in the same discussion Moreland and Craig admit, “The model here proposed implies monothelitism, since the Logos, as the mind of Jesus of Nazareth, has but a single will.” However, this is an implication that is “in our view unobjectionable, since dyothelitism, despite its conciliar support, fnds no warrant in Scripture.”21 As evidence of this claim, the authors cite Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Lk 22:42) where Christ prays, “Yet, not my will but yours be done.” The fathers of Constantinople III, following the teaching of Maximus the Confessor, understood this passage to mean something like, “Yet, not my human will but your divine will be done.” This is consistent with Nicene Christianity and the idea that the divine persons of the Godhead are subsistent relations – the extrapolation of Nicene teaching found in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Moreland and Craig think this is mistaken. They interpret the same passage in a way that implies a social account of the Trinity, thus: “Yet, not my [i.e., God the Son Incarnate’s] will but yours [i.e., God the Father’s] be done.”22 They conclude, The will of the Logos had in virtue of the Incarnation become [sic] the will of the man Jesus of Nazareth. This implication of the model is, in our view, one of its advantages, since it is extraordinarily diffcult to preserve the unity of Christ’s person once distinct wills are ascribed to the Logos and to the individual human nature of Christ. 23 But it is not obviously a strength of a theological position that one revisionist doctrine (concerning the incarnation) requires another revisionist doctrine (concerning the Trinity) to prop it up. Moreland and Craig think that the agony of Christ in Gethsemane is best understood against the

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conceptual backdrop of a social view of the Trinity, or at least, against the backdrop of a view according to which there are distinct wills allocated to distinct divine persons in the Godhead – which I take to be a constituent of social accounts of the Trinity. But this is not the traditional view of the Trinity, which defends the claim that there is but one will in God shared between the divine persons, whose personhood is – at best – analogous to human personhood. Now, the advocate of neo-monothelitism is perfectly free to hold a view of the Trinity at odds with the majority voice of the tradition. This in and of itself is not necessarily problematic or unorthodox. Nevertheless, it does point to several closely related theological issues that are worth pausing to note. First, as I have already indicated, the neo-monothelite view adopted by Craig and Moreland is more revisionist than appears at frst glance. For it requires a particular view of the Trinity as well as a particular view of the incarnation, and in both cases the view in question is not the traditional one. So the revisionism involved in adopting their position is greater than it might at frst appear. For some theologians that might be regarded as a failing of the view. Second, the Craig-Moreland proposal assumes a particular strategy for reading the salient biblical passages that is not necessarily obviously better than the traditional alternative. It is true that the alternative reading strategy adopted by the fathers of Constantinople III (under the infuence of Maximus the Confessor) is not necessarily the only way to read passages such as the Gethsemane narratives of the canonical gospels. 24 Nevertheless, it is a strategy that has informed how the vast majority of the tradition has read these passages, and how they have been understood in terms of their implications for the doctrine of the incarnation. Why should we prefer the reading strategy adopted by Moreland and Craig over that preferred by the fathers of an ecumenical council if both strategies have some merit in terms of their exegesis of the passages in question and neither are incoherent, yet only one has the imprimatur of the Catholic church?25

4 Wessling on neo-monothelitism and tradition This brings us to the work of Jordan Wessling. In a recent essay, he offered a qualifed defense of neo-monothelitism, arguing that the case against neo-monothelitism depends, in important respects, upon the weight given to different sources of theological authority, which may be challenged. 26 The neo-monothelite position relies on what he calls the Conciliar Undercutting Principle (CUP): CUP: The (evangelical) Christian is free to reject an ecumenical conciliar pronouncement if this pronouncement is not taught or implied by Scripture. 27

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We have already seen this at work in passing, in the version of neomonothelitism outlined by Moreland and Craig. But it can be found in Garry DeWesse’s version of the doctrine as well. He writes, [W]hile most evangelicals should and do regard the deliverances of the ecumenical councils as weighty in defning the orthodox faith, they would agree that the councils cannot be accepted uncritically but must themselves be judged by the authority of Scripture. 28 The CUP needs to be distinguished from the Conciliar Abrogation Thesis (CAT): CAT: The (evangelical) Christian should reject an ecumenical conciliar statement if and only if it either: (1) contradicts what is taught in or implied by Scripture, or (2) is incoherent. Defenders of CAT will be much more cautious about overturning the judgment of an ecumenical council than advocates of CUP. Unlike Wessling, I want to press the case for CAT against the CUP of neo-monothelitism found in the work of philosophers like DeWeese, Moreland, and Craig. It seems to me extremely implausible that God would allow the vast majority of the church to be led into error on a matter central to the faith. 29 It also it seems to me that questions canonized by an ecumenical council of the church are matters that are promulgated and believed by the vast majority of the church. Further, doctrinal questions pertaining to the incarnation are surely matters that are central to the faith. (An aside: this seems true even if we don’t have a set of necessary and suffcient conditions for what counts as ‘central to the faith.’ I don’t have a set of necessary and suffcient conditions for adjudicating what counts as ‘central to the game of chess.’ But I do know that a knight can move in certain directions a certain number of places per move, and has the unusual property of being able to ‘leap over’ other pieces on the board. And I know that these qualities possessed by the knight are central to the playing of the game and in some ways set it apart from other similar games, such as checkers. Similarly, what is believed concerning the incarnation surely touches upon matters that are central to the faith in a way that does not apply to, say, what is believed about the posture one should adopt in prayer. 30) Consequently, if an ecumenical council promulgates a teaching about the incarnation, it promulgates a teaching about something that is central to the faith. Given that it is extremely implausible that God would allow the vast majority of the church to be led into error on a matter that is central to the faith, and given that the teaching of an ecumenical council is promulgated to the vast majority of the church as a teaching that Christians should embrace, it seems to me that something like CAT is on-target.

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Constantinople III promulgated an important teaching about the incarnation, one that the fathers of that council thought was an implication of the canons of Chalcedon and that was consistent with the apostolic teaching. Their doctrine does not contradict what is taught or implied in Holy Writ; and it is not incoherent. So I think that there is a very good theological reason for holding to the doctrine of this particular ecumenical council, which endorses dyothelitism. The burden of Wessling’s essay is to show that there is some doubt about this – or at least, suffcient uncertainty that the case against the neomonothelites remains unproven. His strategy involves arguing that it is not clear that the doctrine of dyothelitism promulgated by Constantinople III represents a teaching that is central to the faith. He writes, God allows all kinds of negative states of affairs that surprise us— misguided theological systems, moral evil, animal and human suffering, and so on—states of affairs that appear as bad as, or nearly so, as conciliar error, at least on peripheral doctrines. 31 But, he reasons, if God allows states of affairs that seem almost as bad as conciliar error, why think that conciliar error is that unlikely? It is (he thinks) but a short step from ‘almost as bad as conciliar error’ to ‘conciliar error.’ The addition of the phrase ‘at least on peripheral doctrines’ that appears at the end of the quotation from Wessling above, seems misplaced. The issue is not whether God permits states of affairs almost as bad as mistaken conciliar views about peripheral doctrines, but whether God would permit states of affairs almost as bad as mistaken ecumenical conciliar canons about doctrines that are central to the faith. These are important qualifers. It is the decisions of ecumenical councils that are in view – not some local or regional synod, but a gathering of the leaders of the church Catholic. And it is a question about a matter that is central to the faith, not something peripheral, a matter of adiaphora, such as the posture one adopts in prayer. God does indeed permit all sorts of bad states of affairs that are deeply puzzling to people of faith such as moral evil and animal and human suffering. However, such things are rather different from God allowing a serious doctrinal error to creep into the canonical decision of an ecumenical council  – a decision that has become part of the fabric of Christian belief for the vast majority of Christians down through the ages. For this is tantamount to God permitting the vast majority of Christians down through the ages to believe a falsehood about the manner in which he brought about human salvation in Christ. At the close of his essay, Wessling remarks, [M]any evangelical theologians will remain deeply skeptical about the acceptability of monothelitism. Given the wide reception of the

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two-wills doctrine by Catholics, the Orthodox, and conservative Protestants, these theologians will think that a tremendous burden of proof is placed on the monothelite. 32 But isn’t that just because these theologians, and Christian theologians enamored of classical Christology more generally, think that the teaching of the fathers of Constantinople III on dyothelitism is a matter that is central to the faith, one that is consistent with the apostolic teaching, and that is coherent? Far from establishing that there is some theological wiggle-room for the neo-monothelites, Wessling’s essay only underlines the fact that monothelitism does indeed stand outside the orthodox mainstream of Christian teaching precisely because it is repudiated by an ecumenical council – a matter that the vast majority of Christians agree upon.

5 Assessing neo-monothelitism From the section just concluded, it seems to me that the strength of the neo-monothelite position does not lie in its appeal to a supposed biblical tradition over and against the accretions of later, post-biblical Christian tradition. For, as I have tried to indicate, there seems to me to be a very good case for the conclusion that monothelitism is not a traditional, orthodox Christian doctrine, and Wessling’s closing remarks about the skepticism of most Christians concerning monothelitism only reinforce this claim. At the very least, the notion that the monothelite position is more securely located in the text of Scripture is, I think, a case that is very diffcult to sustain independent of particular interpretive strategies for reading the relevant biblical material, which are contested in the tradition. Instead, the strength of the neo-monothelite position lies in its criticism of the conceptual underpinning of the traditional dyothelite position, which we have called the puzzle of dyothelitism. To recap, this puzzle is motivated by the Chalcedonian Axiom, given earlier: (CA) Christ has one of whatever goes with the person and two of whatever goes with natures. The puzzle is that persons have wills, not natures. So the will(s) of Christ should go along with the person(s) in Christ, not the natures of Christ. In short, persons have wills, natures do not. In which case, it seems like dyothelitism rests on a metaphysical mistake. In one respect, undercutting the metaphysical plausibility of the dyothelitism is a much more fundamental problem than the one Wessling attempts to address (important though that is). It is rather like pointing out to a defender of a Ptolemaic cosmology that even if their view is the traditional one, and has been believed by many important thinkers of the past, it is nevertheless a view that is predicated on a way of thinking about the

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orbital relationships between different celestial bodies that we now know to be false. Similarly, we now think that it is a mistake to assign wills to natures. Instead, we think that wills belong to persons. Christians should not be bound to mistaken ancient psychology just because it was adopted by important church fathers in order to make sense of what they read in Scripture. Their understanding of the text of Scripture may be wrong because they misconstrued the metaphysics of the incarnation. Because this represents a deeper conceptual problem for dyothelitism, it is also more diffcult to defeat. In fact, I do not think there is a clear, unambiguous case in favor of dyothelitism and against monothelitism independent of appeal to theological authority. Instead, I think the theologian must engage in a kind of cost-beneft analysis, paying attention to issues pertaining to the witness of Scripture, the tradition, and metaphysics. I have already given some reason for thinking that the direct appeal to Scripture made by defenders of neo-monothelitism as expressed in CUP is not obviously superior to the more cautious approach of privileging the views of an ecumenical council expressed in CUP. Although I concede that the language of will in relation to nature given by Constantinople III is initially puzzling, there may be good theological reasons for retaining it. But, as we have already noted, it is easier to retain if one is a concretist than an abstractist about human nature. Although there may be abstractists who wish to defend dyothelitism, it is much easier to do so given concretism. To see this, consider the following reasoning. Suppose we presume concretism is true for the sake of argument. Then, ‘human nature’ refers to a concrete particular, not merely a property. As I have already explained, although concretism does press in the direction of Nestorianism, and is often accused of being Nestorian, it does not necessarily imply Nestorianism, nor does it entail Nestorianism. So, it is not necessarily beyond the bounds of orthodoxy as expressed in classical Christology. It is diffcult to see how neo-monothelitism is able to sustain the claim made by classical Christology to the effect that Christ is fully but not merely human. The abstractist may claim that all that is required for orthodoxy (that is, orthodoxy that includes dyothelitism as expressed in the canons of Constantinople III) is that Christ is able to will qua human, which is consistent with abstractists’ metaphysical commitments about the human nature of Christ. But it is not at all clear (to me, at least) that the reduplicative strategy adopted by abstractists at this juncture is successful. Although the Kent-Superman example does not demonstrate that the abstractist position implies or entails something unorthodox, it does illustrate the fact that the reduplicative strategy is suffciently conceptually ambiguous on this point that defenders of dyothelitism will remain suspicious that the abstractist is not really able to predicate a distinct human will of Christ in a way analogous to the Kent and Superman example. So, pace Craig, Moreland, and DeWeese, it does seem easier to see how the claims of classical Christology can be sustained

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if the human nature of Christ is understood in terms of concretism rather than abstractism. Concretism is a good ft with dyothelitism. In which case, there is at least one plausible approach to the incarnation that is consistent with classical Christology, is orthodox, and that is consistent with dyothelitism – namely, concretism. But does the will go with the nature or the person? That is the fundamental Christological question neo-monothelitism raises. On this matter I think the concretist has a response that is able to agree with the fndings of classical Christology as well as the substance of DeWeese’s point about mental properties belonging to persons. The concretist can say that Christ’s human nature, a concrete particular, is the natural endowment of a human person though it is not a human person.33 That is, it is composed of all the parts requisite for a complete human nature (whatever they turn out to be) but does not form a fundamental substance independent of a divine person because the human nature of Christ is assumed by God the Son at the moment it begins to exist. God the Son makes his human nature his own by assuming it such that the only person ‘in’ Christ, so to speak, is God the Son. This sort of concretism has been spelt out in the recent literature in much more detail than we need to go into here.34 It is suffcient for our purposes that we see that concretism of this sort means that Christ’s human nature includes a distinct human will and center of operation and a distinct divine will and center of operation. Moreover, it is also consistent with this view that the will is something normally possessed by a person, not by a nature. Normally, the concrete particular that is a complete human nature forming in utero becomes a human person distinct from a divine person because it is not assumed by a divine person. God does not normally ‘upload’ himself into a particular human nature, taking possession of it from the get-go. In such cases it is natural to think that the will of the mere human person belongs to that person, and not to the nature of that person. Christ is unique in that before his human nature can form a person independent of God the Son, it is assumed by a divine person. So it has all the qualities that a normal human nature would have, including a will. This is what I mean by Christ having the natural endowment of a human person. However, in the case of Christ, one cannot speak of a human person because the nature in question is assumed by God the Son. He assumes the concrete particular of Christ’s human nature and in the process acquires the will and center of operation that belongs to Christ’s human nature. But this very act of acquisition blocks the formation of a person independent of the divine person assuming the human nature in question. In this way, the concretist can agree with classical Christology about dyothelitism, and also agree with DeWeese and other neo-monothelites that the mental properties of Christ that would normally belong to a person are, in this case, the property of God the Son, who literally “personalizes” his human nature in assuming it.35

212 Oliver D. Crisp Let me end this assessment of neo-monothelitism with a comment that applies to the Moreland-Craig version of the doctrine in particular. We have seen that their version of neo-monothelitism has the consequence that the divine persons of the Trinity possess human nature apart from a human body independent of the incarnation. They want to claim that the divine image in human beings refects an archetype that already exists in the Godhead as a property of the divine nature possessed by the divine persons of the Trinity. But is the imago dei a property of Christ’s divine nature alone? Do divine persons have the property of human nature (barring a human body) independent of the incarnation? Does incarnation merely add a human body to God? As Biola theologian Jason McMartin puts it, “[I]f we only have reason to think that Christ bears the image in virtue of his divine nature, then a major motivation for connecting anthropology and Christology will be lost.”36 This, it seems to me, is an important consideration. The divine image in human persons is not the ectype of an archetype in Christ’s divine nature. Rather, Christ is the archetypical image to which we are conformed (as per Pauline theology) because he possesses a complete and sinless human nature that is hypostatically united with God the Son. In this way of thinking, a way of thinking that owes much to certain strands of patristic theology, the divine image is had through conformity to God in Christ, the second Adam (Rom. 5:12–19), the perfect human being, not in virtue of some property God possesses archetypically, and independent of incarnation, as a divine person.37

6 Conclusion In this chapter I have argued that the neo-monothelite view favored by several evangelical Christian philosophers like Garry DeWeese, J. P. Moreland, and William Lane Craig, though theologically sophisticated, is nevertheless problematic. I have also argued that Jordan Wessling’s attempt to offer a qualifed defense of the neo-monothelite position is not successful in attempting to show that there is theological wiggle-room for the doctrine in terms of its appeal to theological authority. Nevertheless, the neomonothelites have shown that there are conceptual problems that defenders of the dyothelite alternative must address. And these are problems that are not easily rebutted. I have offered several reasons for thinking that dyothelitism is still worthy of serious theological consideration (independent of explicit appeals to theological authority) that depend upon a different model of the hypostatic union, one that is concretist rather than abstractist. On balance, it seems to me that there is suffcient conceptual reason for holding to the dyothelitism of classical Christology given concretism, and suffcient authority for it in the tradition for us to maintain the doctrine. For these reasons, it seems to me that dyothelitism is to be preferred to these modern monothelite alternatives.

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Notes 1 The text of the canon in question reads, [W]e proclaim equally two natural volitions or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy fathers. And the two natural wills are not in opposition, as the impious heretics said, far from it, but his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will. Norman P. Tanner, SJ, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1: 128 2 Garrett J. DeWeese, “One Person, Two Natures: Two Metaphysical Models of the Incarnation,” in eds. Fred Sanders & Klaus Issler, Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Academic, 2007), 142. 3 The Chalcedonian Axiom is due to DeWeese’s work, though he does not call it this. For a discussion of the matter, see Oliver D. Crisp, The Word Enfeshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), Ch. 5, esp. p. 85. 4 Examples include the work of the present author, James Arcadi, Sarah Coakley, Richard Cross, Thomas Flint, Alfred Freddoso, Timothy Pawl, and Eleonore Stump, among others. 5 Examples include Garrett DeWeese in the aforementioned essay, “One Person, Two Natures: Two Metaphysical Models of the Incarnation,” and J. P. Moreland, and William Lane Craig in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 597–614. Jordan Wessling offers a cautious assessment of this debate arguing that the case against Neo-Monothetlitism is not proven. See Jordan Wessling, “Christology and Conciliar Authority: On the Viability of Monothelitism for Protestant Theology,” in eds. Oliver D. Crisp & Fred Sanders, Christology Ancient and Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2013), 151–70. I shall consider Moreland, Craig, and Wessling later in this chapter. 6 Alvin Plantinga, “On Heresy, Mind, and Truth,” Faith and Philosophy 16:2 (1999), 182–93. 7 Ibid., 183. 8 Ibid., 184. 9 I have dealt with this at greater length in Oliver D. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Ch. 2. 10 For discussion of “parts” Christology see Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, Ch. 2. A helpful overview of the debate is given in Jonathan Hill’s Introduction to Anna Marmadoro & Jonathan Hill, eds., The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 11 Plantinga, “On Heresy, Mind, and Truth,” 185. 12 In my earlier work on this topic (in Divinity and Humanity) I was surer that the metaphysical story one tells about human nature of Christ has certain implications about monothelitism and dyothelitism. These days, as a result of subsequent conversation on the topic, I am slightly more cautious about drawing such conclusions. 13 Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 66. 14 Cf. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, ch. 2.

214 Oliver D. Crisp 15 Cf. ibid., 60. 16 The text can be found in Henry R. Percival, ed., The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church: Their Canons and Dogmatic Decrees (New York: Edwin S. Gorham, 1901), 345. 17 See, e.g., Brian Leftow, “A Timeless God Incarnate,” in eds. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall & Gerald O’Collins, The Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 273–99; Brian Leftow, “The Humanity of God,” and Thomas P. Flint, “Should Concretists Part with Mereological Models of the Incarnation?” in eds. Anna Marmadoro & Jonathan Hill, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Crisp, The Word Enfeshed (cf. n. 3); and Eleonore Stump, “Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Incarnation,” in eds. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall & Gerald O’Collins, The Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 197–220. 18 Cf. Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations (cf. n. 5), 608: “We postulate with Apollinarius that the Logos was the rational soul of Jesus of Nazareth.” 19 They write, [T]he Logos contained perfect human personhood archetypically in his own nature. The result was that in assuming a hominid body the Logos brought to Christ’s animal nature just those properties that would serve to make it a complete human nature. Thus the human nature of Christ was complete precisely in virtue of the union of his fesh with the Logos. As a result of the union Christ did, indeed, possess a complete, individual human nature comprised of body and soul; for that nature was made complete by the union of the fesh with the Logos, the archetype of humanity. (ibid.) 20 Ibid., 609. 21 Ibid., 611. 22 This is my own extrapolation of what they say about Christ’s agony in the Garden, not a direct quotation from Moreland and Craig. 23 Ibid., 611. 24 This point is made by Wessling, “Christology and Conciliar Authority” (cf. n. 5). 25 It is worth noting that the biblical texts we have are themselves the product of ecclesiastical tradition in a very real sense: they were collected together and approved by the fathers of the early church, who included certain texts and excluded others. So a way of reading a particular textual tradition that derives from the reading strategy adopted by the natural heirs of such ecclesiastical leaders is something that (I suggest) theologians would do well to take very seriously. For a recent discussion of the role of tradition in theologizing relevant to this point see Steven Nemeş, “On the Priority of Tradition: An Exercise in Analytic Theology,” Open Theology 3 (2017), 274–92. 26 See Wessling, “Christology and Conciliar Authority” (cf. n. 5). 27 Caveat Lector: Here, and in considering the CAT below, I have amended Wessling’s version of the principles so that the conciliar decisions in question are those of an ecumenical council only. I think most Protestants would be less concerned if their views diverged from a Roman Catholic council because they are unlikely to regard such councils as ecumenical councils. Plausibly, they are councils of a particular branch of the church, not the whole church, despite Roman Catholic claims to the contrary. (For one thing, a council that does not have full participation from Eastern and Western Christian communions that stand in continuity with previous ecumenical councils cannot be an ecumenical council; Roman Catholic councils do not have full participation from Eastern

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and Western Christian communions in continuity with previous ecumenical councils; therefore, Roman Catholic councils are not ecumenical councils.) DeWeese, Two Metaphysical Models of the Incarnation (cf. n. 2), 148. This is a matter I have touched upon previously; see Oliver D. Crisp, God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 14. Lest the reader think this is a trivial matter, consider the variance of practice in the liturgies of the Free Presbyterian, and Associated Presbyterian churches of Scotland, on the one hand, and the Church of Scotland, on the other. In the frst two communions the congregation stands to pray, whereas in the Church of Scotland the congregation sits to pray. Historically, these liturgical differences have not been thought trivial by members of these different Presbyterian communions. Nevertheless, such difference of practice can hardly be said to be “central to the faith.” Wessling, “Christology and Conciliar Authority” (cf. n. 5), 163. Wessling, “Christology and Conciliar Authority” (cf. n. 5), 170. The term “natural endowment” is borrowed from Brian Leftow. See his “A Timeless God Incarnate” (cf. n. 17). See, e.g., Crisp, The Word Enfeshed (cf. n. 3); Flint, “Should Concretists Part with Mereological Models of the Incarnation?”; Leftow, “A Timeless God Incarnate,” and “The Humanity of God”; and Stump “Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Incarnation” (cf. n. 17). This is one way of construing the ancient doctrine of the en-anhypostatic nature of Christ, which I deal with in more detail in Divinity and Humanity (cf. n. 9), Ch. 2–3. Jason McMartin, “The Theandric Union as Imago Dei and Capax Dei,” in eds. Oliver D. Crisp & Fred Sanders, Christology Ancient and Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2013), 136–50, 143. I have dealt with this in more detail in Crisp, The Word Enfeshed (cf. n. 3), ch. 4.

11 Deifcation and the divided-consciousness-view Johannes Grössl

There is an apparent contradiction in one of the core teachings of the Christian tradition. Jesus Christ is said to be truly human and truly divine, although certain attributes of divinity and humanity seem to be incompatible. From this incompatibility, Schleiermacher derives his infamous seven attacks on the Chalcedonian defnition, rejecting the pre-existence of Christ, the doctrine of two natures, the Chalcedonian defnition, the doctrine of two wills, the interpretation that proclaims two types of consciousness in Christ, the use of the term ‘nature’ in Christology, and the use of the term ‘person’ in Christology.1 This critique has had a strong infuence on theology in the twentieth century and until now. If no person can be fully human and fully divine, and, if Docetism is to be avoided, Jesus must have been a human with a very special relationship to God, but not an incarnated divine person. John Hick has rejected the Chalcedonian defnition frst as inconsistent and later as simply mysterious. 2 After Hick quotes the defnition of Chalcedon, he declares: “But of course this does not explain anything.” Schleiermacher, Hick, and others try to root Christ’s divinity in his relationship to God, his consciousness, his divine inspiration, and his actions. Schleiermacher defended the idea that Jesus possessed the greatest possible consciousness of God that led him to be resistant to sin. 3 According to Schleiermacher, God-consciousness is already present in human nature.4 Christ, therefore, does not acquire a new divine property but in him a potential, which exists in all humans, becomes fully actualized. Not just Protestant but also Catholic theology in the twentieth century has engaged with this idea: Piet Schoonenberg has tried to replace the literal interpretation of Chalcedon with the teaching that God is universally present in the human person.5 Karl Rahner has promoted the idea that the relationship of Christ to God is the uniquely actualized maximal degree of the same relationship all humans stand in with God.6 All this sounds elaborate and somewhat pious, it is however unclear (a) how a God-consciousness is acquired and (b) what the implications of a fully actualized God-consciousness are for a particular human person. Schleiermacher answers the second question vaguely, referring to an unclouded blessedness and a dissolution of the connection

Deifcation and divided consciousness 217 between sin and evil.7 The unclouded blessedness consists of “his having no consciousness of sin or guilt, and his not experiencing evil.”8 Schleiermacher rejects Christ’s impeccability – his inability to sin – and only affrms his sinlessness, which is supposedly the source of his unclouded blessedness and thus of his God-consciousness. But neither Schleiermacher nor any of his followers want to draw the manifest implication regarding question (a)  – that Christ actualized his potential and acquired his God-consciousness, by his own free choice. This, even for adherents of Schleiermacher, comes too close to adoptionism and tends towards a theory of grace Protestant theologians cannot accept (justifcation by works). No Christological model has yet solved the paradox of Christ’s free will and human nature. Even if Christ’s divinity is reduced to absolute Godconsciousness, essential or kenotic love, or sinlessness, one can maybe dissolve the inconsistencies of other attributes, but not the inconsistency of human ability to sin and divine inability to sin. Modern Christology is thus faced with a severe dilemma. One can either reduce Christ’s divinity to his mere ability to be sinless (posse non peccare), or, at the most, to become impeccable through free actions in his earlier life, or one can reject libertarian free will (which includes the power to do otherwise) as a property of Christ’s human nature and, as a consequence, essential to human nature in general. In this chapter, I will explore two possible strategies to avoid this dilemma.

1 Divided-consciousness-views Inspired by Schleiermacher, one can advance the view that every human being has not only a human (sensible) consciousness, but also a Godconsciousness. The latter is, roughly understood, the power of love that guides our actions toward the good, as process theologians would say.9 A person with a fully developed God-consciousness always does the right thing, even if this entails enormous suffering, as Jesus experienced on the cross.10 A person guided by its sensible consciousness naturally tries to avoid pain and fulfll natural desires, and is therefore susceptible to weakness of will and/or evil powers. Several theologians in the twentieth century have tried to make sense of the talk about two consciousnesses in one person, often referring to fndings from empirical psychology. Freud’s great insult on humanity – that we are not sovereign about our own thinking and about our own actions – has led psychologists to research the unconscious and how it affects our consciousness. This research has inspired theologians such as Richard Swinburne, T.V. Morris, and Andrew Loke to defend a divided-consciousness view of Christ, according to which there is a divine and a human consciousness within the one person of Christ. Often, these theories stimulate defense refexes in many theologians, mostly because of the often-used terms ‘two minds Christology,’ ‘divided mind Christology,’ or ‘divided consciousness Christology.’ A divided consciousness is often associated with severe psychological disorders, with a dissociated

218 Johannes Grössl personality. However, Carl Jung observed that even for ordinary, healthy people a unity of consciousness is an illusion. Research with split-brain patients tries to gain knowledge not only about the neurologically impaired human being but lets us derive facts about ordinary human beings with two connected halves of the brain, too. While Richard Swinburne’s11 and T.V. Morris’12 versions of this paradigm are widely criticized for their proximity to Nestorianism (two consciousnesses in Christ seem to imply two persons in Christ),13 Andrew Loke has recently defended the so called ‘Divine Preconscious Model’ of the Incarnation.14 Here, Christ’s human consciousness is almost indistinguishable from an ordinary human consciousness, but the major difference is located in the subconscious part of Christ’s psyche. To be more precise, Loke refers to contemporary psychological research and divides up the mind into conscious, preconscious, and subconscious – that latter two of which together form the unconscious. The preconscious consists of “mental contents that are not currently in consciousness but are accessible to consciousness by directing attention to them,” the unconscious is the part of the mind containing “repressed instincts and their representative wishes, ideas and images that are not accessible to direct examination.”15 Using this terminology and psychological framework, Loke develops his model as such: [T]he Second person of the Trinity […] was an undivided mind without any human body prior to the incarnation. At the incarnation, the divine mind was divided into two parts: the conscious and the preconscious, and the divine attributes of His mind “submerged” into the preconscious.16 One can note that, compared to primitive two-minds-views, it is not the divine mind that partially unites himself with a human mind, and it is also not a divine mind that assumes a human nature and lets a human mind develop next to itself. According to Loke’s model, God (or at least the second person of the Trinity) changes at the moment of the incarnation by being split into two parts. Assuming a human nature thus means not only assuming a human body but transforming the divine consciousness such that it is compatible with a physical existence in the form of a human. Until this point, Loke agrees with adherents of a so-called ‘Kenosis Christology.’ The difference is, that, according to Loke, the consciousness of the Logos is not wholly transformed into a human consciousness, but the divine attributes remain intact somewhere else.17 Sometimes this intuition is embedded in a so-called compositional Christology, according to which Christ consists of the Logos, a human body, and a human soul.18 The distinctive feature of Loke’s approach is that he combines intuitions from two different paradigms. Strict Thomists usually defend a two- or divided-consciousness view because it is the only way to maintain God’s

Deifcation and divided consciousness 219 simplicity and immutability even during the incarnation. Kenoticists reject divine immutability to protect the unity of Christ’s consciousness, with the danger of falling into monothelitism, arguing that Christ’s consciousness and the modifed consciousness of the Logos are identical. The Preconscious Model includes the divided consciousness intuition as well as the kenotic intuition, however, coming closer to the latter, because, compared to compositional models, the identity of the Logos and Christ incarnate can be better maintained. This again is an intuition that for many is essential to the redemptive actions of Christ: Only God can save. Loke’s model could be criticized as regular Kenotic models are, with the charge that human nature is not really assumed, only mimicked. In Loke’s view, there actually is a major difference between our (ordinary human) consciousness and Christ’s consciousness: The latter is controlled by Christ’s impeccable preconscious. Loke rudimentarily anticipates this objection, namely, “that Jesus would not be fully human according to this model, for humans cannot have a preconscious that is divine.” He believes, however, that possessing a divine preconscious is “not necessarily contrary to the essential property of being human.”19 This evaluation can be challenged by closely observing the relationship between the divine and human will of Christ in Loke’s model.

2 Dyothelitism in the preconscious model The theology of Maximus Confessor, which shaped the doctrines defended in the Third Council of Constantinople in the seventh century, was not based on a libertarian account of free will. When Maximus taught that Christ has a truly human and truly divine will, he explicitly did not want to say that the human will could act against the divine will. A will, for Maximus, is only a certain physical-psychological mechanism within a person, a natural desire that induces a conscious wish – this is why the Council speaks of ‘the will of fesh’ instead of the ‘human will of Christ.’ Already early in church history the reduplication strategy was developed, which says that Christ sometimes acts according to his human will and sometimes according to his divine will. 20 But the Third Council of Constantinople is clear that the divine will trumps the human will. 21 The power to choose evil or to act against God’s will has always been excluded as a possibility for the human will. If this is true, Loke’s model seems to be quite orthodox – even if it is the divine preconscious that controls Christ’s consciousness, even if Christ does not know that he is controlled by his preconscious. This ‘orthodoxy,’ however, might undermine Christ’s true humanity, as will be shown. In order to scrutinize Loke’s Christology, it is appropriate to tell two analogies: Assume a person A has developed an enormous power to control her mind, even more than a typical Vulcan. She can not only control her dreams (i.e., have lucid dreams) but decide in advance what kinds of dreams

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she wants to have and how much knowledge and control her dreaming alter ego A’ will have during the dream. She could make A’ completely unaware of her dreaming, she could provide her dreaming counterpart with supernatural powers (like fying or mindreading), some knowledge of the future, or even knowledge that she is living in a dream. A could also decide in advance whether her dream would be made up of a previously composed story, alternative timelines, or even completely random and unpredictable elements. Does A’ have a will? How does it relate to the will of A? Are A and A’ personally identical? One could argue that A could even provide A’ with the power of contrary choice. Note that there is only one stream of consciousness: During the dream, A is not observing the dream, but A has actually become A’, at least temporarily. When she wakes up, A’ turns back into A, with additional memory of the experienced dream, possibly even with traumas, guilt, acquired virtues, or an evolved character. To make the analogy more appropriate to the Logos’ relationship to Christ: B, with even more sophisticated mental powers, decides not to dream, but rather to alter her consciousness for a longer time while staying in the same reality. Assume, for example, that B is female, but wants to truly experience how it is like to be male. With advanced technology, B connects her brain to the brain of an unborn male child before this child develops its own consciousness. Once the connector device is activated, B’s own consciousness is switched off, and B’s stream of consciousness continues in B’, physically instantiated by the brain of the unborn child. All memories of B, her acquired vices, virtues, and character are maintained in B’s brain, in a comatose state, however. All memories of B’ are eventually transferred to B, but they are only accessible to B once B retains consciousness, which is once B’ dies. If this were an appropriate analogy for the incarnation, it would mean God is truly becoming human, truly ignorant regarding many things, and truly suffering. God is not assuming a human person but altering his consciousness, assuming a human body, and living a human life. Even in his incarnated state, the Logos “remained a single Person in the sense of having one agency, rationality, intentionality and self-consciousness.”22 Loke makes an effort to distance himself from Apollinarianism. In opposition to this view – saying that the Logos replaces the human soul – Loke writes that “the mind of Jesus included a complete human mind which was formed at the point of the incarnation.”23 But what exactly is a human mind? Here, Loke is not explicit but presumes that a human mind is one that functions like other human minds on the conscious level. In a footnote, he contends that the existence of a human unconscious is not essential to the human mind; thus, a person can have no repressed instincts and hidden wishes but still count as a person with a human mind. 24 While ordinary humans possess a consciousness, an accessible preconscious, and an inaccessible unconscious, Jesus Christ, according to Loke, possessed a consciousness and two accessible but distinct forms of preconscious: a human

Deifcation and divided consciousness 221 and a divine one. If it is repressed instincts in the unconscious that drive us toward sin and diminish our strength of will, this model is compatible with the doctrine that Christ is equal to us in all except sin. According to the dogma, he is a human person, but not an ordinary human person. There is, however, one question Loke’s model cannot answer: Does Christ possess free will? If Christ really does not have a human unconscious that drives him toward sin, it is possible that Christ does not sin. In dogmatic terms, one could say that Christ is free from original sin, which makes him able to not sin. If he were a simple human without original sin, he evidently would be able to sin, since moral autonomy is an essential part of human nature. But Christ is, according to Loke’s model, a divine person that became a human without original sin. If God is essentially impeccable (i.e., unable to sin), he cannot change this attribute even if he alters his consciousness to function like a human mind. Christ, in his incarnate state, might not know that he is God, that he possesses a divine preconscious, that he has a very special task to fulfll in order to save humanity – he might not even know that he cannot succumb to any temptations. But he would not be able to sin. According to Loke and many others, Jesus could experience temptations without being able to sin. 25 If Jesus had conficting wills, e.g., the divine will that he be fasting and the human desire for food, this suffces to constitute genuine temptation. 26 Even if genuine temptation does not require free will, 27 there is another important reason to attribute free will to Christ: It is Christ’s acquiring merit for his decision to obey God’s will and give his life to save humanity. If Christ was not free to run away at Gethsemane, he is not responsible for his actions as a human. It was the Logos deciding for him how to act. Assume a person C has decided in advance for her alter ego C’ that C’ would kill an evil dictator if she fnds herself in a situation that she could kill an evil dictator. C’ then does not have the free will to kill or not kill the dictator in the moment she makes the decision. However, if C and C’ are personally identical, an ethical mechanism called ‘moral tracing’ applies: C’ is responsible for an action if she has made a well-informed free decision in the past that led her to perform the action now. 28 The Second Divine Person was undoubtedly well-informed about the consequences of her decision to become incarnate; but was she free to program her alter ego to commit sinful acts? If a divine person is essentially impeccable, she cannot suspend her impeccability. C is not meritorious for the good acts of C’ unless C could have done otherwise than perform the good act. Loke does not address this problem properly. He writes about Christ’s impeccability: The impeccability of Christ is understood as the inability of Christ to sin despite the reality of the temptations felt in His human consciousness. According to this model, this would be due to the infuence of His divine preconscious on His consciousness (as noted previously, there is

222 Johannes Grössl a two-way relationship between the preconscious and consciousness of a person). This ensured that He would always choose to rely on the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to overcome temptation. 29 This passage generates new questions: Was Jesus’ consciousness able to sin, but his preconscious prevented him from doing so? Would Jesus’ consciousness have been able to sin if the preconscious had had no infuence on it, if it did not protect Jesus from sinning? Before one can attempt to answer these questions, one needs to discuss where the center of agency in a person is located. Psychologists tend to say that this center is rooted neither only in the conscious nor only in the subconscious realm, but rather in both. Libertarian philosophers, in contrast, emphasize the importance of the conscious realm: Possibly, the subconscious infuences our decisions, weakens our will, even controls us from time to time. But the less we let our subconscious infuence our decisions, the freer we are. William Lane Craig concedes that his Christology, 30 which is similar to Loke’s, implies monothelitism. He argues that a will must always be attributed to a person, and not to a nature. His interpretation of the doctrine dyothelitism says that Christ exercises his one single will “through both the human nature and the divine nature.”31 In a recent article, Loke drew a similar conclusion: Jesus had one consciousness, he had one self-consciousness, he was one ‘willer’, and he had only one will at the personal level. […] Dyothelitism can be understood as affrming that there are two self-determining faculties in Christ, but only one self (the ‘willer’). The Divine Preconscious Model shows how this insight can be meaningfully applied to Christ. The result is that the motivation of Dyothelites (to ensure the completeness of the human and divine natures) as well as the concern of Monothelites (to ensure that there is no division of Christ into two persons) can both be met. 32 According to Loke, Maximus Confessor is wrongly understood if one interprets him as saying that the human will is moved by the divine, although textual evidence can be found for this interpretation. However, there is also textual evidence supporting the interpretation that it is the one Logos who is the subject of willing both as God and as man. 33 This is also the way Thomists typically understand dyothelitism: that Christ wills human things by his human nature and divine things by his divine nature. Accordingly, Christ has two types of wills, but is only one agent that wills and acts. The best way to understand this model, in my opinion, is to put it in terms of Harry Frankfurt’s theory of desires. According to Frankfurt, a person possesses frst- and second-order wishes: wishes and wishes about wishes. A person can have conficting frst-order wishes, e.g., the desire to play video games all night and the desire to sleep, and a second-order wish that

Deifcation and divided consciousness 223 prioritizes frst-order wishes: Because I have to get up tomorrow morning, I have a (second-order) desire to prioritize my (frst-order) desire to sleep over my (frst-order) desire to reach the next character level in my video game. Analogously, Jesus had a (human frst-order) desire to avoid pain and a (divine frst-order) desire to ‘take up the cross.’ Since these desires stand in confict with each other, a second-order wish needs to be established that prioritizes one of these frst-order wishes. But is this second-order desire to prioritize the divine will over the ‘will of the fesh’ itself a human will or a divine will? If it is a divine will, there is no power to do otherwise and no human merit. If it is a human will, one must wonder whether Christ could have said before or in Gethsemane, “My will, and not yours!” and could have eventually avoided the cross. Like all traditional models of the incarnation, Loke’s model fails in maintaining a human free will in Christ. He is, thus, in agreement with German theologians like Georg Essen, who argues that the freedom of the Logos is the freedom of Christ. 34 If this is true, Christ can only be peccable if the Logos itself became peccable. 35 But rejecting God’s necessary moral perfection is not an attractive solution for Christian theists, nor probably for any theist. 36 The only alternative seems to be redefning the notion of libertarian free will, rejecting the principle of alternate possibilities. This is what William Lane Craig does when he claims that Christ, having one will, can be both free and impeccable: “[L]ibertarian freedom of the will does not require the ability to choose other than as one chooses.”37

3 Alternative strategy: a mere human consciousness – divinized If a theologian neither wants to defend a compatibilist account of free will nor attribute to God the power to do evil (or at least less than the best38), she needs to overhaul some of her premises. Analytic theologians are often criticized not only for taking the Bible at face value, neglecting the expertise of contemporary biblical scholarship; some proponents also tend to defend dogmas, taken at face value, neglecting expertise of historical and hermeneutical scholarship about the development of doctrine. If one considers the circumstances in which certain biblical texts were written and creeds and conciliar texts were formulated, one can try to answer important theological questions: Why was a certain property attributed to Christ, either by an evangelist, by a church father, or by a council? What was the psychological motivation for early Christians to develop a certain way to portray Jesus Christ? Which opposing theories and faiths were fought and for what reasons? Jeffrey Siker caused quite a stir among theologians with his thesis that in order for Jesus to be truly human, he must not only be peccable, but he must have actually sinned himself. Siker observes rightly that, in the history of Christianity, Jesus’ humanity has often been sacrifced on the altar of his

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divinity.39 He argues that sinlessness is a metaphor used for understandable reasons by biblical authors, which have later been wrongly “ontologized.”40 The exegetical arguments Siker provides are striking. Attributing sinlessness to Jesus is part of what he calls retrospective theologizing. In order to make sense of Jesus’ shameful death on the cross in the light of the resurrection, early Christians reinterpreted the whole life of Jesus. Jesus now represented an idealized humanity.41 In a process which Siker calls ‘Yom Kippuring Passover,’ Jesus was regarded as the paschal lamb that saved God’s people from their sins. Since on the Jewish feast Yom Kippur, a fawless animal must be used to bear away the sins of the people, Jesus was regarded as a “ritually pure sacrifcial victim,” who “must have been not only ritually pure but morally pure as well.”42 Even the letter to the Hebrews, which strongly emphasizes Christ’s humanity, at the end “joins the dominant Christian tradition of sacrifcing the humanity of Jesus […] by theologizing about Jesus as the perfect sinless sacrifce who atones for human sin.”43 Siker argues that if we want to attribute full humanity to Christ, we need to include human sinfulness. He wonders whether Jesus can “truly be fully human if he does not himself experience the shame and guilt of moral failure, namely, of personal sin?”44 He takes up the intuition of Hebrews that being like us involves suffering and learning. However, Siker suggests that the learning process itself requires knowing sin, knowing failure, knowing true forgiveness of one’s own sins.45 Further evidence for a Jesus that sinned during his life is his baptism ‘for the forgiveness of sins’ and his temptations. Siker is neither convinced by attempts that portray Jesus’ baptism as a pure anointment,46 nor by theories that say Jesus experienced temptations “as if he could have sinned, even though he could not have sinned.”47 For Siker, regarding Jesus as a potentially failing human does not undermine the salvation in and through Christ. But the question is not whether Jesus failed during his life, the question is how these failures let his character evolve. Siker raises the crucial issue here, however without answering it: “[D]oes this mean that Jesus could have frustrated God’s salvifc plans?” Even if Siker is right that a certain amount of sinning is necessary to become the perfect human being, obedient to the cross, he needs to be more precise about the scope of Jesus’ power to sin. When dealing with Paul’s Christology, Siker writes that Paul is “concerned with the macro-level of Jesus’ life and its culmination in death and resurrection.” Sinlessness, for Paul, is not about single iniquities but an evaluation of the whole life of a person. Paul realizes that the one he himself and many others condemned as sinful was truly blameless, at least to the extent that he did not deserve to die, thus, his death must have a different meaning: to bring our salvation. In line with several contemporary scholars,48 Siker reads the often-used Pauline phrase pistis Christou not as ‘faith in Christ’ but as ‘faith of Christ,’ which can lead to a substantial revision of Paul’s theology: We are saved through Christ’s faith, through his obedience that led him to the cross. If this is true, Paul is not only talking about the resurrected Christ, but is

Deifcation and divided consciousness 225 indicating that the resurrection and the atoning work is indeed rooted in the life of Christ.49 Siker does not object to what he regards as the essence of Evangelist Matthew’s theology: that the “death of Jesus makes sense as the fulfllment of God’s divine plan.”50 Does that mean that Christ did not have the free will to reject his mission? Siker writes that the human Jesus “was surely an inspired individual, burning with a passion for God, and with a passionate vision for a revitalized community.”51 Is this his necessary character or is it an acquired character? Could Jesus have developed a different character if he made different life choices earlier on? If one wonders whether to attribute to Jesus the power to sin, one needs to make an important distinction: Either Jesus had the power to sin only in situations where a particular sin was necessary or helpful for positive character formation, or Jesus had the power to sin even in situations where a particular sin leads to negative character formation, which can eventually make his total obedience impossible. Although the frst option is compatible with Siker’s exegetical arguments, his argument from full humanity rather leads to the second: “If we protect Jesus from the moral vicissitudes of life, does he really enter fully into ‘the human condition’?”52 If Jesus was truly peccable, Jesus became divinized because of his free obedience, because of his free avoidance of major sins; and he enabled us to be saved/divinized through his free obedience.

4 Overcoming adoptionism – inclusion of the divine consciousness Does attributing peccability to Christ immediately lead to adoptionism? I believe not. Even if one held a view only because it was once condemned as heretical, that does not mean that one can under no circumstances defend this view. If one can show that the motivation for rejecting a heresy at a particular time was valid but the implication drawn from this motivation was not, one can interpret a dogma as the rejection of those views that contradict the motivation. The core Christological motivation in the frst few centuries was to understand Christ as someone who made our salvation possible, and it was reasoned that a mere human cannot guarantee our salvation. According to adoptionism, Christ is a mere human who, through his moral excellency, became worthy of being adopted by God as his son and as an instrument for God’s salvifc plans. If Christ is the new Adam, however, Christ never was a mere human, he was unique in the way that he had the potential to save humanity, but he only had this potential because God created him without original sin. Taking Siker’s objections into consideration, one could defne ‘free from original sin’ not like Augustine as ‘being able to not sin at all,’ but rather as ‘being able to reduce the amount of sinning to a level that enables the formation of a perfect character.’ For most theologians this will not suffce, because in Siker’s approach the identity of God and Christ can only be interpreted as similarity: Humans

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were originally made in God’s image, but because we are fallen, we do not resemble God’s image any more, but Christ does; thus, we see the divine in Christ. Divinization is not literally ‘becoming God,’ but becoming like God – as close as possible. 53 Two- or divided-consciousness views of the incarnation might be useful to integrate a pre-existence component into an otherwise-adoptionist theory without undermining Christ’s human free will. One can argue that replacing parts of Christ’s subconscious with a kenotically altered divine consciousness leaves basic human attributes intact, including the power to sin. However, this modifed subconscious has infuences on Christ’s psychology, importantly his power to develop a perfect character and maybe even his urge to do so. As Tim Pawl, in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas, has argued in his recent book on conciliar Christology, what we call ‘Christ’ can be thought of as a composite of a divine person and a human nature, unmixed and undivided. 54 Two major objections can be made against this attempt: First, if the human nature is signifcantly altered by the divine (by fundamentally changing the subconscious of a person), the divine and human natures are not unmixed. Second, if the person Jesus Christ has the power to sin and form an imperfect or even evil character, the human and divine nature might divide, so they are not necessarily undivided. I think that these objections can be repudiated. First, the divine nature must have some infuence on the person, just not eliminate essential human attributes. In order for the natures to stay divided, Christ cannot have secure knowledge that he is God incarnate or what his task is to fulfll. Christ cannot have supernatural powers. Christ needs to be able to suffer, experience temptation, and possibly even sin.55 Second, being undivided is not a modal but only a factual statement. However, the Chalcedonian defnition was often interpreted as such: The natures are undivided if they are inseparable, if the person cannot exist without any of the two natures. But even if the natures are inseparable, this only implies that if Jesus sinned more than it would be necessary to reach perfection, he would not lose his divine nature, he would not lose the divine part of his subconscious and turn into an ordinary human being, although he also would not perfect his character and would not be able to act as moral example and as the savior of humanity. Ordinary humans have different ways to deal with their unconscious: They can try to further suppress it or try to access it. But suppression will not make the memories stop infuencing or sometimes even controlling our behavior. Accessing one’s subconscious, e.g., through psychoanalysis, meditation, or prayer, can let us – what Ignatius of Loyola termed – distinguish between spirits. It gives us the opportunity to eliminate the parts of our subconscious that take away our free will and cause suffering and nurture those parts that foster free will and help us develop our character toward perfection. If we choose to let ourselves be controlled by different parts of our subconscious without limits, we lose the integrity of our personality. Childhood trauma sometimes results in a dissociative identity disorder,

Deifcation and divided consciousness 227 colloquially (but medically incorrectly) called schizophrenia. A milder form of dissociation can develop without severe trauma, sometimes as a result from suffering, guilt, and broken relationships. If the subconscious controls one’s actions, but one does not identify with these actions, one becomes the observer of oneself; psychologists call this ‘depersonalization,’ a detachment within the self. How does this relate to Christ? Assume he had the power to fght against his inner urge to do good, the urge to positively develop his character and become obedient to God’s will. Assume he succeeds in fghting his divine subconscious. However, his urge remains and controls some of his actions, although he does not want that to happen. He fnds himself not in control of himself, in a reverse Pauline weakness-of-will situation: “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is bad, but I don’t do it.” The divine nature may eventually lose its infuence on the behavior of the person. Jesus could have sinned, but if he had severely sinned, he would have lost the integrity of his person, would have maybe even stopped being a person. Dissociating one’s divine from one’s human nature must lead into chaos, a chaos that the human mind cannot handle.

5 Conclusion I aimed at accomplishing two things in this chapter: First, to show that the dilemma of Christ’s free will and impeccability cannot be easily resolved by emphasizing Christ’s human nature, even if contemporary research in biblical exegesis is taken into account; second, to show that the paradigm of a divided mind can be applied in a way such that Christ’s free will is maintained without attributing conditional divinity to him, as adoptionist and Ockhamist56 strategies do. However, Andrew Loke would have a severe problem with this modifcation of his theory, since his defense of pre-existence is strongly kenotic. It includes the notion that, after splitting up, the remaining and altered consciousness of the Logos was transformed into the consciousness of a human. Thus, Christ’s consciousness was not created, it was only indistinguishable from a human consciousness, albeit numerically identical with the divine consciousness. 57 Here the problem with the kenosis of divine impeccability arises, which would be, according to classical conceptions of God, incompatible with the divine essence. If theologians want to attribute true humanity to Christ, and if true humanity includes peccability (and possibly, following Siker, even moderate sinfulness), they need to argue for a created human consciousness that has been willingly transformed by God over time, to shape a perfect, then-impeccable character, i.e., become divinized. In order to avoid strong interventionism and to be truer to scripture and tradition, we can regard this transformation as a transformation coming from inside the person, not from outside: Christ’s divine preconscious, which is numerically identical with the Logos, has fully formed and shaped Christ’s human consciousness because Christ,

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by his human free will, did not fght against this inner transformation. Christ could have sinned, and if he had sinned, he would not have made our salvation possible. Humanity is saved, as Paul in the ‘subjective’ reading and inclusivist interpretation of Rom 3:22 says, primarily by the faith of Christ, not by the faith in Christ.

Notes 1 Cf. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube: Nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt (Berlin: De Gruyter 2008 [21830/31]), 60–69 (§96); Troy Stefano, “Christology from Lessing to Schleiermacher,” in ed. Francesca Murphy, The Oxford Handbook of Christology (Oxford University Press, 2015), 347–61, here 357f. 2 John Hick, Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1997), 49. 3 Cf. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube (cf. n. 1), §94.2–3; Stefano, “Christology from Lessing to Schleiermacher” (cf. n. 1), 357: The fact that Schleiermacher frames the Christological question in terms of gradations of God-consciousness means that Jesus becomes a humanist par excellence. Schleiermacher develops the theme […] that Jesus’ life is the ‘completed creation of human nature’ […]. Christology becomes the summit of anthropology, and the source for the fullest human realization. By bearing ‘God-consciousness’ in such an unprecedented way, Jesus not only developed humanity’s potency for God-consciousness, but fulflled and perfected human nature. 4 Cf. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube, 164–6 (§106.1). 5 Bogdan Ferdek, “Christologie in der Sicht Schleiermacher,” in eds. Sarah Schmidt & Leon Miodonski, System und Subversion: Friedrich Schleiermacher und Henrik Steffens (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018). 6 Cf. Karl Rahner, Grundkurs des Glaubens (Freiburg: Herder 31976), 216. 7 Walter Wyman, “Sin and Redemption,” in ed. Jacqueline Mariña, The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 129–50, here 139. Cf. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube (cf. n. 1), §101.2. 8 Wyman, “Sin and Redemption,” 139. 9 Cf. John Cobb, The Process Perspective, Vol. 2 (Nashville, TN: Chalice Press, 2011), 130. 10 Ferdek, “Christologie in der Sicht Schleiermachers” (cf. n. 5), 209: weil das Gottesbewusstsein jeden Moment seines Selbstbewusstseins bestimmt. […] Wegen der grundsätzlichen Sündhaftigkeit des Menschen ist das Bewusstsein Gottes im Menschen jedoch dem sinnlichen Selbstbewusstsein untergeordnet. […] [In Christus ist das] Gottesbewusstsein dem sinnlichen Bewusstsein nicht untergeordnet […]. Solch ein vollkommener Mensch war Christus. In ihm besteht also eine Kongruenz von Gottesbewusstsein und menschlicher Entwicklung. […] Diese Kongruenz vom Handeln Gottes und dem Handeln Christi führt zur Frage nach dem Leiden Christi, insbesondere auf dem Berge Golgotha. […] Das Leiden Christi ist also ein Akt der Liebe Gottes. 11 Cf. Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 201–3. 12 Cf. Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of Christ Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).

Deifcation and divided consciousness 229 13 Cf. e.g., Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Christ and Reconciliation: A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 175. 14 Andrew T.E. Loke, “On the Coherence of the Incarnation: The Divine Preconscious Model,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 51 (2009), 50–63. 15 Ibid., 52; cf. Andrew Colman, A Dictionary of Psychology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 160. 16 Loke, “The Divine Preconscious Model” (cf. n. 14), 56. 17 This is also how Calvin’s Christology differs from Lutheran orthodoxy: The teaching of the ‘extra calvinisticum’ says that the Logos is not bounded by his human nature but remains infnite, omnipotent and omniscient even during the incarnation. 18 Cf. Oliver Crisp, “Compositional christology without Nestorianism,” in eds. Anna Marmodoro & Jonathan Hill, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (Oxford University Press, 2011), 45–66; James Arcadi, “Recent developments in analytic Christology,” Philosophy Compass 13:4 (2018). 19 Loke, “The Divine Preconscious Model” (cf. n. 14), 57. 20 Cf. Ryan T. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God (Oxford University Press, 2016), 181–7 (subchapter “The Reduplicative Strategy and Contradictory Properties”). 21 Cf. Norman Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 Volumes (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 128: “[W]e proclaim two natural volition or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy Fathers. And the two natural wills not in opposition […], but his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will. For the will of the fesh had to be moved, and yet to be subjected to the divine will”. 22 Loke, “The Divine Preconscious Model” (cf. n. 14), 56. 23 Ibid., 58. 24 Ibid., 56 (footnote 33): “The absence of the unconscious is not a problem, for there is no good reason to think that the existence of the unconscious is essential to the human mind”. 25 William Lane Craig holds a similar view. Cf. Craig, “Temptations of Christ,” www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/temptations-of-christ/: One way to understand this is by differentiating levels of consciousness in Jesus’ person. If much of his superhuman knowledge was subliminal, then he was not aware of all he knew, just as we are often unaware of knowledge that lies in our subconscious. Perhaps he was unaware of his impeccability, or if he knew it, perhaps his other cognitive limitations were such that he still had to fght against temptation, just as he had to struggle against anxiety, fear, and fatigue. 26 Loke, “The Divine Preconscious Model” (cf. n. 14), 62. 27 This is implied by almost all traditional Christologies and explicitly claimed by John McKinley: Cf. John McKinley, Tempted For Us, Theological Models and the Practical Relevance of Christ’s Impeccability and Temptation (Eugene, OR: Paternoster 2009), 255: “[…] that humans may be constituted unable to perform certain sins (that is, the[y] are unable to fail to do right), any yet remain free and temptable in relation to those evils”. 28 Cf. John M. Fischer & Neal Tognazzini, “The Truth about Tracing,” Noûs 43 (2009), 531–56.

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29 Loke, “The Divine Preconscious Model” (cf. n. 14), 62 (footnote 51). 30 Cf. William L. Craig & J.P. Moreland, Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2003), 597–614. 31 William L. Craig, “Monotheletism,” www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/ question-answer/monotheletism/. Cf. Craig & Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 601f. 32 Andrew T. E. Loke, “On Dyothelitism Versus Monothelitism: The Divine Preconscious Model,” The Heythrop Journal 57:1 (2016), 135–41. 33 Loke, “On Dyothelitism,” 137f. Cf. Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford University Press, 2004), 182. 34 Cf. Georg Essen, Die Freiheit Jesu. Der neuchalkedonische Enhypostasiebegriff im Horizont neuzeitlicher Subjekt- und Personphilosophie (Regensburg: Pustet, 2001). 35 However, if the kenosis of divine attributes includes a suspension of divine benevolence and moral perfection, these attributes would not be essential divine attributes. 36 If God is not necessarily good, we do not know whether God might not have chosen to be evil and deceive us. 37 William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity: Exploring God`s Relationship to Time (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 261f. Craig argues making an analogy to God’s free will: What makes [one’s] choice free is the absence of any causally determining factors of [one’s] choosing A. This conception of libertarian freedom has the advantage of explaining how it is that God’s choosing to do good is free, even though it is impossible for God to choose sin, namely, His choosing is undetermined by causal constraints. 38 Cf. Richard Swinburne, The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford University Press 2003, 99): “[T]o live under conditions of ignorance except of those things he needs to reveal; of unawareness of his extra-human powers except when these are required to fulfl the reasons for his Incarnation; and of the possibility of his yielding to a temptation to do other than the best (though not to do wrong). Swinburne’s solution, attributing the power to choose whether to perform supererogatory acts but not the power to do evil, is ingenious, but still undermines true humanity – of course only if true humanity implies to power to choose between good and evil, which Swinburne denies. 39 Jeffrey Siker, Jesus, Sin and Perfection in Early Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 253. 40 Ibid., 278. 41 Cf. ibid., 218. 42 Ibid., 243. 43 Ibid., 253. 44 Ibid., 249. 45 Cf. ibid., 88: “Can one learn and grow without making mistakes, without erring?” 46 As e.g. in Nicholas Thomas Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), 537. 47 Siker, Jesus, 142; cf. ibid., 143: „What it means to have the capacity to experience temptation without being able to sin is a problem, to say the least, that was never worked out very well or very convincingly”.

Deifcation and divided consciousness 231 48 Siker, Jesus, 223: “Over the last generation of scholarship, however, there has been a decided move toward reading this phrase as referring to Christ’s own faithfulness”. Cf. Richard Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1 – 4:11 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 22002); Arland Hultgren, The Pistis Christou Formulations in Paul, Novum Testamentum 22 (1980): 248–63. 49 Ibid., 223: “In particular, reading the phrase pistis Christou as referring to Jesus’ own faithful obedience has invoked the much larger narrative of Jesus’ life as an important component of Paul’s theology. […] Paul has in mind the larger narrative of Jesus’ faithful ministry that results in his death. Thus the death of Jesus should not be read in isolation from the story of Jesus’ ministry”. 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57

Ibid., 234. Ibid., 286. Ibid., 266. According to McGrath, this variant of theosis is supported by Antiochene, but not by Alexandrian Christologies; cf. Alister McGrath, Christian Theology. An Introduction (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 52011), 339. Cf. Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford University Press, 2016), 49; 64–71; 208. The theory of original sin tells us, especially if not interpreted in a literal historical manner, that the perfect human is a being without disordered desires, but with the power to choose between good and evil. In an Ockhamist Christology, Christ’s possessing a divine nature from the beginning depends on his future free act of choosing the right things. Christ did not become God, but has always been God because of his obedience. If Christ had not been obedient, he would not have been God. This solution, however, requires intensive foreknowledge on God’s part, probably even knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom (middle knowledge) and creates a huge problem of personal identity of Christ: Is the possibly existing purely human Jesus upon whose free decision Christ’s divinity depends, identical to Christ the incarnate Son? Loke, “The Divine Preconscious Model,” 56: It is important to note that although His conscious after incarnation was qualitatively different from His conscious pre-incarnation, they were numerically the same as His conscious after incarnation was merely a new stage of His conscious pre-incarnation. This model is therefore not asserting that an existing human person with his own conscious was taken up by the Logos at incarnation, which would be the heresy of adoptionism. Rather, this model asserts that it was the same divine Person who became a man while retaining His divine nature.

Part III

Human perfection and sinlessness in Islamic theology

12 The scope of ‘iṣma and Qur’anic evidence Mohammad Haghani Fazl

“There are those who, by God’s grace, never commit sins [and make mistakes].” This is the most succinct formulation of the doctrine of ‘iṣma. The doctrine is unanimously accepted by all Islamic denominations and schools. Among different Islamic groups, the Twelver Shi‘a can be regarded as the most adamant advocates of this doctrine. Not only does the Shi‘a extend the domain of ma‘ṣūmūn (people endowed with ‘iṣma) to their Imams and certain other people, they also extend the scope of ‘iṣma to include the whole of a person’s life span and encompass immunity from errors and forgetfulness as well. The doctrine of ‘iṣma does not explicitly appear in the Qur’ān, but Qur’anic verses have always been cited by Muslim scholars and exegetes as evidence for ‘iṣma. Moreover, ‘iṣma has been discussed in exegeses of the Qur’ān under a number of verses. A survey of Shi‘i theological and exegetical work reveals that scholars have drawn on Qur’anic evidence to prove ‘iṣma for prophets and Imams and substantiate their own reading of the Qur’ān. Once we consider the historical course of the debate over ‘iṣma, it turns out that Qur’anic verses were increasingly cited as evidence for ‘iṣma – from a few cited in early centuries to dozens of verses cited in later centuries. A consideration of Qur’anic verses cited for establishing the doctrine of ‘iṣma reveals that there is a correlation between exegetical accounts of these verses and rational arguments in defense of ‘iṣma. We might even go one step further and claim that all such arguments and exegetical accounts are indeed extensions of a single central argument – the line of reasoning known as the defeat-of-purpose argument, which can be summarized as follows: “‘Iṣma is a prerequisite of guidance, and absence of ‘iṣma in the prophets is a defeat of the purpose of sending them. It is wrong for God to defeat His own purpose.” One of the most important debates over ‘iṣma is the problem of its scope – that is to say, characteristics that are subject to the ‘iṣma requirement. A review of Shi‘i history shows that, despite the prevalence of the strong reading of ‘iṣma, other accounts have also been proposed. In this chapter, I will

236 Mohammad Haghani Fazl consider the following problem: if we were to assess theories of ‘iṣma in terms of correlation between Qur’anic evidence and rational arguments for ‘iṣma, then which theories of the scope of ‘iṣma would most fully satisfy this correlation criterion? To do so, I begin with a review of Qur’anic evidence, and then demonstrate the relation between exegeses of these verses and rational arguments for ‘iṣma. Finally, I consider how theories of the scope of ‘iṣma match the Qur’anic evidence.

1 Specifcation of Ma‘ṣūmūn All Muslims agree that the prophets are ma‘ṣūm. Shi‘a have, however, invoked to certain Qur’anic verses to extend the domain of ma‘ṣūmūn to encompass certain people other than prophets. One such verse is the Verse of Purifcation (or al-Taṭhīr): “Indeed Allah wills to repel all impurity (Rijs) from only you, Ahl al-Bayt (People of the Household)” (Q 33: 33). The argument for ‘iṣma from this verse depends on the two notions of ‘impurity’ (rijs) and ‘divine will.’ It is argued that there are other Qur’anic verses in which sins are referred to as impurity (Q 5: 90; Q 9: 95; Q 22: 30). Thus, the argument goes, impurity cannot be repelled, save by immunity (‘iṣma) from sins, because sins are prime examples of impurity. The term, “Allah wills,” refers to God’s existential (takwīnī) will for such immunity, implying that this has indeed taken place.1 In Shi‘i exegeses of the Qur’ān, the meaning of Ahl al-Bayt is determined by reference to hadiths. Despite differences among Shi‘i hadiths concerning the subject, there is consensus that this verse was about the Five People of ‘Abā’ (robe): Prophet Muhammad, Imam ‘Ali, Fāṭima, al-Ḥasan, and alḤusayn. Although some exegetes have expanded the notion of Ahl al-Bayt to include other Shi‘i Imams, the majority of exegetes restrict it to the fve people noted above, remaining silent on the other Shi‘i Imams. 2 Another Qur’anic verse cited as evidence for a wider domain of ma‘ṣūmūn is the Verse of Abraham’s Test: “[Allah] said: ‘I am making you the Imam of mankind.’ Said he: ‘And from among my descendants?’ He said: ‘My pledge does not extend to the unjust’” (Q 2: 124). Almost all Muslim exegetes believe that the verse implies the ‘iṣma of Imams of mankind, because there are other Qur’anic verses to the effect that those who trespass divine boundaries and commit sins count as “unjust” (Q 65: 1; Q 2: 229). This verse is one of the frst (and perhaps the frst) verses cited as evidence for the ‘iṣma of the Imams.3 The Shi‘a argue, on the one hand, that Imamate is different from prophethood and, on the other, that the “pledge” in the verse refers to Imamate.4 In addition to these two verses, the main ground for the ‘iṣma of the Imams is the particular Shi‘i view of their Imams. Since the Shi‘a believe that their Imams are successors of the Prophet in all respects except in receiving revelations, they believe that every argument for the ‘iṣma of

Scope of ‘iṣma and Qur’anic evidence  237 prophets also applies to the Imams.5 Thus, ma‘ṣūmūn include prophets, the Imams, and certain people such as Fāṭimat al-Zahrā’ and Mary.

2  The Scope of ‘Iṣma There have been different accounts of the nature of ‘iṣma and areas in which a ma‘ṣūm is protected against sins and mistakes. A consideration of different accounts offered in Shi‘i history concerning the scope of ‘iṣma allows it to be divided into a number of dimensions: reception and communication of the revelation; elaboration and implementation of the shari‘a; social behaviors; and the individual dimension. Regarding the temporal extension of ‘iṣma, there is a question of whether it extends to the time before prophethood/Imamate as well.6 The first two dimensions concern religious matters: from receiving the revelation (waḥy) to acting thereupon. The next two dimensions concern non-religious matters, both social and individual. Concerning religious matters, all Shi‘i scholars require ‘iṣma in the sense that, during their prophethood and messengership, the prophets accurately grasped the revelation, properly elaborated and implemented it, and never committed sins. When it comes to the next two dimensions, however, we encounter a range of different views. On one extreme, there are those who believe in the ‘iṣma or immunity of the Imams to sins and mistakes in all these dimensions, throughout their lives.7 With contemporary views in mind, we might claim that this strong position is the major Shi‘i view of the matter. Throughout history, however, there have been a number of scholars whose views were not so strong. Some Shi‘i scholars restrict ‘iṣma to religious matters, refusing to extend it to the ordinary. On this account, it is possible for the Imam to make mistakes when it comes to ordinary matters.8 Moreover, there are people who believe that even inadvertent mistakes in religious matters are not incompatible with ‘iṣma – this includes, for example, the problem of Sahw al-Nabiyy (inadvertent mistakes of the Prophet in the sense that it is possible for the prophet or Imam to make mistakes while saying their prayers, for example) and missing their morning prayer.9 There are others who believe that ‘iṣma is a matter of degrees; that is, it is not the case that all prophets enjoy the same degree of ‘iṣma. In fact, the highest degree of ‘iṣma is enjoyed by Prophet Muhammad and the Imams, while other prophets enjoy lower degrees of ‘iṣma.10 As to the temporal scope of ‘iṣma, some scholars restrict it to the period of prophethood and Imamate. Thus, al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq takes it as possible for prophets and Imams to commit minor sins prior to their prophethood and Imamate.11 Al-Shaykh al-Mufīd requires absolute ‘iṣma prior to Imamate and prophethood, but from rational maturity of the prophets and Imams rather than something innate from birth.12,13

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3 Qur’anic Evidence Over a dozen verses of the Qur’ān have been cited by scholars of different strains throughout the history of Shi‘i theology and Qur’anic exegesis as evidence for ‘iṣma. However, although discussions of the scope of ‘iṣma characteristically required theologians and intellectuals to draw distinctions between its aspects and dimensions, discuss each of them separately, and provide their rational and Qur’anic arguments for them, very few of them went through such a process in their considerations of the issue.14 The most important Qur’anic evidence can be summarized in the following categories. The frst consists of Qur’anic verses concerning the ‘iṣma of the prophets in reception and communication of the revelation. One of the most cited verses in this category is Q 72: 28. On the face of it, the verse implies that God protects the prophets from what is before them and what is behind them, encompassing all their motions and postures in order to ensure that they communicate their Lord’s messages.15 Ṭabāṭabā’ī presents a similar argument from Q 19: 64. Some of these verses, such as Q 53: 3–4, 11, and 17, or Q 69: 44–47, are addressed to Muhammad himself, suggesting that if he added anything to the revelation, God would cut his aorta. Many exegetes hold that these verses are not limited to Muhammad – indeed, they extend to all prophets.16 Almost all Qur’anic verses demanding that prophets be obeyed were cited as evidence for ‘iṣma: “And We did not send any messenger except to be obeyed by permission of Allah” (Q 4: 64). Following this, if we assume that prophets commit sins or make mistakes in their words and deeds, it would be implied that God demanded that people obey those sins and mistakes, which is impossible.17 Verses calling for Muhammad to be obeyed (Q 2: 31–33; 4: 80; 24: 52; 59: 7) have also been cited as evidence for ‘iṣma.18 Moreover, all verses cited as evidence for ‘iṣma of the prophets, except those concerning the reception and communication of the revelation, are cited as evidence for ‘iṣma of the Imams as well. There is a group of Qur’anic verses specifcally cited as evidence for ‘iṣma of the Imams. They are interpreted as obligating the obedience of the Imams, from which the necessity of their ‘iṣma can be inferred. The bestknown verse in this category is the Ulu-l-Amr Verse (the Obedience Verse): “O you who have faith! Obey Allah and obey the Apostle and those vested with authority among you” (Q 4: 59). The verse has been interpreted as follows: obedience to ‘Ulu-l-Amr’ (those vested with authority) is conjoined with obedience to the Prophet, and they are both conjoined with obedience to God, and these imperatives for obedience are not restricted to any specifc case. Now, the argument continues, absolute obedience to someone can be commanded only if he is ma‘ṣūm; for if it is possible for him to command something wrong, it will be inappropriate to command people to obey him, and God never issues such commands.19 Shi‘i scholars identify

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‘those vested with authority’ with their Twelve Imams. There are numerous hadiths in Shi‘i sources in which “Ulu-l-Amr” is identifed with the Twelve Imams, or, more particularly, with the frst three Imams or Imam ‘Ali. 20 The same exegetical and argumentative process also occurs in the following verses: Q 9: 19921 and Q 4: 115. Another category consists of verses interpreted as saying that knowledge should be obtained from ma‘ṣūmūn. One such verse is “ask the People of the Reminder” (Q 16: 43). According to Ibn Shahrāshūb, since the command to ask the “People of the Reminder” (Ahl al-Dhikr) is unconditional and not restricted to a specifc case, it implies the ‘iṣma of the People of the Reminder, for it is wrong for God to command people to seek knowledge from ignorant people or those who might intentionally or unintentionally make mistakes. 22 A similar interpretation is provided for Q 4: 83, 23 and mutatis mutandis, for Q 49: 6. 24 Qur’anic verses reporting on the prophets “purifying” people (Q 2: 129; 3: 164) are in the same category: they are interpreted as implying ‘iṣma of the prophets, since one is eligible to purify others only if he is not prone to sins or mistakes. 25 The same thing is true of verses in which the prophets are characterized as people’s patterns or role-models, such as, “There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern” (Q 33: 21), because if the Prophet was not absolutely qualifed as a rolemodel  – for example, if he made mistakes – then how could God order us to take him as our pattern or role-model?26 Another category of Qur’anic evidence for ‘iṣma consists in verses about the characteristics of prophets. Thus, the Qur’ān refers to the prophets as being chosen (Q 3: 33; 44: 32; 38: 45–48), as “righteous” (Q 7: 196) or as “hastening to good deeds” (Q 21: 90). Most importantly, a number of prophets are referred to in the Qur’ān as “devoted” (mukhlaṣūn) (Q 38: 45–48; 19: 51; 12: 24). These are the best-known verses cited as evidence for ‘iṣma. A number of other verses have also been cited, some of which I shall detail in the following section.

4 The Shadow of Rational Arguments over Exegeses of Qur’anic Evidence In the oldest text in which the Imam’s ‘iṣma is argued for, Hishām ibn al-Ḥakam – who is considered as having a key role in issues of ‘iṣma – articulates a rational argument in defense of ‘iṣma, and then says: “[T]he argument is supported by the Verse of Abraham’s Test.”27 This remained a common practice in discussions of ‘iṣma in Shi‘i theology and exegesis: rational arguments and Qur’anic evidence continued to be stated together. 28 The main idea of these arguments consists of tasks and obligations of the prophets and Imams. Thus, as to the communication of the revelation, it is

240 Mohammad Haghani Fazl said that the prophet claims messengership on behalf of God. This is, whatever he says is endorsed by God. This implies that if the prophet lies, God endorses the lie, and yet it is wrong to endorse a lie and God never does anything wrong. 29 The argument is articulated in different ways in Qur’anic verses regarding the reception and communication of the revelation. There are arguments based on requirements of the stage after the communication of the revelation. Thus, all three arguments quoted from Hishām ibn al-Ḥakam are concerned with the enforcement of ḥudūd (punishments in shari‘a mandated and fxed by the Qur’ān and/or hadiths) and elaboration of religious problems.30 Another such argument is the one urging the necessity of preserving the shari‘a after the Prophet. Thus, Ibn Shahrāshūb suggests, in Q 6: 89–90, that Prophet Muhammad’s shari‘a is eternal, in which case it should have a preserver at each period of time, and just as the bringer of the shari‘a should be ma‘ṣūm, its preserver – the Imam – should also be ma‘ṣūm.31 Such arguments and their different versions can be found in interpretations of Qur’anic evidence for ‘iṣma. In fact, these arguments are based on the assumption that the prophets and Imams have roles and obligations that require ‘iṣma. If they were not ma‘ṣūm, they had to consult a ma‘ṣum in order to discharge these obligations. In the literature on ‘iṣma, this is known as the no-regression argument: every non-ma‘ṣūm needs a ma‘ṣūm, and if he consults a non-ma‘ṣūm person, then this latter person will need a ma‘ṣūm – the regression ends only if we consult a ma‘ṣūm.32 Al-‘Allāmat al-Ḥillī cited the argument based on the Qur’anic verse, “[I]ndeed, this Qur’an guides to that which is the most upright” (Q 17: 9). He interprets “guides” in the verse as “invites,” saying that the verse asks people to step on the most upright path. A similar interpretation also appears in a hadith from Imam al-Ṣādiq, 33 and such a path cannot be known except through the Prophet or his successors, and this requires their ‘iṣma.34 Indeed, one reason provided by the Shi‘a for the specifcation of the Imams is that ma‘ṣūm Imams should be consulted to as guides, and a ma‘ṣūm cannot be known unless his name is explicitly mentioned in transmitted evidence In this regard, there is a hadith in interpretation of Q 17: 9.35 One might suggest that all these arguments – either based on the Imam’s roles or tasks or based on the general role of the prophets and Imams in guiding people – are various versions of the basic argument below, which is called the “defeat-of-purpose argument”: (1) God has sent the prophets and Imams for people’s guidance; (2) in order for the prophets and Imams to play their roles, they should be ma‘ṣūm; (3) if they were non-ma‘ṣūm, the purpose of their sending would be defeated; (4) it is wrong to defeat one’s purpose, and God never does anything wrong. This is why al-‘Allāmat al-Ḥillī cites verses such as, “[A]nd indeed Allah is all-forgiving all-merciful” (Q 2: 218) as evidence for ‘iṣma: he suggests that God has described himself as merciful, but He has created the devil

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and lusts. In this case, without a ma‘ṣūm Imam, it would be impossible to overcome ugliness and achieve happiness in this world or the afterlife. Therefore, if God does not create a ma‘ṣūm Imam, this would contradict his mercy. 36 A review of interpretations of Qur’anic evidence for ‘iṣma reveals that such arguments have a prominent role in how the exegetes understand and interpret these verses. In fact, exegetes and theologians cite verses as evidence for ‘iṣma that are capable of being construed as one of the rational arguments for ‘iṣma. This is why verses that do not obviously imply such ‘iṣma (such as Q 2: 213 and Q 3: 31) are cited as evidence for ‘iṣma in reception and communication of the revelation.37 Mullā Ṣadrā cites Q 33: 57, suggesting that if prophets and Imams were not ma‘ṣūm, it would be possible for them to commit sins or make mistakes, in which case others would be obligated to forbid them from such wrongdoings, which would surely bother them. However, according to this verse, they should not be bothered.38 This is similar to the argument that there is a confict between forbidding prophets from wrongdoings and the obligation of obeying them. The prophets and Imams should be ma‘ṣūm; otherwise, the obligation of their obedience would be compromised. 39 Al-‘Allāmat al-Ḥillī points to the verse, “[T]he unjust will have no helpers” (Q 3: 192), suggesting that the unjust are not entitled to help; that is, God does not command us to help them. Since every non-ma‘ṣūm person is potentially unjust, and given the above interpretation of the verse, no unjust person should be helped, whereas Imams should be helped, we can conclude that no non-ma‘ṣūm person can be an Imam.40 With this expansion of rational arguments (all of which are, indeed, elaborations of different aspects of the basic defeat-of-purpose argument), scholars were able to fnd more ways of making recourse to Qur’anic verses. This shows up in one form or another under different verses. Thus, if God tells us to obey a certain person, that person should be ma‘ṣūm; otherwise, that would count as a command to sin, which is wrong; if God tells us to seek knowledge from someone, this person should be ma‘ṣūm, otherwise he might direct us the wrong way, and this is a wrong thing for God to do; and so on.

5 The Scope of ‘Iṣma in Terms of the Correlation Between Arguments and Qur’anic Evidence Since there is a correlation between interpretations of Qur’anic evidence for ‘iṣma and the defeat-of-purpose argument (and its elaborations), the correlation might be drawn on as a criterion for assessing the theories of the scope of ‘iṣma in Qur’anic verses. In other words, if we consider Qur’anic evidence and rational arguments as mutually explanatory and complementary, we will have at our disposal a criterion by virtue of which we can

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evaluate interpretations of these verses insofar as the scope of ‘iṣma is concerned. An assessment of the theories of the scope of ‘iṣma in terms of such a correlation yields the following results. The Matching of Verbal Evidence with the Core of the Argument If Qur’anic evidence for ‘iṣma is considered on its own – regardless of rational arguments – then what can be gleaned from Qur’anic words are primitive components making up the base of the doctrine of ‘iṣma: God protects the revelation; God has a pledge that does not extend to the unjust (Q 2: 124); there are people whom God has willed to purify (the Purifcation Verse: Q 33: 33); and there are cases in which God intervenes to prevent certain people from committing sins (Q 12: 24). To unearth these primitive and basic components, scholars and exegetes draw on exegetical rules of verbal entities and contexts, such as explication of words (such as “rijs” in Q 33: 33); consideration of historical evidence and occasions of revelations (such as identifcation of Ahl al-Bayt, or the People of the Household, in Q 33: 33, or Abraham’s age when he was assigned with Imamate in Q 2: 124); consideration of the verse’s context (explanation of the notion of pledge in Q 2: 124); and other exegetical work about the text. What is certainly implied by these verses is that the Qur’ān attributes some sort of ‘iṣma to certain people. As to rational arguments for ‘iṣma, if we consider the pattern in Figure 12.1, we will see that the closer we get to the center of the circle, the more necessary ‘iṣma will be. This is why all Muslims (even those who accept the possibility of prophets committing major sins) acknowledge the ‘iṣma requirement in reception and communication of the revelation. Some exegetes go so far as to say that immunity from errors in the communication of the revelation does not imply ‘iṣma, because it might be imagined that the prophet makes a mistake in communicating the revelation or forget something, and then simply corrects it. This is because rational arguments merely imply that God’s message should be accurately communicated to people in due time.41 Moreover, arguments based on a certain role, such as the elaboration of the religion or enforcing the divine laws, can only demonstrate the necessity of ‘iṣma in these specifc realms. What these arguments agree on is that the prophet should be ma‘ṣūm in receiving and communicating the revelation, should not commit sins or make mistakes when elaborating and enforcing the religion, and that overt advertent sins defeat the purpose of inviting and guiding people to good deeds. In sum, assuming the correlation between Qur’anic evidence and rational arguments as a criterion, it might be said that the closer we get to the core of the scope of ‘iṣma, the greater correlation there will be between the two.

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before prophethood/Imamate the individual dimension social behaviors elabora˜on and implementa˜on of religion

recep˜on and communica˜on of revela˜on

Figure 12.1 Five dimensions of inerrancy.

Unbound Terms as a Ground for the Theological View The farther we get from the core of ‘iṣma, the fewer pieces of Qur’anic evidence we will have. Exegetes who wish to prove a wider range of ‘iṣma have sought to support their view with Qur’anic verses. The most important exegetical procedure here is the recourse to absoluteness or unboundedness (iṭlāq) of the relevant terms. Thus, al-Ṭabarsī appeals to unboundedness of the term “unjust” in the Verse of Abraham’s Test (Q 2: 124) to infer ‘iṣma throughout the person’s life. That is to say, given the absoluteness of ‘unjust,’ people who committed a sin in the past and then repented are also outside the scope of ‘iṣma – they cannot be assigned the position of Imamate. The Imam is, therefore, someone who never commits a sin throughout his life.42 In addition to verses concerning ‘iṣma in receiving and communicating the revelation, recourse is made to absoluteness of terms in other Qur’anic evidence of ‘iṣma concerning the obedience of the prophet and seeking knowledge from him (examples of these were provided above). Furthermore, unboundedness of terms is frequently found in arguments from Qur’anic evidence concerning a characteristic of the prophet. Thus, from the fact that the prophets are chosen by God (Q 3: 33; Q 44: 32; Q 38: 45–48), it is argued that the property of being chosen is not bound or qualifed, which shows that they are chosen in all respects, and this is not compatible with committing sins. Therefore, they are ma‘ṣūm.43 The same method is practiced in arguments from Qur’anic verses in which the prophets count

244 Mohammad Haghani Fazl as righteous (Q 7: 196) or as “hastening to good deeds.”44 The unboundedness of the verse, “nor does he speak from [his own] inclination” (Q 53: 3), has also been appealed to as a support for the Prophet’s ‘iṣma in talking about non-religious matters, since the verse says that he talked in accordance to the revelation in all respects.45 One of the most important attributes associated with ‘iṣma is “devoted” (mukhlaṣīn).46 The attribute is used to refer to a number of prophets (Q 38: 45–46; Q 19: 51; Q 12: 2). Moreover, there are two cases in which Satan is quoted as saying: “[A]nd I will certainly cause them all to deviate * Except Thy servants from among them, the devoted ones” (Q 38: 82–83 and Q 15: 39–40). Drawing on unboundedness of ‘deviation’ in the verse, it has been inferred that Satan can never fnd a way to these people’s hearts. Therefore, “devoted” (mukhlaṣ) is tantamount to ma‘ṣūm.47 In fact, the most common exegetical and linguistic arguments in interpretations of Qur’anic evidence for ‘iṣma make recourse to unboundedness and absoluteness of the relevant terms. Thus, it is argued that God has commanded people to obey the prophets, and the command is unbound; Prophet Muhammad is characterized as a role-model or pattern, and this role is unbound; the prophets are chosen, and this characteristic is unbound; they hasten to ‘good deeds,’ which is an unbound term. This is because unboundedness provides exegetes with the ability to articulate their own readings of the defeat-of-purpose argument and the scope of ‘iṣma under the verse. Logical Assessment of a Practical Issue Avoidance of literal verbal evidence and the recourse to unboundedness or absoluteness of the relevant terms as a way of proving a strong reading of ‘iṣma seem to originate from a logical view of the defeat-of-purpose argument. The argument states that since God sent the Prophet and Imams to guide people, they should not do something that defeats the purpose of guidance. For this argument to work, we need to answer the following question: what actions or characteristics of the prophets would defeat God’s purpose of guidance? Since the question is concerned with the problem of how people can trust someone, it is in need of a practical answer, one based on people’s ordinary understanding and not on a strict logical analyses; therefore the answer lies in people’s common practices and their daily lives, in their experience of following and trusting others. Thus, one can examine human communities to see whether a mistake by a leader in his personal life leads his followers to distrust him. However, it seems that advocates of the strong reading of ‘iṣma do not seek a commonsensical and practical answer to the question; instead, they have sought to answer it via rational and strict logical analyses. Such logical analyses can be found in the work of scholars who wish to go beyond the core of ‘iṣma. They add other assertions to the defeat-of-purpose

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argument in order to extend it to all its dimensions and layers. One such assertion is that if the Prophet made inadvertent mistakes, then he could possibly make inadvertent mistakes in propagating the religion too, and since it is impossible to make such mistakes in propagating the religion, it is also impossible to make such mistakes in non-religious matters.48 In his rejection of the theory of the Prophet’s Inadvertent Mistakes (Sahw alNabiyy), which was acceptable to early Shi‘a, al-Shaykh al-Mufīd says: [I]f it is possible for the Prophet to make inadvertent mistakes in his prayers in the presence of people, it should also be possible for him to eat and drink during the Ramadan month, have sexual intercourse with women, and commit incest, make mistakes in his payment of zakat.49 The stronger the correlation between mistakes and lack of ‘iṣma, the more likely it is for the possibility of inadvertent mistakes in non-religious and personal matters to be rejected. Thus, if we assume that the Prophet borrows one thousand dinars and then mistakenly repays one hundred dinars, this will, perforce, lead people to doubt the accuracy of his words, extending the doubt concerning his personal affairs to matters of communicating and elaborating the religion. 50 These scholars present arguments for such logical implications. Thus, AlḤasan ibn ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Lāhījī cites Q 17: 84: “[E]veryone acts according to his character,” and Q 24: 26: “[V]icious women are for vicious men and vicious men are for vicious women and good women are for good men and good men are for good women,” suggesting their similarity to the philosophical principle of congruence (al-sinkhiyya), which asserts that causes and effects are relationally similar. Since shari‘a and its rulings are free from personal desires, its custodians – the prophets and Imams – should also be free from such desires. 51 This logical view goes so far as to regard any faw as being incompatible with God’s purpose of sending the prophets. It concludes that the prophets should have all the perfect attributes and should be free from all bad things.52 Thus, it is claimed that the prophets should be free of diseases such as vitiligo and leprosy, and not only that, they should also have a beautiful face. 53 Taking into account the ordinary character of the issue, however, some scholars and exegetes have offered a smaller scope of ‘iṣma. Thus, Abu-lFutūḥ al-Rāzī, a sixth-century exegete, says in his interpretation of Q 6: 68 that the prophets are not immune from inadvertent mistakes and forgetfulness in mundane, non-religious matters, because they get sick and sleep like other people. He points out, however, that such mistakes and forgetfulness should not be to such an extent that they cause repugnance in people.54 Having such a view of the problem can change one’s interpretation of these verses remarkably; for when we consider people’s behaviors in trusting their leaders, we fnd that they ignore occasional mistakes or errors. From this viewpoint, avoidance of sins prior to prophethood will no longer

246  Mohammad Haghani Fazl be necessary, as people have, throughout history, trusted leaders who repented from sins or seriously sought to correct their mistakes – that is, a leader’s past does not discourage people from following him. More importantly, the way people trust their leaders in religious sects and groups shows that what leads people to follow a leader’s words is his charismatic nature, rather than his specific actions. Incompatibility of the Strong Reading of the Defeat-of-Purpose Argument with Obligation of Adjudication in Accordance with Apparent Evidence As pointed out above (§ 5-3), one frequently cited argument for extension of the scope of ‘iṣma to inadvertent mistakes in both religious and ordinary matters is the following: if the prophet makes a mistake, then it is possible for him to make mistakes in communication of the religion, or if the prophet makes a mistake people will lose their trust in him. This argument is, nevertheless, incompatible with the historical fact that the Prophet and Imams acted upon external evidence in their adjudications of legal matters and decisions about social issues, 55 which is subject to mistakes. This is why Ṭabāṭabā’ī restricts ‘iṣma concerning judgement to immunity from partiality and personal desires.56 When God asks the Prophet to act upon apparent evidence when making judicial opinions, He thereby subjects them to mistakes – although the Prophet does not intend to commit a sin here, he might as well inadvertently trample upon people’s rights as a consequence of his judicial opinion. 57 In this way, the implication in which the strong reading of the defeat-of-­ purpose argument is grounded (that is, inadvertent mistakes imply mistakes in propagation of the religion or people’s distrust) has an obvious counterexample in evidence-based judgement and government, because the rightful person who does not have enough evidence to make his case, and other informed people, would witness the Prophet’s mistake. The same is true about the role of the Imams in administering the government based on apparent evidence. Thus, when Imam ‘Ali learned about a mistake made by one of his appointed local governors, he wrote to him: “[Y]our father’s goodness deceived me about you. I thought you would follow your father’s lead, but as I have been informed, you do not stop personal desires, … once you receive my letter, come and visit me.”58 Imposing Esoteric Interpretations on the Text There are a number of Qur’anic verses that contradict ‘iṣma or at least strong readings thereof, including verses of Adam’s sin, Jonah’s disobedience of the divine command, Moses’ murder of a person, and so on. The wider the scope of ‘iṣma is taken to be, the greater the number of Qur’anic verses that need esoteric interpretations (ta’wīl), because strong readings

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of ‘iṣma also negate doubts about the prophets, such as when Zechariah doubts God’s good tidings of him having a son and asks God to send him a sign (Q 3: 41). Moreover, those who believe that the prophets and Imams should have no physical faws need to provide esoteric interpretations of Moses’ failure to speak distinctly (Q 43: 52) and his request from God that Aaron speaks instead of him (Q 28: 34). It should also be noted that there are many hadiths to the effect that the prophets committed sins. 59 These have been, nevertheless, ignored as time has gone by. The Correlation Criterion in Formative Periods of Shiism That Qur’anic evidence and rational arguments for ‘iṣma are concerned with the core layers of its scope is attested by the smaller scope of ‘iṣma in formative Shi‘i periods. That is to say, although rational arguments had been put forward since the earlier centuries and the most important Qur’anic verses concerning ‘iṣma have been discussed, the notion of ‘iṣma remained in its frst two layers: Throughout the formative centuries of the Shi‘i community, the notion of ‘iṣma was restricted to immunity from sins. The usage was the same in the words of the Pure Imams and their companions. [Immunity from errors and mistakes] began to fnd its way into the words of some scholars of hadiths, such as al-Ṣadūq, and then in the words of some theologians such as al-Shaykh al-Mufīd and others. At the end of 11th century (5th AH) and after the demise of al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, ‘iṣma was no longer restricted to immunity from sins.60 In later centuries, there were still scholars who did not extend ‘iṣma to non-religious matters. It is noteworthy that there were scholars, such as Fakhr al-Muḥaqqiqīn, al-Shahīd al-Awwal, and Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī in the 14th (8th AH), 15th (9th AH), and even later centuries, who did not talk about the Imam’s ‘iṣma in ordinary matters. This shows that, notwithstanding their consideration of rational arguments and Qur’anic verses, they did not think that this layer of ‘iṣma could be inferred from the verses or rational arguments.61

6 Conclusion The doctrine of ‘iṣma is not explicitly stated in the Qur’ān, but given the signifcance of it, Shi‘i scholars have cited many Qur’anic verses in order to prove ‘iṣma and demarcate its scope. In this chapter, I have argued that there is a common logic behind interpretations of these verses and the arguments presented based on them – the defeat-of-purpose argument, in one form or another. I have considered the scope of ‘iṣma in terms of the criterion of interaction between Qur’anic evidence and rational arguments.

248 Mohammad Haghani Fazl Qur’anic evidence provides us with primitive components of the doctrine of ‘iṣma, which can be formulated as follows: there are people who are immune from sins by God’s grace. This is the most one might say about the scope of ‘iṣma based on those components. I have also shown that basic components of ‘iṣma in the Qur’ān are compatible with the core of the defeat-of-purpose argument; that is, the closer we get to the core of ‘iṣma, the greater agreement there will be between Qur’anic evidence and rational arguments. However, interpretations of the relevant verses were affected by the extension of the scope of the defeat-of-purpose argument; that is, the wider the scope of the argument became, the stronger the conclusions that were drawn from the verses. This seems to arise from the fact that Shi‘i scholars and exegetes adopted a logical approach to the problem of ‘iṣma, whereas it is indeed a practical and commonsensical issue. Moreover, when they tried to accommodate the conclusions of their logical analyses within the Qur’ān, they made recourse to absolute and unbounded Qur’anic terms, because this way of reading the terms and phrases has the capacity to allow theological assumptions. Such exegesis of Qur’anic evidence for ‘iṣma encounters problems – for example, it requires esoteric interpretations of many verses concerning the prophets. As pointed out above, if we adopt the interaction between Qur’anic evidence and rational arguments for ‘iṣma as our criterion for assessing the theories of ‘iṣma, we might say that more restricted versions of ‘iṣma, which were more widely held in formative periods of Shiism, were closer to such a criterion. This chapter focused on an understanding of the relevant verses across the history of Shi‘i theology and exegesis. However, if we are to understand ‘iṣma within the Qur’ān itself, we need to disregard theological doctrines, revisit the constitutive components of the doctrine (such as ‘purifcation,’ ‘being chosen,’ ‘God’s pledge not extending to the unjust,’ and the like) in the context of the Qur’ān itself, and redefne them by considering the outlines of Qur’anic material, such as verses attributing mistakes and sins to the prophets. In this process, a more worldly picture of the prophets and a more mundane conception of ‘iṣma will come to light.

Notes 1 Al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, Tafsīr al-Tibyān (Beirut: Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, n.d.), vol. 8, 339–41; al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, al-Fuṣūl al-Mukhtāra (Beirut, Dar al-Mufd, 1993/1414 AH), 54; al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, al-Shāfī f-l-Imāmiyya (Qom, Ismā‘īliyān Institute, 1989/1410 AH), vol. 3, 141; Makārim Shīrāzī, Tafsīr-i Nimūnih (Tehran: Dar al-Kutub al-Islamiyya, 1995/1374 SH), vol. 17, 304; al-Ṭabarsī, Majma‘ al-Bayān (Tehran: Nasir Khusrow, 1993/1372 SH) vol. 8, 559–60. 2 For example, see al-Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān, vol. 8, 339; al-Ṭabarsī, Majma‘ al-Bayān, vol. 8, 560; Fadlallah, Mohammad Hussein, Min Waḥy al-Qur’ān (Beirut: Dar al-Milak li-l-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1998/1419 AH), vol. 18, 300–3; al-Ṭabāṭabā’ī, Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn, al-Mīzān (Qom, Jami‘a Mudarrisin, 1996/1417 AH), vol. 16, 311; Makārim Shīrazī, Tafsīr-i Nimūnih, vol. 17, 295.

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3 Ṣadūq, ‘Ilal al-Shara’i‘ (Najaf: Maktabat al-Haydariyya, 1966/1386 AH), vol. 1, 204. 4 Abu-l-Futūḥ al-Rāzī, Rawḍ al-Jinān wa Rūḥ al-Janān (Mashhad: Research Foundation of Astan Quds, 1987/1308 AH), vol. 2, 141; Sayyid Murtaḍā, alShāfī f-l-Imāma, vol. 3, 139. 5 Al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, Awā’il al-Maqālāt f-l-Madhāhib wa-l-Mukhtārāt (Qom: al-Mu’tamar al-‘Ālamī li-Alfyyat al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, 1992/1413 AH), 19 and 65; al-‘Allāmat al-Ḥillī, Nahj al-Ḥaqq wa Kashf al-Ṣidq (Qom: Dar al-Hijr, 1993/1414 AH), 164; al-Muẓaffar, al-Shaykh Muḥammad Ḥasan, Dalā’il alṢidq (Cairo: Dar al-Mu‘allim li-l-Tiba’a, 1976/1396 AH), 7. 6 For reviews of these accounts, see: al-Fakhr al-Rāzī, ‘Iṣmat al-Anbiyā’ (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1988/1409 AH), 25–27; Khwāja Naṣīr alDīn al-Ṭūsī, Qawā‘id al-‘Aqā’id, ed. Hasan Khazim (Beirut: Dar al-Ghurba, 1992/1413 AH); Subḥānī, Ja‘far, ‘Iṣmat al-Anbiyā’ (Qom: Imam Sadiq Institute, 2003/1382 SH), 41–44. 7 For example, see al-‘Allāmat al-Ḥillī, Ma‘ārij al-Fahm f Sharḥ al-Naẓm (Qom: Dalil-i Ma, 2007/1386 SH), 464; ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Lāhījī, Sarmāyi-yi Īmān dar Uṣūl-i I‘tiqādāt (Tehran: Al-Zahra Publications, 1993/1372 SH), 114–116; Subḥānī, Ja‘far, ‘Iṣmat al-Anbiyā’, 293. 8 Al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, Tanzīh al-Anbiyā’ wa-l-A’imma (Beirut: Dar al-Adwa’, 1988/1409 AH), 121; al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān, vol. 4, 165–6; al-Ṭabarsī, Majma‘ al-Bayān, under Q 6: 68; Abu-l-Futūḥ al-Rāzī, Rawḍ al-Jinān wa Rūḥ al-Janān, vol. 7, 327–8; al-Ḥimṣī al-Razī, al-Munqidh min al-Taqlīd (Qom: Mu’assisat al-Nashr al-Islami, 1991/1412 AH), vol. 2, 293. 9 Sahw al-Nabiyy was endorsed by al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq in earlier centuries and then by people such as al-Fayḍ al-Kāshānī and Muḥammad Taqī al-Tustarī in later centuries: al-Fayḍ al-Kāshānī, al-Wāfī, ed. Sayyid Ḍiyā’ al-Dīn ‘Allāma (Isfahan: Amir al-Mu’minin Library, 1985/1406 AH), vol. 8, 996; al-Tustarī, Muḥammad Taqī, Risāla fī Sahw al-Nabiyy, published as attached to vol. 11 of Qāmūs al-Rijāl (Qom: Mu’assisat al-Nashr al-Islami, 2009/1388 SH). 10 Ruhollah, Khomeini, Ādāb al-Ṣalāt (Tehran: Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Work, 1991/1370 SH), 59–60; Muḥammad Ḥusayn Rukhshād, Dar Maḥżar-i ‘Allāmih Ṭabāṭabā’ī (Qom: Sama’ Qalam, 2007/1386 SH), 134; also see Ṭabāṭabā’ī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn, al-Mīzān, vol. 2, 134. 11 Al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq, ‘Uyūn Akhbār al-Riḍā (Tehran: Nashr-i Saduq, 1993/1372 SH), vol. 1, 196. 12 Al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, Taṣḥīḥ al-I‘tiqādāt al-Imāmiyya, ed. Ḥusayn Dargāhī (Qom: al-Mu’tamar al-‘Alami al-Alfyya li-l-Shaykh al-Mufd, 1992/1371 SH), 129–30. 13 ‘iṣma involves numerous dimensions, so it might not have an exact counterpart in Christian theology. Since it is a matter of immunity from errors in communicating the revelation and elaborating religious matters, it can be deemed similar to the doctrine of ‘infallibility’ in Catholic Church: that the Church and the Pope are immune from errors when they communicate divine rulings. When it comes, however, to immunity from sins and errors in complying with religious duties, ‘iṣma is similar to the doctrine of ‘impeccability.’ There are, nevertheless, people who believe that, in addition to immunity from sins, a ma‘ṣūm never commits errors in his non-religious speeches and behaviors. This might be similar to the doctrine of ‘inerrancy.’ In recent centuries, most Shi‘i scholars take the scope of ‘iṣma to include all these. 14 There are two contemporary examples of such scholars: Subḥānī in his ‘Iṣmat al-Anbiyā’, and Javādī Āmulī in his Vaḥy va Nubuvvat dar Qur’ān. 15 Ṭabāṭabā’ī, al-Mīzān, vol. 2, 135; Subḥānī, ‘Iṣmat al-Anbiyā’ f-l-Qur’ān al-Karīm, 47.

250 Mohammad Haghani Fazl 16 Javādī Āmulī, ‘Abdullāh, Vaḥy va Nubuvvat dar Qur’ān, 213–214; Fadlallah, Mohammad Hussein, Min Waḥy al-Qur’ān, vol. 16, 97. 17 Ṭabāṭabā’ī, al-Mīzān, vol. 2, 137. 18 See: Mullā Ṣadrā, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-Karīm (Qom, Bidar, 1987/1366 SH), vol. 3, 112; Subḥānī, ‘Iṣmat al-Anbiyā’, 63; Javādī Āmulī, Vaḥy va Nubuvvat dar Qur’ān, 224. 19 See Faḍl ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṭabarsī, Majma‘ al-Bayān, vol. 3, 101; Abu-l-Futūḥ alRāzī, Rawḍ al-Jinān wa Rūḥ al-Janān, vol. 5, 409; al-Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān, vol. 3, 236. 20 For example, see Muḥammad ibn Ya’qūb al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, ed. ‘Ali Akbar Ghaffari and Muhammad Akhundi (Tehran: Dar al-Kutub al-Islamiyya, 1986/1407 AH), vol. 1, 286; al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq, ‘Uyūn Akhbār al-Riḍā, vol. 2, 131; ‘Alī ibn Ibrāhīm al-Qummī, Tafsīr al-Qummī (Qom: Dar al-Kitab, 1988/1367 SH), vol. 1, 141; al-Furāt al-Kūfī, Tafsīr al-Furāt (Tehran: Publications of Ministry of Guidance, 1989/1410 AH), 108; Muḥammad ibn Mas’ūd al-‘Ayyāshī, Tafsīr al-‘Ayyāshī, ed. Hāshin Rasūlī Maḥallātī (Tehran: Maktabat al-‘Ilmiyya al-Islamiyya, n.d.), vol. 1, 249, 251, and 252. 21 For example, see Abu-l-Ṣalāḥ al-Ḥalabī, Taqrīb al-Ma‘ārif, ed. al-Shaykh Faris Tabriziyan (Matba‘at al-Hadi, 1996/1417 AH), vol. 1, 179. 22 Ibn Shahrāshūb, Mutashābih al-Qur’ān wa Mukhtalafuh, vol. 2, 49; Abu-lṢalāḥ al-Ḥalabī, Taqrīb al-Ma‘ārif, vol. 1, 179. 23 For example, Ibn Shahrāshūb, Mutashābih al-Qur’ān wa Mukhtalafuh, vol. 2, 48. 24 Ḥasan ibn ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Lāhījī, Shma‘ al-Yaqīn va Āyīni-yi Dīn, ed. Ja‘far Sa‘īdī (Tehran: Sāyih Publications, 2008/1387 SH), 155. 25 Al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, Tanzīh al-Anbiyā’, 4–6; also see Ṭabāṭabā’ī’s exegesis of Q 72: 28 and Q 19: 64 (al-Mīzān, vol. 2, 137) and Mullā Ṣadrā’s exegesis of Q 2: 44 (Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-Karīm, vol. 3, 113). 26 Javādī Āmulī, Vaḥy va Nubuvvat dar Qur’ān, 225. 27 Al-Ṣadūq, ‘Ilal al-Sharā’i‘, vol. 1, 204. 28 For a century-by-century report of these arguments, see Muḥammad Ḥusayn Fāryāb, ‘Iṣmat-i Imām dar Tārīkh-i Tafakkur-i Imāmiyya az Qarb-i Shishum tā Dowrān-i Mu‘āṣir (Infallibility of the Imam in the Intellectual History of Imamiyya from the Sixth Century to the Contemporary Period) (Qom: Imam Khomeini Institute, 2018/1397 SH), Chapter 5. 29 Al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, Tanzīh al-Anbiyā’ wa-l-A’imma, 17. 30 Al-Ṣadūq, ‘Ilal al-Sharā’i‘, vol. 1, 202–4; al-Ṣadūq, Kamāl al-Dīn wa Itmām al-Na‘ma (Qom: Dar al-Kutub al-Islamiyya, 1974/1395 AH), vol. 2, 361–8. 31 Ibn Shahrāshūb, Mutashābih al-Qur’ān wa Mukhtalafuh, vol. 2, 51; also see al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, al-Shāfī f-l-Imāma, vol. 1, 179; al-Ḥillī, al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf, Kashf al-Murād fī Sharḥ Tajrīd al-I‘tiqād (Qom: Mu’assisat al-Nashr al-Islami, 2001/1422 AH), 439; al-Fāḍil al-Miqdād, al-Nāf‘ Yawm al-Ḥashr fī Sharḥ Bāb Ḥādī ‘Ashr (Beirut: Dar al-Adwa’, 1988/1409 AH), 183. 32 This is one of the oldest Shi‘i arguments for ‘iṣma of the Imams, cited by many Shi‘i scholars, including: al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, al-Rasā’il (Qom: Dar al-Qur’ān al-Karīm, 1984/1405 AH), vol. 3, 20; al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, al-Ghayba (Qom: Mu’assisi-yi Ma‘arif-i Islami, 1990/1411 AH), 16; al-Ḥimṣī al-Rāzzī, Muḥammad, al-Munqidh min al-Taqlīd, vol. 2, 278–9; al-Ḥillī, al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf, Manāhij al-Yaqīn (Tehran: Nashr-i Yaran, 1991/1412 AH), 298. 33 al-Fayḍ al-Kāshānī, Tafsīr al-Ṣāfī (Tehran: al-Sadr Publications, 1994/1415 AH), vol. 3, 180. 34 al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf al-Ḥillī, Kitāb al-Alfayn al-Fāriq bayn al-Ṣidq wa-l-Mayn (Qom: al-Mu’assisat al-Islamiyya li-l-Buhuth wa-l-Ma‘lumat, 2002/1381 SH), vol. 2, 223; also see Ṭabāṭabā’ī’s argument based on Q 4: 165 according to which God has sent prophets to people so that people cannot have any arguments against Him.

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35 Al-Fayḍ al-Kāshānī, Tafsīr al-Ṣāfī, vol. 3, 180: “Imams among us are defnitely ma‘ṣūm, and ‘iṣma does not show up in appearances with which they can be identifed. Therefore, the Imams should be explicitly mentioned.” 36 al-Ḥillī, al-Alfayn al-Fāriq bayn al-Ṣidq wa-l-Mayn, vol. 1, 145f. 37 Ṭabāṭabā’ī, al-Mīzān, vol. 2, 134; Javādī Āmulī, Vaḥy va Nubuvvat dar Qur’ān, 214. 38 Mullā Ṣadrā, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-Karīm, vol. 3, 113 39 Khwāja Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Tajrīd al-I‘tiqād (Qom: Publications of the Islamic Propagation Offce, 1996/1417 AH), 222 40 al-Ḥillī, al-Alfayn al-Fāriq bayn al-Ṣidq wa-l-Mayn, section 69; also see his interpretation of Q 6: 21; Q 39: 32, and many other verses. 41 Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, Min Waḥy al-Qur’an al-Karīm, vol. 4, 153. 42 Faḍl ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṭabarsī, Majma‘ al-Bayān, vol. 1, 380–1. 43 Mullā Ṣadrā, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-Karīm, vol. 3, 114; al-Mufīd, Taṣḥīḥ alI‘tiqādāt al-Imāmiyya, 129; Javādī Āmulī, Vaḥy va Nubuvvat dar Qur’ān, 215. 44 Javādī Āmulī, Vaḥy va Nubuvvat dar Qur’ān, 227; Mullā Ṣadrā, Tafsīr alQur’ān al-Karīm, vol. 3, 114; also see ‘Allāma Ṭabāṭabā’ī’s interpretation of Q 4: 68. 45 Muḥammad Ḥusayn Rukhshād, Dar Mahżar-i ‘Allāma Ṭabāṭabā’ī, 60–61. 46 Miṣbāḥ Yazdī, Āmūzish-i ‘Aqā’id (Tehran: Publications of Islamic Development Organization, 2005/1384 SH), 245; Mullā Ṣadrā, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-Karīm, vol. 3, 113. 47 The term, “mukhlaṣīn,” appears 8 times in the Qur’ān – fve of these cases occur in Q 37 (verses 40, 74, 128, 160, 169). A glance at its use in Q 37 shows that it has a more general meaning than ma‘ṣūm. Indeed, it refers to all believers in general, and so it cannot be deemed equivalent to ma‘ṣūm. 48 Al-Muḥaqqiq al-Ḥillī, al-Maslak fī Uṣūl al-Dīn (Mashhad: Majma‘ al-Buhuth al-Islamiyya, 1993/1414 AH), 155. 49 Al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, Risāla fī ‘Adam Sahw al-Nabiyy (Beirut: Dar al-Mufd, 1993/1414 AH), 30. 50 Subḥānī, Ja‘far, ‘Iṣmat al-Anbiyā’, 293. 51 al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Lāhījī, Sham‘ al-Yaqīn va Āyini-yi Dīn, 98. 52 ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Lāhījī, Sarmāyi-yi Imān dar Uṣūl-i I‘tiqādāt, 92. 53 Al-‘Allāmat al-Ḥillī, Manāhij al-Yaqīn, 427; Javādī Āmulī, Adab-i Fanā-yi Muqarrabān (Qom: Isra’, 2002/1381), 249. 54 Abu-l-Futūḥ al-Rāzī, Rawḍ al-Jinān wa Rūḥ al-Janān, vol. 7, 327–8; also see Astarābādī, Muḥammad Ja‘far, al-Barāhīn al-Qāṭi‘a (Qom: Maktabat al-I‘lām al-Islāmī, 2003/1382 SH), vol. 3, 25. 55 A piece of evidence according to which, in Shi‘i traditions, the prophets and Imams issued judicial opinions based on apparent evidence is that adjudication based on the truth (directly known by them) counts as an extraordinary phenomenon, characteristic of Imam al-Mahdī’s period – his Reappearance in End Time. The power to judge based on truths, rather than apparent evidence, is attributed to David the Prophet as well. 56 Ṭabāṭabā’ī, al-Mīzān, vol. 5, 116. 57 There is a hadith from Prophet Muhammad in which he asks Muslims to observe each other’s rights in this respect: I judge among you based on apparent evidence and your oaths, and some of you might as well be more expressive than others (or present stronger evidence), and if I issue a ruling whereby some property is transferred to someone to which he is not entitled, that would be like a piece of fre I put in his hand. (Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, vol. 7, 414)

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58 Nahj al-Balāgha, letter 71. 59 For example, see al-Baḥrānī, Yūsuf, al-Burhān fī Tafsīr al-Qur’ān (Tehran: Bunyad-i Bi‘that, 1995/1416 AH), vol. 1, 180–1. 60 Fāryāb, ‘Iṣmat-i Imām dar Tārīkh-i Tafakkur-i Imāmiyyih, 97 (cf. n. 28). 61 For an account of the views of Shi‘i scholars in this regard, see Fāryāb,‘Iṣmat-i Imām dar Tārīkh-i Tafakkur-i Imāmiyyih, Chapter 4.

13 Inerrancy and exaggeration in Shi‘i theology Muhammad Legenhausen

There are many discussions of human perfection in Islamic literature. The ideal of human perfection is particularly prominent in Shi‘i and Suf works, and these traditions are not unrelated, although the earliest discussions appear to pertain to the Prophet Muhammad (ṣ) and ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib (‘a). Two of the oldest topics of controversy in Shi‘i kalām are those of inerrancy and exaggeration. We begin with an introduction to these concepts, followed by a brief overview of their early appearance in theological debates among the Shi‘a. Next we review the place of these concepts in contemporary Twelver Shi‘i theology and related felds, such as jurisprudence and mysticism. Finally, observations are offered with regard to the relevance of these issues to interreligious dialogue and Islamic ecumenical discussions.

1 An introduction to inerrancy After the summary of the debates about the proper exegesis of the Qur’ān and the evaluation of hadiths in the chapter by Haghani Fazl, let us now consider the central themes that have been introduced with respect to Shi‘i views about inerrancy. The term used for inerrancy is ‘iṣma, the root meaning of which is associated with protection and which is interpreted by theologians to indicate divine protection from various kinds of faws or imperfections. This term does not occur in the Qur’ān, but theologians consider references to purity (e.g., mukhlaṣ) to indicate inerrancy, despite the fact that purity is a matter of degree, while inerrancy is not. First, there is the question of who is to be considered inerrant, ma‘ṣūm. There is consensus among the Twelver Shi‘a that all the prophets, the twelve Imams, and the daughter of the Prophet are inerrant. The condition of being inerrant, free from fault, however, may be true of many other persons as well. The Blessed Virgin Mary (‘a), for example, is regarded as inerrant.1 In the case of the prophets, Fatimah, the Imams, and Mary, there is evidence in revelation and narrations to support the ascription of ‘inerrancy; but it is generally acknowledged that there can be other cases of ‘inerrancy for which we lack such evidence, a point that is given special emphasis

254 Muhammad Legenhausen with regard to those referred to by the mystics as awliyā Allah (the special friends of God) in Imam Khomeini’s discussions. 2 Second, there is the issue of the sorts of imperfections from which inerrant persons are free. It is generally contended that these include both major and minor sins, ignorance of some sort, and even certain kinds of physical defects.3 This is an area in which there has been considerable controversy among Shi‘i theologians, and to which we will return. This leads naturally to a third topic, exaggeration. When the range of perfections attributed to the inerrant extends so far as to be inconsistent with accepted doctrine, accusations of exaggeration (ghulūw) are made. It is for this reason that Shi‘ite theologians generally include discussions of exaggeration following those of inerrancy. Since differences arise over the course of history about what is to be considered accepted doctrine, the scope of exaggeration changes accordingly. Fourth, care is taken by the theologians to describe ‘inerrancy in such a manner that it is not inconsistent with free will. Fifth, the issue is often related to ‘irfān (mysticism) and the nature of human perfection as discussed in Islamic mystical traditions. Sixth and seventh are the two directions in which the Shi‘i position on inerrancy is staked out polemically against non-Shi‘i Muslims, on one hand, who deny ‘inerrancy (or deny features of it that the Shi‘a consider essential) and against Christians, on the other, who are stereotyped as holding exaggerated views that cause them to deify Christ (‘a) or claim that God resides within him. The opposing views of Sunnis and Christians are vague and commonly supposed positions rather than accurate descriptions of views defended in particular texts, although the subsequent course of polemical discussions naturally involved criticism of texts as well as common perceptions; but, for the most part, the polemics have been directed at other Muslims, and the position of the Christians is invoked merely as a foil. It is assumed that the Christian position is blasphemous, and accusations of exaggeration against a Shi‘i individual or group are answered with the retort that the position attacked is falsely assumed to be an exaggeration like that of the Christians. The importance of ‘inerrancy for the Shi‘a extends well beyond the issues mentioned, to questions of how divine guidance is provided in religion, the course of sacred history, spirituality and religious anthropology, issues in jurisprudence, and how to evaluate narrations; and this is refected in Shi‘i art and literature as well as ritual practice, and in the theoretical and practical teachings of the mystics.

2 Genealogy And they argued over the truth and validity [of the martyrdom of the Imams]. It is not as the ghulāt (the exaggerators) and the mufawwiḍah

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(the delegationists)4 claim, may God curse them, for verily they were not killed in fact, but it was made to appear like that to the people. They lie. May God’s wrath be on them. Indeed, it did not appear like this to the people for any of the prophets of God and His proofs (the Imams) except in the case of Jesus the son of Mary (‘a) alone, for he was raised from the earth alive. 5 Although there are narrations according to which the death of the Prophet (ṣ) was denied by Umar, exaggerated claims about his immortality did not become widespread and Umar withdrew his denial the next day.6 Reports about those who held ‘Alī (‘a) to be divine were more persistent. A popular line of narrative traces claims of ‘Alī’s divinity to the frst/seventh century fgure of ‘Abd Allāh ibn Saba’ al-Saba’ī, who is considered to have been the frst of the ghulāt (extremists or exaggerators).7 According to some stories, after ‘Alī (‘a) was assassinated, ibn al-Saba’ claimed that he had not died and that a substitute had been killed. In other stories, ‘Alī (‘a) has ibn al-Saba’ executed by burning for deifying him; and in yet others, ‘Alī (‘a) executes ibn al-Saba’s followers by burning them, and after their sentencing they proclaim that since only God punishes by burning, their apotheosis of ‘Alī (‘a) is vindicated! Although most of the stories about ibn al-Saba’ cannot be traced to before the ffth/eleventh century, there is widespread agreement that he was the frst of the exaggerators, and that he held ‘Alī (‘a) to be divine or to possess attributes that are exclusively divine. Reports about the exaggerators beginning during the Imamate of Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq (‘a) (117–148 AH / 733–765 CE) are abundant.8 Various groups with differing extremist views about the Imams, as well as differences about the identifcation of the Imams, had their center in Kufa. Historians have proposed various explanations for the emergence of the extremist groups at this time, everything from a universal human tendency to lionize heroes to the infuence of neo-Platonic doctrines of henosis in late antiquity.9 It must be remembered, however, that although the term ghulūw (exaggeration) was generally used as a term of condemnation, the question of what attributes of perfections in the Imams would constitute exaggeration were not clear. It was a time of religious and political upheaval. The Umayyad dynasty was succeeded by the Abbasids in 132 AH / 750 CE; the central authority was weak, and exaggerated claims were made on behalf of the Imams and others by those who vied for religious and political authority and power. In this period of upheaval, Imam Ṣādiq (‘a) is presented in Twelver narratives as someone who took a middle course between the extremes of those who denied his Imamate and those who divinized him. Both extremes were presented as forms of betrayal.10 In addition to apotheosis, traditions condemned as exaggeration included those that reported fantastic miracles of the Imams, like ‘Alī riding through the air on his shield.11 The miraculous, however, was far from being uniformly denied and there were even popular

256 Muhammad Legenhausen collections of the miraculous deeds of the Imams, for miracles were often considered as proof of the divine favor by which a person was chosen as an Imam.12 The betrayal of the Imams through the denial of their Imamate was seen as characteristic of Sunni theologians, who denied the imamate altogether, and also of the Shi‘i groups that refused to acknowledge the Imamate of the Twelver Shi‘i Imams or who gave preference to other claimants. The idea that exaggeration was also a betrayal made those who divinized the Imams condemnable as well as those who made excessive claims on behalf of any leaders. A strong condemnation of exaggeration is found in a narration attributed to the ffth Imam: Imam al-Bāqir (‘a) said, ‘O community of Shi‘a – the Shi‘a of the household of Muhammad – be like the middle saddle-cushion, on which the extremist (al-ghālī) who has slid forward falls back, and with which the follower who is yet to come catches up.’ Upon hearing this, a man called Sa‘ad from among the ansar asked him, ‘May I be your ransom, who is an exaggerator?’ He replied, ‘They are a group of people who say such things about us that we do not say about ourselves. Neither are these people from among us, nor do we associate ourselves with them.’ Then the man asked, ‘Who is the follower that is yet to come?’ He replied, ‘The one who is searching for good and wants it, and who will eventually attain it and be rewarded for it.’13 Few, however, would be content with restricting themselves to describing the Imams as they described themselves. One of the groups condemned by heresiologists for exaggeration, with origins in Kufa during the Imamate of Ja‘far Ṣādiq (‘a), were the Khaṭṭābiyya, who are reported to have held that their leader Abū al-Khaṭṭāb and Imam Ṣādiq were incarnations of God, that divinity was passed from one Imam to another;14 others believed in forms of reincarnation. A remarkable text related to the Khaṭṭābiyyah, which refects teachings with roots in those of the exaggerators of Kufa, is the Umm al-Kitāb. Although some scholars have argued that at least portions of the text date to the second/eighth century, Madelung and Anthony argue convincingly that the text in its present form dates to the sixth/twelfth century.15 The text promotes a pentadist theology, according to which the divine essence has fve forms or likenesses that correspond to the ahl al-kisā’: Muḥammad, Fātimah, ‘Alī, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn (‘a). Imam Bāqir (‘a), the ffth Shi‘i Imam, appears in this text to al-Saba’ī in the successive forms of the ahl al-kisā’. Ibn al-Saba’ himself, in one of the stories included in this text, plays the role of the teacher of Imam Bāqir (‘a) in a manner that parallels the story that frst appears in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, of Jesus (‘a) telling the esoteric meanings of the letters of the alphabet to his teacher.16 The Umm al-Kitāb was followed by a series of other texts that refect the ideas of the exaggerators of second/eighth century Kufa.17

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The next major movement of the exaggerators had its beginnings during the Imamate of the eleventh Imam, Ḥasan al-Askari (‘a) (868–874 CE), one of whose disciples, Abū Shuʿayb Muh ammad ̣ ibn Nusayr ̣ al-ʿAbdī alBakrī al-Numayrī, claimed that he was a prophet sent by the tenth Imam, al-Hādī (‘a), to whom he attributed divinity; and for making this claim he was condemned by the Imam. He was denounced again after the death of the eleventh Imam, for claiming to be the bāb (gate, authorized intermediary) to the twelfth Imam, the mahdī (‘a).18 Despite the condemnations, he had a number of followers who continued to spread and develop the mystical views about the Imams that he inspired. These followers normally practiced dissimulation to avoid persecution, and some authors wrote both books in which their exaggeration was concealed and other secret works for their special followers in which the heretical views were expounded.19 The Nuṣayrī’s developed a trinitarian doctrine, according to which divinity is to be understood as including the divine Name (ism), its meaning (ma’nā), and the gate (bāb) which appears in different forms through history by divine mercy to guide people. In some versions of the teaching, all the prophets and Imams are manifestations of Jesus (‘a), who is taken as an exemplar of the divine gate. Often the texts in this tradition contain docetic statements, such as that ‘Alī (‘a) did not need to eat and that his body was an illusion. The Docetism of the Nuṣayrīs differentiates them from most of the other sects of exaggerators, which held that God became incarnate in the Imams. Although there are numerous narrations in which the Imams condemned any attribution of divinity to them, the exaggerators interpreted these public condemnations as dissimulation. The development of what came to be the ‘orthodox’ Twelver Shi‘i doctrine can only be understood if one keeps in mind that its context was one in which esoteric and heretical views were widespread, and tended to be cultivated in groups centered around any of a various number of charismatic leaders. The distinction between what would become “orthodox” Twelver Shi‘ism and exaggeration was not always clear in early writings. 20 So, Amir-Moezzi cites a number of narrations from ‘orthodox’ collections that can easily be interpreted as supporting extreme views of the Imams. He comments: [T]he distinction between moderate and extremist Shiʿism, at least during the early period and especially in the ‘esoteric non-rational’ tradition, proves to be artifcial. This distinction seems to have been made later, mainly by the frst heresiographers at the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth century AH. In ‘proto-Shiʿism’, the boundaries between different trends seem to have been more easily penetrated and the movement of followers between different sects if not simultaneous adherence to several branches of belief would have been common practice. 21

258 Muhammad Legenhausen Within the range of the chaotic formative years, a doctrine of ‘inerrancy took shape among what would become the ‘orthodox’ Imami Shi‘a, according to which the Imams were perfectly obedient to the religious law and had perfect knowledge. Other perfections were also accepted for them, such as being free of physical defects22 and having a genealogy of monotheist forefathers stretching through Isma‘il to Adam. 23 What were considered to be the excesses of the exaggerators, however, were denied. The infallibles are not immortal, they are signs or manifestations of – but not incarnations of – God, they have physical bodies and needs. What emerged as the essence of the perfections of the inerrant was that they had to have those qualities that would make it possible for them to serve as guides and standards for the community of their followers. The mufawwiḍa (delegationists) also sought to position themselves as moderates by comparing their doctrines to the exaggerators who divinized the Imams and the Shi‘a scholars of Qom who considered the Imams to lack supernatural powers, for which these scholars were described as muqaṣṣira (underraters). Central among the beliefs of the delegationists is the idea that the Imams and prophets are bearers of a divine light, the nūr al-Muḥammadī (Muḥammadan light), the frst of God’s creations, and that their inerrancy is due to this divine light. 24 Modarressi reports that, in an anonymous work by one of the delegationists, a statement is alleged to have been made by the Prophet (‘a) that defnes the underraters: [T]hose who fell short in the recognition of the Imams … to know that God delegated His authority to those whom He blessed with His grace: to create by His permission and to resurrect by His permission and to know what is in the mind of the people and the past and the future until the day of resurrection. 25 Some Shi‘a rejected claims that the Imams create and raise the dead by divine delegation, tafwīḍ, but they accepted the idea that the Imams bear the Muḥammadan light, and they used this to explain what makes them inerrant. Similar ideas soon caught on among those who would later be seen as among the earliest Sufs, such as the third/ninth century’s Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, who held that the frst thing that God thought, knew, and willed was Muḥammad (ṣ), who is preserved from sin and even from thinking of sin, 26 and Sahl al-Tustarī, who discussed the Muḥammadan light at length, but considers it to be borne by the Suf awliyā rather than the Shi‘i Imams. 27 The dispute about what constitutes exaggeration and what constitutes underrating continues to the present day. The works of Amir-Moezzi and Modarressi have provoked heated discussions among contemporary Shi‘i theologians. The former is condemned for describing the essence of Shi‘ism as exaggeration, 28 while Modarressi is condemned for falling short in his

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estimation of the Imams and describing the essence of the Imamate to be a political status. 29 We would more likely gain a deeper understanding of the development of Shi‘i doctrine by ignoring disputes about the ‘essence’ of central concepts such as imamate (divinely appointed leadership), wilāyah (guardianship), and inerrancy, which, after all, have shifted in meaning over the course of time and which were understood rather differently by various Shi‘a during each period of this development.

3 Dogma It is reported that Imam Ṣādiq (‘a) said: “Whatever comes to you about us that is permissible to be in creatures, but you do not know it and you do not understand it, then do not deny it and refer it to us. And what comes to you about us that is not permissible to be in creatures, then deny it and do not refer it to us.”30 Given the centuries long history of theological development, it should come as no surprise that the conceptions of imamate and inerrancy have varied with the cultural contexts in which the doctrines have been formulated. For Shaykh Ṣadūq, there was a need to curb excesses in tendencies toward exaggeration. Hence, he allowed that some forms of negligence were compatible with inerrancy. For Shaykh Mufīd, on the other hand, even nonculpable lapses would threaten the authority of the inerrant and were, thus, rejected.31 Some have observed that during the time of Shaykh Ṣadūq, if one held that the Imams could not be inattentive during prayer, one would have been expelled from the community as an exaggerator. Subsequently, if one held that they could be inattentive, one would be condemned for underrating the divine favor bestowed on them. The quote with which I opened this section is also susceptible to different interpretations. Shaykh Muẓaffar himself seems to be inclined to allow all sorts of miraculous powers to be attributed to the inerrant since miracles are not logically impossible. Shaykh Mufīd, on the other hand, was a bit more hesitant. Although he admitted that the Imams knew the various languages of the world, he claimed that there was no rational need to accept such claims, and admitted that he only accepted them on the basis of accepted narrations. 32 Likewise, on the basis of narrations, Mufīd held that the inerrant would never have false dreams. What they saw in a dream would always come to pass. Mufīd also held that although the Imams could receive divine inspiration enabling them to know the past and future, this did not regularly take place, and that, for example, Imam ‘Alī (‘a) did not know he was going to be assassinated when he went to the mosque to pray. 33 Mufīd could agree with the narration from Imam Ṣādiq (‘a), but hold that it was impermissible, that is, completely implausible, to attribute occult knowledge to the Imams when this appears to be inconsistent with

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their behavior; but in the absence of explicit statements on the issue, we can do little better than to surmise what might have been argued. Both Shaykh Ṣadūq and Shaykh Mufīd were less extreme than others in their interpretations of inerrancy; both allowed for some minor faws that would not be cause for blame. More important than the extent of the faws from which the inerrant are protected, however, is the argumentation given for the need for inerrancy. For Shaykh Ṣadūq, the prayer and its rules were established in the community. If an inerrant person were to be distracted in prayer, the result would not be any misguidance of the community. For Shaykh Mufīd, the distraction would detract from the authority of the inerrant, even if it did not otherwise lead to error. Both agreed, on the other hand, that in issuing judgments on the law, the inerrant had to be protected against error, for otherwise it would be possible for the community to be led astray by following them, which is contrary to the divine mission for which they were appointed. This theme is repeated in subsequent treatments of the issue. In Kashf al-Murād, Ṭūsī’s brief remarks are elaborated into fve arguments by Hillī in support of a very extensive view of inerrancy:34 If the Imam were not inerrant, it would necessitate an infnite regress. The consequent is false; therefore, the antecedent will be also false. In other words, the prerequisite for the necessity of the appointment of the Imam is to deem it possible that an error may be committed by his subjects (ra’iyyah). If the prerequisite holds true of the Imam, it will necessitate that he should be guided by another imam and an infnite regress would arise unless the result ends in an Imam who is free from error; therefore, he will be the true Imam. There are two major points to note here. First, the aim is to provide a rational proof for the doctrine of inerrancy. The proof relies on that given elsewhere for prophethood and the imamate, the gist of which is: 1 2 3 4 5 6

God is merciful; so He provides guidance for those who need it; those for whom error is possible require guidance; for anyone other than the inerrant, error is possible; some people are not inerrant; so, God provides guidance for those who are not inerrant.

The form taken by this divine guidance is revelation, prophethood, and the imamate. Suppose, then, that there could be the slightest error in any such form of divine guidance. Then, given God’s mercy, there would have to be some further divine guidance given to lead people from these errors. This would lead to a regression that could only be stopped when there is no longer any possibility for error.

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The argument is logically fawless, that is, if all the premises are granted, the conclusion follows by logical necessity. This is in marked contrast to the arguments of Shaykh Ṣadūq and Shaykh Mufīd, whose concern was more with developing a theology supported by narrations than with a priori reasoning. Second, the focus of the argumentation is on the nature of divine guidance. The argument is not that the Imams must be inerrant because they are bearers of divine light, or because they received some transmitted knowledge or perfection (although such claims are by no means denied). The argument here, however, is that inerrancy is required by divine mercy and the divine will to provide fallible humans with guidance. Of course, one could debate the merits of the premises. Does divine mercy really require some revealed source to be given whenever there is the slightest possibility of any sort of error? If that were the case, there would have to be revealed sources to settle all the myriad sorts of disputes and errors that have been rampant through the ages. If we do not think that God must provide revealed sources because of the possibilities of human errors in mathematics, personal household fnances, and countless other areas in which errors and disputes arise, we would restrict the scope of the argument. There would then need to be some criterion for the restriction. Why should God’s mercy require infallibles for matters of religious and moral guidance, but not for matters of guidance in the natural sciences or the sorts of errors and disputes that everyone faces in daily personal life? If it is said that the latter areas of disagreement do not require divine guidance because they are not relevant to what is ultimately important in life, or in the afterlife, the way would be opened to fallibility with regard to anything that does not pertain to these ultimate concerns. In Hillī’s second argument, the focus is on the Imam’s function as protector of divine law. The Qur’ān and sunnah lack the detailed rulings needed by believers to follow the law. Consensus among fallible humans is likewise fallible; so, consensus among fallible Muslims about the law would be no guarantee against error. Hillī then considers whether reliable proof might be found. If there were such proof, there would be no need for an inerrant imam to decide the issue, although it has often been argued by theologians in the Abrahamic traditions that revelation could still be deemed benefcial for what is already known through reason. Hillī defends the point against the “Barāhima,” who argue that what is revealed must either agree with reason, in which case it is needless, or oppose reason, in which case it should be rejected. 35 Furthermore, if there were convincing proofs for judgments about issues of law, they would have become well-known and widespread. Since they are not, some way to settle such disputes is needed, and God, in His mercy, solves the problem through revelation. Ṭūsī’s argument, elaborated by Hillī, however, alludes to the fact that what is needed is not so much a means of arriving at absolute truths that are

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seen by the inerrant through some divine inspiration, but, rather, a means of arriving at defnitive judgments about religious law. Hillī observes the diffculty of arriving at consensus on the basis of evidence by noting that Muslims living in different places “do not agree on having a specifc type of food at the same time.”36 The evidence simply fails to provide suffcient grounds for reliable consensus. Yet consensus that is not secured by a rational proof or evidence will lack validity unless it is supported by divine authority. With regard to what to eat, however, people can be left to their own devices without blame. In the case of judgments about the law, no such freedom can be assumed, because the prophetic mission included a law for the beneft of humanity. Hillī concludes that the only way to preserve religion is through the existence of an Imam who is not liable to err in rulings. Hillī’s third argument for inerrancy is that if the Imam could commit an error, it would be required for his followers to disapprove of the error; and this would be inconsistent with obedience to him. Obedience and agreement about judgments, however, should be distinguished. One can obey a superior despite disagreeing with an order. Furthermore, judgments about matters of fact may be independent of any imperatives or principles of action. A failure to agree with an opinion expressed does not necessarily imply disobedience. Hillī’s fourth argument is that any kind of sin would nullify the purpose for the appointment of the Imam, that is, that the Muslim community should follow him and obey his instructions. If the Imam were to sin, the community would be obliged to follow him by committing similar sins, contrary to the divine purpose of providing guidance. This is also given as the sole argument for absolute inerrancy by Muẓaffar (1904–1964 CE) in his popular and concise compendium of Shi‘i beliefs, 37 where it is put in the form of a dilemma. If the Imam were to sin or make any sort of error, his followers would either blame him for the error, in opposition to the obedience needed for him to function as their guide, or they would follow him in error, which would also be contrary to his mission as a divine guide. This argument assumes that any sin by an Imam would misguide his followers. But if the Imam’s sins were unknown to his followers, they could not be misled by them. Furthermore, as we saw earlier, Shaykh Ṣadūq could argue that the divine guide can properly lead people even when they make recognized non-culpable errors, such as negligence. By the twentieth century, obedience and guidance had come to be understood in absolute terms in which there is no room for discretion. Hillī’s ffth and fnal argument is that since the Imam is of such high virtue and possesses such divine knowledge with which he has been inspired, for him to commit a sin would be much worse than if an ordinary person were to do so. The sins of ordinary people are explained because of their ignorance or inability to control their desires. The Imam has no such excuse. “Should he commit a sin, he will be in a lower state than that of his subjects.”38

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While the sinlessness of the inerrant was taken to be axiomatic throughout the course of Shi‘i theology, explanations for it differed. A particular cause of doubts arose from the numerous narrations about the repentance of the Imams. If they never sinned, why did they repent? This question troubled the seventh/thirteenth century Shi‘i theologian ‘Alī ibn ‘Īsā alIrbilī (d.  1293 CE). Irbilī, like ‘Allāmah Hillī, was a student of Sayyid ibn Tawwūs (589–664 CE); so, he asked his teacher why the Imams are reported to have prayed for forgiveness and expressed repentance and contrition. Sayyid ibn Tawwūs replied that although the Imams were sinless, they asked to be forgiven, repented, and showed contrition in order to teach poor sinners how to behave. This answer, however, did not satisfy Irbilī because of reports that the seventh Imam was overheard when he was alone in prayer in the middle of the night, weeping during prostration and begging God for forgiveness for his sins. After much contemplation and prayer, Irbilī fnally came to the conclusion that the Imams were constantly in a state of remembrance of God and His Names, and were in a state of the closest proximity to Him possible. So, whenever they descended a bit from this state because of their human needs and social relations, they considered the attention taken away from God to be the gravest sin. It is for this reason, Irbilī surmised, that the Prophet (ṣ) is reported to have said that the good deeds of the pious are the sins of those most proximate (to God). By the time Irbilī thought of this, Sayyid ibn Tawwūs had passed away, and Irbilī wrote that if only his teacher were still alive, he could offer him this solution to the puzzle of the repentance of the sinless. 39 A further explanation of the sinlessness of the inerrant is given by the late scholar and mystic, Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ḥusaynī Ṭihrānī (1926– 1995 CE). He explains inerrancy alluding to the philosophy of Mulla Sadra (1572–1640) by taking inerrancy to be the highest state of proximity to God. God is identifed with absolute existence, and absolute existence is free from quiddity or whatness – what Aristotle called to ti en einai (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι), which is defned as a defciency or limitation with respect to absolute existence in Sadra’s works. What characterizes the self is quiddity. So, inerrancy is not due to one’s self, but to one’s existence: The prophets and Imāms … had the utmost degree of infallibility, such that they would not even think about the most minor sin, but all of that was due to their frst aspect [existence] and not due to themselves, for one’s self is nothing but imperfection and defciency.40 Ṭihrānī comments that this idea that there is a kind of inherent sinfulness in the quiddity of every person might be compared with the Christian doctrine of original sin: Another note to be made is concerning the Christian concept of the original sin, and the belief that every human being is innately sinful.

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Muhammad Legenhausen This concept and belief can have a plausible meaning if it is interpreted as the aspect of defciency and limitation that is inherent in every human being.41

These remarks bring us to contemporary understandings of inerrancy among those Shi‘i theologians who favor the integration of theology with philosophy and mysticism, a position that has become especially prominent due to the writing and teaching of ‘Allāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī (1904–1981 CE).42

4 Dialectic The Apostle of Allah (ṣ): The frst thing that Allah created was my light.43 The Apostle of Allah (ṣ): The frst thing that Allah created was the intellect.44 Imam al-Bāqir (‘a) said, “When Allah created the intellect He said to it, ‘Come forward’ so it came forward, then He said to it, ‘Go back’ and it went back. Then He said to it, ‘By my Honour and Exaltedness, I have not created anything better than you. It is you that I command, and you that I prohibit from things, and you that I punish and you that I reward.’”45 The course of the development of Shi‘i doctrine may be viewed with regard to its dialectical relation to mysticism and occultism. In the early period, that is prior to the major occultation (941 CE), various forms of what came to be denounced as exaggeration played an important role by serving as that against which other Shi‘a defned themselves. During this early period, taṣawwuf (Sufsm) was also fnding various forms. As mentioned earlier, a number of scholars have suggested that Shi‘i ideas about the imamate infuenced the development of Suf ideas about the insān al-kāmil (the perfected human being). From around the eighth/fourteenth century, the Suf terminology is used with increasing frequency in Shi‘i theological and mystical writings. The inerrant come to be seen as those who have achieved the highest stages of spiritual wayfaring. Particular to Suf esotericism was the idea that when one achieves a certain level of spiritual development, one acquires – with God’s permission, of course – supernatural abilities, such as clairvoyance, knowledge of the future and past, the ability to travel long distances in a moment, having true dreams, etc. There is also an ethical dimension. One who travels the stages of the mystic path also acquires virtue, for virtue results from the control of the base self, for which the wayfaring provides training. With the incorporation of these ideas in the Shi‘i tradition, especially in twelfth/eighteenth century Najaf, we fnd a synthesis of ideas that had been developed in Suf circles for the perfect man, combined with Shi‘i doctrines about inerrancy.46

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One of the most important Shi‘i theologians of this period was Muḥammad Mahdī ibn Murtaḍā al-Ṭabāṭabā’ī, known as Baḥr al-‘Ulūm (1742– 1797 CE). Baḥr al-ʿUlūm witnessed a paradigm shift in the study of Islamic law among Shi‘i scholars, and the predominant Akhbarī school gave way to the Uṣūlī school, which continues to hold the allegiance of the majority of Imāmī scholars today. The Akhbarīs adhered to what had become canonical collections of narrations and were suspicious of philosophy and theoretical mysticism, while the Uṣūlīs held that some of the narrations were dubious, and that reason could be employed to extend religious judgments beyond what had been made explicit in the Qur’ān and narrations. In the development of Uṣūlī approaches to Islamic jurisprudence, the concept of inerrancy was taken to be axiomatic. Whatever actions or sayings of the inerrant are held to be reliable must be consistent with their absolute sinlessness. Baḥr al-ʿUlūm came to be considered the highest authority of the Shi‘a and the leader of the Uṣūlīs. During this period there were also intense debates about the activities and teachings of the Sufs, particularly those associated with the Ni‘matullāhī order.47 Both Akhbārīs and Uṣūlīs wrote treatises condemning the Sufs; and members of both groups wrote works in support of what was presented as authentic mysticism. Among such works, we fnd Baḥr al-ʿUlūm’s Treatise on Spiritual Wayfaring, although there are disputes about the authorship of at least parts of this text. In this work, Baḥr al-ʿUlūm takes up a number of themes that were current among the mystics, among them the idea of the pre-existence of the Prophet (ṣ) mentioned earlier with regard to the doctrine of the Muḥammadan light, which was much discussed in Suf texts as well as in works of the exaggerators. With allusion to the narrations with which this section began, Baḥr al-ʿUlūm asserts that the frst thing God created, the Muḥammadan light, combines both prophethood, nubuwwah, and imamate, as guardianship. He explains: Prophethood stems from guardianship [wilāyah] and is born therefrom. In fact, guardianship is the light and prophethood is its refection; guardianship is the face and prophethood is its image; guardianship is the essence and prophethood is its trace. It was the walī (friend of God, guardian, saint) who was frst commanded to “Come forth” (aqbil), and then it was the nabī (prophet) who was told to “Step back” (adbir). This is why prophethood is not possible without guardianship, but guardianship is possible without prophethood.48 The frst creation, the Muḥammadan light or intellect, is then seen as having two aspects – an outer one, prophethood, and an inner one, guardianship. The inner aspect is said to come closer to God, while the outer aspect must step back because the function of prophethood is to turn to the people

266 Muhammad Legenhausen and bring them the divine message.49 The perfection of the prophets and Imams derives from their primordial connection with this divine light. Inerrancy came to be viewed as a natural result of successful spiritual wayfaring. To be free from sin and to have supernatural knowledge was not restricted to the prophets and Imams. With regard to the prophets and Imams, however, there is a divine guarantee of inerrancy due to the need to safeguard divine guidance, but sinlessness and occult knowledge can also be found among those who are especially close to God because of their spiritual wayfaring and divine grace. As we have seen, mysticism is also used to solve the puzzle of the repentance of the inerrant, for their quiddities require them to attend to what is other than God, and this – while not a sin and not punishable or blameworthy – makes repentance in those of this sublime state ftting. Finally, attention to mystical teachings about spiritual wayfaring enabled Shi‘i theologians to explain how the inerrant could be protected from sin without being prevented from sinning by divine intervention. The heart of the ma‘ṣūm is so flled with contrition, and with preference for the divine will above the personal wishes of the self, that virtue and wisdom are a natural result. According to the contemporary theologian – Ayatullah Ja‘far Sobhani (b. 1929), there are both internal and external explanations for inerrancy. Externally, God protects the inerrant by guarding them directly and through His angels, but without any coercion or compulsion.50 Internally, the inerrant are so consumed with awareness of God and contentment with His will, that there is nothing that would lead them to stray. 51 In addition to these points, Ayatullah Sobhani also emphasizes the conditions needed for the inerrant to fulfll their functions of providing people with divine guidance in order to defend a very high level of perfection. He cites Ṭūsī in this regard, and argues that whatever is needed in order for the inerrant to fulfll their divine missions must be granted to them by God. He then argues that if they had any faw or committed any breach of good conduct – and even if they suffered from a kind of physical defect or disease that would be repulsive to people – they would not be able to attain the confdence of their followers to be worthy of absolute obedience. But without this confdence in their judgments and obedience to their commands and example, they would not be able to perform their divine mission. Since the mission of guidance is from God, it is, thus, incumbent upon God to provide those with the mission of guidance the characteristics of sinlessness, virtue, knowledge, fawlessness, and wisdom, without which they would not be accepted by people as inerrant divine guides. 52

5 Contemplation The Apostle of Allah (ṣ) to ‘Alī (‘a): “O ‘Alī! Your example in this community (ummah) is like the example of Jesus the son of Mary; a group of people loved him and exaggerated in this, and a group of people

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hated him and exaggerated in this.” He said: “Then it was revealed: ‘When the son of Mary was cited as an example, behold, your people raise an outcry’”. [43:57]53 The Shi‘i theology of inerrancy has been and continues to be a defning marker that distinguishes the Shi‘a from other groups. It has taken shape in the course of conficts and amended appropriations from the exaggerators and Sufs, and in explicit opposition to positions ascribed to Sunnis and Christians. Although the doctrinal statements refect the factors that were most prominent in different periods, there is also a consistency in the main elements of the doctrine throughout the course of Shi‘i history. The inerrant are thought to be free from major and minor sins and many other kinds of errors, to possess supernatural knowledge and wisdom, and to be free from many other kinds of defects. Furthermore, the doctrine is justifed on the basis of both revealed sources and what is accepted as rational argument. The rational argumentation begins with the assumption that God, due to His mercy, provides guidance toward Himself for those who might otherwise go astray. The elaborations of the doctrinal statements generally consider the conditions required to provide optimal divine guidance. Today, there are other cultural elements that engage the thoughts of Shi‘i scholars than those that formed the context of earlier creeds. Sociological and psychological research is highly relevant to the manner in which religious teachings are understood and spread; and, surely, this can be expected to infuence future refections on the nature of divine guidance. Modern science, historical studies, and philosophical theories of rationality are also gaining the attention of theologians and will form a part of the context in which future developments of doctrine take place. Standards of plausibility are sensitive to the intellectual environment in which arguments are assessed. This context will also be enhanced as deeper understanding is achieved among the different positions that have been taken within Islam, including Sunni and non-orthodox Shi‘i thought, as well as the various tendencies within the Twelver denomination. We can only hope that enmity between the communities will give way to respectful scholarly exchanges. We pray, too, that the dialogues and collaborative research between Christians and Muslims that are taking place with increasing frequency and qualitative improvement will also enrich the milieu in which our theologies continue to evolve.

Notes 1 Ja’far Sobhani, in ed. Reza Shah-Kazemi, Doctrines of Shi’i Islam (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 76. 2 Cf. Ruhollah Khomeini, The Greatest Jihad: Combat with the Self (Tehran: The Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works, 2005), 29–31. Contrary to Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent (New York: New

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York University Press, 1993), 465, there is no indication in any of his works that Khomeini thought of himself as inerrant. Cf. Matthew Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 4 and 94–125. The mufawwiḍah held that the Imams had divine powers (such as the power by which the world is created and maintained) that were delegated to them by God. Discussions of both groups may be found in Hossein Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shi’ite Islam (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1993), 21–49. Muhammad Ibn Ali Ibn Babawayh, Uyun al-Akhbar al-Riḍā, translated by Ali Pairavi (Qom: Ansariyan, 2006), 19-2 and 202. www.al-islam.org/uyunakhbar-ar-ridha-volume-1-shaykh-saduq. See Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shi’ite Islam, 25. Wilferd Madelung, The Succession to Muhammad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 38. Heinz Halm, “ḠOLĀT,” Encyclopædia Iranica (2012). www.iranicaonline. org/articles/golat; Sean W. Anthony, “The Legend of ‘Abdallah ibn Saba’ and the Date of Umm al-Kitab,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 21:1 (2011), 1–2. Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (cf. n. 3), 86. Matti Moosa, Extremist Shiites (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987), xx. According to Ayatullah Amini, the motives for ghulūw are three: ignorance, exploitation for self-promotion, and extravagance in affection. Ibrahim Amini, Imamate and the Imams (Qom: Ansariyan, 2011), 52. Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (cf. n. 3), 87. Ibid., 88. Ibid., 27. al-Kafi, v. 2, 75. William F. Tucker, Mahdis and Millenarians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 113. Anthony, The Legend of ‘Abdallah ibn Saba’, 18. Also see Sean W. Anthony, The Caliph and the Heretic (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2012), 186–9. Bart D. Ehrman & Zlatko Pleše, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), Ch. 6. See the list by century provided in Yaron Friedman, The Nus ̣ayrī-ʿAlawīs (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2010), 274. Friedman, The Nus ̣ayrī-ʿAlawīs, 8. See Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (cf. n. 3), 22–23. See, for example, Newman’s discussion of the extremist sources that found their way into Kulaynī’s works: Andrewj J. Newman, The Formative Period of Twelver Shi`ism (Richmond: Curzon, 2000), 198. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Spirituality of Shiʿi Islam (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 120. See Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (cf. n. 3), Ch. 4, 94–126. Martin J. McDermott, The Theology of al-Shaikh al-Mufd (Beirut: Librairie Oriental, 1986), 102. Syed Husain M. Jafri, Origins and Early Development of Shi’a Islam (London: Longman, 1979), 302. In his introduction to A Shi‘ite Anthology, Seyyed Hossein Nasr describes the doctrine of the transmission of the nur al-Muḥammadī as ‘technical’ usage in Shi‘ite theology: William C. Chittick, ed., A Shi’ite Anthology (London: Muhammadi Trust, 1980), 6. For further references see Amir-Moezzi, The Spirituality of Shiʿi Islam, 136. For a fuller discussion see: Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shi`ism, 29–55. Also see Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (cf. n. 3), 129–31.

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25 Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shi’ite Islam, 36. 26 Bernd Radtke & John O’Kane, The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism (Richmond: Curzon 1996), 100–3. 27 Gerhard Böwering, The Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 149f. and 254. 28 Mohammad Ja’far Reza’ee and Mohammad Nasiri, “Naẓariyeh “Imāmat-e bātinī dar tashayyu‘ nakhostīn” dar būteh naqd (Criticism of the Esoteric View of Imamate in Early Shi’ism),” Naqd va Nazar 17:67 (1391/2012); Mohammad Soori, Ali Amininezhad & Ibrahim Alipur, “Naqd-e didgah Amir-Moezzi dar bareh ‘irfan-e shi’i (Criticism of the view of Amir-Moezzi about Shi’ite mysticism),” aparat.com (1395/2016). www.aparat.com/v/3C1by. 29 The dispute is mentioned in Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (cf. n. 3), 27. A Persian condemnation of the attacks on Modarressi may be found at Sayyid Ali Taliqani, “Molahazati bar asibshenasi madhhabi-farhangi mo’asir shi’ah tavasot doktor modarressi tabataba’I,” dinonline.com, Mordad 16 (1394/2015). www. dinonline.com/doc/note/fa/5364/. 30 My translation of the Arabic. Note that the word translated here as ‘permissible’ can also mean ‘conceivable’ or ‘possible.’ The source given in reference in Muḥammad Riḍā Muẓaffar, The Faith of the Imamiyya Shi’a (Tehran: ABWA, 2012), Part 3, n. 22 (www.al-islam.org/faith-imamiyyah-shiahshaykh-muhammad-ridha-al-mudhaffar), is: “Mukhtasar Basa’ir al-Darajat by al-Hasan al-Hilli (the ninth century of Hijrah), pp. 92; Bihar al-Anwar by al-Majlisi (AH 1111), 25:364, H. 1, Section No. 12; Mustadrak Safnat alBihar by al-Namazi al-Shahrudi (AH 1405), 1:199.” 31 McDermott, The Theology of al-Shaikh al-Mufd (cf. n. 23), 101. 32 Ibid., 110. 33 Ibid., 109. 34 This is a commentary on the rather telegraphic remarks of Ṭūsī: One of the reasons for the infallibility of the Imam is the impossibility of an infnite regress (al-tasalsul) which necessitates his infallibility. Another reason is because he is the protector of the Divine Law, and if he commits a sin, it will be necessary to disapprove of his action. Thus, his violation will be contradictory to the Divine command that he should be obeyed; thereby the goal of his appointment will not be achieved, and his degree and rank will be lower than that of the lowest of the laypeople. (Jamal al-Din Hilli, “Allamah al-Hilli on Imamate in his Kashf al-Murad, Pt. I.,” edited by Karim Aghili, The Message of Thaqalayn 15:4 (2015), available online at: www.messageofthaqalayn.com/60,%20Kashf% 20al-Murad%20I%2059%20-%2078.pdf, accessed 4. August 2018.) The Arabic is: J. a.-D. Hilli, Kashf al-Murad f sharh tajrid al-i’tiqad, edited by Hasan Hasanzadeh Amuli (Qom: Mu’assassah al-Nashr al-Islami al-Tabi’ah li-jama’ah al-mudarrisin, 1984), 364. 35 Hilli, Kashf al-Murad f sharh tajrid al-i’tiqad, 346–8. For a translation of this section, see: Norman Calder, Jawid Mojaddedi & Andrew Rippin, Classical Islam: A Sourcebook of Religious Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 166–9. For similar discussion in Jewish philosophical theology, see the discussion of Saadia in Jonathan Jacobs, “The Epistemology of Moral Tradition: A Defense of a Maimonidean Thesis,” The Review of Metaphysics 64:1 (2010), 64. 36 Hilli, Kashf al-Murad f sharh tajrid al-i’tiqad, 69.

270 Muhammad Legenhausen 37 Muẓaffar, The Faith of the Imamiyya Shi’a, 21–22 and 32. 38 Hilli, Kashf al-Murad f sharh tajrid al-i’tiqad, 71. 39 Hasan Yusufyan & Ahmad Husayn Sharif, Pazhuheshi dar ‘ismat-e ma’suman (Research in the inerrancy of the infallibles) (Tehran: Pazhuheshgah Farhang va Andisheh Islami, 1377/1998), 330–3. 40 Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, Treatise on Spiritual Journeying and Wayfaring, edited by Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ḥusaynī Ṭihrānī (Chicago, IL: Kazi, 2013), 180. 41 Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, Treatise on Spiritual Journeying and Wayfaring, 181. 42 For his biography, see Hamed Algar, “`Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba’i: Philosopher, Exegete, and Gnostic,” Journal of Islamic Studies 17:3 (2006), 326–51. 43 M. Muhammadi Reyshahri, ed., The Scale of Wisdom (Qom: Dar al-Hadith, 2009), 225, citing: Biḥār al-Anwār, v. 1, p. 97, no. 7. 44 Reyshahri, The Scale of Wisdom, 225, citing: Biḥār al-Anwār, v. 1, p. 97, no. 8. 45 Reyshahri, The Scale of Wisdom, 533, citing al-Kafi, v. 1, p. 26, no. 26. 46 For more on this fascinating period of Shi‘i history, see the foreword and introduction to Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, Treatise on Spiritual Journeying and Wayfaring (cf. n. 40) and the references given there. 47 In addition to the references in Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, Treatise on Spiritual Journeying and Wayfaring (cf. n. 40) see Alexander Knysh, Islamic Mysticism (Leiden; Boston, MA; Köln: Brill, 2000), 241–2. 48 Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, Treatise on Spiritual Journeying and Wayfaring (cf. n. 40), 24. 49 I am grateful to Ayatullah Miṣbāḥ for explaining this point in private conversation. 50 Sobhani, Doctrines of Shi’i Islam (cf. n. 1), 71. 51 Ibid., 74. 52 Ibid., 72–73. 53 Reyshahri, The Scale of Wisdom (cf. n. 43), 289, citing: Biḥār al-Anwār, v. 25, p. 284, no. 34.

14 The theological concept of imamate How Imamis reconcile human perfection and free will Vahid Mahdavi Mehr This chapter is an attempt to show more clearly the mechanism through which the concept of imamate, human perfection, and sin work in Imami speculative theology. The reason that I think it is reasonable to explain the role of the concept of imamate in a more systematic way is that it will hopefully provide a way to understand, frst, how the concept of imamate is open to different interpretations depending on one’s ontological, epistemological, or anthropological system of thought, and second, how different approaches to this concept can coexist, and how they can be approached comparatively. Mohammad Legenhausen, in his chapter in this edition, explains different understandings of imamate proposed by different Shi‘a scholars throughout Shi‘a history. But analyzing the theological system in which this concept and other concepts like human perfection and sin are defned, sometimes hints that there is virtually no essential difference between these concepts in Christian and Muslim theologies and the two apparently different concepts have the same theological function. Therefore, after explaining how the lack of an explicit orthodoxy in Islam, particularly in Imami Shi‘a, renders a plurality of understandings of concepts in principle valid, I will briefy explain what human perfection and sin mean in different trends of Imami thought, which might regulate possible comparative studies between the two traditions.

1 Preliminary remarks What I will deal with in this chapter is imamate as a theological concept, which I also try to argue is the essential meaning of the concept in Imami theology,1 and not a political one, which has a secondary function for Imamis as opposed to some other trends of Islamic thought. The theological  concept of imamate, however, is usually misunderstood, or understood in a way such that its political implications undermine its theological essence. Another decisive remark is the notion of orthodoxy in Islamic scholarship. It can be argued that “there are no generally accepted religious authority, no hierarchy, or ecclesiastical offce that would decide for all Muslims what

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is the right belief.”2 And the Quran, the main religious source of Muslims, is not a book of creeds. But it also could be argued that “through the use of informal authority – which is based on reputation as opposed to formal investiture – religious communities can establish and sustain orthodoxy even in the absence of a formal ecclesiastical hierarchy.”3 From the mainstream Sunni perspective, the orthodoxy emerges based on the consensus, ijma’, of notable religious scholars. Although this consensus seems different and formally less authoritative than its Catholic Christian predecessor, it still decides which groups of people are counted as heretics and which doctrines are considered to be heterodoxies. It will also, ironically, make other trends look, in contrast, authoritative. Fazlur Rahman, for example, sums up his view on Shi‘a Muslims by quoting Goldziher: “Sunni Islam is a religion of ijma’, Shi‘a Islam a religion of authority.”4 But as Joel Kraemer, although cautiously, observes, while “Imami Shiism appears at frst blush indisposed to intellectual receptiveness because of its doctrine of the infallible Imam,” this doctrine “breeds skepticism” by “implying that other sources of knowledge are questionable,”5 especially after the occultation of the last Imam of the Imamis, which was the offcial end to Imamis’ direct access to their sole reliable source of religious knowledge. The absence of the Imam in a system that recognizes the Imam, a concept which includes the prophet, as the sole authority on all religious subjects, whether in Islamic law or theology, makes room for a general skeptical attitude towards different sources of knowledge and paves the way for a certain plurality of rational arguments. However, the concept of Imamate in Shi‘a Islam looks particularly authoritative and limiting when misappropriated in certain Sunni frameworks. Namely, to think that there is a body of canonical traditions by Shi‘i Imams that are accepted by all Imamis. This misapprehension, however, is not totally unjustifed. Two reasons might cause such an outlook. First, it could be a result of specifc Imami schools of thought that had such a view and that gained mainstream appeal at a certain time, and hence, were mistaken for what is ‘orthodox’ Imami thought. Second, Shi‘a has been an umbrella term for different non-Sunni Muslims but is also used, particularly today, to denote a specifc branch of Shi‘a, namely Imamis. So, one can mistake the understanding of Ismaili Shi‘a believers, for example, for the Imami position on a certain subject. However, even the Sunni orthodoxy, if existent, is a later development in Islamic history and there is no established orthodoxy until the Abbasids dynasty, in which, “[p]resumably under al-Mahdi, the Mutakkallimun acquired the function of a kind of police over orthodoxy” and “their arguing with non-Muslims was also the area in which the Mutakkallimun most proved their worth; this was how Islamic theology in its method and to a considerable extent in its contents as well acquired its profle.”6 The necessity of creating an orthodoxy, whether it comes naturally or to maintain and regulate power, was the course of action effectively implemented by Abbasids together with some Mu’tazelis, which paved the way for the

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formation of an Islamic orthodoxy, albeit one still different from the original meaning of the term. In the formative years of the orthodoxy, it seems that a branch of Mu’tazili thought dissolved into the currently mainstream Ash’ari thought and went practically extinct as an independent school of thought. Their yearning for creating an orthodoxy, though, lived mainly through Ash’aris, who later joined forces with traditionalists when possible or superseded them when necessary and gained popularity and the claim to orthodoxy – what some Shi‘a Muslims also did when they gained power in Persia for example under the Safavid dynasty. The other branch, inherited the individualism and the “rational spirit” of the Mu’tazilis, which particularly lived on in Shi’a theology.7 Hence, from an orthodox perspective, a doctrinal opposition to consensus might be the line that separates Shi‘a theology from the Islamic orthodoxy. But looking from outside the orthodoxy, it is not an accurate observation. This opposition to orthodoxy might have roots in that the Shi‘a Islam in its formative period was almost always marginalized, and one might want to entertain the idea that existing in its self-understanding was a narrative of betrayal.8 This shows a mindset in which the opinion of the majority is primarily seen as entangled with power structures and corruption and more prone to personal or systematic faws or infuences. There was no romantic or utopian extended period in the Shi‘a narrative of Islamic history that inclines them towards accepting the consensus of the Muslim community or elites on intellectual matters or to try to revive a certain period in which all Muslims lived together in peace and harmony. Early Imami hadith contains, for example, hadiths that in themselves or by referring to the Quran try to condemn consensus and praise marginality and individuality in matters of rational thought9 together with accounts that emphasize the entanglement of rationality with minority and individuality. Whether it was the situation that made this mindset or this mindset that made the situation is not of interest here, but its existence is important in our formulation of the theological concept of imamate. For Imamis, a majority and consensus of the community is believed to be decisive and acceptable in politics, even if they consider the majority to be wrong.10 This fundamental enmity to orthodoxy in favor of consensus is one of the reasons that there is “no normative mainstream Shi’ism […] prior to the tenth century, even among the followers of the twelve Imams.”11 But even Imami theologians of later centuries would have a technical problem in creating an orthodoxy even if they wanted to. The fact that the limited number of religious authorities for Imamis were mainly under oppression and surveillance makes it much harder for an Imami to be able to argue for the authenticity of a certain teaching from an Imam. While “early Shi’a theologians formulated their doctrines on the basis of teachings of Imams […] none of their writings have come to us directly, except for quotations from their books on the works of later authors.”12 What makes it even more complicated is the practice of dissimilation, concealing one’s true beliefs

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and accepting the opinion of the majority in the face of grave danger, which was strongly emphasized by the Imams and should have certainly been exercised by Shi‘a scholars. In matters of theology, hence, the Imami scholar has two options – either to accept a body of hadith or book as more or less authentic, similar to mainstream Sunni Islam and some traditionist schools in Imami Shi‘a, or to go through meticulous authentication of every hadith, and ultimately deciding by reason which hadith has proper, acceptable content.13 So it will not make sense to talk about imamate and discuss its theological implications if we do not set a certain philosophical or theological system as the working system, and while pseudo-dogmas like mainstream belief systems or the creeds of other scholars or schools of thought work as intellectual challenges to the results of every system, any systematic understanding of the concept of imamate should, in principle, be acceptable as Imami thought.

2 Imami thought, esoteric and exoteric There are two defnitions of imamate, standing on the two ends of a spectrum, and different trends of Imami thought fall somewhere between these two, namely, the mystical esoteric and the rational exoteric. These trends, however, all deal with imamate theologically, not politically. This will prove to be contrary to the understanding that sees imamate as a primarily political concept, which depicts Shi‘a as more of a political ‘party’ as the word ‘Shi‘a’ might literally suggest. Theological imamate The concept of imamate is not exclusively Imami. Both Sunni and Zaidi Shi‘a theologies see it as an essentially political concept. Patricia Crone, for example, defnes the general idea of imamate in Islamic history as such. She identifes imams with the “rulers” of an “[i]deal government” that was considered by the Muslim community to have existed in early years of Islam until the last of the four righteous caliphs.14 She sees imamate and caliphate to be two different aspects of the same person, the ruler, designating his legitimacy and political power. She then observes a Mu’tazili anarchist tendency as a result of disenchantment or regret after a brief period of ideal governments that ended in a distorted kingship, which could no longer be desirable or enchanting. Consequently, “the Mu’tazilites (as also the Najdiyya) declared the imamate unnecessary.”15 Crone believes that for Muslims, “the frst imam in human history was Adam. The frst imam in Islamic history was Muhammad; and the imams after him adopted the title caliph.”16 However, there are good reasons for Imamis to understand and use this notion primarily as theological and see the political understanding as

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problematic. As a scriptural argument, frstly, the Quran does not use the word imam only for human beings. It also uses the word for the “book of Moses” (Q 46:12), for example. This means that imamate is essentially more general than a position that only a human being can take up. Secondly, in cases where a human being was considered by the Quran to be an imam, the notion was not exclusive to rulers of the communities. In Q 25:63–76 the Quran uses the word “Caliph” for David, who was also a ruler and for whom it does not use the term imam; meanwhile it uses the term imam for Abraham, for whom there is no account of government in the Quran. These two remarks will be important in understanding the concept of imamate as a notion that can fnd a political defnition and be applied to a ruler but is not essentially so. For the Imamis, as I tried to argue in part in the past section, there was no such thing as an ideal past and no ‘golden age myth.’ Except for a very short period, not only were Shi‘a Imams not caliphs, they did not even try to be. In consequence, for Imamis, even when an Imam was not a ruler, he was no less in his imamate. The accounts of Imams’ disinterest in governing people in Imami tradition could be seen as a sign of differentiation or lack of a necessary connection between imamate and caliphate. That is the reason that while political imamate, at least for some Mu’tazilis, died with the rise of corrupt governments, theological imamate survived with Imamis who also believed that the government of its time was corrupt but this could not be allowed to affect the core of the concept of imamate for them. The core concept of imamate was entangled with the possession of religious knowledge, which considered Imams to be the keepers of God’s law in the society by knowing and living it, and the ones that understood what the theological core of religion is. While keeping religious law alive and preserved was a function of imamate, imposing it was not. The account that Crone gives, hence, while describes the concept from the perspective of an ‘orthodox’ trend of Islam and as a concept in political theory, does not account for another more philosophical perspective that does not see imamate as primarily political. That is the reason for imamate to enter Imami theology as a subdivision of prophetology, and not in political theory as a subdivision of Islamic law, where it would otherwise have belonged. Exoteric theological imamate On one end of the spectrum of theological understanding of imamate, as I said, stands the view that characterizes Imamis as essentially esoteric or as having a mystical approach to religion or understanding of the Quran.17,18 The esoteric perspective on religion exists in Shi‘a theology and it is not easy to argue that it is a minority view or extremist in some way.19 It is also an appealing way of giving an identity to Imamis if one understands them in terms of a clear counter-orthodoxy against mainstream Sunni orthodoxy or in sharp contrast to Sunni consensus doctrine. However, this

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understanding sometimes goes too far with an explicit dismissal of the vast tradition of Sunni esoterism 20 and of other Imami approaches to theology or the Quran. Amir-Moezzi, for example, believes that rational theology, i.e., kalām, represents the exoteric branch of Shīʿī theology, which its representatives share in one way or another with their counterparts from other Muslim denominations. Its importance seems thus secondary when compared to another characteristically Shīʿī type of theology, i.e., esoteric theology. 21 This leads him to conclude that “[t]he true axis around which the Shīʿī religion turns is the imam. One might even say that Shīʿism, as it appears in the earliest systematic books that have reached us, is an Imamology.”22 One can refuse to accept that the essential skepticism of Imami rationality towards any form of consensus separates its rational theology from most of the existing rational theological schools of Islamic theology, but it still makes sense to accept Imamis as yet another rational branch of Islamic theology. It is not self-evident that Imami theology must be essentially different from Sunni theology. On the contrary, one can observe that “Shi’ism in thought and practice does not manifest great differences with Sunnī Islam,” and that “the principal line of distinction between the two can be found in the sources and authorities cited.”23 Amir-Moezzi’s defnition seems not to be the tendency or self-understanding of many Imami theologians that did not belong to the esoteric schools. It could only work as a premise that shapes one’s perspective on what one wants to see as essential and what as secondary, but is of no objective value. His formulation of Imami theology and considering it in its core ‘Imamology’ seems particularly interesting in a Christian context because it might resemble the place that Christology has in Christian theology. This defnition, however, undermines both Sunni esoteric traditions and Shi’i exoteric ones. Rahman correctly observes that while in the time of Shi‘a imams there was a source of guidance for Imamis, if only theoretically, “after the disappearance of the last imam, there is not even the theoretical guidance but only an expectation of his return.” However, instead of recognizing the consequences of such a belief manifested in rational schools of Imami thought, at least in the earlier centuries of Islam, which Kraemer observes, he also accepts the esoteric trends of Shi‘a as the characterizing trend; 24 a profle that ignores other important trends of Imami Shi‘a. Moreover, the esoteric tendencies in Imami history did not necessarily have speculative theological consequences. Many times, it had more of a metanarrative function instead of dogmatic value. For many Imamis, the end of prophecy meant the start of the dominance of reason. 25 Even if an Imami scholar wanted to be a traditionalist, it meant he had to argue for the insuffciency of reason in a certain theological matter to make way for any other reading. The esoteric

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trends as well had to and would give a defnition to reason that would allow them to implement their perspective. So not only are Imamis not essentially esoteric, esoteric Imamis might deal with certain theological matters and the Quran exoterically. In conclusion, and in line with what I discussed earlier, my criticism of Crone and Rahman and of Amir-Moezzi, which was mainly concerned with their ignoring certain trends of thought, was not an attempt at fnding the ‘true’ or ‘orthodox’ Imami belief. Consequently, the terms ‘moderate,’ ‘exaggerated,’ or ‘underrated’ – which we might see in describing different Imami conceptions of Imams and which was used by different Imami schools as a derogatory term in referring to the other – can have no positive or negative connotations from a less biased standpoint but only indicate where one stands on a spectrum of the different understandings of a concept.

3 Inerrancy and human perfection Legenhausen sums up the attitude of the mainstream Shi‘a, which stands between the two ends of the spectrum of imamate: “Within the range of the chaotic formative years, a doctrine of iṣmah took shape among what would become the ‘Orthodox’ Imami Shi‘a according to which the imams were perfectly obedient to the religious law and had perfect knowledge.” The Imams, for the Imamis, however, “are not immortal, they are signs or manifestations of – but not incarnations of – God, they have physical bodies and needs.”26 The two extremes that are criticized by this “orthodoxy” can be described as either exaggerating or underrating the concept of imamate. 27 Esoteric view Human perfection in terms of an esoteric mystical understanding of the concept of imamate tends towards the so-called exaggerated end of the concept spectrum. This understanding of human perfection is close to what a Christian theologian might call ‘divinity.’ It seems to be the closest a formulation of the Islamic understanding of God’s relationship to creation comes to a classical Christian understanding of the divinity of Christ, which probably has to do with their shared philosophical system, which can be described as follows: God Himself has two ontological levels. First, that of the Essence, which is forever inconceivable, unimaginable, beyond all thought. It can only be described by God Himself through His revelations and can be conceived merely as a negative apophatic theology. […] [So that He does not remain hidden,] God thus brought forth in His own being another level, the level of ‘names and attributes’ (al-asmāʾ wa-l-ṣifāt) through

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Vahid Mahdavi Mehr which He is revealed and made known, for He is not the Unknowable but the Unknown who aspires to be known. This is the level of the revealed, exoteric dimension of God and of what can be known about Him. […] These names and attributes act in the created world through divine ‘organs’ (aʿḍāʾ) which are manifestations of the Divine (maẓhar, majlā), theophanies. The theophany par excellence is the Imam (with a capital ‘I’) in the cosmic, archetypical, metaphysical sense. […] In Twelver Shīʿism, the awliyāʾ par excellence, i.e., loci of manifestation of the Imam, are the ‘Fourteen Immaculates’ (maʿṣūm), namely Muḥammad, his daughter Fāṭima, and the twelve imams. 28

Everyone within the spectrum of Imami thought seems to agree with what Legenhausen describes as the dogma, that whatever perfection that could be attributed to a human being is in principle allowed or recommended to be attributed to an Imam, which constitutes the notion of isma. And whatever is reserved for the Creator and cannot be attributed to creatures cannot be attributed to the imams as well. 29 But the relation between creatures and the creator in the mystical formulation seems complicated enough to stretch the boundaries of this dogma. Muslim philosophers even saw no problem in an entity being created and coeternal with God because of how they formulated the meaning of creation, which had nothing to do with time but with essential qualities. So, it was easy to understand the Imam (with a capital I) to have qualities that many theologians understand as divine while maintaining his being created. This seems, prima facie, to be similar to the Arian understanding of the created eternality of the Logos within Christian thought, which was condemned by the Nicene council. In line with the opposition to Arianism, Muslim theologians (Mutakallimun) believed that if something is created, it means that it cannot be eternal or coeternal with the creator. They argued that creation, by defnition, meant having a starting point in time as opposed to eternality. Muslim philosophers, on the other hand, believed eternality to be compatible with createdness and, thus, believed the world to be eternal yet created. 30 The esoteric view, hence, can in principle see the Imam as being coeternal with God although being created. Therefore, the meaning of the term ‘divinity’ used in the Christian dogma could mislead an Imami theologian into thinking a Christian and Imami understanding of human perfection to be irreconcilable. The line that an Imami, dogmatically, cannot cross is ascribing divinity to an Imam as opposed to Christianity, which sets the very reality of a divine human as its dogma. But one can see that the formulation of what is divine and what is not is something that has been debated in Islamic theology, and while an Imami Mutakkalim might still disagree with the Nicene formulation of divinity, it will become a less alien idea when it is understood as similar to the Muslim philosopher’s understanding of divinity and creation.

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Exoteric view In another trend of Imami theology, which might stretch towards the so-called underrating view of imamate – which Amir-Moezzi seems to ignore – the problem that lies in the foundation of the disagreement between different schools of Imami thought in the imamate is different. In this perspective, the notion of isma of the imams, including those before Islam, like Abraham, fnds a historical and social characteristic. The underrating view of imamate shares the interest in history in shaping its conception of the imamate with the “from below” framework of thought in modern Christian theology, “in which the historical fgure, Jesus of Nazareth, is always in play as the source and ultimate referent in affrmations about Jesus Christ.”31 It is concerned with the meaning of human perfection in a more material sense. It has more of an anthropological attitude towards human beings than a metaphysical one. Its conception, hence, has virtually nothing to do with divinity in the metaphysical sense of the word. Imams are considered to be normal human beings, the continuation of a line of guardians of God’s laws and commands, and are the most capable of understanding and formulating them and cannot be in any way exclusively divine (Q17:94–95). It seems true, however, that in this understanding, imamate has no central place in theology, and Imamology and Christology might become a mere overlap of two theological subjects that belong to two different parts of each theological system. Christian theology, even in “from below” approaches, must address incarnation – God’s presence in Jesus Christ as the one true self-revelation of God in whom God is fully present. In the underrating Imami theology, on the other hand, there is no such dogmatic anchor. Incarnation and manifestation A decisive element in fnding correlations and possibilities of comparative study is the scrutinizing of the difference between manifestation and incarnation, between something that can theologically happen only once and something that happens all the time, between seeing the perfect human being as the one who enables salvation and as those who are helping us in choosing the right path, which makes them theologically symbolic. The plurality of God’s manifestations in the exoteric Imami system corresponds to the “from below” and symbolic understanding of Christ as savior, while the “from above” understanding resonates with the esoteric system. In Christian “from below” formulations, one can see that the meaning of divinity proposed by Christian theologians can ft the description of isma in the underrating Imami theology. Whether it always does or what are the challenges is the outcome of comparative studies between the two. It would be beyond my expertise to decide whether seeing the divinity of Christ not

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as “a new divine property” but the actualization of a potential that “exists in all humans,” as Grössl puts it32 can remain “from above” or not. The approach of Schleiermacher in Protestant theology or Rahner in Catholic Christian theology – which sees perfection in “the relationship of Christ to God” as “the uniquely actualized maximal degree of the same relationship all humans stand in with God”33 – could ft the “from below” view depending on the necessity or accidentality of this uniqueness. A uniqueness of this actuality to one person might make it a “from above” approach in a modern formulation, as Roger Haight proposes, 34 which will keep it in the realm of esoteric Imami schools. What I can say is that “from below” approaches resonate with the Imami theology that sees a permissiveness for a plurality of manifestations of God. This would be a description that understands the divinity of Christ in a way that Imami theologians sharing the underrating view can appreciate, a description that they might not call divinity, but then it is only the wording and not the meaning that is in the way. “From above” approaches, on the other end, defend a certain hierarchy for salvation, requiring a perfect entity to enable salvation to those beneath; parallel to those approaches, esoteric Imami thought shares a theological hierarchy of human perfection, advancing a hierarchy of knowledge, which also can comparatively engage with its Christian counterpart. The pluralistic attitude of the Quran towards the prophets seems to suggest that the Abrahamic religions can, in principle, lead believers to salvation. Consequently, exoteric Imamis are more inclined to understand the Quran in its plain meaning and system, as opposed to esoteric Imamis, who tend to go into deeper, more mystical levels of understanding the verses. The Quran, plainly read, tries to establish the possibility of salvation for Muslims by pointing to the very fact that salvation is not exclusive to any religion or denomination of the Abrahamic religions. In other words, the religion of Abraham is a true religion and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, are, in principle, included in its salvifc function.35 This attitude of the Quran permits the underrating Imami understanding of isma or human perfection in seeing its actualization in more than one person and considering other Abrahamic religions as theologically the same as Islam. For the Quran, in its plain meaning, many societies throughout history, from a sacred history perspective, have produced or have been blessed with a perfect human being. Whether this plurality could or should be reduced to only one perfect human being for all, however, depends on one’s philosophical and theological presumptions. That is why the Quran has been understood by many Muslim theologians in a way that adheres to “from above” perspectives and that sees the very Quran, for example, as the crux of salvation history, similar to the Christian view of the crucifxion. As far as divinity is concerned – which seems to be the dogmatic irresolvable confict between Imami and Christian theologies – classical, modern, and postmodern Christian theology can fnd counterparts in different Imami schools of thought with which a constructive comparative theology

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is possible. But it is important to note that what corresponds to the discussion on the divine nature of Christ in its classical sense of the word is, once again, the Mutakkalimun’s discussion on the nature of the Quran, and not Imams. In other words, when Logos is discussed as a divine and not human entity, one can fnd correspondence and the possibility of a comparative study between Islamic and Christian theology on the meaning of Logos, which for some Muslim theologians could mean the Quran, and when it is concerned with the human nature of Christ, the correspondence is between Jesus as a perfect human being and the Imams as personal realizations of the concept of imamate, which also comes down to the perfection of human beings. And while these two aspects, divine and human, are considered by Christian theology to be realized in one entity, Jesus Christ, for Islamic theology, they are not.

4 Sin and free will The possibility of having a plurality of perfect human beings is also related to the Islamic conception of sin, which as I try to show is different, at least from the classical Christian notion of sin. The frst thing to know about sin and sinlessness from an Imami perspective is that sin is related to one’s lack of knowledge. The laws of God are considered being designed to address, in moderation, one’s natural animal needs. Every normal human being is blessed, whether metaphysically or naturally depending on one’s philosophical perspective, with a compass that more or less tells one the basic right from wrong or gives one the ability to recognize right from wrong when given suffcient information. Sin, hence, is committed when one acts against one’s better judgement, which results from not knowing the law or not knowing the destructive consequences of acting against the law, for this world or the other. Consequently, it is assumed that in a relatively optimum environment, it is not impossible for a normal human being to remain sinless. It seems true that “a person guided by sensible consciousness naturally tries to avoid pain and fulfll natural desires”36 but if one has, at the same time, knowledge of the law and the consequences of breaking the law, so this perspective assumes, there is no desire for one to sin in an optimum situation in which all natural desires are addressed in moderation, unless one has suppressed one’s internal moral compass by continuously acting against one’s better judgment. Also, human consciousness is not considered so evil that requires a God-consciousness to avoid evil, but only needs to have enough knowledge in seeing the consequences of one’s actions for the survival instinct to act according to God’s law. From this perspective, the story of Adam, in its slightly but decisively different formulation in the Quran, is an example of how we should act, and not one about how we essentially are. The assumption is that the world and human beings are designed to work in harmony and God’s law is supposed to regulate this harmony and is in accordance with the needs of both to keep the situation

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of the world optimal. So, a perfect knowledge of the law and the consequences of breaking it would cancel out temptations to sin in any rational human being in an optimal environment. Then again, by having a heavily metaphysical understanding of knowledge, we face a description that will come close to divinity. It seems reasonable, therefore, to propose that sin, as a concept, does not have a place in Islamic theology. One’s salvation is entangled with one’s actions. The equivalent of the concept of sin in Islamic theology might be the question of the human awareness of God and God’s laws. Whether human beings have to acquire this knowledge, or whether they potentially or actually know that God exists and they have only the responsibility of fnding out what God’s laws are, was the main concern of early Muslim theologians. The answer to this question, which was at the origin of almost all early Islamic theological compendia, would decide one’s conception of salvation. Salvation in classical Islamic theology, hence, is entangled with one’s formulation of the acquisition of knowledge and epistemology, some of which would be incompatible with the idea of original sin. Consequently, for the “from below” Imamis, sinlessness is in principle attainable by everyone and has a naturalistic legal explanation. This is also the reason that those Imami theologians see it happening more probably in lineages of prophets. Because they were the keepers of the law and had a better access to it. The twelve Imams, being from the household of the prophet, are also considered to have inherited the complete collection of law without distortion. Grössl’s proposition that Christ was impeccable “because Christ was brought up in an ideal situation (which was brought about by free decisions of many humans in many generations)”37 might resonate with this perspective in its accidental placement of the possibility of attaining perfection. Therefore, there is a trend of thought in Imami theology that sees the sinlessness of a perfect human being as having more of a practical value for others than an indicative value for the person having it. If an agent acts according to God’s law, no matter how accidental, the agent is sinless. This sinlessness might be of no value to the person but if there is a practical function for such a person to teach other people how they should live, that is theologically good enough. Many discoveries or inventions were accomplished by geniuses who, relative to their mental capacities, did the same amount of mental work as many people with less mental capacities. Sometimes, they did not even try; they had a gift for it, so to speak. If we do not evaluate a discovery or invention by the amount of dedication it took, it also does not matter whether a sinless person was impeccable and whether sinlessness was because of one’s environment. From this perspective, a prophet, a messenger, does not need infallibility as an intrinsic feature because he or she has direct access to God by revelation and if the messenger happens to make a mistake or does not know something, God will correct or guide him or her directly. But for some of the Imamis, imams did not have such privileged access to God. Consequently,

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they needed to have access to complete religious knowledge because there was no one to correct them if they were wrong. For the “from below” Imamis, this knowledge was in a textual form inherited by the Imams from the prophet, and for the “from above” Imamis it was metaphysical access to the knowable part of divine knowledge. Again, there these formulations have little to do with temptation and sin, which exists in a Christian system of theology. This shows that the concept of isma and inerrancy has no necessary connection to one’s self-worth but rather to one’s ability to guide the society. Unless of course, one’s value is measured by one’s usefulness to society. The question of impeccability in the Christian sense only arises when we try to evaluate the person and not his functions. This personal evaluation is, however, the case with the “from above” or the exaggerated understanding of imamate. This is where the salvifc function of Christ as the savior in Christianity and lack of it, or an equivalent of it, in some Imami theologies makes a difference. If prophets and imams are only reminders of God’s law to humanity, and the prophet of Islam, for example, is no different in that from other prophets (Q3:144), their most important feature is their guiding function and the amount of free will they had does not matter. But if they are the reason for our salvation by their own merits, their relationship with God, or divine nature – which is the case with Christian understanding of Christ – it seems that the esoteric branch of Imami theology, albeit in a different form, is a workable partner, though it is hard to fnd an equivalent for it in “from below” Imami theology. This leads to my fnal remark on one of Grössl’s propositions. Grössl seems to believe that whether actually or potentially, “free will is a disposition essential to human nature.”38 I think, on the other hand, that taking human free will and responsibility as a given is also a dogma. Evidently, all we can say for sure is that we act “as if we are free,” but whether we are free cannot be shown through scientifc evidence. So, in the dilemma of impeccability and free will, one is not confronted with a confict between a dogma and a fact but a confict between two dogmas. And when someone does not accept a compatibilist view, me included, the intellectual compromise of sacrifcing impeccability for free will is not essentially more than sacrifcing free will for impeccability. This makes the two ends of the spectrum, as far as the modifcation of dogmas are concerned, similar. At one end stands the idea that perfection is measured by function whether the agent functioned freely or not, and at the other stands the idea that perfection is measured by the amount of freedom one has in choosing to function properly. The spectrum of the Imami positions regarding Imams, hence, can be understood as having the classical “from above” view at one end, which is entangled with either a compatibilist view of free will or predestination, and having the “from below” view at the other, which allows for a libertarian understanding of free will but entails a modern understanding of human perfection that hardly satisfes the classical expectations.

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As far as comparative studies are concerned, there is no fnal position or latest understanding of imamate or human perfection to be chosen. In this chapter, I tried to sketch some existing views and their mechanism. While it seems that both Christian and Muslim theologians deal with the same theological questions and concerns, their answers fnd different forms in their respective theological systems. An oversimplifcation or misunderstanding of the other might bring a theologian to the conclusion that the other system is disturbingly faulty or irrelevant. Hence, I tried to hint towards a more accurate depiction of the correspondence between Christological questions and their Islamic counterparts. This, I hope, will contribute to a more accurate comparative study of the theological notions that were addressed in this edition (or volume).

Notes 1 For the purpose of this chapter, I will use the word theology for ‘speculative theological kalam.’ I will also use the term ‘Imami theology’ to refer to Twelver Shi‘a Muslims. 2 Robert Langer & Udo Simon, “The Dynamics of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. Dealing with Divergence in Muslim Discourses and Islamic Studies,” Die Welt des Islams, New Series 48:3/4 (2008), 273. 3 Sherman A. Jackson, On Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 30. 4 Fazlur Rahman, Islam (New York: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 173. 5 Joel L. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival During the Buyid Age (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 29. 6 Josef van Ess & John O’Kane & Gwendolin Goldbloom, Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 60. 7 Rahman, Islam (cf. n. 4), 174. 8 See for example: Matthew Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 68–93. 9 See for example: Muhammad ibn Ya’qub al-Kulayni, al-Kaf, V.1, no. 12. 10 This is one of the things that separates Imami Shi‘a from Zaidi Shi‘a, for example, who do not see this distinction between intellectual and political activities in an Imam. So, imamate for an Imami, as opposed to some other Shi‘a branches of Islam, has no essentially political nature. 11 Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (cf. n. 8), 28. 12 Mohammed Ali Amir-Moezzi, “Early Shīʿī Theology,” in ed. Sabine Schmidtke, The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 83. 13 Muhammad ibn Ya’qub al-Kulayni, al-Kaf, V.1, no. 20. 14 Patricia Crone, “Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists,” Past & Present 167 (2000), 10. 15 Ibid., 14. 16 Ibid., 10. 17 Rahman, Islam (cf. n. 4), 173. 18 Amir-Moezzi, Early Shīʿī Theology (cf. n. 12), 84. 19 Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (cf. n. 8), 27. 20 See for example: Aiyub Palmer, “Sufsm,” in ed. Daniel W. Brown, The Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to the Hadith (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), 265–79.

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21 Amir-Moezzi, Early Shīʿī Theology (cf. n. 12), 84. 22 Ibid. 23 Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “An Introduction to Medieval Interpretation of the Qur’ān,” in eds. John Goering et al., With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 311–9, 314. 24 Rahman, Islam (cf. n. 4), 173. 25 Pierce, Twelve Infallible Men (cf. n. 8), 28. 26 Mohammad Legenhausen, “Inerrancy and Exaggeration in Shi‘i Theology” (in this volume), 258. 27 Ibid. 28 Amir-Moezzi, “Early Shīʿī Theology” (cf. n. 12), 85. 29 Legenhausen, “Inerrancy and Exaggeration,” 259. 30 Abū-H āmid ̣ Muhammad ̣ Ibn-Muhammad ̣ al-Ġazzālī & Sabih A Kamali, Al-Ghazali’s Tahafut Al-Falasifah (Lahore, 1963), 14. 31 Roger Haight, Jesus, Symbol of God (New York: Orbis Books, 1999), XII. 32 Johannes Grössl, “Deifcation and the Divided-Consciousness-View” (in this volume), 216. 33 Ibid. 34 Haight, Jesus, Symbol of God (cf. n. 31), 432. 35 See Abdulaziz Sachedina, “The Qur’ān and Other Religions,” in ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, The Cambridge Companion to the Qur’ān (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 291–309. 36 Grössl, Deifcation (cf. n. 32), 217. 37 Johannes Grössl, “Christ’s Impeccability,” in eds. James M. Arcadi & James T. Turner, Jr., T&T Clark Companion to Analytic Theology (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 215–229, 227. 38 Ibid.

Conclusion Impeccability and sinlessness in Islam and Christianity Klaus von Stosch

The last three chapters of this book have shown that the debate on the impeccability or sinlessness of Jesus has a striking parallel in Islamic theology, especially within Shi‘a Islam. Both Shi‘i and Sunni Muslims agree on the doctrine of ‘iṣma of the prophets. ‘Iṣma is usually translated as infallibility or inerrancy; in its standard interpretation within Islamic scholastic theology it implies also impeccability or, at least, sinlessness. Hence, Islam seems to widen the concept of sinlessness to all prophets. Moreover, Shi‘a Islam includes in this concept not only prophets, but also the Twelve Imams, who they regard as the political and spiritual successors of the Prophet Mohammed. In this concluding volume, I will briefy recapitulate the arguments within this Muslim theological debate and consider whether it sheds some light on the Christological debates outlined in the previous chapters of this book.

1 Legenhausen’s main argument for the impeccability of the prophets and Imams The main argument for the importance of the sinlessness of the prophets and Imams1 within Shi‘i theology is grounded in their role in spiritual (or, in some interpretations, also political) guidance. The general idea in this argument is the anthropological insight that people need guidance and that, therefore, a benevolent God will provide humankind with such guidance through persons who are inerrant and impeccable. Such a person is called a ma‘ṣūm within Shi‘i belief. As we saw previously, Legenhausen reconstructs the formal structure of this argument like this:2 1 2 3 4 5 6

God is merciful; so He provides guidance for those who need it; those for whom error is possible require guidance; for anyone other than the innerant, error is possible; some people are not innerant; so, God provides guidance for those who are not innerant.

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There cannot be any doubt about premise 1 from a Christian point of view. Premises 4 and 5 are simply defnitions within Shi‘i terminology that have to be accepted when we take that theology seriously. As the premises do not defne who the impeccable persons are, there is no reason to contradict them here. Hence, the main question for the validity of the conclusion in premise 6 is the question of whether we accept premises 2 and 3. Premise 3 has some plausibility, but it does not prove the necessity of certain infallible persons who provide guidance, but only the necessity of trustworthy information that leads to guidance. There is no need for this guidance to be embodied. And, moreover, it might be that we can get guidance from somebody who commits errors. For example, people go to therapists when they seek guidance in their lives, and they can receive proper guidance if the therapist does her job. In modernity, we trust in different experts for different areas of our life. Modern people only want them to give reliable guidance for certain aspects of their life. They mistrust the idea of a leader for all aspects of life. Moreover, some errors are simply part of the human condition and can even help create an atmosphere of sympathy that makes trust easier. Even sins and wounds resulting from sin can create trust if the other person has learned to deal with her guilt and sin in a convincing way. Hence, premise 3 can be challenged if guidance is understood as guidance only through a certain person for certain aspects of life. Premise 2 presumes the hidden assumption that there are people who need guidance. Again, it is not so clear if guidance is supposed to be exercised by a certain person. If Kant’s idea of Enlightenment is correct, it is a question of maturity to be your own guide and to use your own rationality to gain orientation.3 Thus, again we can ask whether we really need other persons who are impeccable and inerrant to guide us or whether it is not enough to have simply certain persons with specifc knowledge who guide us in certain respects. Especially in the case of political leadership, it can be asked whether the idea of inerrancy makes any sense because politics seems to imply dealing with different preferences and fnding some balance of powers and interests. At least in the understanding of democracy, there is by defnition not one perfect leader who can know how to make a synthesis of those different wishes. Instead, we need a process of negotiation to come to results that will never be fnal or perfect. But even in the realm of spirituality, humans seem to be so diverse that the idea of a specifc spiritual leader is diffcult to understand. Hence, the main problem with the Shi‘i idea from a Christian point of view seems to be that impeccability is based on the idea of guidance or leadership. In a Christian approach, it is not guidance that one searches for in Jesus, but communion with God. Sinlessness is necessary in this concept because sin is defned as separation from God, and it seems to be the case that a person who is separated from God cannot provide communion or unifcation with God. But it is important to note that modern Christians would not seek universal guidance through Jesus.

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What is extremely useful in Legenhausen’s argumentation is its purely pragmatic reasoning. Hence, let us try to make a Christian version of the argument mentioned above, which takes from him the idea of being more concerned with the pragmatic aspects of sin than with the ontological questions of the theory of the hypostatic union: 1 2 3 4 5 6

God is merciful; so God provides communion with God for those who need it; those who are separated from God require communion with God; anyone other than a sinless person is separated from God; a sinless person can only provide people with God’s communion if it is divine; so, God provides at least one divine sinless person for those who are separated from God.

This reconstruction of Christian faith does not use the notion of impeccability because it only insists on the defnition of sin as separation from God, which makes it impossible to conceive a sinner in communion with God. The problem from a pragmatic perspective is not the danger of the possibility of separation from God, but only the actual separation. Hence, we do not need any reasoning on those possibilities. It is suffcient to conceive of Jesus as sinless and – from a pragmatic point of view – it does not add anything meaningful if Jesus is also impeccable.4 The advantage of this reconstruction of Legenhausen’s argument is that it does not undermine human autonomy. It does not presume that humans seek for external guidance or leadership, but that they only seek unifcation or communion with God. There is a long tradition within Christianity that says it is in the nature of humans to seek this unifcation. Aquinas talks of the natural desire (desiderium naturale) of every human being to be unifed with God. And Muslims will also probably agree with this idea und might use the doctrine of fṭra to explain it.5 The diffcult point for Muslims in my reconstruction of Legenhausen’s argumentation is obviously premise 5. From a Christian point of view, the divinity of the sinless person must be a full divinity in essence because only this essential divinity can have the pragmatic success of providing communion with God and healing human separation from God. Hence, here Christians would be required to explain the theory of the Hypostatic Union. However, the theory is introduced here for pragmatic reasons and still needs only the absence of a separation of God, not the impossibility of such a separation. If we again compare Legenhausen’s reconstruction and the Christian alternative, it becomes obvious that both approaches understand sin as separation from God. Legenhausen argues that those persons who offer guidance to God – such as the prophets and Imams – cannot be separated from God, i.e., they cannot commit sins. As they want to teach us how

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to behave, their example has to be free from any sin.6 Otherwise we risk losing our way to God. Impeccability is defended here from the perspective of guidance, which helps Legenhausen avoid the problem of the essential divinity of the guiding person. But, as I explained above, it creates the problem of devaluing human autonomy. Before confronting this reconstruction with the exegetical results of the Biblical part of this book, let us look at another possibility of developing the main Shi‘i argument for the impeccability of the Imams and prophets and let us see whether the criticism mentioned above fts to this version as well.

2 Haghani Fazl’s main argument for the sinlessness of the prophets and Imams Haghani Fazl reconstructs the traditional argument like this:7 1 2 3 4 5

God has intended to guide human beings, ‘Iṣma of the prophets and Imams facilitates the achievement of this purpose, if the prophets and Imams were not infallible, that would defeat their purpose, it is wrong to defeat one’s own purpose, and it is impossible for God to do something wrong.

In this reconstruction, all theists will immediately agree with premises 4 and 5. Premise 1 is similar to Legenhausen’s premise 2. It has the advantage that it does not claim any need for guidance, but only God’s intention to guide us. Again from Kant’s perspective, we could ask whether God might not have wanted to encourage us to use our own rationality for guidance. However, the premise here is stronger because it says only that God intended to guide us without presuming any need for guidance on the human side. Thus, the free choice of humans is respected whether they want to search for external guidance or not. Premise 2 simply says that God wants to facilitate things, and sometimes it is easier to have external guidance, which is easier to admit than the idea of needing an external guide. Premise 3 in this reconstruction leads to the very same problems as premise 3 in Legenhausen’s reconstruction. The problem remains why fallible, sinful and imperfect persons should always be bad guides and leaders. Sobhani even argues at this point that if they had any faw or committed any breach of good conduct, or even if they suffered from a kind of physical defect or disease that would be repulsive to people, they would not be able to attain the confdence of their followers necessary to be worthy of absolute obedience.8 We will not deal with this maximalist interpretation of imamate because it is too obviously at odds with the main sensibilities of democratic and pluralist societies. Of course, physical defects and

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diseases do not have any negative effect on our trust in other persons. At least this should be the case from a moral point of view. When Sobhani argues that a prophet cannot even make the smallest mistake because then people might extrapolate from that to religious affairs and cease to trust him, this kind of argumentation takes him very far away from everything that can be taken seriously in Western societies. Of course, minor mistakes do not destroy trust and respect. They are simply human and even help create sympathy. The question is whether one admits to the mistakes and learns from them. The idea of a perfect leader that was so appealing in the time of Plato has lost credibility in modernity because our world is much too complex to be ruled perfectly in all respects by a wise person. We need different sorts of expertise, and the current stage of knowledge changes quickly, which makes it important to introduce a system of checks and balances within power. Within this system, everybody who develops expertise in a certain respect can be helpful, and it is not necessary for this person to be perfect. Fazl seems to see this point and he suggests that “one can examine human communities to see whether a mistake by a leader in his personal life leads his followers to distrust him.”9 The result will be that this is not the case if the leader is transparent, honest, and tries to make fewer mistakes in his life. Thus, Fazl argues that “a leader’s past does not discourage people from following him.”10 It is interesting that important traditional scholars within Shi‘a Islam such as Shaykh Ṣadūq and Shaykh Mufīd also do not accept the maximalist interpretation and accept at least some minor faws in the ma’sūmīn.11 However, there is also a problem with weaker interpretations of the idea of the ma’sūmīn. Even if we do not take the maximalist interpretation of impeccability into account, there seems to be at least a major agreement within Islam that the prophets should be free from sin “in reception and communication of the revelation.”12 Concerning matters of revelation, we need absolute reliability, Fazl argues. Otherwise we do not know whether we are allowed to trust the delivered message of a prophet. Hence, a minimalist interpretation of sinlessness would not claim impeccability in all moments of life, but only protection from sin in the context of revelation. This interpretation is much more rational and convincing, but it implies an idea of revelation that is rather odd from a modern perspective. Can revelation really be conceived of as a message that is delivered authentically through a prophet? And what does it mean to exclude any kind of error or sin within this process of delivery? Let us briefy explain those two concerns. Revelation is understood in Christianity today mostly as divine self-communication.13 The concept of revelation as divine instruction through a certain divine message is usually rejected because it destroys the idea of human autonomy. If we get a message that is of divine origin, we simply have to obey the message. This idea leads to the question of why everybody is not getting such messages and

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whether the ultimate aim of divine messages can be conceived of as obedience. But it also leads to the question of whether divine messages have to be delivered or performed. Performing a message needs creativity and opens up space for freedom. Hence, it might be more suitable for a God who wants to encourage our free will and creativity to invite his messengers to perform their messages instead of simply conveying them. The other concern is about how sinlessness and inerrancy are related. It might be that the weakness of the messenger makes it clear that the message cannot be from the messenger and that it has a divine origin. Human errors might be helpful to create a common sphere between the messenger and us, and it might at the same time underline how different the message is in itself. I do not want to continue this kind of argumentation because my aim here is not to develop a theory of revelation. I simply wanted to mention briefy that the traditional Shi‘i position implies some problems for a modern perspective, especially within Christianity. Modern concerns become overwhelming when we look at the Shi‘i tradition of absolute obedience. As we explained above, the usual idea of guidance in modernity, it implies only guidance in certain respects. That is why Legenhausen’s renunciation of the idea of absolute obedience in every respect is important. At least he makes it clear that the ma’sūmīn do not want to guarantee absolute truths, but that they only want “to arrive at defnitive judgments about religious law.”14 Hence, the impeccability serves the interpretation of religious law here. This restriction to a certain area helps one see that the task of the prophets and Imams has a restricted sphere. Still, it implies perfection of the human persons and the question arises of why this kind of perfection is necessary. Let us again try to conceive of a Christian version of this argumentation to see more clearly how perfection is conceived here. I suggest the following reformulation of Fazl’s argumentation: 1 2 3 4 5

God has intended to have communion with human beings, the sinlessness of a person mediating God’s intention facilitates the achievement of this purpose, if this person was not sinless, that would defeat their purpose, it is wrong to defeat one’s own purpose, and it is impossible for God to do something wrong.15

Again, the Christian shift in comparison with the Shi‘i idea is that we do not talk about guidance but about communion with God. This difference is expressed in premise 1. It makes it clearer why sinlessness is so important if sin is defned, again, as separation from God. If God’s intention is God’s self-communication then this intention can only be communicated through somebody who is not separated from God (premise 2). The other premises are very similar to the Shi‘i version. Hence, the main question is whether the sinless person is perceived as communication of the divine presence or

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whether this person wants to provide us with guidance. At that point, there seems to be an important difference between Shi‘a Islam and Christianity. In the end, both concepts require sinlessness, but the arguments are different. Moreover, the Christian concept does not require other perfections such as inerrancy or infallibility. Modern Christianity is fully aware of the fact that Jesus made mistakes and had to learn quite a lot from his fellow humans. Hence, in some respects he is less perfect than the Shi‘i Imams. If Christians are stereotyped as having exaggerated views on inerrancy, as Legenhausen reminds us,16 these kinds of stereotypes do not work for modern Christian concepts. From a modern perspective, it is no longer true that Shi‘a muslims are in a middle position between Sunnis and Christians, as Legenhausen suggests, but they seem to make stronger demands for the perfection of their Imams than Christians make for Jesus. Hence, the observation of Mahdavi Mehr that Suf esoteric circles go very much in the direction of traditional Christology in their concept of inerrancy is only true for the premodern traditional version of the Christian concept.17 And if we are allowed to attribute all perfections to the Imams from a Shi‘i perspective,18 it is not so easy to do the same thing for Jesus from a Christian point of view. The Jesus of modern Christian theology is much weaker than the Imams; he is still on the way to understanding his mission and he errs a lot. However, even the modern Christ of liberal theology does not commit sins. That is why the Biblical contributions to this book, especially the one from Jeffrey Siker, are so challenging.

3 Why is it not possible to admit sins in Jesus? If we consider the Biblical exegetical contributions in this book, we see that they offer some important arguments for the conception of Jesus as sinner. Siker argues that the “language of sinlessness, when applied to Jesus, is fundamentally a metaphor.”19 It wants to make sense of the death of Jesus on the cross and uses the Biblical idea of the sinless Passover sacrifce to do it. This theological construction led to the idea of a sinless Jesus. 20 But according to Siker, this image is a very late theological construction that is not necessary for interpreting him. Jesus was a troublesome prophet during his ministry, but nobody gave any thought to his being sinless or perfect. Such thinking only developed after the crucifxion and belief in the resurrection, as the followers of Jesus tried to make sense of what had happened and what they had experienced. 21 Thus, it can be doubted whether the historical Jesus was really without sin. Strotmann goes in the same direction and argues that the baptism of Jesus is a very strong argument against his sinlessness.

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However, such historical claims can be disputed and might lead to different results. There is no narration on Jesus in the Bible that implies an incontrovertible argument for him being a sinner. But Siker gives an interesting systematic argument for his case. He says, “To be fully human is to know the shame of sin, to know the release of repentance and forgiveness, to understand the healing of broken relationships.”22 Hence for Siker, Jesus becomes more authentic, more human and more convincing if he knows sin. It is far more tangible to imagine Jesus as a person whose life took him on a progressive journey of holiness, rather than a perfect human who could do no wrong from the day that his mother Mary brought him into this world. 23 I agree with Siker that we should not conceive of Jesus as a person who could not do wrong. And I also like the idea of a progressive journey in the life of Jesus. However, I think that the idea of a separation of Jesus from God through sin does destroy the Christian message. If Jesus wants to mediate God’s presence to us, he cannot be successful in this message as someone who does not perform God’s presence in his life. A separation from God is simply impossible if this human really is God’s means of self-communication. Hence, from a Christian point of view, we have to insist that the life of Jesus is the self-communication and revelation of God’s presence in every moment of his life. Sin cannot undermine this. And if sin is defned as the loss of communication and relation with God, it cannot characterize Jesus at any moment of his life. If the Bible says that Jesus was made to sin for us (2 Cor 5:21) or that he takes over our sins (1  Pet 2:24), it is true that Jesus experiences our self-alienation from God. But this does not imply that Jesus sinfully loses his communication with God (1 Pet 2:22). It only implies that Jesus includes even our darkest moments of self-alienation in the history of God. Not to be able to admit sins in Jesus does not imply the impossibility of conceiving of sins in his life. Just remember how Kraschl argues for the sinlessness of Jesus without arguing for his infallibility or impeccability. In his contribution to this book, Kraschl introduced three possibilities to us on how to conceive of Jesus as peccable, but sinless. The frst model would simply say that the Hypostatic Union is broken when Jesus commits a sin. The second solution is dependent on the idea of middle knowledge that can be challenged. The third solution is “the backward constitution view,” which is the favorite solution of Kraschl himself. This solution suggests that Jesus is elected as son of God at the end of his life because of his complete devotion to the divine will. At the same time, this election constitutes the Hypostatic Union backwards. Hence, Jesus is hypostatically unifed with God from the frst moment of his life because of his fdelity to God throughout his life: “Only a human being whose life-testimony is cognisable as the real-symbol of God’s perfect love can be hypostatically united to the Logos.”24

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I do not want to discuss these three possibilities here, I only want to remind us that there are speculative solutions for the problem of how to conceive of a sinless, but peccable human person in Hypostatic Union with God. However, such ontological explanations will, of course, be highly disputed. That is why some Muslim ways of argumentation for the impeccability or sinlessness of the prophets and Imams are so compelling to me. They do not develop ontological theories in order to explain the special status of these people, but they argue in purely pragmatic terms. Hence, what Christian theology should learn from the Muslim approach to impeccability is to be more focused on the soteriological basic of Christological claims and not to develop separated ontological discourses.

4 Conclusion We have seen that there are parallel discourses on sinlessness and impeccability in Islam and Christianity. Each religion introduces the concept for different reasons. Whereas Christians need Jesus to be sinless for his ability to relate us to God, Muslims use the idea of impeccability for their concept of guidance through the prophets and Imams. However, there is some danger in this approach because the concepts of impeccability and inerrancy as a tool to explain guidance help guide one to be perfect. This idea of perfection tends to lead to a concept of total obedience or surrender to human authority that can be easily misused in political contexts. If Muslims want to avoid this danger, they might try to rethink the idea of guidance and allow guidance only in certain respects and circumstances. This would mean that the idea of impeccability would be revised and even eliminated from Islamic theology. A modern exegesis of the Bible and the Qur’an might argue that such an elimination can be easily harmonized with the words of scripture and that it would also be helpful to create a more coherent theology of revelation. However, the case is different in Christianity. Although one can revise the doctrine of the impeccability of Jesus, I do not see how Christianity can be conceived without the concept of the sinlessness of Jesus. Hence, Christianity is more in need of this concept and cannot be as ‘modern’ as Islam here. Siker’s compelling suggestions for a more authentic, more human and more convincing approach to Jesus might be used by Muslims to explain their approach to Jesus and the prophets and help them develop ideas that are more in harmony with modernity than Christian ideas. Christianity still has the central claim of the divinity of Christ, which makes the idea of his separation from God through sin inconceivable. What Christians can learn from the Muslim way of reasoning is a more pragmatic account of their own theologizing. This will help them recover the soteriological foundation of Christology and avoid ontological meta-discussions that are no longer related to the salvifc value of their beliefs. 25 Hence, the way of argumentation that we see in our volume also provides an important warning sign for analytic theology not to lose the connection to its soteriological basis.

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Notes 1 The capital ‘I’ in ‘Imams’ indicates that I am referring to the Twelve Imams, who are conceived as infallible in traditional Shi‘i thought. 2 Muhammad Legenhausen, “Inerrancy and Exaggeration in Shi’i Theology” (in this volume), 260. 3 This refers to Kant’s famous defnition of enlightenment; cf. Immanuel Kant, “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” Berlinische Monatsschrift 12 (1784), 481–94. 4 Some theologians have similarly argued that Christ’s impeccability is or even must be irrelevant for explaining his sinlessness; cf. for example Bruce Ware, “The Man Christ Was,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 53:1 (2010), 5–18, 15. 5 Cf. Klaus von Stosch, Herausforderung Islam. Christliche Annäherungen (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 32019), 117. 6 Cf. Legenhausen, “Inerrancy and Exaggeration,” 266. 7 Haghani Fazl, “The Scope of ‘iṣma and Qur’anic Evidence” (in this volume), 248. 8 Cf. Legenhausen, “Inerrancy and Exaggeration,” 266. 9 Haghani Fazl, “The Scope of ‘iṣma,” 244. 10 Haghani Fazl, “The Scope of ‘iṣma,” 246. 11 Cf. Legenhausen, “Inerrancy and Exaggeration,” 259f. 12 Haghani Fazl, “The Scope of ‘iṣma,” 242. 13 Cf. Klaus von Stosch, Offenbarung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010), 46–57. 14 Legenhausen, “Inerrancy and Exaggeration,” 262. 15 Haghani Fazl, “The Scope of ‘iṣma,” 248. 16 Cf. Legenhausen, “Inerrancy and Exaggeration,” 254. 17 Cf. Vahid Mahdavi Mehr, “The Theological Concept of Imamate: How Islam Reconciles Human Perfection and Free Will” (in this volume), 276. 18 Cf. Mahdavi Mehr, “The Theological Concept of Imamate,” 278. 19 Jeffrey Siker, “The Sinlessness of Christ and Human Perfection” (in this volume), 16. 20 Cf. Siker, “The Sinlessness of Christ,” 19. 21 Siker, “The Sinlessness of Christ,” 20. 22 Siker, “The Sinlessness of Christ,” 24. 23 Siker, “The Sinlessness of Christ,” 28. 24 Dominikus Kraschl, “Peccable as Son of Man, Impeccable as Son of God” (in this volume), 193. 25 I have defended such pragmatic-soteriological accounts in recent publications: Klaus von Stosch, “Neuzeitliche Denkwege zur Hypostatischen Union. Eine Positionsbestimmung im Gespräch mit Fichte und Wittgenstein,” in eds. Christian Danz & Georg Essen, Dogmatische Christologie in der Moderne. Problemkonstellationen gegenwärtiger Forschung (Regensburg: Pustet, 2019), 89–109; “Kontexte spätmoderner Christologien. Lebenspraxis als Anstoß für die Theoriebildung systematischer Theologie,” in eds. Gerd Häfner et al., Kontexte neutestamentlicher Christologien (Freiburg: Herder, 2018), 229–56; “Jesus als Gott der Sohn? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Christologie von Karl-Heinz Menke,” in eds. Julia Knop et al., Die Wahrheit ist Person. Brennpunkte einer christologisch gewendeten Dogmatik. Festschrift Karl-Heinz Menke (Regensburg: Pustet, 2015), 129–49.

Author/Subject index

Abbasids (dynasty) 255, 272 Abelard, P. 160–1 Abelardian 160–1; (Abelardian) exemplarist view 160 Abraham: Abrahamic religions 280; Abrahamic tradition 261; Verse of Abraham’s Test 236, 239, 243 absolute obedience 238, 266, 289, 291 absoluteness 243–4, 248 abstract nature view 201–2 abstractism 201, 211; abstractist(-s) 201–3, 205, 210, 212 Adam: Adam-Christ typology 80, 87; new Adam 22, 225; Second Adam 136, 212 adoptionism 5, 8, 79–80, 85, 159, 170, 195, 203, 217, 225–7 Aghili, K. 269 Akhbari school 265 Akhundi, M. 250 Alexamenos graffiti 17 Alexandrian 3, 75–7; Alexandrian Christology 75; Alexandrian school 76–7, 85 Alfeyev, H. 101, 113 Algar, H. 270 Alipur, I. 269 Allah 236, 238–40, 254–5, 264–5 Allison, D. C. 30, 71 Amini, A. 268 Amini, I. 268 Amininezhad, A. 269 Amir-Moezzi, M. A. 257–8, 268–9, 276–7, 279, 284–5 Amuli, H. H. 269 Ᾱmulī, S. H. 247 analogy 7, 41, 100, 124–6, 134, 144, 147, 149, 151, 153, 155, 156–61, 189, 191, 210, 219, 220, 223

analytic theology 200–1, 223, 294 Anderson, J. F. 179 Andrade, J. 111 angel(-s) 19, 21–2, 55–9, 63–4, 67, 94–5, 121, 136, 266 anhypostasia 170, 172 Ansari-Pur, M.-T. 10, 268 Anselm 121, 140 Anselmian 160 Anthony, S. W. 256, 268 anthropology 1–2, 8, 33, 45, 84–5, 87, 119, 145, 194, 212, 254, 271, 279, 286 Antioch/Antiochene 3, 76; Antiochene Christology/Antioch Christology 3, 76, 186; school of Antioch/Antioch school 75, 77, 86–7, 166, 168 Antiquitates Iudaicae 36 Apollinarianism 77, 145, 200, 204–5, 220; Neo-Apollinarianism 200 Apologia 16, 42 Apostle: Apostle (in Islam) 238, 264, 166; Apostles (followers of Christ) 137–8; apostolic 208–9; Apostolic Creed 186 apotheosis 255 Arcadi, J. M. 9, 178, 197, 213, 229, 285 Arendzen, J. P. 101, 110, 113 Arianism 166–7, 278 Aristotelian 147, 194; (neo-)Aristotelian hylomorphism 194 Ashari 273 Assumption Christology 79 Assumption Relation 171–4 atmosphere (phenomenology) 149, 151, 157 atonement/to atone 5, 20, 27, 24–5, 39, 41, 160–1, 224–5; Day of Atonement 44

298  Author/Subject index Attridge, H. W. 74 Augustinus 10, 22, 25, 31, 141, 165, 179, 181, 185, 225 Auschwitz 25 authoritative prototype 62 authority 7, 60, 134–5, 206–7, 210, 212, 238–9, 255, 258–60, 265, 271–2, 294; divine authority 4, 262 al-‘Ayyāshī, M. 250 Backhaus, K. 41, 47–9 backward(-s) constitution model/view 7, 183, 190–1, 195–6, 293 al-Baġdādī, M. (al-Shaykh al-mufīd) 237, 245, 247–9, 251, 259–61, 268–9, 290 al-Baḥrānī, Y. 252 Bani Assadi, N. 10 baptism/to baptize 5–6, 20, 24, 28, 33–6, 38–46, 50–2, 54, 56–8, 76, 80, 82–4, 133, 187, 224, 292; baptizand(-s) 6, 44–5; spirit baptism 41 Bartel, T. W. 99, 112 Barthrellos, D. 180 Bausenhart, G. 93 Bayne, T. 175, 181 Beeley, C. A. 168, 179–80 Beelzebul 54 Bellinger, W. H. 30 benevolence 1, 165, 287 Berger, A. L. 30 Bergman, M. 179 Best, E. 53–6, 60–1, 69–73 Bettenson, H. 179 Betz, H. D. 73 binitarianism 85 Blander, J. 9 blasphemy 20, 254 Böhlemann, P. 47 Bokser, B. M. 30 Bornkamm, G. 48 Böwering, G. 269 Boys, M. C. 30 Breul, M. 93 Brewer, T. 113 Brower, J. E. 162, 179 Brown, C. M. 147, 162 Brown, D. 143–5, 161, 163, 180–1 Brown, D. W. 284 Brown, R. E. 30 Brown, R. F. 140 Bruce, F. F. 73 Brümmer, V. 110, 113, 140

Bruns, P. 81, 85, 88–93 Brüntrup, G. 9, 162 Byzantine fathers 101 Calder, N. 269 caliph/caliphate 274–5 Calvin, J. 25, 113, 229 Capernaum 55 Carey, G. 31 Carroll, J. 31–2 Carter, W. R. 110, 113, 140 Catechetical Lectures/homiliae catecheticae/Catechatical Homilies 77, 82–3, 86 causation 146, 150 Chalcedon: Chalcedonian Axiom 200, 209; Chalcedonian Christology/ Christology of Chalcedon 123, 143, 169–70, 199; Council of Chalcedon/ Chalcedonian council/Chalcedon 2, 4, 75–6, 87, 94, 143, 164, 167, 170, 174, 201, 204, 208, 216, 226; formula of Chalcedon 168–9; Neo-Chalcedonism 87, 169–70; Neo-Chalcedonian Christology 170, 173–4 Chan, J. H. W. 178 Charnocke, S. 181 Chase, F. 113 chief priests 58, 61 Chilton, B. 30 Chittick, W. C. 268 Christology: from above 79, 280; from below 79, 279–80; Christology of Intimacy 147; Christology of separation 75, 79, 195; Alexandrian Christology 75; Antiochene Christology/Antioch Christology 3, 76, 186; Assumption Christology 79; Chalcedonian Christology/ Christology of Chalcedon 123, 143, 169–70, 199; compositional Christology/composite Christology 145, 164, 218; Conciliar Christology 6, 94–6, 103, 108–9, 153, 185–8, 191–2, 194–6, 226; constructive monothelite Christology 204; divided consciousness Christology 217; divided mind Christology 217; ecumenical Christology 170; incarnational Christology/Incarnation Christology 27, 76; Kenotic Christology/Kenosis Christology 143–4, 218; Logos Christology 79,

Author/Subject index  299 81–5; Logos-Anthropos Christology 77–8; Logos-Sarx Christology 77–8; modern Christology 217; Neo-Chalcedonian Christology 170, 173–4; Nestorian Christology 76; New Testament Christology(ies) 34, 46, 159, 196; Spirit Christology 6, 81–2, 84–5, 133–4; three-part Christology 164, 166–9; three-part dyothelite Christology 7, 167, 171, 174–5, 177–8; two minds Christology 144–5, 217; Two Natures Christology 144, 157–8; Two(-)Sons Christology 76, 79, 145–6, 157–8; two-part Christology 164, 166–7; Two-Persons Christology 77 church 16, 76, 84, 151, 164, 167, 169, 206–8; church councils 5, 25; church fathers 3, 79, 82–3, 172, 210, 223; Roman Catholic Church 26 Cirelli, A. 30 Cissé Niang, A. 30 Clement of Alexandria 31 Coakley, S. 213 Cobb, J. 228 Collins, A. Y. 31 Colman, A. 229 commandments of Moses 80 communication of idioms 4, 186, 196 communion 137–9, 287–8, 291 comparative theology 1, 280; comparative study(-ies) 8, 271, 279, 281, 284 compassion 23, 64, 66–8, 122–3, 137 compatibilism 3, 86, 124–5, 145, 157, 160; compatibilist freedom 124, 134, 223, 283 composition 145–6, 149–50, 168, 193–4, 219; compositional Christology/composite Christology 145, 164, 218; hylomorphic composition 193–5 Conciliar Abrogation Thesis 207 conciliar Christology 6, 94–6, 103, 108–9, 153, 185–8, 191–2, 194–6, 226 Conciliar Undercutting Principle 206–7, 210 concretism 7, 201, 203–4, 210–12; concrete human nature 7, 145, 189–90, 192–4; concrete nature view 201–2; concretist(-s) 201–4, 210–12 condensation 146

consciousness 5, 8, 33, 43–5, 61, 86, 102, 126, 145–7, 150–1, 164, 166, 172, 174–5, 177–8, 192, 200, 216–2, 226–7, 281; access-consciousness 175–6; co-consciousness 175, 177; divided consciousness Christology 217; divided consciousness view 7, 217–19, 226; Divine Preconscious Model 218–19, 222; God-consciousness 216–17, 281; phenomenal-conscious 174–7; selfconsciousness 149–51, 170, 205, 220, 222; unity of consciousness 171, 174–5, 178, 218 Constantinople: NiceneConstantinopolitan Creed 186; Second Council of Constantinople/ Constantinople II 76, 94, 169– 70, 173–4; Third Council of Constantinople/Constantinople III 83, 87, 199–201, 203, 205–6, 208–10, 219 constitution 147–8, 192–3 conversion 36–7, 39–40 Corinth 133 Cortez, M. 181 Couenhoven, J. 110 Council: Christological councils 22, 25; Council of Chalcedon/Chalcedonian council/Chalcedon 2, 4, 75–6, 87, 94, 143, 164, 167–70, 174, 201, 204, 208, 216, 226; Council of Ephesus 76, 94, 168; Council of Nicaea/ Nicene Council 77, 82, 166, 278; councils 95, 223; church councils 5, 25; ecumenical councils 94, 171, 185, 206–10; Second Council of Constantinople/Constantinople II 76, 94, 169–70, 173–4; Second Nicaea 107 counter-tendency 5, 34, 45 Craig, W. L. 197, 204–7, 210, 212–14, 222–3, 229–30 Creanga, O. 71 Creed 15, 223, 267, 272, 274; Apostolic Creed 186; Nicene creed 29, 83, 166; Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed 186 Creel, R. E. 179 crisis of faith 128–31, 133 Crisp, O. D. 7, 9, 102, 104, 106–7, 109, 111, 113–15, 145, 160–1, 163, 180–1, 199, 213–15, 229 Crone, P. 274–5, 277, 284

300  Author/Subject index Cross, R. 181, 213 Crossan, J. D. 46 crucifixion 17, 20, 51, 62, 138, 280, 292 cup (metaphor for death) 21, 61, 63, 66 Dabashi, H. 267 Dahlke, B. 9 Daley, B. E. 162 Dammen McAuliffe, J. 285 Danz, C. 295 Dargāhī, H. 249 Davidic king 58 Davidson, I. J. 111, 114, 180–1 Davies, S. T. 161 Davies, W. D. 30, 71 Davis, S. T. 4, 11, 140, 214 Day of Atonement 44 Day, J. P. 111 De Caro, M. 181 de dicto-modalities 184 de re-modalities 184 de S. Cameron, N. M. 179 defeat-of-purpose argument 235, 240–1, 244, 246–8 delegation 258; delegationist 255, 258 Dembroff, R. 115 demons 54–5, 124 determinism 125 devil 20, 51–2, 54–60, 64, 94, 99, 124, 127, 129, 133, 136, 139, 157, 240; adversary 54, 59; Captain of the hosts of evil 54; Evil Adversary 53; Satan 20–3, 50–1, 53–60, 63–4, 67–8, 77, 80, 98, 244 DeWeese, G. J. 199–200, 207, 210–13, 215 dilemma 7, 187–8, 190, 217, 227, 262, 283 van Dillen, L. F. 112 Diller, J. 179, 181 disciple(-s) 17, 20, 22, 28, 38, 40, 55, 59–63, 67–8, 82, 257; discipleship 139 disobedience 63–4, 67–8, 153, 160, 246, 262 dispensational doctrine 3 divided consciousness: divided consciousness Christology 217; divided consciousness view 7, 217–19, 226 divided mind Christology 217 divine attributes 1, 143, 165, 218; omnipotence 1, 4, 103, 105, 121–2,

124, 143, 165, 203; omniscience 4–5, 99, 105, 122, 143, 165, 175, 192 divine nature/divinity (of Christ) 3–4, 6, 15, 21–2, 25, 76–7, 82, 85, 107–8, 119, 143, 146, 148–50, 153, 156–7, 161, 164, 167, 185, 187–8, 194–5, 199, 204–5, 212, 216–17, 222, 224, 277, 279–81, 294 Divine Preconscious Model 218–19, 222 divine will (of Christ) 2, 21, 61, 87–8, 145, 153–4, 199–201, 219, 222–3 al-Dīn 249 Docetism 5, 15, 25, 216, 257 Dockter, C. 6, 10, 75, 92–3 doctrine(-s) 2, 5, 7, 24–5, 27, 85, 95, 144, 146, 155, 158, 161, 165–6, 173, 183, 186–7, 199, 201, 203, 206–9, 212, 219, 221–3, 235, 242, 247–8, 254, 257–9, 263–5, 267, 272–3, 275, 277, 286, 288, 294; communication of idioms 4, 186, 196; doctrine of two natures/two-natures doctrine 2, 75, 196, 199–200, 204, 216; (neoPlatonic doctrines of) henosis 255; revisionist doctrine 205; two-will doctrine/doctrine of two wills 2, 209, 216 dogma 4, 85, 95, 143, 221, 223, 225, 274, 278, 283; dogmatic 7, 183, 190, 221, 276, 279–80 Drobner, H. 89 Duby, S. J. 179 Duckworth, A. L. 112 Dunn, J. D. G. 30, 38, 47–8 Dünzl, F. 77–82, 89–91 duo physikas energieas (two natural operations) 203 duo physikas theleseis (two natural wills) 203 duothelitism 201 Dyer, B. R. 71 dyoprosopism 79 dyothelitism 2, 7, 87, 145–6, 164, 166, 168, 177, 199–200, 203–5, 208–12, 222; puzzle of dyothelitism 200, 209; three-part dyothelite Christology 7, 167, 171, 174–5, 177–8 Easter 158, 195–6 Eberhard, C. 30 Ebner, M. 47–9 ecclesiology 83, 88, 271–2 ecumenical Christology 170

Author/Subject index  301 Egypt 19, 57, 129 Ehrman, B. 31, 268 Elledge, C. D. 30 Ellingworth, P. 65, 74 (criterion of) embarrassment 5, 34, 45 enanthroposanta 77 enhypostasia 170, 172 enhypostasis 135 epistemology 8, 196, 271, 282 Erickson, M. J. 111, 114, 154, 157, 162–3, 189, 197 Ernst, J. 47–8 eschatology 36, 39–43, 119, 154, 191–2, 196; eschatological sacrament 40–1; to eschatologize 35; eschaton 42, 154 esotericism 264; esoteric 256–7, 275–80, 283, 292; esoteric interpretations 246–8; esoteric non-rational tradition 257; esoteric schools 276; esoteric theology 276; esoteric traditions 276; mystical esoteric/esoteric mystical 274, 277 esoterism 276 van Ess, J. 284 Essen, G. 91, 93, 223, 230, 295 essence 147–8, 157, 227, 256, 277 eternal adoption view/eternalistic adoptionism 159, 190 Eucharist 83 evangelical revivalism 26 evangelist(-s) 34–5, 39, 42–3, 50, 52–3, 56, 59, 62, 67, 223, 225 exaggeration 8, 253–9, 264, 277, 283, 292; exaggerator 255–9, 265, 267 exegesis 5, 8, 45, 68, 206, 224–5, 227, 235–6, 238–9, 242–4, 248, 253, 289, 292, 294; exegetes 187, 235–6, 238, 241–5, 248 exemplarism 160 Exodus (act) 19, 53, 57 exorcism(-s) 54 exoteric 276–80 experimental philosophy 97 Fadlallah, M. 248, 250–1 Fall 22, 55 fallibility 144, 187, 261, 289 Farmer, W. R. 30 Farris, J. R. 178, 181, 198 Fāryāb, M. Ḥ. 250, 252 fasting 56–7, 221 fear of death 6, 51, 64–7 Feeley-Harnick, G. 30

Feinberg, J. 140 Ferdek, B. 228 Ferretti, F. 181 Fiedler, P. 48 Filson, F. V. 72 Finlan, S. 32 Firstborn 78–81, 83–4, 88 Fischer, J. M. 229 Fisk, P. J. 111 fiṭra 288 Fitzmyer, J. A. 30 Flint, T. P. 115, 146, 161–2, 172–3, 181, 213–15 foreknowledge 5, 159, 190 forgiveness 6, 16, 19–20, 24, 34, 38–45, 58, 83–4, 123, 224, 263, 293 form-matter distinction 148 Formula of Chalcedon 168–9 Freddoso, A. 213 free will/freedom of will 1–3, 5, 7–8, 80–1, 88, 119, 123, 126–7, 130, 155, 157, 217, 221, 223, 225–8, 254, 283, 291; compatibilist freedom 124, 134, 223, 283; libertarian free will/freedom 1, 123–4, 128, 134, 144–5, 153, 184, 196, 217, 219, 223, 283 Fretheim, T. 180 Friedman, Y. 268 fundamentalism 26 Funkhouser, E. 110, 113 Furnish, V. P. 31 Gager, J. 29 Galilee 36, 45, 60 Galla, B. M. 112 Garcia, L. L. 110 Garden of Eden/Eden 55, 129 Garrett, S. R. 31, 71 Garrigues, J.-M. 93 al-Ġazzālī, M. 285 Gellman, J. 110 genealogy 59–60, 258 Gentile(-s) 16–17, 58, 62 German Idealism 146 Gethsemane 2, 6, 21, 33, 51, 60–3, 65–8, 101, 126, 131, 136, 177, 205–6, 221, 223 Ghaffari, A. 250 Gibson, J. B. 52–3, 55–6, 69–71, 73 Gnilka, J. 48–9, 70 gnomic will 88, 126–7, 164 Gnosis 25, 76 Göcke, B. P. 162, 178

302  Author/Subject index God the Son 122–4, 128, 133, 135–6, 166–7, 170, 172–3, 175, 178, 200, 202–5, 211–12 God’s covenant 29 God-consciousness 216–17, 281 Godhead 149, 205–6, 212 God-man 160, 193–4 Goering, J. 285 Gondreau, P. 99, 112 Goranson Jacob, H. 30 Gospel(-s) 2, 4, 20, 33–5, 42–3, 45, 65, 67, 126, 144, 160, 166, 206; social gospel 26; Synoptic Gospels 18, 33–4, 52, 64, 67 Gottlöber, S. 111 grace 3, 16, 29, 42, 78–9, 80–4, 86, 88, 100, 122, 134, 137–9, 155, 160, 217, 235, 248, 258, 266 Grebe, M. 9 Green, J. B. 31, 72–3 Greer, R. A. 91–3 Gregory of Nazianzus 166–7, 179 Grillmeier, A. 89, 186, 197 Grimm, H. J. 141 Grössl, J. 1, 7–9, 115, 145, 161, 197, 216, 280, 282–3, 285 guidance 25, 86, 138–9, 235, 240, 244, 254, 260–2, 266–7, 276, 286–9, 291–2, 294 Gunton, C. 141 hadith(-s) 236, 239–40, 247, 253, 273–4 Haenchen, E. 46 Häfner, G. 295 Haghani Fazl, M. 8, 235, 253, 289–91, 295 Hagenow, S. 46 Hagner, D. A. 71 Haight, R. 91, 280, 285 al-Ḥalabī, T. 250 Halm, H. 268 Hamilton, M. 181 Härle, W. 46 Hasitschka, M. 68 Hasker, W. 178, 181 Hay, D. 30 Hays, R. 231 Hebrews 19–20, 224 Hegel, G. W. F. 144 Hegelian 144 Heinzer, F. 93 Helm, P. 140, 165, 178–9

Henderson, L. 113 (neo-Platonic doctrines of) henosis 255 heresy 76, 82, 148, 167, 169, 171, 173, 200, 225, 257; heresiographer 257; heresiologist 256; heretic 272; heterodoxy 272 hermeneutics 191, 223 Herrmann, A. 52, 55, 69–71 Heschel, A. J. 31 Hick, J. 4, 11, 216, 228 high priest 4, 26, 33, 51, 64–7, 129, 185, 187 Hill, J. 161, 179, 181, 213–14, 229 al-Ḥilli, J. 240–1, 249–51, 260–3, 269–70 Historical context plausibility 5, 45 Höfer, J. 197 Hoffman, P. 111 Hofmann, W. 98, 101, 112 Hollenbach, P. W. 42–4, 48 Holmen, T. 47 Holocaust 16, 25 Holy Spirit 7, 19, 36, 38, 41, 54, 56, 60, 76, 81–3, 85, 96, 108, 119, 131, 133, 137–40, 154, 222; Spirit 21, 23, 25, 35, 38, 50–1, 53–5, 57, 60, 76, 81–5, 120, 127, 133–4, 136–40 Holy Writ 208 homo assumptus 79 Hopin, H. 161 Hörmann, K. 10 Hughes, P. 111 Hultgren, A. 231 human autonomy 288–90 human nature/humanity of Christ 3–4, 6–9, 15, 21–2, 24–5, 27–9, 64, 75–8, 80–1, 83–8, 100, 102, 106–9, 119, 123, 127–8, 134–5, 137, 143–5, 150, 153–9, 161, 164, 167, 170–4, 185–9, 192, 194–6, 199–205, 210–11, 217, 219, 222–4, 226–7, 281 human perfection 8–9, 253–4, 271, 277–80, 283–4 human will (of Christ) 2, 81, 87–8, 102, 126, 145, 153–4, 199–202, 204, 210, 219, 222–3 Ḥusaynī Ṭihrānī, M. 263, 270 hylomorphism 194; (neo-)Aristotelian hylomorphism 194; hylomorphic composition 193–5 hypostasis 78–9, 87, 106, 170 hypostatic union 2, 6–7, 106, 119, 123, 135, 145, 147–8, 150, 152–3,

Author/Subject index  303 156–9, 167–9, 171, 174–5, 178, 183, 189, 191–6, 212, 288, 293–4; hypostatically united/unified 187, 189–90, 193, 212, 293 Ibn Shahrāshūb 239–40, 250 iconoclastic 26–7 identity 15, 22–3, 25–6, 28, 58, 82, 100, 125, 143, 145–9, 151–3, 156–9, 168, 192, 194, 219, 225 identity of origin 156 ijma’ (consensus) 272–3, 275–6 imago dei/divine image 212 imam(-s) 8, 235–41, 243–7, 253–63, 266, 272–9, 281–3, 286, 288–9, 291– 2, 294; imamate 8, 236–7, 242–3, 255–7, 259–60, 264–5, 271–5, 277, 279, 281, 283–4, 289; Imami 8, 258, 265, 271–83; Imamology 276, 279 Immaculate conception 24 immutability 78–9, 81, 83–4, 105, 120–2, 143–4, 148, 165–6, 177, 219 impeccability 1–9, 75, 94–5, 103–8, 119–28, 132, 134–5, 155, 160, 183, 185–6, 187–9, 196, 217, 221, 227, 283, 286–91, 293–4; Impeccability thesis 6, 94–5, 103, 109 inadvertent mistakes 237, 245–6 incarnation(-s) 7, 65, 76–9, 94, 105, 107–8, 122, 133, 135, 137, 143–6, 151, 155, 157, 161, 167–71, 173, 183, 189–96, 201–8, 210–12, 218– 20, 223, 226, 256, 258, 277, 279; incarnational Christology/Incarnation Christology 27, 76 indeterminism 123 individuation 145, 147–9, 151–2, 156–7 indivisibility 76, 203 inerrancy 8, 187, 253–4, 258–67, 283, 286–7, 291–2, 294; inerrancy argument 187–8 infallibility 8, 99, 144, 187, 235, 263, 272, 282, 286, 287, 289, 292–3; infallibles 258, 261 Infancy Gospel of Thomas 256 inscription 17 inseparability 76, 203, 226 intellectualist tradition/Intellectualism 144 interventionism 227 Islam 8–9, 235, 253–4, 265, 267, 271–84, 286, 290, 292, 294

‘iṣma (inerrancy) 8, 235–48, 253, 277–80, 283, 289 Israel 17, 25, 29, 36–8, 40–4, 53, 56–7, 60, 129 Issler, K. 180, 213 Jackson, S. A. 284 Jacobs, J. 113, 269 Jafri, H. 268 Jaskolla, L. 162 Javādī Ᾱmulī, ‘A. 249–51 Jedwab, J. 175, 181 Jenson, R. W. 169, 180 Jerusalem 42, 58–9, 131 John Philoponus 179 Johnson, M. 31 Jordan River/River Jordan/Jordan 36, 39, 42, 50, 52–3, 133 Judaism 16, 36, 38, 46, 280; Jew(-s) 16–17, 25, 45, 68; Jewish 16, 19–20, 29, 33, 36–7, 39, 45–6, 80 judgment 20, 23, 36–8, 40–1, 43–4, 62, 125, 207, 260–2, 265–6, 281, 291; final judgment 37, 40–1 jurisprudence 8, 253–4, 265 Kaiser, P. 197 kalām 8, 253, 276 Kamali, S. A. 285 Kammler, H.-C. 72 Kant, I. 2, 295 Kantian 2 Kärkkäinen, V.-M. 229 al-Kāshānī, M. 249–51 Kasher, A. 179, 181 Kavanagh, D. J. 111 Kendall, D. 214 Kenosis 3, 5, 28, 105, 143–4, 217, 144, 219, 225, 227; Kenotic Christology/ Kenosis Christology 143–4, 218 Kereszty, R. A. 110 kerygmatic 33 Kharlamov, V. 32 Khazim, H. 249 Khomeini, R. 249, 267 Kingdom of God 17 Kingdom to Israel 17 Knop, J. 295 Knysh, A. 270 Koester, C. R. 30 Kofsky, A. 90, 92 Kraemer, J. L. 272, 276, 284 Kraschl, D. 7, 9, 183, 198, 293, 295

304  Author/Subject index Kripkean 156 al-Kūfī, F. 250 al-Kulaynī, M. 250–1, 268, 284 Kvanvig, J. L. 114 al-Lāhījī, Ḥ. 245, 249–51 Lakoff, G. 26, 31 lamb: lamb of God 19, 38–9; paschal lamb 224; Passover lamb 19, 26; sacrificial lamb 5 Lamoreaux, J. C. 179 Langenfeld, A. 9, 93 Langer, R. 284 Last Supper 39 Latin Trinitarian model 144 law of indiscernibility of identicals 192 laws of the natural order 149 Leftow, B. 9, 110–12, 145–6, 161–2, 196, 214–15 Legenhausen, G. M. 8, 10, 253, 271, 277–8, 285–6, 288–9, 291–2, 295 Lehmann, H. T. 141–2 Lehmann, K. 197 Leim, J. E. 72 Lent 97, 102 Leo’s Tome 94 liberal theology 292 liberation theology 26, 45 libertarianism 86, 123, 125, 222; libertarian free will/freedom 1, 123–4, 128, 134, 144–5, 153, 184, 196, 217, 219, 223, 283; libertarian view of divine freedom 120 Link-Wieczorek, U. 91 Linville, M. D. 181 Locke, J. 151 Lockean 151 Logos 4, 6, 75–86, 88, 135, 145–7, 149, 153, 158–9, 170, 185–96, 204–5, 218–23, 227, 278, 281, 293; Logos Christology 79, 81–5; Logos-Anthropos Christology 77–8; logos-hegemonial 77, 80; Logos-Sarx Christology 77–8; Word (Logos) 20, 78, 85, 106–7, 168, 171, 201, 222 Loke, A. T. E. 178, 181–2, 217–23, 227, 229–31 Lombard, P. 114, 165, 171, 176, 179–81 Lord’s Prayer 6, 50, 62, 67 love 121, 137, 157, 160–1, 186–7, 189–91, 193, 196, 217, 293 Lutheran theology 146

Lütticke, L. 6, 50, 71 Luz, U. 59, 69, 72 ma‘ṣūm/ma‘ṣūmūn/ma’sūmīn 235–9, 240–4, 253, 266, 278, 286, 290–1 Madelung, W. 256, 268 Maḥallātī, H. 250 Mahdavi Mehr, V. 8, 10, 271, 292, 295 Maier, J. 49 Malavasi, G. 89–91 Marcus, J. 31 Mariña, J. 228 Marmodoro, A. 161, 179, 181, 213–14, 229 Marraffa, M. 181 Marschler, T. 9, 161 Martin Luther 25, 137–8, 141–2 martyrdom 33, 184, 192, 194, 196, 254 Matthews, T. F. 30 maximalist interpretation 289–90 Maximus Confessor 87, 93, 101, 126, 141, 145, 162, 180, 205–6, 219, 222 May, J. 111 McCord Adams, M. 110, 114 McDermott, M. J. 268–9 McFague, S. 26–7, 31 McFarland, I. A. 110, 178 McGhee Canham, M. 110, 113 McGrath, A. 231 McKinley, J. E. 6, 10, 31, 69–70, 72, 98, 110, 112–14, 119, 140–1, 229 McLean, B. H. 31 McLeod, F. G. 89–93 McMartin, J. 212, 215 means of grace 137–9 Meier, J. P. 39–41, 43–9 Menke, K.-H. 89, 91, 295 mental states 149, 164, 174–5 mercy 23, 51, 65, 77–9, 81, 88, 123, 187, 240–1, 257, 260–1, 267, 286, 288 mereology 164, 204 Merklein, H. 46 Merz, A. 47–8 mesocosmic panpsychism 150 messiah 16–19, 28–9, 35, 133, 138; messianic 17, 53, 55, 61; messiahship 61 metaphor 16, 26–7, 292 metaphysics 144–7, 151–3, 156–7, 169, 201, 203, 209–10, 278–9, 281–3 middle knowledge 5, 190, 293 Milgrom, J. 30 Milyavskaya, M. 112

Author/Subject index  305 minimal interventionist model 191 minimalist interpretation 290 ministry (of Christ) 7, 19–20, 23, 28–9, 34, 50, 52, 54, 56, 60–1, 64, 66–7, 94, 119, 292 Miodonski, L. 228 miracle(-s) 24, 58, 133, 137, 169, 255–6, 259 Miṣbāḥ, T. M. 251, 270 Modarressi, H. 258, 268–9 modernism 25; Modern Christology 217 Mojaddedi, J. 269 Molinism 190, 196 monophysitism 168–9, 288 monothelitism 2, 87, 199–200, 202–5, 208–10, 212, 219, 222; constructive monothelite Christology 204; neomonothelitism 7, 200–1, 204, 206–7, 208–12 Moosa, M. 268 moral autonomy 2, 221 moral evil 1, 135, 208 morally relevant freedom 183–5, 188, 190, 196 Moreland, J. P. 204–7, 210, 212–14, 230 Morris, L. 59, 71–2 Morris, T. V. 110–11, 113, 124–5, 140–1, 181, 202, 213, 217–18, 228 mosque 259 Muhammadan light 258, 265 Müller, U. B. 47–8 Mullins, R. T. 7, 9, 164, 178, 180–1, 229 Murphy, F. 228 Murphy-O’Connor, J. 42, 49 Murray, M. 111 al-Murtaḍā, ʿA. 248–50, 265 Muslim 1, 235–6, 242, 254, 261–2, 267, 271–4, 276, 278, 280–2, 284, 286, 288, 292, 294 Mutakkallimun 272, 278, 281 Mutazilis/Mutazelis 272–5 al-Muẓaffar, M. 249, 259, 262, 269–70 mysticism 8, 253–4, 264–6; mystical 254, 257, 264, 266, 275, 278, 280; mystical esoteric/esoteric mystical 274, 277; mystics 254, 263, 265 Narrative (Self-)Identity-View 151, 159 Narrative Self-Constitution 151 Nash, R. H. 140

Nasiri, M. 269 natural will 126, 165, 203 negative apophatic theology 277 Nemeş, S. 214 Nestorianism 76, 87, 146, 168–71, 189, 202–4, 210, 218; Nestorian Christology 76 Nestorius 76, 89, 94, 110, 168, 180 New Covenant 138 New Creation 127–8 New Testament Christology(-ies) 34, 46, 159, 196 Newman, A. J. 268 Nicene: Council of Nicaea/Nicene Council 77, 82, 166, 278; Nicene Christianity 199, 205; Nicene creed 29, 83, 166; NiceneConstantinopolitan Creed 186; Second Nicaea 107 Nichols, J. 181 Nichols, W. 181 Niemand, C. 68 non posse non peccare 22 non posse peccare 22, 75 non-interventionist model 191 no-regression argument 240 Norris jr., R. A. 178–80, 182 Nostra Aetate 16 Nyende, P. 64, 73–4 O’Collins, G. 10, 111, 214 O’Connor, T. 11 O’Kane, J. 269, 284 obedience 5, 21, 26, 51–3, 56–7, 63–4, 67, 80, 138, 153, 157, 161, 224–5, 238, 241, 243, 262, 266, 291, 294 Obedience Verse 238 occultism 259, 264, 266 Ockhamist 8, 227 Olson, R. E. 140–1 Only-Begotten 78–81, 84, 88 ontic 168 Ontology 8, 15–16, 26–7, 45, 79, 108, 148–50, 156, 167, 184, 196, 202, 271, 277, 288, 294; to ontologize 224 Origenism 170 original sin 24, 80, 88, 155, 221, 225, 263, 282 Osiek, C. 30 Oswald, H. C. 141 Ott, L. 10 Owen, J. 141 ownership 146–7, 150, 153, 156

306  Author/Subject index Paganism 17 Paige, T. 71 Pairavi, A. 268 Palmer, A. 284 Panentheism 144 Pannenberg, W. 95, 110, 155, 157–8, 163, 170, 180 Papies, E. K. 112 passion (of Christ) 58, 60, 160 Passover 18–19, 26, 292; Passover sacrifice 19, 292; paschal lamb 224 Pauline theology/Paul’s theology 212, 224 Pawl, T. 6, 9, 11, 94, 110–11, 113–15, 153–4, 162, 198, 213, 226, 231 peccability 6, 8, 20, 95, 97, 103–6, 108–9, 120–1, 124, 132, 134–5, 160, 185–9, 225, 227 Pelikan, J. 141, 180 pentadist theology 256 People of the Reminder 239 Percival, H. R. 214 pericope(-s) 33, 35, 54, 60 Persia 273 personhood 2, 151–2, 167, 170, 172–4, 205–6 Pharisees 20, 23, 45 phenomenology 149, 174–6; experimental phenomenology 97; phenomenal-conscious 174–7 philosophical principle of congruence 245 Pierce, M. 268–9, 284–5 Pike, N. 140 pilgrimage 42, 184, 188 Plantinga, A. 201, 213 Pleše, Z. 31, 268 pneumatomachoi 82 Pohle, J. 10, 110 Porter, S. E. 47, 71 posse non peccare 22, 75, 217 posse peccare 75–6, 80, 85–7 prayer 23, 43–4, 51, 60–3, 66–7, 130, 137, 139, 177, 208, 226, 237, 245, 259–60, 263 preacher 36, 39, 41; preaching 34, 36–9, 42–5 predestination 125, 128, 283 pre-election 159 pre-existence 159, 216, 226–7, 265 preference utilitarism 2 Preß, M. 91 Prestige, G. L. 166, 168, 178–80

Preul, R. 46 Price, R. 180 principle of noncontradiction 4 prophecy 57, 276 Prophet (referring to Muhammad) 236–40, 244–6, 253, 255, 258, 263, 265, 286; Prophet of Islam 8, 283 prophet(-s) 8, 20, 23, 29, 36–7, 41, 43, 81, 137–8, 235–48, 253, 255, 257–8, 263, 266, 272, 180, 282–3, 286, 288–92, 294; prophethood 236–7, 245, 260, 265; prophetic 17, 20, 28, 262; prophetic and symbolic act 40; prophetology 275 prosopon 78 Protestant 3, 26, 95, 209, 216–17, 280 Protoevangelium of James 24 providence 121, 125, 127–9, 135–6, 191 Przybylski, B. 71 Ptolemaic cosmology 209 Puig i Tàrrech, A. 42, 47–9 Pure Imams 247 Q (Saying Source) 23, 36, 41, 56 qualitative difference (between Christ and human beings) 81–2, 84 quantitative difference (between Christ and human beings) 81–2 Quinn, P. L. 179 Quitterer, J. 198 al-Qummī, M. (al-Shaykh al-ṣaddūq) 237, 247, 249–50, 259–62, 268, 290 Qumran 43–4 Qur’an 8, 235–6, 238–44, 246–8, 253, 261, 265, 272–3, 275–7, 280–1, 294 Radford Ruether, R. 29 Radtke, B. 269 Rahman, F. 272, 276–7, 284–5 Rahner, K. 162, 182, 197–8, 216, 228, 280 Ramadan 245 rational exoteric 274 al-Rāzī, Ḥ. (Abū l-Futūḥ) 245, 248–51 al-Razī, M. (al-Ḥimṣī) 249 al-Rāzī, M. (Fakhr ad-dīn) 249 Rea, M. 11, 111 redemption 17, 77, 121, 135–6 reductive view (of artificial objects) 147 Reformation movements 25 Reichenbach, B. 140 Reményi, M. 10

Author/Subject index  307 repentance 6, 16, 24, 34, 36–45, 187, 263, 266, 293 replacement formulation 39 resurrection: resurrection (referring to Christ) 5, 16–20, 24–9, 77, 79–80, 83–4, 86–7, 94, 126, 132, 158–9, 224–5, 292; resurrection (referring to imams) 258; Resurrection of Christ 40 retrospective theologizing/theology 5, 15, 27, 29, 196, 224 revelation 16, 79, 120, 122, 133, 145–6, 153, 159–60, 184, 191, 236–44, 253, 260–1, 277, 279, 282, 290–1, 293–4 revisionism 206; revisionist doctrine 205 Reyshahri, M. 270 Reza’ee, M. J. 269 Richard, L. 31 Ricouer, P. 27, 31 righteousness 7, 20, 24, 27–8, 33, 35–6, 39, 57, 96, 119, 123, 130, 133, 136–7, 139, 154, 239, 244, 274 Rippin, A. 269 Risen Lord 158 Rittner, C. A. 31 Robinson, J. A. T. 47 Röhser, G. 46 Roloff, J. 48 Roman 17, 36, 59, 62 Roman Catholic Church 26 Rorem, P. 179 Roth, J. K. 31 Rothenbusch, R. 197 Rubenstein, R. 31 Rukhshād, M. 249, 251 Russell, N. 32 Ruzer, S. 90, 92 Sa‘īdī, J. 250 Sabbath 17, 20, 23–4 Sachedina, A. 285 sacrament 40–1, 83, 84, 88, 137; eschatological sacrament 40–1; Eucharist 83; quasi-sacrament 40 sacrifice 5, 15, 19–20, 22, 24–5, 41, 136, 223–4; Passover sacrifice 19, 292; sacrificial 19–20, 224; sacrificial lamb 5 Safavid dynasty 273 saint(-s) 177, 265 salvation 21, 35, 37, 41–4, 64, 66–7, 78–86, 131, 136, 138–9, 146, 153,

155, 160, 190, 194, 208, 224–5, 228, 279–80, 282–3, 294; will of salvation/salvific will 40, 183–4 sanctification 39, 125, 130 Sanders, F. 170, 180, 213, 215 Sarot, M. 178 Satan 20–3, 50–1, 53–60, 63–4, 67–8, 77, 80, 98, 244 Savior 120, 137, 158, 226, 279, 283 Schaff, P. 197 Schärtl-Trendel, T. 7, 9–10, 143, 161–3, 190, 197 Schechtman, M. 151–3, 162 Schenke, L. 48 Schleiermacher, F. 31, 216–17, 228, 280 Schmidt, S. 228 Schmithals, W. 73 scholasticism 3; Neo-Scholasticism 185 Schützeichel, H. 88 scribes 54, 58, 61 Scripture 4, 6, 17, 22, 29, 57–8, 76, 82–3, 85, 94–6, 101, 119, 121–3, 128, 130–1, 134–7, 185, 205–7, 209–10, 227, 275, 294 Seesemann, H. 68 Segal, A. 30 self-consciousness 149–51, 170, 205, 220, 222 self-manifestation 144, 146, 149, 158–9, 191–2, 193, 194, 196 semi-monophysitism 185 separation: separation from God 77, 287–8, 291, 293–4; Christology of separation 75, 79, 195 Sermon on the Mount 62 Setzer, C. 30 Shah-Kazemi, R. 267 al-Shahrudi, A. 269 shari‘a 237, 240, 245 Sharifi, A. 270 Shedd, W. G. T. 111, 179 Shi’ism 248, 257–8, 272–3, 276; Shi‘a 1, 8, 235–6, 240, 245, 253–4, 256, 258–9, 264–5, 267, 271–7, 286, 290, 292; Shi‘i 8–9, 235–9, 247–8, 253–4, 256, 258–9, 262–7, 272, 276, 286–7, 289, 291–2 Shīrāzī, M. 248 Shīrāzī, S. (Mullā Ṣadrā) 241, 250–1, 263 Shoemaker, S. J. 31 Siker, J. 5, 8, 10, 15, 29–31, 223–5, 227, 230–1, 292–5

308  Author/Subject index Silverman, E. 179 Simon, M. 29 Simon, U. 284 sinfulness 4, 8, 27, 34, 43, 80, 86, 98, 127, 224, 227, 263 Singer, P. 10 sinlessness 4–6, 9, 16, 26–7, 33, 42, 45–6, 76–8, 83–4, 88, 94, 125, 127, 133–4, 136–9, 144, 155, 183, 217, 224, 263, 265–6, 281–2, 286–7, 290–4 Smit, P.-B. 71 Sobhani, J. 266–7, 270, 289–90 Son of God 20, 23, 34–5, 38, 51, 53–5, 57–60, 62, 78, 80, 123–5, 133, 135, 143, 151, 155, 293 Son of Man 38, 61, 187 Soori, M. 269 soteriology 7, 33, 75, 77, 83–6, 88, 119, 153, 160, 187–8, 197 Speak, D. 11 speculative theology 8, 271, 276 Spirit 21, 23, 25, 35, 38, 50–1, 53–5, 57, 60, 76, 81–5, 120, 127, 133–4, 136–40; Holy Spirit 7, 19, 36, 38, 41, 54, 56, 60, 76, 81–3, 85, 96, 108, 119, 131, 133, 137–40, 154, 222; spirit baptism 41; Spirit-Baptist 36; Spirit Christology 6, 81–2, 84–5, 133–4; Spirit of God/God’ Spirit 21, 23–4, 29, 35, 53, 130, 133, 137 Spirit-Baptist 36; spirit baptism 41 Stefano, T. 228 von Stosch, K. 9, 93, 163, 197, 286, 295 strategy of reduplication/reduplication strategy/reduplicative strategy 4, 203, 210, 219 Strotmann, A. 5–6, 9, 33, 197, 292 Stump, E. 110, 213–15 Sturch, R. 111 Subḥānī, J. 249–51 substance dualism 164, 171; substance dualist 167 substance ontology 194 suffering servant 18, 33, 46, 129, 138 Sufi 8, 253, 258, 264–5, 267, 292 sunnah 261 Sunni 254, 256, 267, 272, 274–6, 286, 292; Sunni theology 276 Swinburne, R. 111, 140, 217–18, 228, 230 synagogue 55 synapheia 81; synapheia akribes 79, 83–4

synergeia 81 Synoptic(s) 6, 50–2, 66–8; synopsis 196; Synoptic Gospels 18, 33–4, 52, 64, 67 al-Ṭabarsī, F. 243, 248–51 al-Ṭabāṭabā’ī, M. (Baḥr al-‘ulūm) 265, 270 al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī, M. Ḥ. 238, 246, 248–51, 264, 269–70 Tabriziyan, F. 250 Taliaferro, C. 178–9, 198 Taliqani, S. A. 269 Tanner, Ka. 140 Tanner, Ke. 180 Tanner, N. 110, 115, 213, 229 Tapp, C. 178 Temple (in Jerusalem) 19–20, 28, 58–9, 41, 62 temptation(-s) 1–3, 5–7, 20–3, 50–68, 80–1, 86, 88, 94–100, 102–3, 119–36, 138–40, 154–5, 159, 176, 185, 221–2, 224, 226, 282–3; objective temptability 3; subjective temptability 3; Temptation Argument 6, 103, 105, 109; temptation narrative 22, 33, 51, 53–4, 56, 58–60 Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs 55–6 Theism: Christian theism 96, 107, 155, 223; Classical Theism 4, 7, 9, 144, 165–7, 171–8; open theism 165, 191 Theißen, G. 45, 47–8 Theobald, M. 89 theodicy 1 Theodore of Mopsuestia 6, 75–6, 89–93, 169, 172, 177, 180, 182 theology of (the) glory 137–8 theology of the cross 138 theophany 278 theosis 28 Thomas Aquinas 3, 10–11, 25, 99–100, 106–7, 110–15, 121, 147–9, 162, 172, 179, 181–2, 185, 205, 214–15, 226, 288 Thomasius, G. 10 Thomism 147; Thomists 218, 222 three-part Christology 164, 166–9 Thunberg, L. 141 Timpe, K. 11, 96, 111, 154, 162 Tognazzini, N. 229 Torah 37, 187 Torrance, I. 180 transgression 23–4, 29, 97; transgressive faithfulness 28

Author/Subject index  309 Trinity 5, 27, 82, 85, 119, 143–4, 158, 166, 173, 205–6, 212, 257; second person of the Trinity 82, 105, 143–4, 146, 156, 189, 193, 195, 203, 218; social concept of the Trinity (social Trinitarianism) 143; third person of the Trinity 82–3; trinitarian subordination 5; Trinitarian theology 173; triune 120, 132, 138 Tucker, W. F. 268 Tuomela, R. 149–50, 162 Turner, J. T. 9, 178, 197, 285 Turretin, F. 181 al-Ṭūsī, N. 247–51, 260–1, 266, 269 al-Tustarī, M. T. 249 al-Tustarī, S. 258 twelve: twelve Imams 1, 239, 253, 273, 278, 282, 286; Twelver denominations 267; Twelver narrative 255; Twelver Shi’ism 257, 278; Twelver Shi‘a 235, 253 Twesten, A. D. C. 146, 162 two minds 165, 175–7; two minds Christology 144–5, 217; two-minds view 218 two natures 4, 6–7, 15, 20, 22, 78–9, 85, 107, 119, 123, 143, 145, 152, 157, 168–9, 191, 199, 204, 226; doctrine of two natures/two-natures doctrine 2, 75, 196, 199–200, 204, 216; Two Natures Christology 144, 157–8 Two Sons Worry 7, 167, 169–75, 177–8; Two(-)Sons Christology 76, 79, 145–6, 157–8 Two wills (of Christ) 2, 87, 153, 199–201, 203; divine will (of Christ) 2, 21, 61, 87–8, 145, 153–4, 199–201, 219, 222–3; human will (of Christ) 2, 81, 87–8, 102, 126, 145, 153–4, 199–202, 204, 210, 219, 222–3; Two-will doctrine/doctrine of two wills 2, 209, 216 two-part Christology 164, 166–7 Two-Persons Christology 77 Überbietungstheologie 35 Ullmann, C. 114 Umayyad dynasty 255 unboundedness 243–4, 248 underrating 258–9, 277, 279–80 unification 145, 287–8

unity of consciousness 171, 174–5, 178, 218 Ussher, J. 179 Usuli school 265 Uthemann, K.-H. 93 Vaggione, R. P. 179–80 Valkenberg, V. 30 Van den Brink, G. 178 Vatican II 16 verses: Obedience Verse 238; Verse of Abraham’s Test 236, 239, 243; Verse of Purification/Purification Verse 236, 242 virgin birth 19, 22, 24, 56 vocation 28 Voigt, U. 149–50, 162 Vos, A. 178 Walker, A. J. 93 Ware, B. A. 111, 140, 295 Weichlein, R. 10 Weidemann, H.-U. 6, 9, 50, 71–2 Weinandy, T. G. 180 Welker, M. 146, 161 Wellum, S. J. 99, 112 Wendel, S. 93, 163 Werther, D. 111, 181 Wessling, J. 206–9, 212–15 Wilkins, M. J. 71 will or intellectual appetite 101 Williams, T. 181 Wolter, M. 46, 69 Wong, E. K. 47 Word (Logos) 20, 78, 85, 106–7, 168, 171, 201, 222; Logos 4, 6, 75–86, 88, 135, 145–7, 149, 153, 158–9, 170, 185–96, 204–5, 218–23, 227, 278, 281, 293 worship 59, 77, 80 wrath 5, 37, 43, 45, 131, 135, 137, 255 Wright, N. T. 230 Wyman, W. 228 Yandell, K. 141 Yarbrough, L. 30 Yom Kippur 19, 224; Yom Kippuring Passover 224 Yusufiyan, H. 270 Zaidi 274 zakat 245 Zimmerman, D. W. 179

Scripture index

Note: Page numbers followed by “fn” refer to footnotes.

Lev 4:35 41 16 19

Ps 8:5-7 64 11:6 73 22 62 22:2 62 22:22-31 62 34:8 122 42:6 61 68:10 122 78:25 56 91:11-2 58, 71 94:8-9 73 110 18, 30 119:11 139

Num 23:19 120

Wis 2–3 33

Dtn 6-8 60 6:13 59 6:16 58 8:3 58 8:15 55

Isa 11:5-9 55 45:7 125 51:17 73 53 18, 30, 33, 46 53:9 46 65:25 55 66:15-6 47

Gen 1-2 122 22:1-19 52 50:20 128 Ex 16 56 33:19 122 34:6-7 122 34:28 71

1 Kgs 19:5-8 56 19:8 71 2 Chr 7:3 122 Ezra 9:6-15 43 2 Macc 7:37-8 33

Ezek 23:33 73 Dan 7 38 Hos 2:18 55 11:1 57

312  Scripture index Mal 3:6 122 Mark [Mk] 1:2-13 34 1:4 38, 46 1:4-6 41 1:5 20, 43 1:7-8 34, 38 1:9 36, 56, 69 1:9-10a 34 1:9-11 34 1:10-1 49 1:10b-11 34 1:10 69 1:11 35, 52, 70 1:12 69 1:12-3 23, 50–1, 53-4, 67, 185 1:13 70–1 1:13b 55 1:21-8 55 1:27 55 1:39 69 2:6-10 46 2:26 187 3:22 54 3:22-30 54 3:27 54 3:28-30 54 3:29 54 3:31-5 20 6:17-29 41 8:31 61 8:31-3 63 8:33 73 10:17 187 10:17-8 33 10:18 122, 124 10:45 46 11:12 69 13:1-2 20 13:32 187 14:18 55 14:24 46 14:27-37 61 14:32 63, 73 14:32-42 72 14:34 61, 73 14:35 61 14:36 61–3 14:38 60–2 14:38a 73 14:39 62 14:41 63

14:43-52 33 14:50 61, 63, 73 14:54 55 14:66-72 63 15:34 62 15:38 62 15:39 62 Matt [Mt] 1-2 72 1:1-4:11 56 1:18-25 56 1:19 56 1:20 57 1:21 19, 39 1:24 57 2:13 57 2:19-20 57 2:21 73 3:1-17 34 3:6 39, 43 3:7-10 44 3:7-10 36–7 3:8 44 3:11 38 3:12 36–7 3:13-7 34–5 3:14-5 49 3:15 20, 57 3:17 35, 52, 57 4:1-11 21, 33, 50–1, 59 4:2 56 4:2-4 57 4:3 57, 69 4:3 58 4:5 58 4:5-7 58 4:6 58, 71 4:7 58 4:8 73 4:8-10 59 4:9 59 4:11 59 5:3-7:27 73 5:20 73 6 67 6:1-6 71 6:6 73 6:9 62 6:9-13 62 6:10 62 6:13 50, 62, 73 6:16-8 71 7:21 73

Scripture index  313 8:22 20 11:19 20 12:24 20 12:28 137 14:13-21 58 15:32-9 58 16:21 59 16:23 59 19:16-7 34 20:28 58 21:1-27 58 26:28 39, 46, 58 26:36 63 26:36-46 72 26:39 63 26:39 62 26:41 60–2, 139 26:42 62 26:53 58 26:56 73 27:40 58 27:43 58 27:46 62 27:54 58 28:16 59 28:16-20 59 28:17 59 28:19 82 Luke [Lk] 1:5-80 35 1:32-3 60 1:79 60 2:1 59 2:1-22 34 2:34 60 2:49 138 2:51-2 28, 124 2:52 131, 187 3:1 59 3:3 38, 46 3:7-9 36–7, 44 3:10-4 41 3:16 38 3:17 36–7 3:19-20 60 3:19–22 35 3:21-2 34–5 3:22 52 3:23-38 59 3:38 59 4:1 59, 60 4:1-13 33, 50–1, 60, 72 4:1-14 138–9

4:2 57, 71 4:4 139 4:5-6 60 4:5-8 59 4:7 139 4:9-13 59 4:10-1 71 4:12 139 4:13 60 4:14 60 4:14-5 60 6:20-49 73 7:24-8 41 7:31-5 41 9:23 129, 137 11:2-4 73 11:4 50 14:3 20 14:26 20 18:9–14 45 18:19 33, 187 19:1-10 20 20:37 187 20:40 63 20:46 63 20:47 63 22:3 63 22:20 46 22:28 60 22:39 63 22:39-46 72 22:40 63, 72 22:42 2, 73, 205 22:43 63, 136 22:44 63 22:46 72 22:54 63, 73 24:11 17 24:21 17 John 1:1.14 76 1:25-34 38 1:29 19, 39 1:29-34 35 1:32-34 133 3:5 20 5:18 20 5:19 134 7:18 46 8:24 46 8:34-6 46, 127 8:45-6 49 8:46 20, 46

314  Scripture index 9:16 20 9:24 23 9:40-1 23 11:33 68 11:35 68 11:36 68 11:38 68 12:23 64 12:27 68 12:27-8 64 14:10 130, 133, 137 17:3 137 18:4 102 19:14 19

4:7-12 141 fn. 25 5:21 20, 27, 33, 183, 293 12:1-10 138 13:5 52

Acts 1:22 34 4:24-8 128 8:29 138 10:1-20 138 10:37-8 34 13:24-5 34 14:22 141 fn. 25 16:6-7 138

Phil 2 28 3 27 3:10 129

Rom 1-8 33 3:22 228 3:23 27 4:25 33 5:3-5 141 fn. 25 5:12-9 137, 212 6:16-20 127 8:6-8 127 8:14 138 8:15-16 138 8:16 134, 139 8:17-29 141 fn. 25 8:28-29 125, 129, 138 10:4 137 12:2 122 1 Cor 1:18-23 138 1:18-25 27 1:23 17 5:6 19 10:13 133, 139 12:12 139 13:12 16 15:45-9 135 2 Cor 3:18 25, 138, 141 fn. 25

Gal 1:4 33 4:6 138 5:16-25 131 6:1-2 139 Eph 2:10 139 5:18 139

Col 1:17 173 1:18 135 Hebr [Heb] 1:1-3 120 2:5-18 64–5 2:7 64 2:9 64, 73 2:10 64, 66 2:10-8 66 2:14 64–5 2:15 65–6 2:17 51, 65 2:17-18 130, 138 2:18 50–1, 64–5 3:8-4 73 4:14 65 4:14-16 65 4:14-5:10 64–5 4:15 4, 11, 19–22, 30, 33, 51, 64–5, 94, 119, 128, 134, 183, 185 4:15-16 130, 135, 139 5:7 5, 65–6 5:7-8 51 5:7-10 64, 66 5:8-9 66 5:9 66 6:18 122 11:17 73 12:1-3 133 12:1-14 141 fn. 25 12:2 65, 193 12:4 65

Scripture index  315 Titus 1:2 122 James [Jas] 1:2-5 129, 141 fn. 25 1:12-5 50 1:13 50, 120, 123, 128 1 Peter 1:6 52 1:18-9 46 1:22-24 183 2:21-5 129, 133, 141 fn. 25

2:22 20, 46, 293 2:22-4 46 2:24 293 2 Pet 1:21 134, 138 1 John 1:1-3 120 3:5 46 Rev 21:4 127–8