Let me begin somewhat perversely by making clear what I do not intend to do in this paper. I do not propose to offer a general defense of Ockham's resolution of the metaphysical perplexities engendered by the dogma of the Incarnation. In fact, I have argued elsewhere that his account of the hypostatic union is seriously deficient. 1..

According to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, the Son of God is truly but only contingently a human being. But is it also the case that Christ’s individual human nature is only contingently united to a divine person? The affirmative answer to this question, explicitly espoused by Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, turns out to be philosophically untenable, while the negative answer, which is arguably implicit in St. Thomas Aquinas, explication of the Incarnation, has some surprising and significant (...) metaphysical consequences. (shrink)

Formulated by Aquinas, commented on by post-Copernican philosophers and theologians, analysed in depth by C.S. Lewis, and deliberated by some contemporary writers, the question of multiple incarnations either within humanity or amongst extra-terrestrial sentient species is all too intermittently examined: ‘Can the Christ be incarnated more than once in our reality, or somewhere else in the universe, or another reality?’ In this paper, we examine the debate and the conclusions: that is, Lewis’s position within his philosophical theology and his analogical (...) narratives; also, some contemporary philosophers of religion and theologians (Karl Rahner, with Christopher L. Fisher and David Fergusson; Sjoerd L. Bonting and William B. Drees; E.L. Mascall and Brian Hebblethwaite; Oliver Crisp and Keith Ward). How do they relate to Aquinas’s handling of the question and how do they compare with Lewis’s approach based on a theology of the imagination (grounded in Augustine and Alice Meynell)? Can Lewis resolve the argument? Could alien species have witnessed wholly different acts, equally unique, costly to God, and necessary to the process of salvation? Any answer or explanation relates to the function and purpose of the incarnation: the Fall, original sin—therefore, how we define the boundaries, limits, of atonement. (shrink)

Bible and tradition remain silent on intelligent extraterrestrial life, and few modern theologians have expressed themselves on this topic. Scientific insight suggests the possibility, even likelihood, of the development of life on extrasolar earthlike planets. It is argued that such life forms would resemble earthly life and also develop a religious and moral life. As creatures with free will they would be prone to sin and in need of salvation. It is argued that this would not require multiple incarnations, since (...) Jesus is the cosmic Christ. (shrink)

I consider the fundamental philosophical problem for Christology: how can one and the same person, the Second Person of the Trinity, be both God and man. For being God implies having certain attributes, perhaps immutability, or impassibility, whereas being human implies having apparently inconsistent attributes. This problem is especially vexing for the proponent of Conciliar Christology – the Christology taught in the Ecumenical Councils – since those councils affirm that Christ is both mutable and immutable, both passible and impassible, etc. (...) Many extant solutions to this problem approach it by claiming that the predicates are incompatible when said of the same thing without qualification, but that once the appropriate qualification is added, compatibility is achieved. I provide a different approach. Here I argued that the predicates can be understood so that they are compatible. I then work out the logical relations between the predicates, so understood, showing that no contradiction follows from understanding them in the way I suggest. After that, I consider some of the motivations we have for believing the purportedly incompatible pairs to be, in fact, incompatible, and argue that, on the view offered here, we can salvage most of our intuitions that motivate taking the predicates as incompatible. Finally, I consider three objections. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical examination of the logical problems associated with the claim that Jesus of Nazareth was one and the same person as God the Son, the Second Person of the divine Trinity.

One way of understanding the reduplicative formula "Christ is, ’qua’ God, omniscient, but ’qua’ man, limited in knowledge" is to take the occurrences of the ‘qua‘ locution as picking out different parts of Christ: a divine part and a human part. But this view of Christ as a composite being runs into paradox when combined with the orthodox understanding of the Incarnation, according to which Christ is identical to the second person of the Trinity. In response, we have to choose (...) between modifying the orthodox understanding, adopting a philosophically and theologically contentious perdurantist account of persistence through time, or rejecting altogether the idea of the composite Christ. (shrink)

The period from Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus is one of the richest in the history of Christian theology. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation aims to provide a thorough examination of the doctrine in this era, making explicit its philosophical and theological foundations. Medieval theologians believed that there were good reasons for supposing that Christ's human nature was an individual. In the light of this, Part 1 discusses how the various thinkers held that an individual nature could be united to (...) a divine person. Part 2 shows how one divine person could be incarnate without any other. Part 3 deals with questions of Christological predication, and Part 4 shows how an individual nature is to be distinguished from a person. The work begins with a full account of the metaphysics presupposed in the medieval accounts, and concludes with observations relating medieval accounts to modern Christology. (shrink)

_Philosophical Theology and Christian Doctrine_ surveys and comments on recent work by philosophers of religion in the analytic tradition on the doctrines of the Christian creed. Topics covered include creation, Incarnation, Trinity, salvation and eschatology, and the ultimate future of creation. Comprehensive survey of core Christian doctrines.