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St. Thomas on the Identity and Unity of the Person of Christ: A Problem of Reference in Christological Discourse
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
Over the past few decades philosophers have gathered quite a few logical and linguistic insights from a close study of traditional religious claims and arguments: But on the whole, theologians have not benefited reciprocally from those philosophical explorations into their territory. I believe this has been due in part to the philosophers' unhelpful approach. Their procedure, all too often, has been to lay out a claim or argument in its traditional form, and then go ‘fallacy hunting’, finally to reject it as hopelessly ridden with logical error and based on some outmoded metaphysical notions which are entirely unsalvageable. In all this there is seldom evinced any sensitivity to that religious perception the communication of which was intended by the particular formulation of doctrine they have examined. Thus the philosophical enterprise has time and again come across as inimical to the theologian's interest. In this paper I hope to show that this is not a necessary course of affairs. I intend to examine some traditional Christian claims about the person of Christ as presented by St. Thomas, primarily in the third part of his Summa Theologiae. I shall reject the bulk of his particular formulations but at the same time concur with some of the insights which found expression in those formulae. The particular topic I shall address is the question of the identity and unity of the person of Christ.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1982
References
1 The problem also has been felt to be more than merely a tension between predicates of very different kinds. It has been thought to be a conflict between incompatible predicates, such as eternal and temporal, created and uncreated.
2 An analogous course also tried is the attempt to hold that only the human mode of discourse is strictly applicable to Christ (forms of adoptionism).
3 At this point I shall specify the difference between a suppositum (or hypostasis) and a person merely in this way: a suppositum is an ultimate bearer of properties, a person such a bearer with a particular cluster of properties (‘in a rational nature’).
4 Summa Theologiae III. Q. 2. A. 3. (S.T.)
5 cf. S.T. III. Q. 16. A. 1.
6 cf. S.T. III. Q. 1. A. 1.
7 Every nature except the divine nature admits of accidental properties, which in fact enter into individualising their instantiations.
8 And, on the accepted account of person, where there is a human person, there is a created suppositum.
9 S.T. III. Q. 2. A. 5.
10 Translation of Compendium Theologiae made by Vollert, Cyril. B. Herder Book Co., 1947. Chapter 211, pp. 231–235Google Scholar. See also S.T. III. Q. 2. A. 5.
11 At the end of his life, in various passages in his Compendium of Theology, St. Thomas refers to ‘person’, ‘hypostasis’, and ‘suppositum’, as designating an ‘integral whole’. It is not altogether clear in these passages, but he may have felt at this point of his authorship a pull away from the view of substance which I here criticise and toward the kind of replacement I am offering. But, again, this is not clear.