Philosophy 224

Many Persons?

Beothius

Boethius was a Roman statesman and philosopher of the Western Roman Empire.

He was born in Rome in 480 CE and died, imprisoned, in Pavia in 524 CE.

He was a learned man, who wrote a number of influential theological works, as well as commentaries on Aristotle’s logical works. He also made a number of original contributions to Aristotelian logic.

Christian martyr, killed the story goes for his support of Justin against the Arian Osiligoth Theodoric.

The Person as a Natural Kind

One of the most significant contributions Boethius makes to our account of Personhood is his argument that “person” is a natural kind.– Natural Kind: real, rather than artificial or

arbitrary grouping. This claim is implicit in the psyche-

ologies of Plato and Aristotle, but Boethius spells it out.

Substance or Accident

Reflecting on its status as a natural kind, Boethius then goes on to draw some significant conclusions.

The first is to specify whether as a natural kind, personhood belongs to the order of substances or accidents.– Substance: independently existing thing; accident:

things which inhere in substances.

His position is that persons are substances.

What kind of substance?

Not all substances are persons, however.

Persons are substances with specific qualities: life, sensibility, reason.

Moreover, persons are always particular substances, rather than universals.– Max, rather than human being.

It’s all Greek to Me.

Boethius then proceeds, through an analysis of the relevant Greek philosophical terms, to explore the connections between the notions of essence, substance and person.

His ultimate aim is a theological one: clarifying the essential, substantial and personal status of God.

His conclusion: God is one essence (whatness or nature), three substances (substrates), and three persons (the Trinity).

Ousia or Hypostasis

The key distinction for Boethius is that between essence or nature on the one hand and person on the other.– “…Nature is the specific property of any

substance, and Person is the individual substance of a rational nature” (35c2).

This is a distinction that must be maintained for Boethius, because it has significant christological implications.

What Kind of Person is Christ

Both human and divine, Christ poses a real puzzle for the doctrine of persons.

Some had argued that Christ is two persons. Boethius denies this because it maintains a overly rigid understanding of the relationship between essence and person.

According to him, Christ is one person in whom the two substances have been united (through the common element of reason).

St. Anselm

Archbishop of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church; born in 1033 at Aosta a Burgundian town near Lombardy, died 21 April, 1109.

As significant a philosopher as he was a theologian, Anselm’s work is dominated by the then emerging question of the status of the universals. A realist (as opposed to a nominalist), Anselm’s arguments, though more radical than would later become common, were central to the debate that raged at the heart of scholasticism.

His most famous contribution to the history of philosophy was his ontological argument for the existence of God.

How Many persons?

Despite Boethius’s best efforts, questions about the personhood of God and of Christ continued to animate significant theological debate for the next 500 years.

Anselm weighs in with his own account, grounded in the sort of ontological consideration which animates his famous proof.– In this case, it comes in the form of a reflection on

the notion of a ‘supreme good’ (39c1).

Let’s Start with Three Persons

Anselm assumes the trinitarian view point. The problem is how to account for it in a way that satisfies reason.

Unlike Boethius, Anselm insists that the trinitarian account has to be grounded in an account of the substantial unity of God.– This may not be so much a disagreement as a

terminological difference, with Anselm using ‘substance’ in place of Boethius’s ‘essence.’

What’s the deal with Incarnation?

Anselm is responding in this piece to questions raised to the trinitarian doctrine on the basis of the specific nature of the divine persons.

Christ was a man. If God and Christ are one, doesn’t that mean God was a man. Specifically, doesn’t that mean God sweats (is incarnate).

Christ is the only one who sweats. The answer lies for Anselm in the

doctrine of the person. It’s not in God’s substance that the

incarnation is to be understood, but in a specific person of God, Christ.– “…the Son of God, who is one nature with

the Father and a different person from the Father…” (40c1).

And only one person sweats

Anselm also weighs in on the question of the character of the personhood of Christ.

Like Boethius, Anselm insists that Christ be understood as one person.

His argument is that we should understand Christ’s person like God’s person: “one nature is several persons, and he several persons are one nature…so in Christ the diving being is a person and the human being is a person, and yet there is one person and are not two persons” (42c1-2).