The Volition of ChristSteven Greenaway

Ambrose SeminaryTH 750 – Independent Study

Dr. Mabiala KenzoDecember 17, 2011

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Introduction

i. Purpose of Studyii. Sectional overview

In the arena of Christology, history has shown, both theologically and

philosophically, that the areas of the incarnation and Christ’s volition are a topic of extreme

interest. Of easy recognition is also the kaleidoscope of theories in regards to the

methodology, critique, and priorities placed on these matters from specific people and

contexts. Not only do we find in theological history a vast approach to this topic, but we also

find in scripture what appears to be discrepancies where James 113 asserts that God cannot be

tempted by evil, but with God incarnate, in Mt 2639, he does not want to experience the will

of God and thus this could be a will of evil. In the conclusion I shall return to my resolve of

scripture’s witness to the volition of Christ.

It is the purpose of this study to present to the reader a comprehensive, but not

exhaustive, look into what Christian history has said in regards to the effect that the

incarnation had on the God-man’s volition.

Our first section will be in regards to Christian antiquity, also known as the Patristic

period. We will begin with Origen. I began with him because of his theology steeped in Neo-

Platonism (although he asserts it would be) and that he is considered the first theologian in

post-Christ history. Following Origen, we will look at St Cyril of Alexandria and his key

contribution to Christology – On the Unity of Christ. This work is paramount for its time and

place and will prove quite helpful in giving much substance to my research.

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Our second section will be to look at the Christology within the high middle ages. We

shall first look at Anselm’s small, but powerful, masterpiece Cur Deus Homo so as to see

where pre-scholastic philosophical theology was being led. Following Anselm we shall look

at the main figure in all of Christian theology, that being St Thomas Aquinas set within high-

scholasticism. His first and fourth volumes in the Summa Theologica are central to our

understanding of volition in regards to God, man, and Christ.

Our third section will look at Karl Barth. Neo-Orthodoxy is a crucial time in

theological history. Coming out of the modernity, Karl Barth’s voyage in liberal theology

proved insufficient for what he understood should be a proper Christian outlook to a broken

world. In attempting to recover orthodoxy, but understanding that liberal theology was a

reality to him, the way to Neo-Orthodoxy was paved. And from this, Barth provides us with a

dialectic emphasis where scripture is not about remaining statically the word of God but is

about being the word of God. And so too with Christ, the union of the human and divine

natures are becoming.

Our fourth section will research the approach to Christ’s volition through the lens of

analytic/philosophic theology. We shall look at how analytic theology prospered due to

analytic philosophy’s approach and how it works as a systematic theology. We shall look at

three theories. First, we shall look at the two-mind theory as proposed by Morris and

Swinburne. Second, we shall look at krypsis theology by Oliver Crisp and its necessitation of

an innocent temptation. Finally, we shall look at a neo-Sabellian reformulation by Moreland

and Craig.

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Christological Volition in Antiquity

i. Patristic Philosophy and Theologyii. Patristic Christology

a. Origen on Christ’s volitionb. Cyril of Alexandria on Christ’s volition

Our first concern before we explore Origen’s philosophical theology on Christ’s

volition is where philosophy and theology intersect in the second century.1 At this time the

broad consensus was that Christians should abstain from idolatry; nevertheless, not all agreed

on the Christian attitude toward the pagan culture which included the philosophical works of

Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. While many accepted their teachings, for a Christian to do,

according to many, would be to consent to paganism.

As Christianity had no philosophical language of their own to start with, they

naturally turned to the dominant philosophy of Platonism. This use of philosophy for the

Christian was not clearly distinct from theology and Christian writers “aimed rather at

presenting the Christian wisdom of ‘philosophy’ in a very wide sense, which was primarily

theological, though it contained philosophical elements in the strict sense.”2 As a result, the

pressing attacks upon the church from philosophers allowed Christians to use their

adversary’s weapons to serve their own purposes. Clement of Alexandria professed that

philosophy was a gift from God by which the pagans would be educated in regards to Christ.

There were two reasons for the apologetic advance of Christianity. First, the hostility

towards Christianity and, second, the intellectual Christians desired to penetrate as much as

1 I choose the second century because this is where philosophy and theology come to heads with one another, according to the some at the time, or that they both accommodate each other, according to others. The main emphasis of the apostles was to meet a theological need, not a philosophical one, as their message was directed to the Jews. As Christianity’s roots grew, suspicions were aroused by Jews, political authorities and pagan intellectuals and writers. Copleston asserts that we cannot find a philosophical system in the early Christian writers as their interest was primarily theology – to defend the faith, Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy: volume I, Greece and Rome (The Bellarmine Series IX; London: Burns Oats & Washbourne LTD., 1951), 14.2 Copleston, A History – vol. 1, 15.

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possible that which was revealed and to therefore systematize a view of both human life and

the world through the lens of faith.3

Justin Martyr (103-165) is an example of one who was able to connect pagan

philosophy and Christian philosophy. He thus took on the task of fitting together Christianity

and common wisdom. There was a point of contact between the Christian faith and that of

pagan philosophy as Plato argued for a reality beyond the present world and that both Plato

and Socrates stated there was life beyond the physical death. Common pagan philosophy also

believed in a supreme being from which everything derives its existence. From this, and in

spite of the difference that the Christian hope is in the resurrection of the body, Justin insisted

that in the philosophers there were glimpses of truth that could not be explained as mere

coincidences.4 Further, the Logos was evidence of this Christian-pagan connection. For

Greek philosophers, the Logos was universal reason and thus mankind can share in it. For

Christians, the incarnation was the underlying reason, the Logos, was made flesh. Justin even

states that among some pagan philosophers the actual Logos was known and that whatever

truth there was in pagan philosophy was granted by the Logos of (the Christian) God.

Nevertheless, the incarnation allowed the Logos to be fully known and so what the

philosophers knew in part was not sufficient.5

Justin essentially allowed Christians to find whatever good they could in classical

culture amidst it being pagan. On the other hand, Tatian (120-180 AD) and Tertullian (166-

220 AD) asserted that Christianity and pagan philosophy are not compatible. Tatian gloried in

the barbarian origin of Christianity and thus he was against the claims of classic culture and

3 Copleston, A History – vol. 1, 14.4 Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation, vol. 1 (New York: HarperSanFransisco, 1984), 55.5 Gonzales, The Story of Christianity, 56.

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philosophy; what Greeks thought valuable were under attack by him. Tatian6 claimed that

Greeks attained their astronomy from the Babylonians, geometry from the Egyptians, and

writing from the Phoenicians; philosophy and religion came from Moses which is much older

than Plato and therefore any correlation between the Greeks and the Christians must go back

to the Greeks learning from the barbarians. And by twisting the wisdom of the barbarians, the

Greeks hold a pale reflection of the truth that Moses knew and Christians preach.7 Tatian

asserted that scripture provided the proof for creation in time and free will.

We find with Tertullian the famous statement: What has Athens to do with

Jerusalem? What does the academy have to do with the Church? The prompting which

caused this claim was due to Tertullian being convinced that many heresies that circulated at

his time were the result of “attempts to combine pagan philosophy with Christian doctrine.”8

Our subject whom we shall start with will be Origen (c. 185 – c. 254). Origen was

born in Alexandria to a well-off family. From an early age Origen studied the bible and

memorized verses, thus proving that the bible was central to him from an early age. With his

father in prison for his faith, Origen urged his father not to be an apostate; Origin himself

yearned for martyrdom. Having finished his education he resolved to teach the Catechumen

where he learned to argue theologically and philosophically with heretical students.9 Moving

to think philosophically and dialectically (from Socratic conversation), philosophy was the

means in order to be prepared for theology. The apologetic platform from which Origen

6 An apparent pupil of Justin who was educated in Greek literature and philosophy and later became a Christian.7 Gonzales, The Story of Christianity, 54.8 Gonzales, The Story of Christianity, 54.9 Alastair H. B. Logan, “Origen (c.185-254),” in The Blackwell Companion to the Theologians: Volume One, Early Church to the Reformation (ed. I. Markham; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). 172.

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continued was that from Justin, Tatian, Theophilus,10 and Athenagoras.11 As we will see,

Origen was a key contributor to the free will defence12 during this time of Platonism which

argued that everything that happened was either by nature or by chance.

A student of Clement, Origen’s theology was an attempt to unite the Christian faith

with the prominent Alexandrian philosophy – Neo-Platonism.13 Origen affirmed that

anything which was at variance with apostolic teaching,14 and could deter one from

Christianity, was not true. Nevertheless, Origen argued that his theological hermeneutic was

able to speculate on certain issues which scripture or the apostles did not cover.15 His theory

of creation and fallen spirits is from Platonism though he claimed it was from scripture.

Nevertheless, Origen argues that Jesus came to break the power of Satan and to show us the

path we are to follow in our return to our spiritual home.16

10 Theophilus wrote Ad Autolycum c.180. Argued for the Christian God by means of natural theology; his works show his attributes and that those who know God realize moral purity.11 Athenagoras wrote A Plea for Christians c.177. He spoke against atheism, cannibal feasts and incest and that there cannot be a myriad of gods. Further, he argues that true philosophy is from Christian revelation; yet he admits the Greek philosophers divined some kind of truth. 12 The largest section of Book III in On First Principles (157-222) is dedicated to Free Will. Origen’s writings, known as Frag. 26 – Koetschau – made by Gregory and Basil state that scripture is clear that man is responsible to live a good life and avoid sin (157). Within humanity are not only natural movements but rational movements which other animals don’t have. Rationality allows for discernment within the natural movements (159). All desire for the pleasure, no matter how strong we are on either side, is by virtue rebuked by remembrance of divine rational instruction (161-162). Thing which happen from without are out of our control but by reason we must discern our response to it (163). The reality of free will is also found in Romans 2 where the works of man will render what God gives them (166). Further, “God’s actions and desires do not aim at hardening, but that during the time in which he is displaying kindness and forbearance those who treat his kindness and forbearance with contempt and pride have their heart hardened” (172). Origen, On First Principles (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966).13 Origen’s theological disposition from a Neo-Platonic view asserted that God is purely spiritual, God is indeed the creator of matter, there is an infinity of worlds, evil is a privation and therefore not positive, the Logos/Word is the exemplar of creation, souls being created by God were exactly alike in quality.14 The apostle’s teachings consisted of one God and creator of the universe, Jesus Christ was God and begotten before creation and through the incarnation was both human and divine, the Holy Spirit’s glory is no less than the Father’s or Son’s, and that the soul will be rewarded or punished according to the life in this world.15 An example of this is when Origen claims there were two creations. In the first creation account of Genesis the Greek verb was “to create” but in the second account the Greek verb is “to form”. The first creation was purely spiritual where spirits were created without bodies for the purpose of contemplating the divine. The second creation was material so that a shelter was provided for those fallen spirits who strayed from good contemplation of the divine. 16 Gonzales, The Story of Christianity, 80.

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Let us turn now to Origen’s Christology. Being against Gnostics and Marcionites, On

First Principles argued, in regards to the Son, that Jesus Christ, while being generated before

any other creature, was fully God while being incarnate.17 Essentially the Son is God’s

wisdom which the Father can never be without. In being the invisible and incorporeal image

of the invisible father, the Son is inferior to the Father; the Son is God but not God himself.

He is like a second God.18 What then of the Christ? The divine nature is that of being the

only-begotten Son of the Father. The human nature is as follows: with the first creation of

rational (spiritual) creatures, all fell away due to a weaker degree of loving participation with

God. One did not though and was destined to be the soul of Christ. This soul was like all the

rest and could choose to do good or evil; it chose to cling to the Word. The soul which, like a

piece of iron in the fire, was for ever placed in the Word and the Wisdom, for ever in God, is

God in all its acts, feelings, and thoughts, coming by its continuous burning to have

unchangeability through its union with the Word.19

In dubbing the incarnate Word as the God-man, Origen also developed the concept of

communicatio idiomatum (which would be part of future Alexandrian Christology). Thus,

while Origen admits there are two distinct natures, the assumption of the mortal body and

human soul, through unity with the Word, were transformed by divine providence into a

heavenly and divine quality.20

17 Logan, “Origen (c.185-254),” 178.18 Logan, “Origen (c.185-254),” 180.19 Logan, “Origen (c.185-254),” 182.20 Logan, “Origen (c.185-254),” 183.

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Providing a theodicy,21 Origen asserts, according the necessity of free-will, that to

move away from the just and right is to do evil. As a result of the spiritual beings’ free-will to

not glorify God properly, God decided to create a world based on this merit.22 God can’t be

blamed for those who are born into rich families or poor families. Where the spiritual beings

end up is due to their own choosing and degree of not properly loving God. But one did not

fall. One decided to stay true to loving God. The weaker love of the spiritual soul was thus

united with the stronger love of the Son. By actively clinging to the divine nature, this soul,

along with the flesh it was given, was called the Son of God and the power of God.23 Further,

because of this choosing love and hating evil, the Soul was rewarded for its love toward the

inseparable unity with the Son. As a result, he had the anointing of the oil of gladness. There

was no sin in him though he was tempted in every way as we are. Nevertheless, Origen

realizes that there is a problem as the Son took on the rational human nature which has the

ability to choose between good and evil.

Affirming that a soul is only soul if it is rational and free, Origen states that although

good and evil is available to all souls,

this soul which belongs to Christ so chose to love righteousness as to cling to it unchangeably, and inseparably in accordance with the immensity of its love; the result being that by firmness of purpose, immensity of affection and an inextinguishable warmth of love all susceptibility to change or alteration was destroyed, and what formerly depended upon the will was by the influence of long custom changed into nature. Thus we must believe that there did exist in Christ a human and rational soul, and yet not suppose that it had any susceptibility to or possibility of sin.24

21 In regards to Predestination, God cannot be responsible for future events of impiety or wickedness. Even the person of Jesus made the claim about Judas’ betrayal based on knowing the mind of Judas, not predicting it. Origen states further that the prophets who speak for God did not cause a future action based on their prediction; “but we hold that the future event, which would have taken place even if it had not been prophesied, constitutes the cause of its prediction by the one with foreknowledge … We do not maintain that the one who has foreknowledge takes away the possibility for an event happening or not happening.” From Origen, Contra Celsum (Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 85, 87.22 Origen, On First Principles, 47, 134.23 Origen, On First Principles, 111. The soul also acted as a medium between the divine and the flesh, as the nature of God could not mingle with flesh without a medium.24 Origen, On First Principles, 112-113.

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Although Origen knew his analogy would fail, he still likened the incarnation to a lump of

iron placed in a fire. This piece of iron has been permeated by the fire and so completely

changed into fire. By thus ceaselessly burning with fire, though it is by nature not fire, it

could never emit that which is cold. Thus, the soul which is forever in the Word is “for ever

in the wisdom, for ever in God, is God in all its acts and feelings and thoughts; and therefore

it cannot be called changeable or alterable, since by being ceaselessly kindled it came to

possess unchangeability through its unity with the word of God.25”

Origen asserts that the volition of the person of Christ was free and in that freedom

chose only to want that which was of the divine. At what point this happened, Origen does

not say. What can be asserted is that while Origen argues for both a temptation of Christ and

a point in which the person of Christ could not change because an ability to change back to

what is not God was destroyed, this transition must be at some point in the earthly life of

Christ.

In regards to the Matthew 26 passage, Origen argues that the humanity of Christ

freely, in its weakness, asked the Father to let the cup pass from him if it was possible. But

because of the willingness of the human spirit, Jesus is willing to take on the will of the

Father because of his loving righteousness.26

Let us move onto Cyril of Alexandria (c. 378 – 444). Born in Egypt, Cyril eventually

succeeded his uncle, Theophilus, in 412 to become the Bishop of Alexandria. Cyril’s chief

influence was Athanasius who provided a method of interpreting scripture, the doctrine of the

Trinity, the person of Christ, and the goal of salvation. More than mimicking Athanasius,

though, Cyril fully develops the Athanasian thought. The time frame of Cyril is that of what

25 Origen, On First Principles, 113.26 Origen, Contra Celsum, 88-89.

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we will call Alexandria which is a period of time between the beginning of the fourth century

and the middle of the fifth century. Being crucial to the development of classic Christian

doctrine, Alexandria was in a bitter struggle with Antioch over the divine and human relation

in Christ.27

Differentiating between Alexandria and Antioch28 were due to what each

characterized in regards to the construct of Christ nature. For Alexandria, Christ was

Logos/Sarx (Word/flesh) and for Antioch, Christ was Logos/Anthropos (Word/man). Both

sides agree that the incarnation was literally in-human-ment rather than in-flesh-ment, “and it

means that their vision of the work of Christ centers on the transformation and life-giving

effect of the coming of the divine into our world of human, fleshly experiences.”29 Like

Athanasius, Cyril’s vision is ruled by the union of the Word and flesh which gave life. Unlike

Athanasius, Cyril asserts that in Christ’s humanity there was a rational soul. Nevertheless,

amidst affirming that God Incarnate had a soul, he stated that other than being there it didn’t

have anything to do. That is, while Cyril’s Jesus is a man, he is by no means a man with a

free moral decision before God. “He is not a separate center of activity. He is not a separate

subject of predication.”30

The conflict begins in 428 when the new bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, was in

a dispute with some clerics, monks, and members of the royal family. With Cyril getting

involved, the problem escalated and resulted in a controversy involving Alexandria,

Constantinople, Antioch, Rome, and Jerusalem. Amidst the political rivalry prior to the

27 Paul Parvis. “Alexandrian Theology.” JHTC 1:14.28 Antiochene Christology began with Theodore of Mopsuestia (350-428). “Broadly speaking, Antiochenes are associated with a down-to-earth preference for the literal meaning of Scripture, against allegorical interpretation, and a tendency to keep the humanity of Jesus distinct from his divinity without confusion or mixture,” S. G. Hall, “Antiochene Theology,” JHTC 1:49.29 Parvis, “Alexandrian Theology,” 1:15.30 Parvis, “Alexandrian Theology,” 1:18.

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Council of Ephesus (431A.D.), the theological controversy of Cyril and Nestorius revolved

heavily on the narrow theological issues of the incarnation and Mary as the Theotokos.31

In arguing against Nestorius, Cyril took that stance that there were not two persons in

Christ, but one Son and Lord, being the same God and man, who is not one thing and also

another, but being understood as one and the same. Nestorius argued that in the incarnation

there were two persons: divine and human. Cyril thus asserts that any attempt to use the

abstract intellectual analysis will not allow us to see as we are meant to; rather we are to look

at Jesus with the eyes of the soul and see a united divine and human nature. This is the

hypostatic union – union between the natures while staying distinct. Therefore with Christ,

there is one person with two natures.

In On the Unity of Christ, Cyril states that although the divine did not change into

flesh or partake in any mixing with the human nature through the incarnation, the divine

Word emptied himself. This limited humanity was not even disdained by the divine as he

wished to make that flesh which was held in the grip of sin and death evidently superior to

sin and death. He made it his very own, and not soulless as some have said, but rather

animated with a rational soul, and thus he restored flesh to what it was in the beginning”32

Therefore, Cyril meant when he asserts that the divine became flesh was that he appeared

like us and affirmed the divinity by means of the slave nature.

That which the Divine Word united with was a concrete human nature. A concrete

nature, contra abstract nature, was more than just elements of what characterized humanity

but rather assumed a human body and rational soul. This hypostatic union speaks clearly

31 Daniel A. Keating, “Cyril of Alexandria (c.378-444) and Nestorius of Constantinople (c.381 c.451).” in The Blackwell Companion to the Theologians: Volume One, Early Church to the Reformation (ed. I. Markham; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 80.32 St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 54-55.

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against Nestorius who claimed a mere conjunction between two persons at the incarnation.

Cyril argues that God could have done this with anyone.33 But if any man went to the cross

and had his blood shed, or even a separate man who humbled himself before the cross, this

would then be our example and thus not the true love of the divine who would die for us.

Therefore, any position which takes the limitation and suffering of God away, takes away

Cyril’s argument that God became what he was not that we might become we were not.

In regards to the volition of Christ, Cyril argues preliminarily, that an already slave

cannot freely choose to become a slave as the Word did; thus a theory that God simply

attached himself to another human is fallacious. Even though the Only-Begotten Word of

God chose to come under the limited conditions of humanity, he “still bore witness to the fact

he was naturally free when he jointly paid the drachmas and said: ‘and so the sons are free’

(Mt 1726).”34 This natural freedom was not supressed within his limitations. Within the

assumption of flesh and rational soul, the divine is the personal identity of the person as there

is but one nature within the God-man because he has made the human element his own.

Amidst being able to take on the limitations of humanity, as nothing is impossible for God,

Cyril resolves that this event is a mystery.35

In being able to speak with the Father and recognizing his past authority (Jn 175),

Cyril states that although it was necessary for Christ to be conformed to the limitations of

man – to ennoble the nature of man in himself,36 “he authentically enjoyed transcendent

divine status within his own essential being.”37 Not only is this profound, but Cyril also states

33 St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 73-74.34 St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 75.35 St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 79.36 “The Word of God the Father, therefore, appeared to us in our likeness, bringing help to our human condition in myriad ways, and brilliantly showing us the path which leads to every admirable thing.” St Cyril ofAlexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 102.37 St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 86.

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that this mystery also makes him conclude that amidst being made as we are “he knows that

at the same time he is naturally and truly God.” 38 Yet, with emphasizing so much that God

came to earth for our sake, Cyril states, I believe paradoxically, that in becoming an example

for us, God did not do so nakedly (without flesh) or any self-emptying. Doing so, God

properly employed and experienced the limitations of manhood.

This was why he extended his prayer, and shed a tear, at times even seemed to need a savior himself, and learned obedience, while all the while he was the Son. It was as if the Spirit-bearer was almost astonished at the mystery, that he who was truly and naturally the Son, and eminent in the glories of the Godhead, should bring himself to such abasement as to undergo the abject poverty of the human state.39

Humanity is, therefore, to learn from Christ so that when we have to face a challenge we will

be courageous and not take the wrong path. Nevertheless, this flesh is but a veil for God

meant to cover up the Holy of Holies.

Further, the Only-Begotten Word of God came to do the Father’s will in a body

prepared (Ps 406-8) and that according to John 638-39, Cyril asks how the will of the Son could

be different from the Father’s so as to be one who didn’t desire to abolish corruption of men?

Cyril states that this is not so as the Son is goodness itself.

We say that the destruction of death and the banishing of corruption from the bodies of men was certainly something that the Son wanted to do [(Wis 113-14, 224)] … but there was no other way to shake off the gloomy dominion of death, only by the incarnation of the Only Begotten. This was why he appeared as we are and made his own a body subject to corruption according to the inherent system of its nature. In so far as he himself is life, for he was born from the life of the Father, he intended to implant his own benefit within it, that is life itself. Once he had chosen to undergo likeness to us, out of his compassion and loving-kindness towards us, then it was also necessary to submit to suffering when the wickedness of the Jews was unleashed against him. The shamefulness of his Passion was nonetheless a burden for him, and when the time came when it was necessary to endure the cross on behalf of the life of all, he approached it in a way befitting a man, in the fashion of prayer.”40

Although the Only-Begotten Word of God consented to willingly descend and take on grief,

the will of the Only Begotten Word of God’s main purpose was to bring life to humanity. We

see, therefore, that it was volition of the Only-Begotten Word of God to come to earth and 38 St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 108.39 St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 103.40 St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 125.

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that upon partaking in the trials of humanity the God-man turned to the volition of the Father

who would see the God-man through his non-primary objective of Christ – that being

suffering. 41

Christianity, in comparison to other religions of its time in antiquity (2-5th century),

successfully systematized to a better degree its beliefs. Yes, it did borrow from philosophy,

but its faithfulness to scripture was uncompromised. What philosophy did was help “to

mould its beliefs about God and the world, and taught it to uphold them in argument.”42

     After the time of Cyril and Augustine, “Christian theology becomes more rigid, more

self-confident, more inward-looking, and correspondingly less open to positive suggestions

from the philosophers.”43 Christian contemporaries of the Philosophers were influenced very

little and there was no Churchman who would rank as a philosopher.

Christological Volition in the Medieval Period

i. The Philosophical and Theological settingii. Philosophy of Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)

a. Anselm on God’s willb. Anselm on Christ’s volition

iii. Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)a. Thomas on God’s foreknowledge and predestinationb. Thomas on humanity’s soul and volitionc. Thomas on Christ’s volition

In the middle ages, there was little in regards to new developments in Christology.

Instead, what had been set down at the councils of Nicea, Constantinople (I, II, and II),

Ephesus, and Chalcedon, was continually reinforced.

One hundred years after Augustine’s death, Rome was no longer a force. The

invaders knew nothing of Christianity and so Christianity had to change. Literacy declined

41 St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 125-126.42 Christopher Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity (Great Britain, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 79. 43 Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, 82.

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and people were forced back with the economic changes. “Rural society could not support

elaborate churches or communities of intellectual discussion.”44 Although Christianity was

proven as intellectually respectable, it had to now communicate with less educated people.

As a result monasteries with monks and nuns provided the stable communities.

From the 500s-1000, Western Europeans were concentrated primarily on surviving;

this affected everything, including theology where faith was made very simple. Nevertheless,

after 1000 AD, Europeans began to excel in areas like law, philosophy, architecture and

literature. “The light had come back on.”45 With the re-emergence of intellectual

sophistication, theology was faced again with new challenges where “precision and

completeness now became as important as simplicity and clarity.”46 Some argued that the

cultural advances are contrary to the gospel while others asserted that God created human

reason and it must be developed. Therefore, there was much tension from the eleventh to

thirteenth century in the realm of theology due to varying institutional contexts where

theologians worked.

Resulting (c. 1200) from the different styles of theology were two groups: the

Dominicans and the Franciscans. Both groups sought to commit themselves to the spiritual

world and the physical world. The Dominicans, being preachers and teachers, emphasized

intellectual analysis while the Franciscans emphasized contemplation. The evident tension

between the monastery and the university is seen between Bernard and Peter Abelard.

Bernard was a pivotal person with the Cistercians and wanted no part of Christian

intellectualism that was in the sceptical university world; and this is where Peter Abelard

44 Placher, William C., A History of Christian Theology: an introduction (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), 122.45 Placher, A History of Christian Theology, 140.46 Placher, A History of Christian Theology, 140/

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was. Nevertheless, “the Church decided to accept the world and the structures of its society.

Similarly, Christian theology eventually decided to accept much of the world’s

philosophy.”47

Although Boethius translated many of Aristotle’s writings into Latin in the 500s, it

wasn’t till the 12th and 13th century where Spanish and Sicilian scholars translated Aristotle’s

great philosophical and scientific texts from Greek and Arabic versions which had been

studied for years by Muslim philosophers. As a result of Aristotle in the West, it was

resolved that he “had systematically answered the widest range of questions on everything

from ethics to physics to biology.”48 From this we have a paradigm shift through Aristotle

which resulted in a new way of looking at nature. Any university, therefore, who advertised

that they taught Aristotle, had students flock to those institutions.

In regards to theology, Christians had two problems with this phenomenon. First, how

had Aristotle been able to understand so much when, according to the Augustinian tradition,

one needs faith to understand the world? And second, Aristotle argued that sense observation

is the starting point for knowledge when Christians held to Platonism which asserted that

truths were known by turning away from the senses and looking inwardly to the soul; up to

this point, when the Church looked back to philosophy, they see Plato; from him they get

their understanding of the metaphysics of being. As a result, theology needs to provide a

response to these new challenges. It’s no longer just the student of the bible asking questions

about the interpretation of a particular verse but people who are outside the guild of

Christianity. With the emergence of universities, amidst the church controlling everything,

universities are not studying nature to find God but to study nature for the sake of nature.

47 Placher, A History of Christian Theology, 150.48 Placher, A History of Christian Theology, 150.

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With this rise, all the scientific discoveries of the time challenged the established teaching of

the church. One of the strategies which was adopted by theologians was to take

methodologies of other disciplines (e.g. Science); it was coined at that time that theology was

a science. Although theology was seen as the queen of sciences, it did not take long for other

faculties to test this claim which required theology to defend itself.

One of the main things with the development of the big schools in the 12th and 13th

century was that for the first time in the history of the Church, theology had to answer

questions that did not emerge from its own internal reading of scripture. As long as theology

was mainly a matter of monastic orders, they weren’t dealing with different sets of issues

which rose out of exegesis and other commentators – they were looking inward. But with the

rising of the Scola, theology is answering questions that came from outside theology itself.

Here they are facing science and the reality of nature and what is observed and how were

they to reconcile this with the doctrine of creation.49

The philosophical theologian we shall start with is Anselm of Canterbury (1033-

1109). In this Prescholastic stage, although it may be assumed that theology proper did not

start until the 13th century, Anselm’s theology is very rational (in fact, the entire medieval

theology is a quest for a synthesis of faith and reason).

It is in Cur Deus Homo that Anselm asserted, preliminarily for our topic, that the

salvation of humanity is “a recompense that only God can make and only human beings owe

– then it is necessary that a God-man make this recompense.”50 In stating that a divine and

human nature cannot be transformed into each other and that there cannot be a combined,

third-type nature, the one who is to pay the recompense for the stain of sin must be perfect

49 See Diogenes Allen and Eric O. Springsted (Philosophy for Understanding Theology. Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 81.50 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 294.

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God and perfect man, “since only one who is truly God can make it, but only one who is

truly human owes it.”51 In this state, both natures are preserved. But what of taking on a

human nature?52

Anselm asserts that human natures are rational for the purpose of justice. This follows

that humans are to be enjoined to God through whom this just nature finds happiness. If this

was not the case, and rationality had no ontic correspondence to justice, God would have

made the human nature in vain; and Anselm rejects this as human nature

“was made rational for this purpose … it is certain that rational nature was made for the purpose of loving and choosing the supreme Good above all other things, not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake … it cannot love the supreme Good for its own sake unless it is just.”53

It is clear to see that Anselm concludes that as God did not create humanity in vain,

he therefore must complete in the human nature what he freely began as it would be

not of himself to allow any of his rational creation to entirely perish.54

When it comes to the nature of Christ, then, Anselm argues that Christ must come from

the race of Adam and not from

a new human being in the same way that made Adam … For just as it is right that a human being should make recompense for human guilt, so too it is necessary that the one who make recompense be either the sinner himself or someone of the same race … Hence, if Adam’s

51 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 294. 52 In “On the Harmony of God’s Foreknowledge, Predestination, and Grace with Free Choice,” in Basic Writing (ed. T. Williams; Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2007), Anselm asserts that God’s foreknowledge (which implies that all future things are necessary) is not incompatible with humanity’s free-choice (which implies that many things come about without any necessity). This is so because although a free choice comes about without necessity, God still foreknows it since he foreknows all future things. Further, “God foreknows that I will sin or not sin without necessity … For indeed God, who foresees that something is going to be from the will alone, foreknows the very fact that the will is not compelled or constrained by any other thing, and thus that what is done by the will is done freely” (342). By being in the future, then, it is not by necessity though it is necessarily known by God to be there. In regards to predestination, God cannot predestine only the good or only the bad. If he predestines, he predestines both. But as Anselm argued in the area of foreknowledge, free will does exist and therefore diminishes its assertion in both cases (373). Anselm thus concludes that there is nothing before or after for God as he sees it all (a tenseless theory of time). “So although things that are foreknown and things that are predestined necessarily take place, nonetheless some things that are predestined and foreknown do not come about by that necessity that precedes a thing and brings it about, but by the necessity that follows a thing. Although God predestines these things, he does not bring them about by compelling or restraining the will, but by leaving the will in its own power” (373).53 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 290.54 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 291.

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race is rescued by some human being who does not belong to that same race, it will not be restored to the same dignity that it would have had it Adam had not sinned.55

In regards to being sinless, Jesus must be willing to do something sinful to sin, says Anselm, but

as Jesus couldn’t lie unwillingly and he was not able to will to lie, and so it must be said that he

was not able to lie. In this way he was able and not able to lie.56 Therefore, he actively willed to

not lie as he did not desire to even if he was being forced to. Further, when it comes to Christ’s

praise, Anselm argues that the God-man is just. According to Anselm’s theology, God is just not

by necessity but because of who he is in himself. As God is both good and immutable, he is

ontologically worthy of praise. In the incarnation, as the humanity will also be God he will also

be just by nature and will therefore be worthy of praise as all the good he will have, he will have

freely from himself, not of necessity.57 As a result the human nature will share in whatever is the

divine nature so that it will be one and the same person amidst two natures.

This person, says Anselm, still shares in our misfortunes. And although he can properly

discern and react to misfortune so as to remain happy, the God-man cannot be ignorant like the

rest of humanity as it would be harmful:

Supreme Wisdom will of course act wisely in assuming the human being into unity of the person with God, and so he will not assume in that human being what is in no way useful but instead quite harmful, to the work that this human being is going to carry out.58

Arguing that humanity would not place their faith in this God-man if he is ignorant,

Anselm further states that ignorance has no purpose in the God-man. Even in the childhood and

youth, there is no ignorance in the God-man as the act of the incarnation was an act of wisdom

and, further, ignorance is harmful. Therefore, Anselm declares that in Christ there will never be

an evil will as ignorance is a manifestation of the lack of good knowledge.59 55 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 295.56 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 299. He states further (312) “although he had the power to lie, he had from himself the lack of any power to will to lie.”57 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 300.58 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 305.59 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 305.

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Another interesting aspect of Christ’s will is in regards to death. Anselm states that

although all humans die,60 this mortality is not essential to the human nature. What is essential,

though, is that one’s life can become either wretched or blessed. Nevertheless, as the God-man is

God, he is omnipotent thus he can choose to lay down his life and take it up again. His death,

therefore, is only to be permitted by himself. Therefore, the God-man has willed to give up his

life for God’s honor and in such a way that there is no obligation. This lack of obligation on the

part of the God-man to pay a debt which he does not owe reveals, again, his choosing to give to

God what God does not demand of him. Therefore, by freely willing to make payment on behalf

of human sin, it ought to be done in such a way that death is only if he so wills.61 Because of

humanity’s sin, all humanity is obliged to God and thus not able to freely will a choice. In

regards to the death of Christ, Anselm makes the statement that “since God’s will does nothing

by necessity, but only by its own power, and since [the God-man’s] will was God’s will, he did

not die of any necessity, but solely by his own power.”62 We see here that the one person God-

man had the will of God which is essentially the one person’s will which cannot be challenged

by the human nature as the human nature would not challenge it.

The person of God who wills does not do so of necessity or impossibility. Therefore,

“[b]ecause God does all and only those things that he wills, just as no necessity or impossibility

precedes his willing or not-willing, so too neither does any necessity or impossibility precede his

doing or not-doing, even though he wills and does many things immutably.”63 When speaking of

the God-man who through unity is the very same as God, he has the immutable will and no one

can take this away. This is a showing of power. To undo one’s will is to show a lack of power.

60 Had humanity never sinned, their immortality would have been immutable thus staying truly human without death.61 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 303.62 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 314.63 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 315.

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Anselm states, therefore, that God only does what he wills and nothing can constrain this. “For in

Christ the diversity of natures and unity of person worked out in such a way that if the human

nature could not do what needed to be done for the restoration of human beings, the divine nature

did it; and if it was not at all fitting for the divine nature, the human nature exhibited it.”64

Born in Roccasecca, Aquino, Thomas (c.1224-1274) lived at a pivotal time when

Aristotelian philosophy arrived and overlapped with the beginning of universities – Naples,

Salamanca, Cologne, and Paris; and for Western Christendom’s higher education, Paris was

the central point. Essential to this period of the High Middle Ages was “the study and

integration of new sciences from ancient Greek works and the burgeoning of a new Gothic

art of building and decorating churches.”65 At this time also, the Muslims were hemming in

the Western world by their military success and seducing it by their science and philosophy.

Not given to manual work and prayer like the monks in the monastery, Thomas, as a

Dominican, endeavoured to stabilize the contemplative and active life; as a result,

Dominicans were both intellectual and meditative. To take such a road meant that Thomas

went against his families wishes who desired for him to embrace the Benedictine

monastery.66

With the Church passing on wisdom through the clergy, this contrasted with masters

students studying Aristotle (who weren’t dealing with an infallible guide and so sought to

discover new truths). Thomas aspired to harmonize both systems; he made room within theology

for philosophy. Therefore, God reveals himself both through supernatural and natural means

which can correspond and be enhanced by way of natural analogies for supernatural truths –

64 Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo,” 317.65 Minlib Dallh, “Thomas Aquinas, OP (c.1224-74).” Pages 253-262 in The Blackwell Companion to the Theologians: Volume One, Early Church to the Reformation (ed. I. Markham; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 253-254.66 Dallh, “Thomas Aquinas,” 256

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philosophy is the handmaiden of theology. Nevertheless, Muslims also interpreted Aristotle in

their own way and so Thomas, “who took Aristotle as the true philosophy, thus had to show that

Aristotelianism did not necessarily involve the interpretation given to it by Averroes.”67

The focus on the Thomistic corpus will be limited in respect to our study.68 What follows

is Thomas’ work on God’s knowledge and volition, man’s knowledge and volition, and

concluding what the God-man’s knowledge and volition. For Thomas, God’s knowledge of

creatures, both spiritual and temporal, is the cause of them and not because of them. And as

God’s intellect and will are not separable, what God understands is necessarily to what God wills

and is therefore the cause. With God being the cause of all things, this is called the knowledge of

approbation.69 God does not act by his nature but by his will and this will follows from intellect.

For Thomas, the one who acts by nature is not the first, for the one who precedes the one who

acts by nature must be one who acts intellectually and voluntarily.

The predestination of God, according to Thomas, is that in God there is good and order.

Therefore, the good and the order which nature possess in substance and in its goal – divine

goodness – is created by God as it pre-exists in God who wills to create. Therefore, “it is

necessary that the type of order of things towards their end should pre-exist in the divine mind:

and the type of things ordered towards an end is, properly speaking, providence.”70 Now, as all

things are subject to God’s providence, Thomas argues that it is fitting that men should be

predestined by God. As providence directs things toward their end, things are directed twofold.

The first is that which is above created nature of which the end is life eternal. Second, in regards

to created nature, where a creature can use natural powers, there must be direction to this end and

67 Allen and Springsted, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 81.68 Only volumes 1 and 4 of the 5 volumes of Aquinas I have used.69 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Vol. I, Ia QQ. 1-119 (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1981), 79. 70 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 121.

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so “a rational creature, capable of eternal life, is led towards it, directed, as it were, by God. The

reason of that direction pre-exists in God; as in Him is the type of the order of all tings towards

an end, which we proved above to be providence.”71

What then of human volition? We will look at the soul, its union with the body, and then

the will and if it is free. The soul is the first principle of life, as that which is corporeal (the body)

cannot be the first principle even though ancient philosophers only understood the corporeal as

being essential to life. Therefore, the soul not being a body but is rather the act of a body. To be a

man, then, means to be composed of body and soul. Thomas argues against those who assert that

what is essential to a species is the form alone and not matter by asserting that in natural beings

there is both form and matter which are necessary to define the species. “For whatever belongs in

common to the substance of all the individuals contained under a given species, must belong also

to the substance of the species.”72

In regards to the union of the soul and body, Thomas states that the soul is part of the

man. How a man understands is in regard to his intellect but how a man heals is in regards to his

body. Therefore, an action can be understood in three ways. First, a movement or action is done

in virtue of the whole self; second, in virtue of a part like a man seeing with his eye; third,

through an accidental quality, as when we say that something that is white builds, because it is

accidental to the builder to be white.73 This intellect, which is a part of man, is not one in all men.

Thomas states that it is impossible for one intellect to be available to all men as it is like saying

that Plato and Socrates are one man and only discernible by an external essence. As a result, due

71 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 125.72 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 366.73 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 371.

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to what Thomas knows, it is unreasonable to maintain that there exists in men only one

intellect.74

A thing is natural as it accords to the inclinations of nature, and those things which are

voluntary are as such because they are the inclination of the will. As the intellect obeys the first

principle, those things which are contrary to each other, like what is natural and what is violent,

are existential impossibilities as the first principle always adheres to the true happiness which is

the last end. Therefore, that which is natural must correspond to the intellect and not to reason

which is extends to opposite things. Thomas asserts that “we are masters of our own actions by

reason of our being able to choose this or that. But choice regards not the end, but the means to

the end.”75 The will, then, although adhering to the last end, does not necessarily adhere to God.

It is only upon the certitude of divine vision that the connection of necessarily willing to adhere

to God takes place. Thomas makes a clear generalization when he states that “the will can tend to

nothing except under the aspect of good. But because good is of many kinds, for this reason the

will is not of necessity determined to one.”76

To look at the intellect and the will by themselves, Thomas states that the intellect is the

higher power. By comparing them to each other, the object of the intellect is simpler and more

absolute than that of the will. As the idea of the appetible good is the object of the intellect, the

object of the will is not the idea but the actual appetible good. Thomas, from all this, resolves to

say that man has free will unlike animals who only act from natural instinct,

man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment in some particular act is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things.77

74 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 374.75 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 413.76 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 414.77 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 418.

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Thomas states that man is not the first cause of his free will. God is the first cause and by whose

movement causes both natural and voluntary movements in creatures. Yet natural acts are not

prevented simply because God is the first cause of natural moving. Rather, actions of creatures

are still voluntary amidst the first cause voluntarily moving first. Free will, therefore, is the

subject of grace so that it might move towards the good. Free will is then both a power and an act

though not a natural habit. Free will must be a power because

there is no natural habit in us with respect to those things which come under free-will: for we are naturally inclined to those things of which we have natural habits – for instance, to assent to first principle: while those thing to which we are naturally inclined are not subject to free-will, as we have said of the desire for happiness.78

Thomas then resolves that free will is indifferent to choose good or evil. And although the

choices of free will seem cognitive, free will is an appetitive power because it is a choice of

those things which are in us – choosing one thing and refusing another is to act freely. With

choice, says Thomas, two things happen. In regards to the cognitive power there is judgment on

what is preferred over another. In regards to the appetitive powers, it should be that it must

accept the council from which the cognitive power judged. And as the good is always the object

of the appetite, choice is thus, like free will, an appetitive power.79

As God cannot will evil things to happen, evil is free will action by men. Since the

appetite of man is only for the good, and evil is opposed to good, the appetite does not seek out

evil. But as evil may accompany good, evil may be sought accidentally. This evil which

accompanies the good is but a privation of another good. And this evil, which is the higher

desiring of the privation rather than the good, is the privation of good towards the divine and is

therefore sin.80

78 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 419.79 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 420.80 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 1, 111.

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Thus far we have seen that God has free will in regards to what he doesn’t necessarily

will and that humanity’s volition is free in both power and act to do or not do according to the

appetites within them. Let us now turn to the person of Christ. Preliminarily, by becoming a man,

God revealed how great man’s dignity was and that we should grow in knowledge of him. At the

incarnation, the mode of union at the incarnation took place in the person.

therefore, whatever adheres to a person is united to it in person, whether it belongs to its nature or not. Hence, if the human nature is not united to God the Word in person, it is nowise united to him; and thus belief in the incarnation is altogether done away with, and Christian faith wholly overturned. Therefore, inasmuch as the word has a human nature united to him, which does not belong to his divine nature, it follows that the union took place in the person of the word, and not in the nature.81

Following the discussion on humanity, Thomas continues here to say that the body and soul

within Christ is united. In Christ there are two natures – the divine and the human. Nevertheless,

it is only in the divine where the predicate nature of Christ is both abstract and concrete. In the

human, the predicate nature of Christ is only concrete and thus it cannot be said that Christ is

human nature as the nature is not naturally predicated. If both natures were predicated then

Christ would be two. Nevertheless, there are two natures but one hypostasis. Thomas then states

that by taking on a human nature, this did not provide a new personal being “but only a new

relation of the pre-existing personal being to the human nature, in such a way that the Person is

said to subsist not merely in the Divine, but also in the human nature.”82 The body which Jesus

partook in was an earthly body which would authentically experience the Passion and also

hunger and thirst. The evidence of scripture shows that the soul which the body was united with

manifested Jesus who “was angered, sad, and hungry. Now these show that he had a true soul,

just as that he ate, slept and was weary shows that he had a true human body: otherwise, if these

81 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Vol. IV, IIa IIae QQ. 149-189 & IIIa QQ. 1-73 (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1981), 2029.82 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 4, 2118-2119.

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things are a metaphor, because the like are said of God in the Old Testament, the trustworthiness

of the Gospel story is undermined.”83

We will now move on to Christ’s knowledge and volition. In general, Christ assumed

created knowledge which is outside of the divine due to assuming an entire human nature. There

is also what Thomas calls the beatific knowledge in Christ whereby the Christ knows the Word

and that which is within the Word; but this does not mean that the human soul knows all that the

Word is. The Word is infinitely more than the soul can comprehend even being intimately united

with the divine. Therefore, “the soul of Christ sees the whole essence of God, yet does not

comprehend it; since it does not see it totally, i.e. not as perfectly as it is knowable.”84 This does

not stop Thomas from saying the soul of Christ knew all things in the world – e.g. the thoughts

of men – because all things in the world are also in the Word but all that is in the Word is not in

the world. So the soul of Christ knows all that God can perceive but not all that God can

conceive. Consequently, Christ sees God more clearly than any other creature. And unlike our

knowledge which is not habitual, Christ’s knowledge was habitual. But in Christ his knowledge

was twofold. First, that which exceeds the mode of human nature and so sees the true light of the

essence of God. The second knowledge was proportioned to human nature. This was not perfect

knowledge but merely the genus of human knowledge.85

In regards to Christ’s volition, there are two wills in Christ as by the divine (who already

has a will) taking on a perfect human nature which means necessarily taking on a will and the

will necessarily pertains to the nature. This human will had the ability to move (though not as

first cause) by the soul according to the sensitive appetites. And by taking on a perfect human

nature, the animality of that nature, which provides the sensual appetites, was taken on. Thomas’

83 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 4, 2052.84 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 4, 2080.85 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 4, 2087.

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disclaimer is that even the sensual appetites must obey reason.86 But were the two wills contrary

to each other? In holding to the third council of Constantinople, Thomas states that there is no

opposition of the wills and therefore not contrariety in them either. Thomas states:

For it pleased Christ, in his divine will, and in his will of reason, that his natural will and will of sensuality should be moved according to the order of their nature. Hence it is clear that in Christ there was no opposition or contrariety of wills … In us the desires of the spirit are impeded or retarded by the desires of the flesh: this did not occur in Christ. Hence in Christ there was no contrariety of flesh and spirit, as in us … The agony of Christ was not in the rational soul, in as far as it implies a struggle in the will arising from a diversity of motives, as when anyone, on his reason considering one, wishes one thing, and on its considering another, wishes the contrary. For this springs from the weakness of the reason, which is unable to judge which is the best simply. Now this did not occur in Christ, since by his reason he judged it best that the divine will regarding the salvation of the human race should be fulfilled by his passion. Nevertheless, there was an agony in Christ as regards the sensitive part, inasmuch as it implied a dread of common trial.87

Finally, Thomas says that in Christ there was a free will. As the will naturally adheres to the

good, it wills to the end which is good. With Christ there is also a choice. Because will is also

reason, Christ’s reason made opportunity for choice. As, noted earlier, choice presupposes

council, and what follows from council is judgment, what we judge is therefore what we choose.

And in his human nature, Christ was able to reason according to cognition and the physical.

Thomas asserts, then, that as God willed the suffering of Christ for man’s salvation, Christ in his

sensual nature could will what God did not but in his rational nature would always will as God

willed. Thomas states: “by his rational will Christ willed the Divine will to be fulfilled; but not

by his will of sensuality, the movement of which does not extend to the will of God – nor by his

will considered as nature which regards things absolutely considered and not in relation to the

divine will.”88

Concluding this section on Christ’s volition, Thomas states that the human will was free

in so much as to conform by reason freely to the divine will. So although that rational will would

choose the divine will, the human nature was available to repugnant appetites of his passible

86 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 4, 2121.87 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 4, 212488 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 4, 2123.

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flesh. Finally, what then of the Christ’s temptations? His being tempted falls in line with what

has been said so far. Thomas expressed Jesus needing to be tempted for the redemption of

humanity. This choice was done, according to Thomas, for 4 reasons. To strengthen us in our

temptation; to show humanity that they are not free from temptation after experiencing God; to

show us how to overcome the devil; and to fill us with confidence in his mercy.89

Philosophical Theology took on another paradigm shift with the passage to modernity.

When did modernity begin? There are different views on this question. Some hold modernity to

begin in the Renaissance: for this time, the view went from theocentric to anthropocentric. What

covered the middle-ages was the synthesis between faith and reason. Further, this era was

characterized by the success of the Church to put everything under it (what is good and wrong,

when to harvest, and if someone actually died). Foundational for the church was the crucial

element of the Fathers’ heavenly desires. This platonic view held that the material world was

lesser than the actual, real, and heavenly world. All that was physical in this world was

transformed to be a reflection of the divine. The renaissance, though, is a move away from this

imposition of the divine realm on the material realm. In the 15th century, the sources that were

longed for were recognized to be created before the cross of Christ; at that time, the genius of the

individual was very evident (poets, artists, writers, etc.) In fact, it was stated in the 15th century:

what is to be known has already been known.

Having its beginnings in the Renaissance, “the transition from the ancient world to

the modern” found its completion in the age of reason which occurred from the middle of the

seventeenth through the eighteenth century. With God as the central focal point of the

medieval world, the enlightenment brought the basic shift that “elevated [the] status of

89 Thomas, Summa Theologica vol. 4, 2234-2235.

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human beings and their capabilities.”90 Running contrary to the Christian tradition (that the

bible was the main point of revelation which “human reason was simply to seek to

comprehend”91), the human condition was turned upside down as it was looked at

optimistically in regards to intellect and morals.

The move, therefore, was away from Fides Quaerrens Intellectum to the assertion that

“humans should believe only that which they could understand;”92 human beings had no need to

be dictated over by the external revelation authorities known as scripture and the Church. As a

result, Christian teachings (Christ’s deity, miracles, resurrection, inspiration of scripture, and

divine revelation) were forcefully attacked. Once claiming the right to divine revelation, the

Christian faith is now marginalized as human reason affirmed itself as the primary resource for

human flourishing both practically and morally.93 With the emancipation from tutelage, humanity

was free to think for themselves and for the common good.

For our purposes, we shall look at Rene Descartes (1596-1650). Like Copernicus who

decentered the earth, Descartes decentered God and revelation and asserted that the knowing

subject and reason are the source of truth. Descartes is, sociologically, historically and culturally,

living in uncertain times. Up to the reformation, it is the church that had the last word. The

church was there to tell them, before you mature, what one needs to know. The church was a

place of certainty and stability. But now, what was taken for certain as a body of knowledge by

the Church is actually quite uncertain. Descartes is a Roman Catholic and finds the reformation

to be a disaster. At this time, there are also the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants.

The Edict of Nantes stated the religion of the leader (king, queen, or emperor) is the religion of

90 John R. Frank, Barth: for Armchair Theologians (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 5.91 Frank, Armchair, 6.92 Frank, Armchair, 6.93 Frank, Armchair, 6-7.

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the land; instead of fighting, let’s just come to an agreement. This instability was not trivial for

Descartes for he took up arms to help in fighting Protestants. In Austria, a new king came to

power and he was Roman Catholic. Descartes, therefore, left France and went to see the

crowning. On his way, he is caught in Germany (due to snow) and rents a house. For the entire

winter he stays inside and writes his Meditations. Essentially, his thinking is affected by the

current events. Learning, history, and the Church is offering Descartes no certainty.

Further, although Descartes was schooled in the best institution that the world

offered, he came to realize that everything that he had taken for truth could be doubted.

Philosophers contradicted themselves; science proved that certain theories which were true

before could be proven wrong. Even if we think that what we accept today is truth, how do

we know the same theories won’t be proven wrong tomorrow? This is his position and his

argument is quite convincing! Essentially, there is no certainty in knowledge.

In the 18th Century we encounter Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). The enlightenment

was humanities coming of age. Therefore, his Aude Sapere asserted that humanity needs to

think for itself (contra the Church of the Middle Ages). Kant adopted Descartes view that

whatever can be true on rational grounds is legitimate. He further radicalized what Descartes

said that when we see something out there, its reality doesn’t count on what’s out there but

the impression that is in the mind makes it real. Kant affirms this but he creates a chiasm, a

gulf, a space that cannot be crossed between what is external and what is in the mind

(noumenal – as the world is – and phenomenal – as it appears to me). Whatever you have

‘out there’ and how it is represented in the mind are necessarily different. There is an

objective reality outside of the mind, but that which is objective to subjects is that which is in

their mind. In reality, this is complete agnosticism – you can’t make any statement about the

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noumenal world and that it is; he agrees with Hume that the mind is a blank slate so that

everything that comes to the mind is from the outside. Yet, what we have in the mind doesn’t

allow us to speak properly of the noumenal world as we don’t know if we are seeing the

world as it really is in reality. Kant also argued against Hume that although the mind is a

Tabula Rasa it is not passive. Kant asserted that the mind is active, it brings a contribution;

there is no sensory experience for time or space as we actively create and organize structure

in our mind.94 For Modernity, reason became an end in itself. Although Greeks held that their

gods were both rational and emotional beings, and that scholastic theology never threw God

out of the picture when dealing with reason, reason was not the fundamental issue like it is in

modernity.

Christological Volition of Karl Barth

i. Time and Place of Karl Barth (1886-1968)ii. Humiliated Son of God, Exalted Son of Man

A consequence of Cartesian and Kantian theology and philosophy was the begetting of

liberal theology (late 18th century). Liberal theology was a belief system that tended to

accommodate Christianity to the modern context. The basic methodology of liberal theology was

twofold: first, to reconstruct traditional Christianity in light modern philosophy, culture and

science and, second, to find Christianity’s true essence by taking off the traditional layers that are

contextually irrelevant.

94 There is no time and space out there. As the noumenal world has no space and time, we cannot speak of the world through our subjective paradigm which depends on space and time.

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Barth was raised during the time of Modernism which put forth a modernist theology that

was indifferent to the Word of God, replacing it with the word of man. On May 10, 1886, Barth

was born in Basel, Switzerland to parents who were steeped in the traditions of Christian faith

and its theological expression. When Barth was three, his family moved to Bern where his father

would teach at the university – he was an advocate of a modern form of conservative

Protestantism known as positive theology.95 Further, being influenced by Pietism, Barth’s father

believed that experience was more important that doctrine and saw orthodoxy “as something of a

negative influence on the vibrancy of the Christian life.”96

Barth entered the Bern university after his confirmation classes, but after four

semesters Barth did as most Swiss theological students did and moved to the University of

Berlin and then to Tubingen only to finish at the University of Marburg. Wanting to go

straight from Bern to Marburg, he had to compromise with his Father and instead went to

Berlin (as his father wanted a more conservative education for him). Going then to Tubingen,

Barth’s father hoped to establish conservative theology inside Barth but this was not the case

as Barth thought the conservative approach was not tenable. Finally relenting, Barth was

allowed to finish his last semester at Marburg.97

Having a prior admonition for Wilhelm Herrmann,98 Barth was glad to sit under his

teaching at Marburg; the liberal approach by Herrmann towards theology was soaked up by

95 Frank, Armchair, 2.96 Frank, Armchair, 2.97 Frank, Armchair, 3. 98 The student of Ritschl was the teacher of Barth – Wilhelm Herrmann. “While Herrmann shared Ritschl’s disdain for all forms of metaphysics in theology and his emphasis on ethics, he also believed that Ritschl overstated the way in which faith was dependent on historical knowledge. Herrmann maintained that religion was distinct from all other realms of human activity and inquiry, including science, history, and ethics” (18-19) Therefore religious faith was categorically different from all other forms of knowing and as historical research was restricted to the natural world, it could not reveal anything of true religion (19). “Confidence in the truth of Christianity comes not through the bible, the church, or human reason but solely from direct experience in Christ” and so “only religious faith could provide certainty and confidence in the centrality of Jesus Christ for Christianity” (19). From Frank, Armchair.

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Barth. Befriending Martin Rade, Barth was able to be his editorial assistant for Die

Christliche Welt (“one of the most influential theological journals in Germany”99). Taking

Herrmann’s theology of a necessary experience with Christ with him to preaching, Barth had

to undertake certain challenges as a liberal pastor.

Barth, the Pastor for two year at a Reformed Congregation in Geneva from 1909-

1911, was quite liberal in his sermons. After his time in Geneva, Barth moved in 1911 to a

Swiss village named Safenwil where he preached for the next ten year.100 A key element that

led to Barth’s break with liberalism was his concern for the working class and poor; as the

democratic movement was in full swing, he hoped this new social order would bring a

change to the well-to-do to help them as they were in a privileged position.101 Being quite

attracted to the socialism of the Blumhardts who were priests, Barth embraced the idea that

the gospel was a social embodiment and that “the Christian message did no simply promise a

future life in another world, but a profound difference in the present circumstances through

its announcement of the coming of the kingdom of God to the earth. The focal point of this

movement was hope in the possibility of a visible and tangible appearance of the kingdom of

God and the lordship of Jesus Christ in the world.”102 The main thing is that socialism was

willing to engage in the struggle to oppose the existing powers of the world that caused the

oppression, misery, and suffering of so many inhabitants.103

By engaging socialism, Barth confronted literature that helped him understand the

struggles of his own congregation and thus much of his theology included socialist literature.

“Barth’s socialist commitments coupled with his immersion in the struggles of his working-

99 Frank, Armchair, 4.100 Frank, Armchair, 22101 Frank, Armchair, 23-24102 Frank, Armchair, 24.103 Frank, Armchair, 26.

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class parishioners also had the effects of eroding his confidence in the bourgeois religious

ethos and assumptions of liberalism and alienating him from the intellectual context and

mind-set that shaped his teachers.” Although Barth did not abandon liberal theology based

strictly on this, there were some modification he made to his thinking which would prove

efficient later on to establish his full-scale departure from liberalism.104

The climax that caused Barth to renounce the theology of liberalism happened

because of World War I. Finding out his teachers whom he venerated had “signed a

declaration of support for the Kaiser and the war;” for Barth, this left liberal theology

hopelessly compromised. When Germany was most in need of the Christian witness, liberal

theology betrayed the Christian faith when the Fatherland, the legitimacy of war, and the

Christian faith were confusingly joined together. Interestingly enough, “while liberals could

speak with conviction concerning matters such as religion, history, culture, and ethics, their

approach to theology did not provide them with the necessary resources to speak about God

in ways that called into question and challenged the status quo.”105

With the liberal idea that ‘to talk about God is to talk about humanity in a louder

voice’, Barth asserts that “to speak of God was to speak of something different, strange, and

startling” – God comes to us on his own terms and not in the ones we know; he disrupts and

invaded what we know in order to bring to life a new reality.106 Unfortunately for Barth, not

only did his former teachers give way to nationalism, so did the socialist movement that he

was so profoundly a part of .With socialism refusing to resist supporting the war, Barth stated

104 Frank, Armchair, 28.105 Frank, Armchair, 30-31.106 Frank, Armchair, 31.

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that socialism was not to be identified with the kingdom. As a result, there was the plunge

forward to engage the bible and to understand this new world.107

That liberalism focused on the bible as being authored by fallible humans in their own

context and that scripture was primarily a symbolic document, “Barth came to believe that

this approach inevitably led not only to the domestication of the bible and its message but

also to the domestication of the God to whom the scriptures bear witness.”108 Instead, Barth

says that bible directs us to this new world. The bible isn’t primarily about history, religion,

morality, and the like, but rather God.109 “Rather, it stands over against our knowledge and

will as something Wholly Other.”110

Neo-Orthodoxy, which Barth helped form was contrary to modernity which was a move

away from classical statements of Christianity. It is called neo-orthodoxy because its proponents

wanted to go back to the correct tradition. But because they were living after the enlightenment,

there is no way they could be orthodox the way those before the Enlightenment were. The

essential methodology of Neo-Orthodoxy is that of the dialectic approach. By moving away from

the historical approach of Harnack, Ritchle, and Drey,111 the interest is not in what happened but

in what is happening now. The bible, therefore, becomes the word of God; whereas in the old

way it is the word of God. There are times when scripture doesn’t say anything to you and there

are times when it speaks to you and therefore becomes the word of God.

107 Frank, Armchair, 33108 Frank, Armchair, 35.109 Frank, Armchair, 36-37.110 Frank, Armchair, 37. 111 In the classic approach, scripture is God’s word and historical so we use historical tools to see what God is doing here.

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Along with dialectic theology,112 Barth’s approach has also been called the theology of

crisis. It means

the climax or turning-point of an illness, and a change of direction in a movement of thought. Both significations must here be kept in mind. And crisis, at its profoundest, means judgment. Man, the world, religion, the Church – all for this theology are under the judgment and demand of the Word of God, which the New Testament describes as ‘piercing even to the diving asunder of soul and spirit’, as ‘scrutinizing the very thoughts and conceptions of the heart’. To understand Revelation, man must listen with the consciousness of standing at the bar of God113

Nevertheless, Barth’s thoughts should best be known as ‘The theology of the Word’

because it is in the Word that God is only to be sought; “His Word attests itself in Scripture

in the word of the prophets and apostles, to whom it was originally and once for all uttered

through God’s revelation” … thus we cannot think or speak of God outside of the Word …

“The understanding of that Word, accordingly, is the chosen task of this theology and fixes

its proper title.”114

Before diving into Barth, there are a few things we need to know about his approach. We

will see that Barth views the assertions made by Chalcedon to be only but spectacles for bringing

the main character of the New Testament into focus. As a result, Chalcedon affirms for Barth

that an interpretation is only valid if it does not assert one divinity over the other. Unfortunately,

Alexandria and Antioch show the two extremes. It would be wrong to say that Barth is non-

Chalcedonian for that would put him in the camps of either Nestorianism (extreme Antiochene)

or Docetism (extreme Alexandrian). Barth states that “it is impossible to listen to one and the

same time to the two statements that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, and that the Son of

112 Because God is always subject and never object, this is where dialectic begins with Barth – God cannot be explained like an object and all we know is what God has revealed; thus, theology is but a contradiction if it seeks to measure God and speak of him113 H. R. Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology (The Fontana Library: Theology and Philosophy; London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1964), 254.114 Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology

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God is Jesus of Nazareth. One hears either the one or the other or one hears nothing. When one is

heard, the other can be heard only indirectly, in faith.”115

Further, Barth differs from Alexandrian and Antiochene Christology by allowing for the

inconceivability of the incarnation which took place in and by the freedom of God. For

Alexandria & Antioch, the degrees and differences of the incarnation are resolved on the basis of

ordinary experience and history.116 Therefore, Barth speaks in Alexandrian and Antiochene

idioms back and forth in his writings to help us understand the Christological juxtaposition;

unfortunately, people say Barth is non-Chalcedonian because they only pick up on one side.

Like Thomas, the corpus of Barth’s work is vast. It is for this reason that we shall give

ourselves to his main piece of writing on our said topic – “The Homecoming of the Son of Man”

in Church Dogmatics vol. 4.2.117 Barth begins by saying that if we look at John 114 and accent the

flesh we are left with concluding that while not ceasing to be fully God, this God took on a man

when he went into the far country. This human, we would assume, is in all its creatureliness full

of corruption and perdition. But if we accent the Word, the statement becomes about the man.

That while not ceasing to be man, in accepting into his creatureliness and corruption the Son of

God, he would return home to become a true man where he belonged.118 Essentially, it was God

who went to the far country and returning home was a man.119

The early church argued, according to Barth, that the human nature of Jesus only meant

that Jesus had a nature which made him distinct from God, angel, or animal. Yet, Barth states

there is actually a twofold sense in humanity which Jesus needed to be authentically. First, Barth

115 Barth, Church Dogmatics vol. I, 180.116 George Hunsinger, “Karl Barth’s Christology: its basic Chalcedonian character,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth. Edited by John Webster; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 132117 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics Volume IV, 2: The Doctrine of Reconciliation (Edinburgh, Scotland: T. & T. Clark, 1967), 20-154.118 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 4.2, 21.119 The prodigal son parable, says Barth, is an obvious sorry caricature in its analogy of the incarnation.

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agrees with the early church in that his human nature made him distinct from God (at least in the

part of his human nature), but that

By the “human nature,” however, we have also to understand the “flesh,” human nature as it is determined and stamped by human sin, the corrupt and perverted human nature which stands in eternal jeopardy and has fallen a victim, not only to dying, but to death, to perishing. It is human nature as characterized in this way, Adamic human nature, that the Son of God assumed when he became man, and it is as the bearer of this human nature that he was and is the Mediator and Reconciler between God and us.120

In doing this, Barth asserts that his humanity cannot be a mere appearance nor his divinity

dissolved into a mere idea. How then are we to understand Jesus as a man? Barth says we cannot

look at man in general to figure out the person of Christ but we must rather look at man in

general along with theological anthropology and a doctrine of man’s sin and misery in regards to

the particular person and knowledge of Jesus.121 We run, then, into a paradox: the humanity of

Jesus is completely like us while at the same time completely unlike any other man. In his human

nature he bears the likeness in our creatureliness and its consequence of sin and death; his human

nature has fallen away from God and therefore accused by him. Barth argues, though, that Jesus

could not be our saviour if he did not become like us in totality.122

Yet being unlike as the Son of God, “he is a better and wiser and greater and more strong

and pious man than the rest.”123 The result of the life of Christ is the exaltation to the side of God.

Becoming a servant is the secret of Jesus which has no parallel in all of humanity. This exaltation

is a move from below to above, from earth to heaven, the one opposed to God becomes at peace

with God the judge, creator, and Lord. The exalted Jesus finds his affirmation in Jesus of

Nazareth “whose history takes place and declares itself in its totality, in its free, spontaneous,

inward agreement with the will and decree and action of God, and therefore as a service to god,

120 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 25.121 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 27.122 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 27.123 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 28.

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which includes also a service of men.”124 Barth affirms again that this act of Jesus is done in the

same nature that we have; Jesus is exalting our nature to what it can naturally and possibly

experience in all its freedom.

So far it has been said that it was necessary for God to become man that we might be

saved. Barth fills in any necessary holes by asserting that as Jesus was the eternally elected true

man in history, his existence necessarily touches all men because grace was elected on their

behalf; Christ is their head – he is more than humanity’s example as he is their atonement.125

It is at this point where I wish to bring clarification – we will now look at the unity of the

divine and human. Barth states that the divine did not cease to be as it was for that would result

in the cessation of majesty towards all of humanity. Further, God cannot change into anything

else and cease to be God – to change into a man would mean to not be true man. And the other

side of Christ, which is true humanity, shares a likeness with all humanity yet is necessarily

different than us.126 The whole act of creation and the incarnation is a free will act of God who

did not have to do any of it. By so freely choosing to create (based on his future knowledge of

the grace established in the elected Jesus Christ), God assumed the human being into the divine.

This act of humiliation, which is not alien to God’s nature, allowed for a newness and

strangeness for the divine by co-existing with the creature. The Creator willed a human partner,

willed to descend from his throne, and willed to exalt the creature. This was done for the reason

that the Creator willed to have mercy on the specific creature he was to assume so that his mercy

would extend to all other creatures. It is the Son, the second person of the Trinity – eternally

124 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 29-30. The primary, eternal, and fundamental will of God is the necessity of grace established on the election of Jesus Christ. Barth asserts that the future creature which God was to be with in the incarnation is also, in a way, before all things … even before his own dawning. We cannot think of the rest of humanity being elected first and then the Trinity chose to administer grace. Rather, as Christ was elected before all men, so the future human of Jesus was in a way necessary before its existence as it was through this human nature that the election of grace was administered (33).125 This is done as the man Jesus is the first man reconciled by means of God willing to become this man.126 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 40.

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begotten, who was first loved by the Father and then loved in return. This is the nature of

humiliation in the divine by which, out of obedience, the humiliation is continually perfected in

the incarnation. The consequence of the incarnation is that the existence of God became, and is,

the existence of a man and the two natures were united by, and in, the Son.127

It is not that divine and human-creaturely essence are found and united in him simply and directly, but that He who is “by nature God” with the Father and the Holy Ghost took human essence to Himself and united it with His divine nature. He assumed and adopted that which is so completely different from His divine nature, so alien to it. He is the One who founds and sustains this union, who makes this different and alien thing, His being as man, both possible and actual as his own. He, the eternal Word, became and is flesh.128

What the Word assumed in the incarnation was not a man but took on the human nature which

resolves to be what is human (its kind, essence, nature) in all humanity so as to have relevance

for all other men. This uniting of natures, for Barth, asserts that participation is necessary from

both natures – no participation, no union. By giving the human nature a part of the eternal divine

essence, the human can not only participate but can become co-equal with the rest of the Trinity.

So although the Son has taken the initiative to cause the assumption and provides divine

leadership to the human, the human gives to the divine what it means to be human resulting in

mutual participation. It is in this participation that the human imparts its essence on the divine,

which includes knowing and willing as a man129 and susceptibility to temptation and suffering,130

and the divine imparts it divine essence to the human nature. For Barth this is manifestation of

openness on both sides.

Harmony with the divine will, that service of the divine act, that correspondence to the divine grace, that state of thankfulness, which is the only possibility in view of the fact that this man is determined by this divine will and act of grace alone, and by them brought in His existence into not merely indirect but direct an indestructible confrontation with the divine.131

127 Barth continually repeats that the incarnation was not two beings existing side by side or within one another. The incarnation was the assumption of the human nature by the divine. Therefore, the existence of the One is not only divine but human also.128 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 47.129 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 91.130 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 73.131 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 92.

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It is now that we cover specifically what Barth says on the volition of Jesus Christ. Preliminarily,

Barth asserts that human nature wills to sin, does sin, and, as a result, can sin. What then of

Jesus? Barth argues that Jesus was sinless. Although the objectors might state that Jesus is no

longer our brother if his human essence is sinless, Barth’s resolve is to say that Jesus did bear our

sin and guilt but on the condition that he did not bear his own sin and guilt. Therefore, “he made

our human essence His own even in its corruption, but He did not repeat or affirm its inward

contradiction.”132 In becoming a man, he freely, in His own person, overcame it. In living by the

grace of God, Barth asserts that the determination of God was that his human essence had the

quality that as a man he could not sin because the prior will of God before the incarnation was

that God did not will to sin and so did not sin. Therefore, the human freedom in Jesus Christ was

that of not knowing any other freedom than that of a freedom for obedience. So although the

gospels reveal Jesus as being tempted, falling to temptation could never become the act of Jesus.

Because and as he was man only as the Son of God, it was excluded from the choice of His acts. In virtue of this origin of His being, He was unable to choose it. Therefore he did not choose it. And He did not choose it.133

In conclusion, it has been evident that although the volition of Jesus Christ was free in

every respect with what it means for a man to be free, due to the determination prior to the

incarnation , the person of Jesus Christ could not have sinned though free in every other regard.

Further, Barth clearly showed us that it was God’s freedom which allowed his own humiliation

to becoming perfectly humble by taking on all that it means to be a human, even taking on a

sinful nature though never actualizing person sin. Nevertheless, it is in this union of the divine

and human where both natures participate together and are victorious in actualizing the true man

which is the consequence of God the Son’s humiliation for the purpose of the exaltation of the

Son of Man. 132 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 92133 Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol 4.2, 93.

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From the theological shift of Barth within modernity, we move into the cultural paradigm

shift of postmodernity. While Descartes brought the reference point into the self instead of the

outside world where reason was the reference point, what we will see is that with the passage to

postmodernity that same self is decentered. Postmodernity believes in a self but it is no longer

the center. A central critique which postmodernism brought to the table was a rejection of meta-

narrative.

What characterizes postmodernity is the unbelief/incredulity toward metanarratives.

Christians jump on this though saying that postmodernity is secular or demonic because

Christianity is a metanarrative. But we need to ask ourselves what is meant by metanarrative.

Metanarrative is the modern ambition to tell the story once for all; you take Hume Locke,

Kant, and Descartes – they all tell you in one way or another that they were writing the last

chapter to philosophy; they were trying to put the system together so that if you get it, it

explains everything. A metanarrative tries to include and explain humanity’s story. In

rejecting this, postmodernists state that there is no self at the center to control all knowledge.

We all have a narrative and they are valid.

Amidst not knowing who coined the term ‘postmodernism’, we cannot deny that

much of what was taken as normative in the modern era is now under scrutiny. Though

earlier thinkers did seek certainty and objectivity, though built on firm foundations and

critiqued from a distance, postmodern thinkers rejected these assumptions.134

Christological Volition in Analytic Theology

i. What is Analytic Philosophy?ii. What is Analytic/Philosophical Theology?iii. Christological Volition of Thomas V. Morris & Richard Swinburne

134 Allen and Springsted, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 209.

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a. Two-mind Theoryiv. Christological Volition of Oliver Crisp

a. Kryptic Christologyb. Innocent temptation

v. Christological Volition of William Lane Craig and J.P. Morelanda. A neo-Sabellian reformulation

Before 1960, analytic/philosophical theology was rarely being done anywhere. The

response to anyone asking about who was doing philosophical theology in the first two-thirds

of the twentieth century would be that continental philosophy held the reigns.135 Unlike the

continental philosophers, analytic philosophers are not preoccupied with Kant’s limits of

thoughts and judgment. This is why philosophical theology has not flourished in the

continental tradition.136

Analytic philosophy began with what was called a linguistic turn in that by analyzing

language it could give a proper philosophical account of thought. As this was a truth-

functional logic established by Bertrand Russell,

the truth of each of its parts [must be] considered separately … The truth of the whole is a function of its parts … Analytic statements are, they said, purely logical statements whose truths were based solely on the meaning of the words used. Synthetic statements are statements of empirical fact, that is, statements based on sense observation137

Essential to all of this is the verification principle where there is meaning in a statement only

if its verification or falsification is done so by sense observation. From this, metaphysics,

morals, aesthetics, and religion were dismissed as meaningless.138 Christianity was attacked

when Anthony Flew asserted, in 1949, a falsification principle that says that any statement

must exclude some state of affairs of the observable state and thus any statement not

falsifiable through verification is meaningless as this inability to prove something would not

135 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “How Philosophical Theology Became Possible within the Analytic Tradition of Philosophy,” in Analytic Theology: new essays in the philosophy of theology (ed. O. D. Crisp and M. Rae; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 155.136 Wolterstorff, “How Philosophical Theology,” 157.137 Allen and Springsted, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 211-212.138 Allen and Springsted, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 212.

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provide us anything about the world. “The verification principle shows clearly the belief that

knowledge should be built on certain, public, universal, and neutrally verifiable foundations

– the foundations of observation and logical form, even if that knowledge is contingent

because empirical observations are contingent.”139

As a result, the analytic philosophy at the time was dominated by logical positivism

and this made philosophical theology difficult. Although analytic philosophy analyzed God-

talk and held that some speech of God held certain value, “genuine talk about God could

occur only under conditions that are most likely to be satisfied.”140

Yet, the problems with the verification principle are numerous. If this principle in

itself is strong enough “to exclude metaphysics, religion, and aesthetics” it can also exclude

empirical statements. Furthermore, statements of promise, declaration, or preference are

meaningful while not being true or false. Although there were significant consequences for

Christianity and its theology,

with the demand for narrow empirical verification gone, the sort of mystery that Christian theology engages can be given a much fairer hearing. But Christianity has also had to face the consequences of post-foundationalism and what it means to claim that God’s truth is revealed when the concept of truth is no longer absolute but very much local.141

In time, there were two blinds lifted so that Philosophical theology flourished: 1) “the

emergence of widespread scepticism concerning all attempts to specify general conditions for

the thinkable and the assertable, and 2) the collapse of consensus concerning epistemological

theory, in particular, consensus concerning any theory which implies that theistic beliefs are

rational only if they are rationally grounded in certitude.”142

139 Allen and Springsted, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 213.140 Wolterstorff, “How Philosophical Theology,” 156.141 Allen and Springsted, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 218.142 Wolterstorff, “How Philosophical Theology,” 162.

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Wolterstorff states further that philosophical theology is flourishing in NA and no

other analytical philosophically driven continents because “the United States is far more

religious than these other parts of the world – in particular, far more theistically religious.”143

Added to this is, because of analytic philosophy’s methodology of dialogue, philosophical

theology has advanced as it is a credible component of one side of the debate.

Analytic philosophy is very ontological while not being onto-theology. Onto-theology

makes no appeal to revelation as it is based solely upon reason and it differs from natural

theology (which is also based solely on reason from concepts borrowed by nature) by means

of transcendental concepts. Onto-theology asserts that mere concepts allow for the

knowledge of such a being without the help of any experience whatsoever. Therefore, “the

analytic philosophical theologian enters the philosophical discussion already holding that

God exists and already believing a good many things about God. Whatever it was that led

him to believe these things – perhaps revelation, perhaps induction into an ecclesiastical

tradition – certainly his convictions are not based solely upon reason.”144

Like systematic theology, analytic theology is both procedural and substantive. The

procedural elements in the pursuit of theology are those which are a particular analytic style.

The assumption is that this procedure is better suited to the task of theology than another

other current offer. “The substantive element included several features that are interrelated:

the presumptions that there is some theological truth of the matter and that this truth of the

matter can be ascertained and understood by human beings (theologians included!), and are

instruments of reason.”145

143 Wolterstorff, “How Philosophical Theology,” 162.144 Wolterstorff, “How Philosophical Theology,” 167.145 Oliver Crisp, “On Analytic Theology,” in Analytic Theology: new essays in the philosophy of theology (ed. O. D. Crisp and M. Rae; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 35.

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The procedural component which is derived from analytic philosophy is a method

known by its logical rigour, clarity, and parsimony of expression, together with a focus on a

specific cluster of philosophical problems. A part of analytic philosophy is like being a

mechanic where problems are stripped down and then reformed so the original problem can

be made sense of. As this was a thing of the 50s, today’s analytic philosophers are “more

concerned with building metaphysical worldviews than analysing problems (in this narrow,

linguistic sense at least).”146

In regards to the difference of virtues between analytic and continental philosophers,

Crisp asserts that analytic philosophy is not as concerned with the atomizing of a mechanic

example but is rather concerned with the ends of philosophy (its purpose). “Continental

philosophers might think that clarity and rigour are intellectual virtues to be pursued. But it

may be that continental philosophers are less optimistic than analytic philosophers that

analysis can yield the dividends it promises.”147

Like analytic philosophy, analytic theology involves certain tools like logic; it will

also cherish intellectual virtues like clarity, parsimony of expression, and argumentative

rigour. By these virtues it will deal with complex doctrinal concerns. This will be done by

either dividing these doctrines into manageable units or focus on establishing “a clear

expression of particular theological terms that inform particular doctrines in important

respects.”148 Essentially, by using the analytic approach to theology, that which is complex

within theology can be made sense of by logical rigour. In fact, that which is beyond human

reasoning, as it is mysterious, is another matter entirely not meant for analytic theology.

Crisp also states that reason is the hand-maiden of theology (like Thomas) when thinking

146 Crisp, “On Analytic Theology,” 36.147 Crisp, “On Analytic Theology,” 37.148 Crisp, “On Analytic Theology,” 38.

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about the theological and philosophical relationship; philosophy is a helper and not a

hindrance. “Analytic theology could be thought of as a rationalistic programme that attempts

to domesticate theology, by annexing it to philosophy.”149

Unlike Barth, who is a fugue that uses variations on a theme in different parts of the

work to make sense of a theological topic, analytic theology is responsive to the loci

approach to theology initiated by Philip Melanchthon and Protestant Scholasticism, who

systematize the differing topics within theology and observe to see how they interrelate.

Analytic theology is primarily a faith-seeking-understanding project, “where ‘metaphysical’

analysis is the means by which theologians make sense of what they already believe.”150 So

there is the necessary move away from Kantian epistemology which asks: how is knowledge

of God possible?

Two-Mind Theory of Morris and Swinburne

Within this analytic tradition, our first focus shall be on the two-mind theory as

endorsed by both T. V. Morris and Richard Swinburne. We shall first look at Morris.

The two-mind theory states that there is the eternal mind (EM) of God the Son which is

omniscient while the distinct earthly consciousness (HM = human mind) is contingent and

must grow and develop with the man Jesus. For Morris, this results in the EM having full

access to the HM (and earthly experiences) but the HM did not have full access to the EM (or

its experiences) except for what the EM allowed (it is the HM which is contained in the

EM151). From this, Morris asserts that the human nature is not merely human but fully human

and fully divine. Assuming the human condition, the humbling of the Logos rendered

“himself vulnerable to the pains, sufferings, aggravations, and agonies which became his as a 149 Crisp, “On Analytic Theology,” 41.150 Crisp, “On Analytic Theology,” 51

151 Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1986), 153.

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man but which, in his exclusively divine form of existence, could not have touched him this

way.”152

Morris states that because there was a time when the Word did not have a human

nature and the present human nature is contingent as it was freely taken on, the human

nature, then, is not an essential nature for the Word.153 Jesus is therefore not a representative

human being due to holding first to the higher essential nature of divinity.154

To help the reader understand what it might be like to have two consciences, Morris

uses the dream analogy. The dreamer is partaking in the dream, yet the dreamer is also the

sleeper who is aware that it is simply just a dream. Morris states that it is possible that the

“dreamer is very rapidly alternating between two perspectives.”155 A claim which Morris then

asserts is that because there are two consciences, the humanity of Christ must be limited in

knowledge to at least one truth; this truth must be in regards to the absolute goodness of

himself. A result of this finitude is that it was an epistemic possibility that he could have

sinned.156 Although the HM is the result of the divine hypostasis working under the

constraints and conditions of the human body, it is still distinct from the EM. Therefore, the

volition of Christ is free in respect to its nature.

Swinburne argues that his understanding of a person qua person involves that person

having free will.157 Our freedom, though, is not, in general, perfectly free. To be perfectly

free, which a human can sometimes be, is to be free of all irrational desires. Nevertheless,

152 Morris, Logic, 102-7.153 Morris, Logic, 41. 154 Morris, Logic, 42.155 Morris, Logic, 102-7.156 Morris, Logic, 149.

157 God does not know infallibly beforehand! Yet, God’s omnipotence allows that “we have free will and are sometimes situated in circumstances where we are subject to irrational desires or have a free choice between what we believe to be equal or best actions.” Richard Swinburne, Was Jesus God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 9.

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due to being available to irrational desires, that is, desires to do bad actions or actions which

are less good than a best action, this only means that irrational desires could sufficiently

influence us though not necessarily compel us, and so, with the requirement of effort, we are

free to make the better choice.158

The incarnation of God was inevitable says Swinburne; God must share in our suffering.

And to participate in such suffering, God must take on a human nature in addition to his divine

nature:

Being essentially divine, he could not cease to be divine. So a divine person could only become human by acquiring a human way of thinking and acting and a human body in addition to his divine way of thinking and acting … what makes a way of thinking a human way of thinking? In contrast to animals, humans are capable of logical thought, among their beliefs are moral beliefs (beliefs about which actions are good or bad, obligatory or wrong), and they have free will. But clearly normal humans have these qualities in only a limited degree: their logical powers are fairly primitive, their moral beliefs (like all their other beliefs) are limited in scope and sometimes false, and their freedom … is very limited.159

As God took on a body and a private mental state from which to act, God limited his power

in the incarnate human. This incarnate human nature is, like us, limited. Therefore, while

becoming incarnate, God’s powers were not limited but he did take on, in a way of operating,

an additional limitation. “So, using the notion of the divine mind, we can coherently suppose

a divine person to become incarnate while remaining divine, and yet act and feel much like

ourselves.”160 This separation of belief systems is voluntary and we are therefore presented

with a divine consciousness and human consciousness; and this relationship is asymmetrical

where the divine consciousness includes the human consciousness but not the other way

around (as Morris also asserts).

Further, God Incarnate would also acquire human desires. Desires incline us to do

actions. As humans are subject to desires of both good and bad (or less than best), people

158 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 8.159 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 41.160 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 44.

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only have choice between what is best according to them and what is bad according to them

Are we therefore to speculate that God Incarnate would have been able to do wrong?161

Although God is obligated to take on a human life and suffer to show solidarity with

our suffering where he does no wrong, God is not obligated to live a perfect life (not

obligated to do nothing bad, with many good action, and always did the best or equal best

action or kind of action, where there was one).

He could have been subject to temptation not to live such a life, and it would have been good that he should allow himself to be thus tempted in order that if he succeeded, his success would have resulted from overcoming temptation when ordinary humans often yield to temptations. Thus it would have been a life of the kind that God wished each of us to live. God could then make that life available to us as our reparation.162

He further states:

It follows from God’s essential perfect freedom and omniscience that he would not put himself in a position where he could have chosen to do wrong. So in becoming incarnate God must have ensured that in his human actions he had access to such true moral beliefs as would allow him to be aware of his duties, and he must have ensured that he would never be subject to too strong a desire to do any action which was wrong. Even though God Incarnate could not do wrong, he may, however, through not allowing himself to be aware of his divine beliefs, have been inclined to believe that he might succumb to temptation to do wrong and thus, in the situation of temptation, he could have felt as we do.163

As a result of this, Swinburne states that God Incarnate “was not always conscious of his

own divinity.” Yet, says Swinburne, scripture reveals that God Incarnate must have been

evident to him some of the time to show his followers his divinity and “to show that the

divine was willing to share in their suffering.164 Amidst the perfection of the divine nature

and that God Incarnate could not do wrong, out of perfect freedom he chose to feel as we do

when we are tempted to do wrong, “and he could have been tempted to do acts other than the

best ones available. He could have yielded to these latter temptations; and if he did any

supererogatory acts he would probably do them by resisting such temptations.”165

161 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 44.162 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 57.163 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 45.164 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 46165 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 46-47.

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Specific to the two-mind theory, Swinburne looks to Freud’s psychoanalysis and

asserts that this has

helped us to see how a person can have two systems of belief to some extent independent of each other. Freud described people who sometimes, when performing some actions, act only on one system of beliefs and are not guided by beliefs of the other system; and conversely. Although all the beliefs of such a person are accessible to him, he refuses to admit to his consciousness the beliefs of the one system when he is acting in the light of the other system of beliefs … the Freudian account of such cases [(divided minds of self-deception)] helps us to see the possibility of a person intentionally keeping a lesser belief system separate from her main belief system, and simultaneously doing different actions guided by different sets of beliefs, of both of which she is consciously aware – all for some very good reason.166

So while the divinity of God Incarnate never changed, by taking to himself a human nature

(therefore one person and two nature), the actions done through his human body along with

the thoughts entertained “and the interpretation of perceptual data acquired through the

human eyes, would all be done in the light of the human belief system.”167

Kryptic Christology of Oliver D. Crisp

Divine krypsis, for Crisp, is an alternative to kenotic Christology. Contra to the

kenosis theories,168 Crisp’s argument does not entail that the Word, at the incarnation,

empties himself in any way of his divinity to become human, but rather the divine nature in

all its fullness takes on to himself a human nature.169 Crisp states that another way to label his

divine krypsis is by terming it divine self-concealment.170 It is at the incarnation where the

divine nature assumes the human nature but nothing of the divine is relinquished either 166 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 42.167 Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 43.168 Ontological Kenosis: a strong claim that the earthly God-man did not have certain divine properties; Functionalist Kenosis: this is a weak claim asserting that the Word did not exercises certain divine properties during the temporal timeframe of the incarnation. Crisp states though that even his Divine Krypsis Christology could be seen as “a species of weak functionalist kenotic doctrine.” Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, 121. I see that this theory falls much in line with a two-mind theory.169 In Crisp’s argument, contrary to Barth, he asserts that Jesus Christ could not have had original corruption and not original sin: “even if a person only has original corruption and never actually sins, possession of original corruption is itself sinful, and therefore loathsome in the sight of God, because possession of an originally corrupt human nature entails possession of a morally corrupt human nature. And, to be fallen, a human being must have at least this component of original sin, whether or not such a being also has the two component parts of original guilt.” Oliver Crisp, Divinity and Humanity (CIT; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 105.170 Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, 148.

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temporarily or permanently. “At every moment at which the Word is incarnate, he is also

exercising his divine attributes to the full, as he was before the Incarnation.”171 Therefore, all

that changed was the divine’s assumption of the human nature. Nevertheless, this human

nature was limited like all other post-Fall human natures; thus he was ignorant of various

things. Crisp asserts, though, that “in virtue of the omnipresence of the divine nature the

Word interpenetrates and indwells the human nature of Christ, but the converse is not the

case. That is, the human nature of Christ retains those properties which express the

limitations of the knowledge, power, etc., of his human nature, while being indwelt by the

divine nature of the Word.”172 This unique perichoresis is one that is shared only by the God-

man and falls in line with much of what has been already said that the union is actively

asymmetrical where although the human is indwelt by the divine nature, the human nature

does not partake in all that the divine nature is (at lease, prior to glorification).173 The Logos

has therefore voluntarily placed restrictions on what the human nature of Christ has access to.

Following from Crisp’s divine krypsis theory is Crisp’s argument for innocent

temptation. We have seen thus far that the volition of the God-man, though voluntarily

limited by the Logos, was free in all respects to humanity and completely perfect in the

divine nature. Crisp’s argument, therefore, in regards to innocent temptation goes as such.

Crisp asserts that he holds to the impeccability view because it makes sense. When it

comes to temptation, there is the reality that one can either succumb to particular temptations

or all temptations. Those who hold to impeccability would assert that Christ was incapable of

171 Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, 149.172 Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, 150.173 Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, 149-150.

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succumbing to any temptation; those who don’t like impeccability state that the supposed

temptations are just charades.174

First, Crisp notes that Christ is

not merely a human – he is also divine. Secondly, Christ is only incapable of sin in the relevant sense if he has no capacity or disposition to sin as a human being in abstraction, as it were, from the hypostatic union. However, one traditional account of the incarnation suggests that the divine son of God assumes a sinless but peccable human nature, which, by virtue of being united to the Son, is rendered incapable of sin.175

Next, a prerequisite of temptation is that one has the right ‘psychological configuration’ to

desire an object of temptation. If someone has nothing wrong with them physiologically

about digesting meat but psychologically they avert meat, when this person is presented with

the opportunity to eat a hamburger, this would be no temptation. Therefore, “one central

component of temptation concerns the fact that a person tempted by a particular thing feels

the ‘pull’ of that temptation – they desire the end and the temptation is the means to the sinful

goal.” Crisp notes, though, that we cannot know “what it was like for Jesus of Nazareth to be

God incarnate.”176

Crisp asserts that to hold to the impeccability view, he believes that one is not

culpable if temptation is both (a) from without and (b) you don’t fester on the

acknowledgment of desiring the said temptation. In regards to Christ, “the only class of

temptation Christ could feel the ‘pull’ of consisted in innocent temptations that were external

to Christ;”177 as a definition: innocent temptation “is, roughly, a temptation that does not

require the person being tempted to be in a prior state of sin.”178 Therefore, Christ can be said

174 Oliver Crisp, God Incarnate: explorations in Christology, (London: T&T Clark International, 2009), 107. 175 Crisp, God Incarnate, 127.176 Crisp, God Incarnate, 128.177 Crisp, God Incarnate, 130.178 Crisp, God Incarnate, 129.

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to be tempted by such ‘innocent’ temptation and not be culpable for being in the subjective

state of being tempted by the object of such temptation.

In regards to the sinlessness view, Crisp states that although Christ could not sin it

doesn’t mean that he didn’t have the capacity to sin. According to Anselm, says Crisp, qua

human he could have sinned but qua divine he was incapable of sin. Yet, Crisp asserts that

when it comes to Christ’s moral status according to those who hold to peccability or

impeccability the real issue is not whether Christ had the capacity or felt the tug of

temptation but rather if Christ could have actually sinned. Crisp states “that both defenders of

the sinlessness view and of the impeccability view can affirm that Christ has the capacity to

sin, as a human being.”179

Therefore Crisp holds that those holding the sinlessness view must hold both that (a)

qua human he had the capacity to sin and (b) qua divine he had no capacity to sin. Therefore,

the essential elements of both natures are free in that the divine remains completely perfect in

its being and the human nature’s volition is not hindered as it freely wants to be in

accordance with its unity to the divine.

Neo-Sabellian Reformulation of Moreland and Craig

Moreland and Craig begin with an understanding of the Chalcedonian Creed. They

assert that the four adjectives (without confusion, without change, without division, without

separation) remind us that the two natures of Christ must be kept distinct and that the unity of

his person must not be compromised. “The first two adjectives are aimed at the Alexandrian

(Word-flesh) tendency to blend the two natures together as a result of the incarnation; the last

179 Crisp, God Incarnate, 133.

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two are directed at the Antiochene (Word-man) failure to achieve a real union of the two

natures so that they are divided or separated into two persons.”180

Although Chalcedon settled on an endorsement of dyophysite Christology where

Christ exists in two unified but not confused natures, Greek speaking Christians who were

sympathetic to Alexandria were alienated. Monophysitism and Monothelitism were the battle

cries from those rejected as they asserted that the affirmation of two natures meant there were

two persons. The only response by Constantinople III (680AD), in rejection of both these

doctrines, was that neither nature changed into the other upon hypostatic union.181

The Christology theory of Moreland and Craig is based on (i) the enhypostasis (EH)

view of Leontius Byzantium and (ii) Apollinarius’ rational and animal soul argument. (i) The

EH argument says that the human nature, based on the Chalcedon interpretation, does not

have its own hypostasis; rather, the human hypostasis is only realized in union with the logos

as it could not subsist on its own. Yet, this hypostatic nature does not combine to manifest a

single theanthropic essence;182 therefore, the human nature receives subsistence from the

logos.183 Further, they say that although the human nature is sustained by and shares in

common the hypostatic union through the Logos, the individual human nature does

supervene over the individual divine nature.

(ii) Although Apollinarius deterred from orthodoxy by asserting that the divine took

over a hominid body of only animality (therefore there is no true human nature), Moreland

and Craig find it necessary to affirm that the logos was the rational soul (image of God) of

Christ. Moreland and Craig assert that

180 J.P. Moreland and William L. Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2003), 601.181 Moreland and Craig, Foundations, 601-602.182 Moreland and Craig, Foundations, 606.183 Moreland and Craig, Foundations, 609.

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the Logos contained a 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 compete human nature. Thus the human nature of Christ was complete precisely in virtue of the union of his flesh 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 made complete by the union of the flesh with the Logos, the archetype of humanity.184

The results of the above assertion states that the person of Christ had only one self-

conscious subject while both natures are necessarily complete; therefore, “he is all that God

is and all that man ought to be.”185 Therefore, Jesus authentically struggled against fear,

weakness and temptation for the purpose of aligning the human nature’s will with that of the

will of the Father. Consequently, God’s will, in virtue of the incarnation became the will of

the man Jesus of Nazareth.186

Moreland and Craig assert:

In his conscious experience, we see Jesus genuinely tempted even though he is, in fact, impeccable. The enticements of sin were really felt and could not be blown away like smoke; resisting temptation required spiritual discipline and moral resoluteness on Jesus’ part. In his waking consciousness, Jesus is actually ignorant of certain facts, though kept from error and often supernaturally illumined by the divine subliminal. Even though the Logos possesses all knowledge about the world from quantum mechanics to auto mechanics, there is no reason to think that Jesus of Nazareth would have been able to answer questions about such subjects. So low had he stooped in condescending to take on the human condition. Moreover, in his conscious life, Jesus knew the whole gamut of human anxieties and felt physical hurt and fatigue. The model also preserves the integrity and sincerity of Jesus prayer life, and it explains why Jesus was capable of being perfected through suffering. He, like us, needed to be depended on his Father moment by moment in order live victoriously in a fallen world and to carry out successfully the mission with which he had been charged. The agonies in Gethsemane were no mere show but represented the genuine struggle of the incarnate Logos in his waking consciousness.187

Moreland and Craig are therefore arguing for this theory based on psychoanalysis where

some of our behaviours are not always aware, if at all, of the actions we have deep within.

They argue that hypnotism reveals “a vivid demonstration of the reality of the subliminal.”

As we look at the incarnation – the state of humiliation – only those elements which were

compatible with the normal human experienced were what the Logos allowed to be part of

Christ’s waking consciousness. Therefore, the cognitive perfection of the Logos is likened to 184 Moreland and Craig, Foundations, 608.185 Moreland and Craig, Foundations, 609.186 Moreland and Craig, Foundations, 609. 187 Moreland and Craig, Foundations, 612.

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that of an iceberg beneath the water’s surface which lays submerged in the human

conscience. As a result, Christ is one person, but in that person conscious and subconscious

elements are differentiated in significant way.188 This is the Monothelitism model as the

person of Jesus has a single will. “The subliminal facets of a person’s personality do not

possess a distinct faculty of the will, even though those subconscious aspects of one’s

personality may, indeed, powerfully influence what one wills in ways that one does not

suspect.”189

For Moreland and Craig, then, the volition of God Incarnate is ultimately free though

ignorant as to not knowing he won’t actually sin. As they have shown, the will of the active

Christ is necessarily in a state of freedom for the purposes of aligning its obedience with the

divine. Being like us before the Father provides for us the proper atonement and example by

which to actively respond, also, to the Father.

Conclusion

It clear that the Christology of each time and space is particular unto itself while all

affirm that staying true to scripture, and in some cases the Creeds, is fundamental. Where the

differences have been shown in regards to the person of Christ is found in what the persons

have said in regards to the necessity of Christ’s humanity corresponding to our own; that

being the rest of fallen humanity. Nevertheless, we see that Moreland and Craig disagree

with Barth in that Barth asserted that God took on what was foreign to him while Moreland

and Craig assert that God completed the humanity of Christ by bringing to the assumption

the complete image of God. Crisp further rejects the Barthian assertion that Jesus had to be in

essence sinful while not committing his own sin; for Crisp, original corruption means

188 Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 610-611.189 Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 611.

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original (and personal) sin. We also have the Monothelitism of Moreland and Craig

contrasting the Dyothelitism of Crisp and Thomas and the third council of Constantinople.

Further, what about the concrete verses abstract nature? Cyril stated that the Word emptied

himself and took on a concrete human nature. But Barth stated that the humanity of Jesus

which the Word assumed was not a man but a human nature that is common to all men while

at the same time being a specific man. As for Christ’s volition, our research has shown that

even the idea of ignorance of what Jesus is able to do or not do, to know or not know, is in

question (cf. Anselm vs. Moreland and Craig); it has been argued by some that Jesus knew he

was God and others argued for a type of Freudian psycho-analysis of the subconscious where

full knowledge is asymmetrical.

Let us conclude, then, with where everyone agrees: in Christ there were not two

persons but one person with two natures (even though Cyril asserts there is one nature he is

constantly referring to a specific human element of that nature). Scripture asserts in regards

to the humanity of Jesus that he slept, was hungry, thirsty, cried, was tempted, unaware,

suffered, and died. Scripture also reveals a divine side of the person of Christ. Jesus healed in

his own name, was transfigured, walked on water, forgave sins, claimed he could raise

himself from death, is the image of the invisible God, etc. From this, the two natures cannot

be denied. As to what degree the human and divine freely participated in this economy, our

study has shown a diversity of thought to which I will abstain from my own opinion and say

that what has been said already is a voluminous corpus of plausible theories.

Although the topic has not been on whether Christ was peccable or impeccable, the

ability of Christ to sin or not is a primary issue when dealing with the volition of Christ. John

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E. McKinley asserts that “Christ’s impeccability remains a theological opinion.”190 With the

scripture references above, my conclusion, though I am not taking a position, is that we must

resolve that the God-man had a free will in both his humanity and divinity in so far as what it

meant to be free while being at full union with each other for the purposes of humanity’s

atonement. And it is in that what the volition of Christ looked like we will not fully know as,

according to Barth, that union is still a mystery to us. Like McKinley, we must assert that we

only offer an opinion in affirming the free volition of Christ.

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