Abstract
Given Conciliar Christology and a compositionalist metaphysics of the incarnation, I explore whether ‘qua-propositions’ are capable of solving the coherence problem in Christology. I do this by probing the metaphysical aspect of qua-propositions, since ‘semantics presupposes metaphysics’ (McCord Adams). My proposal focuses on the fact that the Word accidentally owns an individual human nature. Due to that individuality, the human properties first characterise the individual human nature and, in a ‘next step’, this individual human nature characterises the Word. I call this ‘stepped characterisation’. Subsequently, I show that stepped characterisation validates the use of qua-propositions in Conciliar Christology. Hence, qua-propositions are not merely ‘muddling the waters of logic’ (Morris).
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Notes
Sermones 191:1.
The comparison with an accident is broadly medieval, though Aquinas rejected it, see Cross (2009, 51–136); Scotus Ord. 3, d1, p1, q1, n14–16 and n44–47.
See Cross (2002, 35).
The Greek: κατὰ τὴν θεότητα, κατὰ τὴν άνθρωπότητα.
Ord. 3, d11, q2, n48: accipiendo ‘secundum quod’ proprie ut est nota reduplications sive nota inhaerentiae predicati ad subjectum.
Scotus speaks of the ‘ratio formalis’, the ‘formal reason’ of the inherence of the predicate, Cross (2002, 194). See further Scotus Ord. 3, d11, q2, n46–47.
Scotus, Ord. 3, d11, q2, n46: ‘propositio cum tali determinatione distrahente esse vera, et non sine ea’; the difference with a merely reduplicative sense is a newly added ‘distracting determination’.
See also Ord. 3, d11, q2, n53–54.
The difference is: the heart (Scotus uses ‘thorax’) ‘denominat totum (the health of the animal), quia denominat ipsum sicut natum est ipsum denominare’. This holds not for the teeth of the Ethiopian. Ord. 3, d11, q2, n53.
Scotus raises another doubt: that syncategorematic statements do not qualify the predicate, see Ord. 3, d11, q2, n48. Pawl also raises a general ontological objection: if predicates are modified to a nature, then it’s no longer true that ‘humans and dogs are mammals’. Because ‘Fido is a mammal-qua-dog and no human is a mammal-qua-dog.’ Pawl (2016, 133).
I myself adhere to an ontology with kind-natures and individual natures like the ‘Danielitas’ of Daniel (conforming to the scotistic haecceitas). Everything whatsoever has a kind-nature and an individual nature. Next, I acknowledge the existence of accidental and essential properties (general or individual), as well as world-indexed properties, see e.g., Plantinga (1974).
Positing the human individual nature does not lead to Nestorianism because the concept of person is responsible for the hypostatic union, not individuality. According to Scotus, being an ordinary human person means having an individual human nature independently. So being a human person is not a logical corollary of being an individual human rational nature, but it is a further fact: being an independent individual human rational nature. For it could also be that an individual human rational nature is dependent on the second Divine Persona. In that unique case, there is no (independent) human person, only the (independent) Divine Persona. See Bok et al. (2008).
See Scotus Ord. 3, d1, p1, q1, n14–17.
In the period between Aquinas and Scotus ‘the truth-making function of an accident was reduced to dependence rather than to informing.’ Cross (2002, 36).
For a Scotistic analysis of the hypostatic union, see Bok et al. (2008). See also note 15.
Compare Scotus Ord. 3, d1, p1, q2, n103–105: ‘quod cum dependentia alicuius fuerit totaliter terminata ad aliquid, ipsa non potest—dependentia eisusdem rationis—dependere aliud.’
True, stepped characterisation encompasses two steps of direct characterisation (A) and (B); but (C) as a stepped relation between a human property and the Word excludes one straightforward relation between that human property and the Word.
I leave a discussion of Kenotism aside (Pawl 2016, 104–116).
Scotus Ord. 3, d1, p1, q1, n17. Is it possible to relate restriction policies of e.g., Morris and Cross to Scotus’s view that human properties do not inform the Word. Restriction policies assume that contradictory properties must be blocked from being ascribed to the Word. They could be constructed as ‘limitation properties’: ‘These limitation properties will not be understood as elements of human nature at all, but as universal accompaniments of humanity in the case of any created human being.’ (Morris 1986, 65) We are, according to Morris, fully human of course. And so is Christ. But we, unlike Christ, are merely human too, meaning that we do not exemplify any higher ontological kind, such as Divinity. And fully but merely human beings have these kinds of limitation properties: properties common to us, but not essential to the human kind-nature. Christ as a fully human being—but not merely human—does not have these limitations properties, hence no contradiction arises with his Divinity. Aside from the fact that I am not convinced by the ‘blockage’ strategy, the point I want to make is that Morris’s key motive of blocking contradictory properties involves the same scotistic insight that the Divine nature cannot be informed by something. We cannot ascribe ‘being contingent’ to the Word in the sense of informing.
See also Scotus Ord. 3, d1, p1, q1, n63, where he argues that the infinite can be united to a finite human being because the ‘infinitum non habet in se quodcumque ens formaliter, sed virtualiter vel eminenter’. God isn’t informed by the incarnation, though He already ‘virtualiter vel eminenter’ contains everything.
Similarly with an accidental individual property like ‘has Jesus’ suffering’? Would Conciliar Christology accept the phrase: ‘The Word qua Divine had Jesus’ suffering’? I think so. Of course it would reject ‘The Word qua Divine suffered’. (Whereas it would accept of course ‘The Word qua human suffered’).
This broad, non-specified nature of the reduplicative analysis reminds of the fact that the term also functioned as a blanket-term designating the set of different analyses of qua-propositions instead of one of its members as it is used here.
For the predicative analysis is ultimately an ontological solution too, but a totally different one. Hence if it were remedied by our ontology, the result would no longer be a predicative analysis.
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Labooy, G.H. Stepped characterisation: a metaphysical defence of qua-propositions in Christology. Int J Philos Relig 86, 25–38 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-019-09698-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-019-09698-y