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Kenoticism and essential divine properties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2019

ERIC YANG
ERIC YANG*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA95053, USA
*
e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Traditional Christology maintains that Christ was a single divine person with two natures (human and divine). According to kenotic Christology, certain divine properties such as omniscience and omnipotence were divested in order for Christ to acquire essential human properties. However, such a view appears to conflict with perfect-being theology, which takes omniscience and omnipotence to be essential properties for being divine. I propose a view that adopts a Thomistic theory of essences in order to show that there need be no conflict, and hence Christ can give up the property of being omniscient while still being essentially omniscient.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 409 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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