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Transcendence, Instantiation and Incarnation–an Exploration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael Durrant
Michael Durrant
Affiliation:
School of English Studies, Journalism and Philosophy, University of Wales, College of Cardiff, CardiffCF1 3XB
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Extract

This paper is exploratory. I shall raise the following questions:

(1) How is it possible that that which is of its nature transcendent should become immanent or incarnate? In the context of Christian Theology: how is it possible for God to become man?

(2) How is it possible for one and the same individual, Jesus of Nazareth, to be both fully God and fully man?

In relation to (I) I shall attempt to give an account of how it is so possible for the transcendent to become fully immanent and yet remain full transcendent by appealing to Professor Geach's account of Aquinas's doctrine of ‘Form’. I do not deny that there are difficulties for my attempted account. Some of these difficulties will be embraced in this paper, but clearly not all. Such would be imposible in an exploratory study.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 1993 , pp. 337 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 In his paper on Aquinas in Anscombe, G. E. M. and Geach, P. T., Three Philosophers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961)Google Scholar and in his paper ‘Form and Existence’ in Geach, P. T., God and the Soul (London: Routledge, 1969).Google Scholar

2 Southern Journal of Philosophy, XVII (1979), 287–304.Google Scholar

3 Op. cit.

4 In my The Logical Status of ‘God’ (London: Macmillan, 1973)Google Scholar and more recently in ‘The Meaning of “God”, Religion and Philosophy, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 31 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 71–84.Google Scholar

5 In my The Logical Status of ‘God’.

6 Op. cit.

7 Ward, Keith, The Concept of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), pp. 180–1.Google Scholar

8 ‘Provisionally’ in the light of difficulties to be raised in section 4.

9 Geach, P. T., Reference and Generality (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962)Google Scholar, Ch. 2: Frege, G.: ‘On Concept and Object’ in Peter, Geach and Max, Black (Eds), Translation from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952).Google Scholar

11 Prima facie appeal to one or more of the traditional doctrines of analogy will have to be made.

12 P. 343 above.

13 Pp. 342–3 above.

14 Charlton, William, Philosophy and Christian Belief (London: Sheed and War, 1988), p. 1.Google Scholar

15 Such an account has recently been offered in Morris, Thomas V., The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar. I have however raised some fundamental objections to this (see note 18 below). See also Senor, Thomas D.: ‘God, Supernatural Kinds and the Incarnation’, Religious Studies, XXVII (09, 1991), 353–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 I owe this point to Dr Robin Attfield.

17 In ‘Particular and General’ in P. F. Strawson, Logico-Linguistic Papers (London: Methuen, 1971), pp. 35–6.Google Scholar

18 In my ‘The Logic of God Incarnate – Two Recent Metaphysical Principles Examined’, Religious Studies, XXIV (January, 1989), 121–7.Google Scholar