Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century

356 Pages·2022·2.016 MB·English

by  Richard Cross

CHANGING PARADIGMS IN HISTORICAL
AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
General Editors
SARAH COAKLEY
RICHARD CROSS
This series sets out to reconsider the modern distinction between ‘historical’ and
‘systematic’ theology. The scholarship represented in the series is marked by attention
to the way in which historiographic and theological presumptions (‘paradigms’)
necessarily inform the work of historians of Christian thought, and thus affect their
application to contemporary concerns. At certain key junctures such paradigms are
recast, causing a reconsideration of the methods, hermeneutics, geographical
boundaries, or chronological caesuras which have previously guided the theological
narrative. The beginning of the twenty-fi rst century marks a period of such notable
reassessment of the Christian doctrinal heritage, and involves a questioning of the
paradigms that have sustained the classic ‘history- of- ideas’ textbook accounts of the
modern era. Each of the volumes in this series brings such contemporary
methodological and historiographical concerns to conscious consideration. Each
tackles a period or key figure whose significance is ripe for reconsideration, and each
analyses the implicit historiography that has sustained existing scholarship on the
topic. A variety of fresh methodological concerns are considered, without reducing
the theological to other categories. The emphasis is on an awareness of the history of
‘reception’: the possibilities for contemporary theology are bound up with a careful
rewriting of the historical narrative. In this sense, ‘historical’ and ‘systematic’ theology
are necessarily conjoined, yet also closely connected to a discerning interdisciplinary
engagement.
This monograph series accompanies the project of The Oxford Handbook of the
Reception of Christian Theology (Oxford University Press, in progress), also edited by
Sarah Coakley and Richard Cross.
CHANGING PARADIGMS IN HISTORICAL
AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
General Editors
Sarah Coakley (Norris- Hulse Professor of Divinity Emerita, University of Cambridge)
and Richard Cross (John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame)
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A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition
Jonathan D. Teubner
God Visible
Patristic Christology Reconsidered
Brian E. Daley, SJ
Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age
Norman Russell
Christology and
Metaphysics in the
Seventeenth Century
RICHARD CROSS
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For Simon Over

Preface
The theologian interested in the history of metaphysics, and the philosopher
prepared to pay attention to the historical impact of theology on metaphysics, are,
perhaps, rare and exotic flowers. But for these special creatures, the seventeenth
century is an era of almost unmatched richness in Christological speculation,
exceeded perhaps only by the astonishing hundred-y ear period from 1250 to
1350. Although largely neglected in the wake of both Pietism and the
Enlightenment, the highly technical discussions of seventeenth-c entury scholas-
ticism include close attention to both the metaphysics of the Incarnation and its
associated semantics. My principal focus here will be in giving some kind of sys-
tematic and analytic account of the topic, paying full attention to its background,
not only in the sixteenth century, but also in late Patristic and Scholastic theology.
And by ‘seventeenth century’ I mean a long seventeenth century, starting around
1590, with Suárez’s commentary on the tertia pars of Aquinas’s Summa.
It is fair to say that the period I examine here was fundamentally backward-
looking: it developed ideas that had their origins four hundred years earlier, in
the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. There is nothing like the cataclys-
mic change that we find in the next century and a half. In his chapter on the
seven teenth century in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, Mark Elliott begins
thus: ‘The seventeenth century has often been considered a forgettable one for
Christian theology. . . . With Christology, the situation is arguably worse, in that
many of the recent textbooks relate the period between 1400 and 1800 as a time
of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose for that doctrine, with 1600 marking the
nadir of creativity. This verdict has been reinforced by studies of the early modern
era being quick to assume that Reformation theologies were variations on themes
established by the late Middle Ages.’ Still, I hope to show that 1600, far from
marking the ‘nadir of creativity’, in fact inaugurates a century of highly creative
engagements with the earlier tradition. In terms of the quality of discussion and
the richness of the conceptualities, it seems to me to be of unparalleled interest,
unlike anything since the turn of the fourteenth century. The game- changer was
the theory of modes as found in Suárez, which then became integral in early
modern philosophy and theology.
The book covers a lot of ground. Someone interested merely in Catholic the-
ology could read no more than Chapters 4, 5, and 7, along with the Introduction
and much of Chapters 1 to 3 for background, and get a good sense of the overall
structures of, and debates in, Catholic Christology in the era; and someone inter-
ested merely in Protestant theology could read Chapters 6, and 8 to 12, and much
viii Preface
of Chapters 1 to 3 for background, and likewise get a good idea of the general
shape of Christology in the period of Protestant orthodoxy. But I have tried to
structure the work in such a way that the cross- fertilization between the different
traditions becomes evident: in particular, showing how the different Protestant
traditions were influenced by distinct parts of the Catholic tradition. Thus I dem-
onstrate how the Reformed tradition in Christology was shaped by Scotus’s the-
ology, and the Lutheran by Aquinas’s (or, more specifically, by the traditions of
Thomistic theology formulated by and encapsulated in the thought of Cajetan).
The structure of the book—admittedly rather complex—is supposed to facilitate
this global or composite reading. And someone interested in seeing the whole
array of options before plunging into the details would, I hope, be well-s erved by
reading both the Introduction and the Concluding Remarks first, and then
returning to other parts of the book at will. In the Introduction I give an initial
analysis of the conceptual framework used in the book, and in the Concluding
Remarks I offer both a systematic summary of the various metaphysical pos si bil-
ities canvassed earlier in the book, and an admittedly brief and cursory appraisal
of some of their merits and demerits. I also provide at the beginning of the book a
glossary of technical terms that I make use of throughout, since reading the book
in piecemeal fashion may result in by-p assing the discussions where the terms are
first introduced.
Spanning the medieval and early modern fields requires an author to adopt the
various practices of students of each period. Thus, I generally use English names
for medieval theologians; but for proper names from around the middle of the
fifteenth century, I employ the usual modern convention, according to which fig-
ures are on the whole named in their native languages (other than in cases in
which the English name is standard for Anglophone readers: thus, Robert
Bellarmine, not Roberto Bellarmino, for example).
This book is intended as a sequel to two earlier volumes of mine: The
Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus, and
Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates. What motivated
me to write it was, in part, a desire to test the thesis, suggested in the latter of
these two books, that later Lutheran theology, largely thanks to Johannes Brenz
beginning from the late 1520s, adopted a homo assumptus or ‘assumed man’
Christology, as opposed to a more classical Chalcedonian outlook. This hyp oth-
esis, as the reader will see, is amply confirmed in what follows. I now intend to
complete the series, Deo volente, by writing two more volumes: Early Scholastic
Christology: 1050‒1250, and The Metaphysics of Christology: William of Ockham to
Gabriel Biel, the latter of which will probably appear first.
I owe thanks to various people for discussions of material in this book: Matt
Baines, Magda Bieniak, Bill Duba (especially for helping me navigate my way
through the complex waters of Peter Auriol’s texts), Peter Hartman, Isabel
Iribarren, Ulrich Lehner, Brad Littlejohn, Richard Muller, Sam Newlands,
Preface ix
Andy Radde- Gallwitz, Philip-N eri Reese, Drew Rosato, Jacob Schmutz, Chris
Shields, Johannes Zachhuber; and the various readers for OUP, who between
them gave me detailed comments on two earlier drafts. I thank them for their
patience and care. It goes without saying that the inevitable mistakes are wholly
my own responsibility.