Fallenness and anhypostasis: a way forward in the debate over Christ's humanity

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren O. Sumner
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
Hypostatic Union ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractThe doctrine of the incarnation suggests that Christ is necessarily like us in some respects, and also unlike us in others. One long-standing debate in modern christology concerns whether Jesus’ human nature ought to be regarded as ‘fallen’ – as conditioned by the effects of the Fall – despite the fact that he himself remained without sin (Heb 4:15). Is fallenness a condition which is necessary in order for Christ to sympathise with human beings, to represent them, and so to reconcile them to God? Is fallenness logically separable from sinfulness? Recent literature has suggested an increasing intractability on both sides of this debate. This article seeks to bring clarity to the question of the fallenness of Christ's human nature by identifying areas of common ground between advocates and opponents of this position. It engages the work of representatives from both sides – Oliver Crisp in opposition and Karl Barth in support – in order to determine the different ways in which they approach the matter of Jesus’ fallenness and impeccability, and to locate points of potential consensus. Crisp argues that fallenness cannot be detached from sin and guilt – i.e. Augustine's notion of both original sin and original corruption, in which sin is an inevitability. Barth, on the other hand, is critical of the Augustinian view and takes as his point of departure Jesus’ unity and sympathy with fallen creatures. Yet the fallenness of Jesus’ humanity does not mean that sin was a real possibility for him.In this article the christological doctrine of anhypostasis – a way of speaking exclusively of human nature apart from its hypostatic union with God the Son – is suggested as the primary way forward. Advocates of the fallenness position seem to have this qualifier in mind when describing Jesus’ human nature as ‘fallen’: it is true of the assumed nature only when considered in itself, apart from the hypostatic union. There are logical and historical grounds for opponents to accept fallenness strictly on these terms, as well. Beyond this, I argue that anhypostatic fallenness should be acceptable to both sides because it is never without a corresponding sanctification of Jesus’ human nature by its encounter with God. Though Jesus’ humanity was conditioned by the fall, by virtue of the communicatio gratiarum it was not left in a state of peccability.

“Non potest non peccare”: Karl Barth on original sin and the bondage of the will

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-207
Author(s):  
Shao Kai Tseng
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will

Summary This article offers an exposition of Karl Barth’s actualistic reorientation of the Augustinian notions of original sin and the bondage of the will in § 60 and § 65 of Church Dogmatics IV/1–2. Barth redefines human nature as a total determination of the human being (Sein/Dasein) “from above” by the covenantal history of reconciliation. Human nature as such remains totally intact in the historical state of sin. The human being, however, is also determined “from below” by the Adamic world-history of total corruption. With this dialectical construal of sin and human nature, Barth redefines original sin as the radically sinful activities and decisions that determine the confinement of human beings to the historical condition of fallenness. Barth also challenges the famous Augustinian account of the bondage of the will to which original sin gives rise, and uses the present active indicative to express his actualistic reorientation of the Augustinian notion of the bondage: “non potest non peccare”.

Fielding and Richardson

PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 381-388
Author(s):  
William Park
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
General Type ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Tom Jones ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

But the Discovery [of when to laugh and when to cry] was reserved for this Age, and there are two Authors now living in this Metropolis, who have found out the Art, and both brother Biographers, the one of Tom Jones, and the other of Clarissa.author of Charlotte SummersRather than discuss the differences which separate Fielding and Richardson, I propose to survey the common ground which they share with each other and with other novelists of the 1740's and 50's. In other words I am suggesting that these two masters, their contemporaries, and followers have made use of the same materials and that as a result the English novels of the mid-eighteenth century may be regarded as a distinct historic version of a general type of literature. Most readers, it seems to me, do not make this distinction. They either think that the novel is always the same, or they believe that one particular group of novels, such as those written in the early twentieth century, is the form itself. In my opinion, however, we should think of the novel as we do of the drama. No one kind of drama, such as Elizabethan comedy or Restoration comedy, is the drama itself; instead, each is a particular manifestation of the general type. Each kind bears some relationship to the others, but at the same time each has its own identity, which we usually call its conventions. By conventions I mean not only stock characters, situations, and themes, but also notions and assumptions about the novel, human nature, society, and the cosmos itself. If we compare one kind of novel to another without first considering the conventions of each, we are likely to make the same mistake that Thomas Rymer did when he blamed Shakespeare for not conforming to the canons of classical French drama.

Legalism and Humankind

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Frank I. Michelman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Normative Argument

Prescriptive political and moral theories contain ideas about what human beings are like and about what, correspondingly, is good for them. Conceptions of human “nature” and corresponding human good enter into normative argument by way of support and justification. Of course, it is logically open for the ratiocinative traffic to run the other way. Strongly held convictions about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of certain social institutions or practices may help condition and shape one's responses to one or another set of propositions about what people are like and what, in consequence, they have reason to value.

scholarly journals VISÕES DE ALTERIDADE E EXPERIÊNCIA DOCENTE

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Rosângela Tenório de Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Teaching Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings

Este artigo tem como objeto o discurso sobre alteridade em articulação com experiência docente. Pretende-se dar visibilidade à expressão material, conceitual e pedagógica desse discurso em suas relações. A reflexão está sustentada nos estudos pós-colonialistas e pós-estruturalistas. Problematiza-se a interpretação da alteridade como uma possibilidade de acessar a experiência do outro, sentir como o outro em sua essencia, pois entende-se que não há uma natureza humana, mas, sim, humanos produzidos culturalmente e linguisticamente. O enfoque recai sobre a alteridade como uma relação de interdependência permeada por relações de poder, a versão da afirmação da diferença e a dignidade nas relações. AbstractThis article has as its object the discourse on otherness in articulation with teaching experience. It is intended to give visibility to the material, conceptual and pedagogical expression of this discourse in their relations. The reflection is sustained in postcolonialist and poststructuralist studies. The interpretation of otherness as a possibility to access the experience of the other is problematized, to feel as the other in its essence, because is understood that there is no human nature, but human beings produced culturally and linguistically. He focus is on otherness as a relation of interdependence permeated by power relations, the version of affirmation of difference and dignity in relationships.KeywordsOtherness; Cultural difference; Teaching.

scholarly journals Oor die bestaan van God en oor niksheid

1997 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kobus Labuschagne
Keyword(s):  
Karl Barth ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
The Real ◽  
Subjective Approach ◽  
Existentialist Philosophy ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure

On the existence of God and on nothingness The views of Karl Barth and the 'Heilsgeschichte'-tradition on the one hand, and those of Rudolf Bultmann and the 'Formkritik'-tradition on the other hand, do not differ so much on the method of objective historical research. The real differences start to appear on the hermeneutical front, where facts and events referred to in the Scriptures are evaluated and explained. The 'Heilsgeschichte' -tradition is consistent in maintaining an objective point of departure, whilst Bultmann and the 'Form-kritik'-tradition, influenced by existentialist philosophy, reveals a subjective approach. For Bultmann the kerygma cannot be verified historically but only subjectively or existentially. For Barth the kerygma cannot be separated from its true basis of historical events, in and through the person of Jesus Christ. These two different approaches have enormous con-sequences for the question of the existence of God.

scholarly journals UNIVERSALITAS DAN LOKALITAS HUKUM ISLAM

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91
Author(s):  
A. Malthuf Siroj
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mutual Attraction ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
The Law

Islamic law has two dimensions at once, namely universality and locality. In contemporary Islamic legal thought, there are two trends that contain mutual attraction between the two to bring dimension of locality to the dimension of universality on one side, and vice versa on the other side. As a consequence, there will be two possibilities, absoluteness or relativization of Islamic law. The legal discourse increasingly gains its own intensity in recently in line with the development of science and the use of various approaches in the study of Islamic law. Islamic law that is universally used is called syari`ah. This syariah law is rules of Allah SWT that is produced from texts with qath’î quality either from the side of the existency or the meanings without human beings rasional (ra’y) intervention because those texts are not the object of Ijtihad. Meanwhile, local Islamic Law is called fiqh. It is the law which is produced from texts with zhannî quality and becomes an object of Ijtihad. Because Fiqh is the result of Ijtihad so that it is usual when there are many madzhabs on it. Therefore, this paper will put this issue in proportion to find common ground between the two trends of contemporary Islamic legal thought. So that, it will hopefully clear up us the limits of universality and locality dimension of Islamic law, a focus of this legal discourse.

scholarly journals PROPERTY IN THE MORAL LIFE OF HUMAN BEINGS

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 404-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Bertram
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Complex Society ◽  
Property Concepts

AbstractLiberal egalitarian political philosophers have often argued that private property is a legal convention dependent on the state and that complaints about taxation from entitlement theorists are therefore based on a conceptual mistake. But our capacity to grasp and use property concepts seems too embedded in human nature for this to be correct. This essay argues that many standard arguments that property is constitutively a legal convention fail, but that the opposition between conventionalists and natural rights theorists is outmoded. In doing this, the essay draws on recent literature in evolutionary biology and psychology. Even though modern property in a complex society involves legal conventions, those conventions should be sensitive to our natural dispositions concerning ownership.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Youpa Andrew
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Theory Of Human Nature ◽  
Libertarian Free Will ◽  
The Way

This book offers a reading of Spinoza’s moral philosophy. Specifically, it is a philosophical exposition of his masterpiece, the Ethics, that focuses on his moral philosophy. Central to the reading I defend is the view that there is a way of life that is best for human beings, and what makes it best is that it is the way of life that is in agreement with human nature. I begin this study with Spinoza’s theory of emotions, and I do so because it is one of two doctrines that fundamentally shape the structure and content of his vision of the way of life that is best. The other is his view that striving to persevere in being is the actual essence of a finite thing (3p7). Together these make up the foundation of Spinoza’s moral philosophy, and it is from these two doctrines that his moral philosophy emerges. In saying this I am not denying that his substance monism, the doctrines of mind-body parallelism and identity, the tripartite theory of knowledge, and his denial of libertarian free will, among others, also belong to the foundation of his moral philosophy. Each of these contributes in its way to the portrait of the best way of life, and they play important roles in the chapters that follow. But it is his theory of emotions and the theory of human nature on which it rests that are chiefly responsible for the structure and content of his moral philosophy....

Human Nature and the Transcendent

2012 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 233-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Cottingham
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Blaise Pascal ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Spirit

Let me start with the enigmatic dictum of Blaise Pascal:‘l'homme passe l'homme’ –‘man goes beyond himself’; ‘humanity transcends itself’. What does this mean? On one plausible interpretation, Pascal is adverting to that strangerestlessnessof the human spirit which so many philosophers have pondered on, from Augustine before him, to Kierkegaard and many subsequent writers since. To be human is to recognize that we are, in a certain sense, incomplete beings. We are on a journey to a horizon that always seems to recede from view. Unlike all the other animals, who need nothing further for their thriving and flourishing once the appropriate environmental conditions are provided, human beings, even when all their needs are catered for – physical, biological, social, cultural – and even when they enjoy a maximally secure and enriching environment, still have a certain resistance to resting content with existence defined within a given set of parameters. They still have the restless drive to reach forward to something more.

On Value and value: A Reply to Quentin Smith

Philosophy ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 66 (258) ◽  
pp. 525-526
Author(s):  
Jonathan Westphal ◽  
Christopher Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Cosmic Radiation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
A Value ◽  
The One ◽  
Emotional Value

In ‘Concerning the Absurdity of Life’ Quentin Smith accuses us of contradicting ourselves in our argument against Thomas Nagel. On the one hand we said that Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 is not ‘insignificant’ compared with cosmic radiation. On the other we said that the life of a man of integrity or humanity could be lived without a formal claim to Value, so that there was nothing for Nagel's external perspective to negate. But where is the contradiction? We put ‘emotional value’, used of Mozart's concerto, in scare quotes, to show that we disapproved of the phrase, and we also called the emotional value ‘so-called’ with the same intention. What we said about the life of the man of integrity, as we characterized it, was that no formal claim about Value was made for it—note the capital V. ‘Formal’ was meant to make the same point. We meant neither to assert nor to deny that Value was objectively present in the concerto. If we had asserted it, that would have meant that the concerto was no good. If we had denied it, that would have committed us to a styptic view of what it would be for it to be false that it was no good. Also not wanted was to understand how music has a value, for example in education. Smith did not see that we were gunning for just the kind of analysis he gives of integrity and humanity. Hence that capital V in our reference to ‘Value’. It was meant ironically. Is a man's integrity ‘living by his values’, as Smith says, or is ‘humanity’, as we used it, ‘respecting the value of other human beings’? Integrity is surely, as the OED says, more a certain kind of unbrokenness or wholeness, being uncorrupted, even sinless, or innocent. The OED rightly makes no mention of values. Nor does it mention them under ‘humanity’: kindness, benevolence, humaneness, ‘traits or touches of human nature or feeling; points that appeal to man’. It is not true, let alone analytically true, as Smith says, that the notions of integrity and humanity involve value.

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