Divine Generation and Human Potentiality

Chapter 1 demonstrates that divine generation is the beginning of Hilary of Poitiers’s trinitarian anthropology. This chapter frames the discussion of divine generation within the boundaries of early Christian interpretation of John 1:1–4, Hilary’s favored text for the discussion. This illuminates the importance of divine generation in fourth-century Christianity and also Hilary’s unique contributions and the significant anthropological implications therein. In his reading of the passage (in polemical engagements with Homoian theology) the nature of God as eternally generative is seen to directly implicate humanity in that productivity. Hilary argues that in the eternal generation of the Son all things are potentially created, so that the nature of humanity is directly dependent upon the eternal generation of the Son, as this is where it finds its origin. This chapter also provides a trenchant reading of third-century ideas of divine generation (in Origen, Tertullian, and Novatian), which provide the foundation on which Hilary builds.

Divine Humanity

Chapter 5 defines the culmination of Hilary of Poitiers’s trinitarian anthropology, which cannot be understood without an in-depth reading of his intertextual interpretation of John 17:1–6, 1 Corinthians 15:21–28, and Philippians 3:21. In this chapter, the human destiny in Christ parsed in the previous chapter comes to fruition. This has to do initially with the novelty of Hilary’s discussion of the incarnation. He uses adsumere, language traditionally reserved for Christ’s ascension, in reference to the incarnation, tying incarnation and glorification together as one movement. Hilary speaks of Christ’s incarnation as an assumption of all humanity in the assumption of one particular human. The perfection of human potentiality is a concorporeal conforming to Christ. Humanity’s progression through Christ’s incarnation and glorification makes Christ himself the fulfillment of human potentiality. For Hilary, Christ is both the origin and destiny of humanity’s hopeful mutability.

Divine Perfection and Human Potentiality

No figure of fourth-century Christianity seems to be both so well known and clouded in mystery as Hilary of Poitiers. His invaluable position historically is unquestioned, but the coherence and significance of his own thought is less certain. While scholars have worked to renew Hilary’s place within his historical and polemical context, much remains to be said concerning his actual contribution within these revised contextual parameters, and the overall shape of his thought remains obscure. This book provides a new paradigm for understanding Hilary’s De Trinitate. It contends that in all of Hilary’s polemical and constructive argumentation, which is essentially trinitarian, he is inherently developing an anthropology. This work therefore reinterprets Hilary’s overall theological project in terms of the continual, and for him necessary, anthropological corollary of trinitarian theology—to reframe it in terms of a “trinitarian anthropology.” The coherence of Hilary’s work depends upon this framework, and without it his thought will continue to elude his readers. The book demonstrates this by following Hilary’s main lines of trinitarian argument, out of which flows his anthropological vision. These main lines of argument, divided into the book’s chapters, unfold into a progressive picture of humanity from potentiality to perfection. This work will also aid those seeking a more precise picture of fourth-century polemical controversy through trenchant examination of the theologies involved and the philosophical and historical influences acting upon them. The book also places the controversy in the context of its theological heritage, providing a helpful guide to previous Christian thought.

Conclusion

This chapter explains why Noahide law is an appropriate starting point for Jewish philosophy today. Most philosophical reflections on Judaism have not only avoided Noahide law as a starting point, but have avoided halakhah in general. This is because of a basic misunderstanding in Jewish philosophy. This misunderstanding is based on the assumption that the systematic structure admitting philosophical analysis is evidently deductive. Since halakhah is not a process where first principles are set down and thereafter specified, it seems to elude philosophical analysis. The chapter then considers how Noahide law functions as a criterion of the possibility of divine revelation to humanity; as a criterion of human potentiality for knowledge of God; as a criterion of the possibility of revelation; and as a criterion of human potentiality in relation to revelation.