In Defense of Conciliar Christology by Timothy Pawl

Abstract

Reviewed by: In Defense of Conciliar Christology by Timothy Pawl Christopher Tomaszewski In Defense of Conciliar Christology by Timothy Pawl ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), xiv + 251 pp. In this delightfully well-researched book, Timothy Pawl aims to defend the logical consistency of "Conciliar Christology" from the allegations of inconsistency which have been made against it, mostly in the context of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. By "Conciliar Christology," Pawl means the conjunction of all Christological propositions solemnly taught by the first seven Ecumenical Councils of the Christian Church, which Catholics, the Orthodox, and many Protestants accept as authoritative Tradition. Pawl aims not to show that this conciliar Christology is true, or even possibly true (2), but only to defeat arguments which attempt to show some contradiction in conciliar Christology. The organization of the book is straightforward: after examining the content of conciliar Christology (ch. 1), the definitions of key terms used therein (ch. 2), and fleshing out the integrated Christological theory in a broadly hylemorphic fashion (ch. 3), Pawl examines "The Fundamental Problem" for conciliar Christology (ch. 4), and examines three ways of avoiding this allegation of fundamental contradiction (chs. 5–7), before concluding with an examination of additional metaphysical objections which aim to show that conciliar Christology is inconsistent with divine immutability, impassibility, or atemporality (ch. 8), or that conciliar Christology is committed to just one nature, intellect, or will in Christ (ch. 9). Pawl's book has many merits to recommend it, perhaps the most important and praiseworthy of which is his slavish commitment to the conciliar texts which constitute conciliar Christology. As Pawl himself notes, it is an unfortunate and far too common occurrence in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion to "discover articles wherein a view condemned as outside the fold in days of yore is propounded as a novel answer to a theological problem, with apparent ignorance on the author's part that the view has such an ignoble history, or any history at all" (3). This phenomenon has the unhappy consequence that a significant fraction of the work being produced in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion is dead on arrival amongst Christians who are well acquainted with the history of the Church and take seriously the Tradition contained therein. Pawl's book is a refreshing and outstanding exception to this lack of engagement with the doctrinal history of the Church: he has appeals to the conciliar texts and careful interpretation of them sprinkled generously throughout the entire book, and certainly seems to take them to constitute the Christology that must survive scrutiny, thereby setting himself a significantly harder task than those less devoted to these doctrinal authorities, while also positioning [End Page 727] his book to be more useful to Christian philosophers who take these Councils as a definitively authoritative rule of faith. On the other hand, Pawl also demonstrates an excellent facility with the logical analysis which is the hallmark of contemporary analytic philosophy. At places, his book is full of page after page of careful deduction and explanation of the arguments against conciliar Christology which he is attempting to refute. One never wonders exactly which premise Pawl is denying or which inference he thinks is fallacious. For philosophers familiar with the most common forms of argument, this will likely border on the tedious. But it will be very advantageous to the lay reader or the theologian without a background in logic. I am a believer in conciliar Christology, and therefore in its consistency, but I do have some worries about Pawl's solution to "The Fundamental Problem." It would take too long to set up this problem here in the same way or with the same precision as Pawl does in the book, but basically, the claim is that that the predicates which are true of Christ in virtue of his divine nature are inconsistent with the predicates which are true of Christ in virtue of his human nature. But conciliar Christology asserts that many pairs of such predicates (e.g., "passible" and "impassible" or "mutable" and "immutable") are indeed all true of one and the same supposit, the eternal Word. Therefore, conciliar Christology posits contradictions, and is false. This is...