Suffering for Our Sake: Christ and Human Destiny in Hilary of Poitiers’s De Trinitate

Abstract

Hilary of Poitiers’s discussion of Christ’s human experience and suffering in De trinitate has caused immense problems for modern interpreters, who often accuse him of docetic tendencies. The focus on docetism has silenced the true significance of Hilary’s argument. His view of Christ’s human experience actually serves to enhance, not diminish or deny, the reality of Christ’s humanity. Stoic psychological categories allow Hilary to speak of Christ’s suffering without pain as legitimately human, and Hilary’s christological framework enables his discussion of Christ’s experience to have immense implications for all humanity, developing an anthropology based upon the lived experience of Christ.