Richard Cross Research Articles

Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century by Richard Cross (review)

Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century by Richard Cross (review)

The Metaphysics of Christology in the Late Middle Ages: William of Ockham to Gabriel Biel by Richard Cross (review)

The Metaphysics of Christology in the Late Middle Ages: William of Ockham to Gabriel Biel by Richard Cross (review)

Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century by Richard Cross (review)

Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century by Richard Cross (review)

Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century. By Richard Cross

Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century. By Richard Cross

Theological Genealogies of Modernity: An Introduction

Theological Genealogies of Modernity: An Introduction

The Bee and Its Honey

This paper discusses the book of Richard Cross, Communicatio idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates (Oxford University Press 2019). It basically agrees with Cross's view that Martin Luther develops a new variant of the medieval theory of suppositional union in his Christology. The paper argues that the view put forward by Cross has consequences for the soteriological role of human body. While “Christ present in faith” is a corporeal and supernatural gift, it may not be an instance of deification in the sense that human beings could sustain divine properties. Another issue concerns the sense in which Christ can be called a human “person” in Cross's view. As Christ carries a specific instance of human nature which in turn carries a particular instance of corporeality, one could claim that Christ as human being has a particular personalitas. This view resembles the trajectory of “patristic philosophy,” as recently argued by Johannes Zachhuber.

Interpreting Luther's Christology Questions for Richard Cross’s Book Communicatio Idiomatum

In a response to Richard Cross’ insightful and instructive book Communicatio Idiomatum. Reformation Christological Debates, I raise and discuss four issues: Luther’s view of philosophy, Luther's criticism of scholasticism and of dialectics/logic, his appreciation of grammatica or redekunst as opposed to logica, his recourse to the common use of language and to language figures in his explanations of Christology, and finally his novel understanding of Christology. The aim of the article is—with reference to selected Luther texts—to point to themes and problems in Luther's world of thought which have to some extent been left aside in Cross’ investigation. These themes belong fundamentally within a thorough treatment of Luther's Christology and addressing them more directly would therefore perhaps have shed a different light on some of the core issues that Cross raises. Also the conclusion, that Luther forms the beginning of a Lutheran scholasticism, is tentatively brought into question.

The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon by Bruce Lindley McCormack, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, pp. xi + 316, £29.99, hbk

The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon by Bruce Lindley McCormack, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, pp. xi + 316, £29.99, hbk

Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates by Richard Cross

Reviewed by: Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates by Richard Cross Aaron Moldenhauer Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates. By Richard Cross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 312 pp. Richard Cross takes a unique approach to the Christological debates among sixteenth-century Reformers. He does not survey the course of the debates, nor does he consider the many scriptural or patristic arguments raised. Instead, he limits his inquiry to a rigorous analysis of the metaphysical and semantic arguments made by Lutheran and Reformed theologians as they debated the communication of attributes. Cross’s goal is neither to judge which position is correct nor to provide a complete picture of the debates. Instead, he offers deep analysis of key snapshots in the course of the discussion that illuminate the metaphysical and semantic arguments. The result is a book that applies a typical methodology used to analyze scholastic philosophical theology to key moments of Reformation debates about the person of Christ. This approach situates Cross’s work among other works exploring the relation of the Reformers’ Christology to philosophy. Older analyses of Luther’s Christology, influenced by Reinhard Schwarz, argued that Luther broke cleanly with scholastic approaches to the person of Christ since Luther found late medieval metaphysics and semantics unsuited for Christology. Graham White’s Luther as Nominalist (1984) counters Schwarz’s approach by identifying continuities between the scholastics and Luther. In recent years works such as Joar Haga’s Was There a Lutheran Metaphysics? (2012) and David Luy’s Dominus Mortis (2014) have continued this conversation. Cross assumes two points debated in these and other works. First, Cross assumes that the Reformers made metaphysical and semantic arguments in their Christology. Second, Cross assumes that the Reformers knew and used scholastic Christology. The validity of these assumptions can be judged by assessing Cross’s work. An expert in medieval theology, Cross proceeds by [End Page 484] identifying and labeling arguments. While medieval theologians explicitly identified these arguments, the Reformers did not. Despite this difference in style, Cross argues that the Reformers raised metaphysical and semantic arguments and intended them to be taken seriously. Cross reduces key arguments to symbolic representation, using logical shorthand and identifying various positions by initials for ease of future reference. For instance, Cross isolates one of Luther’s arguments raised in his Christological debate with Ulrich Zwingli. Luther held that the two natures of Christ cannot be spatially separated without dividing the person of Christ. Accordingly, wherever Christ’s divine nature is, there Christ’s human nature must also be present. Otherwise the person of Christ is divided. Cross labels this argument as “impossibility of bodily separability” and abbreviates it as “the IBS principle.” He defines IBS as the argument: “If the natures lack two-way spatial inseparability, the person is not indivisible” (59–65). Cross’s list of such frequently cited principles runs close to two pages, showing the extent of his research into primary sources and the precision of his analysis. This type of analysis applied to the conceptually dense material of Reformation Christology demands careful attention from the reader. Cross succeeds in identifying metaphysical and semantic arguments raised by Reformers and in showing that the Reformers knew scholastic Christology, raising questions about how cleanly the Reformers broke with late medieval scholasticism. However, those interested in the debate will need to look beyond this book for a complete picture of Reformation Christology. Cross does not ask how important the arguments he analyzes were in relation to the scriptural, patristic, or other arguments raised. Nor does he ask how significant it is that the Reformers broke with medieval theologians as they pushed philosophical arguments to the background of their work. That is, the reader must recognize the limits of the study that Cross assigns himself. When the limited scope of the book is kept in mind, Cross’s work provides a window into an important facet of Reformation Christology and raises broader questions about the role of philosophy in Reformation theology. [End Page 485] Aaron Moldenhauer Concordia University Wisconsin Mequon, Wisconsin Copyright © 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc

The Medieval Luther ed. by Christine Helmer

Reviewed by: The Medieval Luther ed. by Christine Helmer Mark Mattes The Medieval Luther. Edited by Christine Helmer. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020. xi + 301 pp. This volume of fifteen essays seeks to elucidate a “medieval Luther” as an alternative to the Luther envisioned by the Luther Renaissance which valued forensic justification, the primacy of the Word, and a “relational ontology” (9). Instead, Helmer seeks a Luther deeply indebted to Nominalist philosophy and to the late medieval German mysticism of Tauler. This research program highlights the continuity between the medieval and early modern eras. The book is divided into three main parts: Christology, Soteriology, and Ministry. It is not possible to comment on each essay and so I focus on those most apt to interest Lutheran Quarterly readers. In contrast to Reinhard Schwarz, David Luy shows that Luther’s Christology is no dynamic mixture between the divine and human in Christ, as opposed to a metaphysical, static approach. Instead, Luther’s view is continuous with the scholastic theory of suppositional carrying, which means that while most human natures subsist of themselves and do not depend on an alien suppositum, the humanity of Christ instead uniquely receives its concrete individual existence from the divine suppositum of the Word which carries it (16–17). In other words, Christ is a divine suppositum that also happens to carry a human nature. God the Son has always been simply a divine person but now he happens to sustain a human nature [End Page 356] through an extrinsic causal relation (19). For Luy, this view best accords with Luther’s late Christological disputations. Echoing Luy, Richard Cross draws out the implications of Luther’s view of suppositional union with respect to the assumption, namely, that Luther teaches divine possibility. He notes that Luther denies that Christ’s human sufferings can be ascribed to Christ’s divinity in some way distinct from that in which they are ascribed to his person (27): “Luther . . . explicitly denies that the properties of one nature can be attributed to the other. Indeed, the discussion presupposes that anything ascribed to the divinity here is ascribed to all three persons. So when Luther talks about attributing things to a nature, what he means is to talk about attributing things to a person in or under a nature” (33). Aaron Moldenhauer challenges the notion that Luther taught that words are efficacious in the modern sense of performative. Instead, Luther, similar to Aquinas, sees words as effective when they are spoken according to God’s command and in the person of Christ (49). Such efficacious words still signify the realities to which they refer. Counter to Zwingli, Luther sees words as effective in the sacraments by means of an act of God’s will or command (59). Also writing on the sacraments, the late Marilyn McCord Adams notes that, for Luther, since Christ’s humanity is united to God the Son in hypostatic union, then Christ’s humanity is wherever Christ’s divinity is. Since divinity is everywhere, so in God the Son Christ’s humanity can be everywhere. Even so, she sees Luther’s affirmation of the ubiquity of Christ’s body to be “overkill” (87), since, as medieval scholastics would have noted, Luther’s theory of ubiquity is not necessary for Christ to be really present at many altars wherever the sacrament is observed. Alice Chapman presents the medieval imagery of Christ as a physician and shows that Luther too affirmed that sin is a sickness and that Christ is the physician who heals us (123). Likewise, Candace Kohli shows that in his fight against the Antinomians, Luther advocated an increase in righteousness and a decrease in sin, indeed an active resistance to sin and a kind of purgation through which Christians establish a formal righteousness which begins to fulfill the law in the Spirit through good behavior (127). [End Page 357] Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen draws on the nuptial imagery prevalent in Luther’s bridal mysticism, the happy exchange between Christ and the believer which “means that humans are called to show love and serve in love, love of neighbor. Since God is nothing but love, pouring it abundantly into us...

Communicatio idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates by Richard Cross

Reviewed by: Communicatio idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates by Richard Cross Corey L. Barnes Communicatio idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates. By Richard Cross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xxiv + 288. $85.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-19-884697-0. Richard Cross’s Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates approaches the development of Lutheran Christologies with attention to the Scholastic background, to the intertwined metaphysical and semantic issues at play, and to internal and external pressures shaping the conversations. The result is seven chapters of careful exegesis leveraging finely wrought distinctions to offer a precise analysis of the nature and stakes of the debates. The Introduction sets out crucial parameters and terms for the investigation. The seven chapters trace developments in Lutheran and Reformed Christologies from the 1520s to the 1590s, featuring a lengthy cast of characters and several clearly drawn fault lines. The Council of Chalcedon serves as a point of initial departure and of constant reference, allowing Cross to introduce as technical terms “person,” “hypostasis,” and “suppositum” as well as to present overlapping metaphysical and semantic questions. Chalcedon affirms a union of and in two natures without change, confusion, separation, or division. This union is typically designated the hypostatic union. Chalcedon’s affirmation provides a limit marking off permissible and impermissible theological reflection, excluding as impermissible any combination of divine and human natures into some new nature (a tertium quid) and any assignment of separation of the natures between “two distinct concrete particulars” (3). Within the permissible limits, Cross argues that theologians “have by and large identified two ways of construing this union” (ibid.). One “makes the union between the natures basic” (ibid.), and the other “makes the hypostatic union derivative of or parasitic on some more basic relation” (5). Cross traces this second way of construing the union from Cyril of Alexandria to John Duns Scotus, whose own account focused on the dependence of the assumed nature on the person assuming, in a way akin to the dependence of an accident on a substance. Scotus’s articulation of this model proved influential on late medieval and Reformation debates. Lutheran scholars labelled the model “according to which the human nature was something like a (complex) contingent property of the divine person” the “supposital union” (8). Cross employs this label to indicate the assumed human nature’s dependence upon the divine person assuming and distinguishes the supposital union from the hypostatic union, which more generally indicates the relationship of the divine and human natures. Whether or not one affirms the supposital union can change one’s conception of the relationship between the divine person and the properties of the human nature. Cross employs the term “properties” to designate “both (contingent) accidents and propria, things that follow automatically from a given nature without being included in it” (9). Porphyry lies behind these [End Page 322] discussions. One fault line dividing the thinkers Cross treats is whether they view the divine person directly to bear the properties of human nature or indirectly to bear the properties insofar as they are directly borne by the human nature assumed. Another fault line concerns the assumed human nature as a concrete particular and the reasons why the concrete particular human nature assumed does not fulfill the necessary conditions for personhood. These metaphysical considerations relate to semantic issues as well. Cross establishes a detailed framework for categorizing a broad range of approaches in their general classifications and in their specific forms. He builds from a “semantics for Christological predication” suggested by Timothy Pawls, a semantics that allows symbolic formulation of fine-tuned differences (helpfully listed under “Frequently Cited Principles” on xxiii-xxiv). Using various symbolic formulations within this semantics allows Cross to develop precise designations to indicate the metaphysical grounds for different predications of Christ. In Cross’s analysis “one of the major fault lines in Reformation Christological debate focuses precisely on whether or [not] the divine person bears not only his human nature but also human properties” (19). Framed otherwise, intra-Lutheran and Lutheran-Reformed debates concerned different understandings of the communicatio idiomatum, a phrase Cross notes “specifically applies to predicating divine or human properties of the one person under a description appropriate to the...

A Companion to Giles of Rome ed. by Charles F. Briggs and Peter S. Eardley

Reviewed by: A Companion to Giles of Rome ed. by Charles F. Briggs and Peter S. Eardley Chris Jones Briggs, Charles F., and Peter S. Eardley, eds, A Companion to Giles of Rome (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 71), Leiden, Brill, 2016; e-book; pp. xii, 319; R.R.P. US$194.00, €157.00; ISBN 9789004315396. Giles of Rome has never quite made the A-list. Machiavelli, typecast as the Eminem of medieval political thought, enjoys instant name recognition alongside a reputation for being occasionally offensive. Aquinas, on the other hand, remains an enigmatic Beyoncé-esque figure; even those who have not dived deeply into his back catalogue recognize both his genius and his influence. If constructing a taxonomy of late medieval celebrity, Giles, however, would be a Lloyd Cole-like figure. This is, in part, because, despite a semi-dramatic shift in style late in his career, his work is marked by strong underlying themes. In the context of this slightly stretched metaphor, however, the most important point is that, beyond a devoted and knowledgeable fan-base, his name is likely to invoke hazy recollection among some over-forties while leaving most to reach for Google. While this Companion is unlikely to change that, it is not only a welcome addition to the shelves of those interested in late medieval thought, but a notable reminder of Giles’s influence among his contemporaries. Today, Giles is probably best-known as a so-called papal hierocrat. His De ecclesiastica potestate sits alongside the work of James of Viterbo as the intellectual underpinning of Pope Boniface VIII’s ultimately disastrous attempt to pit papal theory against the reality of Capetian power at the start of the fourteenth century. A few decades earlier, Giles wrote what would become the most influential mirror of princes in the Middle Ages for the man who became Boniface’s most implacable foe, King Philip IV. At the same time, Giles was the [End Page 182] dominant intellectual force within the Augustinian order, a university master, an archbishop, and a voice in favour of suppressing the Templars. As one of the editors, Charles Briggs, explains in the first chapter, the last thirty years have seen a renewed interest in Giles and his work. This entry in Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition series capitalizes and builds on this research to provide a rounded introduction. Following Briggs’s overview of Giles’s life, works, and legacy, seven chapters explore his approach to, respectively, theology; natural philosophy; metaphysics; cognition; ethics and moral psychology; logic, rhetoric, and language; and political thought. Overall, the chapters are of an extremely high quality, written by leading experts in the field. Together, they draw attention to two questions: the degree to which Giles’s thought was shaped by Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, and the extent to which Giles himself stepped beyond his influences. They nuance our understanding while underlining strongly, as Roberto Lambertini highlights (p. 273), that drawing a simplistic dichotomy between Augustinianism and Aristotelianism is highly misleading. Generally speaking, the editorial quality is high. The book is equipped with excellent bibliographies and a comprehensive index. I spotted only one obvious typo (p. 13, n. 31: the date should read 1293, not 1393) and two cases of repeated words in Chapter 6. Nevertheless, it should be said that the formal introduction (pp. 1–5) is perfunctory; it is little more than a series of abstracts. Further, while most chapters include the Latin source material in their notes, Richard Cross’s discussion of Giles’s theology (Chapter 2) does not. Editorial intervention here would have ensured greater consistency. Constantino Marmo’s contribution (Chapter 7), while drawing attention to Giles as the first medieval commentator on Aristotle’s Rhetoric and offering analysis of his much-neglected commentary on the Posterior Analytics, like Chapter 2, ends abruptly without any summing up. This seems out of step with the volume as a whole. It is also unclear why Chapter 5 (Giorgio Pini’s ‘Cognition’) restricts itself to Giles’s mature thought, while Chapter 6 (Peter Eardley’s ‘Ethics and Moral Psychology’) takes a—welcome—longer view. Inevitably, specialists will find points of contention in individual...

Analogy after Aquinas: Logical Problems, Thomistic Answers by Domenic D’Ettore

Reviewed by: Analogy after Aquinas: Logical Problems, Thomistic Answers by Domenic D’Ettore Richard Cross Analogy after Aquinas: Logical Problems, Thomistic Answers. By Domenic D’Ettore. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2019. Pp. 224. $65.00 (hard). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3122-8. This excellent book traces the history of Thomistic accounts of analogy from the early fourteenth century to Francis Sylvestri of Ferrara and Chrysostom Javelli, writing in the 1520s and 1530s in the light of Cajetan’s magisterial De nominum analogia. D’Ettore starts with the philosopher who caused such difficulty for the logic of analogy: namely, John Duns Scotus. Scotus argued that both the principle of noncontradiction and syllogistic validity require univocal concepts, such that there is one ratio through which a name signifies reality. As the earliest Thomists saw, this directly threatens Aquinas’s denial of that very claim, in his assertion that analogy is sufficient for avoiding the fallacy of equivocation. D’Ettore argues that Aquinas’s account simply does not evince any awareness of these difficulties, and hence needs supplementation to enable it to provide answers to Scotus’s worries. A good part of the exposition is devoted to the divergent interpretations of [End Page 664] Aquinas proposed by the Thomists to shore up Aquinas’s position against the Scotist onslaught. It is fashionable in some theological circles today to urge that Scotus’s target was Henry of Ghent, and thus that his criticisms do not touch Aquinas’s account. But that was decidedly not the opinion of the early Thomists, and they were clearly right to be worried. As D’Ettore puts it, “If a Thomist insists that Aquinas’s model(s) of analogous naming demand more than one ratio, then the Thomist must explain how this model dodges Scotus’s criticism that, without one and only one ratio for a term, demonstration is impossible. If a Thomist argues instead that there is one ratio involved in analogous signification, then the Thomist must explain the difference between his own position and that of Scotus, either admitting that analogy reduces semantically to univocity or challenging Scotus’s definition(s) of univocity and analogy” (31–32). D’Ettore groups the philosophical and exegetical problems facing early interpreters of Aquinas under three useful headings: the rationes problem (whether analogous terms signify one or many rationes); the analogy-model problem (whether the theory of analogy is modeled on the relationship between one thing and another [unius ad alterum]—which D’Ettore labels the “Healthy Model”—or of two to a third [duorum ad tertium]—which he labels the “Principle Model”); and the equivocation problem (whether the use of analogous terms necessarily generates equivocation, as Scotus held). The discussion is quite dense, and the array of issues treated very complex. A helpful chart (186) aids the reader in tracking the manifold different answers offered by the subjects of this study: the early fourteenth-century thinkers Hervaeus Natalis and Thomas Sutton; the early fifteenth-century thinker John Capreolus; the late fifteenth-century philosophers Flandrensis and Socinas; and from the early sixteenth century Cajetan and the two Thomists mentioned above. All but the first three were associated with the Dominican studium in Bologna. As Joshua Hochschild convincingly argued a few years ago (The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s “De nominum analogia” [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010]), Cajetan has a good right to claim to have solved Scotus’s objections by appealing to the analogy of proper proportionality. As D’Ettore puts it, “Proportional unity does not eliminate diversity, but it is, nevertheless, a real form of similarity such that whatever properties belong to one thing also belong proportionally to whatever is proportionally similar to it” (139). The different rationes have some kind of unity or identity—a proportional unity or identity—and as such “whatever belongs to one, belongs also to the other proportionally” (ibid., quoting Cajetan, De nominum analogia, c. 10, n. 106). This unity allows Cajetan to circumvent Scotus’s claim that syllogisms that include terms whose significations are related merely analogously ultimately have four (or more) terms. What grounds syllogistic validity and theological reasoning is that, in...

On Contradictory Christology: Preliminary Remarks, Notation and Terminology

The following are some preliminary remarks that will set the stage for my individual replies to Timothy Pawl, Thomas McCall, A. J. Cotnoir, and Sara L. Uckelman’s responses to my paper ‘Christ – A Contradiction’. In that paper I advance and defend a contradictory Christology which solves the fundamental ‘problem’ of Christology by holding that Christ is a contradictory being: it is true that Christ is mutable and it is false that Christ is mutable; it is true that Christ is immutable and it is false that Christ is immutable; and so on for other fundamental-problem properties. Familiarity with ‘Christ – A Contradiction’ (and also with background discussion including, e.g., Richard Cross’s discussions of ‘the fundamental philosophical problem’) is assumed.

Christ – A Contradiction: A Defense of Contradictory Christology

The fundamental problem of Christology (as Richard Cross famously coined it) is the apparent contradiction of Christ as recorded at Chalcedon. Christ is human (with everything entailed thereby) and Christ is divine (with everything entailed thereby). Being divine entails (among many other of God’s properties) being immutable. Being human entails (among many other of our essential properties) being mutable. Were Christ two different persons (viz., a human person, a divine person) there’d be no apparent contradiction. But Chalcedon rules as much out. Were Christ only partly human or only partly divine there’d be no apparent contradiction. But Chalcedon rules as much out. Were the very meaning of ‘mutable’ and/or ‘immutable’ (or other such predicates) other than what they are, there’d be no apparent contradiction. But the meaning is what it is, and changing the meaning of our terms to avoid the apparent contradiction of Christ is an apparent flight from reality.What, in the end, is the explanation of the apparent contradiction of Christ? Theologians and philosophers have long advanced many consistency-seeking answers, all of which increase the metaphysical or semantical complexity of the otherwise strikingly simple but radical core of Christianity’s GodMan. In this paper, I put the simplest explanation on the theological table: namely, Christ appears to be contradictory because Christ is contradictory (i.e., some predicate is both true and false of Christ, and hence some logical contradiction is true of Christ). This explanation may sound complicated to the many who are steeped in the mainstream account of logic according to which logic precludes the possibility of true contradictions. But the mainstream account of logic can and should be rejected. Ridding theology of the dogma of mainstream logic illuminates the simple though striking explanation of the apparent contradiction of Christ — namely, that Christ is a contradictory being. Just as the simplest explanation to the apparent roundness of the earth has earned due acceptance, so too should the simplest explanation of the apparent contradiction of Christ.

Gregory of Nyssa and Divine Simplicity: A Conceptualist Reading

AbstractAndrew Radde‐Gallwitz probes Gregory of Nyssa on divine simplicity, a topic that Radde‐Gallwitz treated earlier in a book‐length monograph and takes further here in response to critics. As he notes, the Cappadocians and their opponents shared belief in divine simplicity. But for Gregory, simplicity functions as part of affirming the co‐equal divinity of the Father and Son, against his opponents. Radde‐Gallwitz lists six negative claims that Gregory’s understanding of divine simplicity supports: (1) God is immaterial; (2) God is without parts; (3) God does not possess any perfection “by acquisition”; (4) God does not possess any perfection “by participation”; (5) in God, there is no mixture or conflux of qualities, especially opposite qualities; (6) in God, there are no degrees of more or less. Yet with regard to positive statements about God’s perfections—for example the relation of God’s goodness to God’s wisdom—things are more difficult, as Radde‐Gallwitz shows. Interpreters of Gregory have differed sharply on this issue, in part because Gregory does not make his position crystal clear. Radde‐Gallwitz himself earlier held that Gregory considers God to have real but non‐definitive perfections distinct from the divine essence. Indebted to Richard Cross, however, Radde‐Gallwitz here adjusts his view, distinguishing more firmly between the divine essence itself and our limited concepts. He draws upon the Platonic distinction between natural and conventional naming, which differ in their accounts of what makes words meaningful. Arguing that Gregory is a “naturalist,” he reads Gregory’s texts on divine simplicity in this light.

Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham by Thomas M. Osborne, Jr.

Reviewed by: Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham by Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. Matthew R. McWhorter Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham by Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. (Washington DC: Catholic University of America, 2014), 250 pp. Thomas Osborne's Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham provides a helpful comparative analysis of three key medieval thinkers with respect to their distinct accounts of human action or theories of "moral psychology" (xvi). These thinkers, Osborne states, "are arguably the three most significant philosophers and theologians of the central period in the development of Scholastic thought" (xiii). His work is written in an accessible style that renders it useful not only as a resource for specialist researchers in [End Page 352] the medieval era but also as a supplemental text for course instruction at the graduate level. While the exact focus and content of this study is unique, it is comparable in approach to other recent volumes in medieval ethics and moral theology such as M. V. Dougherty's Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: From Gratian to Aquinas (2013), or to the comparative medieval studies of Marilyn McCord Adams, Richard Cross, or Russell L. Friedman. Osborne states that his study aims to provide an overview of the issues with which medieval moral psychology grappled and that this, in turn, will serve to illuminate key philosophical questions in ethics, as well as to provide historical background for understanding Reformation and early modern thought (xvi). While Osborne states that his primary goal is to provide a systematic overview of the three thinkers under consideration, his study also illustrates a contextual historical understanding of the authors in question. For example, at times, he provides occasional contextual references to other important medieval ethicists such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, and Albert the Great. Osborne is explicitly conscious of the methodological need to avoid conforming the authors under consideration to a superficial historical narrative in which Scotus is construed as reacting to Aquinas, and Ockham in turn to Scotus (see 222–23, where Osborne briefly critiques two common historio-graphical trends). On this point, Osborne recognizes that Aquinas in the era prior to his canonization did not have as significant an intellectual import for Franciscan thinkers as contemporary scholars might expect (xix). Overall, Osborne indicates that his comparative studies should serve to provide his reader both with basic familiarity with the moral psychology of each thinker and with a cognizance of the doctrinal currents that proved to be influential upon subsequent Western thought (xxv). In this respect, Osborne points to three main themes that he indicates establish a reliable historical narrative concerning the doctrinal developments in fundamental ethics from Aquinas to Ockham: "(1) a developing separation between nature and will, (2) an increased emphasis on the will's activity, and (3) a changing view of mental causation" with respect to elicited exterior acts (xxiv–xxv, cf. 227). These themes collectively provide a helpful orientation for continued study of these thinkers, a framework that other scholars will benefit from exploring and evaluating. Osborne's work is organized into five chapters enveloped by an introduction and a conclusion. Each of the five chapters is focused on [End Page 353] a particular ethical topic, such as the causes of a moral act (viz., an agent's intellect and will), the stages of a moral act, or the specification of a moral act. Regarding the structure of the book, Osborne states that it "develops thematically" (xxii). The topical arrangement of the study is intended generally to follow the ordo doctrinae found in questions 6–21 of the prima secundae of Aquinas's Summa theologiae, which Osborne maintains is the most complete and systematic treatment of moral psychology found among the works of the three thinkers under consideration (xvi). Each of Osborne's chapters is further divided into four parts. This schema for the most part follows a common pattern of first expositing Aquinas's position on the ethical topic at hand and then the positions of Scotus and Ockham and closing with a synopsis that compares and contrasts the main positions of...

Response to Richard Cross on “Are Names Said of God and Creatures Univocally?”

Response to Richard Cross on “Are Names Said of God and Creatures Univocally?”

Hylemorphic Animalism and the Incarnational Problem of Identity

In this paper, I argue that adherents of Patrick Toner’s (2011b) hylemorphic animalism who also assent to orthodox Christology and a thesis about the necessity of identity must reject a prima facie plausible theological possibility held by Ockham, entertained in one form by St. Thomas Aquinas, and recently held by Richard Cross (1989), Thomas Flint (2001a), (2001b), and (2011), and Timothy Pawl (2016) and (forthcoming) concerning which individual concrete human natures an omnipotent God could assume (viz. any of them).

Free will, grace, and anti-Pelagianism

Critics of synergism often complain that the view entails Pelagianism (or at least semi-Pelagianism), and so, critics think, monergism looks like the only live (orthodox) option. Critics of monergism often claim that the view entails that the blame for human sin ultimately traces to God. Recently, several philosophers (including Richard Cross, Eleonore Stump, and Kevin Timpe) have attempted to chart a middle path by offering soteriological accounts which are monergistic (and thus avoid Pelagianism) but maintain the resistibility of God’s grace (with the aim of blocking the tracing of sin to God). In this paper, we present a challenge to such accounts of the resistibility of grace, namely that they imply that human beings are praiseworthy for omitting to resist God’s grace. Even if such views escape Pelagianism as it is typically defined, they fail to avoid the worry at the heart of prominent criticisms of Pelagianism concerning the praise for a human being’s salvation. At the end of the paper, we suggest three possible solutions to this problem.