Talk two slides incarnation
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This is the second talk on the incarnation in which Tony develops the expansive picture of how the incarnation defines and secures the ultimate destiny of humanity. This expansive vision only makes sense in a big picture of the cosmos so that is where Tony begins. He finishes with a summary of probably the most sophisticated framework of the incarnation that the church has developed - Irenaeus' theory of recapitulation.
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Talk two slides incarnation
- 1. The Incarnation; Detour or Destiny? Talk Two: Incarnation as Defining the Destiny of Humanity and the Cosmos Leigh Hunt (1784 - 1859): “A divine religion might be found out, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead of faith”
- 2. Two views of Life & Ministry of Jesus 2 Redemption view Incarnation view Incarnation = detour Incarnation = Destiny Goal? = Forgiveness of sins Method? = Cross + Christ as penal substitute Goal? = Glory of creation Method? = /Resurrection Cross/redemption
- 3. The conceptual landscape onto which the ‘seed of the word’ falls … 3 “INCARNATION” THOMAS AQUINAS “Two tiered Thomism” DUNS SCOTUS “EQUIVOCITY” ???
- 4. Two tiered Thomism: Separates ‘grace’ and ’nature’ 4 GRACE HUMANITY NATURE ARISTOTLEAN View of Nature: Systematic and Logical… HIGH view of God & Grace: Cannot be demonstrated. ”God” means that other than which nothing greater can be signified” Possibility of Knowing God?? Via Negativa “We cannot inquire into the manner in which God exists. We can in inquire only into the manner in which he does not exist since we cannot know of God what he is, but only what he is not. … (this) can be shown by excluding what is incompatible with God”.
- 5. Two tiered Thomism: its implications for ‘nature’ … 5 Objectifies the cosmos/nature & makes it independent The Intellect Prioritises Reason and the Intellect as the method of knowing God – and Understanding as the goal of knowing God (‘Systematic theology”??? Reduces cosmos/nature & By removing mystery, any trace of God Independence of nature makes it ‘greater than God’ GRACE HUMANITY NATURE ”Reality” & knowledge? Vacuum “Supernatural” Clears the way for ‘faith’ v ‘reason’ “Secular” Clears the way for ‘death of God’
- 6. Two tiered Thomism: its assumptions for language & knowledge … 6 GRACE NATURE Language (‘words’) as way of knowing EQUIVOCAL UNEQUIVOCAL OR UNEQUIVOCAL Scientific view of language (words) Analogy compares two things that are completely unlike each other – ie share no intrinsic qualities. Love Rose God Rock
- 7. TS Eliot on possibilities of language … 7 GRACE NATURE A poetic view of words and knowing ????? ????? ????? “every attempt Is a wholly new start, and different kind of failure … a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating..” East Coker What we call the beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning. We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And to know the place for the first time Little Gidding
- 8. Key problem for Two tiered Thomism: Incarnation becomes ‘supernatural’ addition 8 GRACE NATURE The Incarnation = analogy UNEQUIVOCAL Whether any creature can be like God? When we affirm that a creature is like God, we are not in any way compelled to say that God is like a creature. … we say that an effigy (ie painting/image) is like a man, but not that a man is like his effigy. Similarly we can say that a creature is like God, but not that God is like a creature” Summa Theologica Q 4/ Art 3 God Man
- 9. Duns Scotus Integrated view of nature & grace: The ‘integration’ is achieved by ‘intent’ The will of God frames & infuses the cosmos/nature & makes it independent The Intellect & Will There is no ‘reason’ independent of love or will. We cannot know anything without loving it.Lifts creation by restoring mystery, and traces of God Nature cannot be above God & his will cannot reduced to logic. GRACE = LOVE HUMANITY NATURE ”Reality” & knowledge? Will > Intellect?
- 10. 10 A vexed question…. God is LOVE Intent is personal… and personalizes cosmos
- 11. Scotus’ integrated view of knowledge & reality; “Univocity” 11 Language (‘words’) as way of knowing EQUIVOCAL UNEQUIVOCAL OR UNIVOCITY Poetic view of language (words) We share some qualities with God. Thus we can be sure that we have seed of shared meaning with him. Our word can correlate with his word. God Human GOOD Good GRACE = LOVE NATURE ? FONT = Graphik Bold v normal/italics +. 24 pt v 18 pt
- 12. In Scotus integrated system: Incarnation is a revelation not a visitation 12 GRACE NATURE The Incarnation & Knowledge of God Univocity Whether any creature can be like God? Incarnation is ‘univocal’ not ‘analogy. God Human Cosmos
- 13. Johns’ Gospel – book of Word & Signs Prologue WORD/ Logos Book of Signs (Wine/birth/bread/sight/Life over death) Chapters 2 - 12 Farewell Discourses (As I am so are you in this world) Passion & Resurrection The Word created the cosmos but the cosmos did not recognize him… “Came to his own” The Word reveals and communicates the reality of the cosmos, anticipates human rule in the cosmos, and presence of God. The Word now bears fruit and shared in the disciples… you join me and my Father The Word recreates the cosmos and inaugurates a new humanity Goal of humanity = knowing God (& cosmos). Main Problem is “darkness” not “sin” The answer is the ‘Word’ that illuminates everything
- 14. Irenaeus: knowing God is salvation For as those who see the light are within the light, and partake of its brilliancy; even so, those who see God are in God, and receive of His splendour. But [His] splendour vivifies them; those, therefore, who see God, do receive life. And for this reason, He, [although] beyond comprehension, and boundless and invisible, rendered Himself visible, and comprehensible, and within the capacity of those who believe, that He might vivify those who receive and behold Him through faith. For as His greatness is past finding out, so also His goodness is beyond expression; by which having been seen, He bestows life upon those who see Him. It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship with God; but fellowship with God is to know God, and to enjoy His goodness. 6. Men therefore shall see God, that they may live, being made immortal by that sight, and attaining even unto God Salvation = to know God.
- 15. LOVE WORD WISDOM DNA Code of cosmos (Golden thread) The “WORD” “RECAPITULATE” GOD “all in all” Irenaeus: the incarnation as ‘recapitulation’ “The iteration of Adam (both in similarity & contrast) in Christ as the perfect blueprint, so that all things might be subject to him”
- 16. Irenaeus: Word of God is life Salvation = to know God. Word brings light and life Therefore the Son of the Father declares [Him] from the beginning, inasmuch as He was with the Father from the beginning, … And for this reason did the Word become the dispenser of the paternal grace for the benefit of men, for whom He made such great dispensations, revealing God indeed to men, but presenting man to God, and preserving at the same time the invisibility of the Father, lest man should at any time become a despiser of God, and that he should always possess something towards which he might advance; but, on the other hand, revealing God to men through many dispensations, lest man, falling away from God altogether, should cease to exist. For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God. For if the manifestation of God which is made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God.
Editor's Notes
- They were confronting a position rather like we are today – once you personalize the unbelievers, it is harder to confine them to hell. They were confronting ther stark and growing reality of the massive tribes who had not heard of the Gospel.
- All religious controversies sit within a wider landscape of philosophy – and thus the answers to these religious questions must venture into that wider landscape and confront its assumptions, and frame arguments from there. This is what Irenaus did in the second century, so it was a combination of Greece and Jerusalem that framed the modern gospel. All people have views about nature – the world we live in; about supernature – the world of metaphysics and miracles; about humanity which seems to be caught between these two worlds, and about how we can know anything.
- Recall Descartes and his drive for certainty. This drive led him to mathematics as the way of knowing since maths works with real categories and syllogisms. It has its corollary in a very scientific view of language. This scientific view of language is mathematical in that like maths it relies on units. In turn this assumes that nature or external reality is in essence a set of units and the dialectic of maths merely discovers those units. It assumes a Newtonian view of nature – made up of fragments which correlate in predictable ways to create outputs.
- Recall Descartes and his drive for certainty. This drive led him to mathematics as the way of knowing since maths works with real categories and syllogisms. It has its corollary in a very scientific view of language. This scientific view of language is mathematical in that like maths it relies on units. In turn this assumes that nature or external reality is in essence a set of units and the dialectic of maths merely discovers those units. It assumes a Newtonian view of nature – made up of fragments which correlate in predictable ways to create outputs.
- All religious controversies sit within a wider landscape of philosophy – and thus the answers to these religious questions must venture into that wider landscape and confront its assumptions, and frame arguments from there. This is what Irenaus did in the second century, so it was a combination of Greece and Jerusalem that framed the modern gospel. All people have views about nature – the world we live in; about supernature – the world of metaphysics and miracles; about humanity which seems to be caught between these two worlds, and about how we can know anything.
- Scotus says that there is no knowledge independent of the will. And we can amplify the will to love. I can give examples of this in human endeavours, - how understanding any system is impossible if I do not understand ‘why’ it is being made. And identifying the why shapes everything. So CSA – was crucial; TLIP and law reform; Out of Home child care. Thus we cannot understand anything of the cosmos or of God unless we grasp the relentless love of God. This is what Paul emphasizes in Ephesians 1.
- Having established a more integrated view of Grace and nature, this clears the way for Scotus to advance a greater possibility of knowing. The key question is How close does a word get to the reality it is describing? This is stretched when the reality is eternal, apparently incomprehensible and mysterious.
- So the incarnation becomes a SIGN – a multifaceted sign that explains more and more as I look at it. It is a SIGN that leads to God as all signs do. It invites me to see myself as a partaker of the divine nature. And thus to recognise in my inner life, my experience as a human that I am sharing in the divine faculties that shaped the universe. I may only share in them in a fractal, but I share them in quality. Thus I can know God – not by analogy as a foreign power but as a true father. I can know God from the inside.
- Because Jesus is the Word, what he does is a series of signs, that accumulate in meaning and culminate in the passion as the greatest sign of all. Words are not just explaining – or describing; they are declaring and making a new reality. So the ‘Word’ is an instrument of making not just revealing. The cross BOTH revealed the nature of God and achieved our union with God; in the same way that healing the blind man both created sight and revealed the nature of God.
- Ireneaus saw all of this and extended John’s vision. Like John he picked up on the themes of the word/logos in Hellenic thought and built on it.
- All religious controversies sit within a wider landscape of philosophy – and thus the answers to these religious questions must venture into that wider landscape and confront its assumptions, and frame arguments from there. This is what Irenaus did in the second century, so it was a combination of Greece and Jerusalem that framed the modern gospel. All people have views about nature – the world we live in; about supernature – the world of metaphysics and miracles; about humanity which seems to be caught between these two worlds, and about how we can know anything.