Taking Christo Containment Logic to Gethsemane to Rebut Charges

Milltown Studies , 2010

The article explores how de-contextualisation of Christological doctrine became vulnerable to ideology. It proposes ways beyond ideology by recovering the witness perspective and the symbolic language.

Asian Journal of Philosophy. Themes from Beall, 2023

In this paper, I respond to what I have called an epistemological objection to a dialetheist approach to the doctrine of the Incarnation, of which one example is Beall’s contradictory Christ. I discuss Anderson's book Paradox in Christian Theology, in which the author claims to account for the rationality of the doctrine of the Incarnation as a merely apparently contradictory doctrine, and I present my model, based on Anderson’s model, according to which the doctrine has the possibility to be rational by understanding it as genuinely contradictory. I show that this model fits perfectly well with the criteria that, according to Anderson, any model for the rationality of a paradoxical doctrine should meet. Beall does not address the problem of the rationality of the doctrine in his works about the contradictory Christ, and he asserts that he is not interested in it. However, I think that if he wants to make his theory more robust, less suspicious, and more convincing for theologians, philosophers, and ordinary people, he should consider this problem.

Bruce McCormack's on-going project to produce a thoroughly post-metaphysical account of the Divine ontology, in correspondence with Barth's doctrines of the Trinity and election, has spawned a mini industry of counter theses and proposals, only to be met by a myriad of replies and further articulation of ideas; most of which has been constructive and useful. The central issues of the current debate revolve around the nature of the Logos asarkos to the Logos incarnandus, what it means for Jesus to be the subject of election, and the relationship between election and God's self-constitution. This essay argues that one way forward in the debate might be to apply the doctrine of the Primacy of Christ to the discussion, and then to re-evaluate the status of the Logos asarkos and the Logos incarnandus in that light, based upon a relational ontology. *

Modern Theology, 2017

This article addresses some of the confusion regarding the role of metaphysical claims in narrative theology. Those inside and outside of narrative theology alike wonder at the ambiguous place of metaphysical claims about God as an objective reality. This essay enters the conversation through the side door of soteriology. Rather than focusing on the relationship between narrative and metaphysics or narrative and analogy or narrative and first-order theological claims, I examine what sort of metaphysical statements are required to make the Christian claim that human beings are “in Christ” intelligible as a soteriological reality. I argue that the Christian grammar itself assumes a Christology with a certain kind of metaphysical ambition without which Christianity lapses into incoherence. To make this case, I show that David Kelsey’s “narrative identity” Christology in Eccentric Existence lacks the metaphysical statements necessary to uphold his conviction that human beings are “in Christ.” A comparison with T.F Torrance and the Book of Hebrews reveals that when narrative circumvents metaphysical statements about the incarnate Son, soteriological claims lack coherence and the biblical narrative itself is distorted by a false metaphysic. Thus, metaphysical claims internal to the narrative of Jesus are necessary to tell the story of God faithfully. In this way, narrative is the expression of a theological metaphysics.

Religious Studies, 2022

This article aims to provide a new solution to the Logical Problem of the Incarnation by proposing a novel metaphysical reconstrual of the method of reduplicative predication. This reconstrual will be grounded upon the metaphysical thesis of 'Ontological Pluralism, proposed by Kris McDaniel and Jason Turner, and the notion of an 'aspect' proposed by Donald L. M. Baxter. Utilising this thesis and notion will enable the method of reduplicative predication to be further clarified, and the central objection that is often raised against this approach can be successfully answered.

JETS 68.1, 2025

Traditional accounts of the incarnation, accounts which maintain the true divinity and true humanity of Christ, have faced numerous criticisms across the history of the church, criticisms that have never entirely been resolved. What if the problem is not the claim of dual "natures" but rather the philosophical paradigm within which "nature" has been interpreted? In this article, it is argued that significant issues caused by the traditional dual-nature paradigm can be resolved through a conceptualist account of "nature." It is proposed that two things are said to share a nature, to be ontologically identical (the same sort of thing), when they share enough similarity that members of a sociolinguistic community will recognize them as the same sort of thing, that is, when the same mental act (signified by a universal term) will supposit for them both. After introducing the classic paradigm and the problems associated with it, conceptualism is proposed as a plausible solution to the problems of natural and personal identity and, as a result, a strong framework within which to tackle the classic problems associated with the incarnation. At the very least, the plausibility of conceptualism as an answer to pressing issues in the doctrine of the incarnation suggests that the problems are found not in the God-man claim but in a particular construal of the meaning of that claim.

Faith and Philosophy, 1994

The paper gives a model of the sentences that express the core of the doctrine of the Trinity. The new elements in the model are: (1) an underlying map between DIVINE PERSON and GOD-in place of set-theoretic inclusion, and (2) the notion of a predicable keeping or not keeping phase in a system of kinds. These elements, which are explained in the text, are common in everyday language. The model requires no tampering with the fundamental laws of logic, nor does it require the use of any such difficult metaphysical notions as substance and essence as distinct from person. "Licet enim Trinitas Personarum demonstratione probari non possit. .. convenit tamen, ut per aJiqua magis manifesta declaretur."-St. Thomas Aquinas, S.Th., q. 39, art. 6.

J. Rutledge, Paradox and Contradiction in Theology, London: Routledge, 2023

That Christian religion has a rational core, perfectly compatible with our basic moral convictions, was stressed, famously, by Kant in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone and shared by Hegel in Life of Jesus. That the logic of rationality is in some sense contradictory, and requires questioning the validity of traditional logical laws such as the Law of Non Contradiction, is a specifically Hegelian insight, systematically developed in the conception of Vernunftlogik (literally: the logic of reason, also called conceptual, speculative or dialectical logic). Importantly, for Hegel Vernunftlogik is the logic of philosophical, as well as religious truth, and truth, philosophically and religiously intended, involves contradictions. In this paper, I present Hegel’s account of the “unification of the opposites” implied in Christian religion, as developed in the early fragments on Christianity (Frankfurt 1798) and highlight some of its logical and metaphysical features.

2024

This is now published in JETS 68.1 Traditional accounts of the incarnation, accounts which maintain true divine nature and true human nature of Christ, have faced numerous criticisms across the history of the church, criticisms that have never entirely been resolved. What if the problem is not the claim of dual "natures" but rather the philosophical paradigm within which "nature" has been interpreted? In this paper, it is argued that significant issues caused by the traditional dual-nature paradigm can be resolved through a conceptualist account of "nature," that is, ontological identity or similitude with like things. After introducing the classic paradigm and the problems associated with it, conceptualism is proposed as a plausible solution to the problems of natural and personal identity and, as a result, a strong framework within which to tackle the classic problems associated with the incarnation. At the very least, the plausibility of conceptualism as an answer to pressing issues in the doctrine of the Incarnation suggests that the problems are found not in the God-man claim but in a particular construal of the meaning of that claim.

Themes in Philosophy of Religion - Coleção CLE, 2023

Christian teaching concerning such topics as the Holy Trinity or the two natures of Jesus Christ seems inconsistent. According to Christian theology, there are three different individuals and each of them is God, but at the same time there is only one God; what is more, each of these three individuals is the same thing, but they are still different; furthermore, Christ is both God and man, and yet God is not a human being. The article presents these problems and offers solutions which are different from social theories and relative identity trinitarianism. According to these solutions, Christian theology can maintain the principle of non-contradiction and remain consistent. The main solution is based on two (new) “is” operators which are specific to two local logics which are presented in this article: 𝜀 τ for the logic of the Trinity (τ-logic) and 𝜀 𝜒 for the Christo-logic (χ-logic), both based on Leśniewski’s epsilon, used in the main axiom of his ontology.