5 - Recovering the metaphysics: Christ as God-man, metaphysically construed

Summary

Central to my “Chalcedonian” approach to Christology is the insistence that it is God who becomes human. Positively, from the viewpoint of my cosmological hypothesis, Incarnation is key to satisfying God's unitive aims in creation. Negatively, Divine solidarity is key to the solution of human non-optimality problems: Stage-I defeat requires that it is God who participates in horrors. Both ways identify God as the One of Whom we affirm that He was born of the Virgin Mary; that He walked and talked; spat and touched; ate, drank, and slept; that He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered, died, was buried but rose on the third day.

Yet, common sense joins with philosophy and Myth-of-God-Incarnate theologians to press Mary's question: “how can this be?” (Luke 1:34). By way of an answer, I shall outline two accounts of the metaphysics of Christology: one offered by Richard Swinburne in his book The Christian God; and the other inspired by a family of formulations defended by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century medieval Latin school theologians. Like all theories, each has its costs and benefits. My own preference is for the second, but I believe that either is sufficient to rebut the mythographers' charge that the notion of a God-man is unintelligible.

Doctrinal desiderata

First, a brief reminder of the historical parameters of the discussion is in order. Chalcedon laid it down that

1. (T1) in Christ there are two distinct natures – one human and one Divine;

and

1. (T2) in Christ, there is a real unity of natures in a single person or supposit;