Recent developments in analytic Christology

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Received: 6 September 2017 Revised: 9 October 2017 Accepted: 15 November 2017 DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12480 ARTICLE Recent developments in analytic Christology James M. Arcadi Fuller Theological Seminary Correspondence James M. Arcadi, Fuller Theological Seminary, 135 N. Oakland Ave., Pasadena, CA 91182, USA. Email: jamesarcadi@fuller.edu Abstract The notion that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures has been the venue of much philosophical theological work in the past 40 years. One mode of engagement with this idea has been to defend the coherence of the idea. This has been done by, for example, revising standard conceptions of divinity and humanity or predicate attribution. Another mode of engagement with the doctrine is to offer models for how the state of affairs of the Incarnation might work. This could involve retrieving models from thinkers of the past. Finally, the constructive mode applies the reasoning of the two natures/one person conception to other areas of Christian theology such as the atonement or the Eucharist. Examples of each of these modes from the contemporary analytic literature are presented. 1 INTRODUCTION The doctrine of the Incarnation stands at the heart of Christianity. As such, it has been one of the most thoroughly explored notions within the history of Christian theological reflection. The doctrine of the Incarnation has also been the locus of much philosophical attention as well. Hence, it may be hard to demarcate clearly the boundaries between theology and philosophy. Just in virtue of the fact that the very idea of Incarnation within Christian thought emerges only by reflection on, so called, revealed sources (i.e., scripture, creeds, confessions, or statements by authoritative sources), any discussion of the Incarnation might properly be categorized as theology. However, any student of the history of Western philosophy, when she turns her eyes toward the Incarnation, will recognize familiar terms such as nature, person, and substance and will see profound implications for one's understanding of the nature of humans, the nature of reality, and the intersection of the transcendent and the immanent items standardly falling under the rubric of philosophy. The authors I treat here take their starting points from scripture, creeds, or other instances of authoritative teaching of the Christian Church, whether their thought is also an instance of philosophy is a question I will leave unanswered. 1 When thinkers past and present reflect on the data provided in these starting points, by and large they have come to the conclusion that Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is both God and a human being. Those following the creedal material of the Nicene Creed and Definition of Chalcedon take it that Jesus Christ is one person the second person of the Trinity with two natures, the divine nature and an instance of human nature (call this, the two natures ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2018 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Philosophy Compass. 2018;e12480. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12480 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/phc3 1of12

2of12 doctrine or TND). However, how this works, whether it is coherent, and what it entails have produced no small amount of scholarship. The last forty or so years has seen an explosion of philosophical interest in these guiding questions. In no small part, the spark of this explosion can be traced to a few books published in the late 1970s to early 1990s with the phase of God Incarnate in their titles. 2 Some of the objections to the traditional TND from the Myth of God Incarnate camp were of a historical bent: Jesus never existed or The followers of Jesus fabricated or exaggerated his claims. But some were philosophical. Hick (1977) averred that TND went beyond a logical contradiction to a logical incoherence it is simply not possible for one person to be both divine and human. The earliest responses from traditionalist camps were specifically concerned to defend against this coherency objection. Consequently, we might call a first mode of philosophical interest in the doctrine of the Incarnation a defense mode. This is the defending of the logical or metaphysical coherence of some version or other of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Key monographs in this enterprise are provided by bookends to the current discussion Morris (1986) and Pawl (2016a). However, Christian philosophical investigation has not limited itself to defense against the objector. A second mode of interest is, what I call, the faith seeking understanding mode (FSU). This mode take the coherence of the TND as a given and asks how does this work? There are two versions of this mode. First, there are instances where a scholar presents a model or schema of the TND; archetypal book length treatments of this question are Crisp (2007) and Loke (2014). A second species of the FSU mode is the effort to investigate with analytic tools the models of the Incarnation offered by key historical figures. In this species, not only is the line between philosophy and theology fuzzy but also the line between these two and history is also blurred. Key monographs here are from Adams (1999, 2006) and Cross (2002a, 2002b). Finally, a third mode of philosophical interest in Christology I call the constructive mode. A first constructive species are those instances where a scholar probes an issue of Christology beyond the TND. Examples of such might be probing whether or not Christ had a fallen human nature or whether multiple incarnations are possible. A second instance of the constructive mode makes applications of certain perspectives within analytic Christology to other areas of Christian theology, for instance, to the atonement or to the Eucharist. These categories may not be exhaustive, and they are certainly not mutually exclusive; however, they help get a handle on the various manners of engagement with the Incarnation that has been undertaken within the recent philosophically oriented theological literature (or theologically oriented philosophical literature). 2 THE DEFENSE MODE 2.1 Compossibility The standard position among the major players in this history of Christian thought and in the contemporary discussion has held that TND is neither contradictory nor incoherent. I here survey the bookended contributions to the current discussion of Thomas Morris and Timothy Pawl. Morris (1986) still influences the contemporary analytic discussion of the Incarnation. 3 His argument was that the co instantiation of divinity and humanity was not impossible given a proper understanding of natures. He offers the following definitions, we can consider any individual, and the whole set of properties individually necessary and jointly sufficient for being numerically identical with that individual. That set of properties we can call an individualessence, an haecceity [ ] or[ ] an individual nature (38). And further, a natural kind can be understood as constituted by a shareable set of properties individually necessary and jointly sufficient for membership in that kind. Such a set of properties can be characterized as a kind essence, or a kind nature (39). Thus, he arrives at this conclusion, It is the claim of orthodoxy that Jesus had all the kind essential properties of humanity, and all the kind essential properties of divinity, and thus existed (and continues to exist) in two natures (40). At this juncture, Morris proffers his oft referenced mere/full distinction.

3of12 Morris holds that there is a distinction between being merely human and being fully human. Regular human beings are mere and full human beings. Jesus Christ is a full human being but not a mere human being. Just because a property of a human is common does not make that attribute essential to being a full human being. For instance, it has been a common property of all humans of being born within the atmospheric confines of Earth. 4 Yet it does not seem metaphysically impossible for a particular human to be born on the International Space Station or on the Moon. In this vein, it does not tell against being a full human that one is, say, omniscient, it only indicates that one is not a mere human. Morris writes, Jesus was fully human without being merely human. He had all the properties constitutive of human nature, but he also had all the properties necessarily apt for possessing the divine nature (66). On Morris' analysis, it is not impossible for full human beings to be omnipotent, omniscient, and so forth, even if it is impossible for mere human beings to be as such. Thus, he argues for an expansion of our conception of human nature to include the potentiality of exemplifying all those properties of divinity that are essential to the divine kind of nature. Thirty years later, Timothy Pawl (2016a) has likewise attempted a philosophical defense of the coherence of TND. Pawl's project, however, is to investigate not simply TND but the interpretation of TND entailed by the conjunction of all propositions expressed about Christ from the seven Ecumenical Councils what Pawl calls Counciliar Christology. The Councils teach that Christ has seemingly contradictory attributes. For instance, Nicaea II professes the One and same Christ as both invisible and visible lord, incomprehensible and comprehensible, unlimited and limited (153). How one person can have a set of contradictory attributes such as these constitute what Pawl calls the Fundamental Problem of Conciliar Christology. As an instance of the defense mode, Pawl's project is to solve the Fundamental Problem. Pawl's solution to the Fundamental Problem is to revise the truth conditions for the aptness of the predicates said of Christ. For example, one of the problematic pairs of predicates of Christ noted above is that Christ is both invisible and visible. Initially, we might define these terms as: invisible means not being perceivable, and visible means being perceivable. Christ, then according to Conciliar Christology, is both not perceivable and perceivable a clear contradiction. However, on Pawl's theory of predication, these contradictory predicates need to be revised such that invisible means that an entity is invisible just in case it has a nature that is not perceivable, whereas visible means that an entity is visible just in case it has a nature that is perceivable. This revision preserves the contradictoriness of the predicates when applied to one person, yet it allows an opening for the proponent of Conciliar Christology to maintain coherence. For, according totnd, Jesus Christ is a special case in that Christ has two natures. A person with two natures will have two means by which predicates can be aptly predicated of that person. Since Christ has two natures, Christ has two ways to fulfill the conditions required to be either visible or invisible He possesses the divine nature in virtue of which it is true to say of him He is invisible, and he possesses a human nature in virtue of which it is true to say of him He is visible (158). This revision process can then be run through any and all predicates aptly said of Christ. Hence, the seemingly contradictory predicates ascribed to Christ can all be revised and keyed up to the natures that make it such that a particular predicate is apt of Christ. 2.2 Kenoticism In an inverse of a Morrisian revision of one's conception of human nature, the Fundamental Problem of the Incarnation can be addressed, also, by revising one's conception of the divine nature. For instance, if God was held to be not omniscient, but limited in knowledge, then Jesus Christ's inability to know the day or hour of his return would not tell against his divinity. A route of showing the co instantiation of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ in this vein is what has been come to be called kenotic Christology. 5 As Davis puts it, The whole kenotic scheme depends on there not being any essential divine properties that no human being can have and on there not being any essential human properties that no divine being can have (Davis, 2006, 118). There are two main kenotic routes in the contemporary literature. 6

4of12 A first route of kenotic reconceptualization involves revising our conception of which attributes of divinity are essential. Senor (2011) argues that we ought not conceive of humans as simply a cluster of various properties, but rather as a natural kind an entity possessing a particular genomic structure. Likewise, we ought not think of God as possessing certain essential attributes, but rather being of a supernatural kind possessing a divine genome, so to speak. Thus, it might be possible for one person to be a possessor of both kinds of genomes and then one adjusts one's conception of the essentiality of certain purportedly incompatible attributes. This kenotic route holds that attributes typically attributed to the divine nature (such as, say, omniscience or omnipotence or omnipresence) are actually not necessary to the divine nature. A second kenotic route suggests that one needs to revise the attributes typically thought to be apt of God. For instance, whereas it might have been classically thought that any divine person necessarily has the attribute of being omniscient, one can rather think that God has the attribute of being omniscient unless freely choosing tolimit one's knowledge. 7 On this schema, then, when in the Gospels Jesus Christ seems to exemplify limited knowledge, one can simply aver that the divine Word has freely chosen to limit his knowledge and thus is still able to exemplify the essential divine attribute in question. The mistake of Classical Theism, so says the kenoticist, has been to hold that God necessarily exemplifies being omniscient simplicater, rather than a ceteris paribus version of that attribute. 3 THE FAITH SEEKING UNDERSTANDING MODE Discussions in the FSU mode are concerned with the question, how might this work? Two routes of engaging this question are to offer a constructive proposal for how TND might work or to retrieve the proposal of theologians in the past. I here first trace the former route through the contemporary literature, terminating in two promising ways forward for further work. 3.1 Contemporary models 3.1.1 Transformationalist/abstractist/additionalist models A first contemporary distinction is typically made between transformationalist models and relational models of the act of Incarnation. 8 Transformationalists hold that to become human means being transformed into a human just as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly by being transformed into one (Hill, 2011, 8). Jonathan Hill delineates between physicalist transformational models and dualist transformational models, with the distinction turning on how one understands the human being. Hill holds uptrenton Merricks (2007) as the archetypical physicalist transformationalist with his materialistic Christology. 9 The dualist transformationalist is some kind of substance dualist about the human being, where humans are composed of two distinct substances, a body and a soul or mind. One typical dualist understanding of the identity of the human being is to identify her with her soul/mind. Thus, to be a human just means to be a human soul/mind. The Incarnation, on this view, would be when the Word became the mind of a human being, which was at one time properly related to a human body. While this classification is helpful, I worry that the terminology might lead one to think that the transformationalist is committed to a change in the divine nature, something proponents of Classical Theism would not countenance. Further, on Hill's illustration, when a caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly, it ceases to be a caterpillar. But in the Christological sphere, mutatis mutandis, this would entail that the divine Word ceasing to be divine in the Incarnation. Yet this might be merely a semantic issue, and there may be a way to save the phenomenon of the transformationalist perspective, while maintaining the continued divinity of God the Son. Rather than a divine person being transformed into a human, perhaps one might want to refer to this family of views as an additionalist family. The idea here being that the divine person of the Word with all the necessary and sufficient features of a divine person then adds on whatever attributes that

5of12 are necessary for human nature. In this manner, it appears more as though one is simply adding to a set, not showing a relationship between two concrete particulars. Typically juxtaposed to the transformationalist family of models, following a distinction by Alvin Plantinga (1999), two other major models have emerged in the recent literature: abstractist and concretist versions. The concretist/ abstractist distinction rests on different conceptions of nature. Abstractists hold that, at bottom, a nature is a property, a rich property, or a cluster of properties. Concretists hold that, at bottom, a nature is a concrete particular that bears properties. Although Plantinga does not make this connection, it might be more accurate to perceive transformationalist and abstractist positions as both attempting to describe the same additionalist phenomenon. This phenomenon is the adding on of attributes to the divine Word that would entail the Word being categorized also as a human being. If it were the case that one held transformationalist views to be simply abstractist views, then one might be inclined to consider all relational views as concretists views, but this would not be a necessary entailment. In his article, Plantinga offers this description of the abstractist position: when the second person of the Trinity became incarnate and assumed human nature, what happened was that he, the second person of the Trinity, acquired the property of being human; he acquired whatever property it is that is necessary and sufficient for being human. (183) We might think of a nature on the abstract view as being a property pile. That is, in order to get a human nature, one has to pile on (add on) a number of properties, say, being capable of rational thought, or, being appropriately linked with a human body, or whatever properties one thought was necessary and sufficient for being a member of the natural kind human. We already have seen that Morris' view is of this species, another prominent expositor of this family of views is Richard Swinburne. 10 Richard Swinburne has long been known for his ground breaking contributions to philosophical theology. His discussion of the Incarnation is no less provocative than his work on human nature, Classical Theism, and the nature of faith and seems to have the quality of this additionalist mind set. 11 In harmony with Plantinga's characterization of an abstractist perspective on nature, Swinburne answers the question of what a nature is by stating, Minimally it includes a set of properties which make the individual who has them an individual of a certain kind (2011, 155). A human being, on Swinburne's view is, roughly, a rational nature limited in its powers of control and knowledge acquisition, and apt for exercising them through a human body (157). Swinburne thinks that for typical humans, the soul is that which individuates and distinguishes humans one from another. However, because the second Person of the Trinity is already individuated, the human soul of Christ cannot perform this function. Rather, when the Son becomes human, the individuating principle of the Son serves to individuate the human Christ, hence playing the same role as a human soul in typical humans. Swinburne thus says, There is no contradiction in an omnipotent God choosing to have a set of human powers which he executes through a unique body in order to produce effects which he could also produce in a more direct way if he so chose (160). In this manner, in an act of self limiting, God the Son takes on the properties and powers of a human being, bringing about two systems of belief or spheres of consciousness by which it is apt to say the Son is also human (162 3). 3.1.2 Relational/concretist models In distinction from the abstract nature view (or as I indicated what might be also known as the transformationalist or additionalist view), the concrete nature perspective begins not with properties but with concrete particulars. Plantinga states: On the second view, by contrast, what [the Logos] assumed was a human nature, a specific human being. What happened when he became incarnate is that he adopted a peculiarly close and intimate relation to a certain concrete human being, a human nature in the sense of a human being. That is, there is or was a concrete human being a creature, and a creature with will and intellect to whom the Logos became related in an especially intimate way, a way denoted by the term assumption. (183 4)

6of12 The concretist holds that natures are or are composed of concrete particulars that bear properties, but that are not themselves properties. Concrete particulars are not sharable by other entities they cannot be borne by others rather they are the bearer of sharable entities like properties. One need not, but may, hold that these concrete particulars are bare particulars. On this view, a nature is a concrete particular instance of a certain kind that endows an instance of this nature with certain properties and capacities. Plantinga offers this comparison of the two views: the terms nature and human nature get used in two analogically related but very different senses: in the first sense [the abstract nature view], the term human nature denotes a property (or, if you like, group of properties): the property P which is such that necessarily, every human being has P, and necessarily, whatever has P is a human being. In the second sense [the concrete nature view], the thing denoted by human nature and that gets assumed is a human being, a concrete object, not an abstract object like a property. (184) The distinction between these two views on the nature of natures is about logical priority, does one start with properties or with a concrete particular? Thus, regarding Christ, does one think that the possession by Christ certain properties is logically prior to Christ possessing a human nature, or is the possession of a human nature logically prior to Christ possessing certain properties, capacities, relations, and etc.? On the concrete nature view, Christ is composed of two concrete natures. Given this composition, the concreterelational family line has been given the name concrete compositionalism. But within the concrete compositional pedigree, one can end up as a two part or three part concrete compositionalist, with the distinction turning on how one conceives of human being. 12 One could be a two part concrete compositional Christologist because one is a materialist about the human being where the human body is one part and then the Word is another part of Christ. Or perhaps one is a dualist about the human person. 13 In this case, then, one thinks human beings are themselves composed of two parts, a human soul/mind and a human body. Anthropological theories of how humans are composed of two parts can be construed along hylomorphist or substance dualist lines. 14 For instance, a hylomorphist could hold that the human person is necessarily composed of two parts, but the nature of a particular human is identical to the composite, not to one part of the composite. When the Word enters into a union relation with a human nature what results is a three part, concrete composition. Likewise, on most accounts of substance dualism about the human, a human being is necessarily an immaterial soul/mind that contingently is joined to a concrete human body. The typical supposition in the literature is that whatever the relation is that obtains in regular human natures between their bodies and souls is the same relation that obtains during the Incarnation between Christ's human soul/mind and his human body. Thus, in this family line, when the second person of the Trinity assumes a human body/soul composite, a three part, concrete composition occurs. Thomas Flint (2011) has distinguished three part, concrete compositionalism into two varieties. One variety he calls Model T, which conceives of the incarnation as a case of a substance's gaining a part (71). He goes on, In becoming human, the Son or Word of God takes on [Christ's human nature] as a part (71). On this model, Christ refers to the Word who has added on or assumed an instance of human nature. Flint contrasts this variety with Model A, where the Son unites himself to [Christ's human nature] in the incarnation. But the composite thus formed is not the Son. The Son remains one part of the composite entity that results from his assuming a human nature, which we call Christ (79). These are two ways of explicating the concrete composition that occurs at the Incarnation. Pawl's discussion falls within the Model T schema. In what follows, I offer Katherin Rogers' exposition of a three part concrete compositional view of the Incarnation along Model A lines. In a series of articles on the Incarnation, Katherin Rogers has attempted to defend a concrete compositional account of the Incarnation that avoids some of its recent criticisms. 15 Rogers' move is to describe the Incarnation as an action composite. That is, the Incarnation ought to be conceived of more like a state of affairs than a mereological sum; thus, the Incarnation is God doing something, God performing actions. The manner in which Rogers exposits this idea is by recourse to an extensive illustration utilizing the phenomenon of a person playing a video game.

7of12 Imagine an adolescent boy, Rogers calls him Nick (N), and N is engaged in a first person video game where the entity he controls on the screen is Nick's Character (NC). N uses NC in order to operate in the virtual, video game world. This state of affairs of N engaging in the video game as NC Rogers denotes Nick Playing (NP). Accordingly, when N is playing the video game as NC, NP obtains. If, per chance, N's mom tells him to go take out the trash and he turns off the game, then NP would not at that time obtain. This illustration maps on to the theological reality we are discussing in the following manner. N corresponds to the divine Word, NC corresponds to the human nature of Christ, and NP corresponds to the Incarnation. As a version of concrete compositionalism, Rogers thinks that N and NC are concrete particulars. But unlike standard accounts of Incarnational concrete compositionalism, she argues that the composition is constituted by the activity of N playing NC. On this view, there is only ever one person involved in NP, N. But there are two natures engaged: N's original nature and NC. This is just as TND holds Christ is one person with two natures. In the act of the Word operating the human nature, the Incarnation obtains. It is only in the causal activity of N engaging in the game as NC that NP obtains. Likewise, so the illustration goes, it is only in the causal activity of the Word using the human nature that Christ obtains. Another promising perspective has been proffered by Andrew Ter Ern Loke (2014). Loke's view is one of Kryptic Christology (from krypsis, hiding in Greek) 16, in that the supernatural properties of God incarnate were concealed ( veiled ) during the Incarnation (20). Loke exposits Kryptic Christology according to, what he calls, the Divine Preconscious Model (DPM). The DPM states that at the Incarnation, the divine attributes of the Logos (such as the Logos' omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence) were pushed into the Logos' divine preconscious, while a human nature was assumed that included a human preconscious. Loke calls the former part A of Christ's preconscious and the latter part B of his preconscious. The two minds of Christ (his divine and human mind) share one consciousness. But Christ has a full divine nature ( in virtue of the aspect of his consciousness having access to the divine preconscious [part A], thus continuing to possess all the essential divine properties which he had from eternity (70)) and a full human nature ( in virtue of the aspect of his consciousness which had human properties, the human preconscious [part B], and human body (70)). Loke is clear that he wants to understand natures here along concretist lines, where natures are concrete particulars. So, once the Incarnation occurs, Christ is composed of three parts: (1) the concrete divine nature and the concrete human nature, which itself is composed of (2) Christ's human body and (3) Christ's human soul. Loke thinks that the preconscious motif of three part concrete nature Christology avoids Nestorian tendencies of Two Consciousness concrete models, avoids Apollinarian tendencies of abstract nature models, and avoids the troubles of Ketoticism that might seem to evacuate Christ of his full divinity. His model is a Kryptic one because it holds that the divine attributes of the Incarnate Christ are hidden in the divine preconscious, fully accessible (so he still possesses them) but hidden from view where Christ does not (or rarely) access them. 17 Arcadi (2016b) has characterized Loke's model as more at home within an additionalist/abstractist framework, where the various human components of Christ are properties that are added on to the one person. That is, on Arcadi's explication of Loke's model, Christ does not derive his attributes from his natures, but rather by adding on certain properties, he satisfies the conditions for being a member of the kind divinity and the kind humanity. Loke (2017) has responded by averring that this categorization is unfounded. 3.2 Historical retrieval A fair amount of the contemporary analytic discussion of Christology has taken place by way of examinations of particular expressions of TND by significant figures from the Church's history. In fact, one might point to the work of Alfred Freddoso (1983, 1986), Eleanore Stump (2002), Richard Cross (1996, 1999, 2002a, 2002b), and Marilyn McCord Adams (1999) in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s whose work on the Christology of such prominent scholastics asthomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham set the tone for the constructive yet non historically focused work of the last decades. In virtue of the subject matter, one cannot give a synthesized estimation of this

8of12 literature. However, I here point to two influential monographs in this sphere that have done much to shape the current discussion. First, Marilyn McCord Adams' (1999) Aquinas Lectures, published as What Sort of Human Nature, isa thorough tour of various medieval thinkers' analysis of the human nature in Christ and how this nature functions within TND. Richard Cross' (2002a) monumental study of the metaphysics of the Incarnation in medieval theologians from Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus provides a systematic account of the many complexities involved in medieval debates over TND. 18 Both texts are required reading for delving into the medieval discussion. As contemporary philosophers and theologians continue to deploy analytic tools to the task of expositing various historical figures, no doubt this is a category that will continue to grow and prove influential. 19 4 THE CONSTRUCTIVE MODE If Christology is at the heart of Christianity, it would stand to reason that those in the analytic stream would push their analysis of the Incarnation toward other areas of Christian theology beyond the coherence of TND or of providing models for TND. 4.1 Other Christological loci The bulk of Oliver Crisp's Christological work might be best categorized as efforts to apply analytic Christology to various areas of Christological inquiry. 20 For instance, Crisp (2009) addresses such topics as the election of Christ, whether an account of the logos asarkos can be had and whether it would be possible for the second person of the Trinity to become incarnate multiple times. This latter question has also been pursued by Brian Hebblethwaite (2001, 2008) answering in the negative as well as, notably, Kevern (2002), Crisp (2009), LePoidevin (2009a, 2009b, 2011), and Pawl (2016b, 2016c). Crisp has also weighed in on how to conceive of Christ's relation to sin, especially whether Christ had a fallen human nature (Crisp, 2007) and whether Christ was sinless or impeccable (Crisp, 2009). This latter question is also related to the issue of Christ's freedom taken up by Pawl (2014) and Pawl and Timpe (2016). 21 4.2 Other doctrinal loci Finally, within the constructive mode of engagement with the Incarnation within the recent analytic stream, I point out a two avenues where the work of Christology is put to serve other doctrines within Christian theology such as the atonement or sacramental theology. First, Christian theology says that the whole point of even having a TND of the Incarnation is because somehow Jesus Christ brings about a remedy to the deepest problem afflicting humanity. Of course, just what that deepest problem is and how Christ is the remedy has proven difficult to pin down, hence the proliferation of various theories of the atonement. One possible problem that humanity faces is original sin that alienates humans from God. Crisp (2009, 2016) construes an Augustinian realist conception of the dissemination of original sin to all humans as akin to how all parts of a four dimensional whole might be implicated in the sin of a principle part of that whole. But, conversely, a concrete compositional exposition of TND allows Crisp the conceptual resources to show how one might conceive of Christ and all of redeemed humanity as parts of a different four dimensional whole. As such, the atoning work of Christ the principle part of this whole could accrue to the other parts of the whole and thus effect the redemption of the entire whole. Lastly, Arcadi (2015, 2016a, 2018) appropriates the three part, concrete compositional model of the Incarnation as a means of expositing a view of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. Many theologians of the past have drawn a comparison between the Incarnation and the Eucharist. For the Eucharist is said to be Christ's body, in some way related to the very same body that is a component of the human nature that is essential to TND. Arcadi adopts an instrumental explication of the relation between Christ's natures, as seen in Cross (2011), and exposits the consecrated elements

9of12 of bread and wine as instrumentally connected to Christ's body and blood. 22 Hence, in a sense, one can see Christ's presence in the Eucharist as an extension of the Incarnation. Analogously, Arcadi's work on the Eucharist is an extension of the recent analytic work on Christology. 23 ENDNOTES 1 For some further introductory comments on the conceptual contours of the issue, see Le Poidevin (2009b). 2 In 1977, John Hick edited the volume The Myth of God Incarnate as a provocative piece, which took aim at the traditional answers to the first two guiding questions. The hastily composed edited volume in that same year, The Truth of God Incarnate, offered a rebuttal from a traditional position. Further reflection occurred in the 1979 The Myth/Truth of God Incarnate. This was followed up by Stephen T. Davis whose 1980 publication, Is Truly God and Truly Man Coherent?, was republished in his 1983 Logic and the Nature of God, which set the tone for kenotic approaches to Christology in the literature (more on kenoticism anon). The most sophisticated defense of the coherence claim in the 1980s wasthomas V. Morris' The Logic of God Incarnate, and much of the contemporary discussion of the Incarnation within the analytic stream of Christian theological reflection still falls within the wake of this 1986 text. Finally, Hick himself responded to the responses in his 1993 The Metaphor of God Incarnate, whose fifth chapter took Morris on directly. One might also include Brian Hebblethwaite's collected essays in The Incarnation (1987) as contributing to this initial groundswell. 3 See also Morris (1989). 4 Thus allowing for the fact that some humans have been born on airplanes that were not, strictly speaking, on Earth. 5 The term here is derived from the Greek term kenosis in Philippians 2 when the author speaks of Christ emptying himself. Kenotic theories are of a family resemblance in holding that at the Incarnation the divine Word emptied or put off some of the divine attributes that might seem to be incompatible with being human. The earliest discussions of this view in the analytic tradition come from Davis (1983), Brown (1985), and Feenstra (1989a, 1989b). 6 Some kenoticists, and indeed some non kenotic theorists, speak of God as having or exemplifying properties. This conception is verboten for those who hold to some conceptions of Classical Theism, especially those within the Thomist stream. For within this framework, one can run into difficulties regarding God's relation to properties that may or may not be independently necessarily existing. I here attempt to avoid this and corollary difficulties by referring to a more neutralsounding divine attributes. Those who wish to conceive of attributes as properties may certainly do so. 7 One can see an explicit endorsement of this route of divine attribute modification in Evans (2006a, 2006b), Feenstra (1989a, 1989b), Feenstra (2006), and Davis (2006). This idea was suggested, but not employed, by Morris (1986, 75). 8 These terms are Jonathan Hill's (2011). 9 For responses to materialist Christology, see Loke (2012) and Crisp (2009). 10 One might also note Leigh (1982) as an early defender of a view in the transformationalist camp. 11 My discussion here comes from Swinburne's own distillation of his views in his 2011 piece. Earlier permutations can be found in 1994 and 2008. 12 See discussion in Crisp (2007), 41, and Brian Leftow (2002), 29. 13 See Crisp's Christological tetralogy (Crisp, 2007; Crisp, 2009; Crisp, 2011a, 2011b; Crisp, 2016) and Leftow (2011). 14 See these options playing out in the analytic Christological literature in Hill (2012), Marmodoro and Hill (2008, 2010), Loke (2012), Rea (2011), and Stump (2002). 15 She presents her most thorough discussion in Rogers (2013a). Briefer versions of her argument appear in Rogers (2010, 2013b). 16 The term can be traced to Crisp, 2007, chapter 5. 17 For another exploration of Christology with a focus on the consciousness of Christ, see Jedwab (2011). 18 Also of note by Cross is his 2009 piece in the Oxford Handbook to Philosophical Theology. 19 Other recent significant book length studies of Aquinas include Gorman (2017), White (2015), and Legge (2017). 20 Most of Crisp's articles have made their way into his Christological tetralogy. 21 In other areas, see the pursuit of a Christological theory within an idealist ontological framework in Hight and Bohannon (2010) and Crisp (2016). 22 For a book length treatment of this application of Christology to the Eucharist, see Arcadi (2018). 23 I am grateful for comments from and conversations with Oliver Crisp, Joshua Farris, Timothy Pawl, J.T. Turner, Jordan Wessling, and an anonymous reviewer.

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11 of 12 Hight, M., & Bohannon, J. (2010). The son more visible: Immaterialism and the incarnation. Modern Theology, 26, 120 148. Hill, J. (2011). Introduction. In A. Marmodoro, & J. Hill (Eds.), The metaphysics of the incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hill, J. (2012). Aquinas and the unity of Christ: A defence of compositionalism. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 71(2), 117 135. Jedwab, J. (2011). The incarnation and unity of consciousness. In A. Marmodoro, & J. Hill (Eds.), The metaphysics of the incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kevern, P. (2002). Limping principles: A reply to Brian Hebblethwaite on The Impossibility of Multiple Incarnations. Theology, 105, 342 347. Le Poidevin, R. (2009a). Identity and the composite Christ: An incarnational dilemma. Religious Studies, 45(2), 167 186. Le Poidevin, R. (2009b). Incarnation: Metaphysical issues. Philosophy Compass, 4(4), 703 714. Le Poidevin, R. (2011). Multiple incarnations and distributed persons. In A. Marmodoro & J. Hill (Eds.), The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (pp. 228 241). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leftow, B. (2002). A timeless God incarnate. In S. Davis, D. Kendall, & G. O'Collins (Eds.), The incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leftow, B. (2011). The humanity of God. In A. Marmodoro, & J. Hill (Eds.), The metaphysics of the incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Legge, D. (2017). The trinitarian Christology of St Thomas Aquinas. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leigh, R. (1982). Jesus: The one natured God man. Christian Scholar's Review, 11(2), 124 137. Loke, A. (2012). Immaterialist, materialist, and substance dualist accounts of incarnation. Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 54, 414 423. Loke, A. (2014). A kryptic model of the incarnation. Surrey: Ashgate. Loke, A. (2017). On the Divine Preconscious Model of the incarnation and concrete nature Christology: A reply to James Arcadi. Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 59(1), 26 33. Marmodoro, A., & Hill, J. (2008). Modeling the metaphysics of the incarnation. Philosophy and Theology, 20, 99 128. Marmodoro, A., & Hill, J. (2010). Composition models of the incarnation: Unity and unifying relations. Religious Studies, 46(4), 469 488. Merricks, T. (2007). The Word made flesh: Dualism, physicalism and the incarnation. In P. Van Inwagen, & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Persons: Human and divine. Oxford: Clarendon. Morris, T. (1986). The logic of God incarnate. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Morris, T. (1989). The metaphysics of God incarnate. In R. Feenstra, & C. Plantinga (Eds.), Trinity, incarnation, and atonement. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Pawl, T. (2014). The Freedom of Christ and the Problem of Deliberation. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 75(3), 233 247. Pawl, T. (2016a). Defense of Conciliar Christology: A philosophical essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pawl, T. (2016b). Thomistic multiple incarnations. The Heythrop Journal, 57(2), 359 370. Pawl, T. (2016c). Brian Hebblethwaite's arguments against multiple incarnations. Religious Studies, 52(1), 117 130. Pawl, T., & Timpe, K. (2016). Freedom and the Incarnation. Philosophy Compass, 11(11), 743 756. Plantinga, A. (1999). On heresy, mind, and truth. Faith and Philosophy, 16(2), 182 193. Rea, M. (2011). Hylomorphism and the incarnation. In A. Marmodoro, & J. Hill (Eds.), The metaphysics of the incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rogers, K. (2010). Incarnation. In C. Taliaferro, & C. Meister (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Christian philosophical theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rogers, K. (2013a). The incarnation as action composite. Faith and Philosophy, 30(3), 251 270. Rogers, K. (2013b). An Anselmian defense of the incarnation. In C. Meister, J. P. Moreland, & K. A. Sweis (Eds.), Debating Christian theism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Senor, T. (2011). Drawing on many traditions: An ecumenical kenotic Christology. In A. Marmodoro, & J. Hill (Eds.), The metaphysics of the incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stump, E. (2002). Aquinas metaphysics of the incarnation. In S. Davis, D. Kendall, & G. O'Collins (Eds.), The incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

12 of 12 Swinburne, R. (2011). The coherence of Chalcedon. In A. Marmodoro, & J. Hill (Eds.), The metaphysics of the incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. White, T. (2015). The incarnate lord: A Thomistic study of Christology. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. James M. Arcadi is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Analytic Theology Project at Fuller Theological Seminary. His first book, An Incarnational Model of the Eucharist, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. His articles have appeared in Religious Studies, Topoi, and The Heythrop Journal, and he has coedited special issues of TheoLogica and Open Theology. James received the PhD from the University of Bristol, a ThM and MDiv from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, and a BA from Biola University. He taught history, theology, and writing for 7 years at Gordon College where he was also a visiting fellow in the Center for Faith and Inquiry. Alongside of his academic work, James is an ordained priest in the Anglican Church in North America having recently served at parishes in Massachusetts and California. How to cite this article: Arcadi JM. Recent developments in analytic Christology. Philosophy Compass. 2018; e12480. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12480