History of Philosophy Work-in-Progress Luncheon - Joshua Lim, "The Strangeness of Aquinas’s Doctrine of Christ’s Human Knowledge"
Please join us for this week's History of Philosophy Work-in-Progress Luncheon! This week Joshua Lim (Philosophy, University of Notre Dame) will present on "The Strangeness of Aquinas’s Doctrine of Christ’s Human Knowledge."
Each meeting consists of a presentation by a graduate student, faculty member, or visiting researcher on a project that they are working on in the history of philosophy, followed by a period of comments/questions from other participants. The workshop is designed to give contributors the opportunity to develop ideas and receive helpful feedback on projects/papers in a friendly and low stakes environment.
Lunch is provided for registered attendees.
Abstract: Standard historical accounts posit an a priori philosophical ‘principle of perfection’ determining Aquinas’s doctrine of Christ’s ‘triple’ knowledge (as beatific, infused, and acquired). This approach has the strength that it easily resolves the strangeness of Aquinas’s account: the human nature assumed by God must possess every mode of knowledge (divine, angelic, and human) according to its maximal perfection. Inasmuch as it begins with a philosophical a priori rather than the revealed testimony of Christian Scripture, the medieval account has been judged by most contemporary theologians as severely flawed. From a historical perspective, however, there is reason to be wary of this account. My research examines the development of Aquinas’s thought within the broader context of thirteenth-century scholasticism; I show that his teaching is formulated precisely in opposition to accounts which rely on a kind of philosophical principle of perfection as described by modern critics. Read through this lens, Aquinas’s own position can be seen as radically reconceiving the doctrine of his contemporaries and proximate predecessors, through a recovery of the Greek patristic teaching of Christ’s human nature as the instrumentum divinitatis. Rather than explain away the strangeness of Aquinas’s doctrine, I suggest that this aspect of his teaching is rooted in what is, for him, the strangeness of the Incarnation itself.
Originally published at historyofphilosophy.nd.edu. See this site for up-to-date details.