Tim Pawl: a God-man is possible

Catholic analytic philosopher Tim Pawl (University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota) argues that this is logically consistent: Jesus has both a divine and a human nature.

His answer is challenged by another talented young Catholic philosopher, Tomas Bogardus, of Pepperdine University. With their permission, I’ve reposted their dialogue from Facebook. I thought it deserved a wider audience.

From that same thread, I learned that Dr. Pawl is working on a book on the metaphysics of the Christology that comes from the “ecumenical” councils. I’ve thought and taught a good bit about those in recent  years, and plan to discuss them in upcoming podcasts, so I look forward to seeing this book, and the discussion it will generate.

Which is mightier – the Beard or the Smile?

You decide. I’ll weigh in with a comment later.

Here, unedited but for the addition of a few explanatory links (and a gratuitous picture), is their dialogue:
Tomas:

1. Christ’s divine nature is omniscient (but his human nature isn’t).
2. Anything that’s omniscient is a mind (a thinker, a knower).
3. So, Christ’s divine nature is a mind.

But how’s about this?
4. Christ’s human nature is passible (capable of feeling and suffering).
5. Anything capable of feeling and suffering is a mind.
6. So, Christ’s human nature is a mind.

And here’s a dilemma:
7. Either Christ’s human-nature-mind is identical with Christ’s divine-nature-mind or it isn’t.
8. If it is, then Christ’s mind has incompatible properties (from 1)
9. If they aren’t identical, then Christ has two minds.
10. One mind per person, please.
11. So, if Christ’s human-nature-mind is not identical with Christ’s divine-nature-mind, then there are two persons in Christ. (from 9, 10)
12. If there are two persons in Christ, then Nestorianism is true.
13. So, if Christ’s human-nature-mind is not identical with Christ’s divine-nature-mind, then Nestorianism is true. (from 11, 12)
12. So, either Christ’s mind has incompatible properties, or Nestorianism is true. (from 7, 8, and 13)

And I think you want to avoid both of those. So where does the argument go wrong? Maybe premise 10? Is it consistent with Conciliar Christology to allow Christ to have two minds? (Or is 12 wrong and I misunderstood Nestorianism?)

Tim:

Hey Tomas! Here are some thoughts. Can I say “has” a mind rather than “is” a mind in 2 and 5? And I’d say that passibility might not require a mind, if we understand passibility to mean just casual affectability.

As for the dilemma, you are right that I would reject 10. In fact, I think the Conciliar Christologist ought to reject 10. The Councils are clear that Christ gets two of whatever comes with natures, one of whatever comes with persons. So they say explicitly that he has two wills, one divine and one human. And they say that he has two principles of action, which some folk take to mean (or include) two intellects. They don’t, so far as I know, say explicitly that he has two intellects (or minds), but I think they thought it.

So I say we replace 10 with:
10* One mind per rational nature, please.

and then we all high-five, because we’ve avoided a problem for Conciliar Christology! Score!

Tomas:

Hm. Did the Councils use (the Latin for) “passibility” to mean causal affectability? I always thought it meant “able to feel and suffer.” (But I’m no part of a Church Council, so what do I know?)

One person with two minds, eh? I can probably come to terms with that. It’s easier than one God in three persons anyway.

But suppose we get rid of all talk of minds and talk instead only of knowers or thinkers. Whatever is omniscient is a thinker, a knower. So Christ’s divine nature is a thinker/knower. And whatever is capable of feeling/suffering is a thinker, a knower. So Christ’s human nature is a thinker/knower. Do we have one thinker/knower here or two? We don’t want to go the way of the one, or we’ll have that incompatible properties problem. So we have to say two: in Christ there were two thinkers, two knowers. Are we at Nestorianism yet?

And what’s this “in” business? What is it for there to be a thinker/knower “in” a person? I would have thought persons just *are* thinkers/knowers.

So, are you happy to say that in Christ there are two thinkers/knowers, just as there are two minds? If so, what’s it mean for there to be a thinker/knower IN a person, and how could one person have TWO thinkers/knowers in him?

Tim:

Hey Tomas. To the first point about passibility, I took the term to designate being on the receiving side of some (causal) activity. I was influenced by Gavrilyuk‘s book on impassibility on that score. I’ll have to look back to see how I define it in the book.

To the point about thinker/knowers, what are the truth conditions for a thing’s being a thinker/knower (tk)? Suppose that hylomorphic dualism is true, so that a human is composed of a soul, in virtue of which he thinks, and his matter, or body. In the embodied state, when I think on account of some activity of my soul, do we both (me and my soul) count as tks, or just one of us? I’m not sure what you’ll say here. I’ll consider a few options.

Suppose I’m the only tk. Maybe that’s because tks have to be persons. If being a person is a necessary condition for being a tk, then there is but one tk there in Christ, and the “in” is shorthand for saying that it is in virtue of two different things that he is a tk.

Maybe my soul is the tk. Maybe that’s because it is the thing doing the work, and I am somehow derivatively a tk, or a second-class tk. In such a case, there would be two thinkers in Christ. It would be one person with two things doing the thinking work, and the “in” functions to point to the workers.

Maybe we are both tks. But that doesn’t lead the hylomorphic dualist to claim that there are two persons there. Likewise, in the case of Christ, it wouldn’t be sufficient to prove that there are two persons there. (It would if personhood were a necessary condition for being a tk, but then we are back in the first option).

Though I don’t have the texts readily available now, Leo, in his Tome, gives a long list of the things the different natures do. It belongs to one nature, for instance, to weep, and the other to raise a man from the dead. There he says it belongs to one nature to say “the Father is greater than I” and the other to say “the Father and I are one.” Is that sufficient to show that there are two tks? If so, we couldn’t have nestorianism here (I know this is contentious and that there was a large schism after the council on a closely related point). Leo’s Tome was accepted at Chalcedon, and the fathers claimed there that Peter spoke through him.

Finally, concerning the first horn of the new dilemma, what would be the incompatible predicates apt of Christ, the tk in question? Would it be omniscient and lacking in knowledge?

Thanks!

Tomas:

To the first point about passibility, I took the term to designate being on the receiving side of some (causal) activity. I was influenced by Gavrilyuk’s book on impassibility on that score. I’ll have to look back to see how I define it in the book.

Did the Councils ever use it or define it? Did this come up in their discussion of Christology? If not I suppose we could use it as we’d like (noting perhaps that Gavrilyuk’s use is a bit unconventional.).

Suppose that hylomorphic dualism is true, so that a human is composed of a soul, in virtue of which he thinks, and his matter, or body. In the embodied state, when I think on account of some activity of my soul, do we both (me and my soul) count as tks, or just one of us? I’m not sure what you’ll say here.

If someone else had asked me that, I would have said “Let me ask my friend Tim Pawl and get back to you.” So now that you ask me that I’m at a loss! I hope only one of us counts as the thinker/knower. Otherwise I’d think there are too many thinkers/knowers. And I hope it’s I who is the thinker/knower! I’d be quite disappointed to learn that I can’t learn, surprised to know I can’t know, etc.

Suppose I’m the only tk. Maybe that’s because tks have to be persons. If being a person is a necessary condition for being a tk, then there is but one tk there in Christ, and the “in” is shorthand for saying that it is in virtue of two different things that he is a tk.

Yes, I’d hope that I’m the only thinker/knower among me, my soul/form, and my body. (Isn’t my soul/substantial form sometimes said to be like a capacity or a principle or a power, presumably one that *I* exercise? It’s not a thing that thinks, right? It’s what explains *my* ability to think; rational souls aren’t themselves rational, they’re what explain our rationality. Right? Again, on this Thomistic metaphysics, I totally defer to you.) And I’d hope that there’s only one thinker/knower in the neighbourhood of Christ.

But the problem is that I can’t see how your view will allow you to say that, since you’d like to have it that there’s something omniscient in the neighbourhood of Christ, but anything omniscient is a thinker/knower, and so there’s an omniscient thinker/knower in the neighbourhood of Christ: Christ’s divine nature.

And also there’s something that can feel and suffer in the neighbourhood of Christ, anything like that is a thinker/knower, and so there’s a feeling/suffering thinker/knower in the neighbourhood of Christ. This is the thinker/knower who is NOT omniscient, according to you: Christ’s human nature.

And, finally, you’d like to have it that these two thinker/knowers are distinct: one omniscient, the other not. That seems to me to require too many thinkers/knowers in the neighbourhood of Christ.

And we haven’t even gotten to Christ himself! Presumably he’s a thinker/knower as well. So now we’re up to THREE: an unwelcome and pretty mysterious trinity in our theory. And one wonders whether Christ, that third thinker/knower, is omniscient or not, passible or not. The puzzle we posited two thinkers/knowers to solve re-emerges unsolved.

Maybe my soul is the tk. Maybe that’s because it is the thing doing the work, and I am somehow derivatively a tk, or a second-class tk.

I’d recommend not going this way, since “I’m derivatively a tk” and “I’m a second-class tk” are just gentle ways of saying “I’m NOT a thinker/knower.” But I certainly am a thinker/knower, as first-class as they come.

Finally, concerning the first horn of the new dilemma, what would be the incompatible predicates apt of Christ, the tk in question? Would it be omniscient and lacking in knowledge?

Yes, that’s roughly what I had in mind. But if we’re concerned that “lacking in knowledge” doesn’t pick out any legitimate property, we could put the problem just in terms of propositions. Three incompatible propositions would have to be true at the same time on this view: that Christ’s divine nature is omniscient, and that Christ’s human nature is not omniscient, and that Christ’s divine nature is identical with his human nature.

Behold, the dual-natured Smile-beard.

Tim:

Hey Tomas, thanks for all this. A few thoughts on it:

The councils do employ the language of passibility. They say things such as that the divine nature is impassible, the human nature is passible, and that the person is both passible and impassible. But, so far as I know, they do not define it anywhere. I’d be skeptical of reasoning that Gavrilyuk’s definition is unconventional because it isn’t jive with a contemporary dictionary. He’s a pretty sharp historical theologian! Here’s a place where Gavrilyuk describes impassibility in a way dissimilar to the dictionary definition: “divine impassibility is primarily a metaphysical term, marking God’s unlikeness to everything in the created order, not a psychological term denoting (as modern passibilists allege) God’s emotional apathy.”

I think that for Thomas, in the case of hylomorphic dualism, there is a loose sense of “thinker” in which the intellect, in the embodied state, is a thinker, but strictly speaking, the only thinker there is the person.

You want there to be only one thinker in Christ. Why not say that the one knower there, the person, is omniscient, since that person knows everything there is to know. He is not “not omniscient,” since there is nothing the person doesn’t know, even if, by means of his human intellect, there are some things he does not know.

You give two arguments. I’ll quote them here, interleaving in [brackets] what I think someone who says “only persons are thinkers” should say in response to them.

But the problem is that I can’t see how your view will allow you to say that, since you’d like to have it that there’s something omniscient in the neighbourhood of Christ [yes, the person, Christ], but anything omniscient is a thinker/knower [yes, Christ is a thinker/knower], and so there’s an omniscient thinker/knower in the neighbourhood of Christ: Christ’s divine nature [no! not the nature, the person! (leave aside divine simplicity for the moment, so that I don’t bleed out from my nose on to my keyboard)].

And also there’s something that can feel and suffer in the neighbourhood of Christ [yes, the person, Christ], anything like that is a thinker/knower [yes, the person is a t/k], and so there’s a feeling/suffering thinker/knower in the neighbourhood of Christ. This is the thinker/knower who is NOT omniscient, according to you: Christ’s human nature [no! I want the t/k, the only t/k there is around there (on the assumption that “only persons are thinkers”), to be both passible and omniscient. the human nature is not a person, so is not a t/k]

A note: I didn’t posit two thinkers to solve the incompatible predications problem. I tweaked the definitions of the predicates in question to have them both be apt of one and the same thing. That Christ has two distinct natures and two distinct wills is explicitly stated in the councils, and the meaning seems to be that he has two distinct intellects as well. I take that as data to be accommodated by a viable theory of conciliar christology.

Finally, the final inconsistent triad has a straightforward solution for the Conciliar Christologist. Christ’s divine nature is NOT identical to his human nature. The divine nature is uncreated but the human nature is not. The human nature is “flesh enlivened by a rational soul” but the divine nature is not, etc.

Thanks!!

That, my friends, is what respectful theological argument looks like.

Does Dr. Pawl prove his case?