CROSS:METAPHYSICS OF THE INCARNATION PAPER: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus

by Richard Cross

The period from Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus is one of the richest in the history of Christian theology. Cross aims to provide a thorough examination of the doctrine in this era, making explicit its philosophical and theological foundations.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Religion

383 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 2002

About the author

There is more than one person with this name in the Goodreads catalog. This entry is for Richard ^ Cross.

Richard Cross is John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy. He came to Notre Dame in 2007, having been a Fellow of Oriel College in the University of Oxford from 1993 to 2007. He specializes in medieval philosophy and theology, with a particular focus on Duns Scotus. He is currently at work on a multi-volume history of the metaphysics of Christology. A preliminary volume on Aquinas to Scotus appeared in 2002. Recently, he has published volumes on Reformation Christological Debates (OUP, 2019), and The Metaphysics of Christology in the Seventeenth Century (OUP, 2022). In press or in progress are three more volumes, one on discussions from Ockham to Biel; one on Early Scholastic Christology; and a final one on Latin Christology in late antiquity and the early middle ages. He is also preparing a critical edition of different versions of Peter Auriol's commentary on book 3 of the Sentences.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that is essential for anyone desiring a deep, penetrating look at medieval Christology, but, if there's one thing about the medieval theologians, they were not always the most lucid writers. Thus, Cross does us the amazing service of unpacking and clarifying these thinkers. Given the nature of the subject, this is a very difficult read and it will require an intermediate level understanding of philosophical concepts, especially of the Aristotelian variety, and will likely stretch the reader who has not read through a dense philosophically work to be point of breaking.

Having said this, his analysis is outstanding. He walks through various features of medieval Christology with tremendous precision and his concluding chapter gives some strong reasons why contemporary theologians would benefit from the a Christology funded by the medieval theologians. Here, though, he makes a careful distinction: he is not a Thomist, but rather a follower of Duns Scotus, and as such, Scotus features heavily in his account and Aquinas serves as more of a foil to Cross's decidedly Scots account. Highly recommended.

[Tynan Brooks]

I don't know why I expected metaphysical minutiae to be interesting. Anyway, Cross pulls this common move of vacating many conciliar principles to save others of those principles, and it's hard for me to sign on to.