This book traces developments in Christology--and specifically the metaphysics of the union of divine and human natures in one person--from 1050 (the age of Anselm of Canterbury) to 1250 (the age of Albert the Great). During the first part of the period, the key issue is the conflict between Augustine's homo assumptus (assumed man) Christology, defended by the Victorines, and that of Boethius's Chalcedonian Christology, defended by Gilbert of Poitiers (sometimes known as the 'subsistence' theory). By 1180, the latter of these was almost universally accepted. A third view, apparently accepted by Peter Lombard among others, according to which it is not true that Christ as man is something--the non-aliquid Christology--was condemned in 1177. The second part of the book traces the way in which theologians attempted to develop the presentation of Conciliar Christology by working out inchoate solutions to some of the metaphysical questions that the issue raises: what is the nature of the hypostatic union between the two natures, or the human nature and the divine person--is it something created, or something uncreated? And, given that the human nature is a particular substance, what prevents it from being a person? Theologians used insights from both of the rejected theories (the homo assumptus Christology and the non-aliquid Christology) in attempting to answer these issues. The early thirteenth century saw both the founding of the universities of Paris and Oxford, and the founding of the Franciscan and Dominican orders. The book explores the impact of these religious identities on the formation of Christological teaching.

Richard Cross explores the largely uncharted territory of seventeenth-century Christology, paying close attention to its metaphysical and semantic presuppositions and consequences. He shows that theologians of all stripes develop and expand theories that are associated respectively with the medieval theologians Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Italian and French Dominicans follow Aquinas closely, read through the lens of Cardinal Cajetan. But most Iberian Dominicans incorporate Suárez's theory of modes into their account, and Suárez, whose account is a modification of Scotus's, is in turn followed by his fellow Jesuits. Lutherans use Cajetan's account to fill explanatory gaps in their own accounts; and Reformed theologians by and large adapt the position associated with Scotus. The study ends with an account of Leibniz's Christology in its historical and conceptual context.

The late middle ages was a period of great speculative innovation in Christology, within the framework of a standard Christological opinion established by the Franciscan John Duns Scotus and the Dominican Hervaeus Natalis. According to this view, the Incarnation consists in some kind of dependence relationship between an individual human nature and a divine person. The Metaphysics of Christology in the Late Middle Ages: William of Ockham to Gabriel Biel explores ways in which this standard opinion was developed in the late middle ages. Theologians offered various proposals about the nature of the relationship--as a categorial relation, or an absolute quality, or even just the divine will. Author Richard Cross also considers alternative positions: Peter Auriol's claim that the divine person is a 'quidditative termination' of the human nature; the homo assumptus theology of John Wyclif and Jan Hus; and the retrieval of a truly Thomistic Christology in the fifteenth century in the thought of John Capreolus and Denys the Carthusian. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were pre-eminently the age of nominalism, and this book examines the impact of nominalism on Christological discussions, as well as the development of Thomist and Scotist theology in the period. It also provides essential background for the correct understanding of Reformation Christology.

Richard Cross provides the first complete and detailed account of Duns Scotus's theory of cognition, tracing the processes involved in cognition from sensation, through intuition and abstraction, to conceptual thought. He provides an analysis of the ontological status of the various mental items (acts and dispositions) involved in cognition, and a new account of Scotus on nature of conceptual content. Cross goes on to offer a novel, reductionist, interpretation of Scotus's view of the ontological status of representational content, as well as new accounts of Scotus's opinions on intuitive cognition, intelligible species, and the varieties of consciousness. Scotus was a perceptive but highly critical reader of his intellectual forebears, and this volume places his thought clearly within the context of thirteenth-century reflections on cognitive psychology, influenced as they were by Aristotle, Augustine, and Avicenna. As far as possible, Duns Scotus's Theory of Cognition traces developments in Scotus's thought during the ten or so highly productive years that formed the bulk of his intellectual life.

The High Middle Ages were remarkable for their coherent sense of 'Christendom': of people who belonged to a homogeneous Christian society marked by uniform rituals of birth and death and worship. That uniformity, which came under increasing strain as national European characteristics became more pronounced, achieved perhaps its most perfect intellectual expression in the thought of the western Christian thinkers who are sometimes called 'scholastic theologians'. These philosophers produced (during roughly the period 1050-1350 CE) a cohesive body of work from their practice of theology as an academic discipline in the university faculties of their day. Richard Cross' elegant and stylish textbook - designed specifically for modern-day undergraduate use on medieval theology and philosophy courses - offers the first focused introduction to these thinkers based on the individuals themselves and their central preoccupations. The book discusses influential figures like Abelard, Peter Lombard and Hugh of St Victor; the use made by Aquinas of Aristotle; the mystical theology of Bonaventure; Robert Grosseteste's and Roger Bacon's interest in optics; the complex metaphysics of Duns Scotus; and the political thought of Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham. Key themes of medieval theology, including famous axioms like 'Ockham's Razor', are here made fully intelligible and transparent.

From the earliest period of its existence, Christianity has been recognized as the "religion of the cross." Some of the great monuments of Western art are representations of the brutal torture and execution of Christ. Despite the horror of crucifixion, we often find such images beautiful. The beauty of the cross expresses the central paradox of Christian faith: the cross of Christ's execution is the symbol of God's victory over death and sin. The cross as an aesthetic object and as a means of devotion corresponds to the mystery of God's wisdom and power manifest in suffering and apparent failure. In this volume, Richard Viladesau seeks to understand the beauty of the cross as it developed in both theology and art from their beginnings until the eve of the renaissance. He argues that art and symbolism functioned as an alternative strand of theological expression -- sometimes parallel to, sometimes interwoven with, and sometimes in tension with formal theological reflection on the meaning of the Crucifixion and its role insalvation history. Using specific works of art to epitomize particular artistic and theological paradigms, Viladesau then explores the contours of each paradigm through the works of representative theologians as well as liturgical, poetic, artistic, and musical sources. The beauty of the cross is examined from Patristic theology and the earliest representations of the Logos on the cross, to the monastic theology of victory and the Romanesque crucified "majesty," to the Anselmian "revolution" that centered theological and artistic attention on the suffering humanity of Jesus, and finally to the breakdown of the high scholastic theology of the redemption in empirically concentrated nominalism and the beginnings of naturalism in art. By examining the relationship between aesthetic and conceptual theology, Viladesau deepens our understanding of the foremost symbol of Christianity. This volume makes an important contribution to an emerging field, breaking new ground in theological aesthetics. The Beauty of the Cross is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the passion of Christ and its representation.