The freedom of Christ and explanatory priority

Abstract

Call the claim, common to many in the Christian intellectual tradition, that Christ, in virtue of his created human intellect, had certain, infallible, exhaustive foreknowledge the Foreknowledge Thesis. Now consider what I will call the Conditional: if the Foreknowledge Thesis is true, then Christ's created human will was not free. In so far as many, perhaps all, of the people who affirm the Foreknowledge Thesis also wish to affirm the freedom of Christ's human will, the truth of the Conditional would be most unwelcome to them. I consider an argument in support of the Conditional; I argue that it is not successful. (2014) 50, 157-173 According to Conciliar Christology, there was (and is) one person, Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who had (and has) two complete and distinct naturesone fully human nature, and the one and only divine natureand that each of these natures had (and has) its own will and principle of action. Christ, then, had two distinct wills and two distinct intellects. This is an article about the interrelations between those wills and intellects.  I will assume, for the remainder of this article, the truth of Conciliar Christology, and ask whether this assumption, together with the additional assumption that Christ had exhaustive foreknowledge via his human intellect of all that would come to pass, entails that the human will of Christ was not free. I provide an argument that Jesus Christ was not free in his human will, then show this argument to be unsound.  Religious Studies

Freedom and the incarnation

“…Yet another important question one could address about Christ's freedom is its relation to his knowledge. For some discussion of this point, see Pawl (2014bPawl ( , 2014c Concerning the descent into hell, see the Apostle's Creed and the Athanasian Creed (Denzinger, 2002, 7, 16). Ott (1960, 192, notes a quotation from St. Augustine (Ep.…”

“…Yet another important question one could address about Christ's freedom is its relation to his knowledge. For some discussion of this point, see Pawl (.…”

“…refers to compatibilists who think free will is compatible with both the truth and falsity of determinism as 'supercompatibilists.' See alsoTimpe (2012, 18f and 175f).19 That is, on at least one reading of the modal operator "couldn't": couldn't, holding fixed God's volition to determine that the human nature assumed in the Incarnation not sin.20 For other discussions of the freedom of Christ's human will, seePawl (2014bPawl ( , 2014c.21 For a defense of the claim that, in the alternate sequence of such a case, the agent would not be free, see the article that started reflection on such cases,Frankfurt (1969, 830f).22 See also EleonoreStump's (1996) example involving characters from Dostoyevsky's novel The Possessed.23 One might, for instance, followFrankfurt (1971) and hold that freedom of the will is precisely the mark of an agent's being a person rather than a mere wanton.PAWL AND TIMPE…”