Ockham's View Of Humanity Essay

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The theological view during the High Middle Ages was that after Christ’s death, his soul and his body are separated. His body remains in the tomb and his soul is harrowing Hell—rescuing old souls from the old days. The soul and body exist but are no longer together, so that Christ is dead. The metaphysical picture presented here is that we have a complex (Christ’s human nature) which is destroyed at the time of his death without destroying its parts (the intellectual soul and the body). So, all the parts of the human being exist, but you do not have the human. How does William of Ockham account for this metaphysical dilemma? What is the difference between our humanity and Christ’s humanity? Would a classical extensional mereologist accept or reject Ockham’s definition of Christ’s humanity? This paper is divided into four sections: (I) Ockham’s View of Humanity; (II) Ockham’s Metaphysical Response to the Theological Issue of Christ’s Death; (III) The Classical Extensional Mereological …show more content…

Ockham defines ‘subject’ as a complete thing (one thing) that is sustained by no subject and that is not added to anything else; since once something is added to it, it ceases to be a ‘subject’. So, ‘humanity’ sustains nothing in it of itself, whereas ‘man’ sustains something, namely a ‘humanity’. The nominal definitions of the names ‘man’, ‘humanity’, and ‘subject’ are thus instrumental in understanding the distinction between our humanity and Christ’s humanity. For example, Socrates is humanity since he is not a self-sustaining subject, whereas Christ is man since he is a self-sustaining subject. So, there are 2 ways of being a human: (1) our humanity—being your body and soul composite free-standing with no self-sustaining subject; and (2) Christ’s humanity—being a divine nature self-sustaining a body and a soul composite

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