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Christology and duplex hominis beatitudo : Re‐sketching the Supernatural Again
Author(s) -
RICHES AARON
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
international journal of systematic theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.149
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1468-2400
pISSN - 1463-1652
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2400.2011.00560.x
Subject(s) - doctrine , philosophy , christology , commit , epistemology , duplex (building) , theology , biology , computer science , genetics , dna , database
Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of duplex beatitudo is problematic for theologians who want to read his conception of human nature as integrally ordered to the visio divina . The doctrine seems rather to support a duplex ordo – a tidy parallelism of existent human ‘ends’, one discretely ‘natural’ and the other discretely ‘supernatural’. Is this in fact the case? Does the doctrine of duplex beatitudo commit the theologian to a bifurcated anthropology? Or is it possible to reconcile the doctrine with a more paradoxical anthropology which understands the human being as naturally ordered to a supernatural end that nevertheless exceeds the attainable power of human nature? This article offers a christological reading of the doctrine of duplex beatitudo . The article proposes a tensive distinction in unity of the twofold beatitude according to the Chalcedon paradox: inconfuse , immutabiliter , indivise , inseparabiliter .