Logic Matters 2008-03-31

Philosophy of Religion 5: Incarnation

The concluding part of Chapter 3 of Michael Murray and Michael Rea's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion concerns the incarnation. Just two very quick comments on these pages, one on how the authors approach the issue, and one on their final shot at a supposedly helpful analogy.Murray and Rea kick off by quoting from at length from the Chalcedonian Creed of AD451, which propounds a doctrine of the incarnation, in effect by contrasting the "correct" view with various possible heretical interpretations. But the creed does seem -- unsurprisingly -- to be shot through with relics of philosophical views of the time. A student reader might very reasonably ask: why should we take a document that seems to be coloured by the metaphysics of the day as authoritative in shaping our understanding of what we might now mean by ...

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