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THOMISTIC PERSONALISM IN DIALOGUE WITH MODERN DEPICTIONS OF KENOSIS

100%

McCall B.

Studia Ełckie

2017

vol. 19

issue 1

21 - 32

If one looks at Wojtyla’s Love and Responsibility, they can see a number of different ways that he applies Thomistic Personalism. According to him, true personal love must include both an objective and a subjective dimension. Wojtyla refers to the law of ekstasis, according to which the lover goes outside the self to find a fuller existence in another. Moreover, the defining characteris-tic of betrothed love is self-donation. Picking up on Wojtyla’s characterization of betrothed love as self-donation, I argue that the bible gives good grounds for illustrating the Spirit as the active agent of God in the world, particularly re-garding the Spirit as life-giver and animator of all creation through self-donation (or self-giving). The kenosis of the Spirit into creation amounts to betrothed love through self-donation. Thomas Jay Oord’s depiction of “essen-tial kenosis” makes numerous asseverations that are constructive for depicting love as self-donation. Several years ago, a collection of essays by theologians and scientists explored creation as The Work of Love, pointing to divine action as kenosis in which it is asserted that the Spirit has chosen to invite creation into a cooperative relationship, which also coalesces with Wojtyla’s conception of love as self-donation. Ultimately, I contend, the essence of personal love is transcended by self-giving. In the final analysis, we are given the capacity of self-possession in order to be able to give ourselves away. The essence of the self, therefore, is to transcend the self through betrothed self-donated love.

DIVINE POWER AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IN AQUINAS

63%

Erb H. M.

Studia Gilsoniana

2017

vol. 6

issue 4

527-547

The role of divine power in Aquinas’s spiritual doctrine has often been neglected in favor of a focus on the primacy of charity, the controlling virtue of spiritual progress. The tendency among some thinkers (e.g. Polkinghorne) to juxtapose divine love and power stems from the stress on divine immanence at the cost of divine transcendence, and from an evolutionary (vs. classical) view of God with its ‘kenotic’ theodicy. A study of the ways in which divine power grounds and directs the spiritual life highlights the robust role that metaphysics plays in spiritual ascent for Aquinas, and offers a philosophical entry point to his doctrine. Themes in his doctrine of the spiritual life incorporate Platonic transcendent causal plenitude and Aristotelian causal axioms and motifs of growth and unity. From the side of theology, divine power is analyzed through several lenses, including power through weakness in Christ, the sin of Lucifer against the gift of being in contrast to the counsel of obedience, and the role of Christ’s human nature in the Church. Taken together, these themes combine to characterize divine power as redemptive medicine, as opposed to a distant, arbitrary force, and to reveal the ways in which Aquinas applies metaphysical insights to the supernatural order.

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1 Studia Ełckie

1 Studia Gilsoniana

1 Erb H. M.

1 McCall B.

2 2017

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THOMISTIC PERSONALISM IN DIALOGUE WITH MODERN DEPICTIONS OF KENOSIS

DIVINE POWER AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IN AQUINAS