LATC 2018 – Adam and Christ: Human Solidarity Before God

The following are notes from Frances Young’s plenary talk.

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Slime Mold

• Japanese Scientist “trained” them to make their way through a maze
• A self-organizing organism that is greater than the sum of its parts
• Emergence & feedback mechanisms – do we need to reimagine ourselves as constituting an organism that is greater than the sum of its parts?

 

David Kelsey

• Shares some common themes – but today we take up a feature that lies outside of Kelsey’s definition
  • Personal living body with an unsubistitutable identity
  • Rules out participation in Christ
    • “It is human kind that is some sort of corporate whole that exhibits the image of God. However just what this means is unclear.”

 

Corporate Personality (Whole of Humanity Represented both in Adam and in Christ)

• Central to early Christian understanding

 

Athanasius

• He took humanity that we might share divinity
• Does he think of Christ’s humanity as that of a particular human man or humanity in general?
• To grasp the sweep of his story we need to take account of his apologetic concerns
  • There is an oscillation in Athanasius’ work between Humanity and Soul
• The Death of all was fulfilled in the Lord’s body – he somehow dies the death of the whole human race – its impossible to do justice to patristic thought without taking into account the corporate whole of humanity

 

Athanasius and the Corporate Whole

• Passages reflect Platonist intellectual background – particular cases acquire a certain property by participating in its absolute form.
• Because he is the TRUE Son – particulars can participate in this form
• The body of Christ – passing through death and resurrection – is absolute humanity – renewed and recreated – the humanity of Christ is some kind of coproprate whole and Athanasius’ theological schema will fall apart without it.
• Two-fold scheme – Solidarity in Sin and Solidarity in Christ

 

Charles Taylor and The Modern Sources of the Self

• Contrast “modern” anthropology & this participation model
• We no longer think of ourselves collectively
• The term community has crept in but it is a way of talking about individuals who feel they are in the same boat – they think relationships are ultimately about themselves and their own personal commitment
• “The Hunger Angel”

 

However necessary it is to counter individualism with the emphasis on our communal nature does not actually reclaim the human corporations that we find in the patristic sources.

See the book “Think like an anthropologist” – we are all interconnected – scientific study upholds a view of a universal human nature – the intertwining of narratives is a way in which the particular and universal interact

Back to Slime Mold

• Through feedback mechanism individuals become part of a larger whole
• By emergence we have the capacity to reappropriate something like the corporate personality of the patristics