Incorporeality

Abstract: Because later polemics established Jews and Christians as binary opposites, distinguished largely by their views on God’s body, scholars have not sufficiently explored how other Jews in the early Roman period, who stood outside the Jesus movement, conceived of how the divine could become embodied on earth. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria often operates as the quintessential representative of a Jew who stressed God’s absolute incorporeality. Here I demonstrate how Philo also presents a means by which a part of Israel’s God could become united with human materiality, showing how the patriarchs and Moses function as his paradigms. This evidence suggests that scholarship on divine embodiment has been limited by knowledge of later developments in Christian theology. Incarnational formulas, like that found in John 1:14 were not the only way that Jews in the first and second century CE understood that God could become united with human form.

Abstract: Descartes is commonly regarded as the origin of mind–body dualism and the modern mind–body problem A little historical reflection reveals that this picture cannot be entirely accurate: some form of dualism is at least as old as Plato Furthermore, long before Descartes, a central component of the Christian tradition had been the idea that the human soul is immortal and this idea was often (although not always) supported by arguments to the effect that it is incorporeal So the incorporeality of the human soul or mind was not a novel idea But there is reason to say that Descartes made a significant contribution in a different way: he redrew the boundary between mind or soul and body and between the corporeal and the incorporeal In brief, before Descartes, the incorporeal mind was generally identified with the intellect But Descartes formulated our modern conception of the mental as including far more: sense perception, imagination, feeling, emotion The mind, in his words, is a thing that thinks, res cogitans, and he defined thought in terms of consciousness: “I understand by the term ‘thought’ everything that is in us in such a way that we are immediately conscious of it Thus all operations of the will, intellect, imagination and the senses are thoughts” (AT vii, 160) So Descartes initiated the modern mind–body problem in the sense that he formulated the modern view of what belongs to the category of the mental, the category which we investigate in its relation to the physical This is not a novel picture of Descartes’ contribution, but it is rarely taken into account in scholarly interpretations of his writings And whether or not this broad picture of Descartes’ contribution is entirely accurate, it does capture an important aspect of his own view of the matter Descartes aimed to supplant Aristotelianism, as he indicated to his friend Mersenne:

Abstract: In «Enn.»IV, 3.23 Plotinus presents a vindication of the well-known tripartition-cum-trilocation of the soul advanced by Plato in the «Timaeus». His version of the platonic doctrine is marked by a strong spatial separation between the three parts of the soul - reason in the brain, will in the heart and desire in the liver. This is This article adresses two related questions: 1) Can this position be squared with the plotinian key doctrine that the soul is incorporeal and invisible? 2) What are the nature and provenance of this particular version of the tripartition, which, in this form, is not warranted by the platonic text? Plotinus enlists the support of the anatomical researches presented by Galen in his «On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato». At the same time he adapts the latter's demonstration in such a way as to safeguard the unity and incorporeality of the soul. The parts of the soul are not in the three main bodily organs in an ordinary sense - only their activity takes place there. Plotinus arrives at this position through a clarification of the concept of arche as employed by Galen. His understanding of the soul's localisation is heavily indebted to Alexander's «On the soul» (De anima). Meanwhile he dissociates himself from the hylomorphism typical of both Alexander and (in a more latent fashion) Galen. Other features if his argument are explicable as motivated by the wish to emasculate th arguments used by Alexander in favour of the cardiocentric theory. The upshot is a sophisticated and improved defence of the Platonic tripartition which not only is scientifically up-to-date but coheres with some of Plotinus' most deeply held metaphysical convictions

Abstract: This article analyzes Augustine’s thinking on God’s incorporeality, a doctrine he mainly developed in reaction against Manichaean and Arian reflections in this regard. Augustine’s decision to enter the Catholic Church was strongly influenced by his understanding of divine incorporeality, a concept to which he was introduced in the mid-380s in Milan. This means that God is not subject to time and space in any way. This metaphysical commitment enabled Augustine to answer several of his objections to Christianity. Shortly after his baptism, Augustine applied this understanding of the divine to his critiques of the Manichaeans. In this article we see how, decades later, this doctrinal commitment was developed and expressed in his homiletic corpus and in his polemics against the Arians. Knotts looks at sources from the 390s, and then homilies mostly from the second decade of the 400s. This enables us to see how the theme of incorporeality is further developed and deployed in homiletic and polemical contexts. Thus, two closely related themes emerge. First, Augustine holds that we must not think of the generation of the Son according to an earthly logic; we must not seek temporal duration in eternity. Second, we must possess the intellectual humility to realise that our earthly categories are not sufficient for thinking about God. Augustine opts to confess his ignorance of what it means for the Son to be eternal, and rather grounds his theology in scripture. These are two major points that arise in Augustine’s critique of the Arians. We shall also see how the Gospel of John forms a locus theologicus for Augustine. The development of divine incorporeality figures in Augustine’s homilies and polemics as a way to neutralise his opponents and provide further resources for his audience.