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The place of Hilary of Poitiers in the debates and developments of early Christianity is tenuous in contemporary scholarship. In this book, Jarred A. Mercer makes a case for understanding Hilary not only as an important historical figure, but as a significant and independent thinker. Divine Perfection and Human Potentiality offers a new paradigm for understanding Hilary's work De Trinitate as a trinitarian anthropology.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Divine Generation and Human Potentiality
- Chapter 2: Divine Infinity and Human Progress
- Chapter 3: Divine Unity and the "Ladder of Our Nature"
- Chapter 4: The Divine Image and Human Destiny
- Chapter 5: Divine Humanity: The Glorification of Christ and the Perfection of Human Potentiality
- Conclusion: A Hope Greater Than Expected
- References
About the author
Jarred A. Mercer is Associate Chaplain and Career Development Researcher at Merton College, University of Oxford. His articles on Hilary appear in the
Journal of Early Christian Studies,
Studia Patristica, and the
International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church. He is currently beginning a project on the spirituality of children in Late Antiquity as well as writing in contemporary theology.
Summary
The place of Hilary of Poitiers in the debates and developments of early Christianity is tenuous in contemporary scholarship. His invaluable historical position is unquestioned, but the coherence and significance of his own thought is less certain. In this book, Jarred A. Mercer makes a case for understanding Hilary not only as an important historical figure, but as a noteworthy and independent thinker.
Divine Perfection and Human Potentiality offers a new paradigm for understanding Hilary's work De Trinitate. The book contends that in all of Hilary's polemical and constructive argumentation, which is essentially trinitarian, he is inherently developing an anthropology. The work therefore reinterprets Hilary's overall theological project in terms of the continual, and for him necessary, anthropological corollary of trinitarian theology- to reframe it in terms of a "trinitarian anthropology." The coherence of Hilary's work depends upon this framework, and without it his thought continues to elude his readers. Mercer demonstrates this through following Hilary's main lines of trinitarian argument, out of which flow his anthropological vision. These trinitarian arguments unfold into a progressive picture of humanity from potentiality to perfection.
