Foundations of Scholastic Christology in the Summa halensis

Abstract

In the life of Christ—from his humble birth to his horrific death—Francis of Assisi saw nothing less than the full revelation of God. In this dissertation I study how Francis’s impulse toward the historical dimension of the incarnation finds theological expression among Paris’s first generation of Franciscan theologians as represented in their Summa halensis. I argue that the Franciscans’ attention to the historical character of the incarnation facilitates a christology that unites and integrates speculative and practical theological concerns. Speculatively, the Summa halensis prioritizes the full integrity of Christ’s humanity without compromising the existential dependence of that humanity on the Word who assumes it; practically, the Summa halensis grounds the salvific efficacy of Christian penitential practices in the salvific quality of the entire trajectory, and not just the final moments, of Christ’s life. This study, then, offers grounds for a reappraisal of the Summa halensis as a hitherto unrecognized inflection point for the development of scholastic christology, as an early instance of scholastic theology’s tendency to integrate the speculative with the practical.