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2 results

  • 1 - Scripture and Conciliar Teaching

  • from Part I - Foundations and Statements of the Doctrine
  • J. David Moser, Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology
  • Book:
    The Humanity of Christ as Instrument of Salvation
    Published online:
    21 August 2025
    Print publication:
    04 September 2025, pp 15-30

  • Summary

    Chapter 1 introduces the instrument doctrine in Aquinas’s thought and explores its foundations in Scripture, focusing on Aquinas’s biblical commentaries. In his commentaries on Romans and 1 Corinthians, among others, Aquinas argues that the logic of scriptural teaching suggests that Christs’ humanity causes divine effects as instrument of the divinity, including our resurrection. The chapter shows how Aquinas interpreted the Scriptures as coherent with the Catholic tradition, especially the conciliar teaching on Christ in the early ecumenical councils. Aquinas thinks that the doctrine should be understood within the conceptual matrix of these early councils’ teaching on Christ.

The Humanity of Christ as Instrument of Salvation
  • A Study in Thomistic Christology
  • J. David Moser
  • Published online:
    21 August 2025
    Print publication:
    04 September 2025
  • Scripture teaches that God saves humanity through God's own actions and sufferings in Christ, thereby raising a key theological question: How can God use his own human actions and sufferings to bring about those things that he causes through divine power? To answer that question, J. David Moser here explores St. Thomas Aquinas's teaching that Christ's humanity is an instrument of the divinity. Offering an informed account of how Christian salvation happens through the Incarnation of Christ, he also poses a new set of questions about the Incarnation that Aquinas himself did not consider. In response to these questions, and in conversation with a wide range of theologians, including John Duns Scotus and Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Moser argues that the instrument doctrine, an underexplored and underappreciated idea, deepens our understanding of salvation that comes through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. He also defends the instrument doctrine as a dogmatic theological topic worthy of consideration today.