The sheer amount of chutzpah this man must have to say that the English lack a cultural identity (and Londoners and so on various regional identities). Has he ever been to England?

(I have to say, guys, that I really don't feel much anxiety about supposed lack of cultural identity. There is nothing quite like traveling and being confronted with the thousands of little differences between you and others (and then returning, briefly, and feeling out of joint with your “own people”) to make you realize how different you are. Of course the New World lacks many things that the Old World has. Some things require time to grow.)

Turning now to philosophy, for a Christian philosopher the data from divine Revelation play the same role as that which the data from empirical observations play in physical science. Just as any scientifically respectable theoretical physicist would check if a theory he is developing is consistent with recorded observations before publishing it, any theologically respectable Christian philosopher should check if a theory he is developing is consistent with divine Revelation before publishing it.

I'm actually happy to hear you say this. I think it captures an important truth about the Christian view of the relation between philosophy and religion. Philosophy is religion's handmaid. The truths of religion are accepted in a sense prior to doing philosophy. (I'm not sure they're irrational so much as pre-rational, though the latter may be a species of the former.) Posters here often strike me as very nervous about this aspect of Christianity (a sign of the times, I suppose).

I'm, of course, not a Christian philosopher. (I'm sympathetic.)

Second, it can be easily shown that the property theory of contingent existence is wrong. P is a property of contingent entities iff different entities can have different values of P, including the case of not having P (such as physical extension in the case of spiritual entities). But all contingent entities have contingent existence. Therefore contingent existence is not a property.

I think Miller is going to deny that P is a property of contingent entities iff different entities can have different values of P or not have it, and say that existence is an essential property of all existing natures (entities), rather than an accidental one.

Here is an argument against the property theory of existence. (i) if existence is a property, it's either an accidental property or an essential (non-accidental) property; (ii) if existence is an accidental property, an entity a can (by def

Johannes wrote:

The text in italics is definitely not my position, and I wonder on what basis you thought it was. Maybe my statement "the explanation of the Hypostatic Union as that between Subsistent Existence (or Act of Being) and contingent human essence" left some room for misunderstanding, and I should have said "the explanation of the Hypostatic Union as that between a contingent human essence and Subsistent Existence (or Act of Being) in place of ordinary contingent existence".

This is a slip on my part. I should have written “between existence and contingent natures”. (On Vallicella's account, this just is the relation between God and contingent natures.)

As long as you postulate that contingent existence and contingent essence are really distinct, you can state that the relation between the Son and Jesus' human nature is the relation between existence (in this case Subsistent Existence) and contingent essence, without the need to articulate precisely what the relation between existence and essence in contingent beings is.

But I've just shown, by pointing to various accounts of existence, that this isn't so. In fact, on every account I can think of, the relation between existence and essence doesn't yield what you need for an account of the Incarnation; and so a sort of general account of the Incarnation based the real distinction isn't enough.

The above is valid without need to articulate what precisely the binding between essence and existence/Existence is.

Try to see this from my perspective: I'm trying to model the relation between the Son and Jesus in Christ Incarnate based on the relation between existence and essence in contingent beings. I can't really do that without knowing what the relation between existence and essence in contingent beings is. (I suppose I could just accept that there is something that somehow works out, but then I don't see why I shouldn't just say the same thing about the Incarnation, and I'm trying to avoid making those kinds of moves right now.)

Anyway, I'm not going to be bullish about this. I can make most of Vallicella's arguments without a specific model of the Incarnation to attack. (I'm a little worried that the ambiguity in your theory is going to come back to haunt us when you reply later on, but hopefully we can deal with that when it comes.) I actually think any theory that makes contingent existence a constituent of contingent beings fails (and your theory does seem to commit you to this so that you have something to model the Incarnation on in the first place), but I can make that argument if it comes up later.

Johannes wrote:

ii. I think we can take existence/esse (whether subsistent or contingent) as a primitive notion for the purpose of this discussion.

In question (ii), I'm distinguishing between the conceptual question and the ontological question. The conceptual question is: “What does 'Being' mean?” The ontological question is: “What is Being?” or, if you prefer, “What is the essence of Being?”. I'm asking the ontological question.

The reason I'm asking it is that I can only think of two answers that satisfy the real distinction: the property theory and the paradigm theory. The property theory makes the relation between the human and divine natures instantiation (which I'm assuming you don't want) and runs into contradictions; and the paradigm theory makes the Being of contingent individuals their unity, rather than a real constituent or part of them, and so on it the relation between Being and contingent beings doesn't make sense as a model for Christ Incarnate. In other words, I'm asking because I'm trying to figure out what exactly is going on in your theory, and right now I can't.