Capitalizing Christ in Thirteenth-Century Scholasticism | Prof. Boyd Taylor Coolman

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

Prof. Boyd Taylor Coolman examines the thirteenth-century scholastic doctrine of “capital grace,” showing how Alexander of Hales, Hugh of Saint Victor, and the Summa Halensis developed a pneumatologically-centered account of Christ as the head of the Church, which Aquinas later systematized, emphasizing the Holy Spirit’s role in uniting believers to Christ.

This lecture was given on February 23rd, 2024, at Dominican House of Studies.

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About the Speaker:

Boyd Taylor Coolman is an associate professor in the Theology Department in the Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences at Boston College. An historical theologian of medieval Catholicism, Coolman's research interests lie in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, with a focus on the Victorine and early Franciscan traditions, on the emergence of scholastic theology, and on medieval mystical theologies.

Keywords: Alexander of Hales, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Capital Grace, Christ as Head, Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystical Body of Christ, Pneumatology, Scholastic Theology, Summa Halensis

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.7	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.3	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.
0:25.6	Perhaps the best New Testament expression of the convergence of majesty and lowliness in Christ
0:31.4	is the famous hymn in Philippians 2, which Paul already drew our attention to,
0:37.0	which famously contrasts the form of God
0:39.8	and the form of a slave. For present purposes, though, it's Paul's exhortation which precedes the
0:46.7	hymn that is of interest to me, often rendered into English as, let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
0:57.2	The Greek is pronete hen-hamen, pardon the butchering of that.
1:03.6	In Latin, perhaps surprisingly, the imperative is from the verb centere,
1:09.2	hock enum sentite in vobis.
1:13.6	That Latin verb finds an echo in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, where he exhorts
1:18.6	the Corinthians to strive for and even share in the census Christi, or noose Christu in Greek,
1:26.8	often rendered into English as, again, the mind of Christ.
1:32.6	To speak of sharing in the mind of Christ, evokes, of course, Paul's favorite image of the church as
1:38.9	the body of Christ, in which Christ is the head, and believers are his members.
1:45.2	The link is explicit in the letter to the Ephesians, which calls Christ, quote,
1:50.5	the head over all things, the church, which is his body, end quote,
1:55.9	and then later exhorts the Ephesians to, quote, grow in every way into him who is the head, end quote.
2:04.2	Arguably, this is Paul's preferred way, or Pauline theology's preferred way, to express its
2:09.7	fundamental concept of salvation, i.e. being in Christ, a status that is often linked to an inverse claim that the Holy Spirit
	...

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