Jonathan Hill
Varieties of Identity:
Metaphysics, Entanglement, and Christian Theology
To many people, some of the key doctrines of Christian religion are either incomprehensible or downright incoherent. The Trinity, the Incarnation, the atonement, and original sin have all been criticised on these grounds. But what is not so often recognised is that many of the conceptual issues with these doctrines revolve around identity. I consider what some of these issues are and why they seem to distort the usual philosophical (and common sense) approach to identity, and look at possible alternative metaphysics of identity that might help, focusing in particular on the metaphysics of Jonathan Edwards. The oddity of quantum physics also rests, to a large extent, on its apparent violation of the metaphysics of identity. Does it offer a way forward for Christian theology?
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