Divine Perfection and Human Potentiality: The Trinitarian Anthropology of Hilary of Poitiers

The place of Hilary of Poitiers in the debates and developments of early Christianity is tenuous in contemporary scholarship. His invaluable historical position is unquestioned, but the coherence and significance of his own thought is less certain. In this book, Jarred A. Mercer makes a case
for understanding Hilary not only as an important historical figure, but as a noteworthy and independent thinker.

Divine Perfection and Human Potentiality offers a new paradigm for understanding Hilary's work De Trinitate. The book contends that in all of Hilary's polemical and constructive argumentation, which is essentially trinitarian, he is inherently developing an anthropology. The work therefore
reinterprets Hilary's overall theological project in terms of the continual, and for him necessary, anthropological corollary of trinitarian theology- to reframe it in terms of a trinitarian anthropology. The coherence of Hilary's work depends upon this framework, and without it his thought
continues to elude his readers. Mercer demonstrates this through following Hilary's main lines of trinitarian argument, out of which flow his anthropological vision. These trinitarian arguments unfold into a progressive picture of humanity from potentiality to perfection.


Author: Jarred A. Mercer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 02/25/2019
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780190903534

About the Author

Jarred A. Mercer is Associate Chaplain and Career Development Researcher at Merton College, University of Oxford. His articles on Hilary appear in the Journal of Early Christian Studies, Studia Patristica, and the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church. He is currently beginning a project on the spirituality of children in Late Antiquity as well as writing in contemporary theology.