The <i>Capax</i> in a New Key: Kierkegaard's Development of Classical Lutheran Christology
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article examines Kierkegaard's relationship with classical Lutheran Christology. It does so in terms of the claim that the finite has the capacity for the infinite ( finitum capax infiniti—henceforth capax), a classical Lutheran claim according to which Christ's finite humanity completely grasps his infinite divinity. Though Kierkegaard's treatment of transcendence has tended to receive more attention, a doctrine of radical immanence also appears to permeate his thought—a doctrine reminiscent of the capax. Yet he writes at some distance from the claim's original framers. The question thus arises: is Kierkegaard's treatment of Christ in keeping with their expression of the capax? With special reference to Luther and the Lutheran scholastic Johann Gerhard, I argue the affirmative: that is—in their treatment of subjectivity—Kierkegaard's idea of Christ's incognito and his understanding of Christ as God's infinite redoubling represent developments concerning the essential logic of the capax. In Christ, God makes himself entirely present, yet hidden in order to preserve the subjectivity of his followers, and God preserves his own subjectivity as well, perfectly reproducing it in his human life. Understanding this creative development of the capax helps situate Kierkegaard with respect to the Lutheran tradition and sheds light on his ideas of redoubling, incognito, and the God–human being.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".