“Est,” “Adest,”and“Subsistit in”at Vatican II

In this article, I enter into the ongoing dispute over the meaning of the phrase“subsistit in”used by the Second Vatican Council to express the relationship between the one Church of Christ and the Catholic Church. Although publications abound on this topic, I take an original approach to it by prov...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Angelicum 2014-01, Vol.91 (4), p.727-794
Main Author: Hipp, Stephen A.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Dissertationes
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Summary:In this article, I enter into the ongoing dispute over the meaning of the phrase“subsistit in”used by the Second Vatican Council to express the relationship between the one Church of Christ and the Catholic Church. Although publications abound on this topic, I take an original approach to it by providing a grammatical, logical and metaphysical analysis of each of the terms“est”, “adest”and“subsistit in”, in order to reveal their precise signification and to show how they relate to one another. The article maps out the different possible interpretations that can be given to the propositions within which those terms serve at Vatican II to relate Christ’s Church to the Catholic Church. I demonstrate that the phrase“subsistit in”as used by the Council is to be taken in a technical sense; and, through careful attention to the modes of signification and predicative structures of the“est”and“subsistit in”propositions, I show that the switch from“est”to“subsistit in”represents not a change in doctrine, but a development thereof. The article also includes several diagrams that conveniently synthesize the principal conclusions drawn regarding each of these terms.
ISSN:1123-5772