Robert Grosseteste articulated an unusual view of Christ's death that resonates with Karol Wojtyla's personalist conception of love as self‐gift. Grosseteste argued that the cause of Christ's death was not crucifixion but the active breathing forth of his spirit as he hung on the cross. Grosseteste said that in this act Christ took all the faithful into an Aristotelian friendship in which Christ is the “other self” of each one of the redeemed. As a result, the redeemed form a single mystical person with Christ.
Grosseteste's account of Christ's death seems consonant with Wojtyla's personalism in three ways. First, it makes the moment of Christ's death into an active gift of self. Second, parallel to the way an ordinary self‐donation depends on self‐possession and results in self‐discovery, Christ's self‐donation depends on his power to lay down his life and results in the realization of the mystical personhood of Christ in the Church. Third, Grosseteste treats the love between the persons of the Trinity as involving the self‐donation of the Son to the Father.
This article contains three sections. The first two treat Grosseteste and his resonance with Wojtyla. The third draws conclusions for contemporary Christology and anthropology.