Thinking Thought Out

There is no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out — GK Chesterton

Latest blog posts

When I’m not distracted by other projects I try to write a post once a month. Typically, I focus on biblical theology, metaphysics, and ethics.

Explore the archive

  • Three principles about act and potency

    Three principles about act and potency

    A while ago I wrote a series of blog posts on potentiality, change, and limitation. I am always on the lookout for better ways of articulating the act-potency distinction, since it serves as a foundation for much of the Aristotelian-Thomistic framework that I find so useful in philosophy and theology. The original post, from two years ago, was […]

  • God vs icons

    God vs icons

    Suppose that a king is making his way through the towns of his kingdom after defeating a great enemy feared by all. In each town, he stands in the courtyard near a statue of himself, so that the townspeople know where to find him. They may come salute him to show honor, and perhaps ask […]

  • Contra John of Damascus on Icons and the Incarnation

    Contra John of Damascus on Icons and the Incarnation

    John of Damascus argues for the legitimacy of using images in worship of God, citing Moses’s teaching and the incarnation of Jesus as the basis. However, the interpretation of Moses’s words in Deut 4 and the impact of the incarnation on the form of images used for worship are misguided, leading to an inadequate defense of image use in worship.

  • Fear of the Lord

    The idea of “fear” in relation to God is often downplayed as consisting in merely reverence or awe, especially in the New Testament. But while these are no doubt part of it fear, they are inadequate accounts of it on their own. Scripture routinely pairs fear of God with terrifying things and people’s trembling at […]

  • Potentiality, diversity, and limitation

    Over on my post introducing potentiality from first principles, a reader raises some important questions that I thought would be worth answering in a separate post. If you haven’t read that post yet, I would encourage you to before continuing here. This idea of “relative non-being” is the best explanation I have come across of the […]

  • Potentiality underlying change

    In my previous post I explained how we arrive at the notion of potentiality from reflection on two different phenomena, resulting in two equivalent accounts of potentiality: potentiality is relative non-being as well as the passive capacity for act. The second of these accounts arises from considerations of causation and change, but it doesn’t actually end up […]

  • Potentiality from first principles

    In his gigantic post on existential inertia (section 7.13), Joe Schmid gives an argument against the act-potency distinction which can be roughly summarized as follows: the act-potency distinction commits us to pluralism about being, but pluralism about being is false, therefore we should reject the act-potency distinction. I had not heard of pluralism about being before, but […]

  • God causes evil actions without causing the evil in actions

    On a recent episode of Unbelievable?, William Lane Craig and James White discussed whether Molinism or Calvinism provide the better approach to God’s providence in light of the reality of evil. Craig is a proponent of Molinism, which seeks to reconcile libertarian freedom with divine providence by positing a special kind of knowledge in God called middle knowledge. White, […]

Larger projects

From time to time I work on projects that are larger than a blog post, but which are related to the sorts of topics that I discuss within the blog. These are collected here.

  • The Idolatry of Icons

    A biblical critique of the use of images for worship, wherein I argue that it amounts to idolatry. We begin by discerning the problem of idolatry; then we turn to the question of whether the incarnation affects the legitimacy of using images for worship; and we close by considering some common responses to this critique.…

  • Disputed Questions on Scripture and Tradition

    A biblical and historical defense of sola scriptura in the disputed questions format used by Aquinas in his Summa Theologica. The document is broken down into three sections. First, a formulation and biblical defense of sola scriptura; second, an examination of various early church fathers that believe in sola scriptura (including Irenaeus of Lyons, Cyprian…

  • Omni-instrumentality

    Divine providence is about God’s direction of all history in accordance with his plans, without thereby frustrating human freedom or undermining nature. Much discussion exists about what the best philosophical model is for making sense of this, and various models have been proposed over the centuries (see the relevant section on my resources page for…

  • Leviticus

    Over a period of five weeks in 2018, I led a Bible study on the book of Leviticus. After each session, I wrote up detailed notes based on the research that went into it as well as the discussion we had in the session itself. What started out as a study on a weird and…

  • The Genesis Prologue

    In 2017 I led a bible study on the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In the course of preparing the studies, I found myself reading some of the literature on these early chapters, and began realizing that it would be worth combining a number of insights into a comprehensive exegetical account. At the moment, this…

  • God is: Apologetics study series

    God is is an apologetics study series that I an two others wrote for my church. Made up of 5 studies, the series is meant as an introduction to apologetics, and is aimed at students who have not had much exposure to apologetics. You can get a copy of it here. Overview of studies Each week…