Author: Roland

  • The role of works in salvation

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    An important piece of Protestant theology is the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In my experience, this doctrine is often taken to imply that works play no role in salvation, which is not what scripture actually teaches. Part of the problem is that we blur the lines between justification and salvation, to the point… →

  • The measures of activities

    When discussing self-perfective immanent activities we gave the following analysis of activities, with which we were able to delineate three kinds: … an activity is the measured exercise of powers for the sake of some end, where the end for which the activity is done determines the appropriate measure. A thing’s powers are what determine what it can and… →

  • Aristotle’s function argument

    In the course of discussing the egoist worry, we saw that Aristotle’s own proposal for what happiness is is presented as the conclusion of his so-called “function argument.” This name is a bit misleading, however, since Aristotle didn’t think about function in the way we tend to these days, and he doesn’t so much give an argument as gesture in… →

  • Aristotle and the egoist worry (part 2)

    In the first part we introduced the egoist worry about Aristotle’s ethics: does his claim that happiness is the ultimate goal of human life imply that everything we do is done for selfish reasons? We also traced Aristotle’s discussion from the beginning of his Nicomachean Ethics up to just before he puts forward his own proposal for what happiness… →

  • Aristotle and the egoist worry (part 1)

    Aristotle famously held that happiness is the ultimate goal of human life, or — to use language more in keeping with Aristotle — that happiness is the chief good and last end of human life: Let us resume our inquiry and state… what is the highest of all goods achievable by action. Verbally there is very general agreement; for both… →

  • Notes on the Genesis Prologue and Leviticus

    I don’t have a track record for writing blog posts particularly frequently, but even if we take this into account my output over the past few months has been less than usual. The reason for this is that I’ve been working on bigger projects, two of which I’d like to share here. I lead a… →

  • Natural law vs the moral argument

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    Up until recently, I had thought that natural law theory was compatible with moral arguments formulated as follows: If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist. Objective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore, God exists. Moral arguments of this kind have been made popular by defenders such as… →

  • Self-perfective immanent activity

    At the beginning of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes two ways an activity can be related to the end for which that activity is done: either the activity is distinct from its end, or they are the same. We call those activities that are distinct from their ends transient and those that are the same immanent. Now, because an… →

  • Review of The Dictionary of Christianity and Science

    Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of this book so that I could do this review. The question about the proper relationship between science and religion has a long history in Western thought, going back to at least as far as the fifth century with St. Augustine. Over the centuries Christians have approached this question… →

  • A simple matter made complex

    Alice: I just bought a shelf from Ikea. Bob: Strictly speaking, you bought the matter of a shelf from Ikea. Alice: Well, that’s the thing that matters, isn’t it? 😛 Bob: Not really, since it’s the form that makes the matter a shelf. Alice: That’s a different matter entirely, I was just — Bob: Not… →