Blog Archive

  • The law is a guide because it is fulfilled

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    I propose that the purpose of the law was to draw Israel from sin and death to a holy life with God, and that though we are not under law, in Christ we have the life to which it pointed and therefore it is guide for us.

  • A sketch of Reformed-Thomist doctrines of grace

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    My suggestion in this post has been that the “five points of Calvinism” are an imperfect realization of the Reformed convictions about predestination. The desires for a high view of divine sovereignty and agency and the recognition of the inevitability and depth of human sin are both well-placed, but we need to analyze them within a robust philosophical theology and in the context of those church fathers who have come before us.

  • Existential Inertia: A Thomistic Appraisal

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    The intuitions that might draw us to existential inertia are tracking something real, but deeper analysis shows that there is an extra dimension that needs to be considered. The argumentation in the De Ente shows that essence is really distinct from esse in all but one thing, so that while substantial form is a principle of existential inertia, this still depends on an external cause. All-in-all, then, the Thomist is happy to affirm existential inertia, but cautions that the picture is more complicated than initial impressions might appear.

  • Causing the perpetuity of an accidentally ordered series

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    Does Aquinas’s First Way conclude with an immovable first mover? The answer depends on whether we interpret the First Way as an exercise in natural philosophy or metaphysics. Either could work, and will produce philosophical fruit, but the resulting arguments grow ever different.

  • The limits of the mediation of icons

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    While it is true that honor given to the image sometimes passes through to the prototype, this is limited by the nature of the image. If the image is dead, then it cannot mediate the honor of bilateral acts, such as prayer and worship, and any attempt to misuse them as such devolves into idolatry.

  • Series of talks on the Trinity

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    A few weeks ago, I finished giving a series of talks on the Trinity. I have now uploaded the talks here, so that anyone who is interested can access them. There are four talks in total. In the first two I discuss how the New Testament describes Jesus as divine, working within the theological context of the Old Testament. The first talk focuses on how Jesus himself demonstrated his divinity, and explains why this was preferable to him just coming out and saying something like, “Hi everyone, I’m God.” The second talk shows how the apostles then developed ways of…

  • Indeterminacy, infinity, and participation

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    My recent “three principles” post arose from a lengthy discussion I had with reader StructureOfTruth in the comments of an earlier post on limitation. Thankfully, StructureOfTruth continues to keep me honest, and has raised the following concern in the comments on my “three principles” post: The greatest difficulty I have with your line of thought in this post is (still) this idea of “infinite/unlimited/complete/perfect” vs. “finite/limited/incomplete/imperfect”. It seems to me that this is subtly wrong. Looking closely at your argument for the infinity principle, I believe the correct thing to say is not that unreceived act is infinite/unlimited, but rather that unreceived act…

  • Three principles about act and potency

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    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 occasioned by comments made by Joe Schmid about the relationship between the act-potency distinction and pluralism about being. In response to the post, a reader raised important questions about how this approach might help us to understand the Thomistic commitment that potency limits act. My…

  • God vs icons

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    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 him a question or thank him. Suppose further that in one of the towns the people who come salute and speak to the statue rather than to the king, while he is standing there. I hope we could all agree that the king is right…

  • Contra John of Damascus on Icons and the Incarnation

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    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.

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