The Armchair Thomist

     Per request from a member of my philosophy Discord server (link to which is in the above description of my blog), I will provide a brief defense of the doctrine of  creatio ex nihilo , the doctrine that the act of creation lacks a material cause, drawing primarily from St. Thomas' Summa Contra Gentiles . Ultimately, the reason it must be true is God's nature as actus purus , so, the first order of things is to establish the existence of God as actus purus , and I will do this through my own rendition of Aquinas's First Way which gives a metaphysical analysis of change.       It is certain and evident to the senses that there is motion in the world, motion meaning change, but change analyzed with respect to being or ens  can only be understood as an actualization of potential, for act and potency are the principles of being. Now, whatever potential is actualized must be actualized by something already actual. Thus, something actually...

     In light of today's Scripture readings, I have decided to share my thoughts on what it means to fear the Lord and particularly how it is relevant to the beginning of wisdom. Usually, "fear" is not taken to refer to an emotional state of distress, worry, or anxiety toward something but rather a reverence toward the thing as we might revere our parents. However, although reverence may play a large factor in the fear of the Lord, I do not see fear and reverence as convertible. Fear, it seems to me, is reverence with a specific condition, i.e., fear is reverence toward a thing because of its standing toward the fearful insofar as the fearful might receive punishment from the feared. It is a recognition of one's own standing or relationship to the feared.     Why is this the beginning of wisdom? To tell an anecdote, I have, for most of my life, been commended for my moral character and commitment to higher principles than the average person, and have been told t...

     Dr. Alexander Pruss is a prolific contemporary Neo-Aristotelian philosopher who has become immensely influential with his work on infinity, causation, existence, time, modality, philosophy of religion, etc. He is arguably best known for his defense(s) of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and various forms of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. He also covers an array of philosophical issues on his blog which will be the subject of this post. In his article, " Good-bye, (Aristotelian) matter ", Pruss offers some brief critiques of the Aristotelian notion of matter which I believe fall short, so my aim for this post will be to pose my concerns with the content of his article. Given the brief and somewhat casual nature of Pruss's critiques, it is very possible that my responses will be disproportionately technical and critical, but that is only because I want to give as quality of a reply as I can.      Firstly, Pruss begins the art...

     Among the variety of views on the nature of hell and damnation, annihilationism is certainly a minority. However, I have seen somewhat of a rise in its popularity, along with universalism, presumably due to moral dissatisfaction with the eternity of hell and the theodicies for that view. For those who are unfamiliar, annihilationism, broadly speaking, is the view that the damned will eventually be annihilated. This contrasts with universalism in which everyone is saved (or eventually saved if the view allows for temporary damnation) and with the view that the damned exist forever.     There are indeed simpler refutations of annihilationism than that which I will present here, specifically ones from the immortality of the intellectual soul and God's justice (see Grenier), but the argument here is one that came about through sudden epiphany and is, from what I can tell, a novel line of reasoning.     Before I begin, I have some preliminary remarks. ...

     While reading Existence and the Existent  by 20th Century Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, which is an amazing book covering the depth of esse  in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, the author put forth quite a beautiful line of reasoning for the nihilistic entailments of atheism. That form of reasoning is not novel nor particular to Maritain, but it is Maritain's particular formulation that struck me as profound. I say "line of reasoning" over "argument" because it is written more as a stream of consciousness as opposed to providing justification and defenses for premises, so this presentation may not even be what Maritain himself would agree with or what he was trying to say; it is only an interpretation with some of my own insights. If the reader wishes to see the original prose, I would implore them to purchase the book.    Maritain first begins with the fact that the human subject knows in an objective manner, i.e., by objectizing the subje...

     The Nature-Grace debate may not be something a non-Christian is familiar with, but in short, it is a long-standing debate in Christian theology as to how God's grace (some actuality in relation to the capacity for holiness given to creatures as a free gift directly from God) relates to the natures (the essences of things understood as principles of the scope of a thing's activities) of creatures. The debate, as least from what I have seen, focuses on whether the giving of God's (salvific) grace to creatures satisfies a natural appetite in the creature or a supernatural appetite in the creature (and thus whether the appetite for God is a natural or supernatural appetite), the degree to which God is obligated to Himself to provide creatures with (salvific) grace, and whether the beatific vision (the experience of God's essence and the final end of Man) is a natural end or supernatural end.      Here I have whipped up a few arguments for the position that...