The Armchair Thomist

     As I haven't written or recorded anything in over a year, something I've done before, I figured I would post my brief critique on a section in Aquinas's writings on predestination. Philosophically, I'm still fairly Thomistic, but I have been having issues with Aquinas' theology. This post may in fact be the first of a series of critiques of not only massa damnata , viz., the view that the majority of mankind is damned forever, but of a certain traditional Western understanding of damnation in general that I have come to find unsatisfactory. Enough of the detour; let's get into the topic.        To begin, in Article 7 on the question of Predestination in the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas poses the question of whether the number of the predestined is certain. The hypothetical objector in Objection 3 supposes that, in the works of nature, good is found in the majority of things, so if the number of the predestined are fixed, then ...

     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...

     My friend over at The Aspiring Jesuit blog ( https://theaspiringjesuit.blogspot.com ) has recently uploaded a short post about a model of the Divine Trinity that seems plausible to him, and so I figured I would do the same by trying to explicate my understanding of St. Thomas Aquinas' philosophical model of the Trinity which is a model that naturally flows from the basic framework that Aquinas works within.     For most Christian classical theists,  God is analogically said to be a pure act of intellect, but for Aquinas, "the intellect in act is the intelligible in act," so for the intellect to be in act means that it has some intelligible species by which it is in act, and of course due to divine simplicity, this intelligible species is just the divine essence itself. Furthermore, if God's intellect was put in act through an intelligible species that is from something extrinsic to Him (as what happens with us when we cognize the world), then that woul...

    A s the integrated substances that humans are (an example of this integrity is between our intellects which can move our bodies to certain ends and our bodies which can influence what objects we conceptualize, where this mind-body interaction would be expected in an integrated and unified substance), the intellect and body share certain qualities as being apart of that same substance. Here is one quality that they share: just as one can condition their body to be physically healthy, to form new reflexes, to get used to a poison through repetition, or to get used to a certain kind of food such that the bodily appetites are directed toward that food and opposed to others, the same can be said of the intellect, that it can be conditioned in a similar way to be habitually inclined toward certain objects as opposed to others. Now, the intellect's proper and principle object is intelligible being as such , which entails that the passive intellect stands in potency to the re...