714,063 research outputs found

    Science and the Knowledge of God: From Machine to Metaphor

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    After a review of how the machine model of nature has been used to argue both for and against the existence of God, the author makes the case that metaphors borrowed from the sciences can suggest new information about God

    Mary is the Model of Christian Discipleship

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    When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother” (Jn 19:26-27). At the foot of the cross, Mary, the mother of Jesus is given as mother to every single human being. Mary is the mother of all mankind. The New Testament traces Mary as a woman of limitless faith, obedience and humility who followed Jesus in a perfect way. Her heart was always centered on Jesus. She is the humble handmaid of God who surrendered herself completely into the hands of God. Without thinking of her fate, Mary said ‘yes’ to God. Thus, she became an example for those who wish to bear witness to Christ. By the four Marian dogmas (The Mother of God, The Perpetual Virginity of Mary, The Immaculate Conception of Mary, and The Assumption of Mary), Catholic Church teaches its faithful about Mary’s role in the salvation history. These dogmas help us to look more closely at Mary’s life. They teach us the reason why we can look at Mary as a model for Christian life. Like any other Christian, Mary is the example for consecrated people also. Mary is the first person who was consecrated unconditionally to God. As a sign of their consecration to God, Religious profess vows of obedience, chastity and poverty. Mary is the perfect example for Religious to live in the spirit of these three vows. She is our model and she will remain as an unique model for all those who desires to become disciples of Jesus

    Origins of the Quark Model

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    An intellectual history of the quark model prior to February 1964 is presented. Aspects of this history are best summarized by a parable: Man asked God for a riddle, and God obliged: "What is green, hangs from a tree, and sings?" This, of course, was a very difficult question. So man asked God for the answer, and God replied: "A herring!" "A herring? But why is it green?" "Because I painted it green." "But why does it hang from a tree?" "Because I put it there. " "And why does it sing?" "If it didn't sing you would have guessed it was a herring.

    The Superfluity of Purgatory

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    This article is a refutation of Jerry Walls\u27s model of Purgatory, based on God\u27s respect of our free will and the necessity of morally significant choices. Additionally, it will show how Walls\u27s positing of a temporal Purgatory as a means of sanctification through cooperation with God is unnecessary for the Christian in light of our earthly life and God\u27s perfect justice and omnipotence. Finally, it will speculate as to the effects of an instantaneous purification and how it fits more clearly with traditional doctrine

    No Time for Time: Trans-temporal Creation of a Time-bound Realm

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    The radical contingency of all scientific laws is now recognized, owing to new vistas opened by research in Quantum Field Theory, a contingency that implies the dependence of the structural parameters and developmental trajectories of the universe upon the creative power of God. This essay delineates a specific model of a temporal causation, which elucidates the relationship between a time-bound universe and a God who is beyond time

    Logic and the Concept of God

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    This paper introduces the special issue on the Concept of God of the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). The issue contains the following articles: Logic and the Concept of God, by StanisƂaw Krajewski and Ricardo Silvestre; Mathematical Models in Theology. A Buber-inspired Model of God and its Application to “Shema Israel”, by StanisƂaw Krajewski; Gödel’s God-like Essence, by Talia Leven; A Logical Solution to the Paradox of the Stone, by HĂ©ctor HernĂĄndez Ortiz and Victor Cantero; No New Solutions to the Logical Problem of the Trinity, by Beau Branson; What Means ‘Tri-’ in ‘Trinity’ ? An Eastern Patristic Approach to the ‘Quasi-Ordinals’, by Basil LouriĂ©; The Éminence Grise of Christology: Porphyry’s Logical Teaching as a Cornerstone of Argumentation in Christological Debates of the Fifth and Sixth Centruies, by Anna Zhyrkova; The Problem of Universals in Late Patristic Theology, by Dirk KrasmĂŒller; Intuitionist Reasoning in the Tri-unitrian Theology of Nicolas of Cues, by Antonino Drago

    A Mathematical Model of Divine Infinity

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    Mathematics is obviously important in the sciences. And so it is likely to be equally important in any effort that aims to understand God in a scientifically significant way or that aims to clarify the relations between science and theology. The degree to which God has any perfection is absolutely infinite. We use contemporary mathematics to precisely define that absolute infinity. For any perfection, we use transfinite recursion to define an endlessly ascending series of degrees of that perfection. That series rises to an absolutely infinite degree of that perfection. God has that absolutely infinite degree. We focus on the perfections of knowledge, power, and benevolence. Our model of divine infinity thus builds a bridge between mathematics and theology

    Etiological challenges to religious practices

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    There is a common assumption that evolutionary explanations of religion undermine religious beliefs. Do etiological accounts similarly affect the rationality of religious practices? To answer this question, this paper looks at two influential evolutionary accounts of ritual, the hazard-precaution model and costly signaling theory. It examines whether Cuneo’s account of ritual knowledge as knowing to engage God can be maintained in the light of these evolutionary accounts. While the evolutionary accounts under consideration are not metaphysically incompatible with the idea that religious rituals engage God, they cast doubt on whether many, if not all, rituals can do this successfully

    Exemplar Causality as similitudo aequivoca in Peter Auriol

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    The aim of this paper is to discuss the theory of exemplary causality of Peter Auriol (1280-1322). Until at least the late 13th century, medieval authors claim that the world is orderly and intelligible because God created it according to the models existing eternally in his mind (i.e. divine ideas). Auriol challenges the view of his predecessors and contemporaries. He argues that assuming divine ideas amounts to assuming multiplicity in God and therefore questioning the principle of his absolute simplicity. To avoid this problem, he develops a system that enables him to account for God’s knowledge of creatures (both as individuals and as species) and hence to preserve the theological principle of providence, but at the same time allows him to reject divine ideas as intermediaries for creation. In Auriol’s theory of exemplary causality, divine essence is the only object of God’s knowledge and thus the only exemplar for creation. God’s cognitive act is directed exclusively towards his own essence. However, he knows creatures through multiple connotations, i.e. the multiple ways divine essence is connotated when God knows himself. But these connotations play no role in creation, because imitability is only proper to divine essence. To explain how an object can be the only exemplar for the creation of many different creatures, Auriol has to rethink the concept of imitability and develop a new model of exemplary causality enabling him to account for the relationship between God and his creatures. The traditional model was that of analogy: a cause produces an effect which is partly similar and partly different from it. Auriol relies on the concept of equivocity. He argues that it is unnecessary to assume a particular similarity between a cause and its effect. Quite the contrary: for an object to be the exemplar of multiple different things, it is necessary that it should not be similar to any of them. The concept of aequivocatio allows Auriol to reject the traditional model of creation. Aequivocatio does not entail a resemblance between idea and ideatum. There is no contradiction, then, in claiming that a single object (divine essence) is in an equivocal way (aequivoce) the exemplary cause of multiple different objects. This is Auriol’s new theory of divine exemplarism: the theory of similitudo aequivoca
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