Conciliar Christology and the Consistency of Divine Immutability with a Mutable, Incarnate God

[paragraph 3 of the article] The goal of this article is to flesh out that initial understanding of incarnational immutability. The method I employ to attain this goal is to consider cases of predications from the texts of conciliar Christology. I show potential ontological truth conditions for those predications being true that do not require the truth conditions I propose for immutability to be unsatisfied. Put otherwise, I show ontological truth conditions for predications that imply Christ’s mutability and Incarnation that are also consistent with the truth of “Christ is immutable.” Since the truth conditions for the incarnational texts do not require the falsity of the claim that “Christ is immutable,” the incarnational claims do not require the rejection of immutability. In other words, the Incarnation is no reason to deny divine immutability, and vice versa

Conciliar Trinitarianism, Divine Identity Claims, and Subordination

In this article, I present the trinitarian teaching of the first seven ecumenical councils, what we might call Conciliar Trinitarianism. I then consider two questions. First, what is the relationship between the divine persons and the divine nature? I argue that neither strict identity nor instantiation interpretations of that relationship fit well with the conciliar texts. Second, does the relation of procession among the divine persons, asserted in the conciliar texts, imply an objectionable ontological subordination in the Trinity? I argue that there is at least one way for a proponent of Conciliar Trinitarianism to deny that objectionable ontological subordination follows from the divine processions

Scholastic Hylomorphism and Dean Zimmerman

I present Dean Zimmerman’s conceptualization of the varieties of substance dualism. I then focus attention on a form of dualism that he has discussed briefly in a few places, Thomistic dualism as he calls it, or hylomorphic dualism, as I call it. After explicating hylomorphic dualism, I consider the two places where Zimmerman says the most about it, finding, in one case, a way to alleviate a worry he raises using the resources internal to hylomorphism, and, in the other case, a general agreement with his categorizing hylomorphic dualism as an intermediary position between substance dualism and materialism. Since hylomorphic dualism is something of an intermediary position between substance dualism and materialism, it stands to reason that it could be susceptible to attack from both sides. Thus, in the last portions of this article I consider the arguments Zimmerman answers against dualism and levels against materialism. I argue that the hylomorphic theorist can answer the charges against dualism at least as well as the other dualists can. I find that the main argument against materialism that Zimmerman provides, if sound, would also show any composite form of dualism to be false, too. Happily, the hylomorphic thinker has a method of denying the truth of the first premise of that argument, and so, of denying the soundness of the argument

The Five Ways.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/5 – 74) offered his Five Ways, or five proofs for the existence of God, near the beginning of his magnum opus , the Summa theologiae (Part 1, Question 2, Article 3, the response). The Summa (ST), as it is often called, was written as a textbook for men in their priestly formation. It is well over 2,500 pages in a standard English translation from the Latin, but the Five Ways take up only slightly more than one page. Nevertheless, they are almost assuredly the most commented on section of the Summa and some of the most well - known arguments for the existence of God

The Psychology of Habit Formation and Christian Moral Wisdom on Virtue Formation

In this paper, I provide an overview of the Christian moral wisdom with respect to virtue formation and character cultivation.  I focus in particular on some warnings issued by the great teachers on these topics with respect to the motivations one ought to have in the Christian life.  I then discuss some findings of contemporary psychology on habit formation which seem to be at odds with the warnings in Christian moral wisdom.  I argue that while there is surface discord between the contemporary psychology of habit formation and Christian moral wisdom, there is in fact a deep concord between them

Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven

The traditional view of heaven holds that the redeemed in heaven both have free will and are no longer capable of sinning. A number of philosophers have argued that the traditional view is problematic. How can someone be free and yet incapable of sinning? If the redeemed are kept from sinning, their wills must be reined in. And if their wills are reined in, it doesn’t seem right to say that they are free. Following James Sennett, we call this objection to the traditional view of heaven ‘the Problem of Heavenly Freedom’. In this paper, we discuss and criticize four attempts to respond to the Problem of Heavenly Freedom. We then offer our own response to this problem which both preserves the traditional view of heaven and avoids the objections which beset the other attempts