This article discusses Archibald Campbell’s (1691-1756) early writings on religion, and the reactions they provoked from conservative orthodox Presbyterians. Purportedly against the Deist Matthew Tindal, Campbell crucially argued for two claims, namely (i) for the reality of immutable moral laws of nature, and (ii) for the incapacity of natural reason, or the light of nature, to discover the fundamental truths of religion, in particular the existence and perfections of God, and the immortality of the soul. In an episode that had (...) its peak in 1735 and 1736, a Committee for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland scrutinised Campbell’s writings. It attacked the second claim as contradicting Calvinist doctrines concerning the universal guilt of mankind after the Fall, and the first claim as contradicting doctrines concerning justification and salvation, and as supporting Deism. The study of this episode reveals new aspects of how the struggle to define orthodoxy crystallised in philosophical and theological debates in Scotland at the dawn of the Enlightenment, and before the rise of the Moderates. (shrink)

The Church's traditional teaching on divine immutability is frequently criticized today by theologians belonging to a wide variety of nationalities and confessions. Such theologians are frequently united in singling out St. Thomas Aquinas as the best representative of the tradition that they are criticizing. Unfortunately, however, their criticism often involves a misrepresentation of St. Thomas' actual teaching on divine immutability. This book provides a clear, accurate, and detailed account of St. Thomas' teaching, presented in a way that allows (...) St. Thomas to speak to the problems and issues that are raised in contemporary theology regarding divine immutability. (shrink)

Divine immutability, the claim that God is immutable, is a central part of traditional Christianity, though it has come under sustained attack in the last two hundred years. This article first catalogues the historical precedent for and against this claim, then discusses different answers to the question, “What is it to be immutable?” Two definitions of divine immutability receive careful attention. The first is that for God to be immutable is for God to have a constant character (...) and to be faithful in divine promises; this is a definition of “weak immutability.” The second, “strong immutability,” is that for God to be immutable is for God to be wholly unchanging. After showing some implications of the definitions, the article focuses on strong immutability and provides some common arguments against the claim that God is immutable, understood in that way. While most of the historical evidence discussed in this article is from Christian sources, the core discussion of what it is to be strongly immutable, and the arguments against it, are not particular to Christianity. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a striking resurgence of interest in the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of God. This anthology contains a representative sample of some of the best contemporary philosophical work on this central religious idea, covering such topics as the existence of God, the physical nature of God, and the "divine attributes"--goodness, omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, immutability, and simplicity.

This essay considers what the logical implications for God's free will would be if God possessed the characteristics that he is often said to have, such as Immutability. If God does not have free will it undermines the Free Will Defense for the Problem of Evil and the case for free will generally. Those who believe in human free will often believe that it exists because humans possess an immaterial soul; however, if God does not have free will then (...) the religious case for free will is weakened. (shrink)

In the author's view, the proper verdict on the reconcilability of the content of Christian revelation with the full‐blown natural theological concept of God found in the works of classical theologians is much less clear than many contemporary theologians would have it. The author argues that one can reasonably accept the philosophical concept of God as necessary being while rejecting the more problematic notions of immutability and simplicity. This chapter briefly discusses the strands of thought offered by natural theology. (...) It describes Luis de Molina's problematic notion of middle knowledge to assess the timeless eternity theorist's conception of God's knowledge of and actions in response to the world. It argues that the eternity thesis is committed to the doctrine of middle knowledge (or, as with Leftow's alternative, something very much like it), and tries to persuade the reader that this constitutes something of a reductio of the eternity thesis. (shrink)

In the Western theist tradition, the conception of a person tends to be understood as an intrinsic property. Hence, the classification of someone as a person does not depend on relational aspects of that person. From this, Western theists often understand that their conception of God as a person does not clash with the idea of immutability. In this article, I challenge the idea that being a person and being immutable are compatible properties by using Afro-communitarian philosophy and, more (...) specifically Afro-communitarian metaphysics of personhood. Afro-communitarian metaphysics is fundamentally relational, i.e. it understands that most properties of the world depend on the existence of other entities. More precisely, personhood is a property that depends on the existence of relatable beings. But if this is true, then it is not possible to hold that an entity that has the property of personhood also has the property of immutability. More specifically, an entity that is a person has to change due to the fact that personhood is a relational property. This is because it is a necessary condition for being a person that one relates to others, i.e. one only becomes a person when this relation occurs. Hence, the process of becoming a person requires a moment before the relation with another and one after; thereby, the feature of being a person requires the feature of change. With respect to the Christian conception of God, what this implies is that if theist philosophers wish to understand Him as a person, they have to also accept that God is not immutable. For if other beings besides Him are not eternal, then it is only possible that He can be a person when these other beings first started existing. This is the case because the kind of relationality needed to be a person is not simply to relate to something (like emptiness), but to do something that makes Him addressable (which requires that the thing He relates to has the capacity to address Him). This means there are two moments of existence where He has distinct properties and, therefore, is mutable. (shrink)

In his celebrated_ Essay on Population_, Thomas Malthus raised the puzzle of why a benevolent Creator would permit material scarcity in human existence. Albino Barrera revisits this question using Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics of participation and Sacred Scripture’s invitation to covenant fidelity and kingdom discipleship as analytical lenses with which to examine the seeming incongruity of scarcity in God’s providence. Barrera concludes that scarcity turns out to be a signal opportunity for economic agency to receive, internalize, and communicate God’s goodness and (...) righteousness within the human community. Written for theologians, philosophers, social scientists, and policymakers interested in the theological and philosophical foundations of economics, this study argues that precarious, subsistence living is not an immutable law of nature. Rather, such a chronic, dismal condition reflects personal and collective moral failure. In this carefully researched study, Barrera argues that scarcity serves as an occasion for God to provide for us through each other and that there are strong metaphysical and scriptural warrants for enacting progressive social policies for a better sharing of the goods of the earth. "This is a very big, very important work that takes up a large and urgent issue and follows it through with vigorous, meticulous study." —_Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary_ "Professor Barrera addresses an important theological question: 'Why would a benevolent God create a world of material scarcity with all the suffering accompanying this fact?' He goes beyond answering this question by showing that the sacrifices demanded to deal with the challenge of scarcity create virtues and situations that are deeply Christian. Barrera's well-written, jargon-free book will capture the attention of anyone interested in this topic." —_Wilfried Ver Eecke, Georgetown University_. (shrink)

John Dewey once said of philosophical problems that they are quite different from old soldiers. Not only do they never die, but they do not even fade away. Something similar might be said about the unfavourable Divine attributes of the 1950s and 60s, timelessness or eternity, necessary existence, foreknowledge of creaturely free choices, and immutability. All have contemporary defenders. Even the puzzling, traditional tenet that God is metaphysically simple now has formidable apologists. Perhaps the least popular of the traditional (...) theistic canon, the most likely to fade away, is the tenet that God is impassible. The recent appearance of Richard Creel's Divine Impassibility has shown that even this least popular of attributes can be powerfully articulated and defended. Roughly, the impassibility thesis is the claim that God does not undergo sensory experience including suffering and pain, nor is God subject to corruption, substantial essential change or to external agency. Creel's defence of Divine impassibilism is certainly the most balanced and sophisticated in the current literature. Any argument for passibilism must take Creel's work seriously. I intend to do just that in the course of defending the thesis that the God of Christian theism is passible in an important respect. There are substantive moral and religious reasons to believe God suffers. (shrink)

This paper explores a variety of perfect being theism that combines Yujin Nagasawa’s maximal God thesis with the view that God is not atemporal. We argue that the original maximal God thesis still implicitly relies on a “static” view of divine perfections. Instead, following the recent re-evaluation of divine immutability by analytic philosophers, we propose that thinking of divine great-making properties as fluctuating but nevertheless remaining maximal either for every time t or across all times strengthens the original maximal (...) God thesis. Furthermore, we show that “temporalising” Nagasawa’s maximal God and adopting what we call the fluctuating maximal God thesis provides more effective ways of responding to objections to perfect being theism, in particular, the argument from evil and some conceptual problems pertaining to the Incarnation. Finally, we demonstrate that our proposal is compatible with Christian Scriptures and coheres with numerous biblical passages better than Nagasawa’s original proposal does. (shrink)

In this lecture Armstrong argues that the main point of difference between Saint Augustine and other Christian Platonists centers less on how they view the effectiveness of man's free will than on their view of man's relationship to God. The Platonic tradition always stressed the goodness of the deity. Augustine, however, stressed God's immutability and power, and paid little attention to His goodness and His offer of redemption to all men, including those who stand outside the institutionalized church. This (...) engaging 1966 Saint Augustine Lecture is an unabashed polemic which is cast within an examination of three topics which illustrate Augustine's relationship to pagan and Christian Platonism. The criticism is stated with refreshing boldness and masterly erudition. The extensive notes are stimulating and informative. In the first section the author discusses the natural divinity of the soul and tells why most Christian thinkers, including Augustine, rejected the Platonic view that man's soul is naturally divine. The second topic presents the different attitudes Augustine and Platonism expressed toward the body and the material universe. Here Armstrong argues that in their fervent rejection of the Plotinian doctrine of the mystical body of the universe, Christians lost the sense of the holiness of everyday life and thereby dampened their awareness of the immediacy of the Holy Spirit. In his last topic of discussion Armstrong preaches against Augustine's doctrine of selective predestination and his conception of God as an arbitrary tyrant. These two views, says Armstrong, bring bad news to mankind and cause extreme pessimism rather than an awakening of love--the motive force which speeds man back to God.--W. D. T. (shrink)

This paper covers the theme of the death of God considered from a Hegelian standpoint. For Aristotle, the image of God as ‘thought thinking itself’ was an image of the knowledge aspired to in philosophy. With the notion of God becoming man and his insistence on the icon of the Cross, Hegel challenged the Aristotelian goal of philosophy as immutable knowledge of an ‘ultimate’ reality. Hegel viewed the crisis of normativity as strictly linked to the conception of the self. It (...) is Nietzsche who is best known for alluding to the full significance of this image for modern life, but Hegel’s thought on the complex relations of philosophy and religion in the modern world can be regarded as an attempt to think through this same historical phenomenon. In this paper, I focus on the philosophical relevance of Hegel’s notion of the death of God. I argue that unpacking the significance of the ‘truths’ presented symbolically in modern Christianity is crucial in unders.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sunyata and Otherness:Applying Mutually Transformative Categories from Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in ChristologySusie Paulik Babka“The universe is expanding,” the physicists tell us. “But doesn’t an expansion of something mean the presupposition of boundaries?” my naïve mind inquires, thinking too much in terms of discrete substances. Can “something” expand “into” nothing, “into” emptiness? Shot through with “dark energy” (the name an intellectual signifier allowing physicists to speak of the ineffable), the immensity (...) of the universe teaches a lesson in humility before mystery and the radically new. Dark energy makes up 74 percent of the universe and is responsible for increasing the rate of the universe’s expansion; it may be explained as the energy of empty space, or space devoid of matter and gravity. Although an unobservable phenomenon, dark energy penetrates the known universe as that which counteracts gravity’s relationship to matter, causing a negative pressure in regions of the universe devoid of matter to expand. Hence, the energy of emptiness is the reason for the universe’s expansion; emptiness is the reason reality is better described by rapid change and impermanence than stasis and immutability.While it would seem that these developments do not impact religious thinking, the Dalai Lama and others have argued that because science helps us understand the nature of reality, it affects the paradigm in which we consider the veracity of religious ideas. In his words, “if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”1 This is a bold statement, challenging both East and West to consider that when derived from only one source, even our most treasured religious ideas are narrowly conceived.The Western worldview has kept pace neither with the challenges of cosmic and subatomic physics nor with a more sophisticated global community. Since Parmenides in the pre-Socratic era, Western thought has been dominated by Greek philosophical categories, in which the perfection of beings is regarded in immutability and stasis, and things ideally tend toward independence or self-sufficiency. These categories [End Page 73] not only are inadequate to describe reality discovered through scientific means but also fail to articulate the meaning of the religious and cultural encounters taking place between East and West. Writes Joseph O’Leary, “The encounter with Buddhist thought enhances the hermeneutical task of theology, by opening up the possibility that Christian truth today can be more luminously presented in a discourse influenced by Buddhist analytical methods and ontological insights than in the old frameworks formed in dialogue with Greek ontology.”2Deconstructing substance ontology in the West suggests not only that science is a valuable conversation partner to religion but also that religions be conversation partners with each other. Christians should consider how divine or ultimate reality is manifest in other religions and abandon claims to exclusive truth. As Joseph O’Leary argues,The religions need each other, whatever their utter self-sufficiency on the plane of abstruse theological claims. The religions, as human historical trajectories, are inevitably marked by incompleteness and tragic failures. The tensions between them are not to be suppressed by dogmatic self-affirmation, but to be interpreted as the tension of “truth” itself, making itself felt within the finitude and brokenness of the human language striving to express it.3Truth for the Dalai Lama is “pursued by means of critical investigation,” requiring conversation with modern thought forms as well as both religious and secular Western traditions. If Christian theology is to be relevant today, it must continue to deconstruct the classical metaphysical categories that impede the appreciation of what is possible or true, especially in the encounter with non-Christian and non-Western thought, culture, and religious practice. Interreligious encounter necessitates the questioning of ontotheology, the classical metaphysical logic that refers to the rational basis for naming God, the supreme being, with supreme attributes, such as eternity, immutability, omniscience, and omnipotence. Ontotheology is related to the substance ontologies that describe the relation between God and the world and East and West in terms of dualism that according to Paul Knitter “so stresses the difference between two realities, so separates them... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Practicing the Religious Self: Buddhist-Christian Identity as Social ArtifactDuane R. BidwellIt is somewhat paradoxical to write or speak about identity formation in two religious traditions that ultimately deny the reality of any identity that we might claim or fashion for ourselves. In the Christian traditions, a person’s true (or ultimate) identity is received through God’s action and grace in baptism; to foreground any other facet of the self, or (...) to anchor identity in anything but baptism, could be considered a form of idolatry. In the Buddhist traditions human identity is empty, woven not from an inherent or externally granted essence but through the interdependent arising of all things; 1 to cling to self and to identity as independent, enduring, immutable, or autonomous signals a mistaken understanding of reality.2 Indeed, as religious scholar Alice Keefe has written, “belief in the self as independent and self-existent is our fundamental delusion and root poison.” 3Yet day by day most of us experience our identities, including our religious, cultural, and social identities, as neither empty nor erased. On the contrary: they seem to be inscribed with enduring meaning. Knowledge has been chiseled into them through our participation in the rituals and relationships of the world. At times the very fullness of our identities can feel on the verge of overflowing. This sense of dynamic presence and fullness causes our identities to serve as important (and perhaps essential) tools for negotiating the hurly-burly of experience and relationship in the mundane, finite, material world.4 From this perspective, our religious identities are social artifacts, entities and meanings formed in between, or on the margins of, biological selves that are related to one another through communities of practice.5 These communal artifacts may then be interiorized by individuals as resources that can be employed in or offered back to the world—performed, if you will—through particular (and sometimes disciplined) practices.6The primacy of social process in creating and maintaining religious identity implies that community remains central to the process of fashioning the religious self in contemporary Buddhist and Christian practice. If this is true, it raises, of course, important questions about our understandings of ecclesiology and the nature of the sangha, theological anthropology and Buddhist understandings of the person. These questions [End Page 3] deserve to be answered, but they are too broad to be addressed here. My more modest intention is to contribute to generative conversation about religious identity formation by illustrating how my own religious identities as Buddhist and Christian have been practiced and performed as social artifacts in two particular instances. In a secondary sense, this essay serves as a reflection on pastoral work in a multifaith context, something “much needed in the Buddhist-Christian studies milieu.” 7Given the diverse academic approaches to Buddhist-Christian studies, it seems wise to begin by describing my own background and approach. By training I am a pastoral theologian, someone who seeks to understand critically the richness and complexity of human experiences and then to respond with appropriate, faithful, and effective acts of care. The psychological meta-theory of social constructionism serves as a primary conversation partner for my work; it invites me to ask “not what goes on ‘inside’ people, but what people go on inside of.” 8 For pragmatic reasons I tend to utilize David Tracy’s mutual critical (or revised) correlational method,9 and in the dialectic between understanding human experience and responding to it, I privilege liberationist theologies and religio-ethical norms of justice, love, and wisdom. My practice as a spiritual director and pastoral counselor seeks to promote practices of freedom for all people.10As a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) I am accountable to the Reformed tradition of Christian theology. My formal theological education occurred in the ecumenical context of a divinity school affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and at a diocesan seminary affiliated with the contemplative Anglican tradition. My informal training in Buddhist philosophy and practice occurred in the Theravada traditions of Southeast Asia, primarily through five years of participation in an immigrant congregation and weekly study with Thich Phap Nhan, a Vietnamese monk... (shrink)

The concept of "dogma" comes from the Greek word dogmatus, which means "thought", "doctrine". Traditionally, these concepts denote such basic provisions of the doctrine of a denomination, which are recognized as eternal and immutable truths, which are established by the supposedly God Himself and are obligatory for faith in them to all followers of a particular religious course.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 275-276 [Access article in PDF] Zbigniew Janowski. Cartesian Theodicy: Descartes' Quest for Certitude. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002. Pp. 181. Cloth, $30.00. Janowski begins this original and erudite work by saying that although "the Meditations have never [before] been interpreted as a theodicy... insofar as theodicy is concerned with examining the relationship between the existence of evil on the one hand and God's (...) omnipotence and benevolence on the other, Descartes's question 'How would the goodness of God not preclude the possibility that nature is deceptive?' is in perfect conformity with, and continues the long tradition of, Christian apologetics" (13). This is not to deny Descartes's primary role in replacing God's causal role in nature with mechanistic science, and his separating religious truth from that of reason. But Descartes also is profoundly concerned with problems of error, evil, God's role in our sins, and Absolute Truth. Janowski is concerned "to show how Descartes' philosophy is derived from the early-seventeenth-century debates over divine and human freedom" by concentrating on the "incongruity between the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent Creator and man's imperfect nature [and] the nature and scope of human freedom" (19). He presents "the problem of error... as the problem of evil; the problem of human will... as the problem of human freedom, and the quest for Certitude... as theodicy, that is, as the vindication of God's goodness and omnipotence" (19-20). His ground for this is his interpretation of Cartesianism as "a kind of epistemological Augustinianism" (20).The view of basic Christian theology is that God is omnipotent and benevolent, and that all his creations are good, so evil is merely the absence of good. According to Descartes, free will makes both error and evil possible. But Augustine says that after the Fall of Man, free will is corrupt and can incline only to evil. So the only good man can do is by way of God's grace, which man cannot resist, for man is not really free to choose between good and evil. But here, Descartes is in disagreement with Augustine. Again, theodicy concerns the problem of the apparent discrepancy between the power of the creator and the imperfections of creation. And the problem is that Descartes's God is an all-powerful being that is absolutely unlimited and creates everything including logical, moral, and legal principles. Descartes's God is not constrained by the principles of non-contradiction (as opposed to St. Thomas's God, who is so constrained). Descartes's argument is that only God is immutable, nothing created is immutable, so no principle created by God, not the Ten Commandments, not the principle of non-contradiction, is immutable.This doctrine of indifferently created eternal truths allies Descartes with the Molinists who argue that God is indifferent in the sense of all powerful, and that humans have a freedom of indifference in that even given grace, they can decide to do either good or evil. This is in opposition to Augustinians and Jansenists who believe that human will corrupted by the Fall of Man can choose only evil until God gives one grace, after which one can choose only good—which, in either case, rules out any notion of freedom of choice between good and evil by an indifferent free will. Descartes believes that we can choose evil even when God gives us grace to choose good. Descartes does follow Augustine in asserting that for God, knowing and willing are the same, in opposition to St. Thomas. But for humans, knowing and willing are separate, and so humans can both err and sin.Descartes's theodicy is that everything depends on God—physics, mathematics, morals, and law. Without God there would be only nihilism. A great difficulty with this doctrine of eternal truths, however, is that it "makes the nature of God completely incomprehensible to man" (102). This is the doctrine of the Hidden God. But in a backhanded way, it saves Descartes's position. He argues that... (shrink)

Proclus (c.412-485) once offered an argument that Christians took to stand against the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo based on the eternity of the world and God’s perfection. John Philoponus (c.490-570) objected to this on various grounds. Part of this discussion can shed light on contemporary issues in philosophical theology on divine perfection and creation. First I will examine Proclus’ dilemma and John Philoponus’ response. I will argue that Philoponus’ fails to rebut Proclus’ dilemma. The problem is that presentism (...) is incompatible with divine simplicity, timelessness, and a strong doctrine of immutability. From there I will look at how this discussion bears on contemporary understandings of divine perfection and creation, and argue that there are at least two possible ways contemporary philosophical theologians can try to get around the dilemma. One option is to adopt four-dimensional eternalism and maintain the traditional account of the divine perfections. I argue that this option suffers from difficulties that are not compatible with Christian belief. The other option is to keep presentism and modify the divine perfections. I argue that this option is possible and preferable since our understanding of the divine perfections must be modified in light of divine revelation and the incarnation. (shrink)

This article examines Baruch Benedictus Spinoza conceptual understanding of the proofs for the existence of God. It traces the evolution of this theme pursuant to the metaphysical studies of Moderns Philosophy. Тhe concept of God in the philosophy of Spinoza is considered by exploring the nature of the relations between the transcendent sphere of God and the spiritual world of the human person. Spinoza argues from the possibility of God's existence to God's necessary existence. God is an absolutely infinite substance, (...) necessarily exists, qua Natura Naturans is immutable. God or Nature. The universe is an expression of God's nature, qua Natura Naturata - God is its immanent cause. Spinoza's God is synonymous with Nature. Substance is defined as "in itself". Spinoza understands a substance to be something that is self-caused and self-explained. The transcendence is understood as an ontological category, being discussed in connection with the key themes of Christian philosophy, such as time and eternity, person and history, creation and God etc. Spinoza's concept of God is referring to the God of the monotheistic religions, God as One Substance, pertains to a concept of the oneness of God, is transcendent and therefore "unknowable". Spinoza's definition of God found on the first page of the Ethics: Being absolutely infinite. From the point of view of historiography, the role of the book "Ehtics" by Spinoza is highlighted. (shrink)

Panentheism and classical theism. Comments on the basis of Jacek Wojtysiak’s criticism of Józef Życiński’s position The article was inspired by the tenth anniversary of the death of Archbishop Życiński and the article containing polemic with his panentheism published by Wojtysiak. Wojtysiak claims that the essence of theism is the thesis about the existential selfsufficiency of God and the resulting asymmetry of his causal relationship with the world, which consists in the fact that God can exert causal influence on the (...) world, but the world cannot influence God in this way. Since Życiński contradicts this thesis, according to Wojtysiak, his panentheism is not theism at all. I do not agree with this judgment, and what Wojtysiak calls ‘theism’ I call ‘classical theism’. Both panentheism and classical theism constitute legitimate versions of theism. Ishow that the classical theism in the version proposed by Wojtysiak is entangled in serious difficulties. One of them is that on cosmological level it harmonizes best with occasionalism, that is, with full theological determinism. Another one is connected with the thesis t that God is impassible, which deprives him of the possibility of fulfilling these pro-religious functions, which are crucial for Christianity, such as God’s experiential involvement in the history of the world. I propose that the recognition of divine passibility be the minimum condition for any panentheism or position similar to it. Meeting this condition does not require the rejection of the thesis about the classically understood divine immutability, omnipotence or the creation of the world ex nihilo, but it is conducive to the revision of these notions. I point out that revisions proposed by Życiński in his version of panentheism were incomparably smaller than those proposed by Whitehead or especially Hartshorne, but still they cannot be treated as a minor supplement to classical theism. They constitute version of panentheism or neoclassical theism, which is a much better philosophical basis for Christianity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Role of Malebranche in Ernest Renan's Philosophical Development BENJAMIN ROUNTREE RENANHASBEENCALLEDwith some justification the "Malebranche du dix-neuvi~me si~cle." 1 In his praise of the seventeenth-century philosopher, Renan was unconciously inclined to call attention to the similarities between himself and Malebranche by pointing out qualities which they were apt to share. A thinker as sinuous as Renan was bound to appreciate the power of subtle reasoning in such a (...) work as the admirable Recherche de la V~rit6. In a certain sense Renan is even the heir of a spirit to which Malebranche gave fresh impetus. Like Malebranche, he inveighed against pedants, dilettantes, and idolators of antiquity; he turned his back on tradition to favor modem thought over ancient, and placed his faith in a world governed by knowledge and reason in which progress and human perfectibility promise man happiness. In his basic optimism, in his belief that man is capable of knowing truth, in his somewhat pantheistic mysticism, Renan joins hands with Malebranche across the eighteenth century. How well did Renan know Malebranche? What did he think of him? Did his opinion of him undergo any evolution? To find the answers to these questions one must go back to about 1840, when Renan, a.t seventeen, began his study of Malebranche. By the time he was twenty, Renan, under the guidance of M. Gosselin, who little suspected how great a contribution Malebranche would make to Renan's decision to leave the Church, was reading the philosopher with enthusiastic regularity. Indeed, the Oratorian had become "l'objet perp6tuel" of his reflections, he tells us. The speculative terminology of the Entretiens sur la M6taphysique and the M6ditations chrgtiennes echoed through his class compositions and notebooks. His ideas on the general action of Providence in the universe were already similar to those of this philosopher, who, "illustre" and "saint," soon became for him a kind of spiritual hero, a hero whose exemplary intellectual zeal drew Renan instinctively ever more deeply into the contemplative life, into.the fervent and determined quest for "Truth." This "penseur hardi" was destined to excite Renan's own paradoxical mind as "le plus beau r~veur et le plus terrible logicien" ever to exist.~ 1L. L~vy-Bruhl, "La Religion de Renan," Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique (A~pril,1923), p. 344. Ernest Renan, Souvenirs d'en]ance et de ieunesse, in Les Oeuvres completes d'Ernest Renan (Paris: Calmann=L~vy, 1947), II, 843-846. All future references to Renan will be made from this edition unless otherwise specified. See also Lewis F. Mott, Ernest Renan (New York: D. Appleton, 1921), pp. 15-16; Jean Pommier, Renan (Paris: Perrin, 1923), p. 37; La Jeunesse clSricale d'Ernest Renan (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1933), p. 138; "Les Lectures de Renan au sSminaire,"La Revue d'histoire litt6raire de la France (1934), p. 93. [47] 48 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY For a moment Malebranche, like Pascal, even helped delay Renan's loss of faith. The attempt of a Christian to satisfy the intelligence through vigorous application of Cartesian rationalism to theology and science fascinated the young student in 1843 as he read the Conversations chr~tiennes and the Recherche de la Vdritd. He eagerly believed that reason leads one to knowledge of God, that the search for Truth is the search for God. Thus, equating the Diety to Truth and retaining his belief in a providence evident in immutable natural law, Renan continued to accept the Catholic dogma, the Bible and revealed truth in a "general sense," as he says in his Souvenirs. After Renan's first soul-shattering year of philosophy Malebranche still stood alongside Pascal and Bossuet as a model of piety, as a "grand esprit," a profound intelligence capable of remaining genuinely Christian, a powerful thinker "qui dit sa messe route sa vie." a He appeared as one solution to Renan's own growing spiritual problem, for Malebranche's example seemed a way of retaining intellectual independence without leaving the Church. Here was a priest, Renan thought, who, in a time of steadily increasing ecclesiastical authority, had been able to live "peacefully" even as a member of a religious congregation without... (shrink)

It is well known that Augustine, Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas participated in a tradition of philosophical theology which determined God to be simple, perfect, immutable and timelessly eternal. Within the parameters of such an Hellenic understanding of the divine nature, they sought a clarification of one of the fundamental teachings of their Christian faith, the doctrine of the Trinity. These classical theists were not dogmatists, naively unreflective about the very possibility of their project. Aquinas, for instance, explicitly worried about and (...) fought to dispel the seeming contradiction between the philosophical requirement of divine simplicity and the creedal insistence on a threefold personhood in God. 1 Nevertheless, doubts abound. Philosophers otherwise friendly to Classical Theism still remain unsure about the coherence of affirming a God that is at once absolutely simple and triune. 2 A less friendly critic has even suggested that the theory of divine simplicity pressured Augustine and his medieval followers away from recognizing that real complexity within the life of God which Trinitarianism expresses. 3. (shrink)

The concept of divine agency is central to the narrative traditions inherited by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The scriptures of the Abrahamic religions include repeated references to the intentional actions and intentional outcomes of the actions of God. For instance, in the “Song of Moses” (Exodus 15:1-18), Moses celebrates the freedom of the Hebrews from bondage, declaring that Yahweh is “awesome in splendor, doing wonders” (5:11 NRSV). Alongside the picture of God as an agent who performs actions is a conception (...) of God that developed over the centuries as a simple, immutable, impassable, timelessly eternal being. To many philosophers and theologians, this conception of God as a being who exists in a durationless eternity is inconsistent with the way God is characterized in the scriptures, viz., as an agent who acts in time, often in direct response to the actions of other agents. In this paper, I will assume that if the God of Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism exists, then God is an agent who has performed intentional actions. I will argue that if God is such an agent, then God cannot exist outside of time.1 This is because of how.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dei Filius IV:On the Development of DogmaAndrew MeszarosIntroductionHistorically, it is indisputable that the intention of the latter part of chapter 4 of Dei Filius was to restate the substantial immutability of the deposit of faith, not for the sake of rejecting doctrinal development, but for the sake of establishing parameters for a certain profectus fidei—progress or development in the faith—which no Catholic theologian doubted, not even nineteenth-century neo-Scholastics. (...) Then-contemporary (e.g., John Henry Newman and the Tübingen school) and subsequent (e.g., Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac) theologians' theories that were more thoroughly worked out presupposed this immutability.The argument here is simple: Dei Filius's teaching on the immutability of dogma not only did serve as the necessary foundation for any sound (i.e., Catholic) theory of doctrinal development, but continues to do so. While the teaching of Dei Filius itself is limited and incomplete, it is essential. Furthermore, its key feature of dogmatic immutability is not compromised by even the most dramatic of doctrinal developments.To establish the ongoing relevance of Dei Filius for contemporary discussions on doctrinal development, I will first draw out certain key similarities between the nineteenth-century, modernist, and contemporary contexts. This will be followed by a presentation of the relevant portions of Dei Filius. Finally, in the longest section, I will discuss what is at stake in the teaching of Dei Filius and offer some different examples of how doctrines develop in ways that uphold the fundamental-theological principle laid out [End Page 909] in Dei Filius: namely, that all doctrinal development is homogenous with, or in continuity with, the deposit of faith.Anton Günther and Theology TodayWe can identify two major factors that led to the Vatican Council having to address dogmatic development. The first, and perhaps most important, factor is the implication that Anton Günther's (1783–1863) understanding of faith and reason had on dogma and its immutability. The second factor is simply the fact that, in the midst of these pervasive philosophical and theological disputes over faith and reason, Pius IX not only managed to define the Immaculate Conception as dogma, but did so by papal definition: the 1854 definition was the freshest example of what would later be defined in 1870.1 A brief examination of the thought of Günther will help us better understand why the paragraph on development (i.e., the immutability and progress of dogma) pertains to the faith–reason relationship and, hence, appears in the fourth chapter. 2Günther's major concern is a noble one: namely, to respond to the Kantian critique of supernatural religion. To do so, he sees it as necessary not only to defend rationally but also to explain rationally—according to the philosophical systems of Schelling and Hegel—Christian dogma. Günther is no brash and pure rationalist. He believes in the history of supernatural revelation. He acknowledges that reason alone could never discover supernaturally revealed truths; but, as a so-called semi-rationalist, he believes that, once made known to it, reason can then penetrate and, indeed, prove these revealed truths.3 [End Page 910]But if revealed mysteries are discoverable by human reason, then those same mysteries have to be interpreted in such a way that is, indeed, within the reach of reason using its proper resources.4 Not Scholasticism but German idealism—especially its category of self-consciousness—was Günther's vehicle for giving an account of the faith. Such a re-interpretation of Christian dogma according idealism's categories naturally alters the original understanding of that dogma. But for Günther, this reinterpretation is necessary if revelation is to be accessible to reason.So, for example, because modern psychology cannot make sense of a distinction between "person" and "nature" that is not coterminous, we must conclude, against Ephesus, that Christ is in fact a unity of two persons. Nor, for that matter, is the human person a composite of body and soul as defined by the Council of Vienne (1311–1312). Because God is self-conscious spirit, there is a process of trebling in God that tends toward... (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard sought to clarify what it means to be a Christian. He concluded that a one-on-one relationship with God is required, to encounter the "Absolute Paradox," defined as an immutable being entering into and transforming human history. Kierkegaard's dim view of a systematic Christian theology includes a preoccupation with theological exposition that distracts from the essential task of achieving a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Alternatively, Paul Tillich's theology is based on a triadic relationship of being, nonbeing and Being-Itself, (...) a doctrine of symbols, and a reinterpretation of the Incarnation. It correlates a culture's questions and concerns with the Christian message to certain criteria of acceptability that, to Tillich, must satisfy the "Protestant Principle," stipulating that a theological system both restates the present-time Christian message and acknowledges that this restatement cannot be the definitive, ultimate expression of that message. Theology on Trial presents and assesses whether, and to what degree, Tillich's theology satisfies his own criteria of acceptability. An acceptable theology must be logically consistent and free of equivocation. The concluding section of the book examines the views of each author from the standpoint of the other. (shrink)

The article uses typological understanding of the Lord's Supper to analyze Old Testament text. Intertextual hermeneutics, which connects the lexical units of various parts of texts for comprehensive understanding allowed to see an echo of the Eucharist in Old Testament. One of the most expressive prototypes or typos of the Lord's Supper in the Old Testament is the idea of the Covenants and changing of the covenants. The author analyzes the concept of testament and all cases of using this term (...) in Old Testament texts, and concludes that the word “berith” in the biblical text cannot be identified only with the concept of contract, agreement or union. Also, it cannot be identified only with the concept of law, command or statute. The Testament should be taken holistically, combining different meanings of this concept. In this way, the “berith” describes the idea of a specific agreement, which has the character of a bloody decree. Therefore, on the basis of biblical ideas, the concept of a covenant in a broad sense can be presented as a relationship between God and people, which can be described as a God-initiated contract of a personal-corporate nature, which provides for mutual obligations. This kind of relationship is characterized by a fixed immutability and is accompanied by signs, evidence and a special memory procedure. Therefore, in the Old Testament period, we can confidently talk only about the Covenant with Noah, Abraham and Moses, who were revealed and showed their inner, spiritual essence in the New Testament of Jesus Christ. Only in these cases did the signs of covenant relations in the narrow sense be revealed, namely: God's initiative, personal-corporate relations, the invariability and obligatory commemorativeness are caused. Other ancient covenants do not contain a complete religious component and are not eucharistic prototypes. An important sign of the typos of the Lord's Supper in the Old Testament is the blood of the covenant. All covenants were accompanied by the shedding of sacrificial blood, which indicated the sacrifice of Christ and its echo in the Eucharistic cup. This emphasizes the difference between “berith” as a covenant and “berith” as a commandment or statute. Bloodless covenant are not testaments in the full biblical sense of the word. The idea of a testament as a bloodline expresses the highest seriousness of mutual testamentary obligations. That is, a Testament is an inviolable contract, the non-fulfillment of which threatens death. An additional feature of the testament, as shown in the article, was the theophanic Presence. It manifested itself not only at the time of the covenant, but also in an invisible way throughout its validity. The establishment of a covenant relationship has always been associated with theophany and could not have been otherwise, because the covenant is always personal, so God considered it necessary to show a personal presence at this crucial time. The author proves that in all pre-Christian covenants there is a single prototype line that was revealed in Jesus Christ. By the faith and merit of the ancestor, his descendants enter into the covenant and enjoy the benefits and blessings of their predecessor, as well as inherit all his obligations to God. The people of the New Testament enjoy all the benefits and advantages not because of their own merits, but only because of the merits of Jesus. The sign of entering into the Covenant of Jesus is water baptism, which, as an external action, plays the role of a spiritual sign that indicates spiritual circumcision as a clipping of all sins. Thus, the intertextual analysis of the New Testament and Old Testament texts revealed the typos of Lord's Supper and shows the Christ as a single one, who determines the conditions of the covenants and makes it valid. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 558-559 [Access article in PDF] Stephen Gaukroger. Descartes' System of Natural Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. viii + 258. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $22.00. Stephen Gaukroger, author of a definitive biography of Descartes, has now written an excellent account of Descartes's natural philosophy as presented in his Principia philosophiae. Gaukroger claims that the roots of modernity lay in the (...) philosophies of Francis Bacon and René Descartes, both of whom regarded natural philosophy, rather than either moral philosophy or metaphysics, as the core of the philosophical enterprise. Whereas Bacon developed his ideas from a background steeped in the writings of the Renaissance humanists who emphasized moral philosophy, Descartes developed his ideas in the context of Scholastic philosophy, particularly the textbooks of the Jesuits that he had encountered at La Flèche and that located the foundations of philosophy in metaphysics.Regarding the unpublished early works, Le monde and L'homme, as suppressed parts of Descartes's mature project and taking seriously Descartes's stated intention of dealing with living things and humans along with the physical world in his natural philosophy, Gaukroger presents a detailed account of this "complete" version of the Principia philosophiae. In a series of six chapters, he explicates Descartes's views on the principles of knowledge, the principles of material objects, the visible universe, the Earth, living things, and man. In addition to Le monde and L'homme, Gaukroger draws on Les Passions de l'âme as an important source for Descartes's views on human nature.Gaukroger situates Descartes's natural philosophy in the context of the Scholastic textbook tradition in a chapter preceding his account of the Principa philosophiae. He delves into the history of medieval universities, the place of natural philosophy in the medieval curriculum, and the changing relationship between metaphysics and natural philosophy, particularly after the Condemnations of 1277. Difficulties in reconciling Aristotelian natural philosophy and Christian theology, which had been formulated in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics, continued into the sixteenth century and provided the immediate background to the Jesuit commentaries and textbooks to which Descartes was exposed as a student. In these works, Jesuit philosophers attempted to derive a coherently unified Christian Aristotelianism from first principles. Gaukroger reminds us that Descartes's Principia philosophiae was a deliberate attempt to replace these Jesuit textbooks with one based on mechanistic principles.Despite the strength of Gaukroger's book as a contextualized study of a major philosophical figure who is frequently treated in an entirely ahistorical way, the book is not without its problems. The main problem is one that plagues many studies of Descartes (and other canonical figures in the history of philosophy), to wit, the presumption that he is somehow unique. For example, Gaukroger writes at length about Descartes's views about the differences between animals and humans with regard to cognition, arguing that Descartes did not consider animals to be automata because they lack rational souls but rather that they actually experience some but not all of the more abstract or reflexive forms of cognition usually ascribed to humans. Gaukroger does not mention the fact that many other early modern philosophers held a view like this. For example, Descartes's contemporary and fellow mechanical philosopher Pierre Gassendi claimed that animals could know universals, as when a dog recognizes that it is a human that is approaching, but differ from humans in not being capable of contemplating the nature of universality per se. Descartes was part of a community of thinkers concerned with similar problems, and his natural philosophy can be illuminated by viewing him in that context as well as against the backdrop of Scholasticism.Gaukroger underplays the significance of theology for Descartes's philosophy. Although he discusses how God's attributes, especially immutability, provide the basis for Descartes's laws of motion, he does not explore the specific aspects of Descartes's theological presuppositions and the way they influenced his entire natural philosophical project. Gaukroger repeats the received view that "One of the principal tasks of a mechanistic natural philosophy... (shrink)

In medieval texts the term ius naturale can mean either natural law or natural right; for the latter sense see the article Natural Rights ”. Ius naturale in the former sense, and also lex naturalis, mean the universal and immutable law to which the laws of human legislators, the customs of particular communities and the actions of individuals ought to conform. It is equivalent to morality thought of as a system of law. It is called “natural” either (a) because it (...) is taught by natural instinct, i.e. some capacity innate in human beings, or (b) because it is accessible to “natural reason”, i.e. to personal reflection independent of any special revelation from God (such as the Christian faith claims to be) and independent of the moral authority of other human beings; or for both reasons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Job, Boethius, and Epic TruthJames G. WilliamsJob, Boethius, and Epic Truth, by Ann W. Anstell; xiii & 240pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, $32.95.Ann Anstell succeeds in showing that the book of Job and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy served as vehicles for the transmission and transformation of heroic poetry through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. The style is sometimes forbidding for the nonspecialist because of dry (...) descriptions of various texts and the extensive quotation of Latin without translation. There are certain sections, however, where the author is clearly passionately engaged in the subject and consequently comes across much more clearly and vividly to the reader; this is especially true of part of the discussion of Gregory’s Moralia in Job and the chapter on “Boethian Lovers,” particularly the treatment of Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum.The thesis and argument of the book are of great potential interest both to literary critics and literary historians and to philosophers and historians of philosophy. The “epic truth” of the title is a bridge between literary genre and transmission and the kind of philosophy concerned with concepts of self and [End Page 379] world. Anstell argues that the conventional distinctions between classical epic and medieval romance tend to overlook the historical continuity between the two genres. “The Middle Ages interpreted classical epic in a way that entailed its subsequent imitation in romance” (p. 212). Romance makes explicit what epic is implicitly about, namely a way or journey to self-knowledge.Boethius, writing about 525 as a prisoner, draws upon Virgil’s Georgics and Stoic and Neoplatonic writings. Lady Philosophy appears to him and educes him into recollection of his own true being through remembering the heroes of the past. He thus recognizes his own mortality and passions, the importance of reason, and the reality of his immortal soul. This journey to concrete awareness of the immortal soul is a key step towards the epic truth that emerged in Christian thinking, but in Boethius the centrality of Christ as Logos-Redeemer does not come into view. It does, however, in the tradition of reading and interpreting Job.Through his meditations and moral instructions on Job, Gregory (Pope, 590–604) used the precedent of Boethius’ Consolation to draw the classical form of the vir, the heroic mortal and the model of virtus, virtue, into the Christian configuration of sainthood. Using a Christian form of allegory, the “other-speaking” of a text that articulates its deeper structure and truth, Gregory portrays Job as a man of fortitude, courage, and patience whose suffering becomes the occasion truly to understand that his immutable soul is not the prisoner of the body that is sick and dying. “Job’s human nature, perfected in wisdom and power through suffering, reflects Christ’s own divine humanity, and far surpasses in heroic virtue the excellence of even an allegorized Aeneas” (p. 91).These two works, then, are the chief exemplars of the “heroic poetry” of the Middle Ages, which joined the literatures commonly designated as “epic” and “romance.” This medieval synthesis insisted on figural or allegorical continuity with classical antiquity but departed formally from classical literary conventions. Job and Boethius provided critical authorization for these tendencies. Job as Christ-figure was the model for legends of the saints, while the Consolation influenced the romance literature that featured stages of spiritual growth; this literature “extended into a history of personal salvation by assimilating the lover’s sufferings to those of Job and Christ” (p. 214). These two paradigmatic works, which provided models of the stable saint as Christ-figure and the emotional pilgrim on a spiritual journey, began to dissolve in the Renaissance. Boethius’s Consolation ceased to be understood in terms of the epic and Job came to be seen as a drama and a tragedy. Thus the author concludes that “the virtues... the Middle Ages attributed to Job, especially wisdom and fortitude, belong no longer to man but to God” (p. 215). Human beings must make their way in an inconstant, puzzling world separated from God.James G. WilliamsSyracuse UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The studies contained in this volume range widely and include the following: K. Bormann, on the concept of truth and the doctrine concerning Nous in Aristotle and some of his commentators; K. Jacobi, on "good" and "evil" and their opposition in Aristotle, some Aristotelian commentators, and Thomas Aquinas; P.-B. Lüttringhaus, on God, freedom, and necessity in Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy; G. Vuillemin-Diem, a long study concerning William of Moerbeke's translation into Latin of Aristotle's Metaphysics; R. Wielockx, on Godfrey of Fontaines (...) as a witness in support of the authenticity of Albert the Great's Summa theologiae; R. Hissette, on Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas and the Paris Condemnation of 1277; A. Zimmermann, on Thomas Aquinas's De veritate, qu. 1; C. Kopp, an edition and study of the fallaciae breves contained in a British Museum manuscript; I. Craemer-Ruegenberg, a study on the terminatio materiae primae as found in a commentary on Aristotle's Physics dating from the second half of the fourteenth century; H. G. Senger, a study of a question by Lambert of Heerenberg, concerning whether Aristotle's soul was saved. Limitations of space will force me to confine my remarks to only a few of these carefully researched investigations. In the first study Bormann seeks to determine Aristotle's views concerning the ultimate ground for universally valid propositions and Aristotle's justification for his belief that certain of these are valid for all men and at all times in spite of the differences in human language. This quickly leads him to consider Aristotle's views concerning mind as active and mind as passive, especially as found in De anima III, 5. Mind as active is not to be identified with Aristotle's Unmoved Mover of Metaphysics XII; it unites with the soul of the individual man during the latter's lifetime, is free from all potentiality, is never acted upon, and exists in separation from the individual human being with the death of the latter. Mind as passive passes away with the individual soul when a particular man dies. Bormann then examines subsequent efforts to clarify Aristotle's thought concerning this by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, John Philoponus, Averroes, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. Lüttringhaus introduces his discussion of Boethius's views on God, freedom, and necessity by drawing an interesting contrast between freedom as found in the One of Plotinus and freedom in Boethius. Given his Christian Neoplatonism, Boethius must reconcile human freedom with an omnipotent and omniscient God. His efforts to do so in the Consolatio are then carefully analyzed by Lüttringhaus. As Lüttringhaus points out, Boethius's distinction between absolute necessity and hypothetical necessity in Bk. V is crucial for his defense of human freedom, along with his distinction between divine eternity and human temporality. G. Vuillemin-Diem's study offers new and valuable information concerning Moerbeke's revision and translation of the Metaphysics. Contrary to the long held view that Moerbeke had only newly translated one book and had simply revised an earlier translation for the others, she shows that he newly translated Bks. XI, XIII, and XIV. Moreover, she reveals that a long overlooked surviving Greek manuscript may have served as the model for Morebeke's revision and translation, either directly or through a copy. R. Wielockx turns to three manuscripts from Godfrey of Fontaines' library which still survive in order to cast some new light on the disputed authenticity of Albert the Great's Summa theologiae. The manuscripts contain a number of excerpts taken from the first part of Albert's Summa; many of those contained in the two last-mentioned manuscripts are explicitly attributed to Albert by Godfrey's own hand, according to Wielockx. Given this and the relatively early dating Wielockx has established for the copying of these excerpts into the manuscripts in question, he has here discovered a valuable external and positive indication pointing to the authenticity of at least this earlier part of Albert's Summa. Having already published an important book in 1977 on the Paris Condemnation of 1277, R. Hissette here returns to the disputed issue whether some of these condemned propositions were directly aimed at Thomas Aquinas or at Albert the Great. Hissette acknowledges that a number of positions held by Aquinas and by Albert were in fact touched on by various condemned propositions. He also notes that the authors of the decree itself must have known that the condemned propositions were held by Aquinas and by various Masters from the Arts Faculty at Paris. But given the statement in the prologue of the decree to this effect that it was aimed at members of the Arts Faculty, Hissette continues to deny that either Thomas or Albert was a direct target of this condemnation; they were only indirectly implicated. Some may wonder whether this distinction defended by Hissette is real or only verbal. In his careful analysis of Thomas's De veritate, 1, 6, Zimmermann draws some interesting comparisons and contrasts between Thomas's views concerning whether any created truth is immutable and Anselm's De veritate, on the one hand, and Bertrand Russell's "Truth and Falsity," on the other.--John F. Wippel, The Catholic University of America. (shrink)

These six lectures from the twentyfirst Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures, an annual series exploring various dimensions of Roman life, provide an invaluable reflection on the relationship, Pelikan’s “counterpoint,” between Genesis and the Timaeus down through the ages. How did the only Platonic dialogue known in its entirety during the Middle Ages influence Judaeo-Christian cosmology? Pelikan chooses to answer this question by first discussing “Classical Rome: ‘Description of the Universe as Philosophy’” and Lucretius’ theological and literary contributions to the history of (...) cosmogonic speculation. In rejecting divine causality, Lucretius’ atomism made room for natural science and for a teleology without explicit reference to direct heavenly agency. Talk of the divine was thus interpreted apophatically and the poetry of de Rerum Natura allowed the truths of what remains for us a “likely story” to be conveyed without a historical or anthropomorphic literalness. Lucretius’ indebtedness to Epicurean materialism is obvious and as Pelikan stresses, “it was from Athens that classical Rome learned to think philosophically about cosmogony”. In “Athens: Geneseôs Archê as ‘The Principle of Becoming’,” Pelikan poses the fundamental questions: Why was the cosmos created? And according to what model had it been created? Plato’s answer is of course that the world of becoming is an image of an immutable and perfect model. This patterning is due to God as Goodness and his willing that all things act together for a purpose. Chapter 3 continues this inquiry with “Jerusalem: Genesis as a ‘Likely Account’ of One God Almighty Maker.” Here Pelikan focuses in on Jerusalem’s contribution of the imago Dei. While the Timaeus defines “the terms of the counterpoint,” Genesis sets “the outline and sequence” of creation, the crowning achievement of which is the rational and sovereign human person. Therefore, whereas Plato may have understood the entire universe to be in God’s image, Moses reserved this exalted position for humanity alone, a dignity Pelikan treats in his discussion of free moral choice. (shrink)