Down the rabbit hole -- Something to consider -- (W)hole in the all -- Now playing -- Collapsing polarities -- An allegory for our time -- Living as the void -- A cosmic conversation -- An awakening?

Although Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines disagree with each other profoundly over the relationship between the intellect and the will, they all think that someone who sees God must also love him in the ordinary course of events. However, Godfrey rejects a central thesis argued for by both Henry and Giles, namely that by God’s absolute power there could be such vision without love. The debate is not about the ability to freely reject or at (...) least refrain from willing complete happiness, but about the connection between the known object and the will’s act. Godfrey’s discussion is an occasion for him to criticize Giles’ idiosyncratic view that an elicited act of love for the known object is necessary for every act of knowing, and Henry’s development of the view that the known object is merely a sine qua non cause of an act of love. In his response, Godfrey defends a thesis that later becomes widespread, namely that the known object is an efficient cause of love. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A New Approach to the Natural Desire to See GodFrancis Bethel O.S.B.We read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God. … Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for" (§27). We seek the true and the good, and God is absolute Truth and (...) Goodness. Does this mean that the desire for truth and happiness is a direct ordering to God? How to understand this desire in relation to the supernatural desire for God?I propose in the following pages to explore the intellectual side of our aptitude for God around St. Thomas's theme of the natural desire to see him. We can situate the various views on this subject according to two main lines, both of which have their difficulties. One group holds that, since our faculties are innately ordered to their proportionate and therefore limited objects, they cannot also be ordered to the Beatific Vision of the infinite God. The other position affirms that, since creatures do not satisfy us, our spiritual faculties must somehow be innately directed to that Vision. In the first case one needs to counterbalance by showing how grace builds on nature, how the Vision fulfills our nature. In the second, one has to make clear how one can still preserve the distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders.1 [End Page 753]I will call the "elicited-desire position" the opinion that a direct order to the Vision arises only after one becomes aware of God's existence, and "natural-appetite position" the stand that intrinsic principles of our spiritual faculties are ordered to the Vision.2 St. Thomas did not use these terms [End Page 754] here and did not turn his attention especially toward that distinction; some therefore prefer not to resort to them for fear of obscuring St. Thomas's perspective. Nevertheless, I adopt them because that is where the question lies in the current debate.St. Thomas in fact would seem to have a foot on each side of the debate. In some texts, especially when arguing in favor of the Vision, he presents a deep, natural élan in that direction. In others, when he is manifesting that we need grace to enter the supernatural order, he explains that we can have no natural movement toward that order. So, as everyone remarks, we have a second problem: what exactly is the thought of the master, of the guide through whom we need to reflect on the natural desire?Why take up again this so embattled issue? For the good reason that any better glimpse of the beautiful mystery of man in his relation to God is fruitful for our spiritual life and contemplation, for philosophy and theology. To make headway, I think that we need to embrace the question more largely, take it up from its foundations by re-immersing it in St. Thomas's metaphysics. I differ from most others partly because I study the dynamism of the intellect, not the will. I disagree with the elicited-desire position, for I judge that the intellect innately surpasses its object toward God. I differ also from many who hold the natural-appetite position in that I do not conceive the intellectual appetite as oriented toward something supernatural; I do not consider God to be included in our natural intellect's object.In the first part, to manifest the need of a fresh approach, I will examine how well the two fundamental positions measure up to the Church's and St. Thomas's teachings on the relationship between nature and grace. We will see that St. Thomas teaches and the Church indicates that God is not the direct, formal object or term of a natural faculty and yet our intellect innately tends beyond its natural object toward God.In the second part, I will introduce new texts of St. Thomas that study in metaphysical terms the relation of our intellect to God. We will find that the fact that the intellect's object is being (ens)—in the sense of... (shrink)

"In The Givenness of Desire, Randall S. Rosenberg examines the human desire for God through the lens of Lonergan's "concrete subjectivity." Rosenberg engages and integrates two major scholarly developments: the tension between Neo-Thomists and scholars of Henri de Lubac over our natural desire to see God and the theological appropriation of the mimetic theory of René Girard, with an emphasis on the saints as models of desire. With Lonergan as an integrating thread, the author engages a variety of thinkers, including (...) Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean-Luc Marion, René Girard, James Alison, Lawrence Feingold, John Milbank, among others. The theme of concrete subjectivity helps to resist the tendency of equating too easily the natural desire for being with the natural desire for God without at the same time acknowledging the widespread distortion of desire found in the consumer culture that infects contemporary life. The Givenness of Desire investigates our paradoxical desire for God that is rooted in both the natural and supernatural."--. (shrink)

This study develops a concept of “justificatory respect” and applies it to a recent theistic response to contemporary presentations ofatheism and agnosticism. The related concepts of reflexive justificatory respect (applying to one’s own positions) and of an associated epistemic virtue as necessary but not sufficient conditions for theists and unbelievers to engage one another in successful dialogical inquiry are also developed. Novak’s book signally fails to exercise both kinds of respect. His failures serve to partially delineate the condition for success (...) in the project he desiderates. They also highlight the special qualifications of agnostics for engaging in that project. (shrink)

The beatific vision plays a prominent role in the history of Christian ethics. Reformed ethics has an ambiguous relationship to this history, on two counts. First, it offers some qualified critiques of the role of vision in ordering ethical understanding, and second, on some accounts, Reformed ethics shares some responsibility for the loss of transcendence in the modern world, and the narrowing of the ethical field that has resulted from this loss. This essay argues that the vision of God in (...) John Calvin’s understanding of the Christian life offers resources to defend a Reformed ethics from some recent detractors. Further, it provides a constructive contrast with the role of eschatology in a prominent strand of 20th century ethics. This argument is sustained through a close reading of Calvin’s biblical commentaries on the role of theophanies and the promise of the vision of God, and of Book III, chapters 6-10 of the Institutes. (shrink)

In this article, I would like to present a brief overview of Aquinas’s philosophy of mind. I try to express the cognitive processes that this model of the mind describes in more modern terminology (e.g., I interpret ‘an image’ [phantasm] as the binding effect of monomodal representations of a perceived object). Characteristic of this model is the postulation, in the case of the human mind, of intellectual abstraction leading to concepts, which requires assuming the existence of the intellect in its (...) active and passive aspects. In this context, a metaphysical conclusion can be drawn about the immortal nature of this intellect, according to Thomas. On the other hand, this model of the mind is not, to all appearances, a variant of Platonic-Cartesian dualism – Aquinas makes several arguments against dualism understood in this way, at least one of which was still raised by (non-Thomistic) critics of Descartes. In addition, Thomas points to the developmental aspect of the human mind and also attempts to describe the possible functioning of the intellect after death. (shrink)

Playing on the various meanings of Seeing Through God, John Llewelyn explores the act of looking in the wake of the death of the transcendent God of metaphysics. Taking up strategies developed by the Western sciences for seeing and observing, he finds that the so-called tough-minded practices of the physical sciences are very much at home with the so-called tender-minded practices of Eastern religions. Instead of opposing East and West, Llewelyn thinks that blending these spheres leads to a (...) better understanding of aesthetic experience and imagination. In this blending, he presents a phenomenological description of the imagination and the ethical and religious dimensions of the act of imagining. Seeing Through God touches on themes of salvation, the preservation of the environment, and the role of God in our temptation to dishonor the earth. This unique book presents Llewelyn as one of the leading interpreters of the environmental phenomenology movement. (shrink)

I begin this review with a brief overview of the book itself, followed by a discussion of its pedagogical usefulness as a text in Philosophy of Sport and Philosophy of Religion courses. I then move on to discuss a few points in the book that I take to be especially interesting and/or problematic from a philosophical point of view.

In Seeing Ourselves, philosopher and neuroscientist Raymond Tallis goes in search of what kind of beings we are, and where we might find meaning in our lives. Showcasing a remarkably detailed engagement with a huge range of disciplines, Tallis shows the unique nature of human consciousness.

This creates a Christian theology of wisdom for the present day, in discussion with two sets of conversation-partners: The writers of the 'wisdom literature' in ancient Israel and the Jewish community in Alexandria; and the philosophers and thinkers of the late-modern age, among them Derrida, Levinas, Kristeva, Ricoeur, and Arendt.

God speaks. Hearing God. Two phrases of two words each are perhaps the most critical, misunderstood and even abused words in the existence of the Church and in particular for evangelicals. ‘I think God said’ and ‘I think God is saying’ are the most sagacious, precise, truthful and appropriate manner of responding to the conviction that God speaks and for shared engaging enriched discourse on what God says to ensure He is heard. The Bible must never be seen and interpreted (...) only as a handbook, instruction or rules book of propositional information, doctrine and description. Rather it is an astonishing and amazing book full of God’s wisdom for all people in all their situatedness. Peter Enns pointed out that the Bible must be seen as a source of godly wisdom to be explored, pondered, deliberated, and put into action. It is not a book about a God ‘mainly interested in whether we’ve read and understood the fine print; if not, God has no recourse but to punish us. Rather, I would beseech all Christians of all epochs to see it as a book full of wisdom relevant for each situatedness and ‘allows us to see God as a good parent, full of grace, love, and patience - the very character traits we value in earthly parents and that the people of God are to exemplify. Wisdom heals us to see God as God is.’ If there is any merit in this essay and conclusion of mine, then perhaps God can strike a straight blow with a very crooked stick. (shrink)

In De ciuitate Dei (ciu.), Augustine famously calls people with disabilities created on purpose by an absolutely competent God (16.8). On the whole, however, Augustine's views on disabilities in ciu. are often misunderstood. The statement about the creation of people with disabilities is part of a discussion of the theodicy question that implies that the goodness of people with disabilities is not open to experience and must be accepted on faith. This negative background assumption results from Augustine's view that dignity (...) emerges from the embodied beauty, rationality, and utility of the ensouled body (22). Augustine gives several examples of how disabilities reduce dignity along with these dimensions, as “deformity defeats beauty” (19.4). In eternal salvation, however, disabilities will be removed (22). Martyrs will perhaps retain scars in heaven, but these particular scars will be of such a kind that there is “not deformitas in them, but dignitas” (22.19). If in the resurrection for eternal life God removes congenital disabilities that God created so competently, what is their purpose in the first place? Augustine regards disabilities as temporal embodied warnings of eternal corporeal punishment (21.8). As a concluding perspective, the alternative view of disabilities by the Apostle Paul will be considered. (shrink)

God's character remains one of the big mysteries in Supernatural. We certainly see God's impact on the world, and occasionally, we're told he has miraculously interceded on behalf of the Winchesters or Castiel. Spinoza said, ”The knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge.“ But after concluding that God exists, Spinoza concludes that evil does not. Ironically, while many thought of Spinoza as the Devil, he denied the Devil's existence. As Supernatural illustrates, loving relationships don't need to be mutually beneficial; one (...) person may even risk his life to save another person he loves. Often philosophical, the ending scene may hold the key to understanding God in Supernatural. The Philosopher John Locke argued that the idea of redemption could be arrived at in principle by the same sort of reasoning that arrives at the idea of God. (shrink)

Believing in God requires not only a leap of faith but also an extension of people’s normal capacity to perceive the minds of others. Usually, people perceive minds of all kinds by trying to understand their conscious experience (what it is like to be them) and their agency (what they can do). Although humans are perceived to have both agency and experience, humans appear to see God as possessing agency, but not experience. God’s unique mind is due, the authors suggest, (...) to the uniquely moral role He occupies. In this article, the authors propose that God is seen as the ultimate moral agent, the entity people blame and praise when they receive anomalous harm and help. Support for this proposition comes from research on mind perception, morality, and moral typecasting. Interestingly, although people perceive God as the author of salvation, suffering seems to evoke even more attributions to the divine. (shrink)

This paper attempts to illuminate and interpret the contradictory portrait of God as both seen and unseen in the Torah. Thus Moses is commanded not to look on the face of God yet also praised for having spoken to God “face to face". We seek ways to reconcile the contradictory portraits of God through the use of the term “doubled-mindedness” in the theology of Jerome Gellman, in the logic of “thirdness” in C.S. Peirce’s semiotics, and in the use of both (...) particle and wave models in Einstein’s physics of light. The paper concludes by disusing the practical consequences of theological double-mindedness for the religious life and the philosophical meaning of redemption as the time when the contradiction of the unseen and seen God is resolved. (shrink)

Many theists believe that God is continuously acting to sustain the universe in existence. One way of understanding this act of sustenance is to see God as actually creating the universe anew at each moment. This paper argues against the coherence of this view by drawing out some of its consequences. I argue that the re-creationist must deny the causal efficacy of created f things, as well as the identity of things across time. Most problematically, I argue that re-creationism ultimately (...) denies the reality of time itself. (shrink)

God and Goodness takes the experience of value as a starting point for natural theology. Mark Wynn argues that theism offers our best understanding of the goodness of the world, especially its beauty and openness to the development of richer and more complex material forms. We also see that the world's goodness calls for a moral response: commitment to the goodness of the world represents a natural extension of the trust to which we aspire in our dealings with human beings.

The unsettling language of blood has been invoked throughout the history of Christianity. But until now there has been no truly sustained treatment of how Christians use blood to think with. Eugene F. Rogers Jr. discusses in his much-anticipated new book the sheer, surprising strangeness of Christian blood-talk, exploring the many and varied ways in which it offers a language where Christians cooperate, sacrifice, grow and disagree. He asks too how it is that blood-talk dominates when other explanations would do, (...) and how blood seeps into places where it seems hardly to belong. Reaching beyond academic disputes, to consider how religious debates fuel civil ones, he shows that it is not only theologians or clergy who engage in blood-talk, but also lawmakers, judges, generals, doctors and voters at large. Religious arguments have significant societal consequences, Rogers contends; and for that reason secular citizens must do their best to understand them. (shrink)

Finding the heart of God -- Finding God's heart -- Have you seen God's face? -- Why does God sing? -- Searching God's mind -- When God is silent -- Did you know God thinks about you? -- God has unique plans for every unsaved person -- God remembers no longer -- Did you know God reads and writes? -- The unknowable of God -- God whispers -- DoesGod have a nose? -- Wax in God's ears -- God loves to (...) provide for our needs -- God's eyes see all -- What God hates -- God heals protectively -- A laughing God -- A tired Jesus -- What angers God? -- God is love -- The holiness of God -- God is good -- God is person -- God is the all-powerful God -- God is all-knowing -- God is everywhere present -- God is spirit -- God does not change -- The Trinity three in one. (shrink)

My goal in this chapter is to consider the connection between an agent’s moral character and those actions that she is capable of freely performing. Most of these connections hold for all moral agents, but my particular focus will be on the specific case of divine agency. That is, I’m primarily interested in the connection between God’s moral character and His exercise of His free agency. As I will argue, even if an agent’s character determines her choices or actions, that (...) doesn’t threaten the agent’s freedom so long as her character is formed in the right way.1 (Or, perhaps more accurately, so long as it’s not formed in the wrong way. And I do not see how God’s character could be formed in such a way that would undermine the exercise of His agency.) I proceed as follows. First, I explore the relationship between what an agent freely chooses to do and her moral character in general. I then address the relationship between God’s character, His reasons, and His freedom, on the assumptions of Perfect Being Theology.2 In the third section, I turn to the compatibility question, and show how an incompatibilist could agree with everything I say in the first two sections. That is, I argue that the considerations to which I appeal regarding divine freedom do not force the Perfect Being theologian to endorse compatibilism (though they also don’t prove incompatibilism). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: “God is a woman” From Mother Goddesses to Classical Theism It's Like This “Defective and misbegotten” “The true mother of life and all things” Mothers Made in the Image of God Notes.

Who are you, God? -- Who made you, God? -- I want to find you, God -- I can't see you, God -- How much do you know, God? -- Where is truth, God? -- The shadow doesn't turn -- The just judge -- The invincible power -- Can I trust you, God? -- The love that will not let us go -- The name above all names.

Children will see how God is a Loving Father who perfectly provides for all he has made.