Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Christian Doctrine

  • Two Senses of ‘Presupposition’ in Van Til and in General

    Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., p. 279: "Thus the truth of Christianity appears to be the immediately indispensable presupposition of the fruitful study of nature." My gloss: The fruitful study of nature presupposes the truth of Christianity.  It is a fact that we study nature, and it is a fact…

  • Van Til on an Absolutely Certain Proof of Christianity

    Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., p. 381: The best, the only, the absolutely certain proof of the truth of Christianity is that unless its truth be presupposed,there is no proof of anything. Van Til's  claim, to employ some Kantian jargon, is that the truth of Christianity is a condition of…

  • Van Til and Romans 1:18-20

    I tip my hat to David Bagwill for recommending that I read Cornelius Van Til. So I sprang for the fourth edition of The Defense of the Faith, with Oliphint's annotations, P & R Publishing, 2008. Van Til's presuppositionalism is intriguing even if in places preposterous. Having discussed Romans 1:18 a couple of time before…

  • “And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us” (John 1:14)

    Let us meditate this Christmas morning on the sheer audacity of the idea that God would not only enter this world of time and misery, but come into it in the most humble manner possible . . . . Read the rest here. It is a 'sermon' you will not likely hear in any Catholic…

  • A Christian Koan

    Man is godlike and therefore proud.  He becomes even more godlike when he humbles himself. The central thought of Christianity, true or not, is one so repellent to the natural human pride of life that one ought at least to entertain the unlikelihood of its having a merely human origin.  The thought is that God…

  • A Christological and Mariological Query That Leads into the Philosophy of Language

    Theme music: What If God Was One of Us  (just a slob like one of us)? My favorite Oregonian luthier, Dave Bagwill, checks in: Karl White wrote in your post of 12-6-18: "If Jesus is a person of the Godhead then it must hold that his essence is immutable and above contingent change, particularly in…

  • Is Everything in the Bible Literally True?

    Of course not.  If everything in the Bible is literally true, then every sentence in oratio obliqua in the Bible is literally true.  Now the sentence 'There is no God'  occurs in the oblique context, "The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'"  (Psalm 14:1)  So if everything  in the Bible is…

  • Was the Fall Necessary?

    Karl White inquires, Doesn't the classical doctrine of Theism as applied to Christianity require that the temptation in Eden and subsequent Fall were predestined and inescapable? I say this because if Jesus is a person of the Godhead then it must hold that his essence is immutable and above contingent change, particularly in response to…

  • Catholicism as a Literary Affair?

    William Giraldi in Commonweal: Because I want nothing to do with hocus-pocus, because dogma and decrees are closed to real contest, and because corporations make me glum (the Vatican is, among other things, a corporation), Catholicism is for me a literary affair: drama, poetry, myth, tradition. Homilies and hymnals, liturgies and sermons done right, the Benedictus,…

  • More on the Hypostatic Union

    I am very impressed with Thomas Joseph White, OP, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, The Catholic University of America Press, 2017, xiv + 534 pp. It deserves to be called magisterial, the work of a magister, a master.  I am presently working through Chapter One, "The Ontology of the Hypostatic Union." White and…

  • Thomas Joseph White on the Hypostatic Union: Questions

    Vito Caiati writes,  I am struggling, in particular, to understand what [Thomas Joseph] White is proposing with regard to the hypostatic union on pages 82-84 [of The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, The Catholic University of America Press, 2017].  He follows Aquinas in affirming “a substantial union of God and man. . .…

  • The Cross Won, but the Battle Never Ends

    I ended my European tour in June at Rome where all roads are said to lead.  After hours of prayer and meditation in Santa Maria Maggiore, I spent a long time in the vicinity of the Coliseum where I noticed something I had missed on previous visits: The brutal Romans contributed mightily to civilization, but…

  • Is Ora et Labora Enough? Or do Christians Need Leisure Too?

    Paul J. Griffiths maintains a strikingly wrong-headed thesis in an article entitled,  Ora et Labora: Christians Don't Need Leisure.  The Latin translates as "Pray and Work.'  The thesis is in the second paragraph: The deleterious effects of narcissism are evident in the work of many, Christian and otherwise, who advocate leisure as good for us,…

  • The Philosopher and the Christian

    For Vito Caiati ………………….. George W. Bush once referred to Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher, thereby betraying both a failure to grasp what a philosopher is and who Jesus claimed to be. Jesus Christ is not a philosopher.  The philosopher is a mere lover of wisdom.  His love is desirous and needy; it…

  • The Logic of the Incarnation: Response to Fr. Kirby

    I presented the following argument in a response to Dr. Vito Caiati: a. The Second Person of the Trinity and the man Jesus differ property-wise.  b.  Necessarily, for any x, y, if x, y differ property-wise, i.e., differ in respect of even one property, then x, y are numerically different, i.e., not numerically identical.  (Indiscernibility of…