Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Trinity and Incarnation

  • Incarnation: A Mystical Approach

    A Substack meditation for Christmas Day drawing upon Thomas Aquinas, Juan de la Cruz, and Josef Pieper.

  • Physicalist Christology?

    Notes on Merricks.  Substack latest.

  • Crucifixion as Incarnation in extremis

    In an earlier thread, Vito Caiati  states: Thus, while Christ’s physical suffering is comparable to ours, his emotional suffering is not: He is in a unique and privileged existential position, one that derives from his absolute knowledge of all things, which permits him to die [in horrific] pain but without the terrors of the unknown…

  • Incarnation: A Mystical Approach

    A Christmas Eve Substack meditation that draws upon a mystical and possibly heretical passage from Juan de la Cruz.

  • The Two Natures and the Real Presence: A Note on Frithjof Schuon

     I have been reading Frithjof Schuon off and on since the mid-'70s.  But this is my first weblog entry that mentions him. I don't expect it will be my last. The orthodox, Chalcedonian, view of Christ is that he is at once fully divine and fully human, true God and true man, and thus one…

  • Can a Necessary Being Depend for its Existence on a Necessary Being?

    Brian Bosse raised this question over the phone the other day. This re-post from February 2010 answers it. ………………………….. According to the Athanasian Creed, the Persons of the Trinity, though each of them uncreated and eternal and necessary, are related as follows. The Father is unbegotten.  The Son is begotten by the Father, but not made…

  • Two Natures, One Suppositum

    I forgot where I found this diagram. (HT to Dmitri Dain who after my initial posting e-mailed me the reference.) The diagram is pretty good except insofar as it suggests that the divine nature of Christ is a proper part of the divine nature.     

  • Another Theological Conundrum: Hypostatic Union and the Contingency of the Incarnation

    In the immediately preceding theological thread, Dr. Caiati reminded me of Fr. Thomas Joseph White's The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (CUA Press, 2017). So I cracked open my copy and found some notes from October 2018, one batch of which I will now turn into a weblog entry. 'Hypostatic Union' ". .…

  • A Christian Koan for Christmas Eve

    From my Facebook page, three years ago, today. My writing is uneven in quality. But the Muse was with me below. …………………………..   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…

  • The Characteristic Attitude of the Pyrrhonists

    Benson Mates, The Skeptic Way, Oxford UP, 1996, p. 5: ". . . the characteristic attitude of the Pyrrhonists is one of aporia, of being at a a loss, puzzled, stumped, stymied."  Aporia is not doubt.  Doubt implies understanding, but aporia is a lack of understanding.  The modern skeptic may doubt, but not the ancient skeptic. Connected with…

  • Notes on the Introduction to Michel Henry, Incarnation: A Philosophy of Flesh

    I have Steven Nemes to thank for introducing me to the thought of Michel Henry. I recall as a graduate student in the 'seventies  having seen a big fat tome published in 1973 by Martinus Nijhoff entitled The Essence of Manifestation by one Michel Henry. I may have paged through parts of it back then,…

  • A Mystical Approach to the Incarnation

    I have been, and will continue,  discussing Trinity and Incarnation objectively, that is, in an objectifying manner.  Now what do I mean by that?  Well, with respect to the Trinity, the central conundrum, to put it in a very crude and quick way is this:  How can three things be one thing?  With respect to the…

  • Divine Simplicity and Incarnation

    This from a reader: Jordan Daniel Wood . . . affirms that God does not have possibilities within himself to actualize and thus the Incarnation—God becoming a human being—must in some way [be] actual prior to its historical event; God does not become a human being but in some way already is a human being…

  • If God is Uniquely Unique, How could He be Addressed in Prayer?

    My entry God as Uniquely Unique ended on an aporetic note. I acknowledged the following sort of objection, but had nothing to say in response to it. How could the ontologically simple God be of any religious use to the suffering creature wandering in the desert of the world? "Such an utterly transcendent God as…

  • Water Analogies for the Trinity

    T.O. suggests the following: ‘Divine’ is a mass term, and so when we say “the father the son and the spirit are God”, we are really saying that all three are equally divine or participate in divinity.  I don't quite know what my reader is driving at, but perhaps he has a water analogy in…