Category: Trinity and Incarnation
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He Breathed His Last
If you have ever struggled with the one-person-two-natures doctrine, then you may be inclined to agree with Dale Tuggy: Today is when we remember that terrible and wonderful day when our Savior willingly died for us, breathing his last. This whole time, God was not breathing at all. As a divine spirit, God lacks lungs,…
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Intellectual Integrity and the Appeal to Mystery
Bradley Schneider writes, . . . while we're on the subject of divine simplicity, I would be interested in your thoughts on the following dilemma. Suppose you are strongly persuaded by philosophical arguments that, if God exists, God must be simple, i.e., some version of DDS must be true. Otherwise, if God were composite, He…
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Reader Considers Converting to Islam. Would Christian Unitarianism Satisfy his Scruples?
Here is the beginning of the letter he sent me: I've been considering converting to Islam.You've had a big part in this, though I know it won't please you to hear it. Your arguments against the coherency of the Incarnation are hard to get past. My arguments against the Chalcedonian, 'two-natures-one-person' theology of the Incarnation…
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“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…
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Does Omniscience Require Incarnation? Pursuing Some Consequences
Dr. Vito Caiati occasioned in me a new thought the other day: that divine omniscience might require divine incarnation. The gist of the thought is as follows. If God is all-knowing, then he possesses not only all knowledge by description, but also all knowledge by acquaintance. But it is not easy to see how God…
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Must God Become Man to Know the Human Lot?
Vito Caiati, commenting on Good Friday: At the Mercy of a Little Piece of Iron: In yesterday’s Good Friday post, you write, “The fullness of Incarnation requires that the one incarnated experience the worst of embodiment and be tortured to death. For if Christ is to be fully human, in addition to fully divine, he…
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Good Friday: At the Mercy of a Little Piece of Iron
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 75: The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of iron; such is the hum an condition; space and time are the cause of it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite…
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“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…
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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…
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On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion
Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of P. B., vol. 12, part 2, p. 34, #68: A public place is an unnatural environment in which to place oneself mentally or physically in the attitude of true prayer. It is far too intimate, emotional, and personal to be satisfactorily tried anywhere except in solitude. What passes for prayer…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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. . .…
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Amazon Pricing
Bezos and the boys are asking a paltry $3,214.79 for a hardbound copy of The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, but a whopping $34.95 for the same book in paperback. Now I'll grant you that hardbounds are superior to paperbacks in point of longevity, but 100 times better? There is something screwy about…