Classical theism and William Lane Craig's theistic personalism
Hi, everyone,
I'm a new member eager to learn from you. My field is computer science. But I earned a BA degree in philosophy and passed two graduate seminars in it. Since I'm a devout Catholic, I'm analytic Thomas, too. So please criticize my argument after I post it.
For now, I'll summarize what I hope to prove: If St. Thomas Aquinas's classical theism is true, Prof. William Lane Craig's theistic personalism causes a vicious infinite regress.
Thanks for your help.
Bill
I'm a new member eager to learn from you. My field is computer science. But I earned a BA degree in philosophy and passed two graduate seminars in it. Since I'm a devout Catholic, I'm analytic Thomas, too. So please criticize my argument after I post it.
For now, I'll summarize what I hope to prove: If St. Thomas Aquinas's classical theism is true, Prof. William Lane Craig's theistic personalism causes a vicious infinite regress.
Thanks for your help.
Bill
Comments (107)
Hey Bill,
How have you been?
I've been well, thanks. But we'll see how I'll feel after you guys criticize my argument. :smile:
and besides, an infinite regress would not be a heavy lift for God?
:wink:
Can an all-powerful God make a rock that he can't lift? No, he can't do that. The question implies that though he can do anything, there's something he. can't do.. It implies a self-contradiction. But that's alright because classical theists believe that God can do any logically possible thing that his nature allows.
Yes, I'm a heavy one. So here's what I say about that.
Donald Fraser's Amen
Now you know I'm an opera buff.
Scholastic realists believe that, as I understand it. Voluntarists believe that God is in no way constrained by logic. And, of course, to spell that out, would require a considerable amount of text, which I myself am probably not equipped to write. But its something Ive read about regarding the disputes in classical metaphysics.
When you know what it is Thomas possibility and actuality, you'll also see why he thinks there can be only one God and why you need to use "god" in another sense to describe Zeus, Aphrodite, Kali, Thor, and the other pagan deities.
Besides, we need to reflect on the difference between a a primary cause and a secondary one to know what may be wrong with Craig's theistic personalism.
I appreciate your reply though I was not expecting one at this time.
I will wait here until you are ready to present and argue your notion that Mr. Lane's "theistic personalism causes a vicious infinite regress".
I look forward to it.
I'm sorry about. the delay because my argument is turning into a description. So I'll post it when I can.
[quote=Edward Feser; http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/04/craig-on-divine-simplicity-and-theistic.html] ...the problem with the thesis that God is a person is not the word person, but rather the word a. And as Davies (in Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion) and I have argued many times, there are two key problems with it - a philosophical problem, and a distinctively Christian theological problem.
The philosophical problem is that this language implies that God is a particular instance of the general kind person, and anything that is an instance of any kind is composite rather than simple, and thus requires a cause. Thus, nothing that is an instance of a kind could be God, who is of course essentially uncaused. (Obviously these claims need spelling out and defense, but of course I and other Thomists have spelled them out and defended them in detail many times.) The distinctively Christian theological problem is that God is Trinitarian -- three divine Persons in one substance -- and thus cannot be characterized as a person on pain of heresy.
So, the reason Davies labels the rejection of classical theism theistic personalism is not that he thinks God is impersonal. The reason is rather that he takes theistic personalists to start with the idea that God is a particular instance of the general kind person and to go from there. And this, he thinks, is what leads them to draw conclusions incompatible with classical theism, such as that God is (like the persons were familiar with in everyday experience) changeable, temporal, made up of parts, etc. To reject theistic personalism, then, is not a matter of regarding God as impersonal, but rather a matter of rejecting the idea that God is a particular instance of the kind person, or of any other kind for that matter. [/quote]
So the argument, essentially, is that Craig (and theistic personalism generally) view God as a person, a particular being, in anthropomorphic terms - a person like us, only perfect. The infinite regress arises from the claim that if God is a particular being, then in some sense he must be caused, as all particulars exist as the result of causes - as Feser says, 'anything that is an instance of any kind is composite rather than simple, and thus requires a cause.'
I think the conflict arises as a consequence of Craig's Protestantism which tends to deprecate the classical metaphysics found in Aquinas (Feser describes himself as 'Aristotelian-Thomist') and other pre-modern theologies. Protestantism often leans towards the literal interpretation of scripture, citing 'sola scriptura'. The most obvious form of that is creationist fundamentalism, granted, a minority view but still representing an influential current in Protestant Christianity. Aquinas sought to accomodate elements of Aristotle, for which he was criticized by Luther. Protestant theology looks on metaphysics, which ultimately derives from Greek rather than Biblical sources, with suspicion. That's where I see the root of the conflict.
Let me sum up my point about a vicious infinite regress. In a YouTube video, Dr. Craig says that without creation, God is timeless and temporal after it. On the other hand, classical theists believe that God is absolutely simple with no parts of any kind. And potentials are metaphysical parts. So, if God is purely actual, there's no potential in him. But Dr. Craig implies that God is metaphysical parts when he, Craig, says that God went from being possibly in time to being actually in it. Any object with potential is a composed object. And each composed object needs cause to put the parts together. So you end up with infinitely many composers but no composed object.
Naturally, I'm taking the PSR for granted. Although Prof. Paul Draper rejects it, he agrees with me that Craig's theistic personalism implies a vicious infinite degree if Thomistic metaphysics is true.
I'm still waiting for Dr. Craig's reply because I emailed him my argument.
Not all Catholics are Thomists. In fact many many are not these days. Traditional Catholic scholar Robert Sungenis has a book The Immutable God Who can Change his Mind nd has debated Thomist Jimmy Akin and others about it. Thomism in Catholicism is an opinion.
I'm familiar with some things Sungenis said about that. Try my friend Eleanor Stump's book The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers. It's a tiny 103-page book and she's an Aquinas scholar who explains how our divinely simple God can talk with Jonah, say. Eleanore is philosophy professor at St. Louis University.
She also wrote Aquinas, a brilliant book including a brilliant chapter about divine simplicity. I know God can speak. The question is how he does that when he's absolutely simple. Catholics must believe the doctrine about divine simplicity because it's a dogma.
The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers
Divine simplicity is a contradiction however. How can God create if he has to make an moment of choice, thus changing his simplicity to a multiplicity. Suddenly he is a God who knows he created and is now related to creation. Also God, despite the choice to create, makes no true moral decisions so he is, not immoral, but amoral. He may be innocent but he doesn't have the goodness of courage ect. within him. The idea that he owns goodness like a possession is absurd. So ye Aquinas sucks. I dont consider his writings to be real philosophy. He was a theologian, commited to things he had no proof for
Before God created the universe has he actualised the property of being a creator?
Do you have a link and timestamp to the YouTube video, or a quote from Craig? We need more than hearsay.
Try this:
Im a practicing Catholic, BA in philosophy too. Always good to know someone thinking for themselves while grateful to God for inviting us all to the table of wisdom.
I still draw a clear line between philosophy/science and theology. Not because there is more than one world. There is only one truth. And not because the two are irreconcilable. (Jesus did that in the incarnation.).
But philosophy/science, is a product of our experience, observation subject to reason. Science has its hands full just asserting what is or scientific law reflects objective reality. Talk of God in a logical, scientific way is so far away from what science is willing to admit. This is why the God of the philosopher, to me, has always been a hollow thing, nothing like a person - monad or infinite pure actuality or just a concept like an unmoved mover, or the One or even the Good. This hollowness is why, to me, the scientifically contextualized God led Aquinas to call his words straw and Augustine a grain of sand. Our only evidence of God in history that would approach useful objects of scientific inquiry are miracles and resurrections which are by definition, unscientific (I mean, the last place you would want to experiment on cures for cancer would be on Jesus resurrected body, for instance, because why would we expect any sample tissue from a resurrected body to have anything to do with anything else in nature, where cancer occurs and resurrections dont).
Now, all that said, turning instead to theology: God is one God; this one God, revealed himself to us in the name of the Father, the Son, and their self-same Spirit. Three persons each fully the one God. Son, eternally begotten of the Father, receives all from the Father, and in the same Spirit of the Father, says not my will but thine be done and gives everything he receives back to the Father
Or, the word was with God, and the word was God.
I see a lot of other issues we might want to tackle before understanding how this God could be before creation, then in creation, unchangeable and simple, and changing and complex.
We could ignore all of those issues just as well, but then, where did we come up with God is simple or a person in the first place?
Since I already see God as one, being Father, Son and Spirit, I see room for God to be living, changing, creating, while not moving, not changing at all. There is room for it, somewhere between one God and three Persons. But not an easy math problem here (more of a Russells Paradox). And we may just as well try to crack the logic of how the Son refers to His Father when he says I and the Father are one as we would solve the problem of an infinite regress in any personhood at all.
Individual lives like ours, may be as much of an impossibility to explain as is the life of God. Since we are like Him, made in His image, that actually makes sense to me. So I use science/philosophy to try to explain my impossible condition in life. Any truth gleaned gets me closer to God as a bonus, but I struggle to use science to see God directly. When I try to use that same reason to explain Gods life, I have to admit to non-believers (most modern scientists) that it sounds crazy (if the subject ever comes up).
In Fundamentals of Catholic Dogama, Dr. Ludwig Ott writes, "Eternity is duration without beginning and without end, without sooner and without later, a 'permanent now'. . . The essence of eternity is the absolute lack of succession" (Ott 36).
That's why medieval philosophers say there's a difference between an eternal thing an everlasting one. We say Gd is eternal partly because he never changes, An everlasting thing lasts forever after it begins to exist. For example, God created your immortal soul when your dad's sperm fertilized your mom's egg. So that soul will aways survive.
Ott, Ludwig. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. Ed. James Canon Bastible, D.D. Trans. Patrick Lynch, Ph.D. Charlotte: TAN Books, 1974.
God is timeless without. creation.
Ludwig Ott is not the magisterium. Simplicity can be interprerted along with many philosophical traditions. But no i am no longer Catholic. Vicarious atonment is an immoral doctrine and is central to Christianity. No one can do your repentence for you. Priesthoods are evil. And yes Aquinas was a priest. Ugg
See the discussion between Bishop Robert Barron and William Lane Craig on divine simplicity. In his response Craig explicitly targets the Thomistic view: Symposium Part 1 - Divine Simplicity. Craig's rejection of divine simplicity is apparently well-known.
A frequently underappreciated point, yet crucial to holding that God is more than merely a product of one's imagination.
One is supposed to believe in God through divine revelation, ie. from the top down, with God revealing himself, and then a particular person coming in contact with that revelation via disciplic succession (that goes back directly to God himself).
Not from the bottom up, the way philosophers and Protestants do it, where a particular person comes up with various "reasons for believing in God".
Time aside, would it not be the case that God as pure actuality is "in" the universe in only a "potential" way prior to creation, and in a "non-potential" way once creation has occurred? How do you make sense of that? (Note: I guess it would not have been a problem for Aquinas if Aquinas thought the universe was eternal/infinite).
Perhaps it is a mischaracterization to describe the state of God outside creation as "potentially" in time? In wonderer1's quote, Dr. Craig does not use that term.
If creation does not yet exist, can God bear any relation to it viz. potentiality? But if not, then God needn't be a composite of potentiality and actuality and there is not infinite backpedaling.
For me, it's important to ponder the divine nature, immortal souls and the divine nature to avoid theological mistakes, For example, Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, believe that God the Father has a material body. I've even heard that for them, each saved human person will live on his own plant where everyone else will worship him.
I'm a big fan of the Intelligent Design movement, too, because it show that God is probably real. Science fascinates me, too, especially microbiology. Since I don't know enough math to understand physics, I usually ignore most of it. But I'm eager to learn as much of it as possible.
Maybe you've read parts of St. Alphonse's de Ligouri's collected works. I'm reading then now because I proofread for a publisher that's republishing those works. I'm too emotional too often. So I don't enjoy the effusive parts of that saint's books. He'll write page after page telling God how much he loves him. Then after five or six mushy pages in a row, I long to study the abstractions again. In fact, I love computer science partly because I can reflect serenely on it without feeling too much emotion.
The real problem for all Christianities is the whole eternal damnation business -- "If you don't get it right this time around and don't pick the right Christian denomination, you'll burn forever."
It's not clear why the Supreme Being would bring about such a creation a significant portion of which will suffer forever, while he watches on, apparently happily, as they failed to pick the right religion.
No, Dr. Ott isn't the Magisterium. But the doctrine about absolute divine simplicity is a dogma. So, each Catholic has a duty to believe it. If he denies it, he's a heretic. Catholics believe that a heretic will go to hell if he's to blame for his heresy when he dies.
Some Protestants, especially Calvinists, believe that after they accept Christ as their Lord and Savior, they'll still go to heaven, no matter what terrible sins they commit after that. That doctrine seems immoral because it promotes license. It also contradicts Mark 16:16, where Our Lord says, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved. But he who does not believe will be damned," See that verse in the KJV. If Calvinists are right, I can stop believing and still reach heaven. But then Our Lord was mistaken, he lied, or at least one falsehood got into Sacred Scripture.
I don't mean to insult anyone. But it would be absurd for me to become a Protestant. Protestants tell you that Sacred Scripture is divinely inspired, error-free, and infallible. Sadly, though, interdenominational disagreements have splintered Protestants into about 40,000 sects. That makes the idea of divine inspiration seem absurd to secularists, How do inerrancy, divine inspiration, and so forth make Christianity believable if no one knows what the Bible means? That's why Protestant private judgment makes divinely revealed truth hard to discover.
I meet Protestants who believe they understand the Bible because they can quote it from memory. But to interpret a passage accurately, you must know what the divinely inspired writer meant by it. When I merely repeat a memorized passage, I'm like a talking parrot who merely repeats what he hears when he has no idea what it means.
Please don't expect me to explain the incarnation when I know too little about Christology. Anyhow, I suggest that when we say that God in the world, we mean that he sustains it and makes events happen in it. If I'm right, we need to use the word "in" in a non-spatial sense.
You have to interpret scripture in order to establish the catholic authority. Is that not private interpretation. As for Vatican I and simplicity, why what that means philosophically be understood as Aquinas would have? It's open to many interpretations. There is hardly anything if not nothing in Catholic dogma that doesnt have many interpretations. Thomist interpretation has been broken for almost a hundred years.
Consider the dogma that during Holy Mass, bread and wine become Christ's body and his blood. Protestants usually think Our Lord speaks metaphorically about that change in John 6. They'll tell us that we're idolators who "worship wafers."
That's partly because they believe Luther's novel "sola scriptura" doctrine. It's novel because he invented it. You won't find it in any document from the Early Church. But if you read St. Ignatius of Antioch's 2nd-century letter to the Smyrnaeans where he warned them to avoid anyone who denied that bread changed into Christ's body and blood.
He wrote:
"Chapter 6. Unbelievers in the blood of Christ shall be condemned
Let no man deceive himself. Both the things which are in heaven, and the glorious angels, and rulers, both visible and invisible, if they believe not in the blood of Christ, shall, in consequence, incur condemnation. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Matthew 19:12 Let not [high] place puff any one up: for that which is worth all is faith and love, to which nothing is to be preferred. But consider those who are of a different opinion with respect to the grace of Christ which has come unto us, how opposed they are to the will of God. They have no regard for love; no care for the widow, or the orphan, or the oppressed; of the bond, or of the free; of the hungry, or of the thirsty.
Chapter 7. Let us stand aloof from such heretics
They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that you should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils."
St. Ignatius's letter to the Smyrnaeans
If Dr. Craig rode a Time Machine to St. Ignatius's diocese, people there wouldn't have thought he was a Christian. Instead, they would have believed he was a heretic.
Eucharistic Miracle in Lanciano, Italy
Eucharistic Miracle in Lanciano, Italy
Catholics pay attention to what the Early Church believed. But many Protestants ignore it because they believe sola scriptura.
Years ago, I emailed with a Seventh-Day Adventist about "soul sleep." I quoted St. Justin Marty's 2nd-century First Apology to show that he believed that disembodied souls stayed awake. So, the Adventist replied, "That doesn't matter. We have the Bible."
Justin's First Apology
So does your tongue touch Jesus when you eat him? Where? Like is your tongue glidding over his chin or ass? Is it really in the realm of possibility that your house is really a lady bug? Your church teaches nonsense and nonsense such that it's hard to know what it's even teaching anymore. Is pope Francis's teaching on capital punishment infallible? Nobody knows. Are the briefs and bulls from the middle ages ex cathedra or ordinary magisterium? Nobody knows. The system completely breaks down upon examination.
1 Corinthians 11:27 says, "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord." How do you profane something that isn't there?
How do you interpret John 6:52-53?
How do I profane something that isn't there?
No, Francis didn't teach infallibility about the death penalty. The Church still supports it despite his politically progressive opinion. That's all it is, his opinion.
You can profane a sacramental, right? And i didnt insult you. I respect you but not your religion. Seriously, does Jesus feel your tongue when you chew him? This is why Aquinas is a waste of time! He defends nonsense with alleged philosophy. He's not a philosopher. He was a big fat doodo bird. As for the "miracle", do you have any idea how rich your church is and how much they can invest in convincing people to sit in a pew with Jesus in their stomach because they HAVE to? Dont be so guillable. Finally, Frances says IN the Catechism that now the Church "TEACHES, in light of the GOSPEL, that the death penalty is an ATTACK on the DIGNITY of the human person...ect". The ect part is the pastoral part. What i quoted is the doctrinal part. Yet this contradicts the Catechism of Trent and many other Popes. So case closed, the Church is wrong and you were fooled by a piece of decaying flesh
Craig's view is incoherent except perhaps if God enters time by accident. But if God willngly enters time, He is the necessary and sufficient condition of time, so time has to be co-eternal with Him, IOW, He does not enter time.
the same is in fact true, for the Thomist God because He is said to be completely immutable hence, He is the sufficient conditiion of everything apart for Him.On Thomism, the universe has to be beginningless.
You weren't expecting me to argue against that, were you? :wink:
Craig agrees that omnipotence entails the ability to do anything that is logically possible. It is not a limitation to be unable to do the logically impossible.
Quoting BillMcEnaney
Which implies that some people in the early 2nd century believed in transubstantiation.
Quoting BillMcEnaney
They believe scripture is the inspired word of God. The writing of the Apostolic fathers is not scripture.
BTW, I found a transcript wherein Craig discusses Ignatius, transubstantiation, and the Lutheran alternative of co-substantuation:
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-1/s1-the-doctrine-of-the-church/the-doctrine-of-the-church-part-7
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-1/s1-the-doctrine-of-the-church/the-doctrine-of-the-church-part-8
Dr. Craig is a monothelite. That means that he believes Christ has only noe will, his divine one. He knows that a council condemned monothelitism. But that doesn't worry him when he takes each doctrine "to the bar of Scripture." It's as though he believes the Bible is a thinker that can say, "Dr. Craig. here's why Diothelites are wrong."
But think about how Sacred Scripture seems to falsify monothelitism when we read passages like Matthew 26:39. In the Revised Standard Version, he says, "
And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.
How can Christ have only one will when he distinguishes explicitly between his will and God the Father's will? Our Lord didn't contradict himself. He didn't pray, "Not my will but mine be done."
I'm staying on topic. So I need to reflect on what to tell you about consubstantiation. For now, my point is that Dr. Craig's monothelitism is unbiblical. So is consubstantiation, in my opinion. But I'll need to think harder about it before I'll know what to tell you about it.
Meanwhile, I suspect that Lutherans seem confused when they tell us that bread and wine with Christ's body and his blood. If a Lutheran minister says "This is my body" when consecrates bread during a Lutheran liturgy," other people may need to wonder briefly to tell what "this" stands for. Christ didn't say "This is my body along with the bread." He didn't describe a sandwich where he was "the meat."
Sometimes Christians act like rationalists. That means that they'll believe only what they think they understand. Still, as I discovered this morning, sometimes a Bible passage will seem perfectly clear. But we need much more background information to see what that passage takes for granted.
Protestants will exclaim that during their services, the Holy Ghost moves in their church building. But what does it mean to say that he goes from here to there when he doesn't take up space? How does a nonphysical person relate spatially to anyone or anything?
That's why we distinguish between a substance and its accidents. In that sense of "substance," a substance has properties. But it's not a property. Bread can be square, round, white, brown, soft, crunchy and more. Those properties are essential to bread You wouldn't say, "Bill, that can't be a slice of bread. It's not square."
Catholics say that the color, texture, aroma, weight, and so forth are a host's accidents because an accident is a property that's not a part of a thing's essence or its nature. He even argued that after bread and wine transubstantiate, the accidents survive when they've stopped being properties of the bread or wine that had them.
I didn't say you insulted me. I wrote that your comment was potentially insulting.
Whatever you believe about transubstantiation, St. Ignatius of Antioch clearly thought bread and wine became Our Lord's body and blood. So, if you think Christ uses a metaphor when he says "This is my body," St. Ignatius disagrees with you. I remind you of that because if Christ spoke literally, bread and wine become more than mere symbols. That's why I posted the two-part article about the Eucharistic miracle in Lanciano, Italy.
Maybe Ignatius believed in Thomism but translations of religious texts are open to innumerable variation. And again, is it possible that God put the essense of a lady bug in your phone so that it's not at all what it looks like. That would be called an illusion. Thomist try to hairsplit between illusion (the word Descartes used for the Eucharest) and normal reality. But God works in mysterious ways. Is the sun a hamburger?
An essence is the set of properties that distinguishes a person, a place, or a thing from everything else there is. For example, each dog has the properties that make him a dog. Every even number gives you a remainder equal to zero when you divide that number by two. A chemical is water if and only if it consists of H2O. If you dissolve table sugar in it, you make solution. But water is always H2O.
If someone or something loses an essential property, he or it will stop existing. When I die, my body will become a corpse because a body is a part of a living creature when we're not talking about a car's body, say.
Why cant God take the substance out of the sun and replace it with whatever pleases him?
If Jesus's "body blood soul and divinity" are acting as the substance of the matterial piece of bread, then the body and blood are accidents acting as substance. How does that make sense?
When Catholics say that even if an object has always existed and always will exist, it still needs God to sustain it. We don't assume that a created thing needs to have begun to exist.
An article by Mr. David Armstrong, professional Catholic apologist
Take the smallest piece of bread possible. Divide it any further and it's no longer bread. Now where is Jesus in there? His body and blood are spatial so why cant we say "maybe his arm is here, ect." It becomes ridiculous upon examination. Why would you want to eat someone anyway? You're trying to defend the slavery you put yourself into. Does the bread have no substance or is Jesus the substance? Now you can see why Thomism is joke. The distinctions become too fine to make sense! Descartes position made more sense but he was condemned. Earlier in his life he rejected Thomism because scholasticism in general contained far too many subtleties answerable in many ways. He uponed to door in Europe for true philosophy. Thomism is dead to those who are free
There different kinds of presence, too. That's why St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that a consecrated host in a tabernacle doesn't have Christ's "dimensive qualities." For example, if he's six feet tall, he doesn't shrink to fit into a tabernacle. He doesn't clone himself to live in each tabernacle in the world either.
Again. Catholics distinguish between the substance, i.e., the natures of Christ's body and his blood and the walking, talking divine person. Suppose you remove a microscopic crumb from a loaf of bread. It'll still be a piece of bread, though you'll need to microscope to show it to you. What would you do to extract each ingredient a baker poured into s bowl while making the dough?
I suggest you try to think more deeply if you want to understand what I'm trying to say. You told us that you were a Catholic. So would you please tell us whether you studied, say, The Catechism of St. Pius X or another catechism?
Craig on Monothelitism
Matthew 26:39 says, "And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt" in the KJV.
You're a biased thinker like Aquinas. You've avoided the question about why God can take the substance out of bread and put Jesus inside but cant take the substance of the sun out and replace it with whatever pleases him. Also, how many bilocated bodies are in a host?
Aren't you treating Thomist metaphysics as dogma? Why accept it? Isn't it to rationalize other dogma (including transsubstantiation)?
I specialized in logic when earned my philosophy degree.
You not doing any kind of metaphysics. You havent proven a single thing philosophically
So we have a host here and a pineapple there. Jesus in the true essence of the host. What stops a horse from being the substance of the accidents of the pine apple by a miracle of God. If you keep refusing to answer this conversation is over.
The difference between a person and his nature is a basic distinction from any Catholic catechism for adults. If you've studied a catechism, that distinction should be familiar to you.
When you make such obvious mistakes, it's hard to see how you could know whether Thomism leads to skepticism.
Nature, essence, and substance are all identical. They may not be for a hairsplitter. Nor are they different from accidents. A things reality is what we perceive it to be. Things are upon for observation. That is all there is. There is no spooky people or things behind them. The world is what there is. What constitues a thing is what is "there". A thing cant be one thing yet another like Thomism tries to argue for. As per my question you didnt answer, why isnt it possible that God clothed your "car" with the accidents of a car and its really a horse. Or maybe thats a fact since Pius X loving people are Catholic Amish. You believe in God, grace, mystical bodies, nature, quiddity, essence substance, accidents, properties, such a load of garbage it should boggle your mind. But your mind has been poisined since 1994!
See you on a another thread
An accident is a property that someone or something might gain or lose. He or it can survive with or without that nonessential property. You're essentially human. But having hair isn't an essential property. Your could shave your head. A sunburn is another inessential property. Your height is, too, because a surgeon could amputate your legs. If you lose an essential property, you'll die.
The essence of someone or something determines what he or it can do. Since you're human, you can reason. But you can't fly under your. own power. Water can hydrate you, put out some fires, drown, and animal, and more. It can't fuel a gasoline engine, turn into a cheesecake, or explode.
I'm still waiting for you to criticize my infinite regress argument against Dr. Craig's God concept.
I'm pretty sure Craig would disagree that "potentials are...parts".
[Quote]So, if God is purely actual, there's no potential in him. But Dr. Craig implies that God is metaphysical parts when he, Craig, says that God went from being possibly in time to being actually in it.[/quote]
I doubt Craig believe God is "purely actual". Craig's view is that God is timeless "sans creation", and temporal with creation, but this temporal/timeless characteristic is a relational property, not an intrinsic property.
[Quote]Any object with potential is a composed object. And each composed object needs cause to put the parts together. [/quote]
Craig embraces divine simplicity; he does not embrace Thomist metaphysics. So what if he's inconsistent with a metaphysical system he does not embrace? If you are committed to Thomist metaphysics, then you can certainly reject Craig's philosophy. But perhaps you should reconsider Thomism.
For Catholics, Dr. Craig would still be at least a material heretic, even if he believed the dogma about absolute divine simplicity. That's because he still believes Monothelitism when he knows that the Third Council of Constantinople condemned it between 680 and 681 A.D.
An article about Monothelitism
In my opinion, if Monothelitism were true, Christ's human nature would be partial. That's because Catholics believe that a human nature includes a human will.But Dr. Craig thinks that Christ is fully human and fully divine. That suggests that the professor's Christology is logically inconsistent if being fully divine and fully human implies having a divine will and a human one.
Dr. Craig is a brilliant Christian scholar and a fine debater who knows more than I'll ever know. But no one can be an orthodox Catholic and believe Monothelitism. Catholics believe some doctrines that we need to deduce from the Bible because they follow from some Bible passages. Still, I suggest that Sacred Scripture flatly contradicts Craig's monthelitism in Matthew 26:39, the verse where Our Savior prays, '9 And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." in the KJV.
How can Christ have only one will, his divine one, when he distinguishes between his will and God the Father's will? After all, God the Son is the only divine person with a human nature. Dr. Craig contradicts himself if he says that though Christ is full divine and fully human, his human nature is only partial.
Dr. Craig rejects Nestorianism, the heresy Council of Ephesus condemned in 431 A.D. Catholics believe that Christ, God's only-begotten Son, is a divine person with two natures. He's not one person composed of two persons. Nestorius believed that two persons, a divine person and a human one, shared Jesus's body. On the other hand, if Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, has only the divine will, who spoke to God the Father in Matthew 26:39? If the speaker had only a human will, it's hard to see how he could have been God the Son. After all, a mere human being can't save us from sin when he's a sinner.
The Historical Introduction to the Council of Ephesus that confirms the Catholic Church's belief that a council can teach infallibly
Arguing from Catholic dogma does not work against non-Catholics, and it does not work on a philosophy forum. Instead of appealing to Catholic dogma, what you need to do is address Craig's arguments:
Quoting Leontiskos
This is the question that you continue to beg.
An absolutely simple God has no parts of any kind. That's why "an absolutely simple God with inseparable parts" is self-contradictory. It implies that God is absolutely simple and not absolutely simple.
From a Thomistic perspective, theistic personalism is absurd because theistic personalists treat God as someone like Superman. They reflect on their human power, human, knowledge human goodness, etc., and think God has much more power, much more knowledge, and much more goodness than any human person does.
The theistic personalist's God is too creaturely. If theistic personalism is true, its God isn't the Biblical one. If the absolutely simple God and the theistic personalist's God exist, the theistic personalist's God is a creature. But then he's like Zeus if that Ancient Greek god exists. After all, Zeus has human-like parents.
A key concept in Scholastic philosophy, emphasised in Aquinas, is the "analogical way of knowing." He says that we only know something of God by analogy. While we cannot know God's essence directly (since it is beyond our finite human intellect), we can know God indirectly through His works. We can understand aspects of God analogically, by considering the goodness, truth, and being that we observe in creation and reasoning back to their ultimate source in God. However it is not strictly true to say that God is actually goodness or truth. In Aquinas' philosophy, when we say that God is good, true, or beautiful, we do not mean these in the same way as when we describe a human being or a thing in the world as good, true, or beautiful. This distinction arises from Aquinas' emphasis on the infinite and transcendent nature of God, which is fundamentally different from the finite and contingent nature of creatures.
Aquinas employs the analogy of being to navigate between two extremes: univocity (where words mean the same thing when applied to God and creatures) and equivocity (where words have entirely different meanings, making communication about God and creatures incommensurable). The analogical use of language allows for a middle path: words can be applied to both God and creatures, but their meanings are related not by identity but by analogy.
For Aquinas, when we say God is good, we mean that God is the cause of goodness in all things and that God's goodness is superabundant and incomparable to any goodness found in creation. The goodness in creatures participates in or reflects the divine goodness, but it does not exhaust or fully represent it. Thus, the analogical mode of knowing acknowledges that we know something true about God based on the effects we see in the world (such as goodness, being, or beauty), but we also recognize that the divine reality of these attributes is infinitely beyond our finite understanding. Perchance the same principle might apply to the divine simplicity.
(It is in this respect that Duns Scotus argued for the univocity of being, which means that being is understood in the same way of both God and creatures. This does not imply that God and creatures are identical or that there is no qualitative difference between them; Scotus acknowledged the infinite difference in degree. However, it does mean that the concept of "being" itself can be applied in the same sense to both God and creation, facilitating a more direct discussion about God based on natural reason. By asserting a common metaphysical ground between God and creatures, Scotus univocity of being is seen as diminishing the transcendental gap between Creator and creation. This, in turn, is argued to have led to a disenchanted world, where God becomes just another being among beings, albeit the greatest one. I think this is where theistic personalism of the Craig variety originated. ChatGPT helped with drafting this post.)
"In" sounds strange when people use it to talk about God's "properties" since that word suggests composition.
Dr. Craig says he takes theological disputes to the "bar of Scripture." But it seems that the "judge" hasn't ruled on Monothelitism. If the judge, the Bible, did rule on it, the good professor may have misinterpreted the decision. No offense. But now you know partly why Catholics reject sola scriptura in each sense of that vague phrase.
I've watched many videos with Prof. Craig in them, though I haven't heard him list the properties that each human nature must include to be a human nature. He hasn't filled in the blank in "For any x, x is a human nature if an only if x has these properties____."
Suppose that dogma is false.
The Catholic Church regards the great Protestant Reformers as heretics. I don't think Craig would mine being grouped with them. So I don't know why you obsess on the fact that Craig does not embrace Catholic dogma.
I'm an atheist (and former Catholic). I've examined Craig's theistic arguments and found their weaknesses. Why don't you do likewise: examine Craig's theology and find its weaknesses? It seems pointless to just dwell on his differences with Catholic dogma unless you can show thid dogma is more likely to be true.
For Przywara the analogy of being was encapsulated at Lateran Council IV:
Quoting Przywara's Analogia Entis, by James Collins
What about heresy? For a Catholic, a heretic is any baptized person who denies a dogma or doubts it stubbornly. We believe that each Protestant is a heretic. So is every Eastern Orthodox Christian and any baptized Messianic Jew.
But we distinguish among three kinds of heretic. A material heretic believes a heresy when he doesn't know it's heretical. A formal heretic knows that he believes a heresy. A subjective formal heretic believes a heresy and deserves blame because he believes. It can be mortally sinful to be a subjective formal heretic. Martin Luther was a formal heretic excommunicated for his heresy. But since the Catholic Church won't judge the dead, she doesn't know whether he went to hell. Neither do I.
Me neither. This thread began without an OP and continued lackluster.
When someone bilocates, he's somehow how in two places at once. So, Our Lord doesn't bilobate when to every Catholic Church in my neighborhood, let alone to each Catholic Church in the world.
Eucharistic miracle in Lanciano, Italy, PART 1
Eucharistic miracle in Lanciano, Italy, Part 2
The only "flaws" I've noticed is that his views aren't consistent with Thomist metaphysics. That's not a logical flaw that connotes incoherence; it's just disagreement on certain first principles. I've spent a good bit of time trying to understand Craig's philosophy, and it seems coherent - even though far-fetched (compared to naturalism), so I'd be very interested in examining an incoherence in his views. So please explain: are you claiming Craig's view is incoherent?
Perhaps you should start a thread where you show Thomist metaphysics is likely to be true. It appears to me that the Aristotelian concept of essence (which Thomas inherits) was embraced by the early church because it rationalized transubstantiation (and the Trinity). So you kind of need something like this to be true. However, it's an absurdity, and (IMO) that makes it a good reason to reject Catholicism. I'm eager to know if I'm wrong about it being an absurdity.
Protestants say that, but because every matter of faith is then taken to be arbitrated by the individual conscience, in practice this results in a kind of hyper-pluralism. (Subject of a book The Unintended Reformation, Brad Gregory.)
:up: Thanks for the recommendation.
On the other hand, Catholics must believe that the essences of bread and wine became the essences of his body and blood. If they deny that belief, they become heretics. If they're impenitent for that heresy, they're no longer Catholics, even when they still believe they are. That means that they must revert to Catholicism if they still want to practice Catholicism.
Pope St. Pius X writes: "45. In the first place, with regard to studies, We will and ordain that scholastic philosophy be made the basis of the sacred sciences. It goes without saying that if anything is met with among the scholastic doctors which may be regarded as an excess of subtlety, or which is altogether destitute of probability, We have no desire whatever to propose it for the imitation of present generations (Leo XIII. Enc. Aeterni Patris). And let it be clearly understood above all things that the scholastic philosophy We prescribe is that which the Angelic Doctor has bequeathed to us, and We, therefore, declare that all the ordinances of Our Predecessor on this subject continue fully in force, and, as far as may be necessary, We do decree anew, and confirm, and ordain that they be by all strictly observed. In seminaries where they may have been neglected let the Bishops impose them and require their observance, and let this apply also to the Superiors of religious institutions. Further let Professors remember that they cannot set St. Thomas aside, especially in metaphysical questions, without grave detriment."
Pascendi Dominici Gregis (Feeding the Lord's Flock)
The Eastern Orthodox Christians believe that bread and wine transubstantiate. But they don't describe the change in an Aristotelian-Thomistic way. Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox can agree that bread and wine change, even when the disagree on the metaphysics behind the dogma.
Anyhow, I believe I've shown that Dr. Craig's theology is logically inconsistent with the Bible. So maybe you didn't find enough time to read the post where I argue that his theology is inconsistent. My point about the vicious infinite regress presupposes that Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and the PSR are true. So, if someone falsifies them, that will show that I argued unsoundly.
Then again, my point inconsistency doesn't depend on Aristotlelian-Thomistic metaphysics. It relies instead on two things. First, Dr. Craig believes Monothelitism, though the Third Council of Constantinople condemned it in the seventh century. Second, my argument relies on Matthew 26:39.
In Matthew 26:39 in the RSV, Our Lord prays, "And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.
Monothelites believe that Christ's only will his the divine will, and the will his the faculty a person chooses with. Can God the Father have a human. will when he hasn't adopted a human nature? No, he can't. That means that the divine will God the Father uses must be distinct from Christ's human one. Our Savior asks his Father to take Our Savior's suffering away if God the Father chooses to do that. But Jesus distinguishes between his will and the Father's will. So, if Christ's only will is the divine one, his prayer is self-contradictory. It's absurd to say "Not my will but mine be done."
If I've found a self-contradiction in Dr. Craig's theology, that inconsistency makes his whole theology inconsistent. After all, propositions are mutually consistent if and only if they can be true together.
Then they have to accept the metaphysical assumption that there are non-physical essences to the objects of existence - including physical objects. Isn't it true that you uncritically accept this? If one denies this questionable metaphysical assumption, he could still interpret the Last Supper figuratively.
Quoting BillMcEnaney
I may have missed it, but my impression is that you've merely shown that Craig's theology is inconsistent with your interpretation of the BIble. Still, you admit your claim of an infinite regress depends on the premise of A-T metaphysics, so that doesn't entail an inconsistency on Craig's part.
Quoting BillMcEnaney
Craig associates a will with personhood, so that if Jesus has 2 wills then he is 2 persons (i.e. Nestorianism). This also implies there can't be a single "divine will" because that is contrary to there being a 3 person trinity. He references Luke 22:42 in the same link:
[i]"When Jesus prays in the garden, Not my will but thine be done he is not praying to himself. That is not the human will of Christ talking to the divine will. That is the Son talking to the Father. The Son is saying, Not my will be done, but Father, thy will be done. I think this implies Monothelitism. Christ had a single will which was perfectly submitted to the will of the Father....
...If we define mind to mean a self-conscious subject, the doctrine of the Trinity is, I think, that there are three minds in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If you think that God has a single self-consciousness, you are a unitarian...we want to affirm that there are three self-conscious subjects in the Godhead, and that these three all agree. In that sense, they are of one mind. They all agree. But that is in a metaphorical sense."
The term essence (essentia) was a Latin invention used to translate Aristotle's Greek ousia. Cicero is credited with inventing the term, from the Latin esse, to be. It means "what it is to be". To complicate matters, ousia is often translated as 'substance', a term whose meaning is not co-extensive with ousia. Ousia refers to some particular being, Socrates or Plato.
The guiding question of Aristotle's Metaphysics is the question of 'being qua being", that is, what it is for something to be the thing that it is. What is it, for example, that distinguishes man from other beings. And, what it is distinguishes Socrates from other men. The puzzle is laid out in Plato's Phaedo. Each attempted solution proves to be problematic.
Those who desire answers and assurances will take part to be the whole. In the Phaedo in the double sense of the soul not as a part but as the whole and the stories and not the arguments as the whole. In re Aristotle's Metaphysics, the problem of prime movers is taken to be not the problem but the answer.
Thanks to sola scriptura, Protestants have splintered into about 47,000 sects. So it seems anyone can invent a new Christian religion and interpret the Last Supper metaphorically. Episcopalians don't believe bread and wine transubstantiate. Some Protestants believe Catholics are idolators who worship bread. If those Protestants rode a Time Machine to the second century to visit St. Ignatius of Antioch's diocese, the Catholics there would have avoided them because they didn't believe in transubstantiation.
St. Ignatius writes:
Chapter 6. Unbelievers in the blood of Christ shall be condemned
Let no man deceive himself. Both the things which are in heaven, and the glorious angels, and rulers, both visible and invisible, if they believe not in the blood of Christ, shall, in consequence, incur condemnation. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Matthew 19:12 Let not [high] place puff any one up: for that which is worth all is faith and love, to which nothing is to be preferred. But consider those who are of a different opinion with respect to the grace of Christ which has come unto us, how opposed they are to the will of God. They have no regard for love; no care for the widow, or the orphan, or the oppressed; of the bond, or of the free; of the hungry, or of the thirsty.
Chapter 7. Let us stand aloof from such heretics
They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that you should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils."
St. Ignatius of Antioch's letter to the Smyrnaeans
From what I can tell, an essence is always a nonphysical property. Aristotle defines man as rational animal because all human beings have rational animality in common. Your five senses help you perceive another person. But you can't see, touch, taste, hear, or smell rational animality.
In 431, the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorianism. Then, in 451, the Council of Chalcedon taught that: "So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the fathers handed it down to us."
The Council of Chalcedon
What does Dr. Craig think a nature is in itself? I've never heard him define it. Whatever he believes a nature consists of, you've just supported my belief that his theology is heretical by quoting a document where he says he believes that God has three minds. one for each divine person. His belief is understandable because he rejects absolute divine simplicity. But his point about three minds might suggest polytheism.
In my opinion, if Dr. Craig absolute divine simplicity, he would know why Catholics disagree with his interpretation of Matthew 26:39. Catholics believe that since God is absolutely simple, each divine person has the same divine will and the same divine intellect.
That is essentially my point. One cannot point to a set of necessary and sufficient properties as the essence of a thing, so what's left other than the assumption that there is some unanalyzable, immaterial aspect of a thing. The notion that a bread wafer is essentially flesh is based on some such assumption. Why accept it, other than to rationalize Catholic dogma?
Years ago, I stumbled on a website where an acquaintance wrote about Genesis 1-3. After a serious motorcycle-accident, he convinced himself that only he interpreted Genesis accurately. He said the strangest things, too. For example, he told me that God gave Adam and Eve material bodies to punish the because they fell from grace "in the spiritual realm." That sounds Gnostic, eh? He even believed that "In the beginning" was a title for Christ rather than a phrase describing a time when something happened.
The man revised his will to ensure that after his death, other people would spread his theological theory. A Protestant pastor asked my acquaintance to publish that theory to help him, the pastor, teach it to his congregation. Is it any wonder that Protestant services and Protestant youth group meetings convinced me to stay in the Catholic Church?
By the way, acquaintance's name is "Kenneth G. Redden" if you want to Google for his writings. I can't find them online anymore.
I jumped in because too often Aristotle is viewed through the eyes of Aquinas. I think this is a mistake.What Aristotle leaves open and unanswered Aquinas answers theologically. To put it differently, they are on opposite sides of the ancient quarrel between philosophers and poets.
Protestants generally defer the Apostolic Fathers as well, but they deny they were necessarily of one voice. Regardless, the Reformation was a reaction to the undeniable corruption that grew in the Catholic Church. If the institution couldn't be trusted - where else to place their faith other than Scripture and reasoning?
Quoting BillMcEnaney
Agreed. Here's a Protestant who also agrees.
IMO, the Protestants were right to mistrust the Church, and you're right to mistrust sola scriptura. All this shows is that Christianity is a human creation. If you get some good out of it, continue to embrace it. But recognize that others may gain something from their own unique beliefs- so why not let them embrace whatever they believe? No one can be proven right.
[I]Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern ConservativeBaptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.[/i]
Year ago, after I vowed to be a lifelong virgin, I boarded a bus with another member of the gym I belonged to in 2007. She said, "There's a guy in there. You know him very well. I've had my eye on him for months." Seeing that I didn't know who she meant, she asked whether I needed to get hit in the head with a brick.
We went to dinner at a restaurant where a morbidly obese man danced to [I]Who Let the Dogs Out[/I]. That wasn't fun, especially when I knew that the woman had almost nothing in common with me. She frightened me by inviting me to a Christmas party. So I skipped it. Then the first woman I asked for a date preferred women.
You might say that my romantic life was a joke.
I don't expect to convince anyone become Catholic because anything I write. Naturally, the do get something from what they believe. I do, too. That's why I should thank them when they prove me wrong.
I'm not theologian. I'm a computer science tutor with a philosophy degree. That's why I need you folks to look into what your hear from me. If I misinterpret Thomas or Catholicism, I want someone or something to correct me.
The older I grow, the more I long to know everlasting truths because knowledge is good in itself. I want to be an amateur scholar who writes about computer science, philosophy, theology, opera, and high culture. That's why I couldn't care less about most popular culture. Since have cerebral palsy, I want my intellect to make up for what my body can't do. Who knows how long that'll take.
The Bach/Gounod Ave Maria
Very interesting article.