I’m listening to an interview with a scholar who argues that there is no evidence of persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.

After nearly an hour, she clarifies that her argument is that they were killed for refusing to offer sacrifices to the emperor, not for being Christian…

The absolute state of modern scholarship… I’m not even exaggerating. Her book is titled “The Myth of Persecution.” Here is her explanation of that “myth”:

.@redeemed_zoomer Please stop making stuff up about Bonaventure and Scotus. Both affirmed natural theology and thought we worship the same God as Jews and Muslims. Yet you portray them as disagreeing with Thomas in your video.

I will reply with proofs from Scotus, but plenty could be found in Bonaventure as well. It is well known that Scotus thinks the existence of God can be known through natural reason. For example, see Ord. I d. 3 q. 1 n. 5

A thread on Jewish Catholics 🧵

Throughout every age of the Church, there have been many converts to the Catholic faith from the Jewish people. I want to highlight many notable ones. I will only include those who have passed to the next life. This list is by no means exhaustive. First, we should remember that all the saints of the Old Covenant are Catholic saints. Furthermore, all of the Apostles were Jews. Aside from St. Luke, every other author of scripture was from one of the tribes of Israel. Finally, Our Lord and Our Lady are themselves Jews.

In some recent threads, I showed that the biblical requirements for the messiah match better with Jesus than those laid out by the Rambam.

But that was easy mode. Let's see how the prophet Daniel predicted the exact year of the messiah would die to end sin!

A thread🧵 In the book of Daniel, Daniel receives a series of visions of 4 kingdoms. These kingdoms are traditionally identified by Jews and Christians as Babylon, Medo-Persian, Greece, and Rome.

According to Christians, one of the most clear prophecies of Jesus in the Hebrew Bible is Isaiah 53. However, many Jews dispute that this passage is not about the messiah. Let's take a look at the book of Isaiah to see who is right.

A thread 🧵 In my last thread, I argued that the messiah is central to scripture. He is the promised seed who will undo the curse of Genesis 3

By 2 Samuel this seed has been narrowed down to the line of David. A seed from this line will sit upon the throne "forever"

https://x.com/ByzCat/status/1853886676541780303

In my last thread, I put forward a response to the Rambam's arguments for why Jesus is not the messiah.

However, I think the divide between Christians and Jews is deeper. We have different conceptions of what a messiah is. So here is a defense of the Christian view.

Thread🧵 Although world peace will come about in the time of the messiah, Jews understand the messiah to be primarily the national leader of the Jews. He will not perform any great miracles or change the nature of things.

https://x.com/ByzCat/status/1852831511319613534

What is the meaning of the book of Job? Is God the cause of suffering? Did God really make a bet with Satan? Why does God never tell Job about His bet with Satan?

A thread on divine providence and Job 🧵 St. Thomas Aquinas explains that Job is about divine providence. This means we first need to consider the metaphysics of divine providence.

Boethius says that "Providence is the divine type itself, seated in the Supreme Ruler; which disposes all things"

I can’t think of literally anyone else on here besides Nick whom I could criticize and get dozens of deranged comments like this.

If you hate someone becuase they are ethnically Jewish, please unfollow and block me. I am indeed ethnically Jewish. I don’t have any interest in you

https://twitter.com/roidoid1/status/1787033617345987022

I could literally praise Hitler and talk about how I wish the holocaust had killed every last Jew and I still wouldn’t be pure enough to lunatics like this. I know because I used to be stupid enough to try and simp for these types.

@AleMartnezR1 I did some videos on his proof for God near the very beginning of my channel. I ramble a lot in them (it was my first time making youtube videos) but hopefully I explain things well. Jeremy Daggett also has a very helpful paper in the festschrift for Peter Damian Fehlner. @AleMartnezR1 The argument essentially turns on the S5 modal axiom that whatever is possible is necessarily possible. Scotus is concerned that traditional arguments from contingency move from a contingent premise to a necessary conclusion (which he thinks is impossible), so he argues...

Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner on true, false, and incomplete forms of Christian spirituality

A thread 🧵 Fr. Peter lists four types of Christian spiritualities. He uses the square of opposition from classical logic as an analogy for the relation of these types. Ultimately, A, the Marian mode, is the most perfect form of spirituality, with others more or less compatible.

How comparing Augustine, Newton, and Einstein on gravity can teach us about natural desire for God

A thread 🧵



Let’s start with Newton’s account of gravity. Newton thinks that efficient causes are the only real kinds of causes in nature. Gravity works by an efficient cause. So the Earth literally pulls the apple down. The planets move because the sun pulls them.

An argument for why the American government must recognize Catholicism as the true religion

A thread 1) The greater a thing is, the more it ought to be honored
2) God is the greatest thing possible
3) Therefore, God ought to be honored above all else (and this we call religion)
4) Honor is a matter of justice
5) Therefore, religion is a matter of justice

Whether oatmeal raisin cookies are better than chocolate chip?

Obj 1. When the mind conceived of a cookie, it conceives of a chocolate chip cookie. Therefore, oatmeal raisin cookies are only cookies analogously.

https://twitter.com/militantthomist/status/1721517330348335133

Obj 2. It is of the nature of a cookie to taste sweet. But chocolate chip cookies are sweeter. Therefore etc.

Obj 3. The majority of people prefer chocolate chip cookies. Therefore, the natural law prefers them.

Pop theology: "No one took Genesis as discussing science until Protestant fundamentalism"

Actual medieval theologians debating the composition of the waters above the firmament: For those interested, Scotus here rejects the position that the waters above the firmament are vapor, and he instead holds that it is the crystalline sphere which surrounds the universe. He says that it is called water because it has certain properties of water.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the philosophy of science recently, so I want to do a thread on some of the books that I have found most helpful. Kuhn provides a radical challenge to the scientism you grew up with. He points out that science has not developed by slow progress, but by radical paradigm shifts. Ultimately, Kuhn fails to build a positive vision of what science should be, but it’s an important starting point.

Critics of postliberalism (and unfortunately some postliberals themselves) assert that rights are the invention of liberalism. Is that true?

Let’s compare the rights theories of St. Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Hobbes.

🧵

St. Thomas discusses right as the opening question to the treatise on justice. According to him, right (ius) is the object of justice (iustitia). That is, justice is to fulfill the right of another.

A very beautiful image of the immaculate conception is contained in Zechariah 3.

🧵

When it comes to the immaculate conception, there seems to be a significant problem: one cannot be born without original sin without the grace of the incarnation. But the in order for the incarnation to happen, there has to be a sinless woman to bear God. How does we solve this?

Is the Catholic faith the true faith?

part 4 (see my pinned thread for parts 1-3) In the first three parts we established

1) God exists
2) God became man to save us from sin
3) The Catholic Church is the true Church

Now that we have established the truth of the Catholic faith, what should you do?

Is the Catholic faith the true faith?

part 3 (see my pinned thread for parts 1 and 2) We established in the last 2 parts that:

1) God exists
2) God became man to save us from our sins
3) It would be most fitting if he established a Church

In this thread we will establish that this is the Catholic Church

Is the Catholic faith the true faith?

part 2 (see my pinned post for part 1) In part 1 we established

1) God exists
2) It would seem fitting if he became man to save us, and Christianity claims it is true

In this thread we still need to establish that God did indeed become man, and that he established the Catholic Church.

Is the Catholic faith the true faith?

This thread will only take a minute to read, but given that this might have to do with your eternal destiny, isn’t it worth spending a minute to look at it? In order to for the Catholic faith to be the true faith, only 3 things must be true:

1) God exists
2) That God became incarnate as Jesus Christ
3) Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church