@JoshuaLWatson I see you now are on an anti-Trinitarian crusade, Josh. When it comes to the _doctrine_ of the Trinity, I'm an unapologetic mysterian--not because I revel in illogic nor because I think you and others have advanced cogent objections to the doctrine >> @JoshuaLWatson but because your objections, by necessity, cannot reach the transcendent Creator whom Christians confess and worship.

The interesting question is why the Church Fathers were compelled to formulate a doctrine that is so scandalously antinomic and paradoxical. >>

The movie that traumatized me when I was a kid (5 years old) was a movie that few of you have seen or even heard of: 'First Man into Space.' It was part of double-feature with 'Tom Thumb'--a terrible, irresponsible pairing. But it makes for a great story!

https://twitter.com/creepydotorg/status/1762198428065419538

It was a birthday party for a neighborhood friend. His Mom dropped us off at the Buckingham Theatre on Glebe Road in Arlington. We were chaperoned by a high school neighbor. I presume we all loved 'Tom Thumb,' but I have no memory of it. >>

"Classical theism" is a Western construct. I don't know when philosophers started using the term, but it's a construct nonetheless. The interesting question is whether historic--particularly Eastern--Christian presentations of God comfortably fit within the construct. Are Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Ps-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory Palamas accurately described as classical theists? If not, does it matter for Christian theology?

@JordanW41069857 @FrJohnBehr

When a proponent of eternal damnation tells you that his church also believes that God's love is unconditional, ask him one question: May preachers of your church speak an unconditional promise regarding the eternal destiny of their hearers? >> If he's honest, he will answer no, thus exposing the emptiness and banality of his understanding of "unconditional."

Only universalist preachers can speak the gospel in the mode of unconditional promise. Everyone else is reduced to speaking conditional promise--i.e., law.

@StMichael71 @TGBelt Eternal damnation is only possible if God ceases by grace to rescue the damned from the _state_ of mortal sin, which is the traditional, if not dogmatic, view of Catholicism. And that is why the state of mortal sin is inescapable for the damned! >> @StMichael71 @TGBelt You have already conceded elsewhere that God could save the damned if he willed to do so. But after the particular judgment he no longer wills to save the damned. He condemns them to their state of incorrigibility, with all the suffering that entails. >>

"In the Eastern fathers, by contrast, we find something quite different. The soul, as an icon of God, has a natural and inseverable connection to its divine archetype. This connection is what makes the soul susceptible to divine attributes,

afkimel.wordpress.com/2023/01/14/hum… these energies being what is meant by the word grace. Thus, while it is true that the divine energies are above nature, the soul’s access to these supernatural graces is perfectly natural. And the Fall does not change this.

I have wrestled with the following statement for 20+ years:

"There can be no doubt, then, that had he wished to do so God could always have prevented me from sinning – without, of course, in any way interfering with my freedom. For freedom does not mean independence of God. It means independence of other creatures. Thus although God does not cause me to fail to choose the good, he could easily have caused me to choose the good." ~ Herbert McCabe

@TGBelt I do not admit your counterfactual precisely because it is a counterfactual. What we know is that God has created the world, and I do not believe it was arbitrary, as your position assumes. >> @TGBelt Given divine simplicity, divine creation is necessary. Call it conditional necessity in Thomistic fashion, if you like; but God is the God who has freely and necessarily chosen to be the Creator of the cosmos made for Jesus. This is who he who he is eternally and immutably. >>

"It was not necessary but fitting that God should create all things as an image of divine Wisdom, and God will always do what is fitting, though he is not constrained to do so. If we deny this, we are implying that his acts are merely arbitrary or whimsical. No, things are beautiful, and they are created in order to reflect and participate in the beauty of God." ~ Stratford Caldecott

“In revelation, it is said not that God is freedom but that He is love.” ~ Sergius Bulgakov There is something odd, and very wrong, about the infernalist claim that our love of God requires a libertarian freedom to condemn ourselves to _everlasting_ torment, as if divine Love would ever permit us to do that.

@Aristotles_Jedi @FeserEdward @StMichael71 Given that David fully affirms the nonnecessity of creation in classical theistic fashion, then his claim that it is impossible that the Good (Bonum est diffusivum sui) not create must be interpreted within this absolute nonnecessity within the divine simplicity. >> @Aristotles_Jedi @FeserEdward @StMichael71 It cannot be the case that God is faced with options or alternatives. That would be an anthropomorphic error, as if God were a being. God is his Goodness is his Will is his Eternity, etc. Aquinas resolves the conundrum by positing hypothetical or suppositional necessity. >>

Response to the recent premature accusations of necessitarianism now being leveled against DBH by @StMichael71 and @FeserEdward:

First read David's early books 'Beauty of the Infinite' and 'Doors of the Sea.' >> In these works he makes clear that God's creation of the world is radically nonnecessary, flowing from God's inner Trinitarian delight. He is quite clear that the world does not add anything to God's infinite being and bliss: >>

One cannot talk about fedoras without talking about Borsalino. Founded in 1857, the Italian company achieved fame as one one of the world's finest hatmakers. Borsalinos were Humphrey Bogart's favorite fedora. If you want to see a lot of Borsalino hats in action, watch the gangster movie 'Borsalino,' starring Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Like all hat companies, Borsalino has struggled over the past decades,

Next up in my fedora recommendations is the famous Stetson. Stetson is known for their cowboy hats, but they also make several classical fedoras. I particularly love their Temple fedora. It features a center-dent crown, wide hatband, and dimensional brim, which gives it a very cool look. And it's available in different colors. My Temple is black.

delmonicohatter.com/product/IT10.h…

Now that Fall is upon us, I hope all of you men who have never known the bliss of wearing a nice fedora will finally take the plunge. But where to start?

For first-time wearers (and any fedora lover), I enthusiastically recommend the fur-felt hats by the Australian hatmaker Akubra. Dollar for dollar, theirs is the best fedora value available in the U.S. Their hats are made to last forever in every kind of weather. You may safely wear them in the rain and snow, day after day, decades on end.

"From the point of view of time, of our history (which, of course, is the only point of view we can actually take), there was certainly a time when Jesus had not yet been born. Moses could have said with perfect truth ‘Jesus of Nazareth is not yet’ or ‘Jesus does not exist’ because, of course, the future does not exist; that is what makes it future... So, yes, Moses could have truly said ‘Jesus does not exist’, he could also have said with truth ‘The Son of God does exist’, and he could have made both these statements at the same time.

@StMichael71 I am, obviously, not persuaded by your repeated claim that universalism entails coercion or violence. Universalists emphatically deny this. You insist that this is only a nominal denial, but that would require a far deeper analysis of universalist presentations.>> Putting aside the patristic universalists, the key universalists thinkers on freedom are David Hart, Thomas Talbott, Eric Reitan, and Sergius Bulgakov. You really need to read their works. I'd be happy to provide titles. >>

@StMichael71 We can, of course, debate what "love requires" until the parousia. At this point we are dealing with conflicting fundamental apprehensions of the gospel, and those are more difficult to negotiate. All infernalist presentations endorse a conditional understanding of love, >> @StMichael71 of one sort or another. If that is what you think love means, I honestly don't know what to say. I could point you to the 'Showings' of Julian of Norwich or the discourses of St Isaac the Syrian and hope that they provoke a paradigm shift in your moral vision.

A few thoughts about yesterday's tweet battle between DBH and the Neochalcedonians. Despite whatever differences exist between them, they seem to be doctrinally minor. Christian theologians and philosophers always disagree, and that's part of the creative fun. I'm going to nickname DBH's position "Vedantic theology," in contrast to NC theology.

What interests me is how these respective theologies preach. In what ways will the preaching of the gospel be different, both from each other and from standard Orthodox and Catholic preaching?

"To be sure, creation differs from God's own being. In Himself, God differs from Himself as the Creator and Almighty, but this distinction does not refer to the opposition of freedom and necessity and is not determined by them. God posits His own natural being in absolute freedom, which is united with the absoluteness of this being's content as the only possible and, in this sense, necessary content. But one can say the same thing about God's creative act, which finds an absolutely sufficient ground in

@king_mosaic @JordanW41069857 A few further thoughts, king. First, there is only one way to believe, preach, and teach the doctrine of eternal perdition, namely, to believe, preach and teach it as true. We must not retrieve the dishonest practice of the patristic universalists who preached hell to the masses. @king_mosaic @JordanW41069857 To believe in hell is to believe that everlasting damnation is a genuine possibility. That rules out any kind of confident universalism. I personally believe that it rules out the hopeful universalism of Balthasar and Ware, which strikes me as an impossible balancing act.