Forthcoming in British Journal for the History of Philosophy: "Unknowing: Christian and Buddhist Soteriological Epistemology."

My "Being a Not-Quite-Buddhist Theist" argued Buddhism is incompatible with theism.

This is "How to make Buddhists Catholic."

academia.edu/126762314/Unkn… The paper is a broadside against contemporary interpretations of Madhyamika Buddhist philosophy along the lines of Carnap. Then, I show the Gifts of the Holy Spirit provide an interpretation of Buddhism much more adequate to their soteriology, which is close to Tibetan views.

It's a strange eisegesis which insists that the Blessed Virgin Mary lacked real faith, that praise of her in Scripture was really meant to insult her, etc., so that she was (purportedly) a failure as a Christian believer.

It's also beside the point regarding devotion to her. If the Blessed Virgin were to evince repeated 'weakness' as a believer, the apostles and others in Scripture do not fair much better by comparison. Yet we still take people like Paul, Peter, and other notable 'failures' to be admirable heroes of Christian faith.

Many outsiders to orthodox and traditional Christianity misunderstand the basis for Marian devotion, why we do it, and why it would count as a legitimate devotional practice.

[A short thread.] It is no proof against Marian devotion that it is not depicted as occurring in New Testament communities. Marian devotion is a devotional practice that developed over time, like many others. This is perfectly normal & entirely consonant with this piety being a sound development.

"...it is said that God, knowing that man would sin, allowed him to sin because he knew this would benefit him, and for this reason did not deny sin access, because it had been ordained by God from the beginning that through comparison and experience we would be able to... ascertain the greatness of those infinite blessings. For the sake of this, namely that it would profit us, he let sin enter, and man found great assistance in his war against this same sin. Because these words are alien to the meaning of divine scripture, with the result that...

As I was reading the Acta of the Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople II), I discovered three interesting facts about which I might write up a scholarly article in the future.

1. The Origenist anathemas were plausibly affirmed in the conciliar anathemas, since Origen ... ... is explicitly named in their condemnations with reference to his pernicious doctrines previously condemned, which looks a clear reference to the condemnations signed before the council. (As I partially explained in an earlier post).

A lot of these criticisms depend very much on how we think of hell.

If the damned are adamant in their hated of God and others, and unhappy about those in heaven rejoicing, I don't think the blessed should be hostages to the damned. That's just to further victimization.

https://twitter.com/rightscholar/status/1747451730533535803

I don't think most people spend lots of time (not even universalists!) worrying/being sad because the Devil does not love God. People are concerned about loved ones in hell. The question is really about what happens in that case. Importantly, compassion isn't simply sadness.

Having now read Eric Perl's 'Thinking Being,' (after reading 'Theophany' and his other articles) I continue to be unimpressed by his idiosyncratic reading of ancient/medieval authors. But I gained insight into why his views might attract: they make God's existence trivially true. Perl adopts apophatic language to claim God does not exist, but is 'just existence.' While there is a kind of view in apophatic tradition nominally like this view, what Perl often says indicates that he takes the view in an odd direction.

"The fallacy of every universalist argument lies not in proving the love of God to be universal and omnipotent but in laying down the impossibility of ultimate damnation. ...There is not a shred of Biblical witness ...to support the impossibility of ultimate damnation." "...one would be utterly at a loss to understand why Judas who for several years had the priceless privilege of enjoying to the full the love of the Son of God should not have found that love irresistible. If ever omnipotent divine love was manifested it was in Jesus Christ...

'Jesus' refers to the Person. Christ's Person pre-exists (temporally & logically) His incarnation, is uncreated, and is constituted by proceeding eternally from the Father. Jesus is not created.

His human nature is created. We CAN say: 'Christ is created in His human nature.'

https://twitter.com/JordanW41069857/status/1702412085781582315

Here's what it seems to me that Jordan is saying, in the rest of the thread: it is proper to say Jesus is created from nothing, because not only His nature but His Person is created from nothing, and we can, by union with Christ, become uncreated in the same way that Jesus was.

Pseudo-Dionysius has been my spiritual reading, and I had forgotten that part of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy where he discusses funeral rites. Obviously, he was not a universalist, as when discussing the fate of those who depart this life in a bad moral condition... "Those, however, who are full of blemishes, and unholy stains, even though they have attained to some initiation, yet, of their own accord, have, to their own destruction, rejected this from their mind, and have rashly followed their destructive lusts, to them when they have ...

It is striking how radically different are the overall theological/philosophical commitments of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa from their contemporary self-identified disciples.

I sincerely wonder if their views on apokatastasis are being misappropriated. I think there is not enough clarity why and in what way they held apokatastasis.

Origen and Nyssa do not argue, as far as I know, God's character as loving/good entails universalism. They do not argue anyone being lost would make God evil and hold sin is entirely our fault.

True love of others requires care for helping them to believe what is important, true, & salvific. It would not be true love to allow others to believe harmful things. E.g., we try to disabuse others of beliefs that they are worthless trash. Such beliefs are false & harmful. Beliefs that are heretical are bad because they are false and harmful to our spiritual lives. They misinform us about who we are and who God is for us, with potentially disastrous results.

We love others when we try to help them escape lies that keep them trapped in darkness.

David Bentley Hart:

"For grace to transform us means that what we become by grace must be continuous with who and what we are as natural beings already... Every little Logos of everything is itself a modality of the divine presence already."

St. Athanasius begs to differ 🧵 "Very Son of the Father, natural and genuine, proper to His essence ...not a creature or work, but an offspring proper to the Father's essence. Wherefore He is very God, existing one in essence with the very Father; while other beings, to whom He said, 'I said you are Gods ,' ...

I discovered St. Gregory Palamas has a homily dedicated to why God made those whom He foreknew would reject salvation. His answer (Hom. 41) is: God called all (even though not all respond to His call) and did not want them to be damned - they are damned by their own free choice. "If God led me and called me to salvation through His goodness, but I turned out evil, ought my wickedness, before it even existed, to have overcome his eternal goodness and have thwarted it? ...

I am really finding myself vibing with St. Gregory Palamas.

Gregory is ironically a defender of the purportedly 'Thomist' position that deification is not the natural end of human beings; he insists very clearly on the distinction between nature and grace (super-nature). "...the deified are not simply improved with regard to their nature; rather, they receive in addition the divine activity itself, the very Holy Spirit. '...whenever we consider the grace activated in his partakers, we say that the Spirit is in us.’

The whole of the Nicene Creed can be summarized as "Jesus Saves."

The Creed just works out what is required for this phrase to be true.

Saves how? In short, by bringing about union with God. But a mere man could not save us.

Thus, we speak of the relation of Jesus to God.

🧵 God the Father is the source of all being, creator of heaven & earth. Jesus is not identical with the Father. Yet, Jesus too is God. Otherwise, uniting ourselves to Him in faith & love, baptism & sacraments, would not save us. We would share in the life of a creature, not God.

It is well-known that it is usually a component of bad and abusive relationships that the abuser engages in emotional blackmail with their victim. “Don’t you care about me? How can you leave me, if you really love me?”

As we know, the fact is – in reality – that this is a lie. What is truly loving is usually to separate and love the flawed person from afar - rather than to allow them to hold you as emotional ransom.

It is not wrong to apply these thoughts to the problem of mourning our loved ones who might end up separated from us over moral issues.

Thomas Zwilling wrote to me: "I think there is something distinctly unsatisfactory about saying 'although all people are given sufficient grace to avoid sin, every single person who is not given an additional, intrinsically efficacious grace will sin mortally, fail to repent.... ...and be condemned to hell,' and that 'although the additional grace that all and only the elect are given is infallible and intrisically efficacious, it did not make it impossible for them not to sin' ...once you've granted those claims, [it] starts to look a bit jury-rigged."

What are the differences between Calvinism & Thomism on predestination?

As I tried to clarify, in response to allegations they are the same, the primary point of difference (as Garrigou-Lagrange notes below) is that Providence does not necessitate. God's grace can be resisted. Theologically speaking, then, the Thomist affirms that sufficient grace is given to all, Christ died for all (including the damned), & alternative possibilities are open to all to avoid sin.

GL therefore refers to efficacious grace subsequently as a 'non-necessitating' motion.

Re-reading Taylor's original post, I think he misunderstood me as arguing predestination does not make salvation of the predestined necessary or certain, relative to God's decrees.

I argued against the view that God's foreknowledge is incompatible with us being to do otherwise.

https://twitter.com/thomaesplendor/status/1670252370083606529

I noted that Aquinas insists that "predestination most certainly and infallibly takes effect; yet it does not impose any necessity." I ended by noting that, while Aquinas says this is true, much of the debate involves trying to determine how this is true.

Here's a post in which I not only defend and clarify Eleonore Stump's views from Kimel's criticisms, but I argue those criticisms illuminate - by contrast - why Stump looks right that universalism requires denying that God's love for us is unconditional.

facebook.com/stmichael71/po…

https://twitter.com/EOrthodoxy/status/1670062981072273413

In the end, it seems to me Stump is correct. God has allowed damnation precisely because He wants free creatures to be in free union with Him. God knew the consequences of allowing this, and assumed the cost upon Himself.