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963A Solution to the Fundamental Philosophical Problem of ChristologyJournal of Analytic Theology 2 61-85. 2014.I consider the fundamental philosophical problem for Christology: how can one and the same person, the Second Person of the Trinity, be both God and man. For being God implies having certain attributes, perhaps immutability, or impassibility, whereas being human implies having apparently inconsistent attributes. This problem is especially vexing for the proponent of Conciliar Christology – the Christology taught in the Ecumenical Councils – since those councils affirm that Christ is both mutable…Read more
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121Change, Difference, and Orthodox Truthmaker TheoryAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (3): 539-550. 2014.Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Ahead of Print
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29Review of Mark Ian Thomas Robson, Ontology and Providence in Creation: Taking Ex Nihilo Seriously (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (7). 2009.
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69The Freedom of Christ and Explanatory PriorityReligious Studies 50 (2): 157-173. 2014.Call the claim, common to many in the Christian intellectual tradition, that Christ, in virtue of his created human intellect, had certain, infallible, exhaustive foreknowledge the Foreknowledge Thesis. Now consider what I will call the Conditional: if the Foreknowledge Thesis is true, then Christ's created human will was not free. In so far as many, perhaps all, of the people who affirm the Foreknowledge Thesis also wish to affirm the freedom of Christ's human will, the truth of the Conditional…Read more
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365Thomistic Multiple IncarnationsHeythrop Journal (6): 359-370. 2014.In this article I present St. Thomas Aquinas’s views on the possibility of multiple incarnations. First I disambiguate four things one might mean when saying that multiple incarnations are possible. Then I provide and justify what I take to be Aquinas’s answers to these questions, showing the intricacies of his argumentation and concluding that he holds an extremely robust view of the possibility of multiple incarnations. According to Aquinas, I argue, there could be three simultaneously exis…Read more
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90Christologically Inspired, Empirically Motivated HylomorphismRes Philosophica 93 (1): 137-160. 2016.In this paper we present the standard Thomistic view concerning substances and their parts. We then note some objections to that view. Afterwards, we present Aquinas’s Christology, then draw an analogy between the relation that holds between the Second Person and the assumed human nature, on the one hand, and the relation that holds between a substance whole and its substance parts, on the other. We then show how the analogy, which St. Thomas himself drew at points, is useful for providing a the…Read more
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125Divine ImmutabilityThe Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2009.Divine immutability, the claim that God is immutable, is a central part of traditional Christianity, though it has come under sustained attack in the last two hundred years. This article first catalogues the historical precedent for and against this claim, then discusses different answers to the question, “What is it to be immutable?” Two definitions of divine immutability receive careful attention. The first is that for God to be immutable is for God to have a constant character and to be f…Read more
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55The freedom of Christ and the problem of deliberationInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 75 (3): 233-247. 2014.Call the claim, common to many in the Christian intellectual tradition, that Christ, in virtue of his created human intellect, had certain, infallible exhaustive foreknowledge the Foreknowledge Thesis. Now consider what I will call the Conditional: If the Foreknowledge Thesis is true, then Christ’s created human will lacked an important sort of freedom that we mere humans have. Insofar as many, perhaps all, of the people who affirm the Foreknowledge Thesis also wish to affirm the robust freedom …Read more
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113Aquinas' five waysIn Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 7--17. 2011.In this article I present Aquinas's 5 ways in their logical structure and provide some discussion of the contentious premises or inferences.
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326Aquinas on Blameworthiness and the Virtue of FaithJournal of Postgraduates in Wuhan University 21 (4): 21-26. 2005.Many Christians seem to have difficulty in their worldview insofar as they affirm: (1) If a person cannot do something, then that person is not blameworthy for not doing that action, (2) No one has it within his or her power to acquire faith, and (3) Some individuals who do not have the virtue of faith are nevertheless blameworthy for not having faith. These propositions together appear to entail a contradiction. In this paper I show how the Christian philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas, affirms th…Read more
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112The Possibility Principle and the Truthmakers for Modal TruthsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (3): 417-428. 2010.A necessary part of David Armstrong's account of truthmakers for modal truths is his Possibility principle: any truthmaker for a contingent truth is also a truthmaker for the possibility of the complement of that contingent truth (if T makes _p_ true and _p_ is contingent, then T makes ⋄∼_p_ true). I criticize Armstrong's Possibility principle for two reasons. First, his argument for the Possibility principle both relies on an unwarranted generalization and vitiates his desire for relevant truth…Read more
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150God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness, by James E. Dolezal (review)Faith and Philosophy 30 (4): 480-486. 2013.This is a review of _God Without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God's Absoluteness_, by James E. Dolezal.
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55Stone's Evidential Atheism: A CritiqueFaith and Philosophy 30 (3): 317-329. 2013.In a pair of recent articles, Jim Stone presents a new version of the Evidential Argument from Evil. I provide two arguments against Stone’s Evidential Problem of Evil, one from the dialectical standpoint of a theist, the second from a dialectical standpoint that is neutral between theism and atheism. In neither case, I argue, should an interlocutor accept all the premises of the argument.
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154The Five WaysIn Brian Davies & Eleonore Stump (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Aquinas, Oxford University Press. pp. 115-131. 2011.I present and evaluate the 5 Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas. I discuss the contentious premises and inferences of the arguments.
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66Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, and Material Objects. By Jeffrey E. Brower (review)American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 89 (4): 723-727. 2015.I review Jeffrey Brower's book, "Aquinas's Ontology of the Material World"
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755Conciliar Christology and the Problem of Incompatible PredicationsScientia et Fides 3 (2): 85-106. 2015.In this article I canvas the options available to a proponent of the traditional doctrine of the incarnation against a charge of incoherence. In particular, I consider the charge of incoherence due to incompatible predications both being true of the same one person, the God-man Jesus Christ. For instance, one might think that any- thing divine has to have certain attributes – perhaps omnipotence, or impassibility. But, the charge continues, nothing human can be omnipotent or impassible. And so n…Read more
Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Religion |
Incarnation |
Thomas Aquinas |