•  8
    Scholastic Hylomorphism and Dean Zimmerman
    TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 8 (2). 2022.
    I present Dean Zimmerman’s conceptualization of the varieties of substance dualism. I then focus attention on a form of dualism that he has discussed briefly in a few places, Thomistic dualism as he calls it, or hylomorphic dualism, as I call it. After explicating hylomorphic dualism, I consider the two places where Zimmerman says the most about it, finding, in one case, a way to alleviate a worry he raises using the resources internal to hylomorphism, and, in the other case, a general agreement…Read more
  •  166
    Growth in Patience in Christian Moral Wisdom and Contemporary Positive Psychology
    with Sarah Schnitker and Juliette Ratchford
    Journal of Beliefs and Values 42 (3): 333-347. 2020.
    Moral education requires interdisciplinary engagement across philosophy, psychology, and education. Positive psychologists regularly acknowledge the breadth and depth of wisdom regarding the cultivation of virtues present in philosophical and religious texts and consult such writings when creating constructs, but they are less prone to integrate scientific findings with historical texts as inquiry proceeds. Thus, we provide a comparative analysis of the advice given in Lorenzo Scupoli’s The Spir…Read more
  •  11
    Aquinas' Five Ways
    In Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The First Way – The Argument from Motion The Second Way – The Argument from Causation The Third Way – The Argument from Possibility and Necessity The Fourth Way – The Argument from Gradation The Fifth Way – The Argument from the Governance.
  •  16
    The Psychology of Habit Formation and Christian Moral Wisdom on Virtue Formation
    TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 7 (1). 2022.
    In this paper, I provide an overview of the Christian moral wisdom with respect to virtue formation and character cultivation. I focus in particular on some warnings issued by the great teachers on these topics with respect to the motivations one ought to have in the Christian life. I then discuss some findings of contemporary psychology on habit formation which seem to be at odds with the warnings in Christian moral wisdom. I argue that while there is surface discord between the contemporary ps…Read more
  •  55
    Review of: Jc Beall, "The Contradictory Christ" (review)
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (2). 2022.
    I review Jc Beall's book, The Contradictory Christ
  •  21
    Christian Moral Wisdom, Character Formation, and Contemporary Psychology
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 96 (2): 215-233. 2022.
    Consider the advice for growth in virtue from the Christian Moral Wisdom tradition and contemporary psychology. What is the relation between the outputs of these sources? We present some of the common moral wisdom from the Christian tradition, spelling out the nuance and justification given for the suggestions. We next canvas contemporary psychological findings to discover the evidential relation they bear toward such advice. Although numerous psychological studies might be provided as evidence,…Read more
  •  33
    Paradise and Growing in Virtue
    In T. Ryan Byerly & Eric Silverman (eds.), Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays about Heaven, Oxford University Press. pp. 97-109. 2017.
    The present volume is devoted to philosophical reflection on the nature of paradise. Our contribution to this larger project is an extension of previous work that we’ve done on the nature of human agency and virtue in heaven. Here, we’d like to focus on three things. First, we will discuss in greater detail what it is we mean by “growth in virtue.” Second, we will answer a number of objections to that understanding of growth in virtue. Third, we will show two benefits of this understanding of gr…Read more
  •  418
    Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven
    Faith and Philosophy 26 (4): 396-417. 2009.
    The traditional view of heaven holds that the redeemed in heaven both have free will and are no longer capable of sinning. A number of philosophers have argued that the traditional view is problematic. How can someone be free and yet incapable of sinning? If the redeemed are kept from sinning, their wills must be reined in. And if their wills are reined in, it doesn’t seem right to say that they are free. Following James Sennett, we call this objection to the traditional view of heaven ‘the Prob…Read more
  •  83
    Freedom and the Incarnation
    Philosophy Compass 11 (11): 743-756. 2016.
    In this paper, we explore how free will should be understood within the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, particularly on the assumption of traditional Christology. We focus on two issues: reconciling Christ's free will with the claim that Christ's human will was subjected to the divine will in the Incarnation; and reconciling the claims that Christ was fully human and free with the belief that Christ, since God, could not sin.
  •  28
  •  744
    Heavenly Freedom: A Response to Cowan
    Faith and Philosophy 30 (2): 188-197. 2013.
    In a recent issue of Faith and Philosophy, Steven Cowan calls into question our success in responding to what we called the “Problem of Heavenly Free- dom” in our earlier “Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven.” In this reply, we defend our view against Cowan’s criticisms.
  •  44
    The Incarnation
    Cambridge University Press. 2020.
    The doctrine of the Incarnation, that Jesus Christ was both truly God and truly human, is the foundation and cornerstone of traditional Christian theism. And yet this traditional teaching appears to verge on incoherence. How can one person be both God, having all the perfections of divinity, and human, having all the limitations of humanity? This is the fundamental philosophical problem of the Incarnation. Perhaps a solution is found in an analysis of what the traditional teaching meant by perso…Read more
  •  13
    Temporary Intrinsics and Christological Predication
    Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 7 157-189. 2016.
    In this paper I have briefly presented the problem of temporary intrinsics, along with five types of responses to the problem. I then presented the fundamental problem for Christology, which I called the problem of natural intrinsics. I presented six types of response to the problem, all but the last analogous to a response to the problem of temporary intrinsics. my goal has not been to argue that any individual response to either problem is correct. Instead, my goal has been to present an inte…Read more
  •  61
    Explosive Theology: A Reply to Jc Beall’s “Christ – A Contradiction”
    Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (1): 440-451. 2019.
    ㅤThis article is part of a symposium on Jc Beall's "Christ-A Contradiction."
  •  100
    Complete Symposium on Jc Beall's Christ – A Contradiction: A Defense of Contradictory Christology
    with Jc Beall, Thomas McCall, A. J. Cotnoir, and Sara L. Uckelman
    Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (1): 400-577. 2019.
    The fundamental problem of Christology is the apparent contradiction of Christ as recorded at Chalcedon. Christ is human and Christ is divine. Being divine entails being immutable. Being human entails being mutable. Were Christ two different persons there’d be no apparent contradiction. But Chalcedon rules as much out. Were Christ only partly human or only partly divine there’d be no apparent contradiction. But Chalcedon rules as much out. Were the very meaning of ‘mutable’ and/or ‘immutable’ ot…Read more
  •  16
    Thomistic Multiple Incarnations
    Heythrop Journal 57 (2): 359-370. 2016.
    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 existin…Read more
  •  19
    A Reply to “The Antinomy of Future Contingent Events”
    Roczniki Filozoficzne 66 (4): 149-157. 2018.
    In this brief reply I discuss Fr. Marcin Tkaczyk’s excellent article, “The Antinomy of Future Contingent Events.” I first raise some concerns about his understanding of representation. I then raise three concerns about his preferred solution to the antinomy: first, that a part of his theory of representation itself motivates a rejection of proposition 1 of the antinomy; second, that one needn’t employ retroactive causal connections to weaken 1 as he does; and third, that it is difficult to make …Read more
  •  93
  •  25
    This study considers the philosophical arguments against that Extended Conciliar Christology and argues that none of them succeed in showing the doctrine to be false, or incoherent, or inconsistent.
  •  130
    In Defense of Divine Truthmaker Simplicity
    Res Philosophica 96 (1): 63-75. 2019.
    In his recent article “Against Divine Truthmaker Simplicity,” Noël Saenz has provided two careful arguments for the falsity of a theory of divine simplicity which he dubs “Divine Truthmaker Simplicity.” In this brief response, I criticize his two arguments, arguing that neither is sound.
  •  1097
    [paragraph 3 of the article] The goal of this article is to flesh out that initial understanding of incarnational immutability. The method I employ to attain this goal is to consider cases of predications from the texts of conciliar Christology. I show potential ontological truth conditions for those predications being true that do not require the truth conditions I propose for immutability to be unsatisfied. Put otherwise, I show ontological truth conditions for predications that imply Christ’s…Read more
  •  55
    A Thomistic Truthmaker Principle
    Acta Philosophica 25 (1): 45-64. 2016.
    In this article I provide a Thomistic truthmaker principle. Although Aquinas himself never provides a truthmaker principle, he does say things that show he thought many truths require truthmakers, or, in other terms, that truths have an ontological grounding. That truths are somehow grounded or explained by reality is an important aspect of Thomistic thought. The principle I provide could be affirmed by someone with Thomistic tendencies: it is consistent with Aquinas’ thought and makes sense of …Read more
  •  44
    Truthmaking and Christian Theology
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 89 181-194. 2015.
    This paper analyzes Catholic philosophy by investigating the parameters that Catholic dogmatic claims set for theories of truthmaking. First I argue that two well-known truthmaker views—the view that properties alone are the truthmakers for contingent predications, and the view that all truths need truthmakers—are precluded by Catholic dogma. In particular, the doctrine of transubstantiation precludes the first, and the doctrines of divine causality and divine freedom together preclude the secon…Read more
  •  932
    A Solution to the Fundamental Philosophical Problem of Christology
    Journal 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
  •  115
    Change, Difference, and Orthodox Truthmaker Theory
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (3): 539-550. 2014.
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Ahead of Print
  •  64
    The Freedom of Christ and Explanatory Priority
    Religious 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
  •  361
    Thomistic Multiple Incarnations
    Heythrop 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