Eternal Love, Eternal Freedom

May 29, 2008

Here is a reply I have written to Paul Manata of Triablogue fame conerning free will and moral impeccability. Some of you might find the original exchange linked above helpful to get a sense of the conversation.

Paul,

 Please excuse the tardiness of my reply to you. With end of the semester duties and fighting off pneumonia now for the last two weeks I have had to put all things internet related to one side.

 I agree that Hasker believes a lot of other things, many of them I do not. Let me be clear, I have zero sympathy with his Open Theism. You are right to write that you are entitled to bring out implications, but the questions I had were concerning how you got those implications from the text cited. I took Hasker to be arguing that a necessary condition for genuine love was a lack of sufficient antecedent conditions, which is why he is focusing on sourcehood. We can look at the person affected by the potion or the person given the potion but I think the result will be the same. That is just to say that Hasker’s example is intuitive purchase. In imaginative cases I think it would be right to think that without the potion the person giving it would be fearful of losing the “love” that he had. Why? Because the potion was the source and without it, there wouldn’t be love present. This shows I think what Hasker wants it to show, namely that sourcehood is a necessary condition on freedom. This leaves untouched I think your concern. Hasker isn’t attacking the claim that an unfailable love is genuine love, but rather that a love brought about by sufficient antecedent conditions isn’t a genuine love. One can have the first without the second and Hasker has written as much elsewhere. And Hasker is not alone in thinking that one can have an unfailable outcome without determinism. If you don’t think so, then Frankfurt cases go out the window since they would then, as Widerker, Kane and Co. have argued, presuppose determinism.

I don’t know the inner workings of Hasker’s mind on Trinitarianism, but on a traditional model, the Father, Son and Spirit don’t have different wills, but only one so I don’t know how it would be possible for the Son to will for the Father to give up his nature. Your model presupposes a heterodox view of the will as hypostatic that I don’t think that even Hasker to my knowledge endorses.

My comments about time weren’t pedantic. What they point out is that the example as you frame it is ill framed. And lots of people believe that God is timeless, but that doesn’t tell me much since there are a variety of theories on divine timelessness. Furthermore, the point was to drive the question about the coherence of libertarianism further into the doctrine of God, which is where you took it, rather than looking at it within a temporal box.

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Posted by Perry Robinson

3 Problems of Divine Simplicity?

May 29, 2008

It’s amazing the amount of energy and time very intelligent people spend on doing “theology” “without Christ”. If it were me, I’d change the article to read “3 Problems of divine simplicity without Christ.” I’ve always wondered when these philosophers would ever consider the Incarnation and how this absolutely simple substance (or relation or whatever) can have an enhypostatic human nature. And I just had to chuckle somewhat at the “traditional part of Christianity” montra. I shake my head wondering if someday these folks will ever wake up and make life a little easier on them with a wholesale rejection of the doctrine in the first place. It’s not a part of the authentic Tradition and never was.

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Posted by photios

the natural law of death

May 24, 2008

In the beginning thoughts of St. Athanasius’ The Incarnation of the Word of God, he well establishes that it was God the Father by whom all things were created and all things are sustained. He then goes on to reflect upon the nature of man in and of himself (that is, considered apart from God), and he calls this nature something peculiar, by the standards of anglophone natural theologies anyway:

…But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He has given by making it conditional from the first upon two things – namely, law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away the birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death, and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption.

…For God had made man thus (that is, as an embodied spirit), and had willed that he should remain in incorruption. But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, they were in the process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion. For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore, when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he also bears the likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt.

…This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, though they were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping the natural law, provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is to say, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption….

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Posted by ochlophobist

Political Hesychasm: the thought of Fr. Johns S. Romanides and Christos Yannaras

May 23, 2008

The Revival of Political Hesychasm in Greek Orthodox Thought: A Study of the Hesychast Basis of the Thought of John S. Romanides and Christos Yannaras

This looks very interesting. The man is a convert to the Orthodox faith and was heavily influenced by these men. I’m happy to see someone writing in a very positive manner about Father John Romanides. It’s about time.

Don’t know how long this dissertation will be up on Baylor’s page, but get it while you can.

3 Comments | Church Fathers, Conversions to Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodox, Palamas | Permalink
Posted by photios

Wisdom From My Students

May 22, 2008

There are “emphirical sciences”

One of David Hume’s objections to the teleological argument is that “If God is an analogy, he could be evil and not good.”

“The problem of evil is that you don’t know when it can come out and everyone has the evil inside them. It is the whole fact if choosing to do good over evil. You have to put good in front of the evil.”

“Hume objects to induction because he does not believe that by definition we can induce.”

“Induction: everything in the past and present will happen in the future.”

 ”The allegory of the cave represents the education of the soul on the body.”

Kant’s Categorical Imperative is “Act only to the maximum where by at the same time will that it would create a universal cause.”

“Hume objects to induction, it upsets him.”

The Ontological Argument is “that logic exits and you have to beware what form you want to which makes you good and that the state can’t tell you what to believe in, you get to decide.”

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Posted by Perry Robinson

An Irish gem in the West: The Proper Use of Dialectic

May 21, 2008

“For just as God is both beyond all things and in all things — for He Who only truly is, is the essence of all things, and while He is whole in all things He does not cease to be whole beyond all things, whole in the world, whole around the world, whole in the sensible creature, whole in the intelligible creature, whole creating the universe, whole created in the universe, whole in the whole of the universe and whole in its parts, since He is both the whole and the part, just as He is neither the whole nor the part — in the same way human nature in its own world (in its own subsistence) in its own universe and in its invisible and visible parts is whole in itself, and whole in its whole, and whole in its parts, and its parts are whole in themselves and whole in the whole.”

-John Scotus Eriugena Periphyseon, IV.759a-b

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Confusion in the West: West vs. West on the Filioque

May 14, 2008

The Orthodox View

 

“Moreover, we have from the letter written by the same Saint Maximus to the priest Marinus concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit, where he implies that the Greeks tried, in vain, to make a case against us, since we do not say that the Son is a cause or principle of the Holy Spirit, as they assert. But, not incognizant of the unity of substance between Father and the Son, as he proceeds from the Father, we confess that he proceeds from the Son, understanding processionem, of course, as “mission.” Interpreting piously, he instructs those skilled in both languages to peace, while he teaches both us and the Greeks that in one sense the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son and in another sense he does not proceed, showing the difficulty of expressing the idiosyncrasies of one language in another.”

 

–Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Anastasius Ad Ioannem Diaconum, PL 129, 560-61

 

“It is from the person [substantia] of the Father that the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit proceeds.”

 

– John Scotus Erigena, De Divisione Naturae, PL 122, 613

 

Note: John follows the older Latin understanding of substantia is hypostasis and essentia is ousia which is why I translate substantia as “person” here.

 

The view of the Heterodox

 

“The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father because he flows from his substance…and just as the Son received his substance from the Father by being begotten, so also he received from the Father the ability to send the Spirit of Truth from himself through proceeding…For just as the Father and the Son are of one substance, so too by procession from both did the Holy Spirit receive his consubstantial existence.”

 

–Ratramnus of Corbie, Contra Graecorum Opposita Romanam Ecclesiam Inflamantium, PL 121, 229

 

Ratramnus’ assumption that there is only one manner of coming forth from the Father echoing his presupposition on absolute divine simplicity:

 

“Therefore if the Son proceeds from God the Father and the Holy Spirit also proceeds, what will keep the Arians silent, not blaspheming that the Holy Spirit is also the Son of the Father.”

 

– Ibid., PL 121, 247

8 Comments | Church Fathers, Filioque, Trinity | Permalink
Posted by photios

The Hymn of a Wise Man

May 13, 2008

O Only-begotten Son and Word of God,

Thou Who are Immortal, yet didst deign

for our salvation to be incarnate through

the most holy Lady and Ever-Virgin

Mary, and without change didst become

Man and wast crucified, trampling upon

death by death, do Thou, O Christ our

God, Who are one of the Holy Trinity and

art glorified, together with the Father

and the Holy Spirit, save us.

- St. Justinian the Great, Emperor and Saint

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Posted by photios

On the Road Again

May 7, 2008

Dear Readers,

As you know the blog the past month or so has been rather slow. This has been for a number of reasons.

First I judged it to be best to skip out on blogging during Lent. It freed up some time to spend with my family and gave me a bit of perspective. Sometimes you need to get away from something to see it more clearly.

Second, I have a paper forthcoming for publication and another one under review which along with my teaching duties has consumed a fair amount of my time. 

Third, I have been embroiled in an academic fracas since another person that I thought was a friend of mine, and a professing Christian, (I suppose thankfully that they aren’t Orthodox) turned out to be plagiarizing my most important work. For academic and legal reasons I am not able to write about this openly. But a word to the wise, if you are in academia, I wouldn’t share any of your best (or original) ideas in seminar with anyone. In my opinion, unless it is in print, formally published and unless there is verbatium copying, you simply can’t win, no matter how overwhelming the evidence. It doesn’t matter what a given policy states in terms of class presentations, colloquia or whatever. If it isn’t in print, you’ve lost. As I have learned this is the unspoken “gnosis” among academics. Silly me, I thought integrity mattered. The will to power crops up in the oddest of places. (See Time Bandits)

Consequently, I won’t be airing some of the cutting edge stuff or things I am kicking around, here anymore or any of my papers even though I have a copyright listed at the header of the blog. It just isn’t sufficient protection against intellectual theft. So until material is accepted for publication, I need to be silent as a trappist church mouse.

So as soon as finals are over and the grading is done, (after the 15th) watch for some new posts on various topics. These will include a second part on metaethics, the inadequacy of Catholicism and Protestantism replies to the problem of evil, and the eternity of the world. I also plan to address some comments I left standing. And a number of you have made email inquiries that I haven’t been able to get back to, so please be patient.

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Posted by Perry Robinson