Hello DBH. I was wondering about an apparent contradiction brought to my attention by a Catholic. In _The Doors of the Sea_ you write:
«To assert that every finite contingency is solely and unambiguously the effect of a single will working all things — without any deeper mystery of created freedom — is to assert nothing but that the world is what it is, for any meaningful distinction between the will of God and the simple totality of cosmic eventuality has collapsed. If all that occurs, in the minutest detail and in the entirety, of its design, is only the expression of one infinite volition that makes no real room within its transcendent determinations for other, secondary, subsidiary but free agencies (and so for some element of chance and absurdity), then the world is both arbitrary and necessary, both meaningful in every part and meaningless in its totality, an expression of pure power and nothing else.»
Yet in _That All Shall Be Saved_ you write:
«And yet, given the metaphysics of creatio ex nihilo, there is no logical room here for making a moral distinction between what God directly intends in creation and what he merely allows to happen. Call this “Theme 3)b”: at that final limit, will and permission necessarily become indistinguishable.
It is a logical truism that all secondary causes in creation are reducible to their first cause.»
Did you mean to say "...reducible to their first cause at the final limit"? This Catholic wrote: "Hart denies the distinction between God's antecedent will and consequent will on account of the reducibility of secondary causes to the first cause, which he affirms in the first passage" and "The issue is that secondary causes are reducible to the first cause in the second passage, which is precisely what is denied in the first."
I've been looking for sources that establish a connection between Philo's (or others) allegorical school of thought and Paul, i.e. evidence that Paul did not believe the literal events of the OT but interpreted them in the fashion of Gregory of Nyssa. Are there any?
Hello DBH. I was wondering about an apparent contradiction brought to my attention by a Catholic. In _The Doors of the Sea_ you write:
«To assert that every finite contingency is solely and unambiguously the effect of a single will working all things — without any deeper mystery of created freedom — is to assert nothing but that the world is what it is, for any meaningful distinction between the will of God and the simple totality of cosmic eventuality has collapsed. If all that occurs, in the minutest detail and in the entirety, of its design, is only the expression of one infinite volition that makes no real room within its transcendent determinations for other, secondary, subsidiary but free agencies (and so for some element of chance and absurdity), then the world is both arbitrary and necessary, both meaningful in every part and meaningless in its totality, an expression of pure power and nothing else.»
Yet in _That All Shall Be Saved_ you write:
«And yet, given the metaphysics of creatio ex nihilo, there is no logical room here for making a moral distinction between what God directly intends in creation and what he merely allows to happen. Call this “Theme 3)b”: at that final limit, will and permission necessarily become indistinguishable.
It is a logical truism that all secondary causes in creation are reducible to their first cause.»
Did you mean to say "...reducible to their first cause at the final limit"? This Catholic wrote: "Hart denies the distinction between God's antecedent will and consequent will on account of the reducibility of secondary causes to the first cause, which he affirms in the first passage" and "The issue is that secondary causes are reducible to the first cause in the second passage, which is precisely what is denied in the first."
off topic
David, is Ohtani the absolute best player in baseball?
Immanent release date where? Will it be streaming? Is it going to some theological film festival? Please advise.
I've been looking for sources that establish a connection between Philo's (or others) allegorical school of thought and Paul, i.e. evidence that Paul did not believe the literal events of the OT but interpreted them in the fashion of Gregory of Nyssa. Are there any?
TASBS stacked beneath a book called Confessions of a Tomboy Grandma is, admittedly, kind of a funny image.