Download or read book Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation written by Gaven Kerr and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Gaven Kerr expands on the brief treatment of creation offered in his 2015 volume, Aquinas's Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia. Aquinas does not offer one cohesive treatment on the issue of creation; Kerr synthesizes discussions from across his works in order to present a unified Thomistic metaphysics of creation. Kerr argues that Aquinas's metaphysics of creation, wherein God is conceived as the absolute source of all that exists, is the backbone of his philosophical theology. Throughout his writings, the framework of the absolute dependence of creatures on God and of the independence of God as existence itself is ever present. Without understanding this aspect of Aquinas's philosophical thought, Kerr suggests, it is impossible to understand his philosophy of God. When it comes to metaphysics, Thomas is committed to thinking through the issues involved therein on the basis of natural reason. Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation demonstrates Aquinas's belief that we must arrive at an affirmation of the existence of God on the basis of a wider metaphysical view as to the constitution of reality, a view that does not presuppose divine truths but can indeed establish them.
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Creation written by Norman Kretzmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norman Kretzmann expounds and criticizes Aquinas's theology of creation, which is natural' (or philosophical) in that Aquinas developed it without depending on the data of Scripture. Because of the special importance of intellective creatures like us, Aquinas's account of the divine origin and organization of the universe includes essential ingredients of his philosophy of mind. The Metaphysics of Creation is a continuation of the project Kretzmann began inThe Metaphysics of Theism; as before, he not only explains Aquinas's natural theology, but advocates it as the best available to us.
Download or read book Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas written by Rudi A. Te Velde and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1995 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a philosophical analysis of the main themes and problems of Aquinas' metaphysics of creation, centred on the concept of participation, the systematical meaning of which is examined in a critical discussion of the prevailing views of contemporary Thomas scholars.
Download or read book The One and the Many written by W. Norris Clarke, S.J. and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it is taught today, metaphysics is often presented as a fragmented view of philosophy that ignores the fundamental issues of its classical precedents. Eschewing these postmodern approaches, W. Norris Clarke finds an integrated vision of reality in the wisdom of Aquinas and here offers a contemporary version of systematic metaphysics in the Thomistic tradition. The One and the Many presents metaphysics as an integrated whole which draws on Aquinas' themes, structure, and insight without attempting to summarize his work. Although its primary inspiration is the philosophy of St. Thomas himself, it also takes into account significant contributions not only of later philosophers but also of those developments in modern science that have philosophical bearing, from the Big Bang to evolution.
Download or read book The Many and the One written by Yonghua Ge and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How God relates to the world lies at the heart of the most intense debates in modern theology and philosophy. Movements of Nouvelle Théologie, process theology, radical orthodoxy, modern Trinitarian theology and postmodern theology (i.e. Jean-Luc Marion) all seek to reconsider God’s relation to the world as a corrective of what they perceive as problematic. Of particular significance is the recent revival of the theology of participation, as promoted by Radical Orthodoxy in UK and Hans Boersma in North America. Facing excessive secularism and fragmentation of the modern Western world, Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma resort to the pre-modern theology of participation as the way forward. Relying heavily on Platonism, however, their participatory theology, as critics pointed out, tends to compromise the intrinsic goodness of the creation. In this book, Ge proposes that a distinctively Christian theology of participation anchored in creatio ex nihilo, developed by Augustine and brought to the fore by Aquinas, provides a more promising solution which not only secures the unity of things in God but also the goodness of creaturely plurality. Since participation in its origin is a solution to the problem of the One and the Many, Ge employs Gunton’s framework of the one and the many in his discussion of Augustine and Aquinas’s theologies of participation. By reshaping their concepts of participation in the light of the doctrine of creation, Ge argues, these thinkers have profoundly transformed the metaphysics of participation, making it finally more suitable for describing the unique relationship between God’s unity and creaturely plurality. This Christian metaphysics of participation is not only an advance on Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma, but also superior to competing theories of reality such as pluralism and reductionist physicalism. The book will also bring out implications for modern science-religion dialogues, the core of which concerns how God relates to the world.
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Creation written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norman Kretzmann expounds and criticises Aquinas' theology of creation, which is natural (or philosophical) in that Aquinas developed it without depending on the data of Scripture.
Download or read book Providence and Science in a World of Contingency written by Ignacio Silva and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providence and Science in a World of Contingency offers a novel assessment of the contemporary debate over divine providential action and the natural sciences, suggesting a re-consideration of Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysical doctrine of providence coupled with his account of natural contingency. By looking at the history of debates over providence and nature, the volume provides a set of criteria to evaluate providential divine action models, challenging the underlying, theologically contentious assumptions of current discussions on divine providential action. Such assumptions include that God needs causally open spaces in the created world in order to act in it providentially, and the unfitting conclusion that, if this is the case, then God is assumed to act as another cause among causes. In response to these shortcomings, the book presents a comprehensive account of Aquinas’ metaphysics of natural causation, contingency, and their relation to divine providence. It offers a fresh and bold metaphysical narrative, based on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, which appreciates the relation between divine providence and natural contingency.
Download or read book Aquinas on Creation written by Saint Thomas (Aquinas) and published by PIMS. This book was released on 1997 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The six articles that comprise Book 2, Distinction 1, Question 1 of Aquinas' Writings on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard represent his earliest and most succinct account of creation. These texts contain the essential Thomistic doctrines on the subject, and are here translated into English for the first time, along with an introduction and analysis. In Article One Aquinas argues, against Manichean dualism, that there is one ultimate cause of all created being; in so doing he gives three proofs for the existence of the Creator and the essential features of his answer to the problem of evil. Thomas establishes his definition of creation in Article Two, providing the needed distinctions between philosophical and theological senses of creation. Emanationism and the problem of whether there can be any intermediary causes in God's act of creation are the subject of Article Three. The next article demonstrates that although God is the cause of all created being, nevertheless creatures are true causes in nature. Article Five argues that it is from revelation alone that we know that the world had a temporal beginning, and that the philosophical arguments that purport to show either the necessity or impossibility of the temporal beginning are not persuasive. A detailed exposition of the meaning of the first sentence of the Bible, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," follows in Article Six.
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Theism written by Norman Kretzmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norman Kretzmann expounds and criticises Aquinas' theology of creation, which is natural (or philosophical) in that Aquinas developed it without depending on the data of Scripture.
Download or read book Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas written by Velde and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas presents a comprehensive and penetrating account of Aquinas' metaphysics of creation. Its main focus is the concept of participation of being. On the basis of a detailed textual analysis a philosophical interpretation is offered of the main concepts and arguments which underlie Thomas' theocentric understanding of reality. The central unifying theme of the book is the apparent tension between the notion of participation (central to the Platonic tradition) and that of substance (central to the Aristotelian tradition). The author argues that Aquinas is quite successful in bringing together in his metaphysics on the one hand the substantiality of finite beings and on the other hand their total dependency upon the divine being by way of participation. The author defends his interpretation in a critical discussion of the views on participation brought forward by well-known Aquinas scholars such as Geiger and Fabro.
Download or read book Aquinas on Being and Essence written by Joseph Bobik and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Aquinas on Being and Essence: A Translation and Interpretation, Joseph Bobik interprets the doctrines put forth by St. Thomas Aquinas in his treatise On Being and Essence. He foregrounds the meaning of the important distinction between first and second intentions, the differing uses of the term “matter,” and the Thomistic conception of metaphysics.
Download or read book Metaphysics written by Adrian Pabst and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book does nothing less than to set new standards in combining philosophical with political theology. Pabst s argument about rationality has the potential to change debates in philosophy, politics, and religion." (from the foreword) This comprehensive and detailed study of individuation reveals the theological nature of metaphysics. Adrian Pabst argues that ancient and modern conceptions of "being" or individual substance fail to account for the ontological relations that bind beings to each other and to God, their source. On the basis of a genealogical account of rival theories of creation and individuation from Plato to postmodernism, Pabst proposes that the Christian Neo-Platonic fusion of biblical revelation with Greco-Roman philosophy fulfills and surpasses all other ontologies and conceptions of individuality.
Download or read book Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas written by John F. Wippel and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the generic problem of "Christian philosophy" and considers Aquinas's views on the nature and methodology of metaphysics, and on metaphysics of created and uncreated being.
Download or read book Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III written by John F. Wippel and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III is Msgr. John Wippel’s third volume dedicated to the metaphysical thought of Thomas Aquinas. After an introduction, this volume of collected essays begins with Wippel’s interpretation of the discovery of the subject of metaphysics by a special kind of judgment (“separation”). In subsequent chapters, Wippel turns to the relationship between faith and reason, exploring what are known as the preambles of faith. This is followed by two chapters on the important contributions by Cornelio Fabro on Aquinas’s distinction between essence and esse and on participation. The volume continues with articles on Aquinas’s view of creation as a preamble of faith, Aquinas’s much-disputed defense of unicity of substantial form in creatures, his account of the separated soul’s natural knowledge, and Aquinas’s understanding of evil in his De Malo 1. The volume concludes with an article comparing Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Godfrey of Fontaines on the metaphysical composition of angelic beings. Most of these issues were disputed during Aquinas’s time by some of his contemporaries, and the proper understanding of each continues to be debated by various students of his thought today. Wippel’s purpose, therefore, is to help clarify our understanding of Aquinas’s thought on each of these topics, a task that requires the careful analysis of primary sources and of secondary literature and attention to the relative chronology of his writing.
Download or read book Talking about God and Talking about Creation written by Rahim Acar and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-08-04 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study compares Avicenna’s and Thomas Aquinas’ conceptions of God, theological language, the nature of creative action and the beginning of the universe. It emphasizes the connection between their positions regarding theological language and their discussions of creation.
Download or read book Aquinas s Way to God written by Gaven Kerr OP and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaven Kerr provides the first book-length study of St. Thomas Aquinas's much neglected proof for the existence of God in De Ente et Essentia Chapter 4. He offers a contemporary presentation, interpretation, and defense of this proof, beginning with an account of the metaphysical principles used by Aquinas and then describing how they are employed within the proof to establish the existence of God. Along the way, Kerr engages contemporary authors who have addressed Aquinas's or similar reasoning. The proof developed in the De Ente is, on Kerr's reading, independent of many of the other proofs in Aquinas's corpus and resistant to the traditional classificatory schemes of proofs of God. By applying a historical and hermeneutical awareness of the philosophical issues presented by Aquinas's thought and evaluating such philosophical issues with analytical precision, Kerr is able to move through the proof and evaluate what Aquinas is saying, and whether what he is saying is true. By means of an analysis of one of Aquinas's earliest proofs, Kerr highlights a foundational argument that is present throughout the much more commonly studied Thomistic writings, and brings it to bear within the context of analytical philosophy, showing its relevance to the contemporary reader.
Download or read book Pseudo Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas written by O'Rourke and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Aquinas' encounter with Pseudo-Dionysius can be discovered an integral philosophy of reality — a comprehensive vision of existence, depicting the universe in its procession from and return to the Absolute, according to each grade of reality, including man, its place in the hierarchy of being. The point of divergence is the primacy attributed, in turn, by the authors to the Good or to Being as a universal principle. Against this background the present work investigates the influence of Dionysius with respect to the central themes of Aquinas' metaphysics: knowledge of the Absolute, and its nature as transcendent; Being as primary and universal perfection; the diffusion of creation; the hierarchy of creatures and return of all to God as the final end. This is one of the few studies to date which considers in a comprehensive way the relation between these remarkable thinkers. By concrete example and continual reference it illustrates both the pervasive influence of Pseudo-Dionysius and the profound originality of Aquinas.
