Soul and body make, for Thomas, as single unified substance. But the demonstration of this point depends on whether one looks at the issue from the perpective of the parts (soul/body, or body parts) or the whole. As Robert Pasnau ( Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study . . . . Continue Reading »
Toward the end of The Star of Redemption (Modern Jewish Philosophy and Religion) , Rosenzweig finds the star in the human face: “The basic level is ordered according to the receptive organs; they are the building blocks, as it were, which together compose the face, the mask, namely . . . . Continue Reading »
“Come let us reason together,” Isaiah says. An exhortation to logical deduction with the help of syllogism? Certainly, logic and syllogisms are involved, but the verb “reason” ( yakach ) is commonly translated as “argue” (Job 13:15) or . . . . Continue Reading »
Is God more concerned with bodies or souls? It’s an imperfect indicator, but a count of the use of terms in Scripture is revealing, perhaps even startling. The word “soul” is used in the NASB just under 300x (a few dozen more than the number of times that the NASB uses . . . . Continue Reading »
Creatures by definition depend on something outside themselves to remain in existence. Does this then mean that they are in danger of slipping into non-existence? Do they, as one scholar suggests, retain “a potency for nonbeing” and do they “risk passing out of . . . . Continue Reading »
A number of sections of Eberhard Busch’s The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology deal with Barth’s criticisms of natural theology. In one section, Busch helpfully puts this in the context of Barth’s reaction to Nazism and his effort to trace the . . . . Continue Reading »
Athanasius employs much of the same language and makes some of the same conceptual moves in talking about the Son’s relation to the Father on the one hand and the Son’s incarnation in the flesh on the other. The Son is “proper to” the Father’s essence; so too the flesh . . . . Continue Reading »
Bonhoeffer shows how love of God and love for His creation can be reconciled by using a musical analogy: “God wants us to love him eternally with our whole hearts - not in such a way as to injure or weaken our earthly love, but to provide a kind of cantus firmus to which the other melodies of . . . . Continue Reading »
For Athanasius, creation’s multiplicity is not a defect but part of its glory. No created thing supplies all need; no single light illuminates day and night. So there are many lights. Each light is its own essence, but these essences cooperate to fill what is lacking in the . . . . Continue Reading »
Gregory’s fifth oration again: Human nature “has a unity which is only conceivable in thought; and the individuals are parted from one another very far indeed, both by time and by dispositions and by power. For we are not only compound beings, but also contrasted beings, both with . . . . Continue Reading »
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