Category Archives: Aquinas

The Infernal Quarantine of Love

Posted on 29 January 2023 by Fr Aidan Kimel

I am the way into the city of woe, I am the way into eternal pain, I am the way to go among the lost. Justice caused my high architect to move: Divine omnipotence created me, The highest wisdom, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Aquinas, Eschatology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Avicenna and Aquinas: Ruminating Divine Freedom and Necessity

Posted on 7 November 2022 by Fr Aidan Kimel

I recently wrote the following letter to Dr Rahim Acar, a Muslim scholar and expert on the philosopher Avicenna. For purposes of publication, I have revised and significantly expanded the letter, adding quotations from his book, as well as specific … Continue reading →

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How Can a Good God Permit Eternal Damnation? Thomism and the Problem of Hell

Posted on 7 December 2021 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Mats Wahlberg (Ph.D., Umeå University, 2010, Ph.D., Stellenbosch University, 2014) is docent and associate professor of systematic theology at Umeå University, Sweden, and a member of the Academy of Catholic Theology.

Posted in Aquinas, Eschatology | 6 Comments

St Thomas Aquinas and the Contuition of Divinity

Posted on 26 May 2021 by Fr Aidan Kimel

I begin with confession: I do not know if the five ways of St Thomas Aquinas succeed as proofs for the existence of God. I lack the competence to offer an opinion. But even philoso­phers who do have the necessary … Continue reading →

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Can Reason Prove the Existence of God?

Posted on 24 May 2021 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Back in 1974, after five or six years of atheism, I began to believe in the existence of God. I couldn’t have been more surprised. I thought my atheism was rock solid. So what effected the change? A philosophical argument. … Continue reading →

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Simple Divinity is Sheer Existing

Posted on 3 May 2021 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“The doctrine of God’s simplicity,” states James Dolezal, “reaches the zenith of expression and sophistication in the thought of Thomas Aquinas” (God Without Parts, p. 6). One might even argue that it forms the lynchpin of St Thomas’s under­standing of … Continue reading →

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St Thomas Aquinas, Divine Simplicity, and Knowing the Unknowable God

Posted on 28 April 2021 by Fr Aidan Kimel

What is God? What is his nature? The answer given by St Thomas Aquinas may surprise us: we do not know. By contemplation of the structures of the world, we may know that God exists as the ultimate cause and … Continue reading →

Posted in Aquinas, Philosophical Theology | 2 Comments

Divine Simplicity as Negative Theology

Posted on 26 April 2021 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“From first to last,” writes philosopher Brian Davies, “the doctrine of divine simplicity is a piece of negative or apophatic theology and not a purported description of God” (“Classical Theism and the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity,” in Language, Meaning and … Continue reading →

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