Tag Archives: being

Ex Nihilo Nonnihil Fit: “from nothing something comes”

Posted on 6 September 2020 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Can we imagine the universe spontaneously emerging from nothing? I would have thought that the answer would obviously and logically be no—as long as nothing is understood as it was in classical philosophy and theology: the absence of any thing … Continue reading →

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Platonism and the Trinity: Apophaticism and Pure Relationality

Posted on 6 April 2020 by Fr Aidan Kimel

by Alexander Earl APOPHATICISM To recapitulate, in Plotinus there are several levels of reality: the Cosmos (from our discus­sion of beauty and bodies), Soul (especially discursive reasoning), Intellect (the all-at-once act of intellect intellecting the intelligibles), and then the One … Continue reading →

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Introducing William Desmond: God as Agapeic Origin

Posted on 26 June 2018 by Fr Aidan Kimel

by Christopher Ben Simpson, Ph.D. The metaxological sense of being is a vision of being that entails genuine otherness, transcendence, and difference in the midst of community. Central to this vision is the way in which divine otherness or God … Continue reading →

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Dionysian Ponderings: Plotinian Emanation and the Creatio ex Nihilo

Posted on 24 June 2018 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Did St Dionysius the Areopagite teach the creation of the cosmos from out of nothing? This is a live question for readers of the Corpus Areopagaticum. Dionysius does not explicitly cite the creatio ex nihilo and therefore can easily (some would … Continue reading →

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Introducing William Desmond: Metaphysics and the Fourfold Sense of Being

Posted on 19 June 2018 by Fr Aidan Kimel

by Christopher Ben Simpson, Ph.D. Metaphysics Metaphysics asks the question of being: the meaning of being—the significance of the “to be” (BB 3). Metaphysics also asks the ultimate “why” of being: why being and not nothing? (BB 4; HG 3). … Continue reading →

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Dionysian Ponderings: Transcendence and the Plotinian One

Posted on 30 May 2018 by Fr Aidan Kimel

I come to my reading of the Corpus Areopagaticum with a specific understanding of divine transcendence, an understanding which I will be testing along the way. We might put it this way: God infinitely surpasses all creaturely distinctions and dualities—transcendence … Continue reading →

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The Nought of Sin and the Blindness of God

Posted on 9 November 2017 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“Sinne is no dede,” Julian of Norwich calmly states (LT 11), yet who would be so insensitive and cruel to tell that to the families who lost loved ones in last week’s massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas. When Devin Kelly … Continue reading →

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Existing is more than Existence

Posted on 6 February 2017 by Fr Aidan Kimel

The problem of the one and the many, writes Norris Clarke, “is the ultimate paradox of being and the deepest and the most fundamental problem of all metaphysics, of every intellectual effort to achieve a total, unified vision of all … Continue reading →

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