Tag Archives: God

Aquinas and Divine Freedom: God Might Have Willed Otherwise

Posted on 18 September 2018 by

Finally we come to the contentious question driving this series on Aquinas: Is the divine act of creation truly free? 7) God wills the world freely and non-necessarily (SCG 81–83, 88). While it may appear that if the metaphysically simple and … Continue reading →

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Aquinas and Divine Freedom: To Know the Divine Essence is to Know the Cosmos

Posted on 12 September 2018 by

If God is eternal, immutable, and incomposite, how is it that his creation of the cosmos is not a necessary, and thus unfree and fettered, act? We have raised this question in two earlier postings on St Dionysius: “Transcending Freedom … Continue reading →

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Dionysian Ponderings: Divine Knowledge, Creation, and Modal Collapse

Posted on 26 August 2018 by

How does the infinite Creator know the contingent realities he has brought into existence without compromising his metaphysical simpleness? Or as St Dionysius the Areopagite asks: How is God to comprehend something among the intelligibles since he does not have … Continue reading →

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Dionysian Ponderings: Created by the Good as Desire for the Good

Posted on 6 August 2018 by

The transcendent Deity, states St Dionysius the Areopagite, is beyond all naming, for it exists beyond differentiation and intelligibility, beyond being and beings, surpassing classification, taxonomy, and categories, even thought itself. “It is at a total remove from every condition, … Continue reading →

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Dionysian Ponderings: The Parhypostatic Nullity of Evil

Posted on 1 August 2018 by

Ecstatic movement from the Good and Beautiful into the multiplicity of the good and beautiful, succeeded by joyful return to the Good and Beautiful. From God, in God, through God, to God. Abiding, procession, reversion; diffusion, illumination, union. Creation and … Continue reading →

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Dionysian Ponderings: Transcending Freedom and Necessity

Posted on 14 July 2018 by

“There is no evidence in the Dionysian corpus of creatio ex nihilo,” avers Timothy D. Knepper; “rather, the divine names, the properties they source, and the beings that participate in them, all preexist in and process from God” (Negating Negation, … Continue reading →

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Dionysian Ponderings: To let be or not let be–that is the question

Posted on 8 July 2018 by

Did the Lord God Almighty have to create the world? This is the question I now wish to pose to St Dionysius the Areopagite. It is a pressing question for Christian students of the Areopagite because he is so deeply … Continue reading →

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