Panentheism from a Trinitarian Perspective

Horizons ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Bracken
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
The Other ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Underlying Principle ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Transcendence ◽  
Triune God ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
Process Oriented

AbstractClassical models of the God–world relationship tend to emphasize the transcendence of God at the expense of God's immanence to the world of creation. Neo-classical or process-oriented models, on the other hand, tend to emphasize the immanence of God within the world process at the expense of the divine transcendence. Using the distinction originally made by Thomas Aquinas between person and nature within the Godhead, the author offers a modified process-oriented understanding of the God–world relationship in which the transcendence of the triune God to creation is assured but in which creatures derive their existence and activity from the divine nature or ground of being along with the divine persons. Ultimate Reality, therefore, is not God in a unipersonal sense, nor the three divine persons apart from creation, but a Cosmic Society of existents, both finite and infinite, who are sustained by one and the same underlying principle of existence and activity.

scholarly journals Contemplative life as an ideal of blessing in Thomas Aquinas’ moral philosophy

2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (316) ◽  
pp. 456
Author(s):  
Nadir Antonio Pichler ◽  
Talia Castilhos de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
First Principle ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
The World ◽  
Contemplative Life

The purpose of the text is to describe and analyze the contemplative life as an ideal of beatitude in the moral philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. By assimilating, remodeling and criticizing the ancient and medieval philosophical-theological tradition, Thomas structures an original and complex synthesis, immersing itself in the essence of the divine nature through knowledge and in the human soul through the contemplative life, and from there to erect the pillars of an ontology theocentric, where God is the supreme good and promoter of human happiness, the first principle of all reality. From him comes the world, man and all creatures, and everything tends to return to its essence, in a special the man. For this reason, God is the alpha and omega, propitiator of the deepest beatitude. The text is organized into four items: the context of beatitude, the excellence of the intellectual soul by the activity of the contemplative life, the reasons for the contemplative life and the comparison between the active and the contemplative life. Síntese: O objetivo do texto é descrever e analisar a vida contemplativa como ideal de beatitude na filosofia moral de Tomás de Aquino. Assimilando, remodelando e criticando a tradição filosófico-teológica antiga a medieval, Tomás estrutura uma síntese original e complexa, mergulhando na essencia da natureza divina pelo conhecimento e na alma humana pela vida contemplativa, para, a partir daí, erigir os pilares de uma ontologia teocentrica, onde Deus é o bem supremo e promotor da felicidade humana, o primeiro princípio de toda a realidade. Dele procede o mundo, o homem e todas as criaturas, e tudo tende a retornar a sua essencia, de modo especial, o homem. Por isso, Deus é o alfa e o ômega, propiciador da mais profunda beatitude. O texto está organizado em quatro itens: Contexto da beatitude, a excelência da alma intelectiva pela atividade da vida contemplativa, as razoes da vida contemplativa e a comparaçao entre a vida ativa e a contemplativa.Palavras-chave: Beatitude; Vida contemplativa; Filosofia moral; Tomás de Aquino; Deus.

Predestination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George I. Mavrodes
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Equal Condition ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
Determining Factor

Predestination appears to be a religious or theological version of universal determinism, a version in which the final determining factor is the will or action of God. It is most often associated with the theological tradition of Calvinism, although some theologians outside the Calvinist tradition, or prior to it (for example, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas), profess similar doctrines. The idea of predestination also plays a role in some religions other than Christianity, perhaps most notably in Islam. Sometimes the idea of predestination is formulated in a comparatively restricted way, being applied only to the manner in which the divine grace of salvation is said to be extended to some human beings and not to others. John Calvin, for example, writes: We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death. (Institutes, bk 3, ch. 21, sec. 5) At other times, however, the idea is applied more generally to the whole course of events in the world; whatever happens in the world is determined by the will of God. Philosophically, the most interesting aspects of the doctrine are not essentially linked with salvation. For instance, if God is the first cause of all that happens, how can people be said to have free will? One answer may be that people are free in so far as they act in accordance with their own motives and desires, even if these are determined by God. Another problem is that the doctrine seems to make God ultimately responsible for sin. A possible response here is to distinguish between actively causing something and passively allowing it to happen, and to say that God merely allows people to sin; it is then human agents who actively choose to sin and God is therefore not responsible.

scholarly journals Seeing God. Thomas Aquinas on Divine Presence in the World

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 739-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Roszak ◽  
Tomasz Huzarek
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Natural Level ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Changing World

Abstract: How to recognize the presence of God in the world? Thomas Aquinas' proposition, based on the efficient, exemplary and intentional causality, including both the natural level and grace, avoids several simplifications, the consequence of which is transcendent blindness. On the one hand, it does not allow to fall into a panentheistic reductionism involving God into the game of His variability in relation to the changing world. The sensitivity of Thomas in interpreting a real existing world makes it impossible to close the subject in the ''house without windows'', from where God can only be presumed. On the other hand, the proposal of Aquinas avoids the radical transcendence of God, according to which He has nothing to do with the world.

Theism and Absolutism

Philosophy ◽  
1944 ◽  
Vol 19 (73) ◽  
pp. 117-129
Author(s):  
T. A. Burkill
Keyword(s):  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World

Theism is sometimes defined by reference to the contrasted doctrines of Deism and Pantheism. Deism, it is said, lays stress on God's transcendence, while Pantheism emphasizes his immanence to the exclusion of his transcendence. Theism, on the other hand, mediates between these two one-sided doctrines and affirms that God is at once both immanent and transcendent. He is in the world and yet beyond it. This definition, however, can only be accepted with qualification because some forms of Pantheism are arrived at by stressing, not the immanence, but the transcendence of God. According to Neo-Platonism, for example, the ineffable Absolute is so transcendent in existence and value that the world is reduced to the humble status of a mere illusory appearance and all veritable reality is absorbed in the Divine. This complication of the matter means that when studying the nature of Theism it is necessary to consider the opposition between Cosmism and Acosmism as well as that between transcendence and immanence The cosmistic tendency is to affirm, whereas the acosmistic tendency is to deny, the ultimate reality of the finite individual's effective autonomy. Theism is cosmistic, in the sense that it refuses to reduce the finite individual to a mere dependent mode of God. Nevertheless, the acosmistic tendency is very evident in many so-called theistic systems—so much so in some cases, indeed, that what is alleged to be Theism really amounts to Pantheism in disguise.

scholarly journals PRODUCTION BASED LEARNING: AS A TOOL TO INCREASE ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS OF STUDENTS

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ganefri ◽  
Aznil Mardin ◽  
Ulfia Rahmi ◽  
Asmar Yulastri
Keyword(s):  
Vocational Education ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Entrepreneurship Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Step ◽  
Teaching Model ◽  
Instructional Designers ◽  
Entrepreneurial Skills ◽  
The World ◽  
Process Oriented

The aim of this paper is to examine the issue of the development of entrepreneurial skills of students in vocational education. Entrepreneurship education is a subject that is included in the curriculum of vocational education which aims to broaden the knowledge of the students to the world of entrepreneurship and to motivate them to become directly involved in the entrepreneurial world. However, the achievement of the objectives of the course is still far from what is expected, it is caused by the lack of experience gained by the students in the entrepreneurial course and by the lack of student ability to generalize from one course to the other courses. The recent learning process oriented on the theory that was less supported by the practice, so that the experiences gained were still abstract. The teaching model of production based learning is the main step in improving the entrepreneurial skills of the learners, it is caused by this model will synergize the knowledge (cognitive) and psychomotor abilities of students that have not been achieved well. The implication is that faculty and instructional designers need to design the learning that facilitates the students in order to have direct experiences especially in entrepreneurial courses (entrepreneurship)

Richard Hooker's Via Media Doctrine of Justification

1981 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee W. Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
The World

The “judicious” Richard Hooker (1554–1600) gave classic expression to the via media position of Elizabethan Anglicanism. He attempted to steer a middle course, appropriating what he considered to be the truths and avoiding what he considered to be the errors and excesses, between Roman Catholicism and the Magisterial Reformation (Lutheranism and especially Calvinism). It has often been pointed out by scholars that Hooker sometimes inclines more in one direction than the other on certain key doctrines. For example, it has been said many times that his view of the relation of God and the world, of grace and nature, of faith and reason, is characterized by continuity rather than discontinuity, and that in this he was true to the medieval Catholic thought of Thomas Aquinas. But his view of justification has been said to be nearer to that of the Magisterial Reformation than to that of Rome.

Thomas' Proofs as Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Towards a Trinitarian Analogia

1978 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
George Kuykendall
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The West ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The World ◽  
First Cause ◽  
God The Father

Thomas Aquinas argued that, while revelation alone can supply knowledge of the divine nature, unaided human reason can infer the divine existence from the world's existence. His proofs of God's existence are, in principle, extensions and elaborations of the patristic natural theologies. The Fathers believed that Neoplatonic and Hellenistic speculations about the eternal One, the arche of the cosmos, constituted a ‘natural’ knowledge of God the Father and his creation. God's selfrevelation in the incarnation was placed in the context of this natural theology. Augustine's version of natural theology both summed up the patristic achievement for the West and laid the foundation for Western medieval exploration of the natural knowledge of God. Like Augustine, Thomas believed one could reason naturally from the sensible world to God's existence; unlike him, Thomas reasoned with Aristotle and not Plato. Thomas' ordering of the natural and revealed knowledge of God repeats, then, the patristic sequence: first one proves that God is the first Cause of the world, and then one reasons from revelation about God's redemptive and reconciling relation to the world.

TEÍSMO SEM CONTRADIÇÕES?

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (114) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Carlos R. V. Cirne-Lima
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Traditional Theism ◽  
Necessary Being ◽  
The World ◽  
Necessary Existence

A doutrina neotomista tradicional, retomando os argumentos de Tomás de Aquino, pretende demonstrar a existência necessária de Deus como sendo a primeira causa não-causada de toda a série de causas. Puntel retoma este argumento com maior clareza, distinguindo a totalidade do Ser – existente e possível – e, dentro dela, a subtotalidade do ser necessário (Deus) e a subtotalidade dos seres contingentes (mundo). Contra esta posição considera-se a existência de uma única totalidade omniabrangente e universalíssima, que em sí é necessária e que engendra, dentro em si, subtotalidades contingentes. Ao invés de uma totalidade do Ser com duas subtotalidades, das quais uma é Deus, a outra, os seres criados, propõe-se uma única totalidade que é Deus e que engendra, dentro em si, as várias subtotalidades que são os seres contingentes. Ao invés do teísmo tradicional dos neotomistas, o panenteísmo dos místicos neoplatônicos.Abstract: The traditional neo-Thomist doctrine, retaking Thomas Aquinas´ arguments, intends to demonstrate God’s necessary existence as being the first non-caused cause of the whole series of causes. Using this argument, Puntel clearly distinguishes the existing and possible wholeness of being and, within it, the subtotality of the necessary being (God) and the subtotality of contingent beings (the world). Against this standpoint, the existence of a unique, universal and all-encompassing totality, which is in itself necessary and generates within itself contingent subtotalities, will be considered. Instead of a totality of the Being with its two subtotalities, God and the created beings, a unique totality is being proposed, that of God, which generates within itself all the other subtotalities that are the contingent beings. Therefore, instead of the traditional theism of the neo-Thomists, it is the panentheism of neo-Platonist mystics that is being proposed.

Intentionality and the Experience of Time

KronoScope ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39
Author(s):  
Arnold Modell
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Future Time ◽  
Emotional Bonding ◽  
The Past ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
The World

AbstractThis paper explores the experience of time from the perspective of a concept of intentionality derived from Thomas Aquinas. As action directed at some future goal is determined by memorial categories, intentionality contains within it reference to past and future time. Meaning is achieved through action into the world and in turn the self is altered by that action. As the world is essentially an unlabeled place, we organize experience by means of memorial categories. Memorial categories serve as relatively stable templates, modified by the recontextualization that follows from novel experiences. Thus, the sense of the permanence of the past, that gives time its direction, is a construction of our brain. The now moment of experience is not emotionally neutral; our relation between past and future time is mediated by means of feeling rhythmic synchrony, keeping in time with the other provides the earliest medium for emotional bonding.

Religious Studies of Democratic Ukraine

2001 ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Anatolii M. Kolodnyi
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Integral System ◽  
The World

Ukrainian religious studies have deep roots. We find the elements of it in the written descendants of the writings of Kievan Rus. From the prince's time, the universal way of vision, understanding and appreciation of the world for many Ukrainian thinkers becomes their own religious experiences. The main purpose of their works is not the desire to create a certain integral system of theological knowledge, but the desire to convey their personal religious-minded perception of the divine nature, harmony, beauty and perfection of God created the world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document