Divine Essence Research Articles

Innovating the Green Way: Natural Considerations for Sustainable Consumption

Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can – there will always come a time when you will be grateful for what you did… Sarah Caldwell The five natural elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Sky), the Sun and the Moon, plants, trees, birds and animals, came into existence much ahead of human beings. In fact, man – as a part of Nature – was the last creation in the Universe. Though, we (human beings) have been created with the superlative degree of intellect, there is so much that can be learnt from Nature; the traditions of wisdom from the world teach us that a divine essence flows through all creations. But we will be able to learn from Nature only if we are open and receptive. Together with Nature, man can co-create ground-breaking ideas that could help him create wealth and well-being at the same time. It leads to ‘Win more – Win more’ scenarios. Bio-mimicry, a recently popular field of science, contemplates Nature's best ideas and imitates its designs and processes to offer innovative and sustainable solutions for life on Earth. The inspirations from Nature can be great teachings for inclusive growth and sustainable development. Natural farming is another upcoming stream which exemplifies the idea of working with Nature to maintain a balance between the species (food chain), thereby making the struggle for survival on the planet more affordable and sustainable. Encompassing these, this paper attempts to understand and appreciate Nature from a holistic perspective – to design precepts that would guide us to create a more sustainable and cooperative world. We also seek to explicate how Nature (plants, birds and animals) can be a ‘guru’ to guide us through the path of wisdom by paying attention to and by observing, understanding and reflecting on how and why Nature behaves the way it behaves.

Is God Necessarily Who God Is? Alternatives for the Trinity and Election Debate

AbstractAs a contribution to discussions of the relationship between trinity and election, in this article I explore the helpfulness of a return to ancient modal and metaphysical theological distinctions. At the forefront of trinity/election debates has been Bruce McCormack's controversial claim that election could be conceived as logically prior to, and the motivation for, God's being triune. Steering clear of questions about the right interpretation or trajectory of Karl Barth's theology, I attempt to identify the motivating theological convictions of this debate's interlocutors and find constructive options which maintain or address those convictions. One option I defend is the possibility that triunity is not logically prior to election.I begin with an analysis of three central theological convictions which seem to be at the heart of the trinity/election debates. They are: (1) a revelation axiom – that knowledge of God's nature is governed by the particular historical revelation of God in Christ; (2) a nuanced commitment to divine immutability; and (3) divine libertas a coactione – God's being free in nature and action from external constraint. I then contend that if more attention is paid to modal and metaphysical options with respect to the existence and essence of God, one will see that there are a number of viable positions which respect these convictions.I argue that at least some of the conceptual difficulties of McCormack's position can be eliminated if we properly distinguish kinds of necessity in reference to God's being and if we dispense with any notion of priority between God's essence and God's willing God's essence. With respect to kinds of necessity, I recall the ancient distinction between properties that are (a) necessary consequents of God's essence, (b) contingent and (c) a necessary consequence of God's essence given certain contingent states of affairs. Those distinctions, along with clarifications about the nature of divine freedom vis-à-vis his essence and actions, allow us to see the range of theological positions which remain faithful to the relevant concerns of the revelation axiom, divine immutability and divine freedom.I conclude that, while it is problematic to defend the logical priority of election over triunity, McCormack is justified in his claim that granting election as part of God's essence does no violence to divine freedom and he is perfectly entitled to the view that God's essential properties, including both God's fit-for-election-hypostatic-configuration and God's being the electing God are mutual aspects of God's single self-caused being.

Znany – nieznany Bóg. Uwagi na temat rozwoju doktryny niepoznawalności Boga u chrześcijańskich autorów od II do VI wieku

The Fathers of the Church from the beginning of the Christian thought were under a strong influence of the Greek philosophy which was in this time understood mainly as the path to unity with the Supreme Being. Christian Apologists tried to convince in their apologies that Christianity is the true philosophy because it allows to reach its goal in the best and the most certain way. Apologists commonly claimed that thanks to the biblical revelation Christians have the knowledge of God which is the most perfect and accurate. We can observe such claims also in the writings of Alexandrian Fathers for whom God is somehow known even at the highest mystical experiences. The Christian doctrine of the knowledge of God changed radically in the fourth century AD in the writings of Cappadocian Fathers who defended the orthodox faith against the Arians. The most famous of them - Eunomius claimed that the essence of God is to be unbegotten. Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa answered him that we cannot know the essence of God and none of his attributes can be understood as his essence. The Cappadocian Fathers were the founders of the Christian doctrine of unknowability of God, and they formulated it in the precise philosophical language. They also made a great contribution to the further development of this doctrine. Dialectic arguments showed only one aspect of unknowability of God; another one was the darkness in the ultimate mystical experience. Gregory of Nyssa explained it well in his Life of Moses, but this teaching reached its ultimate figure in writings of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite - unknown author from the end of the fifth century AD. Pseudo-Dionysius claimed that the best knowledge which we can have of God is ignorance. The man can reach this knowledge only at the highest stage of mystical life at the apophatic way. The conclusion of this brief analysis of unknowability of God in the Patristic tradition is the statement that there were two main stimulants of its evolution: theoretical and mystical. For both of them the key role played the Greek philosophy which was an inspiration in creative explanation of the Holy Scripture made by the Fathers of the Church.

Creation in Early Christian Polemical Literature: Irenaeus against the Gnostics and Athanasius against the Arians

AbstractThe doctrine of creation out of nothing was conceptually sharpened as the Church Fathers engaged the cosmological views of their opponents. This article discusses the emergence of this doctrine in the second century, focusing on the polemic of Irenaeus against the Gnostics. For Irenaeus, creatio ex nihilo was already a part of the “rule of truth,” which provided a hermeneutical key to the scriptures. Irenaeus also used rational arguments to show that Gnostic cosmologies obscured, rather than explained the origins of the world. A different challenge arose in the fourth century, when Arius began to teach that the Son was created out of nothing, thereby treating the divine act of the generation of the Son analogously to the creating of the world. Athanasius of Alexandria introduced an important distinction by correlating the eternal generation of the Son with the divine essence and the creation of the world with the will of the Father.

Emanation of Beauty and Love in Hafez’s Sonnets

Inherent beauty in the light radiation of the Holy essence of God, conveying through the names, attributes, creatures and love, is an issue that initially has been observed in the great mystics’ perspectives. The aesthetes have also demonstrated the main principles of this school of thought in their works. Emanation of the Holy essence of God through his names and beautiful attributes is manifested in the abundant mysterious pages of the mystical literature; these concepts have emerged along with the sensational words and phrases, which are about seduction, cute coquetry and other features of the beloved in the Hafez’s poetic works. Thus, the present study aims at investigating these pearlike concepts under a new interpretation. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n2p227

مراتب ذات حق در سوره اخلاص

Seyyed Reza Eshaqniya, Hussein Zahmatkesh The holy Chapter Ekhlas (Unity) is of the important chapters in the Glorious Quran whose position is clear in infallible imams' sayings and Muslim thinkers' commentary views. This chapter includes deep mystical points on Divine Essence on which many views have been proposed. Accordingly, this chapter indicates the tenor of three stages of God's essence- absent of all absents, oneness, and uniqueness- based on mystics' esoteric and mystical views. The present paper briefly studies Muslim mystics' mystical approach to stages of Divine Essence using the Chapter of Unity. The stage of absent of all absents is a non-conditional- as- the- source- of- division essence which has no sign and there is no means to acquire knowledge on it. The stages of oneness and uniqueness are conditioned- by- no- condition and conditioned-by-something essences, respectively. No doubt, the essence of the Most high is and these three determinations are named based on a consideration. The nature of mystical approach to stages of Divine Essence with regard to this monotheistic Chapter (Ekhlas- Unity) usually indicates this commentary explanation that refers to the stage of absent adytum of essence i.e. absent of all absents; God is one means the stage of essence of Divine Unity; and God is He on Whom all depends means the stage of essence of Divine oneness.

Classical Christian Theism and the Criterion of Particularity

AbstractThis article acknowledges the importance of doing theology proper under the guidance of special revelation and its particular conception of God and argues, against a common contemporary outlook, that the classical Christian theism of Aquinas and the Reformed tradition resonates with the criterion of particularity. To make this case, three features of classical Christian theism (the inference from creatio ex nihilo to the actuality of God, God's freedom from being in a genus and the tendency to treat the divine essence and attributes largely before the treatment of the Trinity) are examined and found to comport formally and materially with the rule of Christian particularity.

Black Liberation Theology and the Lynching of Jesus

Black Liberation Theology and the Lynching of Jesus

Burning Love: St Bonaventure and the Problem of Christ’s Earthly Beatitude

The Christology of St Bonaventure contains the paradoxical claim that during his Passion Christ simultaneously possesses perfect beatitude and experiences immeasurable suffering. Against Bonaventure’s claim, Caroline Walker Bynum argues that the bliss of beatitude cannot coexist with the intense physical and mental agony of the Passion. This article develops a reply to her objection on Bonaventure’s behalf that identifies beatific love of the divine essence revealed in the vision of glory not with any specific feelings or emotions but with a complex habit or disposition that responds in different ways under varying circumstances. This reply is also defended against some possible objections. The article concludes by explaining the sense in which Bonaventure understands the sufferings of Christ to be not only literally immeasurable but also particularly fitting.

The Manifestation of Fireand Lightinthe Icons of Mir-Heidar’s Miraj Nameh

According to the bases of the art if the East, the artist tries to manifest the absolute essence of God in his artistic works, and the imaginary motifs and forms depicted in his works narrate the light of God. In principle, the artist is not bound to imitate nature and uses symbol to represent the metaphysical universe and its existing truths. Symbol represents a transcendental reality embracing deep concepts, whose cognition helps to understand the substance of the Islamic thoughts and to be enjoyed of its internal beauty. Illustration and iconography of fire is the depiction of one of these symbols. Indeed, the fire painted in Iranian miniature is not the representative of fire as one of the four elements, rather a symbol of the sacredness and light of the saints of God. In this research, it is aimed the study the mystical attitudes towards light and fire in order to understand better the meanings of fire. Among the different miniature manuscripts narrating this story, MirajNameh has been selected for this purpose, since this book contains illustrations of the material world, seven heavens, paradise, and hell simultaneously. This research aims to prove that the artist has been visually aware of the different types of fire and light, although it cannot be claimed that he was fully informed of the mystical meaning of such distinction. It is however clear that this attitude followed in the visual tradition of Iranian bookmaking is of great significance.

Jewish Ghettos in Sighet and Dąbrowa Górnicza

Jewish Ghettos in Sighet and Dąbrowa Górnicza

The Views of the Ash'arites,The Mu'tazilites and the Extreme Orthodox on the Createdness of the Qur'an

The controversy among the various schools of theology over the question whether the Qur’an is created or uncreated and eternal has been on for centuries and it seems to be unending. A glimpse at the internet will no doubt give a clear picture of this debate that is heating by the day. This debate is bound up with another question whether speech is one of God’s attributes or not. Two extremes are discernible from this debate and at the centre lay the Ash’arites who maintains an intermediary position between the two diametrically opposed schools of thought. At the one extreme were the Multazilites and a section of the Rafidites who maintain that the Qur’an was created. At the other extreme were the extreme orthodox that held an extreme anthropomorphic view as regard the divine speech. According to them the speech of God is composed of letters, words and sounds which inhere in the essence of God. Hence, this study is aimed at a critical examination of this contentious subject, in a view to highlight those unconventional tendencies which are inherent in the theological arguments of these diametrically opposed schools. The moderate position of the Asharites, will be examined viz; the Qur’an and the Sunnah.

Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity by Andrew Radde-Gallwitz

BOOK REVIEWS 145 arguments concerning them, and thereby gives an indication of a “style” of thinking that underlies those arguments. FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUERSCHMIDT Loyola University Maryland Baltimore, Maryland Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity. By ANDREW RADDE-GALLWITZ. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. 272. $100.00 (cloth) ISBN: 978-0-19-957411-7. Divine simplicity has long been a contested issue. Although there are powerful reasons for concluding that God is in some way preeminently simple, there are also serious difficulties in doing so, among them that of understanding how a perfectly simple God could possess what at least seem to be a multitude of properties. The book under review examines some of the earliest attempts to deal with this issue. Although its primary focus is on Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, there are also substantive discussions of Ptolemaeus Gnosticus (a second-century critic of Marcion), Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, and Eunomius. It exhibits a high level of scholarship and is often helpful on points of detail. Nonetheless, the book’s fundamental line of interpretation seems to me to be mistaken. I will first summarize the main outlines of this interpretation and then offer a criticism of a central point. The author observes, rightly enough, that the philosophical context for the earliest Christian discussions of divine simplicity was supplied by Middle Platonism. The Middle Platonists distinguished sharply between the highest, unknowable God and a lower, demiurgic God who in some obscure way derives from the first. The highest God is wholly simple, unknowable, and not directly engaged in the world; the second God is simple only in relation to creatures, but can be known via nous (the faculty of pure intellectual apprehension) and is, in at least some versions, identical to Plato’s realm of the Forms. Christians found this fundamental scheme appealing as a way to understand the relationship between God the Father and the Logos, and versions of it are to be found in Ptolemaeus, Clement, and Origen. A second sort of answer to the problem of divine simplicity began to emerge in the theology of Athanasius. Athanasius was an early advocate of what RaddeGallwitz calls the identity thesis, the claim that divine simplicity is best understood as implying the identity of the divine essence and attributes. Admittedly Athanasius does not state this thesis categorically, but he does assert BOOK REVIEWS 146 that God has no accidents or “essential complements” and hence that terms such as ‘God’ and ‘Father’ must name the divine essence itself. This notion was picked up by Eunomius, who saw (as Athanasius had not) that it could be used to support Arianism. For Eunomius, ingeneracy is, as it were, the master divine attribute to which all others are equivalent; and since the Son is not ingenerate, he cannot be God. The essential contribution of Basil and Gregory, according to Radde-Gallwitz, consisted in finding a way to understand divine simplicity that requires neither the identity thesis nor the radical apophaticism of the Middle Platonists. Both of these views have at their root what Radde-Gallwitz calls the thesis of the epistemological priority of definition, the idea (found most obviously in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics) that knowing an entity requires knowing its definition. Basil and Gregory, by contrast, recognize that there can be knowledge of the divine substance or essence (ousia) that is not in any way tantamount to a definition. What can be known are the divine “propria,” distinguishing characteristics such as light, wisdom, power, life, truth, goodness, and incorruptibility that are coextensive with and intrinsic to the divine essence but do not, either individually or collectively, constitute its definition. This use of the term ‘proprium’ (Greek idiÇma or idiot‘s) may be a bit confusing because in Aristotelian logic a proprium is a property that follows directly from the definition of a substance, as, for example, having interior angles that add up to 180 degrees follows from the definition of a triangle. Basil and Gregory do not claim to know the definition of the divine substance, and so make no claim regarding whether the propria follow from it. Their position is simply...

Henry of Ghent on Real Relations and the Trinity: The Case for Numerical Sameness Without Identity

I argue that there is a hitherto unrecognized connection between Henry of Ghent’s general theory of real relations and his Trinitarian theology, namely the notion of numerical sameness without identity. A real relation (relatio) is numerically the same thing (res) as its absolute (non-relative) foundation, without being identical to its foundation. This not only holds for creaturely real relations but also for the divine persons’ distinguishing real relations. A divine person who is constituted by a real relation (relatio) and the divine essence is numerically the same thing (res) as the divine essence without being identical to it. Further, I compare Mark Henninger’s and Jos Decorte’s interpretations of Henry’s general theory of real relations and show that Henninger’s is to be preferred and how it is consistent with my interpretation. I argue that the difficulty with Decorte’s interpretation stems, in part, from his misrepresentation of Henry’s Trinitarian theology. Subsequently, I fill in some missing pieces to Decorte’s presentation of Henry’s Trinitarian theology, and this in turn shows why Henninger’s interpretation in conjunction with mine is to be preferred.

The Perfect Маn in the Philosophy of 'Abd al-Karim al-Jili (in Аrаbiс)

Maytham М. al-Janabi analyzes the image of the Perfect Маn (al-insan al-kamil) in 'Abd al-Karim al-Jili's philosophy. This concept plays а significant part in the classical Sufi tradition. The Perfect man is the Microcosm and а mode of the divine Essence. Al-Jili was the most important thinker who has developed this concept. М. al-Janabi attempts to analyze this phenomenon, basing оn his most important work entitled al-Insan al-kamil.

La omnipotencia del Absoluto en Suárez: la necesidad de una perfección infinita / God’s Omnipotence in Suárez. The Need of Absolute Perfection

In this paper I study the attribute of God ́s omnipotence in Francisco Suárez. The need, perfection and infinity of the divine essence qualify this attribute crucially; potence belongs to God himself, who –as an infinite being- contains all possible perfection. God contains all by its nature, because He contains every possibility, which is infinite. Thus, undestanding Himself, God understands everything, because He contains all in its essence.

Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham, by Russell L. Friedman

This book is based on a series of lectures given at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, in March and April 2008. It consists of a survey of the main arguments which scholastic theologians produced concerning the trinity in the period c.1250–c.1350. The author promises us for the future a lengthy monographic treatment of the subject: the summary has, as it were, come out first. The great merit of Friedman's book is that it gives a clear exposition of the intricacies of scholastic arguments which, on this most difficult of theological topics, were abstruse indeed. He begins by focusing on the fundamental problem: how to explain identity and difference within the trinity. We are led through the relational account, based on the notion of the opposition of relations in the persons of the trinity—thus the existence of the one (for instance, the Father) implies the other (the Son); the Holy Spirit is ‘breathed’ passively as opposed to the active ‘breathing’ of the Spirit by the Father and the Son. The emanational account is explained: the persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same divine essence in three different ways, described by the mode by which each one emanates or originates. In addition, there was the psychological model which derived from Augustine and which drew on the philosophy of mind—the Son is a concept produced by the Father's intellect, the Holy Spirit is love produced by the will shared by the Father and the Son. In this view, theories of cognition, of concept formation, relate to the trinity.

TOMÁS DE AQUINO Y LA TEOLOGÍA POSITIVA

Throughout his work Aquinas is consistent in holding that, about God, we do not know what He is but rather what He is not. We do not have a direct knowledge of divine essence in this life. However, from his De potentia onwards, and in the Summa theologiae , Thomas argues that the names which mean divine perfections –being, goodness, wisdom and the like– are not merely negative or relational terms, but are predicated substantialiter of God. That means they signify the very divine substance, though imperfectly. The paper tries to analyze what type of knowledge this attribution presupposes, and according to this, to what extent his natural theology can be assessed as negative or positive.

Begetting extraordinary humans

We are very grateful to Verso Books for giving us the permission to publish this version of Chapter eight (Fifth component 2), The metamorphosis of kinship, Verso (2012).

S'UNIR À L'INTELLECT, VOIR DIEU. AVERROÈS ET LA DOCTRINE DE LA JONCTION AU CŒUR DU THOMISME

AbstractThe article examines the relation that Aquinas' theory of the beatific vision maintains with Averroes' noetics as presented in hisGreat Commentary on the De anima. Starting with hisCommentary on the Sentences, in which the young Thomas Aquinas offers an explicit transposition of the philosophical intellection of separate substances into the Christian theological order, through to his later works where no mention of it is found, we will endeavour to present the exact nature of these borrowings and to evaluate their accuracy by questioning the conceptual coherence of Aquinas' gesture: could Aquinas base his conception of a vision of God by essence on a noetic construction which was originally part of a system judged both erroneous and contrary to faith? Can one concede theologically, concerning the relation between divine essence and intellect, what one refuses philosophically, concerning the relation between the separate intellect and the body? Although Aquinas and his followers, in the incipient quarrel, assert it to be so, we will indicate how the original paradoxical borrowing maintains something conceptually problematic at the heart of Aquinas' thinking.