Notes from 1 1/2 books of on The Trinity by St Augustine and some St Thomas Aquinas. Dig in.

Procession - An internal origin within God. Example is your intellect internally proceeds within you allowing you to form thoughts or words, but that procession of intellect does not leave you .
Knowing = Procession/Generation. God’s act of knowing himself perfectly or his divine self knowledge is not a random thought, it is a subsistent divine Word. That divine Word is the Son. The reason it is called generation is because the procession from the Father is understood as the divine intellect/knowledge.
Love/Will= Procession. When you know something you can love what you know. Love proceeds from the Lover (Father) to the beloved (Spirit). This procession is known to be called spiration rather than generation because it’s from love/will not intellect.
There can only be two processions due to there only being two internal operations; intellect and will. Intellect = Word, which then Generates, whereas will = love which then Spirates. Final result: intellect, Word, Generation. Will, Love, Spiration.
Augustine uses Latria and our bodies being a temple to show divinity of the Spirit
Christ is lesser then the Holy Spirit when incarnate because he emptied himself and took the form of a servant
Augustine uses 1 Corinthians 2:2 for objections to Christ not knowing the hour.
God uses his Word to create and love is highest form, not human self love.
Augustine believes the three men with Abraham were manifestations of the Trinity.

Hello all, I wanted to get some clarity regarding the sins of gluttony, greed, lust and envy. Feel free to correct me on any observations I’ve made below:

Regarding gluttony, is this sin strictly related to food, or can it also refer broadly to any form of overconsumption, such as excessive spending of money and the hoarding wealth. With the two examples given, if they were examples of gluttony, what would them distinct from greed (avarice), or do the two sins overlap at times? If so, I feel like I may have often conflated the two sins. With lust, although it’s mostly referred to as an intense sexual desire, can it also used to refer to desires in general, such as wealth? If yes, then how would you differentiate between lust and greed, because couldn’t greed therefore be a form of lust or acting upon said lust? Similarly with envy, is it not driven by a lustful desire to have an object that another person has which you don’t?

I was thinking about this scenario: a superpowered(think something like those comic book superheroes or scifi/fantasy reality warpers) person decides to use his capabilities to greatly reduce the amount of suffering/misery in the world. He then uses his powers to eliminate/stop/reduce hunger/famine, droughts, large scale natural disasters, wars, plagues, crime...

As a result, the world becomes a much safer and prosperous place, at least in theory. But then what now? Is this a good state of affairs/condition for making to be in according to christian though? Or is the suffering and misery of the world a necessary thing? With these removed, would there be less room/opportunity for martyrdom, charity, mercy and sanctification? Would this super being have made the world a better place? Or would him have pridefully made it more hedonistic and lazy?

Edit: sorry for the misspelling. I meant 'to what degree is misery/suffering...'

So this topic has been troubling me for a while and I can’t really find sound theological opinion/explanation on this.

So the catechism says that to the Jews belong the sonship, glory the promises etc (CCC 839). The Church’s understand of Romans 9 and 11 is that Jews still have a covenant with God despite their rejection of the Gospel, for the sake of their forefathers. I understand the point that God’s promises are irrevocable on God’s side.

At the same time we obviously do not believe that this special relationship is salvific. The Church clearly teaches that there is only one route to salvation: Jesus Christ. (Not talking about those with invincible ignorance).

So what does it mean that they are still God’s chosen people? Like practically what does that actually mean. I understand God keeps His promises but what **are** the promises? That Israel will be saved? But then that makes those promises/covenants salvific which we just established they are not. If they were then that would mean there are two paths to salvation: one through Jesus and one through Jewish bloodline. This is clearly the dual-covenant theology which is a heresy.

I am deeply unsettled by the discourse on this topic. Trying to find the answer through research I only found two different extremes. One, claiming or strongly insinuating that Jews **are** saved through this covenant while explicitly denying Christ (they add “in a mysterious way only know by God” as if it makes the fact that they just completely minimised Jesus acceptable)
Or the second which from what I’ve seen has only been posted by SSPX (or similar communities). This one completely rejects that Jews still have a covenant with God and also rejects Vatican II and overall “modern Catholicism”.

Either way, I’m not really sure how to square these two teachings myself, and it is bringing a lot of doubt.

Am interested to inquire, within the Catholic intellectual circles, how is Karl Barth received i.e his systematic theology etc etc

Basically the idea is that conscious states and behaviours are eventually bound to be mapped in a way that is perceived by us as rational. Perceiving the mapping as irrational would be mentally draining and not conducive to survival and thriving, so naturally we end up evolving to perceive the mapping as rational. Therefore, this mapping eventually being perceived as rational is expected under naturalism.

These past few days, I have been reflecting on the entertainment I have consumed over the last few years, and I realized that some of it contains forms of blasphemy, even though the film or series itself was not intended to be blasphemous. I would like to give a few examples:

In the movie John Wick, Wick breaks into a church and shoots a corrupt priest, who responds by cursing at him inside the church.

There is something similar in The Sopranos, where Christopher curses inside a church, not to mention the many occasions when the characters use the F-word in connection with holy names.

Another example is in the series Shōgun, when the main character steps on a cross out of hatred for Catholicism because he is a staunch Protestant.

When I watched these things, I was a Catholic with a more lax attitude toward these matters, so I did not think much of them. After all, these stories were not created specifically to blaspheme, unlike works such as The Last Temptation of Christ, The Boys, and others.

In the end, I did not stop watching The Sopranos, Shōgun, or John Wick. But would continuing to watch these movies and series constitute cooperating with blasphemy?

I also found it somewhat strange that Bishop Robert Barron praised The Sopranos. I agree that the show has a great message, but I am not sure whether that is enough to justify overlooking these problematic elements.

I would like to know how Catholics should think about this issue. Is there a distinction between consuming entertainment that contains blasphemous elements and actually participating in or approving of blasphemy?

I am thinking about confessing these as sins of blasphemy.

I've been thinking about the metaphysical foundations of classical natural law, particularly the move from powers/dispositions to natural ends.

Suppose I grant a fairly robust powers ontology. Objects really do possess causal powers, and these powers ground objective modal facts. So, for example, some object A has the power to produce manifestations X, Y, or Z under the appropriate circumstances. This gives us genuine facts about what A can do and perhaps even grounds counterfactuals and laws of nature.

What I'm having trouble seeing is why we should move from:

"A has a power whose characteristic manifestation is X"

to:

"A is directed toward X as a final end."

It seems possible to stop at the modal claim. Fragility grounds a real capacity to break under certain conditions, but surely breaking is not therefore the "fulfillment" or good of the glass. Similarly, combustibility makes combustion a characteristic possible manifestation of gasoline, but it seems strange to say that gasoline is therefore metaphysically directed toward being burned in any normatively relevant sense.

So it seems important to distinguish:

1. A power has a characteristic manifestation.

2. A thing is teleologically directed toward that manifestation.

3. Realizing that manifestation is good or perfective for the thing.

4. Rational agents therefore have reasons not to deliberately frustrate that manifestation.

I'm not seeing why (1) entails (2), much less why (2) entails (3) or (4).

This becomes especially relevant to classical natural-law arguments concerning human faculties. Consider vision. The visual faculty is clearly organized for sight. But imagine someone in circumstances where everything they could see would cause them serious psychological harm. Deliberately closing their eyes and preventing the faculty from realizing its function could then promote their well-being rather than frustrate it.

That seems to show that even if a faculty has an objective function, realizing its function on a particular occasion does not necessarily contribute to the flourishing of the person as a whole.

The contraception case makes the issue especially clear. Human sexual intercourse obviously has a reproductive function, and I have no problem granting that procreation is a genuine natural function of the reproductive faculty. What I do not understand is why this biological or metaphysical fact entails that deliberately preventing reproduction during intercourse is intrinsically morally wrong. Why must the natural function of a subordinate faculty operate as an exceptionless moral constraint on how a rational person may use that faculty?

A classical natural-law theorist can respond that there is a distinction between simply not exercising a faculty and positively frustrating it. But we seem to intentionally interfere with natural functions in many unobjectionable cases: suppressing immune activity, inducing unconsciousness during surgery, blocking pain, selectively preventing sensory input, and so on. So "deliberately frustrating a natural function" cannot itself be a sufficient condition for moral wrongness.

It therefore seems that an additional bridge principle is required, something like:

"Certain natural ends are goods of the person such that deliberately acting against their realization is intrinsically contrary to human flourishing."

But if that is the crucial premise, then it seems the real philosophical work is being done by the theory of human flourishing and normativity, rather than by the powers ontology itself.

So my questions are:

Does contemporary powers metaphysics actually require teleology in the Aristotelian sense, or can one coherently hold that powers merely ground a structured space of objective possibilities?

And, even granting Aristotelian teleology, what is the strongest argument for moving from "this faculty has X as its natural end" to "deliberately frustrating X is intrinsically morally wrong"?

I'm particularly interested in the strongest Aristotelian/Thomistic response rather than arguments that simply deny powers or natural functions altogether.

In the beginning, or perhaps before the concept of beginnings could make sense, God chose to create.

God, being perfect and therefore perfectly satisfied, had no necessity in this choice, nor greater satisfaction, nor ethical obligation. And, because the goodness of creatures is contingent on the goodness gifted to them by God, there’s an interesting dilemma at the moment before time.

Good has an epistemic quality. But how can God evaluate the good of a hypothetical creation? Unlike our own choices, for God things are only lovely if He chooses to make them lovely. We experience good, but God must choose what is good, for nothing is good unless He makes it so.

i know this is a little rambling, but stay with me. God’s first choice is similar to our own free choices. For us, we are ignorant of the ultimate good, and so must make our own judgements. Why then, were we not made with perfect knowledge of every choice we could make? If good is something to be known, then why leave us ignorant?

But in the beginning, God made the same choice. He already knew the value of everything that was good in itself, as it was in His own essence. He had no ignorance, but in His omniscience, he saw all the things that _could_ be beautiful, if He let them, and chose to create.

So perhaps we were made ignorant for this reason. From within the goods we know absolutely, we are like God, and behave blamelessly. But in our ignorance, we are given the chance to create good within ourselves, just as God had the choice to create good outside Himself.

In this view, our test is this: If you were I AM, knowing everything that is good, would you choose to love more?

Can I investigate the truth independently, without asking others for permission?

Just that inquiry I was wondering about these few days. If you could recommend academic material or bibliography to study further, I'd be grateful for that.

There are the traditional theodicy of Genesis to explain many of the evil’s in the world, however can a catholic:

1)Believe that the fallen angels corrupted the natural world

2)Believe in the “soul creation” theodicy?

I have a question about predestination: What is the purpose of God creating a man whom He already knows will ultimately be condemned?

I am not saying that God condemns anyone, but rather that He creates a person while already knowing their final destiny. Would it not have been better for that person not to have been created in the first place?

Is there any proof of life after death besides NDEs? I have frequent panic attacks about this.

I am afraid of dying. I wouldn't mind a state of non-consciousness—if the atheist view turns out to be true—but the thought that the short time we spend with loved ones, along with our memories, relatives, friends, and the people we share our lives with, will never be seen again... that is what troubles me.
Perhaps there is nothing after death; maybe the idea of ​​a place existing after consciousness ceases is simply a coping mechanism for grief—a way to explain and come to terms with the fact that a loved one has died.
After all, why is there no proof of the soul? Why do people who experience near-death events report feeling nothing, or being in a void? Wouldn't that actually support a materialist view?

How can thomism be synergistic? As the works that you do depend on the grace that you receive, and this grace is withheld from some and only given to the elect, even if this grace makes your will naturally align with God's making it akin to the idea where in calvinism God changes the disposition in your heart, and from there you can choose to follow your desires as it is always in accordance with God

I am a reader with a strong interest in Catholic culture, theology, and philosophy. While reading Augustine, a volume in the “Greatest Thinkers” series published by Zhonghua Book Company, I encountered several ideas concerning the problem of evil and the so-called “free-will response” that I find difficult to understand.
I would be very grateful if someone familiar with Catholic theology, the thought of St. Augustine, or the philosophical problem of evil could help clarify these questions for me.
Before presenting my questions, however, I would like to make an important disclaimer. The book I am reading is not itself a theological work, and I am not certain that the translator consistently uses theological or philosophical terminology in the same way that it is traditionally used within the Catholic intellectual tradition. Therefore, if some of my confusion results from imprecise translation or terminology that does not correspond to traditional Catholic usage, I apologize in advance.
Likewise, if my questions reveal a lack of familiarity with theology or philosophy, I hope you will forgive my limited knowledge. I am sincerely trying to understand these issues more deeply.
The Argument Presented in the Book
The book presents the problem of evil roughly as follows:
Anyone who believes in an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good God must confront the problem of evil. How can the existence of such a God be reconciled with the existence of evil?
The argument may be formulated as follows:
Evil exists.
If God does not know about evil, then He is not omniscient.
If God knows about evil but cannot prevent it, then He is not omnipotent.
If God knows about evil, can prevent it, but does not prevent it, then He is not perfectly good.
Therefore, the existence of evil seems to demonstrate that there cannot be a God who is simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good.
The book then discusses what it calls the “free-will response.” According to this account, evil is connected with the freedom of human beings. God desires a world without evil, but He also knows that human beings cannot achieve genuine happiness unless they possess freedom.
The passage compares God to a loving parent who allows his children to live their own lives. By granting human beings freedom, however, God also makes possible two kinds of evil: moral evil, which results directly from human choices, and natural evil, which is said to result indirectly from human choices.
The passage concludes that if human beings had chosen to obey God, they would not have encountered evil, and therefore God is not responsible for evil because evil is ultimately the direct or indirect consequence of human choice.
This explanation has raised several questions for me.

1. What do omnipotence, omniscience, and divine goodness mean in Catholic theology?
How does Catholic theology traditionally define the divine attributes of:
Omnipotence
Omniscience
Perfect goodness
For example, does omnipotence mean that God can do absolutely anything whatsoever, including things that are logically contradictory? Or does it mean that God can do everything that is genuinely possible and consistent with His own nature?
Similarly, what exactly does it mean to say that God is perfectly good? Does divine goodness mean that God always prevents suffering whenever He has the power to do so, or is the relationship between goodness and the prevention of suffering more complicated than that?

2. What are “good” and “evil,” and what is their relationship?
I understand that St. Augustine’s understanding of evil may differ significantly from the common idea that good and evil are two opposing substances or forces.
Is it correct to say that, according to Augustine and the broader Catholic tradition, evil is not a positive thing or substance created by God, but rather a privation of good (privatio boni)?
If so, how should we understand the relationship between good and evil?
Are good and evil genuinely symmetrical opposites, like two independent forces competing against one another? Or is evil better understood as a deficiency, corruption, or absence of something that ought to be present?
This seems particularly important for understanding the problem of evil, because the argument in the book appears to begin with the assumption that “evil exists” in a way that may not correspond exactly to Augustine’s understanding.

3. Does God’s mercy conflict with His wisdom?
The passage says, in effect, that:
Out of His goodness and mercy, God desires a world without evil. However, out of His wisdom, He knows that human beings cannot be genuinely happy unless they possess freedom.
At first glance, this seems to suggest a conflict between two divine attributes.
If God’s mercy leads Him toward the creation of a world without evil, but His wisdom leads Him to permit human freedom even though freedom makes evil possible, does this mean that God’s mercy and His wisdom are pulling in different directions?
Could we say that God faces a choice between being merciful and being wise?
My intuition is that this cannot be correct if Catholic theology teaches the divine simplicity and unity of God. If God is not composed of separate and competing parts, then His wisdom, goodness, mercy, justice, and other attributes cannot literally be independent forces that conflict with one another.
So how should this passage be understood correctly?
Is the apparent conflict merely the result of describing God’s actions from a human perspective? Or is the book’s formulation itself theologically imprecise?

4. If God is omnipotent, why could He not make everyone obey Him?
The passage also states:
If human beings had chosen to obey God, then they would not have encountered evil.
This raises another difficulty for me.
If God is omnipotent, why could He not simply make every human being completely obey His will?
I understand that one possible answer is that forced obedience would not be genuine freedom. However, this seems to raise another question:
Could an omnipotent God create human beings who are genuinely free and yet always freely choose the good?
And if this is possible, why did God not create such human beings?
Furthermore, if God is omniscient, would He not know in advance that human beings would misuse their freedom and act against His will?
If God knew that human beings would sin before creating them, then how should we understand the relationship between:
God’s omniscience,
human freedom,
divine providence,
and moral responsibility?
Does God’s foreknowledge of a free action mean that the action is predetermined?
Or can God infallibly know what a person will freely choose without causing that person to make that choice?

I would especially appreciate an explanation from the perspective of St. Augustine and the Catholic theological tradition, rather than merely a general philosophical defense of theism.
In particular, I would like to understand how the following concepts fit together:
Divine omnipotence
Divine omniscience
Divine goodness
Divine simplicity
The nature of evil as privatio boni
Free will
Original sin
Divine providence
God’s permission of evil
Thank you very much for your patience. I am asking these questions not because I wish to argue against Christianity, but because I sincerely want to understand Catholic thought more deeply. If any of my assumptions or formulations are mistaken, I would be especially grateful to have those mistakes pointed out.

Personally, I have a deep theological and moral issue with this narrative because it overlooks a profound ethical contradiction. If God is truly omniscient and knows the depths of the human heart, it is logically absurd and morally indefensible for Him to yield to Satan’s cosmic provocation, reducing His most devoted servant to a pawn in a cruel and unnecessary wager simply to prove a point He already knew. Furthermore, the story engages in an appalling objectification of human life by presenting the gift of ten new children and a new wife as a divine "reward" that somehow settles the score, treating human beings and familial love as if they were mere commodities or replaceable inventory while completely ignoring the unending trauma of grief. By contrast, the God embodied in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ operates on an entirely opposite paradigm: during His temptations in the wilderness, Jesus flatly refuses to perform tricks or play games with the devil to prove His divine authority; He perceives people's inner faith directly without subjecting them to agonizing trials; and He actively heals human suffering rather than orchestrating it as a test of devotion. Ultimately, a truly loving, omnipotent God does not need to validate His sovereignty to evil by using the agony of His faithful as collateral.

Even when I acknowledge the story's underlying metaphor: that remaining loyal and faithful will lead to God’s ultimate provision; the philosophical and literal framework of Job still feels deeply antagonistic to what Jesus Christ teaches.​ Jesus never presented faith as a transactional endurance test or a game where human suffering is leveraged for a future payout. Instead, Christ completely redefines suffering. For example, in the story of the man born blind (John 9:1-3), his disciples assume that the blindness is a divine punishment or a test of sin. Jesus shatters that paradigm, affirming that tragedy and misfortune are neither a divinely imposed judgment nor a test of loyalty. He reveals a God who meets us with grace and compassion in our pain, not a deity who permits destruction just to prove a point before issuing a cosmic reimbursement.

P1. If a conceptual model has greater comparative epistemic support than its competitors, then rational

agents have defeasible reason to prefer it.

P2. This conceptual model has that support because it better withstands relevant objections and

competing hypotheses.

C1. Therefore, rational agents have defeasible reason to prefer this conceptual model.

P3. If rational agents have defeasible reason to prefer a conceptual model and they update rationally, then

their credences tend to converge on that model.

P4. Rational agents update rationally.

C2. Therefore, rational agents' credences tend to converge on this conceptual model

Hello everyone,

So from my understanding, the force behind the First Way is the fact that you can prove God’s existence with the existence of any concrete entity. But, i think i found a rival explanation that eliminates the need of God, and i would like to see: 1)if my understanding of the First Way is correct 2)if it’s correct, how to solve this other explanation.

1)So from what i understand, the Firsy Way applies to any concrete object: Take for instance a cup of water over my desk existing now in t. Now, what makes it the case that it exists in t? Well the cup of water is the actualization of a set of potencies, and a subset is actualized by a concrete entity y in which y it’s different from the cup of water. Ok, and for y to actualize the subset of potencies of the cup of the water in time t, it also needs for it’s set of potencies to be actualized by different entities and so on. So from this sequence we have a Per Se series, in which each member is dependent of the another, and each member actualizes it’s sequent member if it’s also actualized by it’s antecessor(a sequence of actualizers actualized). The series cannot extend to infinity, because, if it did, there would not be any actualization at all(since all members borrow the power to actualize it’s sucessor from a source, therefore if it were infinit, we could always find a member that’s not actualized). Hence, we need a member of the series that actualizes but it’s not actualized, namely God.

2)However i think an atheist/agnostic could appeal to this model to explain the cup of water: There are set of particles and eternal conditional laws. For instance the cup of water exists at time t, because the cup of water is composed of these fundamental particles(like Democritus atoms) and they actualize the cup at time t without being actualized(because their existence are fundamental and they are at that position in time t, because of inertia(that is, there is nothing opposing the particles in being at that position). So we have a Per Se series that ends with an entity that has potential, therefore, it’s not God, therefore it’s not the case that, for any concrete object to exist, it must be actualized by God.

3)I know some people might appeal to other arguments to answer this model(like contingency argument and whatnot) and i agree with this. However what i wanted to know if there’s an answer inside the Aristotelin argument that refute or dissolve the characterization of this model.

Why does the Bible portray people who lived well beyond 120 years? Wouldn't that be technically impossible? Is there an explanation for this, considering biological limits and the low life expectancy prior to medical advances? And how does evolution fit into this picture?

​

I ended up being confronted by a heresy of a Protestant friend who was so ridiculous that me never even had an answer, which is abnormal because I usually have an answer to all heresies.

Basically he says he believes that a woman that commits adultery in both Mark and João should be removed because he thinks he is not canonical ????

I am a Catholic, and a conservative, but I am also a strong believer in same-sex marriage.

This has nothing to do with politics, I just wanted to make it clear that both of my, I guess you could say, idealistic identifications are historically against same-sex marriage.

Even so, I believe that love is love, and I’ve met and been friends with plenty of gay people who are extremely good people seem perfectly happy. I’m trying to understand how I’m supposed to use these people and, also, whether or not I’m supposed to support them.

I understand this is historically contradictory to teachings in the Bible (primarily the command to get married and having offspring) but as a human, especially with a flawed mind, it is very difficult me to see past this when I have so much real life evidence of why gay people are morally ok.

To be clear, I am not a full supporter of LGBT, as I completely disagree with those who are transgender. I do not see any reasoning behind changing genders and it is completely biblically inexplicable. Even so, I can’t seem to find the same moral objection to same sex partnership.

Could someone please explain?