Creation as Emanation
Creation as Emanation

Author: Therese Bonin

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2001-04-25

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0268159114

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The Liber de causis (De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa), a monotheistic reworking of Proclus’ Elements of Theology, was translated from Arabic into Latin in the twelfth century, with an attribution to Aristotle. Considering this Neoplatonic text a product of Aristotle's school and even the completion of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Albert the Great concluded his series of Aristotelian paraphrases by commenting on it. To do so was to invite controversy, since accidents of translation had made many readers think that the Liber de causis taught that God made only the first creature, which in turn created the diverse multitude of lesser things. Thus, Albert’s contemporaries in the Christian West took the text to uphold the supposedly Aristotelian doctrine that from the One only one thing can emanate—a doctrine they rejected, believing as they did that God freely determined the number and kinds of creatures. Albert, however, defended the philosophers against the theologians of his day, denying that the thesis "from the One only one proceeds" removed God’s causality from the diversity and multiplicity of our world. This Albert did by appealing to a greater theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and equating the being that is the subject of metaphysics with the procession of Being from God's intellect, a procession Dionysius described in On the Divine Names. Creation as Emanation examines Albert's reading of the Liber de causis with an eye toward two questions: First, how does Albert view the relation between faith and reason, so that he can identify creation from nothing with emanation from God? And second, how does he understand Platonism and Aristotelianism, so that he can avoid the misreadings of his fellow theologians by finding in a late-fifth-century Neoplatonist the key to Aristotle’s meaning?

Creation Emanation and Salvation
Creation Emanation and Salvation

Author: NA Hallett

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-10-14

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9401749418

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The present work is intended once again to draw the attention of readers to the resources opened up by Spinoza for the elucidation of the classical problems of philosophy. Today these problems are too often taken to be merely verbal, so that answers to them so far as these are metaphysical are confidently claimed to be "nonsense." My labours will, therefore, seem to minds thus committed to have been untimely and funda mentally futile. Untimely they may have been, but unless also fu tile their untimeliness may render them the more exigent; and to judge them as futile is to claim a certainty not avaIlable to the honest sceptic. Vigorous attempts to discredit metaphysical investigation are no new thing, though the latest is, perhaps, the most thoroughgoing, and cer tainly the most self-confident. Yet it may well be argued that effective criticism of metaphysics is either itself a sort of metaphysics, or has for its foundation presuppositions that could only be metaphysically es tablished. "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recu"et." Metaphysics survives, and can only survive as a true philosophia perennis, as the catalyst of scepsis and schism - neither as inexorable dogma "once for all de livered," nor as "a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth, without a formal seed.

The Design of Existence
The Design of Existence

Author: Wilson Van Dusen

Publisher: Chrysalis Books

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780877853947

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A guidebook to the mystical experience like no other. Viewing external reality from a multi-dimensional perspective, Van Dusen imposes that vision on our internal reality. He sets out to explore the inner landscape in detail, using the writings of 18th-century visonary Emanuel Swedenborg as a template and comparing them to works in of other spiritual traditions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. For both Swedenborg and Van Dusen, our interior realm reflects the external cosmos. Each of us carries in our nature and character a cosmological design. This inner-outer correspondence makes possible a mystical sense of oneness.Includes contemplative and meditative exercises for daily use.

Creation and the God of Abraham
Creation and the God of Abraham

Author: David B. Burrell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-09-02

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1139490788

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Creatio ex nihilo is a foundational doctrine in the Abrahamic faiths. It states that God created the world freely out of nothing - from no pre-existent matter, space or time. This teaching is central to classical accounts of divine action, free will, grace, theodicy, religious language, intercessory prayer and questions of divine temporality and, as such, the foundation of a scriptural God but also the transcendent Creator of all that is. This edited collection explores how we might now recover a place for this doctrine, and, with it, a consistent defence of the God of Abraham in philosophical, scientific and theological terms. The contributions span the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and cover a wide range of sources, including historical, philosophical, scientific and theological. As such, the book develops these perspectives to reveal the relevance of this idea within the modern world.

Curing Mad Truths
Curing Mad Truths

Author: Rémi Brague

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2019-06-25

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0268105715

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In his first book composed in English, Rémi Brague maintains that there is a fundamental problem with modernity: we no longer consider the created world and humanity as intrinsically valuable. Curing Mad Truths, based on a number of Brague's lectures to English-speaking audiences, explores the idea that humanity must return to the Middle Ages. Not the Middle Ages of purported backwardness and barbarism, but rather a Middle Ages that understood creation—including human beings—as the product of an intelligent and benevolent God. The positive developments that have come about due to the modern project, be they health, knowledge, freedom, or peace, are not grounded in a rational project because human existence itself is no longer the good that it once was. Brague turns to our intellectual forebears of the medieval world to present a reasoned argument as to why humanity and civilizations are goods worth promoting and preserving. Curing Mad Truths will be of interest to a learned audience of philosophers, historians, and medievalists.

Christianity and Creation
Christianity and Creation

Author: James P. Mackey

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2006-11-01

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 9780826419071

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James Mackey has written a bold one-volume systematic theology in eight chapters on creation, fall, salvation, God, creed, code, cult and church constitution.

How to Think About God
How to Think About God

Author: Mortimer J. Adler

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1991-07-16

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0020160224

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Dr. Adler extends and modernizes the argument for the existence of God developed by Aristotle and Aquinas without relying on faith, mysticism, or science. Instead, he uses a rationalist argument to lead the reader to a point where he or she can see that the existence of God is not necessarily dependent upon a suspension of disbelief. Lightning Print On Demand Title

The End For Which God Created the World
The End For Which God Created the World

Author: Jonathan Edwards

Publisher: Ravenio Books

Published: 2015-06-29

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13:

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This classic is organized as follows: Introduction Containing Explanations of Terms and General Positions Chapter I. Wherein Is Considered, What Reason Teaches Concerning This Affair. Section I. Some things observed in general, which reason dictates Section II. Some further observations concerning those things which reason leads us to suppose God aimed at in the creation of the world Section III. Wherein it is considered how, on the supposition of God’s making the aforementioned things his last end, he manifests a supreme and ultimate regard to himself in all his works Section IV. Some objections considered, which may be made against the reasonableness of what has been said of God making himself his last end. Chapter II. Wherein If It Is Inquired, What Is To Be Learned From Holy Scriptures, Concerning God’s Last End In The Creation Of The World Section I. The Scriptures represent God as making himself his own last end in the creation of the world Section II. Wherein some positions are advanced concerning a just method of arguing in this affair, from what we find in the Holy Scriptures Section III. Particular texts of Scripture, that show that God’s glory is an ultimate end of the creation Section IV. Places of Scripture that lead us to suppose, that God created the world for his name, to make his perfections known; and that he made it for his praise. Section V. Places of Scripture from whence it may be argued, that communication of good to the creature, was one thing which God had in view, as an ultimate end of the creation of the world. Section VI. Wherein is considered what is meant by the glory of God and the name of God in Scripture, when spoken of as God’s end in his works Section VII. Showing that the ultimate End of the Creation of the World is but one, and what that one end is.

Creation and the Persistence of Evil
Creation and the Persistence of Evil

Author: Jon D. Levenson

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1994-12-19

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9780691029504

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This paperback edition brings to a wide audience one of the most innovative and meaningful models of God for this post-Auschwitz era. In a thought-provoking return to the original Hebrew conception of God, which questions accepted conceptions of divine omnipotence, Jon Levenson defines God's authorship of the world as a consequence of his victory in his struggle with evil. He traces a flexible conception of God to the earliest Hebrew sources, arguing, for example, that Genesis 1 does not describe the banishment of evil but the attempt to contain the menace of evil in the world, a struggle that continues today.