- Feb 21, 2014I am grateful to John and Dennis for their kindness. I do agree that Ross' Hidden Necessities is the essential source for his ideas on essences. I am always happy to look at this book again.
John, I do not understand your ideas on the need for better escatology. Incarnation after the Last Judgment is as Paul says, a mystery. But a central purpose of Christian philosophy is to help us imagine and appreciate the Four Mysteries: Creation, the Fall, Redemption, and Incarnation. Please explain what you mean. Do you have an essay on this topic?
I have a major trouble with the doctrine of the unity of the Transcendentals in general, and, in particular, with the concept of The Good as metaphysics. I understand Goodness as experienced, e.g. in appreciation and gratitude. I allow that the phenomenology of these concepts, and thus of Goodness, is essential to philosophy of religion. But goodness as in 'a good example', i.e., close to a paradigm, is not the same as Goodness in any Christian sense.
In individual is not composed of Good (which has Being) and Evil or non-Good (which does not. Goods conflict. Is this the best of all possible worlds? Must it be, as God's creation? I am God's creation but am not the best possible Jim Given.
But I don't understand how to proceed - in the domain of natural theology or of metaphysics, from God as Being to God as Goodness. Is Being equivalent to Goodness? I think we can't understand this in our Fallen condition. Revelation tells us that God is Good, but not, I think, metaphysics.
Ecological niches, like relative goods, change with time; as real possibilities they arise and disappear. Can this be consistent with a notion of essence?
I take a stand against Divine Ideas. Ross takes a similar but more nuanced position. What do people think about this.
God encounters the World not in a timeless real, but in the Eternal Now. God does not see the World; he is not limited to abstractive knowledge. Rather, he forms the world as it comes to be in the moment it does, but not "before" in any sense. God like any great artist, can be surprised (and delighted) by the emergence of his Creation.
In re emergence and novelty, the Process Philosophers ask many good questions. But in trying to allow for novelty and freedom, they throw out the baby with the bathwater. That is, they cease to be Christians.
Jim Given---In James_F_Ross_Study_Group@yahoogroups.com, <pluviosilla@...> wrote:
Ø Jim Given asks: “how to make such a concept [the notion that essences are ‘emergent like ecological niches’] fill the demands we inherit from Plato and Aristotle?”
My answer: we need to rework Plato’s Doctrine of Participation, especially, as it applies to the Transcendentals, but Aquinas has already set us on the path. His notion of Universal Good does not really mean the same thing it meant in Plato’s system. It is the good which trumps all others, but it need not be a static form. Thanks to our recursive intellect, we have what I’d call an nth-order ranking faculty that is capable of responding to an eternally unfolding revelation of higher and higher goods, and that will be our experience of Goodness, Truth and Beauty in heaven.
James Barham, Jim Given’s passion is the topic of Free Will; mine is eschatology. I believe that ontology without eschatology is a fool’s errand.
From: James_F_Ross_Study_Group@yahoogroups.com [mailto:James_F_Ross_Study_Group@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of jagiven1370@...
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2014 9:06 PM
To: James_F_Ross_Study_Group@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [James. F. Ross Study Group] P.S.James,
Welcome to the group I am also a senior (61 yr old) scientist, an amateur philosopher, and a Catholic.
I believe that Thomism as received is not capable of accounting for the freedom of the human will or the absolute novelty of nature. Thus I am deeply interested in Thomist-Scotist synthesis. Jim Ross (with Bates) wrote a very important book on Duns Scotus. He like me had major problems with the concept of Divine Ideas. I still have difficulties with Ross' book Hidden necessities on the topic of essences. Are essences mathematical like Schrodinger equation solutions, or more aptly thought of as emergent like ecological niches. I choose the latter, but how to make such a concept fill the demands we inherit from Plato and Aristotle?
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