Creation and Freedom. An Augustinian Problem : « Quia voluit » ? and/or « Quia bonus » ?

Beyond data: The opportunity for analytics in CRE

Perspiciatis Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores. Perspiciatis Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores.

From Tertullian’s Credo Quia Absurdum to Bohr’s Crazy Theories: A Rational Explanation of a Seemingly Irrational Idea

At first glance, Tertullian’s idea – that absurdity of a statement makes it more believable – sounds irrational, maybe appropriate for theology but definitely not for science. However, somewhat surprisingly, a similar idea was successfully used by the Nobelist Niels Bohr in theoretical physics – an epitome of rationality in science. In this paper, we show that this Tertullian-Bohr idea actually...

An Apophatic View of God and Creation

The English Dominican Herbert McCabe highlighted some ideas of Thomas Aquinas on the knowability of God and on creation, which can usefully challenge some widespread commonplaces. The purposes of this article are two: to present McCabe’s sophisticated doctrine on the knowability of God and on creation in a systematic way, and to put this doctrine into its historical context. In the scattered an...

Bonus? No, just an onus.

Al-kindī and the Mu‘tazila: Divine Attributes, Creation and Freedom

The ‘Abb®sid caliphs al-Ma’m‚n and al-Mu‘ta◊im, who between them reigned from 198 to 227 A.H. (813-842 A.D.) are best-known to historians of philosophy for two things. First, they supported a massive translation project that had already begun in the previous century with al-Ma’m‚n’s grandfather, al-Man◊‚r. The result was that many of the most important works of Greek philosophy and science were...