Category: aquinas

  • Why is there Something?

    Why is there Something?

    THE PROJECT was a conversation/presentation for our local chapter of the Dominican lay fraternity on Chapter 12 of The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics by Fr W. Norris Clarke, SJ. The chapter was on Efficient Cause, which is one of the four causes of Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy. Here follow the notes…

  • Can you do that?

    THIS YEAR for our chapter of the Lay Fraternity of St Dominic, we are reading The One and the Many: a Contemporary Thomist Metaphysics by W. Norris Clarke S.J. (insert OP/SJ jokes here). As is often the case with Amazon it took too long for such a non-popular book to arrive so we had a…

  • Sheer Poetry

    Sheer Poetry

    The reason, however, why the philosopher may be likened to the poet is this: both are concerned with the marvelous. – St Thomas Aquinas WHEN THIS QUOTE Surfaced in my Twitter timeline this morning, there was first an urgent recourse to Google. The reader is strongly advised to Google any random quotation: so many float…

  • Cheap Thomism

    Cheap Thomism

    When I first converted to Orthodoxy, entering the Church in 2002, I asked Fr Victor Sokolov (Memory Eternal!) to bless my apartment. Upon arrival, he did a sort of brief inspection of my space including a long perusal of my bookshelves. At that time my library was much larger than it now is, containing the…

  • An Infinity of Love

    An Infinity of Love

    JMJ Spillway at Fontana Dam, North Carolina At our monthly meeting, the Dominican Tertiaries were discussing Aquinas’ Summa, Part 1, Question 12. How God is known by us. I noted that this was where Aquinas and Palamas parted company. Article 1 states clearly (after ditching a few objections): Unde simpliciter concedendum est quod beati Dei…