Alving Plantinga’s criticism of Aquinas’s Doctrine of Divine Simplicity cannot be ignored since currently numerous philosophers and theologians follow him regarding the downplaying or rejecting DDS. In fact, engaging Plantinga’s arguments against DDS is a needed step in order to explore whether divine simplicity can be recorded in the analytic tradition. Embracing a non-constituent ontological framework where human concepts can apply univocally to God despite the limitations of human language (p. 18), Plantinga explores how God relates to abstract properties and the conflict between DDS and attributes such as aseity and sovereignty. Plantinga discusses Aquinas’s doctrine of simplicity and offers …

Although the covenant was a relatively known theme among sixteenth-century early Reformers, Bullinger’s theology —as reflected in his treatise A Brief Exposition of the One and Eternal Testament or Covenant of God (hereafter Covenant of God) — develops further Zwingli’s notion of the covenant. Although we can’t say that the covenant is a central hermeneutical principle to understand all Bullinger’s theology, his development of the covenant offers some good insights. Testamentum as Covenant Due to the diversity of meanings, Bullinger starts clarifying his understanding of the term ‘testamentum.’ He understands ‘testamentum’ as an oath-based promise taking into account what Scripture …

Pascal claims that pride and despair can be replaced by the virtues of humility and hope. I will explore in this post what Pascal means by pride and despair as spiritual vices, and how an encounter with Christ in faith engenders the spiritual virtues of humility and hope. When Pascal writes that the knowledge of God creates prides one should understand that such knowledge has been acquired without the proper contextualization: the knowledge of humanity’s own wretchedness or misery. Similarly, the knowledge of humanity’s wretchedness leads human beings into despair if they do not have the knowledge of God. In …

Aquinas in Suma Theologica (II-II, Q.20, A.4) argues that sloth leads to despair. I will briefly explore how sloth might lead to despair, using Rebecca DeYoung’s reinterpretation on the nature of sloth in her book Glittering Vices (Brazos Press, 2009). Young briefly challenges the popular notion of understanding sloth as mere laziness. She argues that the modern concept of ‘sloth’ has departed significantly from the spiritual roots with which it had connections (p. 82). Young’s aim is to retrieve the Christian notion of sloth and clarify the misunderstandings around this concept. Young clings to Aquinas, who is in the middle …

I remember one of my challenging internships while in Seminary. How could I forget it? The workload was too much, something that led me to organize a volunteer group. Every week I needed to do a series of regular tasks, such as organizing and distributing printed material, writing projects, and the list goes on. After several weeks of hard work, it was difficult to bear the workload. The problem was not my busy schedule itself or the number of assigned tasks, but the large and complex process to complete those tasks. One single project could even take weeks before it …

In a workshop I attended a couple of years ago, the speaker asked his audience some questions about Christian leadership. After participants answered with a variety of interesting responses, the speaker offered his definition of a leader. Without entering into details, I found myself struggling with this speaker’s definition of a Christian leader: everything he said reminded me of a corporate boss. I have to accept that at the end, a boss is kind of a leader. What I cannot accept, however, is that this kind of leadership is how Scripture depicts an “after God’s own heart” leader. Unlike other …