Scotus begins by making a distinction between a proposition about the possible in a divided sense verses a proposition about the possible in a composite sense.  In the latter case, such a proposition is false, as it is not possible that at the same time I both sit and do not sit.  However, in the [...]

As Hannah Arendt brings to our attention, the concept of the will has a history, and its history was decisively shaped by Christian theologians and philosophers.[1]  As Arendt so aptly puts it, “[f]reedom becomes a problem, and the Will as an independent autonomous faculty is discovered, only when men begin to doubt the coincidence of [...]

Joel at sacra doctrina has a nice (not to mention funny) post on rational animality that interacts with the Denys Turner series that I posted not long ago.  While you’re visiting his blog, check out his post on all souls–provocative, thoughtful, and as always irenic. 

By Daniel W. McClain
IV. Creation as Gift: moving forward with nature and grace
If de Lubac proposes a recovery of Thomas’ teaching on the desiderium naturale that is sensitive to the concern to maintain an intrinsic end to human nature, he is also aware of the concern presented by those who initially adopted the pure nature [...]

By Daniel W. McClain
III. De Lubac: the Loss of Man’s Natural Desire for a Supernatural Finality
Henri de Lubac writes in the first chapter of The Mystery of the Supernatural that despite Thomas’ clarity that humanity naturally longs for one end - that it is a supernatural one, without so much a reference to a “hypothetical [...]

By Daniel W. McClain
II. Thomas 2: The Vision of God in the Summa Theologica
Having demonstrated in the Summa Contra Gentiles that happiness is humanity’s end,[1] he  elaborates on the desiderium naturale in the Summa Theologica I-II. He launches into it by demonstrating the incoherence of a person having several “last ends.” The desire a person [...]

This begins a multi-part series on de Lubac by Daniel W. McClain.  Daniel is a doctoral student of theology at the Catholic University of America and blogs at The Land of Unlikeness.  
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By Daniel W. McClain
Henri de Lubac is one of a few rather unique Thomists of the twentieth century in that he produces a reading of [...]

The final installment of my transcription of Turner’s lecture.
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Step five, viz., that music as I put it is prototypically Eucharistic.  Maybe by now you’ve caught hold of the connective tissue of the thought … the formal similarity of thought structure.  For on Thomas’ account, in the Eucharist is brought the absolute limit possible before our [...]

Below is a continuation of my transcription of Turner’s lecture. 
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Step three:  poetry.  Herbert McCabe [sp?] once said, “poetry is language trying to become bodily experience.” That seems right except for the “trying to be.” Poetic meanings work through a complex set of transactions between what is conveyed by the meaning of the words considered as [...]

A More Extended Conception of Reason
Below is a continuation of the Turner transciption (see Part I and Part II).
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What I [Turner] want to do now is to move on from talking about reason in this minimal sense, and to talk now about a more extended conception of reason, which seems to me to be operative [...]

Below is a continuation of the Turner transciption (for Part I click here).  
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[According to Turner] what is more disconcerting than Kerr’s anxieties is the problematic claim that Thomas theologically and Vatican I dogmatically appear to be staking for faith’s relation for the possibilities of reason.  For that claim appears to be that it is a [...]

Presented at the Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference,
October 20, 2007
Below is more or less a transcription (with filler words here and there) of Denys Turner’s plenary speech at the recent PMR conference in Philadelphia.  I plan to post the lecture in five or so installments to allow for as much discussion as possible on each [...]