Consider the following: Let, g ≝ God a ≝ God’s act of creation Now, according to the argument from Modal Collapse: 1. ☐(∃x)(x = g) (premise) 2. ☐(a=g) (premise) Therefore 3. ☐(∃x)(x = a) The fear, is that if God’s act of creation exists of necessity, then all contingent facts become necessary. However, I would propose the following: C<x,p,ω> ≝ x creates the fact of p in world ω a* ≝ (ɿx)(∀p)[(♢p ∧ ♢~p) →(∃ω)(C<x,p,ω>)] However, this does not cause modal collapse, it seems to me. As (3) above would really just mean: 4. ☐(∃x)(∀p){[(♢p ∧ ♢~p) → (∃ω)(C<x,p,ω>) ∧ (∀y)[(♢p ∧ ♢~p ..read more

Victorinus’s Commentary on Revelation (circa AD 280-304) is often thought not to support a Marian interpretation of the Woman in Revelation 12, as he explicitly identifies her as the “Ancient Church”: “The woman clothed with the sun, and having the moon under her feet, and wearing a crown of twelve stars upon her head, and travailing in her pains, is the ancient Church of fathers, and prophets, and saints, and apostles, which had the groans and torments of its longing until it saw that Christ, the fruit of its people according to the flesh long promised to it, had ..read more

Here is a recent talk I did with Kyle Alander on Suan Sonna’s New Eliakim Argument: If you would like to play around with the numbers, here is the calculator: papacy-calculatorDownload ..read more

In discussing Sola Fide with Protestants, I have seen reference to the following quote (though I cannot source it directly to Martin Luther): The Sola is then nuanced to a point where I, as a Catholic, find it unobjectionable. If a saving faith is one that is always accompanied by works of love, then I agree. I might add that the correlation is not merely incidental, but essential. This inspired me to work through each of the Solae and provide a Catholic nuance that follows the same formula. 1. Sola Fide: Faith alone saves, but a faith that saves is never alone (for it is formed by works of l ..read more

Ok, now the Davidic Kingdom came to be. Christians see Christ and His Church as the fulfillment of the Davidic monarchy. Speculate counterfactually. What if the prophesies of the Old Testament and fulfillment in the New Testament were found in the establishment of the Church in the model of the Judges.[?] What would that Church look like.[?] Describe it. ChatGPT What an intriguing counterfactual scenario! If the prophecies of the Old Testament and their fulfillment in the New Testament were based on the model of the Judges rather than the Davidic monarchy, the resulting Christian Church might ..read more

Here is a kind of logical fallacy that may afflict some thinkers: The Fallacy of Independent Premises: An unreliable inference method, especially in probability, in which one unreflectively assumes that the premises of an argument are independent of one another, or in which one thinks that it is logically virtuous, e.g. to avoid circularity, to treat them in this way. Given that most arguments attempt to capture an underlying relevance, and appeal to background knowledge, evidence, or warrant that may require the updating of one belief in light of the other, it is an unreliable method of inf ..read more

D1. A ‘Rule of Faith’ is a consistent source or standard by which beliefs and practices are measured, derived, or confirmed. [Justification: By Stipulation] P1. If Sola Scriptura is true, then it is not the case that there is another infallible rule or faith apart from Scripture. [Justification: Analytically true] P2. If there is an infallible Witness of the Holy Spirit, which is a consistent source or standard, distinct from Scripture, by which beliefs and practices are measured, derived, or confirmed, then there is another infallible rule of faith apart from Scripture. [Justification: D1 an ..read more

Here is an analogy by which we might better understand the doctrine of transubstantiation: a corpse would not be a natural human substance for Aristotle, since it has lost the unifying principle of the human soul, which is the form of the human being. So, a corpse is an assemblage of underlying substances arranged in a way that we call “human” (human by “equivocation” motivated by causal history and appearances). Despite this substantial change, many appearances of a living human remain and persist on the dimensive substrate of that assemblage of diverse substances. Now, in this case, the matt ..read more

Either the act of creation takes on the property of being explicable because God chooses it, or God’s choosing an act of creation because it has of itself the property of being explicable. If it is the former, then it seems that God’s choosing the act of creation is itself brute, and the only explanation for creation is God’s choosing it. If it is the latter, then it seems God’s act of creation is necessitated, in that God assessed the options and found one option to objectively possess features that were sufficient for his selection. So, either God’s act of creation is brute or necessary. T ..read more

Model: GPT-4 Please analyze the following argument, and assume Free Logic, i.e. existential quantifiers are not ontologically committing: Deduction Fx ≝ x is a fictional being Gxy ≝ x is greater than y ©… ≝ it is conceivable that… g ≝ (ɿx)~©(∃y)Gyx 1. (∀x)(Fx ⊃ ©(∃y)Gyx) (Premise) 2. (∀x)[(x = g) ⊃ ~©(∃y)Gyx] (Premise) 3. (∃x)(x = g) (Premise) 4. μ = g (3 EI) 5. (μ = g) ⊃ ~©(∃y)Gyμ (2 UI) 6. Fμ ⊃ ©(∃y)Gyμ (1 UI) 7. ~©(∃y)Gyμ (4,5 MP) 8. ~ Fμ (6,7 MT) 9. ~Fg (4 ID) Q.E.D. Defense of Premises: Premise 1: By fiction, I stipulate that something exists as a mere description within our univers ..read more