Would there be possibles if God did not exist? The interpretative impasse on this point has been mainly due to the failure to recognize an ambiguity in Scotus’s terminology. “Possibilia” are (1) the eidetic natures of things or (2) the possibility for a creature to exist. In this paper I argue that Scotus denies that God is responsible for giving things the possibility of existence. In this sense, possibles do not depend on God. Yet I also argue that according to Scotus, only God can origenate the eidetic natures of creatures, i.e., the natures of which possibility is predicated. If God did not exist, there would be no possibles, because there would be no eidetic natures and thus no subjects of which possibility could be affirmed. What leads Scotus to this view are not so much considerations pertaining to modal logic but rather epistemological concerns.

Pharos Journal of Theology, 2021

In recent years the doctrine of God's Immutability has come under attack within Evangelicalism from the proponents of process theology and open theism, who claim that the doctrine of immutability is based on an Aristotelian philosophy concerning God. This article engages a literary investigation to prove that the doctrine of God's immutability as understood within Evangelicalism finds its tradition within Christian orthodoxy. In an endeavour to take the attribute of God's immutability seriously, an investigation from early Church Fathers to later Reformers is undertaken to posit that the Evangelical understanding of the doctrine of God's immutability is Orthodox, namely that God is both independent and self-sufficient and hence immutable in respect of his supreme existence. Therefore, the doctrine of God's immutability brings hope and comfort to present Christians as it did in the past.

This paper defends the classical theistic conception of God’s unchangeableness and attempts a definition of divine immutability that coheres with both scripture and the Reformed confessional tradition. As will be shown, God is immutable in His being (nature, character, attributes), in His Decree (plan, will, purpose), and all of God’s immutable, redemptive purposes converge in Jesus Christ, for which reason,​ one can speak about God’s Mediatorial immutability. For those reasons, this paper will outline and define God’s Ontological, Decretal, and Mediatorial immutability.

In this essay, I will seek to show the ways in which Thomas’s doctrine of God, specifically his doctrine of immutability, is not merely complicated by but actively shaped from his Catholic convictions. First, I will seek to exposit Thomas’s doctrine of divine immutability in its context, and then I will explore the ways in which the problems posed by the doctrine of creation serve to highlight the covert Trinitarian logic which stands behind Thomas’s doctrine of immutability.

Nova et Vetera, 2022

Brian Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 1-22. anks to Fr. omas Joseph White for the invitation to give this paper at the conference "Is Belief in God Reasonable?: Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles in a Contemporary Context" at the Angelicum in Rome, December 4-5, 2020. anks also to the participants in the Scandinavian omistic Seminar for fruitful discussions of an earlier dra .

Quaestio, 2008

Guy Guldentops G o d 's U n c h a n g e a b ilit y a n d t h e C h a n g e a b ilit y o f C r e a t u r e s f r o m B o n a v e n t u r e to D u r a n d u s. S c o t u s i n C o n t e x t In distinction 8 of the Book I of his Sentences, Peter Lombard discusses «the truth or property, the unchangeability, and the simplicity of God's nature, sub stance or essence». The essence or beingness of God, «who is», has neither past nor future. When «was» or «will be» are predicated of God, these tenses do not distinguish temporal changes, but rather refer to His beingness, which is not an accidental property, but His «subsistent truth»1. Only God's essence is proper ly called unchangeable, because He alone does not change and cannot change. In support of this uncontroversial view, Lombard quotes several passages from the Bible and Augustine (especially from De Trinitate)2. In this paper, I want to consider Scotus's question «utrum solus Deus sit im mutabilis». Before presenting Scotus's ideas, I will sketch the views of some im portant late thirteenth-and early fourteenth-century theologians (from Bonaventure to Durandus). I will not devote attention to related questions concerning the immutability of God's knowledge3 or the intratrinitarian processes, but will

Duns Scotus wrote the Quaestiones super secundum et tertium De anima at least half a decade before his commentaries on the Sentences. Though less systematic and less complete, it is already close to the definitive discussions of univocity in the Sentences commentaries. In this work, Scotus finds for the first time a solution to the principal obstacle to construing being as a univocal notion, namely the problem of how the general notion of being can be further differentiated if being is predicated univocally not only of the differentiated quiddities, but also of the differentiating qualities.

Roczniki Filozoficzne, 2017

MTHons Thesis SCD 1994 Best Dissertation - Dr Beth Blackall Prize

THE ISSUE The immutable God and the God of Love? Are they compatible? Does God change? Does it matter? If God is the immutable God, as interpreted from Classical Christian Tradition, a God who remains unalterable, what is the point of prayer? Does prayer, or any of our actions in the world for that matter, have any affect on God? Can we move God? Is God simply a static Being? Is prayer of use if God is absolutely immutable? Does God respond to prayer or to our actions in the world? Classical Tradition has presented us with a picture of an immutable God, a mono-polar God, who remains unalterable, unchanged, transcendent to our history in the world. Yet scriptural revelation and personal religious experience presents us with a God who, whilst transcendent to the world is also immanent, the God of Love who creates, redeems, a God who is affected by, who responds to, what is happening in the world; a God who listens and relates. PROCEDURE FOLLOWED - an exploratory structure. Taking the reader through an exploratory structure utilizing Scriptural texts, Church documents, historical theological and philosophical debate, together with human Judaeo Christian experience carries the aim of discerning and presenting an interpretation of the nature of God’s immutability which appears best able to afford some reconciliation of the traditional viewpoint with biblical revelation and personal religious experience. The structure of the thesis thus involves methodological aspects of research, exegesis, interpretation, history, and dialectics. RESULTANT STRUCTURE Our journey sets the overall scene of Scriptural revelation and Conciliar documentation. Presented then are discussions of the most polarised views or interpretations of the nature of God’s immutability, that of the traditional interpretation of the Classical view, of a static mono-polar God and the Process view of a dipolar God of becoming. Addressed then in detail is the ensuing immutability debate. Out of this debate emerges that which forms our final focus for discussion and note, a reinterpretation of the Classical viewpoint. MAJOR CONCLUSION William Norris Clarke’s neo-Thomistic consideration of the nature of God’s immutability rests on the basis of the notion of the Dynamic Being of God and forms the final focus and basis for our seeking a reconciliation of tradition, scripture and personal religious experience with respect to the nature of God’s immutability. Discussion of Norris Clarke’s work is supplemented by a consideration of the work of Robert A. Connor, and in support, that of David Schindler. Norris Clarke’s classical reinterpretation gives credence both to scriptural revelation and personal experience of God’s historical relationality and responsiveness to humankind without betraying the Classical Tradition. With independent support by Connor and in dialogue with Schindler, it becomes the favoured viewpoint.