Simon Oliver

Motion According to Aquinas and Newton

This article seeks to examine the theological basis of the understanding of motion in the work of Aquinas and Newton. As well as the Aristotelian roots of Aquinas view, attention is also paid to motion understood as a participation in the perfect ‘motionless motion’ of the emanation of the Son from the Father. This is contrasted with the crucial theological context of Newtons view of motion as expressed in the Principia, namely his Arianism and theological voluntarism. Motion becomes a purely physical and spatial category predicted on violent competition rather than mutual enhancement and the goal of perfection. Meanwhile, it is suggested that Newton has to resort to unmediated divine action within absolute and eternal space in order to describe how a universe in motion might have anything to do with God.

The Eucharist before Nature and Culture

This article examines the claim by Bruno Latour that the modern division between the realms of nature and culture is in collapse. Following Latour, the division of nature and culture is located within a “modern constitution” which also includes the bracketing of God and a non-theological ontology. Technology is examined as a means of overcoming the chaotic collapse of the dualism of nature and culture. Particular reference is made to the work of Donna Haraway. However, it is argued that technology, in being mimetic, is not able to re-configure the relationship between nature and culture. Instead, through a comparison of the theologies of John Calvin and St. Thomas Aquinas, nature and culture are seen to be reconfigured in a non-mimetic understanding of the Eucharist in which the natural and cultural elements of the Churchs liturgy reach their telos through participation in the divine life.

The theodicy of Austin Farrer

This article seeks to place the theodicy of the Anglican theologian Austin Farrer, as expressed in Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited (1962), within the context of philosophical and theological approaches to the so-called “problem of evil”. Farrers work is initially contrasted with the theodicies of John Hick and Richard Swinburne. This comparison reveals some of the rationalist and foundationalist moral assumptions of modern philosophical theodicy of which Hick and Swinburne are representatives. By contrast, it is argued that Farrers approach is thoroughly theological and begins not with a pre-conceived ethics, but with Gods self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Farrer is thus deemed to have much in common with pre-Enlightenment thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas. Although Farrers theodicy is seen to be theological (rather than a philosophical attempt at a resolution of the modern “problem of evil”), it is argued that he resists trends in recent theological approaches to theodicy that claim that God is passible (for example, the work of Jurgen Moltmann). This article defends divine impassibility and argues that, although Farrers later “metaphysical personalism” implies that God may be personal to the point that he could be said to suffer, his Augustinian notion of the nature of evil as privatio boni strongly implies impassibility. This Farrer is seen to avoid two anthropomorphic approaches to theodicy: one that judges God by the standards of a foundational secular morality, and the other that ascribes certain “personal” emotions to the divine. This article defends Farrers theological approach to theodicy and his emphasis on ecclesiology and soteriology. However, the lack of a convincing and thorough dogmatic theology is seen to render his theodicy uncompelling. Despite this weakness, it is argued that Farrers work points theodicy towards a theological encounter with particular narratives of evil and suffering and away from the consideration of a single “problem of evil” by means of “rational”, philosophical enquiry.