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Nicene Trinitarian Theology: True God from True God; Of One Substance (Homoousios) with the Father

Nicene Trinitarian Theology: True God from True God; Of One Substance (Homoousios) with the Father

Kairos Podcast 6: Biblical-Nicene Trinitarianism vs Early Heresies. Part 5/6

Theology of the Nicene Creed (325 AD)
Note how the four clauses of the Nicene Creed specifically rebut Arianism.

1. TRUE GOD FROM TRUE GOD – He is also ‘true God’, i.e. not God in a secondary degree.

2. THAT IS, FROM THE SUBSTANCE OF THE FATHER added to give a more precise interpretation to BEGOTTEN FROM THE FATHER – “What we have here is a deliberately formulated counterblast to the principal tenet of Arianism, that the Son had been created out of nothing and had a beginning.”

3. BEGOTTEN NOT MADE – “The Arians were “eager enough to employ such language as BEGOTTEN, but the meaning they put upon it was indistinguishable from MADE… [The Nicene Creed affirms that] The Godhead had never been without His Word or His Wisdom: so the Father had never been other than the Father, and had never been without His Son. The Son and the Father must therefore have coexisted from all eternity, the Father eternally begetting the Son.” (ECD 237-238).

4. OF ONE SUBSTANCE WITH THE FATHER – “This asserts the full deity of the Son. “The Son, it implied, shared the very being or essence of the Father. He was therefore fully divine. Whatever belonged to or characterized the Godhead belonged to and characterized Him.” (ECD 238)

To ensure total condemnation of Arian theology, the anathemas were added to condemn phrases typically used in Arian catchwords or slogans. Continue reading “Nicene Trinitarian Theology: True God from True God; Of One Substance (Homoousios) with the Father”

Metaphysics of Knowledge and Empirical-Mathematical Science. Jacques Maritain’s Three Degrees of Abstraction

The earlier post, Models of Integration of Science and Faith – Science and Christianity: Part 5/6, analyses different models for the relationship between of science and Christianity: conflict, independence, complementation, dialogue, integration and transformation. However, the absence of discussion on the epistemological foundations underlying the typology of models gives the impression that it is based on pragmatic and arbitrary criteria. What is missing is a philosophy of nature and metaphysics of knowledge to ensure that the process of integration is empirically well founded and logically coherent . The purpose of the present post on Jacques Maritain’s Three Degrees of Abstraction is to fill a lacuna found in the earlier discussion.

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Many scientists today assert that modern empirical science and the “scientific method” is the best, if not the final arbiter of any truth claim about the world and reality. The premise of this assertion is that physical reality is the only reality and all truth claims must be empirically verifiable. Continue reading “Metaphysics of Knowledge and Empirical-Mathematical Science. Jacques Maritain’s Three Degrees of Abstraction”

LGBT Ideology & Activism in Social Context. Homosexual Practice & LGBT Sexual Revolution. Part 1/5

LGBT Ideology & Activism in Social Context. HPLSR Part 1/5

A. Two Opposing Reactions to Homosexual Practice
1) Inclusivist Liberals: Emphasis on LOVE with a loose attachment to biblical law.
2) Historical church 2000 yr Tradition.

B. Application – Welcoming, but not affirming
Speak God’s truth in love BUT no place for self-righteousness.
Differentiate between people struggling with same-sex attraction from militant homosexual activists.
Main focus on homosexual practices tho’ may make reference to the sexual dysphoria and transgender debate.

C. Basic Facts
Relevant statistics about homosexual practices today
Multiple causes of homosexuality.

D. Biblical Focus on Acts, Not ‘Orientation’
The Bible knows nothing of “homosexual orientation.” The church’s moral focus is not fundamentally with homosexual orientation, no matter how it is supposed to develop.The church’s moral concern is with what an individual does with his or her experiences of same-sex attraction.z

You can watch the video at
LGBT Ideology & Activism in Social Context: HPLSR Part 1/5

Related Posts:
Collated posts on Bible and Homosexuality

In Defence of Secondary Causation Against Occasionalism

So, if created things have no actions productive of effects, it follows that no nature of anything would ever be known through the effect. And thus, all the knowledge of natural science is taken away from us, for the demonstrations in it are chiefly derived from the effect. (Aquinas SCG 3.69.18)

Secondary Causes: Their Relation to the Primary Cause (God)
The Primary Cause (God) is the uncaused cause, the source of all beings and existence.¹ God continues to sustain the universe at every moment to ensure its continued existence and operation.

Secondary Causes like finite living beings and natural forces possess causal powers. For example, fire has the power to heat and a human has to power to make choices and initiate action. Everything must have a cause. A thing’s nature must be caused by another, that is, it is causally dependent on another agent in a chain of causes. Since these agents are dependent, there are accordingly regarded as secondary” causes. This chain of causes operates as an interactive system established by God. However, each “secondary” cause is ultimately dependent on the power of the Primary Cause (God).

What is the relationship between primary cause and secondary cause? The relationship between a craftsman and his tool provides a helpful analogy: The craftsman (God) is the primary cause of the artifact but this does not undermine the genuine role contributed by the tool (secondary cause) in the production of the artifact.

In Defence of Secondary Causation Against Occasionalism
According to occasionalism², created substances do not have intrinsic power of causation to bring about changes or events. There is no secondary causation since all events are directly caused by God. The discussion below defends the necessity of secondary causation by highlighting some weaknesses of occasionalism. Continue reading “In Defence of Secondary Causation Against Occasionalism”

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“For Scholastics, in order to be caused (whether caused to exist or caused to undergo some change), a thing must in some way be a mixture of act and potency, since to change or come into being is to go from potency to act. But then what is pure actuality and thus devoid of potency not only need not have a cause, but could not have had one. Hence it is false to say that everything has a cause. The principle of causality says that what changes requires a cause, that what comes into being has a cause, that what is composite, contingent or merely participates in being needs a cause, and in general that what goes from potency to act requires a cause. But that is very different from saying that absolutely everything has a cause. When the Scholastic says that God is uncaused, that is not because God is being made an arbitrary exception to a general rule. It is rather because God is taken to be pure actuality, non-composite, non-contingent, and so forth.” Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (editiones scholasticae, 2014), p. 107.
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Occasionalism was a dominant philosophy school in medieval Islam. Its prominent advocates included Al-Ash’ari (10th C), founder Ash’arite occasionalism and following him, Al-Ghazali (12th C) and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (13th C). According to Islamic occasionalism, what appears to be causal relationships in nature are merely God’s habit (’adah) of creating certain events after others, with no necessary connection between them. “God has decreed as a matter of habit (’adah) that the succession of accidents shall correspond to a certain pattern… But it is clear that God who is the ultimate Agent could alter this course of habit freely.” See Majid Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism (Routledge, 1958, 2008), p. 30

Should the Church Adopt the Chinese Ritual of Ancestor Worship/Veneration?

I have been asked several times about my view on a Tik Tok video which shows a church conducting its Chinese New Year or Spring Festival worship which seems to follow the form of the Chinese ritual of ancestor worship or veneration.

My response to this video is based on how practitioners of this kind of rituals normally justify their adoption of the form of “ancestor worship or veneration. It is also based on my personal experience of similar worship during my younger pagan days.

One may argue that offering incense is in the Bible. OK, I can give some benefit of doubt on this matter. That is, putting three incense joss sticks is debatable and defensible – assuming worship & acknowledgement of the Triune God in heaven with NO images. Context matters.¹

Does the tablet in front of the table contain only Bible verses praising the Triune God without images? If there is no image, then the ritual could be discussed. But I doubt it as bible verses tablets have not become common place in church worship rituals. What is written in the tablet would make a crucial difference to the nature of the ritual as it could be some Chinese characters describing the “sky god” Tian (天), the “earth god” Tudigong (土地公), and the “kitchen god” is known as Zao Shen (灶神). The presence of these references would certainly be problematic. Looks like this video pertains more towards some form of ancestor veneration/worship. Continue reading “Should the Church Adopt the Chinese Ritual of Ancestor Worship/Veneration?”

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[Additional footnote added on 14/04/2025 as clarification – Context matters. I wont approve putting a joss stick in front of an ancestral tablet, or the earth god tablet etc.- because according to pagan beliefs, the spirits of the ancestors or the spirit of the earth god resides within the tablets. This is idolatry even though there are no images. Conceivably, someone may just put joss sticks in an urn to offer incense to the “heavenly god/God” without a tablet or images – well, we can discuss to find out what exactly the one who puts the joss stick has in mind & decide accordingly. However, in reality (except for a Chinese cult, which existed briefly in the 1970s), 99+ % of the people put the joss sticks in front of some kinds of tablets which are understood to be residences of spirits. This would be idolatry. The case of the tablet in the video is ambiguous because I don’t know what is in the tablet – but if what is written in the tablet encourages or is in line with the customary idea of tablets being places of residence of any spirit(s), then it would be idolatry. The presumption is that the presence of the tablet is likely to become a stumbling block and therefore is best not used at all].

Liberal Scholarship can be Sophisticated and Erudite (John Barton), but “Liberalism is not Christianity. It’s Another Religion Altogether” (J.G. Machen)

Some readers of my earlier posts on Liberal theology have challenged me to explain what I mean when I refer to Liberal theology. It is claimed that the word “Liberalism” has been abused to disabuse and slander other believers simply because of some ‘minor’ theological differences. Truth be told, liberalism is no minor theological issue. It is a dangerous distortion of biblical Christianity precisely because it uses familiar theological term but invests in these terms meanings that are contrary to what the Bible originally teaches.

Liberalism is the reigning paradigm among biblical scholars and theologians teaching in Western secular universities today. I recommend my readers read John Barton, A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths (Penguin, 2020) to become acquainted with contemporary liberalism.

A cursory reading of Barton’s book shows that doubts about the historical reliability of the Bible run through the whole book. Given below is a small sample of Barton’s skeptical conclusions: Continue reading “Liberal Scholarship can be Sophisticated and Erudite (John Barton), but “Liberalism is not Christianity. It’s Another Religion Altogether” (J.G. Machen)”

A Corrective to Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’ Misreading of Aquinas’ Philosophy in his Book, “Islam and Secularism”

Note: This post was earlier published as an appendix to the post, Link – The Primacy of “Existence” over “Essence” : A Foundational Principle of Christian “Existential” Philosophy.

Our exposition of Aquinas’ thesis on the primacy of existence over essence provides a corrective to Malaysia’s premier philosopher, Naquib al-Attas, who claims that Aquinas’ misguided notion of distinction between existence and essence led to the development of nominalism (or Ockhamism) which denies the ontological reality of universals and asserts that universals are merely names (nomina) or abstract concepts.¹ This denial results not only in doubts about the existence of objects but also the existence of God and ultimately gives birth to Western secularism.² Naquib writes, Continue reading “A Corrective to Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’ Misreading of Aquinas’ Philosophy in his Book, “Islam and Secularism””

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Strictly speaking, Ockham’s view should be described as conceptualism rather than nominalism. Nominalism denies the real existence of universals; universals are merely names or conventional linguistic constructs. Conceptualism also rejects universals as existing independently in the external world. They are mental constructs or representations based on similarities or shared features observed among individual objects. Note that the mind plays an active role in forming universals by abstracting common features. Conceptualism represents the middle ground between realism (which posits independently existing universals) and nominalism (which denies the ontological or epistemological significance of universals entirely). However, the boundary between conceptualism to nominalism is blurr, given the proximity between language and mental concepts. Hence the suggestion that Ockham view be described as “conceptualist nominalism”.
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Note that Naquib asserts that Aquinas’ distinction of essence or quiddity from existence is based on a misunderstanding of Avicenna’s position since for medieval Islamic philosophers, essence and existence are not radically separated; rather, they are unified in a manner that reflects the interconnectedness of all creation with the Creator. However, the fact remains that existence for Avicenna (as he was read by Western philosophers in the 13th century) is not a constituent of the essence of anything, that is, existence is an accessory accident which must be conferred upon a thing by an external cause in order that it may exist. The validity of historical interpretation of Avicenna may remain an open question, but the logical implications of Avicenna’s view as understood then were correctly drawn out by Aquinas.

The Primacy of “Existence” over “Essence”: A Foundational Principle of Christian “Existential” Philosophy

Note also the appendix: A corrective to Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’ misreading of Aquinas’ philosophy in his book, Islam and Secularism.

A. Definition of terms “Existence” and “Essence”
In classical metaphysics, “essence” refers to what a thing is – its defining characteristics or nature. “Existence,” on the other hand, refers to the fact that a thing is – its actuality or the act of being.¹ Etienne Gilson notes that philosophers who were influenced by Greek philosophy treated essence as primary, with existence being a secondary or accidental attribute. Gilson critiques Platonic-Aristotelian and medieval Islamic philosophers like Avicenna and modern rationalist philosophers like Descartes and Kant for subordinating existence to essence.

Étienne Gilson’s book, The Elements of Christian Philosophy (Doubleday, 1960) offers a lucid exposition of his argument that “existence” (esse) is more fundamental than “essence” (essentia) within the framework of Thomistic thought which Gilson deploys to critique of certain trends in medieval and modern philosophy. For Gilson, Aquinas’s insight was revolutionary because it inverted the traditional emphasis on essence. Gilson lays out his argument that existence is more fundamental than essence in his book, The Elements of Christian Philosophy. Continue reading “The Primacy of “Existence” over “Essence”: A Foundational Principle of Christian “Existential” Philosophy”

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F.C. Copleston gives a careful explanation of the distinction and relationship between “essence” and “existence”: “Essence is that which answers the question what a thing is; it is substance considered as definable…Existence, on the other hand, is the act by which an essence or substance is or has being…Essence is the potential metaphysical component in a thing (it is that which is or has being, the quod est), while existence is the act by which essence has being (it is the quo est). This distinction is not, be it noted, a physical distinction between two separable things; it is a metaphysical distinction within a thing… And inasmuch as the substance, considered as essence, is that which has being, that of which we say that it exists, it can be said to ‘receive’ existence. But these ways of speaking are not meant to imply either that existence is something apart from an essence or that an essence has objective reality apart from existence. The distinction between them is a distinction within a concrete finite being” F.C. Copleston, Aquinas (Penguin, 1955, 1975), p. 101.