Tim Weldon has written a brief, but helpful introduction on John Duns Scotus. It's one of the simplest works I've ever read on Scotus. Please see http://voices.yahoo.com/the-sophisticated-wisdom-john-duns-scotus-11748226.html?cat=37
thanks,
Edgar
5 comments:
Very interesting,did Scotus though have any comments about"hatred"?
In my studies on Scotus, I've mostly concentrated on his metaphysics, theology and thoughts on the human person. I know that he wrote extensively on love and he does talk about the impious sin of hating God and he discusses the command that we have to love our neighbor as well. Weldon discusses these points on pages 58-60 of his work.
I think discussions like these are fascinating. But would you agree that just the mere possibility that God may have a good reason for permitting evil is an adequate reason to discount any arguments from evil that try to disprove God's existence? An argument from evil basically says that the statements "God exists" and "evil exists" are logically inconsistent, or absurd. The two statements can't both be true for the argument to be valid. In other words, the atheist must take on an enormous burden of proof, for they would have to show that "God exists" and "evil exists" could not both be possibly true. What do you think?
As I'm sure you would agree, atheists generally are not easily swayed by proofs for the existence of God. But that doesn't mean I believe the fault lies in the proofs.
When a Christian or theist can bring forth solid possible reasons why God might permit evil, such an argument shows the evident flaws in the logical problem of evil. I believe the task of showing the flawed nature of the LPE has already been done by Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, William Lane Craig and others. What's more of a challenge is the evidential problem of evil. It's not an insurmountable argument, but just more difficult to explain, IMO.
I agree that evil can sometimes be hard to explain, but is not insurmountable. But I am annoyed at the average lay atheist who thinks the very existence of evil contradicts the Christian God.
And I apologize, it appears I've commented under the wrong post.
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