Those Darn Rationalists

Sorry for the lack of updates lately...though I promise you once school is done I'm going to have some REALLY cool stuff to post! I'm working on a theological idea about the act of Creation in relation to the Incarnation based on the theology of St Augustine, Balthasaar, and Benedict XVI in his pre-pope days. Some of my friends will tell you that they have heard me talk about this, and it is actually kinda tough, because talking about the inner-relationship of time and eternity through the incarnation isn't exactly easy, but once one is able to explain it, it is VERY cool! It'll be a cool tool to use simply because for those people who always raise philosophical problems about God, well, those problems can be explained away through theology, you have to accept one premise though, Christ. Anyways, it's really cool and I'm really excited, and it'll have LOTS of diagrams. I'm writing it out by hand first because I'll be able to be slow and not use so many words to explain this idea. I'll also continue again with my Theology of the Body posts.

I've got a exam on the Rationalists on Friday night. Please pray for me if you remember. After this exam I'll have but one more exam to go and then I'll have my BA in Philosophy. The Rationalists are an interesting bunch, and I never agree with any of them completely.

Descartes - Moron, pure and simple.

Melbranche - Cool because he is a Catholic priest, but he's got a weird metaphysics that doesn't exactly jive with Catholic doctrine.

Spinoza - Very cool and consistent, but you have to accept his axioms, and I don't, and I'm glad I don't becuse his philosophy negates the idea of free will and promotes determinism.

Leibniz - By far my favourite of the class, though he is the hardest to understand. This man was probably one of the smartest men to ever live, I mean, he invented Calculus and Symbolic Logic just to name 2 of his many MANY achievements. His philosophy is really cool because of his denial of space and time as flat, but instead as a way of representing logical relations between substances. I do have a beef with his philosophy too, though, in that his definition of substance entails the loss of free will as well, and thus all falls down the hole for me, and for him if you don't accept that. But by far the coolest and the most interesting!

Anyways, I've got a little bit more studying to do then it's time to hit the hay. God Bless everyone!

-Harrison