Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Debating The Filioque and Incarnation: A Comparative Analysis of Eastern Orthodox and Thomistic Perspectives on the Trinity The Eastern Orthodox claim that the three persons in the Trinity have the same divine will and power since they are the One God. However, if one does not affirm that they have the possibility of becoming incarnate then this would entail that they do not have the same power as only the Son has the power to become incarnate, while the Father and Holy Spirit cannot. If there are three persons who are each divine and yet share different powers then there is a strong argument that this leads to three gods rather than one. The idea that the Son alone has the power to become incarnate comes from Book 4 Chapter 4 of An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by John of Damascus, “The Father is Father and not Son: the Son is Son and not Father: the Holy Spirit is Spirit and not Father or Son. For the individuality is unchangeable. How, indeed, could individuality continue to exi...

The Essence-Existence Distinction Under Thomas Aquinas One of my previous blogs discussed the doctrine of Divine Processions and specifically the procession of the Son by way of knowing was explained. In that blog I wrote,  “However, God knows himself perfectly and he is the only thing that can possibly understand his own essence. In his act of understanding himself it will be a perfect image with the same essence as it will be identical as it will be a reflection of his essence. Therefore, the Son proceeds by way of knowing. Knowledge is a procession. The reason why it becomes a person is because it is the perfect image of the divine essence.” This made me ask why this is the case? Could God imagine anything such as a unicorn and “by way of knowing” it exists? But then I continued to think and it hit me! Perhaps the difference between the Logos and a unicorn is that the former procession presupposes that existence is part of essence. God could imagine a perfect unicorn but that al...